Red Prince Page 2

  “He’s waking up!” Jasnia pulled the wet cloth away from the boy’s mouth as the boy shifted and blinked.

  Lakhoni returned his focus to the situation. “How do we stop the bleeding?”

  Simra shook her head. “It’s difficult. We have to put pressure on the wound, but that’s hard on the head.”

  A young boy with a serious head wound and other injuries. Lakhoni remembered struggling free from darkness and finding himself left for dead. The memory of the agony all over his body had faded, at least. “I can press the bandage here.” Lakhoni held out his hand.

  “No, I’m worried that will make it worse.” Simra unrolled the thick bandage she held. It was made of extremely soft and pliable leather. “Let’s wrap this over it and then we’ll tighten it like a tourniquet on the other side of his head.”

  Jasnia bent close to the boy’s mouth, which was moving the slightest bit.

  “Don’t let him die, Simra.” Prila turned wide, scared eyes on Simra. “I did what you said and held his head up a little and kept it covered.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” Simra bent to wrap her bandage around the boy’s head. “Jasnia, move.”

  “Quiet, he’s saying something!” Jasnia bent closer.

  Lakhoni took the bandage Simra handed him and strained to hear the boy. He heard nothing as he carefully continued wrapping the bandage around the boy’s head.

  “Something about a man.” Jasnia’s ear was practically against the boy’s face.

  “What?” Lakhoni handed the bandage back to Simra, who tied the two loose ends around her blunt stick.

  “Hush!” Jasnia hissed.

  Lakhoni watched Simra, a feeling of helplessness filling him. The young boy’s fingers twitched weakly as Simra carefully tightened the bandage. “Is this going to work?” Lakhoni looked around. Was this boy the only survivor?

  Simra grunted softly, a sad sound. “I don’t know.”

  “He’s saying they took in a hurt man,” Jasnia said. “Cured him. But the man went crazy. Killed everyone.”

  “One man did this?” Lakhoni kept his voice low. The carnage was incredible. It had been an entire raiding party that had slaughtered his own village.

  But one man had done this on his own? “That’s impossible.”

  “Simra!” Jasnia straightened, eyes wide with alarm. “He’s coughing.”

  The boy twitched violently. Lakhoni took an instinctive step backward. He leaned closer. The shaking grew worse.

  “It’s a seizure.” Simra swore and guided Lakhoni’s hand to the blunt stick. “Loosen this. Carefully. Maybe it’s making him worse.” She put her ear to the boy’s bare chest.

  “He called the man a demon,” Jasnia said, squeezing the boy’s hand. “A demon with a hole in his chest! What does that mean?”

  “Don’t let him die, Simra!” Prila said again.

  “Hush, child.” Simra said.

  A hole in his chest? How was that possible? Lakhoni already had the bandage loosened all the way. The twitching continued, growing worse. “What do we do?”

  “I don’t know!” Simra straightened, eyes wide in fear. “His heart’s going so fast! But it’s so weak, he’s lost so much bl—”

  The boy jerked hard. His eyes flashed open. He stared at the sky and whispered two words. “Red prince.” Then he stilled, his spirit flying to join those of his departed family.

  Prila burst into loud sobs, vaulted to her feet, and ran away. Jasnia stared at the boy’s lifeless body, blinking as tears washed down her cheeks.

  Lakhoni stared at Simra, those last two words ringing in his ears, destroying any vestige of peace he still felt from earlier in the forest.

  “Red prince?” Simra absently twisted the bandage in her hand. “No.”

  Lakhoni shook his head, trying to pull his thoughts back together. “He’s supposed to be dead.”

  “It can’t be him.” Simra sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

  “A hole in his chest?” Lakhoni’s knuckles felt like they were going to explode; his hands clenched into tight fists. He forced them open, studying his palms. “That hole is from Alronna’s arrow.” He pushed to his feet and took a slow, centering breath.

  “We are somehow following him.” Simra took Lakhoni’s hand. “How can that be?”

  “Because he lives.” Lakhoni let out his breath and felt his feet connecting with the earth, the cool air brushing his skin. “And Alronna is having those dreams pulling us north.” He studied the small village, the trinoma. “We have work to do here. These people deserve the Dance.” He searched inside himself, seeking his core, the heat there.

  Simra nodded. “I’ll send Jasnia for the others. We’ll do it together.” Her strong, warm hand squeezed his, easing some of the tension in his fingers.

  Lakhoni drew another breath, directing it to ignite the fury there. He met Simra’s brown and gold eyes. Memories of that first morning so many seasons ago flitted behind his eyes. His family and friends slain. Their murderers fleeing back to their evil masters. “We’ll do it together.” He looked northward, the dark line of green trees meeting the slate blue of the sky. He pictured the muscled brother of Molgar, the dead Bonaha. Gadnar. The red prince. “Then we will finish what we started in Hamalralin.”

  Simra bent to Jasnia, sending the girl off to get the others to come help.

  Lakhoni went in search of firewood for the bonfire. First the Dance for these people. Then the hunt. “If not us, who else?”

  Lakhoni searched the hard ground between all the huts of the trinoma for wood, turning up several armfuls. As he gathered fuel for the Dance of Death and Fire, Simra saw to the body of the boy. She disappeared for a short time, then returned with a soaked and dripping skin of water, using that and a soft cloth to clean the boy’s face and skin.

  Crashing in the woods beyond the small village pulled Lakhoni into a spin. He dropped the rough, dry wood into the pile he’d made and drew his dagger.

  Mastopo emerged, with his sister Lina not far behind. They pushed past branches and roughly stepped on branches and roots, sounding like a beaten and dying ox lumbering through a river of dry sticks. Balon and Falon followed, the two dogs strangely absent.

  Mastopo spotted Lakhoni. “Where is everyone?”

  Lakhoni shook his head. “Don’t know. Jasnia called for you?”

  Lina brushed by her brother and joined Simra. “She came running through telling us to find you, then ran off shouting something about Prila.” Lina hissed sadly at the sight of the dead boy. “Oh, Ancestors, see his spirit through your gates to your rest.”

  Prila was young, only in her seventh year. Despite having grown up with the Separated, she had somehow not become hardened like many of her people. Lakhoni pointed into the forest. “Prila ran off that way. Jasnia must be looking for her.”

  “But her mother and the others?” Mastopo asked. He stopped next to Lakhoni, eyeballing the pile of wood, then Lakhoni. Balon and Falon seemed to understand right away and the brothers started looking for more wood.

  “I assume still hunting,” Lakhoni said. His traveling group had divided into three smaller parties—two to find food and one to keep the young people safe. Simra was by far the most responsible, which she clearly knew, so she’d volunteered to stay with the children and Lina and Mastopo. The brother and sister pair from Zyronilxa wouldn’t have been any good in a hunting party anyway. They’d grown up in the big city and the most hunting they’d ever had to do was for a knife or plate.

  Lakhoni pointed at the forest. “Mastopo, gather more wood. We need enough to lay these people to rest.”

  Mastopo’s brows drew down and he gestured at the grisly scene. “They’re already dead. What rest?”

  A bolt of fury shot through Lakhoni, but he suppressed it. What more could he expect from a young man who had only known city life? Well, except for having been stolen away by the most evil men in the land to be sacrificed on an altar of uncut stone. Lakhoni fought to keep his vo
ice calm, but it still came out as sharp as an obsidian blade. “We will do the Dance of Death and Fire for these people. They deserve nothing less.”

  Mastopo rocked back, his lank black hair swaying. “Right. Yeah. Of course.” He scampered away. Lakhoni glared after him. Two months’ journey from the city of his birth and Mastopo still behaved as if nothing had changed. As if he hadn’t chosen to leave the city with his sister and join Lakoni’s party headed north, to the legendary land of many waters.

  While Lakhoni didn’t necessarily regret rescuing Mastopo from that altar in Hamalralin, there were times he thought perhaps the young man might have gained some spine from one slice of Molgar’s dagger. He shook the thought away and cupped his hands around his mouth. Lamorun and Hilana needed to know where they were. So did Alronna and her hunting party. Lakhoni gave the call he and Lamorun and Alronna had been using since they were small children.

  A warm hand caught him by the wrist. He turned and found Simra’s gold-flecked eyes looking at him. She gave him a small smile. “What was that sound you just made?”

  Lakhoni smiled back. “A lokapi drunk on Salno’s berry wine.”

  Simra blinked. “A… what?”

  “It started when Alronna, Lamorun, and I were playing Hunt the Boar in the forest near our village.” He thought back to the heavy, gnarled trunks and stout branches of the trees in whose shadow he’d grown up. The cold, crisp stream only fifty paces out from the stone walls of the village huts. “Alronna was the Hunter, and Lamorun and I planned to warn each other every time she came close to make sure she never found us.”

  Simra raised an eyebrow. “So you were cheating.”

  Lakhoni’s heart flipped in his chest and his mouth went dry, still not being accustomed to the effect she so often had on him. “Not cheating. Working together.”

  “We call that cheating where I come from,” Simra said.

  Balon, bending to arrange an armful of branches on the wood pile, snorted a laugh. Lakhoni ignored him. Mastopo walked by with an armful of dry branches and dropped them on the pile, throwing a questioning look Lakhoni’s way. Lakhoni nodded and the young man went back to work.

  “Well, maybe.” Lakhoni glanced at the sun’s position, figuring they had a few hours of daylight left. “Anyway. I saw Alronna getting closer to where I thought Lamorun was hiding and had to warn him. So, I tried to make the sound of a lokapi, which there were lots of near my village. But it came out wrong.”

  “It came out like that?” Simra’s mouth quirked in a crooked smile.

  Lakhoni used his foot to shove the end of a branch that had slid down the pile. “Yes. And Lamorun laughed so hard he fell over. Alronna would have found him right away except she was laughing too.”

  Simra gave a small laugh and bent to the pile of wood, breaking small twigs off branches to build a pile of tinder. “And you meant for it to sound like a lokapi.”

  “Yes.” Lakhoni helped create the tinder. “Lamorun said it sounded more like a drunk one. Our healer, Salno, made berry wine that he never seemed to run out of. So, it stuck. We used it so much that our parents would yell at us to stop.”

  “I can understand why.”

  “You’re just jealous you can’t make the sound yourself.” Lakhoni began arranging the pile of wood so it would burn better. “Like Lamorun. It took him forever to master it.”

  “I can’t believe you can still make that sound!” Lamorun’s voice broke through the clearing.

  Lakhoni turned to see his brother and Hilana angle around one of the trinoma’s houses and stop suddenly. They carried the cleaned boar strung on a thick branch. Their faces went slack as they took in the bodies.

  “What happened here?” Hilana asked, wide eyes darting from side to side.

  “Gadnar,” Lakhoni said.

  Lamorun dropped his end of the heavy branch and reached for his club. Cudgel. Small tree. Lamorun had found the heavy, smooth weapon at the top of a waterfall weeks before. It was nearly half Lamorun’s height, with a smooth shaft that narrowed to a handle but widened toward the other end. Lamorun had thought the stick would hold a heavy rock well and he was right. He’d strapped a rock that was nearly as big as Lakhoni’s head, and somewhat pointed at both ends, to the thicker end of the club. He’d also embedded some jagged rock pieces up and down the head. Which made it one of the most vicious looking weapons Lakhoni had ever seen. “That serpent yet lives?” Lamorun hissed and turned in a circle, ready to pounce at any danger. Every muscle in his brother’s body seemed to quiver in barely contained fury.

  “He’s not here still.” Lakhoni extended his hands, trying to calm his brother. “I don’t know how far away he is.” He explained the situation to Lamorun and Hilana as Simra and Mastopo built the soon-to-be funeral pyre and Lina prepared the bodies for their final rest. As Lakhoni finished the story, he heard voices coming from the other side of the trinoma a moment before Jasnia and Prila appeared, with Prila dragging her mother by the hand.

  Prila’s mother’s fierce gaze blazed into Lakhoni.

  Vena. Gimno’s wife. Gimno—whom Lakhoni himself had killed in the king’s chamber in Zyronilxa.

  Not for the first time, Lakhoni looked away in shame, unable to meet Vena’s eyes. One day he would have to tell her it had been him that had taken her husband’s life. The life of Prila’s father. But today was not that day.

  Alronna came behind Vena, a rope slung over her shoulder. The women and girls entered the village, followed closely by Corzon and Melana.

  “Lakhoni?” Vena lengthened her stride and pulled her daughter close to her side. “What happened here?”

  Lakhoni explained again as the rest of the group started the funeral pyre. “We don’t know where he is now, but the boy said ‘red prince.’”

  “That’s impossible. You said Alronna shot him.” Vena looked to Alronna for confirmation.

  “I saw my arrow bury itself in his chest.” Alronna set her burden down—two hapchas—and looked around warily. “But he somehow survived that and escaped the judge chamber.”

  “And you thought he’d died soon after,” Vena said. She swallowed. “He was in my circle. The brother of the Bonaha. And he lives?” The fear in her voice was palpable. And the way she said “The Bonaha” still sounded too reverent for Lakhoni’s liking. Molgar’s cruel leadership of the Separated had led to the blood of hundreds being spilled. Including her own husband’s. The Bonaha—Molgar—needed to be forgotten as soon as possible.

  “It seems so.” Lakhoni nodded at Corzon and Melana, then looked back at Vena and her daughter, then Jasnia. Five former members of the Living Dead. They’d encountered Vena and her group only two days north of Zyronilxa. Corzon and Melana had been wounded in the fighting and Vena had been seeing to their wounds, while caring for her daughter and the now-orphaned Jasnia.

  They wouldn’t have found these stragglers from the Living Dead at all if not for their dogs—Feb and Gar, whom Balon and Falon had let loose to run free for an hour as the group had made camp for the night.

  Lakhoni and several others had heard Feb and Gar barking furiously and voices raised and had rush through the woods to track down the noise. They found Feb and Gar leaping around frantically, barking at a huddled group of bedraggled people. Lakhoni nocked an arrow as the dogs were held tightly, but when Vena had straightened, one arm protectively around Prila, he had nearly let the arrow fly wildly.

  Even though many of the group protested, particularly Mastopo, the idea of bringing some former Living Dead into the traveling party, Lakhoni had insisted. Guilt, Lakhoni thought, was surely one of the main reasons. Aside from that, Vena and her sorry-looking crew were in no shape to fight. Melana had also been severely injured in the fighting near Zyronilxa.

  Between Simra and Vena, Melana had overcome the blood sickness and had regained her normal coloring, much to Corzon’s obvious relief.

  Every time Lakhoni looked at Vena or caught sight of Prila’s profile with her strong nose that looked so much like
her father’s, he felt a twinge. Gimno had died honorably, according to the code of the Living Dead, but that didn’t make it any better to have killed him.

  Corzon blinked slowly and pulled Melana closer. He shook his head. “There is no way to be sure this was Gadnar. It could have been a raiding party from some other city or tribe.”

  Lakhoni glared at his old hut-mate. “You were not here. You did not hear what he said. We did.” Lakhoni winced at the fear-tinged fury in his voice. Corzon didn’t deserve his venom. Lakhoni pictured the blaze of anger inside him and shoved it deeper. He softened his tone and took in his traveling group. His people, really. “Somehow Gadnar lived.” He made sure to pitch his voice so it would carry. “He murdered these people.” A tremble slid through him, which he fought hard to suppress. These people needed the Dance. Too many murdered families. Too many. “Gadnar needs to be stopped.”

  Prila whispered something softly. It sounded like “Anor,” the name Gadnar had gone by when living with the Living Dead.

  Simra drew close to Lakhoni’s side. Her warmth comforted him as he took in the too-familiar scene of a slaughtered village. Somehow, she knew what he was feeling. She always did.

  “Gadnar needs to be stopped?” Mastopo stomped heavily into the rough circle of people, staring at Lakhoni. He flung a hand out. “He’s one man. One man with an arrow hole in his chest! And he did this?” Fear etched itself into Mastopo’s voice. “No. We can’t stop him. He would slit our throats in our sleep. He’s a devil, not a human.”

  Lakhoni centered with the firm and unmoving hard-packed dirt under his feet. He didn’t respond to Mastopo’s fear. He breathed out his tension and the images of his slaughtered family and friends and willed his heart to slow. “No. He’s a man like you and me, Mastopo.”

  “Or at least like Lakhoni.” Balon coughed dramatically into his hand. Falon barked a laugh and swallowed it back, catching Lakhoni’s stern look.

  “He has no special power.” Lakhoni spread his senses out, seeking answers. “I don’t know why he’s evil, why murder is all he does. But he can be stopped. He can be killed.” And I can kill him, Lakhoni thought. Great Spirit make his blood be the last I have to spill.