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One vile head at a time.
My purpose, my goal, rattled through my mind on repeat as I stomped through the forest and back toward Kivon Road, the winding main road of Okivo. The road stretched all along the far coast, connecting the Qits on one side and the villages on the other. Some called it Spine Road, the roads that stretched from it to the people looking like bones on a back. Far ahead, at the top of the spine, like some gaudy head, was the palace, and down on the other end of the Realm, the great Temple of the Sister. The head and the heart of this festering country.
The Runturin was a fortress of black stone that stretched and sliced apart the sky, the home of the Ramal and his family nearly impenetrable. The Temple, on the other hand, was open to all, the white stone rumored to look like clouds on a plane. The immense temple was where everyone in Okivo would travel to pay their respects and receive blessings from the Goddess on the grounds where she had destroyed the Sister and the Fae in the end of The Black War, the final battle over magic when magic was split.
Well, where the Book of the Goddess said she had eradicated them, anyway. If that history was true, I wouldn’t be hunting the bastards, would I?
The sun had long since set when I emerged from the forest, the golden light of dawn already peaking over the distant horizon when I arrived at Kivon Road. I had journeyed too far this time, the hunt taking me far from my Qit and from home. It would be a five-day journey on horse to reach the village, and by then, the head would start to smell. Even worse, I had no horse.
Kicking my feet against the loose pebbles on the road, I let the dirt from the well-worn path cover the last of the blood on my boots.
“Fucking Fae,” I snarled, silently wishing I could kick the head into oblivion. If I didn’t need the bounty for those damn ears I would leave it there to rot instead of taking it with me to draw every bloodthirsty beast out of the forest and into my camp.
There would be no sleep until I reached home.
I had wished for a horse before, but a horse on a Qit was a ridiculous notion, even if we could afford it. What I could pull off the Fae, the bounty we would receive from the head and my odd jobs, and what Jayse sold in the shop only covered enough to survive. Much like the rest of the Realm.
When that woman had given me that roll in the town square, there was a part of me that thought things would be better in this time, that food and safety would exist in bounds. In a way, it was. There was no black guard, and no Red Wave. There was still starvation, however. There was still not enough food to go around. Many in our Qit would take the month-long trip to the Temple of the Sister to worship the Goddess and ask for blessings and plenty. I hadn’t the heart to tell them it was only going to get worse.
“Eh, Friend! Need a board?” I turned at the familiar lilt of the Wave Walkers, the call pulling me out of my thoughts with a start. The head thumped to the ground as I reached for my swords, my mind pulling through the quickest way to end the fool that had walked up behind me. I froze the second I saw the carriage, the tall wood-paneled pack wagon that the Wave Walkers used for transport pulled down the road by a lumbering old horse and a man who looked to be as old and wary as his mount.
The wagon creaked and screamed of age and ill repair the closer it lumbered, the sound loud enough that many of the birds in the marshy meadow Spine Road cut through took flight. I hadn’t even heard the transport carriage approach. That was not good.
I must be more tired than I thought.
Covering my reach and grabbing the head, I turned, fixing the widest grin I could on my face, the stretch uncomfortable and foreign.
“Ay, mawn. Oo gon’ Triskin way? I be headin’ t’ords Waide of the water.” I slid into the vernacular easily. The Wave Walkers were my people more than any others, after all. Even Jayse.
Usually, I would walk, but if I was tired enough not to hear them coming, I was too tired to be traveling alone. Besides, I didn’t want to let this head rot too far, or they would pay us less for the bounty.
“Hop in de bawk. Tiz a coin!” I threw him the asked amount and slunk toward the back.
I had barely hefted myself onto the large carriage when the driver kicked the massive horses back into a trot, the windowless void of the panel wagon swallowing me whole.
“Ay! Who we’d haf here ’dem?” One of the voices drifted toward me as my eyes began to adjust. Thankfully it was dim enough in there that no one would be able to see my eyes.
Normally I would wear my hood low around others, but it was already too stifling for something like that to be comfortable.
“Name’s Jack,” I said, giving the name I always did on the road. It was my way of remembering him, I suppose. Or perhaps I was simply hiding behind him.
Hiding behind what I had done.
They all mumbled a welcome, a few of them giving their names, which I didn’t bother to commit to memory.
Wave Walkers moved from Qit to Qit as quickly as the waves they were named after. Few traveled together, and seeing as I always traveled alone, rarely did any of them cross my path a second time. Not that they ever recognized me when they did.
They dressed in sun-bleached cotton that was riddled with holes and stains, and always smelled of salt and fish. Their hair was long and scraggly, the beards on their faces grown out to protect them from the sun. Very few were clean-shaven, like myself, but I had been known to grow a beard on a long job, especially if I needed to be hidden more.
My lack of beard was possibly making me stand out on this occasion, seeing as one of the men across from me had already begun to stare.
Look away, boy, or I’ll gut you like a fish in front of everyone.
I tried to smile again, but this time, my mind was much too full of exactly how I would slice him down, what I would do with the last dregs of his life that I would suck away… It all beamed from my eyes as I stared back at him. His gaze darted down, his hand going to his sides, right where a knife would be stored if he had one.
“We bin swapin’ tales. You ’erd of the Wandre’r, Jack?” the man next to the staring bloke asked. I think he had said his name was Kint. “We was jus’ tawkin’ ‘bout the Wandre’r.”
Ah, the Wanderer, the character I had created of myself years ago. Over the years, the simple tale I had weaved about a man who killed Fae had mutated from a story swapped by travelers to a story told to children to keep them in line. I sat up straighter, my nerves prickling as to which version of myself I would hear about today.
