Page 1 of Tethered Fates

Prologue

Blood flows from the neck of the bandit.

I kick the flailing man away, the sharp edge of my katana already swinging as another comes at me with a rusty kitchen knife. A single slice is all it takes to open his throat, his broken and dirty nails clawing at his gushing wound as he collapses to the ground.

Once his wet gargling has ceased, and the only noise is the rustling trees and the trickling river over rocks, I turn to face the stranger at my back. The ten paces and eight corpses littering the forest floor are all that separate us.

“You’re a good warrior,” the man calls, casually cleaning his blade with a rag.He’s oddly pale, larger than a bear, and he wandered into my declining village as the sunset bathed the pitted roads in the same shade of red soaking into my sandals.

And despite the cold night, he was clothed in little but an air of mystery.

“As are you,” I reply, my panting breaths turning into clouds.

The trees overhead sway through the moonlight, creating shifting patterns that dance across the stranger’s broad face. His sword, like his strangely accented Japanese, feels familiar yet foreign. It’s like a Chokutō, but broader and heavier—his accent, too.

As always, curiosity tugs at me. Who is this man, and why, though he breathes as heavily as I do, do no clouds leave his mouth?

“You called yourself a traveller in search of something, stranger,” I say, standing straight, the breeze sweeping up the orange leaves between us. “And I said I’d help if you helped me end the bandits killing my former master’s peasants.”

“And now they’re dead,” he replies, his confidence unshakable.

I nod, weary. Intrigued. “They are.”

His answering grin is a vicious slice of his lips, intimidating but not on purpose. Like a wolf in tall grass, it seems simply his nature. “You have no master then?”

My master, like his family, guard, and most everyone else, succumbed to a fever. They died shitting themselves and coughing up chunks of lung. But this man doesn’t need to know that. “The remaining few will move somewhere else now that the bandits are cleared.”

“Not you?” He swings up his heavy sword, resting it flat on his wide shoulders.

A mile from where he stands is the tree where I held my first katana. By the river is the spot where I kissed my first boy. Three miles from the bridge leading into our village is where I first took a life. I know every hovel the peasants lived in, the crumbling castle my former master prided over, and the shrine where the priests were murdered.

Every inch of my home is a well-documented memory collecting dust, and even before this trouble, thinking about it bored me.

“Where are you from?” I ask instead.

“Far across the sea.” And like the hungry wolf, he stalks closer. Sniffing out the nearly dead thing my parents, master, and mentors tried to beat out of me—curiosity.

“From a place called Norðvegr.”

I try to say the name, and he laughs. I laughed at him when he attempted to pronounce the name of my village, so it’s only fair.

“I always knew my village was small, but now I’ve met you, and I’m learning just how small my life really is,” I comment. He may see prey within me, but within him I spy… possibility.

He may be the hungry wolf, but I’ve been starving for so much longer.

The stranger nods, like he’s had the same thought before. “My name’s Vidar.”

“An odd name for an odd man.”

He laughs, deep as rolling thunder. “I’m looking for a companion.”

“I don’t fuck men like you. I prefer someone with a…” I tilt my head. “Softer soul.”

Vidar grins. This man is neither a cultivated noble nor a desperate bandit. He’s a warrior, and perhaps one that’s always been without a master.

“And I only fuck women, so that’s perfect. I’m looking for someone who wants an adventure.”

“We’re friends now?” I throw back, having more fun in this one conversation than in…