“Grakthar Skulleater, the Blood Dragon, Terror of the Peaks, Chartered Accountant. How may I help you?”
“Hi M. Skulleater, Blood Dragon, Terror -“
“Please. Skulleater is fine.”
“Sure. Skulleater, I’m looking for a copy of our tax documents. Some intern animated them into a paper golem and he’s having a hell of a time catching it. Client number seven-eight-mark-three-six-six.”
“Of course. Please hold.”
Grakthar Skulleater, the Blood Dragon, Terror of the Peaks, and chartered accountant suppressed a sigh. He adjusted his glasses and pulled one of the excessively-heavy drawers from his reinforced filing cabinet.
Sometimes – especially on a call five minutes before close of business – Grakthar Skulleater missed the good old days.
He kept his necktie tight because it reminded him of bandits trying and failing to choke him back. The tie was red because against his white dress shirt and charcoal-grey suit, it reminded him of a splash of fresh blood on his chest. All of his office equipment was heavy custom steel because he the usual desks, drawers, and adding machines were too fragile for him.
Grakthar Skulleater located the file. The first page bore his personal stamp in crisp red ink, meticulously blended blood crimson. Other accountants, corporations, and individual clients recognized Grakthar’s ink at a glance. It felt almost as rewarding as when he was known as the only person to have eaten an entire human skull.
He turned back to the radio. “Is the request urgent? Shall I send a courier?”
“Standard mail is fine, as long as it has your personal seal on the documents and envelope.”
Grakthar Skulleater prepared the file for copying and mailing. He stamped his mark onto the header pages and across the envelope’s seal, feeling a flush of pride at the specific request for Grakthar Skulleater’s mark. Accounting certainly had its thrills.
But sometimes he missed the feeling of punching his war pick straight through a monster and being showered by its blood as viscera rained into his mouth through his primal scream.
Grakthar Skulleater tidied his desk, secured his favourite pencils in his shirt pocket, and tucked in his chair. Almost time for the best part of every day: dinner and catching up with Saratha and his girls.
The radio crackled. Grakthar’s personal frequency.
Grakthar ground his teeth together. He was in control of his rage, but he knew Saratha would notice the grinding and recommend therapy again. He’d been, plenty of times, knew and mastered all the modern techniques. Controlling the anger was simple. No one could tell him how to let it go forever.
He sighed and picked up the handset. “Grakthar Skulleater, the Blood Dragon, Terror of the Peaks, Chartered Accountant. How may I help you?”
“Grakthar? That really you, buddy? Chartered accountant?”
Grakthar’s lips separated into a wide, mono-tusked grin. “Burzlebark Thigh-Chopper? You son of a bitch. How’s prison?”
“Good, good. Actually I just got out. Now, listen – I’ve had something on my mind. Thought we could take a vacation. Do some murderin’. Like old times.”
Grakthar clicked transmit but held, silent. The rage bubbled inside him, tickling his ulcers. He heard his pulse, louder than was typical with his high blood pressure.
Burzlebark continued. “Now look, I know what you’re gonna say, but with the ol’ clan gone, the monsters we used to fight have been multiplying. You heard about the sorcerer’s tower? With all the official Aulonians cleaning up that mess, there’s no one to cull the owlbears we kind of sort of accidentally selected for aggression. We’d actually be helping.”
Grakthar flexed his muscles involuntarily, causing his suit to strain and creak in protest. He swiveled his chair to face the back of his cubicle.
Mounted with care on a hand-stained oak plaque lived Troica, Grakthar’s war pick. He kept it oiled up, polished, in tip-top condition. The bluesteel – which he now knew was cobalt – shone from worn-smooth leather-bound handle to bent-and-straightened shaft to vicious, heavy, pointed-hammer tip. Grakthar held out one hand. He wanted nothing more than to swing Troica again.
He turned back and clicked the radio handset. “Sorry old friend. I can’t.”
“Hi honey, how was your day?” Saratha called from the shower.
Grakthar tugged on the shower curtain and leaned into the stream to kiss Saratha. She giggled as the water ran into his dress shirt, turning it translucent, making visible his scarred muscle.
He wiped his eyes and smiled. Saratha was short and round and unathletic and wouldn’t survive one single day with his old clan. He loved her for it. Her stretch marks were victorious battle scars.
“Well, the day was alright,” Grakthar said as he stole her towel to dry his hair.
Saratha crossed her arms over her chest, prompting him to follow up.
“Burzlebark Thigh-Chopper called.”
“Isn’t he still in prison?”
“Just got out.”
“What did he want?”
Grakthar took a deep breath and sat on the lid of the toilet. “Burzlebark asked if I’d take a vacation with him to hunt monsters. I declined.”
The water stopped. Saratha peered at him with her narrow-eyed curious squint. “Why? You don’t think it’d be fun to relive the good old days?”
Saratha knew all about Grakthar’s raiding and killing days. She understood he hadn’t known anything else and still chose to end that life. She accepted him and who he was now without question or mistrust.
He reached out and took her hand. “These are the good days,” he said with his single-tusked smile.
Saratha stepped out of the shower. Grakthar wrapped the towel around her, then pulled her in for another kiss. “I agree,” she mumbled into his lips, “But you deserve a vacation.”
“What about the girls?”
“Tab and Say will miss you, but they’ll be fine,” Saratha said. She let Grakthar towel her off, didn’t rush him. “They’re starting to wonder why daddy always cooks the meat and mommy does the vegetables, though.”
“They’re not old enough to hear why daddy knows everything about all meat and the best ways to cook it,” Grakthar grumbled.
“But they will be soon.” Saratha wrapped her hands around his arm, counted, and grimaced. “Maybe a vacation will help put your past behind you for good so you can lower that blood pressure.”
“Grakthar Skulleater’s rage sustains him,” he complained.
“Grakthar Skulleater’s rage sustains his stress ulcers, chest pains, and headaches,” Saratha retorted. “Your medication treats the symptoms, not the cause.” Her voice softened. “It’s not good for your daughters to see your primary emotion is always rage. Even though you have it under control and never ever let it hurt anyone. It still teaches the wrong lessons.”
Grakthar Skulleater sighed. “I know. You’re right.”
“You need a vacation. Doctor’s orders. Go slaughter those monsters. The ones I saw on the news? What were they – bear owls?”
“Owlbears.”
“Right. I will write you a prescription, if it helps.”
Grakthar sighed and kissed Saratha’s neck. “I love you, Dr. Saratha Oetos.”
“Love you, Grakthar Skulleater the Blood Dragon and Terror of the Peaks.” She winked. “Better get started on those steaks though. Your doctor is hungry.”
He stood and stretched. “Of course. Don’t be long, I want to eat your vegetables.”
She slapped his ass. “Don’t say it like that, it sounds dirty. But still make sure you do before you leave.”
He growled at Saratha, the way he had their first night together thinking it would be primally attractive, but only made Saratha laugh. It still worked.
Grakthar went to the kitchen to find his apron, then to the living room to call Burzlebark back.
Grakthar Skulleater, the Blood Dragon, Terror of the Peaks, and chartered accountant swung his war pick Troica with a bellow that made the hills tremble. The owlbear diving from the cliff above widened its eyes in a brief moment of horror as Troica smashed through its rib cage and punched straight out its spine in a shower of gore that coated Grakthar even as he screamed. The creature fell apart, bludgeoned in half. The halves and guts splattered down Grakthar’s sides until he stood in an ankle-deep pool of viscera.
“And how did that make you feel?” asked Burzlebark Thigh-Chopper.
Grakthar shrugged and toed the corpse. “Pretty good, but it’s only a small one.”
“Yeah. Sorry buddy, I was sure we’d have seen more and bigger by now.”
Grakthar sniffed and lifted a bloodsoaked hand for shade. The hills were rocky and scraggy with thornwood and thistle and blackberry and raspberry, just as he remembered. He breathed deep of air crisp with scents of wildflowers and woody stems and that undercurrent of rot from the bogs in the narrows.
He and Burzlebark spent the day ranging through some of their old haunts and lairs of elder owlbears, still infested with stench but devoid of activity. They foraged for mushrooms, but the sweet earthy tang only tasted of dirt now that Grakthar knew properly cooked and seasoned vegetables.
He’d known his old leathers wouldn’t fit the way they used to. He put in the work to maintain his strength and fortitude, but still he tugged at the straps of his furs and leathers, feeling a touch small. He was slimmer now. Ate proportionally less protein and fat.
Grakthar led them in circles around the old clan hideout, debating whether he needed to see it one last time. Burzlebark watched close.
What marks of the clan remained, years after the clan scattered to the winds and prisons? How much of the legacy of conquests and prizes had been dismantled, erased, chiseled into cover-up scars?
No, Grakthar had already seen the clan grounds for the last time, the morning they’d set out for war. He remembered the site thriving, full of life, temporarily laid to sleep by a clan singing war songs and slinging war paint and expecting to return perhaps the very next day if the raid went well.
Today his old home would be more ghost than memory. Grakthar grunted at Burzlebark to follow, away, through the thornwood hunting grounds where warriors used to prove themselves by bringing back the most dangerous owlbear they could best bare-handed.
Many of the warriors died on their quests. Grakthar brought back one of the largest owlbears in clan memory. Not quite as large as Branda’s, but he’d always felt she cheated a little with her magic.
Today, there seemed to be no risk in the thornwood. Birds, yes, but no game large enough to brave the excessive spines and bristles.
“I thought you said there was an owlbear outbreak because the royal family isn’t taking care of the King’s Land,” Grakthar said as they crested another rocky hill, this one also empty of owlbears. “Has that little count been out here with his hunting party?”
“No, no,” Burzlebark said. He rested his axe on the ground and leaned on its hilt. “He’s too busy with the sorcerer’s tower.”
“Hurm. How was prison?” Grakthar asked as an excuse to think about something else.
Burzlebark laughed and sat on an ass-shaped rock. “Oh, you know.”
“I don’t. I was pardoned for warning the city and stopping Branda.”
“Really?” Burzlebark blinked and straightened. “I thought you had a reduced sentence.”
Grakthar shrugged and showed his hands, crusted with flaky, dry brown blood. Since Burzlebark was leaning, Grakthar sat next to him and set to cleaning Troica.
Burzlebark was just as big as he’d always been. Bigger, even, bearing fresh scars – these short and straight and narrow, likely from small prison knives. He was clean-shaven, and Grakthar hadn’t recognized him at first without the wild bloodied-muddied beard.
“Suppose it makes sense, letting you off and all,” Burzlebark finally said.
Grakthar loosened his grip on Troica.
“I turned myself in, too, you know.”
“I know,” Grakthar nodded.
“Burzlebark hesitated. “It was hard. Going from the clan where the strongest leads and provides to… something very different.”
Grakthar nodded. He understood, if in a different way.
“What if we could go back?”
Grakthar looked up, sharper than the fangs of his old sabertooth mount. Carefully he enunciated “What do you mean?”
“I’m not talking about time magic or anything,” Burzlebark chuckled. “Just… what if we could re-form the clan? Make some new good old days, so we know we’re in them this time.”
“What do you mean exactly?“
He could admit part of him leapt at the idea, but it wouldn’t work anymore. It had always been difficult to keep the reins on people organized around power and violence. The clan held together for a few centuries, but not without its own little bloody revolutions.
They’d been falling apart even before the end. Branda’s plan to deal with the city’s defensive artillery had been optimistic at best, arrogantly blind at worst. The raid might have succeeded, and certainly he and Branda would have survived, but even the best victory Grakthar could imagine involved at least half the clan dead.
And today, thanks to Count MacReady, anyone could carry a rifle heavy enough to down monsters. He’d even heard rumour of rotary pistols that packed almost the same punch, and portable radios small enough to hang off a belt. Grakthar had been too angry to die plenty of times, but that was when most fighting was in melee or against untrained hedge mages.
Burzlebark looked like he wanted to argue, but he looked at his hands, then to the north. He shook his head and smiled. “Anyway, why accounting? You always were the smart one, but math?”
“It makes me angry when numbers are wrong,” Grakthar said, slowly, suspicious of the topic change. “I smash the numbers with my math weapons until they make sense.”
Burzlebark laughed. “Makes sense when you put it that way.” He looked north again. “I guess I thought you’d be into sports fighting. Like a boxer or the tank for a dungeon crawling team.”
He shook his head. “After the pardon I couldn’t let the rage out and let them think I was a monster after all. But holding it in isn’t good either. I had an aneurysm.”
“A what?”
“When a blood vessel in your brain bursts. Mine was from excessive blood pressure. I healed, but my doctor said I needed to find healthier ways to manage my rage.”
Burzlebark grinned and elbowed Grakthar in the ribs. Must have heard something in Grakthar’s tone. “Did something happen with you and the doctor?”
Grakthar showed the silver ring on his hand. “We got married.”
“Oh,” Burzlebark said, an odd look on his face. “You didn’t, uh…”
“Don’t,” growled Grakthar, “Or I will slap you so hard you’ll have to go looking for your jaw.”
Burzlebark showed his palms in surrender. “Okay. It’s just…” He looked north again.
“What do you keep -“
She crested the hill to the north, riding on a great rambling owlbear, the tone of her muscle golden in the fading sun, her great rune-etched stone hammers hanging from ample hips. Her single tusk glinted, the match for his after she’d filed the other down.
Branda Blasthammer, Wildcat of the Hills, Scalp Chewer, and clan chieftain.
Grakthar’s first wife.
He turned on Burzlebark. “You planned this. You tricked me.” Grakthar Skulleater felt his pulse rising, red in his peripherals.
Grakthar would not bellow battle rage and dismember Burzlebark. Grakthar would not grab Burzlebark by the throat and throttle him until he begged forgiveness and his bowels emptied. Grakthar fumbled with his bag to find his blood pressure medication under the bundle of favourite pencils.
He breathed until the red faded.
Burzlebark stared. “I did plan this,” he admitted. “Branda found me hours after I released. Don’t know how she knew or how she’s free. She’s been -“
A side effect of the breathing exercises and diaphragm control was that Grakthar could put more power into his shouts than ever. “OUT OF MY SIGHT, WORM!” The hill beneath them shook and Burzlebark was blown back, tumbled through rocks and thorns.
Grakthar focused and calmed himself, crushed his hands into fists, forced them open.
Fleeing would look weak. Like prey. Branda rode a mighty owlbear – Grakthar had seen them overtake the fastest warriors over short distances.
Branda came down the hill, through thorns, up to Grakthar. The owlbear ignored slashing vines, protected by thick skin and matted feathers. The beast’s eyes focused on Grakthar.
He did not meet its gaze. Grakthar locked in on Branda. She’d always been taller and slimmer through no fault of her own. There was a worn tatter to her now: too much scar tissue, tattoos faded and blurred, long red hair less ropy and more stringy.
Branda’s physical strength was greater than most but it was never her true power. The twin granite hammers hanging on her hips were crusted black with the soot and ash of countless explosions.
She rode up to him, her expression unexpectedly soft. The owlbear hooted into a low growl. Branda slid down the fur-lined saddle, pushed the owlbear back and commanded it to stay. Branda tensed her shoulders and… smiled. “Grakthar Skulleater! Blood Dragon! Terror of the Peaks! Honey bear! How are you?”
She enveloped him in a hug and squeezed as fiercely as she could, bursting his breath from his chest. Grakthar could do nothing but blink bewildered. The last time they’d spoken, Branda tried to blast him into pulp. They’d nearly killed each other.
“I’m fine, thank you,” he replied automatically. “How are you?”
“Better than I have been for a long time,” Branda grinned. Her single small tusk was capped with gold, now, and it glinted in the evening light. “I’m rebuilding the clan. I’ve decided to forgive you, if you ask for it.”
He pushed her away more forcefully than he meant to. Had he pushed Saratha like this he would likely have killed her. He felt a flash of shame, reached to help, but Branda had braced and barely stumbled. She laughed her throaty, lustful laugh he remembered too well.
Grakthar squared his shoulders and crossed his arms. “I’ve done nothing needing forgiveness. I saved the lives of our clan and everyone in the city.”
“Oh. Without you, the clan would be worse off than it is now?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
“Are you certain?“
Damn her. Damn Branda. Of course Grakthar could not be entirely one hundred percent certain. Of course it was possible a miracle might have happened. But what next? A raiding clan that took an entire city would draw the attention of the Aulonian army, no matter how busy they were elsewhere.
Grakthar focused on his breathing exercises. Branda always knew how to rile him up, how to prime him for violence. But thanks to the trials, he knew how much pain he’d caused, and thanks to Saratha he knew how his rage damaged his body even as it kept him alive in battle.
“This is unhealthy,” Grakthar declared. “It always was.”
Branda slunk around into his line of sight again. “But we worked so well together. Your mind tempering my power, my heart stoking your strength.”
Grakthar raised his hand. For a moment there was a glint of old thrill in Branda’s eyes as she thought he would hit her. For a moment the old feelings stirred and he thought he might. But his hand stopped, and Branda frowned.
He held out his ring. “I’m married.”
“I know,” Branda said, her voice softer than he’d ever heard it. “You and I are still married.”
Grakthar shook his head. “Not in any way that’s legally recognized. My wife and I don’t have to hurt each other to feel alive.” He puffed out his chest with pride. “I have children. Twin girls.”
Branda’s gaze darkened to a thunderous scowl. “Just because I could never give you -“
“It’s not about what you can give me, it’s about what we took from each other.” Grakthar placed his hand on her shoulder, as platonically as he could, and she didn’t try to break it. “I’m going home,” he said.
Grakthar turned and strode down the hill. He stepped over Burzlebark, sprawled in the ravine snickering. Grakthar only kicked him a little.
He did not turn back to see Branda’s response. He imagined she would handle it poorly.
Grakthar fed coins into the public radio in the nearest village and dialed the frequency for home. “Saratha, Saratha. Grakthar. Please pick up.”
The radio was set deep into the town’s council hall, in full sight of the little market square. The clan had razed this village, once. Burned it to the ground. Even in those days, when murder was for the good of the clan and his rage drove him, Grakthar only killed those who fought back. He told Branda the elderly, the children, the cowards were not threats. They would become storytellers spreading the legend of the clan.
“Grakthar calling Saratha. Please pick up. Please.”
The village had been rebuilt in stone instead of wood, fresh and new save for the mourning shrine to the dead. Grakthar would not look at it. He’d changed out of his furs and leathers so the townsfolk would not look at him – and because he felt more comfortable in a shirt and slacks. When had that happened?
“Daddy?”
“Tab,” he grinned. “How’s my favourite girl?” The twins had figured out immediately that he called them both his favourite, but he still did.
“How did you know it was me?”
“I always know. Is your mother there?”
“Yes.”
“Can I speak with her, please?”
“Okay. Are you mad at me?”
A brief chill lanced Grakthar’s heart. “No, Tab. I love you. Tell Say I love her.”
“Okay. Love you daddy!”
The radio clicked and hummed. Grakthar punched it and jammed in a few more coins.
“Hi,” came Saratha’s voice.
“You sound tired.”
“I’m fine. Long day at the clinic. You sound stressed.”
Grakthar sighed and realized he’d been clenching his fists. And arms. And legs. And shoulders. And toes. “I ran into someone I used to know. It didn’t go well. I’m fine, but I’m ready to come home.”
“Oh, I thought you’d be out the whole week?”
“There’s nothing left for me here. I just -“
A terrible hooting echoed from the hills above the village, followed by a second, a third, and then the shock crack of a sonic boom: Branda’s hammers exploding against each other.
“Mother fucking owlshit-ass bearcunt bitch -“
“Grakthar! The girls can hear you.”
“Sorry. Gotta go.”
Grakthar smashed the handset onto the receiver so hard the radio crunched into sparking scrap. He shredded the travel wrap off Troica and hefted, inhaling the tang of oiled steel and leather, freshly polished and clean of owlbear blood. Perhaps he should have left some.
Townsfolk ran screaming from the market square, most failing to secure their stalls. Vegetables bounced and bruised over packed earth. Grakthar parted the wave of the crowd, feeling his face curl into a savage snarl, exposing his one short tusk.
Burzlebark burst into the square on the back of his own owlbear, smaller than Branda’s, but vicious and snarling with blood on its beak and claws. Burzlebark bore a bloodied club and spear, laughing and jeering, the manic rage written across his face in contorted lines.
He hurled the spear at a cabbage vendor. Grakthar screamed so hard it shattered in flight. The man escaped.
Grakthar hauled back, still screaming, and punched the owlbear between its eyes. It dropped dead on the spot, skull cracked. Later, he would feel bad for the animal.
Burzlebark launched from the beasts’s back, loosing his battle cry, swinging his club. He was trained in the clan’s primal rage, a summoning of ancestral warrior and beast spirits to amplify powerful emotions and strength. A raging clan member was nearly impervious to conventional handheld weapons, could boast feats bordering on magical, and was worth dozens of average warriors. For Burzlebark, a hammer to the face would be a minor wound, to be laughed off.
Grakthar hurled Troica through Burzlebark’s head with a wet, slapping crunch. His white dress shirt splattered red with blood and brain and shards of bone. He wiped pieces of his old friend from his eyes, dropped to his knees, and howled.
“There it is,” hissed Branda from a rooftop, mounted on her hooting owlbear, a piece of someone’s leg carried in its beak. Branda laughed in that infuriating way that used to fire Grakthar up, but now only pissed him off. “There’s the legendary Blood Dragon rage.”
The owlbear leapt heavy from the roof and paced a tight circle around Grakthar. Branda dismounted and stood before him, blackened granite hammers in hand. “We were meant to be together,” she said, unexpectedly soft. “I miss you, Grakthar Skulleater. I’m sorry things happened the way they did.” She held out a hand, let a hammer dangle from its strap. “We can still be together. I’d like that.”
An apology, of a kind? Vocalizing that she missed him? Had Branda actually changed?
Not that he would consider her offer for even a moment. “Thank you, but I’m married,” Grakthar said.
Branda placed her hand on her chest. “Yes. To me.”
Grakthar sighed and loosened his grip on Troica. Perhaps, at least, there was a way to convince her to stand down without trying to kill each other.
“All you need to do is ask my forgiveness,” she said.
Grakthar saw blood. He burst to his feet and swung at Branda. She was ready – the hammer still in her grip swung into his side and exploded in tune with Branda’s roar. The impact launched Grakthar across the market square, through half a dozen stalls, and smashed him into the memorial. Shattered stone names of dead men and women pelted Grakthar as hail.
That was it.
He grasped the broken monument, roared, and hurled it like a cannonball toward Branda. She swung her hammers and the rage magic exploded the pieces into sharp-edged fragments, tearing at Grakthar’s skin through his bloodstained dress shirt and pleated slacks.
“Fight,” rasped Branda, pointing one hammer at Grakthar. Her owlbear hooted and charged.
Grakthar braced himself. Somehow – perhaps with her magic – Branda had raised the largest owlbear he’d ever seen, larger than the one he’d proved himself against as a young warrior. The thing barreled at him like a locomotive, hooting its terrible hoot, gouging canyons into the market square with claws bigger than Grakthar’s hands.
He planted his feet, grit his teeth, sidestepped and caught the charging beast beneath his arms. With a mighty roar overpowering the owlbear’s shriek, Grakthar raised the whole thing, leapt into the air, and flipped its face into the ground, the throw and its weight it almost to its neck.
The owlbear twitched and clawed feebly, and then it died. Grakthar turned to face Branda, hating her for making him kill the animal. He took hold of the hate. He burned it within his chest as fuel for the furnace of his anger.
Grakthar Skulleater, the Blood Dragon, Terror of the Peaks charged at Branda Blasthammer the Scalp-Chewer. His feet pummeled craters into the hard-packed earth. His battle cry shook the foundations of the village. His fists ripped shock waves through the wind.
Branda raised her hammers to meet him – but Grakthar feinted, slid under. The hammerblast would have burst his eardrums had he not set his jaw and fury against it. Instead, Grakthar rode the shock wave to Troica.
He raised his war pick and charged again. He bellowed with every ounce of his repressed rage, his every wish and regret that he could have done better. He turned his anger at himself against Branda, and he swung Troica straight for her heart.
Memory flashed in reflections of the blood on Branda’s face. They’d complemented each other, pushed each other to ever-greater depths of passion. They’d treated each other terribly. Believed they amplified their love as well as their hate. Grakthar knew they’d been wrong.
He was the one who taught Branda to focus rage into spellcasting, to turn crude sparks of fire magic to deadly explosions that could shatter walls and collapse hillsides. But even at her strongest, when she led the doomed charge against the city, Branda never had Grakthar’s power in single combat.
He closed his eyes and finished his swing.
Branda caught Troica between her hammers and the war pick exploded into razor-sharp shards of metal that pelted and pierced Grakthar’s chest and arms and face. The shock wave drove the shards deeper, below the skin, into muscle and sinew.
Grakthar Skulleater screamed not in rage, but in pain. Branda had never been this strong. She never… His rage wasn’t enough. Grakthar faltered. For the first time he doubted his power.
Branda hauled him up by his starched collar. Her lips turned down; there was no pleasure on her scarred face. “I still love you, Grakthar. I would have forgiven you, if you weren’t too stubborn to ask. I might even have been content to beat you at your best, but you’re broken.”
He punched her with all the rage he could muster, but to his bewilderment, his wounds slowed and weakened him rather than bolstering his anger. Branda laughed bitterly at the impacts on her sides and belly and ribs.
“The Blood Dragon is dead,” Branda declared. “The Terror of the Peaks is gone. Now you’re…” Her eyes traced his clothes, landed on his pocket full of pencils. “Just an accountant. Goodbye, Grakthar.”
Grakthar struggled to pull his split lips into a smile. “Just an accountant,” he repeated.
He grabbed his two favourite pencils from his shirt pocket and stabbed them into Branda’s eyes.
She dropped him, screaming, scrabbling at her face. Grakthar took her hands, twined his fingers with hers, looked at his wedding ring. He squeezed and crushed all her fingers and both wrists. She dropped to her knees and he kicked first one thigh, then the other, breaking both.
Grakthar sat next to Branda. She writhed and moaned, her rage insufficient.
An old woman and man crawled out of the hole in the council building’s wall. Holding each other, they shuffled through ruins of market stalls toward Grakthar. They stared at Branda, at the bodies she’d left behind, and then at him.
“Who are you?” asked the elderly woman.
“An accountant,” Grakthar replied.
“The monument she threw you into was built for her victims,” said the old man. “She deserves death.”
“Maybe,” Grakthar said.
“You should kill her.”
Grakthar looked down at Branda. Though her sockets contained only pencils, if she still had eyes, they would be filled with hate. He had the impression that through her pain, despite her lack of vision, she stared at him.
“Kill her,” urged the old man.
“Please,” Branda begged. “Grakthar. Please.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Grakthar said. He looked at his bloody cut-up fingers, trembling. The rage, his lifelong companion…
“I’m sorry,” Grakthar said.
Saratha tied off the last of his bandages after three hours of cleaning and care. She smiled and patted his back, mostly unscathed. “I don’t mind taking care of you.”
He carefully laid down in their bed and sighed his longest sigh. “Not for that. I never told you the entire truth about Branda Blasthammer.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. Casual, mild curiosity. No suspicion.
Grakthar felt a hint of the old anger – how can she be so calm – as if his omission were somehow her fault. He’d only verbalized that anger once. Saratha told him it was not acceptable and the next time she would leave him. That was long before their engagement, and he’d managed.
He steadied himself and he told her. “Branda and I were married in the clan tradition.”
Saratha sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at her hands. “Oh,” she said. She turned her fingers over themselves in a weave of circles. “But you’re divorced?”
He stared at the ceiling. “That’s not how it works. But it’s not legally recog -“
“I know you haven’t spoken to her since you left the clan.” Saratha forced a smile. “It would have made the news.”
“I should have told you. I’m so sorry. I…” Grakthar paused, caught himself about to justify. “I’m sorry.”
Saratha lay next to Grakthar, gently placed one hand on his bandaged chest. Feeling for his heartbeat. She stayed like that, her eyes watching, until eventually she said “I forgive you.”
Grakthar blew out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.
She kissed his ear. “Did you mean what you said? That you’re done with the rage?” Her voice took on a playful shocked tone. “Your blood pressure tested normal.”
“I mean it,” he said, and kissed her nose.
“Mmm. Love you.”
“I love you too,” said Grakthar.
He stared at the ceiling and recalled breaking Branda’s neck in his hands, the savage satisfaction in the eyes of the town elders, the way they seemed to validate and encourage him even as Branda used the last breath he crushed from her to tell Grakthar she still loved him.
The rage was quiet now, but Grakthar feared it would always be there, waiting.
Leave a Reply