Deathsworn (Wattys 2018 Winner)

Deathsworn Volume II ... Teaser

It took six Islanders to carry the corpse. They fronted a jubilant procession, hooting and hollering, a full score of painted warriors trailing behind, banging on drums or else filling the air with spears tipped by flint and stone. The children of the village fled before them, naked as the day they were born, while the women perched around the fire pit simply gawped in wonderment. Bard found himself doing the same when they passed the cage, the presence of Bodkin and Tall Toyne a notion entirely dwarfed by the spectacle at hand.

Bard had seen mountain wolves twice the size of mastiffs before, and ice bears in the far west that could claim a man's face with one lazy swipe of a paw. It mattered for little, the creature vaunted by the Ooamanee would have given more worldly men than he pause for thought. Tall Toyne had spent countless hours around the campfire impressing how nightcats were the true bane of the Island Kingdoms, how they crept into villages at night and claimed what they would before slinking into the darkness, leaving but dread in their wake. It was only upon seeing the beast, though, all fifteen-feet of rippling black pelt, dark as a midnight sea, that Bard could truly appreciate Toyne's sincerity. Its paws, hanging limp in death, were bigger than any bear's, its head comfortably wider than a man's torso. There were three sizable puncture wounds in its neck, the surrounding pelt matted thick with blood. Even Pot and Pan were rendered mute as the Islanders paraded by on their lap of the village.

Then came the drummers. Ooamanee tall and short frantically beat taught hides with their hands, whilst those behind shouldered the cry of "BOORABOON! BOORABOON!" It wasn't until Bodkin was practically in front of him, having broken off from the snaking train, that Bard pulled his eyes away. 

The Greenman wore a bewildered smile upon his usually resolute face. It was odd to see him without his half-helm, his neat coal black hair, speckled with grey, on show to the world. Otherwise, though, the storm had left him as Bard remembered. He was still squat, still possessive of a powerful upper body molded through long years of working the fine bow slung across his back. His eyes remained flinty, his dusky beard trimmed in accordance with his old station as a bowman of Ark, his green jerkin threadbare and salt-stained from the Great Blue. "Mortus give me strength," he said, "this day gets stranger."

Bard reached his hand through the bars and clasped Bodkin's. "It's good to see you, Bodkin, but what in the name of the Elders has happened?"

Deathsworn Volume II is the next in the series, and can be found on my profile if you'd like to continue the journey.