Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 277: To the North (5)

Darkul and Ketal drank all night and spoke without pretense. Darkul poured out every grievance he had stored up, and Ketal listened with easy patience and answered in kind. The exchange was more pleasant for Ketal than he expected. Darkul had lived among barbarians long enough to know their brand of stubborn foolishness. Barbarians differed from tribe to tribe, yet the grain ran the same. Sharing stories about blockheads felt shamelessly good, and the talk carried them straight into dawn.

Early in the morning, Darkul strapped his pack shut and checked the sword at his hip. He looked at Ketal, and his eyes were full of goodwill. The feeling came from recognizing one another as comrades who had suffered under barbarians and survived. A firm friendship had taken shape while the bottles emptied.

They finished their preparations and walked out through the edge of the village. The barbarians behind them lifted their voices at once.

“Do not go!”

“My master, please do not leave us!”

They meant every word. After yesterday, they had started to think of Darkul as a teacher. A few tried to follow, but their bones were cracked from head to toe. Their bodies did not answer even when their hearts did.

Darkul did not slow. He turned, raised his middle finger high, and laughed like a man stepping into sunlight.

“Goodbye, you miserable fools! Let us never meet again!”

It was a strange scene. The one leaving swore he never wanted to see them again. The ones left behind howled at him to stay. Men sprawled along the road used what strength they had left and shouted with raw voices.

“One day, we will come to defeat you! Wait for us!”

“Come if you can!” Darkul shouted back. He spun on his heel and stepped lightly onto the open road. “This feels glorious. I am happy. I should have done this sooner!”

“That is good to hear,” Ketal said. “Although I am not sure you should have said that last part.”

“You mean telling them to come if they can?”

“You gave them permission.”

Darkul snorted. “They will never make it. The holy land of Elia is very far from here. Do you think those thick-headed men can cross the continent and reach it? It is impossible.”

He spoke with complete certainty. Ketal’s face was less sure.

“Is that what you believe?” Ketal asked him.

From experience, barbarians did not give up easily. They followed until the day they died. It was not a figure of speech. He himself had smashed pursuit to pieces before he ever dared travel outside the White Snowfield.

However, he let the thought go. If trouble came from this, it would be Darkul’s problem to solve. Ketal set his eyes on the northern road.

“Have you ever met the Barbarian King?” Ketal asked him as they went.

Darkul shook his head. “I have never seen him. I have heard plenty of stories.”

“What kind of man is he?”

“A man like you, if the stories can be trusted.”

“Like me?”

“I mean, he is reasonable. He listens and he speaks like a person who reads. They say he is closer to a scholar than a typical barbarian.”

Such men existed among the tribes, one in a thousand at most. A few could talk evenly and consider a point without swinging a fist. Most of those few never lasted. They could not fit the barbarian way, and the way flung them out. They tried to persuade their people and failed because words slid off like rain. In the end, they fled rather than split their skulls on a wall that would not move.

The Barbarian King was different for a simple reason—he had power. He had strength great enough to make the entire North listen.

“He is a Hero,” Darkul said. “Before he became king, the North was worse than chaos.”

Barbarians took orders from no one. They acted however they pleased. They jumped caravans, killed guards, and took all the cargo. They raided nearby territories and stole grain. To the rest of the continent, they were almost a hostile nation. When the Barbarian King appeared, the shape began to change. He drew lines. He wrote rules. Typically, barbarians did not follow the words of other people, but he silenced every protest with overwhelming strength. They obeyed because of the law of the strong. The savagery eased, not completely, but enough to matter.

Darkul lifted a shoulder as he continued, “It is still a mess, but it is better than it was.”

“I see,” Ketal said. The picture interested him; it felt familiar. He remembered pressing his own tribe toward order, forcing it into shape with strength whenever words failed. Even without meeting the Barbarian King, he felt a quiet kinship.

“I would like to meet him,” Ketal said. “I would like to see what kind of man bends the North.”

“You will, in about a month. For now, be careful. You should be ready to fight at any time.”

“To fight? Why?” Ketal’s look was openly puzzled. Did Darkul expect a barbarian raid?

However, the answer came out of the brush in front of them. A deep roar rolled over the track. A second cry tore the air, higher and rasping. Orcs burst from a snarl of thorns and charged in a line.

“They are here,” Darkul said. He drew his sword. Brightness gathered along the edge in a clean band of light. He swept his arm. The radiance leapt from steel, thinned to a cutting flare, and tore across the front rank. Orcs screamed and fell on their backs in the dust.

“Monsters on the road,” Ketal said. “Why?”

“Do you know the way Dungeons work?” Darkul asked him.

“I do.”

Dungeons appeared near places where people gathered. If no one cleared them for a time, the creatures inside boiled out of the entrance and spread. For that reason, the Dungeons near towns and cities were put on a schedule. Mercenaries and soldiers cleared them before they spilled.

“Oh, I see. The barbarians are not clearing the Dungeons on purpose,” Ketal said, nodding.

“That is right. There is a belief that a journey without danger is not a journey. The Barbarian King tried to impose patrols, but the backlash was heavy, so he gave up.” Darkul clicked his tongue. “They are mad. One traveler in ten dies while wandering the North, and still they refuse to act.”

The price fell on everyone who used the road in the North. However many Dungeons the North had left to rot, the effect was plain. By the hour, monsters came boiling out, which turned a simple day of travel into a march broken by skirmishes.

Ketal’s patience thinned. Even in a land like this, he wanted the clean rhythm that travel promises. Swatting the same kinds of pests he had faced a dozen times offered no joy. He began to consider taking Darkul by the arm and running straight to the Barbarian King.

Darkul mistook the silence for strain. “Do not worry. You will see them soon.”

“See who?”

“Groups. Even barbarians are not foolish enough to cross a field of monsters alone. We only need to endure until we join a column.”

***

Darkul proved right. A large party soon came into view, a tight mass of men moving together in a loose square. As Ketal and Darkul approached, one of the front guards lifted a hand.

“Who are you?”

“We are traveling to the North,” Darkul answered. “We are on our way to meet the Barbarian King.”

“We are going to the same place!” the man said. “You are welcome to join us!”

They asked for no names and no papers. Three exchanges, and the door was open. Ketal watched the easy trust and nodded to himself.

“They make traveling groups by destination,” Ketal muttered.

“That is the habit of the North,” Darkul said. “If you are headed for the same place, you join up and go together. There is no reason to suffer alone. We can follow them. They like to boast, and they like the front. They will race each other to kill any monsters we meet.”

They folded into the column and walked. In the middle of the crowd, Ketal drew little attention. He was larger than most of the men, but not large enough to break the pattern of what the eye expected. A few barbarians glanced at him, then looked away with no more interest than a man gives a tree he had seen before.

The lack of reaction stirred a strange feeling in his chest. He found himself staring at the line of backs ahead of him.

“You are wearing a strange face,” the Holy Sword said. “You look like a poor man who became rich and then sat down to a bowl of the stew he ate in hard years. It seems you cannot decide whether it tastes like memory or like regret.”

“Where did you learn to say it that way?” Ketal murmured.

“The knowledge the gods had fed me had many stories in it,” the Holy Sword replied. “When I was bored in the Hall of the Gods, I passed the time by spinning daydreams out of them.”

“That is fair,” Ketal said. “You did spend a long time in the Hall of the Gods.”

Ketal had lived among barbarians in the White Snowfield for a time that could be called a blink or a lifetime, depending on which world one used to count. He could not forget. If he wanted to hate that time, he could. If he wanted to miss it, he could. The feeling was a braid of both. He had no intention of going back. He settled his pace to match the column and let the road pull him forward.

Monsters tested them throughout the afternoon. Numbers decided every fight. When a pack showed itself, barbarians from the column surged to meet it. The creatures broke against a line of bodies and blades and fell. The march smoothed again.

At nightfall, they chose a patch of ground with a low rise against the wind and made a camp. Fires came alive. They tore strips of dried meat, chewed, and passed water-skins from hand to hand. For a little while, the camp quieted.

Then a shout went up from the far side of the circle. A second shout answered. Soon voices had fallen into a heavy chant that rode around the fire like a second ring.

“Fight! Fight!”

Men were drawing a wide circle with their boots and setting torches into the ground to mark the edge. Darkul watched it and grimaced.

“Barbarians always want to prove they are the strongest,” he explained.

“So this is a duel,” Ketal said. “They want to choose the leader for the group.”

“The strongest has the right to lead,” Darkul said. “Do not worry about it. Our destination is the same. Their fight will not touch us. Unless you want to join.”

He tipped his chin at Ketal and measured him. “You could win without effort.”

Darkul had judged Ketal to be at the very top of Advanced strength. In this column, he would be the strongest man. If Ketal wanted the circle, he could take it.

“I am not interested,” Ketal said, and shook his head.

He had stepped into enough circles to fill ten lifetimes. He had no taste for another on his first week back under open sky. Darkul blinked, surprised, and then smiled to himself.

“You are unusual,” he said. He already knew Ketal did not fit the usual mold. However, he had not expected to see indifference to the very act that most men of the North lived for. The discovery made him like Ketal more.

They sat side by side and watched. Sleep was impossible with the chant rolling around the camp. Two men stepped into the torchlight. The crowd fell back. Someone barked a start.

“The axe will not last,” Ketal said.

“The other barbarian is stronger,” Darkul said.

The prediction landed. The axe met a parry that looked simple and came apart at the haft. The crowd roared approval. The man rushed in barehanded and tried to grapple. His opponent slipped the rush and stamped down.

“His arm is broken,” Ketal said.

“That is the price of refusing to yield,” Darkul said without a blink.

The loser coughed blood and folded around his middle.

“His insides are hurt,” Ketal said. “He will need weeks of rest.”

“Fools,” Darkul said, and clicked his tongue. “They never learn.”

Ketal did not share the disgust. He watched with a different kind of attention. These were duels. Men stepped into the ring to prove strength in a language everyone there understood. Yet, they were not trying to kill each other. They held back the last inch. They moderated their strikes at the end.

It was sensible. A leader who killed his own men to take a title would have no one left to lead. Even barbarians had that much sense. Even so, something about it left a burr under his skin.

If you call it a duel, he thought, you should be ready to die.

He had been taught that a duel was a promise. One life set itself against another and accepted the cost. In his mind, the shape was simple: you crushed a skull, you cut a limb free and let it fall, you stood over a body with strength so undeniable that the tribe bent or broke. To finish instead with a shattered axe and a splint felt incomplete, as if the vow of the duel had not yet been answered.

In truth, it was about the level of a children’s play-fight back in his tribe.

If my barbarians had seen this, they would have complained that it was no duel at all, Ketal thought with a click of his tongue.

He did not notice it himself, but in his eyes lingered the same kind of feeling an old man has when watching the young.