He’d had enough time to ponder the problems between them on his long hunt, and he poured it out to Sverin, speaking as he hadn’t for years. “Your father’s stubbornness, our own fears, this strange land, and torn loyalties made us fearful of even each other, of being honest with each other. But no more.”
The movement took form, stalking forward. Wind gusted and pelted the red gryfon with snow as he emerged, less aggressive than cautious and curious, like a wild cat, his ears twitching at Caj’s voice.
Caj stood perfectly still, not advancing, not retreating. “Sverin.” In vain he searched for a sign of recognition, of comprehension. In all his years he’d seen nothing as terrifying as the blank stare which greeted him. “Brother. Tell me what haunts you. Trust me, as I couldn’t, but should have, trusted you with the truth about Shard.”
Sverin’s gold eyes held on him, empty, watching. Fearful, Caj realized. As fearful as a wild thing.
“Tell me now,” Caj said softly, “what Ragna knows, but that you could not tell me before.” At those words, something kindled in Sverin’s gaze. Catching a careful breath, Caj forced himself not to step forward. “Whatever it is, my king, my friend, I am your servant. I am your wingbrother. We’ll fly this wind together.”
He fought not to raise his voice, to plead, to fly forward and pound Sverin’s head until he came to recognition.
“You know me. Stop hiding in fear. I thought you’d be glad to see me. Halvden told you I was dead, but that was a lie. You see me here, whole and alive.”
He clung to the fact that Sverin did not advance, did not attack, rather seemed attentive to the careful, low timbre of his voice. So he kept talking.
“Oh, Sverin, I’ve been thinking for days what to say to you, to make you remember yourself. Do you remember, our third summer as wingbrothers, when your father forbade us from returning to the Ostral Shores to watch the mating flights? He said the celebration was too wild, but I think he feared you and Elena would wing off together without another word. Too young, too feckless,” he parroted Per’s rough words, the memory fresh and alive from their time as initiates. Something flickered in Sverin’s face at the mimic of his father’s voice.
“So…” Caj edged a step closer and Sverin bent his head low, ears flat. Caj stopped, but did not retreat. “You don’t frighten me. You remember the story. You drenched poor old Ringvul in chokecherry juice to dye him red, fruit that you’d made
me
smash, and swore him to silence. My talons and his feathers were stained for a fortnight. You commanded him to your sentry post at sunset, and he looked red enough to fool your father for as long as it took us to sneak away—and off we went. Do you remember?” Caj murmured, and when he slipped another two, slow steps forward, Sverin didn’t move or growl. “Do you remember Elena, sunrise by the lake? She told me once, that was the very moment she knew she would be your mate. Not because you were a prince, not because she thought you were handsome, strong, or brave, but because you dyed a poor old sentry red and disobeyed your father so you could have an adventure together.”
Sverin advanced one step, then another, out of the shadow of the rock, watching Caj. Caj was within leaping distance, and he held his ground there. “Have you ever told Kjorn that story?”
The light in the valley did not change, but a warmth seemed to come to Sverin’s face, as if the sun touched his eyes, as if Tyr awakened the knowing part of him.
Then a warrior cry cracked the frozen air.
Two half-blood Vanir, whom Caj hadn’t seen blended with the rock and snow, lunged out and dove at Sverin.
“
For Einarr!”
“For the Queen!”
The light winked out of Sverin’s eyes and his ears laid flat to his skull.
They’d waited there, waited for Sverin to be distracted and emerge fully from the cave. Caj knew them. His own students, young, vigorous, honorable. Stupid.
Sverin snarled. Even through his fury, Caj thought he discerned words.
“A trap?”
The Red King ramped up to meet their dive, hissing shrilly with fury.
“No!” Caj broke out of his shock and surged forward. “Andor, Tollak, fall back!”
For half a breath he and Sverin stood side by side, flared wings eclipsing.
Tollak, lean, mottled gray and falcon-faced, banked hard, surprised by Caj and Sverin’s mixed ferocity. Andor, heavier and near black in color, swerved, but came around to redouble and aim for Sverin.
“Leave him!” Caj screamed, voice cracking, with frustration. “You fools!”
He flared his good wing defensively, trying to block Sverin from Andor as he swooped down.
“Leave him!” He realized he could no longer command in Sverin’s name, or on any of his own rankings. Sverin crouched to meet the diving warrior, for a moment seeming oblivious to Caj. Caj could not let them engage, but couldn’t ignore Sverin to beat them off himself.
Instead he turned, ramming into Sverin’s side. His only element was surprise and Sverin staggered from it and fell, sprawling, sliding on the icy rocks into a deep, wet embankment of snow.
Andor cursed and circled tightly. Thankfully, younger Tollak flapped up higher, watching, looking toward the pass as if he expected reinforcement. Caj hoped he didn’t, and looked up at Andor.
“Leave him, I beg you—in—in the name of the Summer King, in Tor’s name,” he checked behind him to see Sverin recovering, shaking snow from his wings, and flared as if he could block him from Andor’s sight. “Don’t fight. Leave him to me.”
Perhaps the surprise of Caj calling on both the goddess the Aesir never recognized and the Summer King he didn’t believe in was as good as a strike. The dark warrior dropped to the ground a leap from Caj, staring uncertainly. “The queens ordered—”
“I know. I beg you leave him to me.” Caj fell again to all fours, and had only the sight of Andor’s eyes widening to warn him that Sverin’s focus had changed. He spun and threw up his talons in time to lock with Sverin and shoved, rolling through the snow.
“Stay back,” he shouted when he sensed the young warrior darting forward. “
Stay away.”
Talons clenched against Sverin’s, Caj managed only to twist and avoid crushing his broken wing again as Sverin shoved him down.
Sucking in cold breaths of air and desperately kicking in attempt to dislodge his massive wingbrother, Caj uselessly recalled Halvden’s warning that fighting made it worse.
But now there was no other way.
Sunlight gleamed through breaking clouds, littering the snow with brilliant patches of white. Sverin yanked his talons free of Caj’s grasp and swiped for his face. Caj caught Sverin’s wrist joint in his beak and resisted the battle urge to crunch down and break bone, fearing it would only worsen his fury.
Tyr, Tyr, make me strong
.
When Sverin tugged, Caj released, and grasped for the leg again with his talons.
“I didn’t come to fight,” he grunted, slapping talons against Sverin’s chest to keep him from snapping at his throat.
Yet I do…I do fight. I fear.
For ten years he had feared. Sverin had feared. They had not trusted each other, and it had broken them both.
Sverin reared up to slash talons at Caj’s throat and rather than defend, Caj wrenched over to his belly, shoved to all fours and blundered away through the deep snow.
Sverin plunged after him, then launched into the sky, wings slapping gouges into the snow.
“That’s just like you!” Caj shouted, relieved that Sverin circled him, apparently forgetting about the younger warriors who stared from the rocks. “Knowing I have a disadvantage and using it! You miserable cheat.”
Caj dragged forward through snow as deep as his chest, challenging, drawing Sverin away from the den, out into the valley. Perhaps he should’ve drawn him to the tree line but it might help him catch sight of the young warriors again, and if he flew at them, Caj couldn’t stop him.
“You know you can’t best me in a grapple, so you’ll fly and dive, is that it?” Caj gasped, finding the deep snow almost a greater challenge than the fight. But it would hamper Sverin too, and give Caj some cushion.
The baiting worked. If he didn’t understand the words, he understood the tone, and with a fierce cry, Sverin dove. Caj whirled about to meet him, ramping high. Out of instinct he thrust open both wings—and barked in pain at the hot, snapping sensation that lanced up his injured bones.
Sverin smashed into him and Caj’s scream rang into the sky, bounding off the rock and mountainside.
“Stop,” he panted, delirious with pain and sudden despair.
If only they hadn’t intervened. If only…if.
“Sverin, you must stop—I know you don’t want to kill me—”
Sverin pressed, his razor beak gaping wide, his eyes locked on Caj’s neck.
“You know me,” he grunted as Sverin rocked down on him like a bear trying to disable a threat. Caj, flat on his back, talons locked on Sverin’s forelegs, managed a hard breath, and laughed as blood stung his own eye. “There, brother, first blood. You win. Are you happy? You won’t kill me, I know it.”
Sun lanced across them between the racing clouds, sun and stinging, gusting snow. Throbbing pain in his wing seem to weaken his grip and he tightened his talons, shoving against Sverin, giving him a shake.
“It’s me,” he growled.
“Me.
Trust me. We must trust as we once did. I know your true heart. I know you to be honorable, merciful—”
Sverin shrieked and Caj winced as it rang in his ears.
Still holding Sverin back with the last of his strength, he gazed through a bright fog at the lashing beak, at the blood-red feathers in the scattered sunlight.
Fighting makes it worse. Fighting.
Fighting.
Blood pounded the warning through his ears, his own racing heart.
With the whirling delirium of pain and the certainty of death suddenly striking each other in his mind, Caj realized with bright clarity what he had to do. The only thing left he
could
do.
“You must trust me,” Caj growled again to the mad creature who could be the end of him, “as I trust you.”
With a shuddering breath, he loosened his grip, and Sverin leaned into his weight, eyes glassy with a killing light.
“I submit,” Caj rumbled, locking eyes. “My brother. My king.”
With final resolve he let his grip fall slack. He let fall his wings, his limbs, and relaxed against the ground. He turned his face toward the blinding, sunlit snow, and offered Sverin his throat.
Red lashed in the corner of his eye, Sverin’s face swooping in. Talons pressed against his chest, pinning. Caj didn’t wince as the beak squeezed tight against his neck.
All he saw was white, winking with glittering motes of gold, and he thought his death had been swift and painless. He waited to see his father.
Wind sifted against his flight feathers.
No dead came to greet him, no shining warriors of Tyr, and he realized he was cold.
. . . As cold as if he still laid there, aching, crushed into the snow under the weight of an enormous opponent.
His wing throbbed with pain. The brightness in his eyes was sunlight on snow. The dim, distant shapes he saw were mountains and trees, the very mountains and trees of the Sun Isle.
Sverin’s weight was real, and the red gryfon had not killed him.
Caj didn’t move. Still Tollak and Andor hung back, staring and uncertain, mercifully still, and the first sound to break the silence did not come from them.
“Caj.”
His voice, raw from animal screaming, rough and guttural from many turns of the moon without use, sounded like the purest birdsong to Caj.
Warily Caj shifted, turning his face again and blinking back the sunbursts from his eyes. “Sverin.”
“Yes.” Still he hesitated, pinning, measuring his options with a lost, exhausted expression on his face.
Lost and exhausted, but present, aware, and knowing. Caj had been right. His near sacrifice had worked to awaken Sverin to himself.
“You’re alive,” the Red King croaked.
“I am, Sverin. I am.”
“Why did you come here?” With a sort of calm horror Sverin appeared to realize that he’d almost killed his own wingbrother.
“To find you,” Caj said firmly. With a heavy, slow weariness that alarmed him, Sverin climbed back, letting Caj rise to all fours again. “To speak to you.”
“Halvden told me you were dead.” His eyes narrowed.
Caj spoke quickly. “It’s past, my brother. He’s made amends, and I have. And I’m…” He found himself without words, suddenly dizzy, as if the entire journey caught up to him in that moment. “I am so glad to see you.”
Sverin made a rough noise, and cast a sideways look to the half-blood warriors waiting, now looking completely unsure what to do. “The Widow Queen sends her regards, I see.”
“Thyra too,” Caj said. Sverin, thinking perhaps of the last time he’d seen Caj’s daughter, when he’d tried to exile her from the pride, lowered his head.
“Andor,” Caj called over his shoulder. “Tollak. I have him. Go find Ingmer and the others, and tell them.”
They hesitated, and Caj lifted one wing with a growl.
Years of training and obeying under Caj appeared to overcome them, especially now that Sverin ceased to attack, and they moved quickly.
Sverin eyed them as they flapped hard overhead, toward the pass at the far end of the valley.
“Sverin,” Caj murmured.
The red gryfon looked back to him, seeming ten years older and at the end of his strength. “You should have left me here. You should have let me die wild, and Nameless, as I deserve.”
Not since they were fledglings had Caj seen Sverin express self-pity, and he rustled his wing feathers in disapproval. “That’s not what you deserve. And you
will
face your fate with honor and courage. Did you hear all of what I said, before we fought?”
“I did.” Sverin rustled against the cold wind and turned toward the shelter of the rocks. Caj followed him, wading through the trail he’d blazed earlier in the snow. “You’re sorry you lied. You’re sorry about Shard.” He stepped into the shallow snow near the cave, and turned again to face Caj. “Why did you lie to me?”