Dead Man's Steel by Luke Scull

Author:Luke Scull [Scull, Luke]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781781851623
Publisher: Head of Zeus

Reunions

✥

‘YOU AWAKE, SON?’

Brodar Kayne waited hesitantly by the tent flap, suddenly uncertain of what to say to the boy he had raised to be a man, the boy he had raised to become king of the High Fangs. There were a lot of things he wanted to say. Some things he had to say. Three years was a long time, and the news he had brought with him to the tent upon learning Magnar was finally conscious was the kind of news no father wanted to give his child.

‘Yes.’ His son’s voice was as weak as parchment. As weak as parchment, but nonetheless as familiar to him as his own scarred hands. Hands he’d used to lift him from the cradle as a babe. To feed him as a child. To teach him how to wield a sword as a man.

Kayne closed his eyes for a moment and steeled himself for what had to be done. ‘Mind if we talk?’

There was a brief moment of silence, and then, ‘Come in, Father.’

He entered the tent and came to stand beside Magnar. His son was still desperately weak, half the weight a man ought to be and so badly maimed it broke Kayne’s heart to look upon him. ‘Does it hurt?’ he asked, trying to keep the pain out of his own voice.

Magnar raised a mangled hand. He’d lost two fingers on his left hand and one on his right, and ugly scars disfigured his chest where Krazka had mutilated him. Kayne had an inkling the butcher had done worse things, but he didn’t want to ask. Some things were better left unknown. ‘Not as much as before,’ Magnar said. ‘But it hurts.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Kayne said, feeling utterly helpless. ‘The healers say you’ll get stronger with time.’

Magnar nodded, a distracted look in his grey eyes. He’d grown a beard since his imprisonment. It only served to highlight the scars around his jaw where no hair could grow and likely never would. ‘Stronger,’ he repeated, sounding bitter. ‘I’m broken. The broken king.’

Kayne stiffened, feeling as though ghostly fingers had just raked him down the back. Like wildfire, the Seer’s words ignited in his brain.

You stood before the Bandit King. You knelt before the Butcher King. And you sent the Broken King to his death.

He might’ve stood before Asander the Bandit King and he might’ve knelt before Krazka the Butcher King, at least after a fashion. But there was no way in hell he would ever send his own son to his death. ‘No man’s broken till he can’t get back up,’ he said, more sharply than he intended.

Magnar looked away and Kayne hesitated a moment, dreading what was coming, knowing it had to be done. ‘Son,’ he began. ‘I got something to tell you. It’s... it’s about your ma.’

Magnar’s grey eyes, his mother’s eyes, met Kayne’s blue orbs, and just like that understanding passed between father and son. ‘When?’ came his strangled reply.

‘A few weeks back.’ Kayne swallowed the lump in his own throat.

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