A-Viking (Betrayed by Faith Book 3) Page 4

  “The more power, whatever the type, the greater the consequences.” She finished.

  Griffin nodded to her. She looked at him speculatively as she prepared four chunks of damper with the bacon that Griffin had cooked.

  “Are you set on traveling alone?” Griffin raised his eyebrow at her, and she blushed. “I mean, I need to get away. Away from home. Away from my father. Especially,” her voice changing to one of fear mingled with disgust, “I need to get away from David.”

  “Oh?” Griffin asked, raising his eyebrows.

  Brianna sighed. “Father wants me to marry him. That would make me and any children I had a target of the Major Conclaves. Not David though.” Disgust entered her voice. “The major Conclaves only target the mother of children that cross bloodlines between the five and the children themselves. Never the fathers. I need to get away. I also need to be trained to defend myself. Father refused to let me, and David keeps saying that I won’t need to know. He’ll be there to defend me.”

  She looked eloquently at the tree Griffin split the night before. “I feel a fair amount of doubt he can, now.”

  While she took breakfast to David and ‘Nia, who were just waking up, Griffin was lost in thought. He could sympathize with her issues with her father. He snorted internally. David was an arsehole, a hothead and to be honest, an idiot. If he had a child, he’d kill a man like David before allowing his daughter to marry him. He definitely wouldn’t be pushing her to it.

  But he’d shown how weak he could be when filled with doubt. His brother and apprentice repeatedly handed him his arse while training with them. He was not sure he was good enough to protect her from a group of similar skill to David. A small group, maybe three or four he would feel confident he could. A larger group he was not so sure.

  He was, however, sure he could give her the training she desired.

  Thinking about the options, he considered different strategies. He wouldn’t travel to her home, wherever that was. Nor would he be going with David. The imbecile would eventually drive him to murder. His desire - need - to keep wandering meant that settling down was not an option. Her story left him concerned for her welfare and safety if he didn’t train her. If she would travel with him, that was not an issue.

  “Why do I keep getting into these situations?” He almost looked reflexively up. Not that there was anyone or anything out there to help him. It was rather frustrating to be on his own after looking to a ‘higher being’ for inspiration on the right decision for so long. He was startled by the hoot of an owl. Turning to the sound, as soon as he locked eyes with it, the owl took flight.

  He wandered over to his gear as he ate his breakfast, getting out the equipment he’d need with one hand and organizing the rest for repacking as he ate. After he had finished, he frowned reflectively at the kevlar and ceramic plate shirt. He’d better wear it, he supposed, especially with how hostile David was. If that young jackass tried to start something by stealth, it’d give him an edge.

  After he’d packed up his extra clothes and food, he looked at the tent. He considered striking it but realized that with David’s shoulder, even if he healed fast, David wouldn’t be able to hike out with them. With a clear conscience, Griffin couldn’t insist that the others leave him here, no matter how much he wanted to.

  He started getting dressed in his armor shirt. Griffin wouldn’t forget his promise to Einar. After he had been dressed, he decided it would be best to test Brianna’s basic ability and willingness before offering to train her.

  He went back to the campfire and made sure it was contained. Since they were likely to be here for a few days, they’d have to clean the fire pit when it went cold. Being summer, there was no need to keep it burning during the day. Brianna approached him after a few minutes. “David has been convinced to be peaceable. I think you scare him. He’s never been defeated so completely by anyone.”

  “He’s what, thirty at the oldest?” Griffin asked, shaking his head.

  Brianna replied, “Thirty-three actually.”

  Griffin snorted. “I’m over two hundred years old. I learned a long time ago to control my anger.” He grinned at her. “Training every day for that long gives you an advantage over people that much younger. Especially when the person who fights you attacks with either arrogance or rage.”

  “Enough about him, though. You said earlier that you wanted to learn how to fight. I can start training you while we are waiting for him to be able to travel again. For that, I need some things from you, though. First, I need a self-honest assessment of your fitness. How far you can walk in a day with a pack, what weights you can lift, that sort of thing. Then I need you to understand that this training will cause you a lot of pain. You have no training, and pain is the best teacher in this. Finally, I need to know how willing you are to hurt someone. If you aren’t willing to hurt someone, there is nothing I can do. No-one can teach someone who hasn’t the will to cause harm how to fight. It just can’t be done.”

  Over the next hour, they talked about everything. Griffin was happily surprised to discover she worked out regularly. She explained that sometimes being physically exhausted was the only way she could sleep. When she shielded someone’s dreams, she would sometimes experience them. Griffin winced at that. He knew how horrible his dreams were. She shrugged, explaining it was a part of the heritage, and usually, it only happened with people of Graki heritage. She was a descendant of Hypnos, the Graki with dominion over dreams.

  He then handed her the ‘wooden’ Gladius and ran her through the core drills. He heard muttering from the direction of David but ignored it. From what he could see that young punk was either sucking up to her father by refusing to train her or he was supremely arrogant. A person’s best defense was to be able to defend themselves, not to depend on someone else.

  She was surprisingly quick at learning how to attack but struggled to learn the blocks and parries. It removed his concerns about whether he would be able to teach her. A person who had trouble learning to defend was far and away preferable to someone who couldn’t strike another.

  He would wait until tomorrow before discussing his conditions on taking her on as a trainee. One battle at a time as they say.

  Somewhere in India, March 7, 2014.

  Nin woke up covered in sweat. Her body felt sore and headachy. Pain, not the kind she usually felt from training, but cramps, focused in the belly. ‘Well,’ she thought, ‘this sucks. No wonder I decided to just Dream for so long. No point in having to put up with this if I didn’t have too.’ Rinzen was calling for her, and there was a knock on the door. “Fucking hell. I’m coming already. Do you have to be so damned pushy?” Nin answered.

  There was an eloquent silence, and then the door opened, admitting Rinzen, who quickly shut the door behind her.

  “What has gotten into you, Nin? You’ve been cranky for days. I thought it must have been your period or something, but that doesn’t make sense.”

  “What do you mean a period? You mean menstrual cycle? I’ve never had one.” Her face took on a disgruntled look.

  Rinzen’s expression changed to one of shock. “You mean you have lived over two thousand years…”

  Nin snapped, “Way to make me feel better. I’m just an old maid, is it?”

  Rinzen gave her a quelling look with a raised eyebrow. “As I was saying. Without cramping or a period?”

  Nin shrugged. “When I exercised or trained sure. What are you getting at?”

  “No, I meant intense cramping. Around your guts. And no… discharge?”

  “It’s not like I’m a full human. Hell, it’s not like there is anyone to really compare me with. I’m the only half-human daughter of my father. So what was I going to compare to… wait.” Nin sat there for a few minutes, thinking. “You said cramping in the guts right?” Rinzen nodded. “Shit. So I’m over two thousand years old, and NOW I start getting my period?” There were five minutes of profanity directed at the universe. After that, tears rolled down her fa
ce. “Why now? I finally felt I had someone I could connect to. Someone to be with. First, he’s nowhere near me, and I’m horribly out of shape. Then I find I have to adapt to… Oh, that is so damned unfair! Starless night! IF I hadn’t found him what do you bet the odds are I would never have had this… this… crap happen to me?”

  “Don’t look at me. If you don’t know, how am I supposed to?” Rinzen said with a smile.

  “I’d better get you some things from my supplies, though. Since you have no experience with this… Hey, don’t glare at me. I’m trying to help.”

  Nin gave Rinzen an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. After so long not interacting with the physical plane, I’m still adjusting, and now I have to adapt to things I thought I would never experience. It’s messing with me. It’s like I can't control my emotions. I spent two hundred years making sure I had them under control in case I had to deal with my brothers, and now… It’s like I can feel the control I had in there, but every time I reach for it slips out of my grasp.”

  Rinzen nodded. “That would be frustrating. I’d better get that stuff for you, though. Be back soon.”

  She slipped out the door. As she walked down the hall to her room, she grimaced. She would now be a chaperon for a teenage girl who could probably squash her if she got a thought to into her head. A volatile and dangerous girl with literally millennia of knowledge, but no personal experience of the situation to help her deal with it.

  If she left Nin now, she might be safe physically. She’d never be able to forgive herself, though. And every life that might be taken accidentally by Nin if she went off like a nuke at someone would be on her soul.

  That made the decision easy. She had no choice but to look after the ancient teenager, at least until she found her lifemate. Maybe then she could quietly slip away and leave him to deal with the problem. It would be his then after all.

  When Rinzen returned to the room with the items, she found Nin in a trance. She tentatively touched her, and Nin came out of the trance with a start. She was visibly upset, and an occasional tear rolled down her face.

  “What’s wrong?” Rinzen asked, her concern apparent in both her tone and on her face.

  “I can’t meditate. I just tried, to seek calmness. I ended up going straight into the Dream. If you hadn’t touched me, I’m not sure how long I would have done that. Days… maybe weeks.” Nin shuddered. “I’m still not used to the physical. My mind seeks to return to the Dream. If I do, I might lose my lifemate forever.”

  With that, she burst into tears. “I… can’t… live… with… that…” she said between sobs.

  Rinzen was coming to understand. Despite the legends surrounding her power and her heritage, she was still subject to the frailties of anyone. Despite everything she knew and had seen, she was still… human for lack of a better term. She needed to experience things for herself to actually understand them. She had weaknesses, fears, strengths, and hopes.

  Nin was a good friend going through a hard time. At that moment Rinzen committed herself to standing by her, come what may. So she was acting like a teenager. She was experiencing the same changes that those teenagers did. What else could be expected?

  She sat on the bed and hugged her charge and friend.

  Blue Mountains, Australia, March 7, 2014.

  Brianna woke in the campsite she and Griffin were using, seeing him running through training drills with both the sword and the axe. While he sparred and trained with her in unarmed techniques, he would only let her drill with the sword. When she asked about axe drills, he simply said. “Master the sword drills first. Then you can spar with me. After that, we’ll see if the axe suits you. Personally, I don’t think it will. You also need to learn both knife and dagger. If we were anywhere else, I’d try to train you with a gun as well, but here there is no point. Australia doesn’t like guns.”

  Watching him at his drills, she could not only see the grace with which he moved, but also the speed and skill with which he executed the movements. If he hadn’t had the weapons in his hands, it would have looked like a stylized dance. With them it only made him seem more deadly than she already thought him. Today however she noticed that he occasionally grimaced when the axe, in his left hand, moved slightly out of time with the movements of his gladius.

  When she commented on this after breakfast, he smiled at her. “As I told you before an axe is not really a beginner’s weapon. I had not used one in my left hand since the last world war when I served as a colonel in the Russian army.” He grimaced. “Perhaps the only genuinely good thing that the Order did was side against the Nazis in that conflict.” It sounded like even that faint praise of the Order caused him pain.

  She was still worried about him. He had told her to only shield his dreams one night in seven. She had argued for one night in four, as exhaustion would not be an aid to either of them. He had made it part of the deal by which she traveled with him. That had gone down with David and ‘Nia about as well as a radium-filled balloon floated.

  David had insisted that he had been charged to protect her by her father. ‘Nia was suspect of his motives. The argument had only ended when Griffin had asked for a knife from each of them and sworn on his own blade he would behave around her honorably, and the only way she would die under his protection was if he was dead first. Then he had handed them both back their knives, having cut his palms with them. The blood on them was dried from the energy he had drawn in while swearing the oath.

  When David had tried to insist she would be safer if he went with them, Griffin had asked how. After all, if he were distracted by worrying about a knife in his back all the time, it would make it harder for him to sleep. ‘I’d rather go into a fight with no allies than a single one I am unsure of,’ he had said. David had fumed over this but after his actions couldn’t really argue the point. ‘Nia was wise enough to realize that she was to make sure David stayed away from them.

  She agreed to make sure that David went to Nowhere Town. However, she made the point to Brianna that the only way Griffin was to find out about Nowhere Town was by visiting it in Brianna’s company. That was an order that could be followed.

  They were walking around thirty kilometers a day. He had explained to her it was a part of conditioning, and at night he took on most of the tasks at camp. He’d talk to her about various periods of his life and had once commented that the weight they were carrying was less than that of Napoleonic or even second world war soldiers.

  “You fought in the Napoleonic Wars?” she asked him.

  He smiled. “Yes. That was when you might say I was going through a rebellious phase. I felt that the French vision of either Empire or a universal republican system was destructive. One thing I have alway studied extensively was history, especially military history. In my studies, I believe there is a greater strength in diversity than a strict homogeneity. What Napoleon and those French in the post-revolutionary era tried to achieve would have either hobbled or destroyed significant parts of that diversity. The Order sought to keep absolute neutrality. I joined Wellington’s forces for Waterloo.”

  She frowned and looked at him. “But the collection of rules that the major Conclaves want us to follow are based on similar beliefs. They seem to be formed from a core document according to my father. He’s studied their practices for years.” She grimaced, and a shudder ran through her. “Some of the practices they use are so misogynistic. For example, a Norskrinjar male can choose any female of the Conclave to be his shieldmaiden, so long as she is not a recognized warrior. She is to follow him and provide ‘comfort’ while he is on any task for the Conclave. If she is a fighter, she doesn’t have to accept, but I imagine pressure to agree is placed on her.” Her frown deepened into a scowl

  Griffin grimaced at the thought of that. It sounded like an arranged marriage at best to him, with no way for the woman to escape.

  But Brianna continued with real anger in her voice, “In some ways, philosophically, the Ajeptos are the best. They allow w
omen to chose their own husband within or without of the Conclave, but the husbands often treat their wives so badly that a collection of safe houses is maintained by several of the minor Conclaves to funnel those fleeing their husbands to the Hathori Conclave. They are another minor group without the political power to force change. The Keltoi are allied to them. The Keltoi are the only Conclave that treats women as equals. Sort of. They still follow the rule that blames only the woman for having children that cross over the original five groups.”

  Griffin frowned and looked at her. “That there is one thing that the Order doesn’t do. Not as long as I was with them. Individuals may have disrespected women, but the Order as a whole treated them as equals for at least the last two centuries.” He thought on this further. “If I have the chance that is something I will change.”

  Brianna’s jaw dropped at that comment. “Close your mouth, or you’ll catch flies,” he chuckled.

  “What do you mean you will change it? It’s the way it has been for thousands of years. How can one person change that?”

  Griffin’s face took on a grim visage. “By force, if I have to. I created the final rule of the Order more than a century ago. I wanted a senior Paladin demoted to the junior ranks for using ladies of the night as bait. I was on the wrong end of the vote, so I called for a duel. He turned up armed and armored, and I was unarmed. I’m still here. He is not.” He shrugged as if to say ‘and it was too easy.'

  “A belief that something is righteous often leads to anger when it is challenged. Someone who is angry is easier to defeat more often than not. It clouds the mind and causes misjudgment. Just look at how easy David was to defeat when I kept prodding him. He might be a brawler, but he was never really a warrior or a soldier. If he had been, he would have learned that.”

  He continued, “But you got me off track. Diversity is a strength, not a weakness. Different ways of looking at a problem lead to better end solutions. From what you have told me, the Conclaves follow different interpretations of the same code. That right there is an example of diversity. And they allow the minor Conclaves to exist. Although none of those, except for the Einherjar, could withstand any of the major ones attempting to wipe them out.”