The Manx Cat Guardians Boxed Set Page 7

  He danced back, smirking when Arngrim backed away, trying to regroup. Oh no, that would not do at all. Óláfr followed suit, only taking a second to swipe at his dripping brow with the sleeve of his offending kyrtill. The darkening stains gathering on Arngrim body pleased Óláfr as he continued to push his sword at Arngrim’s. Several times he could have ended it, but he pulled back, needing to punish him.

  The crowd continued to roar and chant around them. The craving for blood filled the air. It buzzed as it would in the aftermath of the lightning storm. Óláfr’s thirst for blood had him thrust harder, wanting to give in to the clawing need. He struck hard, a feral grin spreading across his face as he saw the opportunity and pushed the sword into Arngrim left arm, slicing deep, making Arngrim relinquish his sword. The coppery scent of blood tainted the air around them as it splattered his kyrtill and the surrounding ground. Uncaring, he let the rage flow, dropping his sword as Arngrim did. He launched himself onto his big body, knocking them both to the ground. Landing on top of Arngrim’s fat stomach, he bounced slightly, allowing him to shift his knee. Aiming high between Arngrim’s legs, he drove hard and fast.

  The loud shout in his ear was little consolation when the horrible stench of fetid breath panted into his face before he had a chance to roll off Arngrim. He jumped up when the rage wouldn’t cease its hot, destructive path through him. It wanted to pummel and grind Arngrim to dust.

  He beckoned for Arngrim to get up with shaking fingers. The abject terror painted on Arngrim’s face made the beast inside jubilant, but it didn’t quench its thirst for more. Before he could rationalise, he bent, dragging Arngrim up by the scruff of his kyrtill and shaking him. Frustration and anger rattled through the larger man, making his bones crunch and grind together under Óláfr’s hands.

  His nose wrinkled in disgust as he watched a wet stain spread across the lower part of Arngrim’s kyrtill. Releasing him, Óláfr jumped out of the way and watched Arngrim land in a heap at his feet. He rubbed his hands against his chest, trying to remove any remnants of body fluids that had touched his skin.

  He tucked his hands behind himself when they wanted to shake violently as the rush of adrenaline died under the onslaught of the reek of Arngrim’s soiled clothing and pitiful sobs. Óláfr moved back, kicking Arngrim’s unmoving legs out of the way as he stalked off. He forgot about his sword and disregarded the pathetic shouts coming from Arngrim.

  “Why, Óláfr? Why… would you attack…. me in this way? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to kill me.”

  Óláfr marched back into the castle, ignoring Arngrim’s breathless sobbing shouts aimed at his back. His body shook with the restraint it took not to go back and finish him off. Looking down at his bloody clenching fists, he thought only of the need to rinse off the blood and dirt clinging to his skin. He felt contaminated somehow by Arngrim’s blood, as if it was poisoning his system.

  The sense of disquiet filling him had him moving quicker. Entering his chamber, he collapsed against the hard door. The fight left him drained, and his legs wobbled while his heart tried to slow. Struggling to draw in a breath through the tightness inside his chest, a wave of pain morphed into an immense pressure that sat in the middle of his chest, causing white flashing lights to blind him. He fell to his knees while images replayed in all their gory detail. Gasping for breath, he sucked in large gulps while gripping his head to ensure it didn’t fall off. His neck strained to hold his head up as he staggered to his feet, trying to make sense of why Maximillian was replaying the fight to him. He hadn’t even been aware Maximillian had been there watching. Giving up, he fell onto the pile of fur, letting Maximillian have his way.

  Maximillian

  Maximillian felt Magnus’s tears drying on his matted coat, adding to his distress. His stomach chose that moment to growl and gurgle, letting him know in no uncertain terms it was time to get out of that tiny cell.

  Where the hell is Óláfr? Why had he not come to his senses?

  Maximillian puffed up his chest, hating that Óláfr had made a liar out of him when he had assured Magnus he would come. He coughed at the lie that sat in his craw, choking him with each passing sunrise. His feeble repeated attempts even sounded unconvincing to his ears.

  Stubborn fool!

  The desperation leaking from Magnus had both their hopes waning. His shoulders drooped with the reality of what he had to do. He had to prepare for the oncoming lecture, knowing full well Christina wasn’t going to be pleased with what he had done.

  “Christina, Christina, are you there? I am in need of your help.” His panicked squeal met with a static silence. Maximillian paused. Panic crawled inside his gut, tangling it in small knots while he tried to calm himself. Waiting for a beat, a sense of foreboding he didn’t want to feel slid across his fur, lifting the tiny hairs. He hoped that it was just the block he’d used on Óláfr interfering. He tried again. The effort contorted his sizeable body filthy from rubbing him against Magnus’s grimy, tattered clothing, causing the filth to coat his mouth and nose.

  He sneezed. Eyes streaming, he blinked owlishly into the darkness. His eyes widened in horror at the empty ringing inside his mind. It had him remembering the last time he’d entered the church bailey when the bells chimed so loudly, he could hear nothing but the ringing for days. Oh by the God Njord, this cannot be a good thing.

  He took a fortifying breath, regretting it instantly as the stale smell of unclean bodies and death coated the back of his throat, making him gag. Blinking back his distress, he did the one thing he’d vowed never to do and called on his relatives for help. The nosy cretins would surely know what had happened to Christina because they were always poking their tiny noses in everyone’s business.

  Preparing himself, he opened his mind. “Morgana, Morgana, do you know where Christina is? I am unable to sense her spirit.” He stopped speaking when several voices filled his mind, all fighting to talk at once and dish up whatever scandal had occurred while he had been shielding himself with Magnus.

  Maximillian bowed his head, scowling at the aching throb behind his eyes as the voices rose. He squeezed them shut, hoping it would help. Feeling only slightly better with them closed, he at least was more able to cope with the noise levels. Remembering too late, he took another deep breath, coughing and gagging into Magnus’s thin shoulder. Small, icy-cold fingers brushed his matted fur coat, trying to comfort him.

  Sniffing in despair, Maximillian chuffed. He thanked him for the small gesture of caring, even when the guilt was coiling inside like grass snakes. It slithered around inside him, waiting for unsuspecting prey to strike at, leaving him vulnerable and susceptible to Magnus’s misery.

  The deluge of information drowned out his internal melancholy, shouting over the top of them once he had closed the link between him and Magnus, first.

  “Please one at a time. I can’t hear or think with you all caterwauling at once.” The loud plea had the voices die down a fraction, but it was enough to let him hear Morgana.

  “Stop shouting, Maximillian. You are the one who asked for our help, and see, hell did not freeze over.” Her chuckled response had him rolling his eyes.

  “Just get to the point, Morgana. I have no time to waste on frivolous conversation.” He chose not to hear the disgruntled meow that followed. Patience never was his strong suit at the best of times with his family. Now, it wore thin, much like Magnus’s threadbare kyrtill. Maximillian shifted on top of Magnus, trying not to sniff up while he attempted to hold his breath.

  “Maximillian, are you listening to me?”

  The whine grated on his last nerve when he realised he’d missed what she had said. “Sorry, I was trying not to breathe. What did you say?” He could hear the tutting from the others who thought he was precocious. I suppose I asked for that, but hell, they want to try sitting in squalor, breathing in Goddesses know what and see how they’d cope.

  Shaking off his gloomy thoughts, he listened to Morgana. His sense of foreboding com
ing to the forefront made it challenging to sit still.

  “Christina has been summoned back to the otherworld. It would appear your actions created a storm, shifting the proper balance of things. I think, though I am not one hundred per cent sure, that this is your punishment for meddling in things you should know better than to touch with a large longboat oar.” Morgana’s voice trailed off as if she was considering her next words carefully, though he should have known better.

  His hackles rose, and the fur on his neck ruffled up in the iced air coming through the cracks in the stone. He shivered into his dingy fur coat, waiting for the axe to fall. His neck prepared for the blow. It strained forward towards something. What, he didn’t know.

  He all but felt his blood freeze in his body when she continued. His heart was bouncing against his ribcage, beating a violent tattoo with the urge to tell her to shut up. Her words rebounded through him. Each blow was more potent than the last, leaving him no place to hide. He sat cringing into Magnus.

  “Óláfr has, this very morning, been advised by the bishop to put Magnus to death in the most brutal way. Bestowed with the highest form of punishment, the blood eagle. They are now, as we speak, building the pyre on which he will burn after they cut his lungs from his body, pulling them out his back.”

  The macabre conversation seemed to quieten even the most vocal of his guardians. At a loss, he struggled to grasp what was going to happen. Seriously, have my actions caused this? He wished he was going to wake up and find it was all some dreadful nightmare, but the ever-growing gnawing in the pit of his stomach told him otherwise. Morgana continued talking, firing the nails into the coffin within which he sat blocking out the light that kept his soul whole.

  “You were warned many times about interfering with the laws, and now your arrogance is going to make that good-looking young man pay the highest price. I hope you can live with this, Maximillian.”

  Her words were flung with disdain, making him recall his similar conversation with Óláfr. How little time had passed since that fateful talk, but by the God Njord and Goddess Freyja, everything had shifted, making him totter on the uneven ground he had created with his stupid actions. This surface was more treacherous than the rocky grounds outside the castle.

  His mind buzzed with the words. Forcing himself up, he got off Magnus’s frail, chilled body. Not giving himself a chance to rethink his actions, he squeezed back through the rusty metal bars, hardly noticing he managed it with ease. Running as fast as his short legs would carry him, he panted as he ran up the stairwell along the passageway, knowing exactly where Óláfr would be.

  He didn’t stop until he was outside his sleeping chamber.

  “Odin’s Raven.”

  Magnus’s confusion pushed past the barrier he’d used to shield him earlier, forgetting to remove the block in his haste to go to Óláfr. He babbled, trying to stem Magnus’s terror at being left alone.

  “Magnus, please calm yourself. I will be back, but there has been a turn of events that needs my immediate attention.” He hoped he sounded more positive than he felt.

  Magnus’s resigned response left him knowing he had failed miserably.

  “There is no need to rush. I will still be here, awaiting my fate.”

  Maximillian shifted his body uncomfortably as it sagged under the weight of the bubbling despair and anger rushing through him. Blocking Magnus for his good, Maximillian straightened his spine as he opened his link with Óláfr, bellowing at him to come and open the door. The loud rumble of his stomach distracted him when a whiff of meat met his nose, making his whiskers twitch. He was tempted to seek out the source of the smell. Only the noise of the door creaking opening in front of him had him forgetting his stomach. Instead, he concentrated on the matter at hand.

  Moving past Óláfr, he headed towards the stone hearth and the heat of the fire. He sat shivering on the fur pelt left just for him. He tried valiantly not to think about the dirt or the stench coming from his fur and rubbing off on his bed. Instead, he aimed his stony gaze on what appeared to be an unrepentant Óláfr, the blankness in his expression making Maximillian shudder. Am I too late?

  His thought barely registered as he took in Óláfr’s slumped shoulders, dark smudges circling his sunken eyes, and deep grooves etched into his grim pinched face. His commanding presence seemed to shrink before his very eyes, causing a wave of sympathy to wash over Maximillian before he could stop it. By the Goddess Freyja, he looks ancient, aged into a withered, older man.

  Óláfr’s blank, fathomless eyes seemed to stare through Maximillian, making him think he couldn’t see him, so lost in the misery that seemed to float on the air between them.

  Dismissing the ball of fear that stuck in his throat, much like his hair tended to do when he cleaned himself, Maximillian coughed, trying to dislodge it before speaking.

  “Óláfr, you need to go to Magnus now while you still have time to redeem yourself. He is losing the will to live.” Hoping the truth would jar some response, he growled in distress when all his urgent pleas had garnered, was a shrug of his massive shoulders.

  Maximillian felt the light of Magnus’s spirit waver as if Magnus knew what was happening. Please give me a chance?

  He rushed on, stumbling over his words. “Please, Óláfr, you need to fix this now, Magnus is meant for you and you alone. He is your one chance at true happiness in this life, your soulmate. He is a gift from Manannán himself.” Maximillian’s teeth bared at Óláfr as he interrupted, shouting over the top of him.

  “No, Maximillian, he is no gift, and I choose not to accept. I will handfast Lauon. It will resolve the issues with my brother and give some peace to the Islanders. It is best for everyone.” Óláfr’s despair had the last words spitting at Maximillian, coating him in oily bitterness. It slid insidiously over his fur, sinking through his skin and settling into his soul, suffocating it.

  His body shuddered with apprehension, feeling Óláfr’s resolve become hard and unmovable like the stones in the shell keep that protected them from attack. He watched the resolve in Óláfr’s heart, harden. Their connection lost under the weight of his decision, it cracked open Óláfr soul. It bled out and infected Maximillian. Cringing towards the fire, Maximillian tried to escape the desolation it caused. He bowed under the strain of watching the crack widen as Óláfr worked on breaking the bond with Magnus, stamping it to death with his will, making sure he couldn’t go back.

  Tears seeped down his fur unnoticed as he launched himself up Óláfr’s legs. Digging his claws into his kyrtill, he climbed up, needing to look Óláfr in the eye. The devastation he saw made guilt weigh his body down, and he struggled to maintain his grip under the deluge of grief and pain. Óláfr pushed him away, making him release his claws and dropping back to the floor. Disgusted, Maximillian pivoted away, unable to look at the damage he’d helped create. The silent chamber mocked him with the knowledge he had no one to blame for what was to come, but himself.

  He stalked away, unsure how he was going to break the news to Magnus, and his paws faulted on the stairwell leading down into the depths of the castle. He knew he needed to be the one to deliver the news and not the likes of Arngrim or the bishop, who would take great pride in relaying what was to come. He moved as swiftly as he could in his weakened state. The lack of food combined with the weight of responsibility made him feel sick to his stomach.

  The silence followed him. Even the constant chatter that had always seemed present in his mind was silent. Their judgement slanted his thinking towards the situation only got worse. Not that he could see how, but something just on the edges of his consciousness nagged that it could and that it would before the sun set.

  Adjusting his vision to the darkness, if not his nose to the stench, he moved back down the winding passageway. He ignored the guards positioned at the entrance of the dungeons, who were teasing their captives. He soundlessly moved around them. Heading towards Magnus and the misery, he felt coming in waves from him.

 
; He could make out Magnus’s sparsely covered body plastered against the cold floor and stone shell behind him. His face was hidden in his thin arms as they hugged his small frame, attempting to keep the icy breeze from his exposed skin while his teeth chattered continuously. He made a pitiful sight as he shifted to try and get into a more comfortable position. Maximillian knew it was impossible, having spent the same amount of time as Magnus on that freezing stone floor.

  He released a heartfelt sigh alerting Magnus to his presence. The bright shine of terror that shone in the blue depths of his eyes made him hesitate to enter the cell. Forcing his body back through the bars, he went directly to Magnus, careful not to hurt him as he climbed up, offering what little warmth he could to ease his suffering.

  The pain in his soul twisted hard. It gave Maximillian a moment to consider if his death was imminent as well. Pushing aside the thought, he eased closer to Magnus’s face, so he was able to see his into eyes when he spoke. He needed him to see how sorry he was. How much what he was going to tell him would hurt him, cut at his very being, his soul.

  “Magnus, I need to speak about what is going to happen.” He paused, taking a breath when he felt the tiny shivers wrack through him from Magnus. He was pleased when he barely gagged on the smell coming from Magnus. Making himself continue even when he saw the reality wash over Magnus, his eyes shuttered when the pain moved into his heart, piercing it.

  Maximillian struggled to get past the amount of blood seeping into his soul from Magnus and merging with Óláfr’s. The irony of that was not lost on him as he fought past his pain to continue.

  “I know, Maximillian.”

  Maximillian’s eyes watered, mewling in distress at the finality in Magnus’s voice as he spoke.

  “I felt you trying to shield me, but I knew he wasn’t coming. He doesn’t want the gift of me being his beloved. My soul felt it the moment he rejected me. You do not need to worry yourself. I have accepted my fate.”