Author’s Note

CW (for this author’s note and the story it addresses): references to sexual assault (not in-scene), violence/gore, language, sex.

I realize I am playing with fire to post The Farnen as my first self-published short story, a grimdark fantasy short of about 6,500 words. I also realize I am spoiling it a bit now, but I feel it is necessary, lest my story be written off (apologies for the pun) as yet another masculine-presenting writer taking advantage of something truly dreadful for the purposes of a story. Let me be clear before we go any further: there are references to sexual assault in this story. Let me be immediately clear about something else: this is a revenge story. Not vengeance. Not tragedy. Revenge.  

My wife noted a dearth of stories in our popular culture wherein a woman gets revenge for herself after a man assaults her. I was able to name a few without researching: Dexter Season 5, Big Driver by Stephen King, The Revenant and Hold the Dark (hardly the main storylines, but it happens), and Revenge (2017 film)—but my primary takeaway from my brainstorm was that she was right. There are very few examples (I know from subsequent research that I did not name them all), and they are the exception, not the rule. Assault is more often used as the motivating factor for some man in the story to seek vengeance, if anyone gets justice at all. In such stories, the women in question are without agency, often without personality, and have no real effect on the story beyond having been assaulted. Rarely do writers develop stories in which women seek and obtain their own revenge.

For The Farnen, I had developed a clear idea of the culture and world, but I had no plot to go with it. My wife’s complaint gave me something I could write—for her, for myself, and hopefully for someone else who might find some catharsis in reading it.

This is an ugly topic. This is something some people have no interest in reading, regardless of how it is handled. They think it’s unnecessary, triggering, and even lazy writing. Some have started rejecting all stories and authors who use SA as a plot device out of hand. I understand that. If you’re one of them, please heed the warning that this story is not for you. I have other stories you may enjoy, but they are not ready. Stay tuned!

For the rest of you, know that the assault does not take place in-scene, references to it are vague, and I have worked with sensitivity readers to ensure that the confrontations that do occur are not overly triggering. This is not an assault story. This is a revenge story.

For those still interested in a dark, gritty fantasy world of lawlessness and ritualistic dueling violence, I present to you: The Farnen.

 

 

For Meggie, my love and my strength.

The Farnen

            “Are you afraid?”  

            The man bristled at her question. “Of course not! But you’re a…it’s not…” He groped about for the words.

            Devna raised an eyebrow. “So you are afraid. Pity.”

            She could feel the eyes upon her, could feel the conflict brewing among the onlookers. Confused murmurs and sporadic, incredulous laughter rippled through the tavern. A woman calling a drekslav duel? Such a thing wasn’t done.

            Devna barely noticed. She saw only him, only his Trolskirr family tartan and his troubled face, burned into her memory from the night she had lost everything. The part he had played was a small one, but that didn’t matter. He was a Trolskirr, and he was alone. He would do for a start.

            “Listen here, you little bitch…” He trailed off again, eyes widening as she untied the slav straps from her wrists and dropped them to the floor in front of him.

            The tavern went silent.

            “Do you reject my challenge?” she asked.

            The man’s face froze for a moment as her question sank in. Then all of his confusion and indecision turned to fury. Devna could feel it baking off of him.

            Good.

            He dropped to his knees and picked up the long leather straps. “It has been called,” he said through gritted teeth.

            The tavern echoed him. “It has been called.”

            Devna knelt in front of him. He was close enough that she could feel the heat of his body, could smell the drink on his breath. It was how drekslav was fought. Close. Intimate. Without escape. The man wrapped the straps roughly around her knees, then his, binding her to him.

            When the knots were tied, the two of them settled back on their heels and waited. Face-to-face. Knee-to-knee. Bound until the end.  

            “Who will ring?” the man asked. His face was still, save for a small tilt of a smile at the corners of his mouth. With the slav straps in place, he had accepted what was happening. Now he wanted to punish her.

            No one volunteered.

            “I will,” the bartender said. He owned the place. It was his duty to ring in the duel if no one else would.  

             Devna was surprised to find fear growing inside her. She had thought such things were behind her now, but here it was.

             The man removed his shirt, revealing a lithe, muscled torso. His smile grew. He leered at her, waiting to see if she would do the same. It was customary—to expose hidden armor—but women fighting the drekslav was not.

            Devna trembled with anticipation. Conscious of his stare, she pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it to the floor. She knew what would happen next. She would not waste her moment. The man’s eyes flicked down to her bare chest.

            “Now!” the bartender shouted.

            Devna drew her drek and slit the man’s throat. The short dueling sword sank deep, scraping against his spine as it opened him, flinging blood into the onlookers and spilling a sheet of red down his chest. His own drek had not even cleared its sheath.

            Gasps rose around her.

            The man choked and gurgled, reaching numbly for his throat. His eyes grew distant, glassy. Then he sagged sideways, his body twisting awkwardly toward the floor, caught on the slav straps binding him to Devna. The last of his blood pattered down onto the stone like a fading rain, and he stilled.  

            Silence followed. Devna let it sit for a moment, then raised her right hand. Her bloody sword dripped red lines down her arm. “My name is Devna Vrell, daughter of Comlin.”

            The tavern broke into low muttering.

            “Thought she was dead…”

            “They killed her father and raped her…”
            “…burned down their home and little shop…”

             “Trolskirr…” “Trolskirr…” “Trolskirr…”

            Devna turned to the bartender. “Ringer,” she said. “Mark me.”

            The bartender seemed to jerk awake, pulling his gaze from the dead Trolskirr man. He looked pale. Unsteady. It seemed he was just now understanding the part he had played in all of this. He brought her tartan cloak of white and gray and black from behind the bar. Vrell colors. Broad checkered patterns, free of ostentation.

            The bartender took her drek and carefully cut a small square of flesh from the back of her hand, no bigger than a pea. Sharp pain bit into her, but Devna kept her face still. She took the flap of skin from him and pressed it to the forehead of the Trolskirr man. Then she took the man’s drek and his coin purse. The former she pushed into her own belt, the latter she gave to the bartender.

            He took the purse and walked away, shaking his head and wearing a stupefied expression.

            Devna untied the slavs and returned them to her wrists, moving slowly, purposefully, willing her hands not to shake. She had killed a man in a true drekslav duel. She had killed a Trolskirr—not the one she was after, but one who had been there. One who had held her down.

            It had begun.

            Devna donned her shirt and cloak, making a show of closing the awl-wheel and nail clasp for all to see. They knew her now. She had returned to Trolskirr territory, to the very neighborhood where her father’s cobbler shop had stood for decades before the Vrells had fallen victim to the Trolskirr patriarch’s attentions.

            Everyone knew the Vrell family. Now everyone knew it wasn’t dead.

 

One year earlier

 

            Devna Vrell stumbled through the streets of Gresh, reeking of smoke and blood. Her father’s blood. Her blood. She ran down alleys and over bridges. She ran until she could not run anymore. Then she found an alley in Northend, far from Trolskirr territory, and collapsed into a nightmarish sleep.

            The next few days were a fog. She passed through them like a fever dream, images from that night dominating her mind. The Trolskirrs had come after midnight, forcing their way into the Vrells’ modest home above the cobbler shop. Her father, Comlin, who had not worn a drek in twenty years, had been forced from his bed into a drekslav duel over his refusal to marry Devna off to one of Baska Trolskirr’s great-nephews. Comlin’s misgivings had been well placed. That same nephew killed him and raped Devna in front of Baska Trolskirr himself. Before they left, the most powerful family in Gresh had set the Vrell house and shop on fire, hoping to end their line and legacy altogether. Devna had only just escaped.

            But in her dreams, she didn’t. Over and over she died, either beneath Rindiv Trolskirr’s sweating body or devoured by flames in the inferno that took her home. More and more, she longed for it to end. She had her father’s drek, and she knew how to do it.

            It was the memory of Rindiv’s eyes that forced her to live again. Their eager light, as eager to kill her father as to force himself upon her, began to dull her fear. Devna imagined what it would be like to run her father’s drek across Rindiv’s throat. Baska’s. All of them. In that alley, dead to the world, the last Vrell learned what it was to hate.

            Her hatred warmed her. Sustained her. It drove her to use the last of her coin to bathe and buy new clothes. It drove her to the taverns in Wilstruck territory, watching for men with scars on their hands. It drove her to choose the one who left alone and follow him.

            She did not go unnoticed for long. Out on the street the man rounded on her, drawing his drek.

            “What do you want?” he demanded. His voice was like gravel, his body tense and ready.

            The old Devna would have run. The new Devna shook her head. “What do you want?” she asked. “Going home alone?”

            The man looked around. It seemed he thought she was the distraction for an attack, and she took note of his wariness. When nothing happened, he turned back to her and saw the drek in her belt. To her surprise, he did not laugh or smirk. “Do you know how to use that?” he asked instead.

            “Do you know how to teach me?”

            The man blinked. “Is that why you followed me home?”

            She stepped toward him, letting her cloak fall open further. From the way men had called after her and pawed at her for the last ten years, she knew she had whatever it was they were hoping to see. “I followed you home because you have ten scars on each hand, and you still move well enough to carry a drek.”

            “Why would I teach you?”

            She was close enough to touch him now. His drek was still in his hand, but it looked idle, forgotten. He was looking her over in the unconscious way men had, likely unaware he was doing it at all. He liked what he saw.

            “Because we both have something to offer that the other wants.” Devna barely recognized the words coming out of her mouth, barely recognized the voice as her own. It was her hatred talking, turning her into whatever person she needed to be to satisfy it.

            “If I teach you…” he said, his voice breathless.

            “You may have me.”

            He agreed. His name was Naldo Krislov, a tailor of a lesser family in the northern reaches of Gresh. He lived in a small apartment above his shop, just as Devna and her father had. He let her in, brewed her tea, then knelt before her, knee-to-knee like drekslav fighters while they drank it.

            “Drekslav is close, intimate,” he said. “There is no room for mistake. It is about readiness above all things. Readiness before, readiness during, readiness after.”

            Devna looked up from her tea. “After?”

            Naldo nodded. “Some men give in to death as it takes them. Others fight until they are truly gone. Even a man with a cut throat can swing a drek.” He took a sip from his cup. “And even dead men have friends.”

            Next came the techniques. Pure Farnen drekslav was a duel of a single cut directly from the draw. A slice across the throat or the abdomen were the simplest methods, and these were what he spent the night teaching Devna. They practiced with short wooden swords carved into the shape of dreks. By dawn, her neck and stomach were bruised, and she had soaked her clothes with sweat, but she was getting faster.

            Then they went to his bed, and she paid him for his services. She had thought it would be hard after what Rindiv had done to her, that she would recoil from Naldo’s touch, that she might lose her nerve. She didn’t. Her hatred had changed her, hardened her. And Naldo was not Rindiv. For all of the death that sullied the backs of his hands, she found them to be as gentle as they were strong, almost tender. He gasped his pleasure inside her as the sun rose, then left her to sleep in his bed as he went downstairs to open his shop.

            She spent the day alone. Alone with her dreams and her hate.

            The next night, they began again. For months she stayed with him, learning all of the intricacies that would keep her alive and deliver her revenge. He taught her to watch for signs that her opponent would spit in her eyes at the sound of the ringer, to block stabs and slashes from every possible angle, to counter attack and duck and even grip an opponent’s wrist to keep them from drawing. And how to counter it.

            Her interest intrigued Naldo. Even more than the sex, she suspected this was why he had accepted her. Why he kept her. Every night she went to his bed, and every morning she chewed barrenbrush to keep her womb from quickening. It was a simple thing to give him, an easy thing—nothing at all like Rindiv invading her—and in return, he taught her to be ready. To be quick. To kill.

            While Naldo worked in his shop, she practiced with her real drek against a wooden support beam wrapped in discarded fabrics. That fire inside her pushed her past the point of exhaustion, lending speed to her blade until she collapsed into sleep. The beam was Rindiv. Baska. Every nameless Trolskirr who had beaten her father and held her down. She carved them up, faster and faster, ducking and dodging and cutting them to ribbons.

            Against Naldo, she began to win. Though women did not fight drekslav, it was not a style that played to the strength of men, she found. It was the fastest and the most cunning who won, not the strongest, and with her hatred by her side, not even Naldo could keep up with her for long. When she had defeated him every round for the fifth night, he set his wooden drek down and shook his head.

            “You know you have outgrown me,” he said. “Whoever it is you hope to kill, if he is better than I am, you will need to find an even better teacher.”

            It was true. Rindiv Trolskirr’s hands had been well-marked with victory scars. Baska had scars nearly to his elbows.

            “I will always be grateful for you,” she told him. And she would.

            Devna found her own pleasure on top of him that night, and as he dozed, she gathered her things and left.

            From his home, she went straight to a brothel. She passed men waiting their turn, discussing the invasion of northern Farn by the Raekin Empire. An invading army might have concerned her half a year ago. No longer.  

            “I am looking for work,” she said.

            The owner—an aged woman who looked as hard as an iron-strapped door—looked her up and down. “You? Do you know what kind of place this is?” Her gaze fell to the drek at Devna’s hip. She frowned. “What is this?”

            “Send me the men you wouldn’t mind losing,” Devna said. “The kind who hurt the girls and cut up the men you hire to get rid of them.”

            The owner snorted out a laugh. “Are you mad, girl?”

            “Yes.”

            The owner blinked at that, searching Devna’s face for some hint of a joke. When she found none, her face darkened. “I’ve lost girls to those men.”

            “Not anymore.”

            The woman tapped her finger on her lips, considering Devna, then shrugged. “The other girls will be grateful, and I suppose it’s just as much cleanup if you die instead of them. Fine. You can use the storage room in the back. I’ll put an old mattress in there.” She leveled a finger at Devna. “If I hear a single complaint from you or about you, you’re gone.”  

            That night, Devna took up residence in a cramped room. She knelt in the drekslav position beside a moldy mattress, feet tucked under her, listening and waiting. Exaggerated sounds of pleasure and rhythmic pounding rose and fell from the other rooms. Drunken shouts and laughter and stumbling footsteps sounded in the hall. Just after midnight she heard a muffled voice directing someone to her room. Heavy footsteps slowed and stopped outside her door.

            A man entered. He wore Wilstruck tartan of yellow on blue, and he stank of liquor. “What’re you doing here?” he asked her, blinking bleary eyes. “You’re…tidy. Clean. Got all your teeth. Clean women don’t whore.”

            “I am a special kind,” she said, gesturing for him to take a seat.

            He did, kneeling in front of her, the hands in his lap scarred all the way to his wrists with tightly spaced, raised marks. “I’m going to fuck the clean right off you!” he brayed, laughing. “What do you mean special?”

            “I don’t take money,” she said, wiping flecks of spittle from her cheeks and trying not to gag on his breath. She set the wooden practice sword between them. “I take lessons.”

            “Lessons! Phfa!” The man clapped his thigh and laughed again. “Women do not fight the drekslav. No. You’re going to take what I give you, and you’re not going to make a fuss.”

            “There is an alternative,” Devna said.

            “Oh, enough,” the man said, rising. “Get on the bed, whore, and—”

            Her blade touched this throat, stopping him after the seconds it took his drunken mind to realize what it was.         

            “The alternative is I challenge you. Pick up the sword.”

            She guided him back down with her drek, then slipped it back into her sheath.

            He stared at her as if she had grown a third arm. “What is this?”

            “If you can out-draw me with that wooden sword, you can fuck me as many times as your little cock can handle it until dawn. Free of charge.”

            Interest began to creep onto his face. “All right…”

            “And if I win,” she said, tapping her drek. “You die.”

            He laughed again. “You think you can beat me to the draw, bitch?”

            It was not hard to see Rindiv in this man. Her stomach boiled inside her as she watched his eyes lick over her body. “I intend to find out. Take off your fucking shirt.”

            “You’re mad,” he breathed. “Fucking mad.” But he pulled his shirt over his head and slipped the wooden sword into his belt.

            “So they keep telling me,” Devna murmured, tying her slavs around their knees, binding the two of them together, face-to-face, knee-to-knee. She slipped off her own shirt and settled back on her feet.

            The man leered at her breasts, grinning. “I am going to enjoy this,” he said. “Who will ring?”

            “This coin.” Devna raised an iron penny. “When it hits the floor, we begin.”

            Anticipation rose within her. She had to read him, his intent, his strategy. He was the kind to spit in her face, but would he bother to actually use the wooden drek? He had a real one beside it. Even if he did, she guessed he would try to hurt her if he could, to teach her a lesson. The head. He would try for her skull.

            She flicked the coin into the air. Its metallic ring sang in the silent room, rising toward the ceiling. The man lunged for her. She had expected him to punish her, but with her cooperation on the other side of his victory, she had at least expected him to wait for the ring. But she had forgotten a basic tenet of drekslav: witnesses. The ringer was a third person for a reason, and part of that reason was to decide whether a mark on the hand had been earned. There was no one here to judge the legitimacy of either victory, so of course this man had cheated. He could knock her senseless and rape her whether he won fairly or not.

            He drew the wooden sword and reached for her wrist with the other hand. She managed to draw, slicing open his left hand and dodging the sword blow. The man bellowed, clutching his bleeding hand to his side. He brought the wooden sword back around. Devna ducked low and raked her blade across his stomach. His tucked arm took much of the cut, but she smelled blood and bowels as a wet spray hit her thighs.

            “You fucking little cunt!” he screamed.

            Then his body was on her, crushing her. He pounded on her back with the wooden sword, and she slashed at his legs until she could free her blade hand. She slipped her drek into his side and between his ribs. Meat resisted, then gave way. The long blade slid deep. She wrapped her left arm around him and clasped her hands together, wrenching the blade deeper. Again and again. At last, he groaned and slumped down over her, heavy and limp.

            For a moment, she wasn’t sure she could get out from under him. She panicked, thrashing, folded over and pinned under his stinking weight, until she finally bucked him off. He landed on the stone floor with a wet slap. His eyes stared, lifeless. Devna untied the slavs and scooted back against the wall, gasping and shaking. And alive.

            So it was that the cruel men of the brothels of Northend became her teachers. She lost a few times in the beginning, but the terrible nights she spent with those who won drove her hatred ever higher. She imagined she was with Rindiv again, or Baska himself. She let that pain carry her training to new heights, and she never let the same man beat her twice. In a matter of months, she stopped losing altogether. Before long, there was no one left to kill.

 

#

 

            One year to the day that her life had been taken from her, Devna Vrell returned to southern Gresh. She carried a satchel of every drek she had taken from dead men, though her hands were bare. Without a ringer, they had not been true drekslavs, and she would enter the vipers’ nest that was Trolskirr territory unmarked. Not even word of a drek-wielding whore had passed beyond Northend’s brothels. That was good. She had a different rumor to start tonight.

            After she killed the Trolskirr man in her first legitimate drekslav, she wore her gray and black and white tartan cloak through the Greshen streets, its clasp of an awl wheel and nail nestled against her throat. Comlin’s sigil. One just like it had hung above the door to his cobbler shop. Her old neighbors gaped as she passed, unsure how to say hello to a woman they thought was dead. She let them stare, let them remember. Let them talk.  

            Once she was sure she had been seen, she slipped a second cloak from her rucksack and changed. It was a plain traveler’s cloak of no pattern or family color. She put the hood up and stepped into an alley until she saw what she had hoped to see. Four men in the green and gold of Trolskirr entered the market area. They searched about, craning their necks, asking questions of the vendors and marketgoers, but they did not find what they were looking for. Her. Or so she guessed. As they left the market, she followed them.

            “The Raekin have taken Demertov,” one of them said. “They’ll have conquered half of Farn by the new year.”

            “And if they come here, we’ll cut them down,” another said.

            A third scoffed. “Don’t be stupid!”

            Devna nearly missed a step. She knew that third voice. Rindiv Trolskirr. Her rapist was among these men. Excitement kindled the well-worn rage inside her.

            “Farn has no army,” Rindiv snapped. “No king. Only the families can protect us, and not with dreks. The Greshen patriarchs are sending a delegation to negotiate.”

            “But I heard the Raekin were already on their way…”

            They turned down an alley, still arguing about the Raekin advancement through Farn. Devna had planned to follow them, to see where they went, to return after nightfall. Not anymore. She took off her boots and set them quietly against the alley wall. Then she stalked up behind them on silent feet.

            Her drek slit the throat of one and the inner thigh of another before any of them knew what was happening. The third reached for his weapon, and she drove her blade into both of his kidneys. He fell with a gasp.

            Rindiv whirled, drawing his drek. “What the…?” His eyes met hers, and his mind seemed to grind to a halt. Recognition bloomed. “You.”

            “Me.”

            “What…?” He looked around, his fellow Trolskirrs collapsing around him, fading as their blood drained away. “What…?”

            “Get down on your knees and take off your shirt,” Devna said. Her voice was calm, but her insides were churning. She had thought about him—about this moment—for a year, and it was here. Now. She thought of all the ways she could kill him, standing or otherwise, and it took everything she had not to leap into it. Into all of them.

            “What?” Rindiv gaped at her. “That load of shit at the tavern last night was true?” He looked like he wanted to laugh, but his eyes fell once more to the bleeding men around him.

            “I challenge you to drekslav,” Devna hissed. “Get on the ground.”

            “No.” He began to sink down into a crouch, shifting off to the side, angling toward her. “You have no right to challenge me.”

            His words set her fury to a fierce blaze. “You had no right to challenge my father!” she screamed at him. “He hadn’t worn a drek in twenty years!”

            He met her rage with a grin. “You see? Drekslav is about control. You got lucky last night, but you don’t have what it takes. I’m going to cut you until you can’t run, and I’ll make what happened in your house feel like a soft kiss.”

            Devna teetered on a knife’s edge, her control wavering, caught between that young woman Rindiv had raped and the practiced killer she had become. She could smell him, the same smell as that terrible night. Her fear threatened to take her.

            But just as she had seen his face in the faces of all of those brothel men, she began to see them in him. She had learned from them. Killed them. Even when they came for her three or four at a time, she had left that room alive. For all his family’s power, this man was no different.

            Rindiv lunged for her. She countered, and he backed away bleeding. He came for her again, unsure of himself, faltering. With quick slashes, she carved up his body. The drek was modeled from a butcher’s boning knife, and it cut into Rindiv like so much meat. He screamed, swiping wildly for her. She ducked around him and slit his hamstrings. He fell to his knees.

            “No!” he gasped.

            “I told you to get on your knees,” she said, gripping his hair and wrenching his head back.

            She slit his throat, relishing in the gurgling sound he made. It was the same sound that haunted her dreams, the one her father had made when Rindiv had cut him down.

            After, Naldo’s voice said in her head.

            She caught Rindiv’s wrist as he stabbed at her one last time. His head lolled, and he collapsed to the cobblestones.

            Devna’s own legs turned to water beneath her, and she sat clumsily down beside Rindiv’s body. Her head swam, her skin crawled. Pure elation rose from somewhere deep within her, some lost piece of her now found settling back in its place. It was worn and battered, but it was hers. It belonged.

            As she gathered up the dreks of the fallen men and retrieved her boots, the sound of running footsteps reached her ears. She dashed down to the other end of the alley and rounded the corner, peeking back around.

            Ten men in Trolskirr tartan came storming into view. Devna pulled herself back out of sight, then ran, still in her stocking feet, back to Northend. She slept in the same alley where she had almost killed herself a year ago. She slept and dreamed of her father, of his bent form begging for the life of his daughter. Above him towered a man with drekslav scars all the way to his elbows. A man who did not accept her father’s pleas. An old man, but the most dangerous man in all of Gresh, maybe all of Farn. Baska Trolskirr. He struck her father over and over, eyes wild with fury.

            She wasn’t done. Devna Vrell woke knowing that she would not find the peace she had worked for until she had killed Baska Trolskirr. But the days that followed began to cast doubt on that idea. From the rumors in Northend, it seemed Baska was set to join the delegation heading to negotiate with the advancing Raekin. He was intent on saving Gresh, or at least giving up the pieces of it he did not care for. From everything she had heard of the Raekin, they did not negotiate. They did not meet with dignitaries. They killed them. And that would not do.

            She spent the next day in her traveler’s cloak, hiding in plain sight with her hood low, observing the comings and goings of Trolskirr tartan. They were looking for her, for a woman in Vrell tartan. Even when they looked right at her, they did not know her face. She had changed far too much from the cobbler’s daughter they had known.

            When she finally found a Trolskirr walking the streets by himself, she killed him and stole his cloak. Then she took to the rooftops and climbed the walls of the Trolskirr compound under cover of darkness. Once inside, she kept her hood low and walked with an air of cool confidence until she caught sight of the patriarch stepping inside a bedchamber and closing the door behind him. There were no guards. In all of his long years, only large rival families had ever dared attempt assassination of Baska Trolskirr. Many of his victory scars were from just such attempts. In the past decades, even the Wilstrucks had given up.

            She was about to open the door, when another idea occurred to her. Devna knocked. An assassin would not knock, but to walk boldly in might invite a more defensive posture. A knock was polite. Disarming.

            Baska opened the door to find her steel against his neck.

            “Move back,” she told him in a soft voice. “Slowly.”

            He did. She shut the door behind her without looking and pushed him further into the room. It was a luxurious bedchamber, with four fireplaces—all burning—and a four-post monstrosity she supposed counted as a bed. A meal fit for a feast sat across a table larger than any she had ever seen in someone’s home.

            “So,” she murmured. “This is what you do with our taxes.”

            “So,” he countered. “This is the young woman cutting through my boys.”

            He appeared cautious, but relatively undisturbed by the blade against his throat.

            “You had my father killed.”

            Baska shrugged his wide shoulders. “He insulted me.”  

            “And having your nephew rape me?”

            “He was promised a lifetime of your flesh. A small taste was owed.”

            Devna’s rage was a cold stone in her chest. “I killed him. A small taste of what I owed him. And you.”

            Baska smiled. “Well said. You are here to kill me, then?”

            “I am here to challenge you. I hope you will be less of a coward than your nephew and accept.”

            Baska studied her. “Do you know where the word Farn comes from?”

            The question was not what she expected. Unsure where he was going with this, she answered. “It’s the old word for stone.”

            “It is the Garashen word for stone,” he corrected. “It is the same word they use for blade. When they ruled the continent, they found what is now Farn, a place of sandy soil and stony earth, and they made a prison camp of it. They punished their subjects from all corners of Fellibor by bringing them here to dig up stones under cruel overseers. This is why our language holds every tongue of the continent within it. When the Garashen’s reign of magic and terror fell, our ancestors killed the overseers and made cities from those stones. But we needed order. Rules. A system for disputes, for we were many.”

            “Drekslav, yes,” Devna said, irritated. “I’ve heard the stories.” Was he stalling? Had he managed to get some signal out without her knowing? She listened for guards but heard nothing.

            “I imagine you have,” Baska said, nodding, but still he continued. “We do not name all of our people Farnen just because they were born here. A true Farnen is one of stone and blade. It is a title that we earn.” He looked out the window, to the north. “There are so few real Farnens left, Devna Vrell. Those of solid resolve and quick wit, those who can take what is theirs and far more besides. I believed I was the last Farnen, and with Raekin nearly upon us, I worried our Farnen ways would die with me. With Gresh.” He looked back at her. “But you. You surprised me. I thought when I burned down your life that I was stamping out the last remnant of a dying house. But you lived. You turned yourself to stone with the blade, and you cut down your enemies all the way to me.”

            “Do you accept my challenge?” Devna demanded. “Or do I kill you now?”  

            “Our ways will die with us, Devna Vrell. I would rather die by drekslav, a Farnen, than skewered on Raekin arrows as they storm my city. They leave only death in their wake. I accept your challenge.”

             “It has been called,” Devna said.

            Two men stepped out from hidden alcoves and echoed her. “It has been called.”

            So, there were guards. Devna hid her surprise, holding Baska’s gaze.

            “If she survives, she is not to be harmed,” Baska told the men. “And if she can kill me, it would be unwise to try. She goes free.”

            The men glanced at each other, but they nodded.

            Baska knelt and removed his shirt, baring a chest covered in thin drek scars. Devna did the same. She untied one slav band from her wrist, and he provided the other.

            “Who will ring?” Baska asked.

            “I will,” one of the men said.

            “Goodbye, my sons.”

            “Goodbye, Patri,” they said together.     

            Devna and Baska sat poised, ready. She doubted the two men would listen once Baska was dead. She was not even sure she could kill him. He had killed so many, and as he had beaten her father on that horrible night, he had moved like a snake. Whatever happened, she was going to die tonight. So she had better make it count.

            The silence stretched. Her blood pounded in her ears.  

             “Now.”

             They drew their swords. Baska went for her throat. She went for his blade. It was a technique Naldo had taught her for an opponent of greater skill, one who would try to finish the fight quickly to avoid humiliation. Their steel clashed.

            Baska was strong. Fast. He stabbed and slashed at her, his blade flashing in the firelight. Devna ducked and dodged. She caught his drek again and again, swaying and dancing in a storm of steel. Everything she had learned—everything she had become—went into that last drekslav.

            His attacks grew more complex. Harder to read. He switched between hands, between grips, his drek a blur.

            Then it found her. She felt the sting of the razor edge in her abdomen, shallow, but decisive. She fended off his next few attacks, trying to ignore how the new wound pulled with every movement. He cut her again. Deeper.

            Panic stole over her. Her head swam. He was carving her up, bleeding her. Each time he did, she slowed a little more.

            Her next swing was wild, unfocused. Baska swept her drek aside, scraping his own up her sternum toward her neck.

            She could feel what was about to happen. He would follow the center of her chest, then hook his blade to the side in a savage arc. It would open that massive artery beside her throat and empty her. She would die.

            No. It couldn’t end like this. Not yet. She needed to kill him. She wasn’t done.

           Devna leaned forward, into the drek. Pain screamed through her chest, but the edge of the blade caught on her bone and faltered. She lashed out and opened Baska’s arm. His cry was like music.

            He switched hands, kept on swinging, but cutting him had spurred new life into Devna. She pressed him, fighting furiously.  

            Devna landed shallow cuts across his torso, then deeper ones on his arms. Baska’s control wavered. He raised his sword arm too high, and she ran a deep gash across his wrist. The drek dropped from his hand. He lunged for it, and she rammed her blade up under his chin and into his skull.

             A groan rose from the patriarch. His strength left him, and he slumped forward against her, blood warming her arms. In her mind it was honey. Butter. It was something she had never thought she would feel, but something she needed. Something sweet and decadent. Deserved.

            She pushed his body away and pulled her blade free. She watched as the head of the Trolskirr family fell limp to the floor of his bedchamber. His eyes stared.

            For a long moment, Devna heard only the pounding of her own heart in her head, her own gasps for breath. She shook, a leaf in a storm. Then a voice broke through, and she seemed to crash back into herself.     

            “It is done,” one of Baska’s sons said.

            Devna tensed, but the sons made no move for her.

            “You are owed a mark,” the ringer said.

            He took his father’s drek and cut a square of flesh from the back of her hand. The pain grounded her. She pressed it to Baska’s forehead.

            The other son nodded to her. “No one will stop you.”

            The two men untied the slavs and busied themselves with their father’s body.

            Devna dressed and made her way cautiously out of the estate. Though she had no idea how they had known not to, no one stopped her. Once she was out on the street, she let go of the sweat-slick handle of her father’s drek and breathed her first full breath. It was laden with the piss and grime of Gresh, but it was real. Deep. Free. A sense of calm control settled over her, a clarity she had never known before.  

            She found where she had hidden her things and went back to the burned shell of her house for the first time in a year. There she smeared a handprint of Baska’s blood on the charred bricks. “Our family still lives, father,” she whispered.

            Crashes and screams rose in the night. Devna donned her Vrell tartan cloak and headed toward them, curious. There had been a time when she had been afraid of such things, when a scream in the night would have seen her double-checking the locks on the doors and bundling herself in bed. Now she had no fear at all.

            Devna reached the outer gates of Gresh as the light of dawn touched the eastern sky. Smoke filled the air. Thick. Rancid. The gates shuddered against some great force. Another crash followed, and the gates split open. Men in black armor with shields and spears poured in.

            The Raekin had come.

            Devna looked around at the screaming people rushing away toward the interior of the city. She saw the way they ran, their eyes wild, their need to live so plain, so visceral. None of it touched her.  

            She had found her revenge. It was all she had thought about for the past year, and not a moment later, the end had come. For everyone.

            Devna Vrell, the Farnen, watched the Raekin surge into Gresh. She drew her drek and began to laugh.

The End

Written in what is now called Minnesota (Dakota land), February 2022

Paul R Monarch