Break their Bones (Gunto)

[Ulric]

81st of Winter

Ulric grumbled, his face covered by a swirl of vapor.

The icy clutch of winter, though waning, couldn’t have inspired any less fury in his weary bones. There was something dismal in returning from a journey. The ordeal had sloughed away, the finding was over. There was a bend in his shoulders under the layers of leather, blackened plate, and shifting, scraping, scales, though their jut was clouded by defiance, spiky hair framing a bruised face, the ridge of his jaw covered by a patchy beard. He’d gleaned his augury from the cackle of crows, and now, hearing the thrum of ragged wings, he scoured over the pewter-gray sky. They were a desultory lot, those eaters of carrion. They’d mocked him for so long, he couldn’t deny that he was partly bereft when they weren’t there.

Caw, they cried. Caw, caw.

“That’s enough of your japery,” he growled. “Those fiends of pipers skirl away, and you just shyke on statues, defying the only scrolls of musty, crumbling history that we’ve got left.” This was his vigil. The sunder of chains, the crushing of bones.

But even then, he was only lusting for her, the fierce, inky-eyed savage who’d bound herself to him. He longed for the press of her sweaty flesh against his, the sweet nectar of her lips. Trudging through the ranks of gray birches, squat junipers, and firs redolent of pale, sticky resin, he tugged gloved fingers over the mark inscribed just under his ear, the one that wasn’t missing a crest of rubbery cartilage, and dreamed of what he’d find when he came through that final ravine. The city would sprawl before him, so huge, chimerical even from afar.

Biding for an instant, he took a glance back, scrying over the jut of boulders, an inexorable jigsaw only broken by patches of frosty heather and bracken, tufts of grass swaying in the gusts, tangled snarls of timber and crusts of lichen and fungi everywhere. The blotchy darker traces of melding ash where fires had once raced up desiccated slopes, braided by a scattering of brown needles, the tiny hard cones of conifers. Beyond, the flanges of peaks rose over spiny contours, plunging into gorges, into foggy, sheerly undulating valleys. They echoed with desolate mystery.

Ulric gave a shrug, shifting the cloak of heavy sable draped over his back, tangled at its base by briars. Bearing his heavy, ugly bulk of his crossbow, he turned back toward the distant beckon of the city. Look for me, he’d whispered into her ear. Look for me, when the folds of their blankets were scratchy on his back, her slender form beneath his tense, bunching muscles, coiled now in bitter repose. The demise of winter loomed. There was only a clash in the shadows, a clangor of war in the back of his head. They’d be leaving this city, the haunt of hopeless, irresolute dreamers, to venture over sea and through swamp, tundra, and forest in the hopes of finding a lost soul and flaying another from the depravity of her body.

And as he shambled ever onward, the very soil seemed to groan beneath him. He wasn’t just a man any longer. He was a prophet, cursed but defiant, marching to war with a sordid joy splayed over the scar of his grin. He grimly lusted for that carnage, but first he required warriors.

[Gunto]

The eyes of Ulric's crows were not the only that fell upon him this day. He crouched with his back to a thin sickly thin birch, its bark was worn away from rutting beasts. He did not seem so impressive as Naama had claimed, shuffling along in the company of corpse eaters, but his sister would not lie. Gunto rose, kicking his feet free of the thorny underbrush that clung to his worn boots. He was not made for winter. His bare chest was the hue of the world's most discarded coin, a dark copper invariably interrupted by swirls of ebony and muddy red ink along his arms.

He took his steps with purpose, pushing his way through thorny shrubs and hopping over shattered and overturned stones. Every breath released a blast of white into the air the briefly concealed his face, a ghastly milky white mask that covered the front of his head with splashes of crimson around his eyes. He could see him more closely now, this Ulric… he had stopped to glance back at the city for only a moment before shuffling forward again. Gunto raised two fingers to his lips as he inhaled deeply, and let out a piercing whistle that battled the cackling of the crows to dominate his ears.

He lowered his hands, and trudged forward through the rocks and ankle deep thorns. His boots ripped them from the ground or kicked them aside, every step heralding a symphony of clinking and thudding from the knives he wore and the bones braided into his hair. He stepped about ten paces from the man Naama had asked him to find.

“A little bird with black eyes told me to find you.” He announced, tilting his head as he spoke. A thick beard and mustache obscured some of the tattoos, but the style was unmistakable. Braided into it's length were several bleached bones, the hollowed out fragments doomed to adorn his face rather than the blades their owners had raised against him so long ago. He could not look more different than Ulric; where the man before him stood cased in the metals that made the joy of killing an arduous task, Gunto's torso was wrapped in a flexible leather girdle studded with metal that left his swollen chest and shoulders bare. A mass of leather and buckskin hung from his belt to his knees, but he was otherwise unarmored. A long throwing ax hung from a loop at his waist, and the knives at his hips laughed at their namesake. They were so massive any man but Gunto would have called them short swords. Even sheathed their heinous downward curve was apparent.

“This little bird tells me you need swords. What does the king of crows need with warriors, I wonder?” He bellowed, reaching to his face and rubbing the snot from under his nose with the thick leather on his forearm. He was not made for winter. “I am Gunto of the Shadow Hand. I hear you are even more familiar with my kin than I am, king crow, har! I figured you'd have a three foot dong to handle my sister, but you disappoint. Maybe she already cut it off, har har!”

Gunto trudged forward, booted feet kicking small shards of rock and dried underbrush from his path. A gallant warrior he was not; he was a savage. When it came to killing, there were hundreds of men would were better. Mayhaps thousands. Gunto did not contest this, but few could match him when it came to the one thing that mattered most in a fight. A man could cross blades with Gunto and match him, but only the vilest few could hope to match the cruelty he displayed for his enemies.

[Ulric]

Harshly, the whistle prised its way into his ear, twanging discordantly against the tender drum, tweaking a scowl. There was a careless snap of twigs, an unceasing crackle from the desiccated crescents of leaves, furling away from nearly bare saplings. That’s not right, he grunted, vaguely tensing though he’d already figured from the sluggish cacophony of strides that he wasn’t about to be waylaid.

Ulric found, with a jaded chagrin, that the savage breaking from the gray, densely filaded trunks did not, in fact, bear the sultry sway of his mate’s legs, but an unkempt beard. There were also the cords of muscle, adorned with pale scars, and over his visage a chalky blur. That, if anything, spoke to his doubt that their encounter was anything but a vagary of trifling coincidence. It’s just like her, though more brutal, he glared, a jerk tugging beyond his weary eye as he scoured over the man, grinding his teeth at the discordant crunch of briars. They do take great care in refining their visages, he thought dourly. It’s as if they hunger for dread, feed off the qualms of a culture that does not adhere to their feral ciphers. I’ve grasped the crows’ insight, though. I’m the defender of their augury, the veracity of flayed, rotting flesh made manifest. I know better.

“Funny,” he grunted when they’d came to a momentary languor, biding through the savage’s disregard, his tongue’s japery, the rough laughter. That was ever their way. That was his way. There wasn’t any sanctity in those glib whispers, in the images ungraven in bare, desolate planes of rock. I don’t kneel, they were conjuring from a glowing ember of quiet, locking horns in the way of men. There wouldn’t be any chains between them until they did.

“Y’know, she’s a shrieker,” Ulric rasped, plucking a hand off the heavy crossbow to scratch at his stubbly chin. The prods urged into a consequent dip, sliding just by the savage’s groin, though they lingered vaguely, to rest over the dirt by his toes. “There’s no defraying a mate who’s always under you, slippery as an eel. The lustful thunder of her heart, the splaying of her legs before my dong, that’s the measure of her subjugation. That’s my conquest, for you.”

There wasn’t any use in the jeers, for he’d already deduced it wouldn’t be any use, but he was beyond caring. The savage knew his sister was a slut. There simply wasn’t a knife to twist.

And besides, he did require warriors.

Ulric licked his lips, idly discharging the crossbow. There was a clack of whipcord and a shiver of metal, the quarrel whanging out to plunge just shy of the savage’s instep, tearing up a patch of earth. He’d been hoping, nay, trying to transfix the crest of a boot, but he’d just have to improvise.

Making no apology, he tossed away the crossbow, tugged the circular shield from where he’d slung it over his back. “Had to pulp nearly half her face to get her wet, and even then, she kept trying to maul me with those nails of hers. I suppose that’s the only thing you savages comprehend, isn’t it?” He gave a harsh laugh. “Three feet or not, my dong is there. And presently her lips will be around it, whilst you play nursemaid to that pesky stray of hers.”

The axe flipped into his grasp, making a sparse wheel as he forced a yawn, ready to grate nerves. Those short, heavy blades had earned a stir of his curiousity, and now he longed to watch the man move, to see how he fought. And then, to unravel it.

As if gleaning his mind, the crows cackled.