Neskaya Read online

  I

  I KNEW what the others said about Neskaya: that his name held no meaning in our language, that without the names of his ancestors he could inherit none of their traits, that his sorceress mother had seduced our king, and that his coloring was strange and wrong. Warriors and old women alike gossiped that Neskaya held too little interest in feasting, mead drinking, and wenching for a healthy young man. They spoke of his long, silent spells and of his days missing from his father’s grand hall. Many speculated on where he went, though no one knew for sure.

  But none dared say he did not love and excel at battle. None dared to question his courage. I had stood shoulder to shoulder with him on many fields, his swords moving in arcs so fast and graceful that my eyes could scarcely follow. I wondered if any others lived who had heard his little chuckle when an enemy fell at his feet and the warm blood painted his white cheek? Of all of our people, Neskaya alone could fight with a sword in each hand, instead of a single blade or axe. He wielded them so beautifully that when he fought; it looked more enchanting than a dance. He was a fine warrior, deadly and quick, a man any other would happily take on a raid, and yet a man no other could sit comfortably with around the fire afterward. As for me, I had known Neskaya long, half of my life, and while I could not refute what others said of his strangeness, I didn’t feel ill at ease with him. He was the best swordsman, the best archer, and the fastest runner of our people. For these reasons, and many others, some I had no words to name, I loved him.

  I’d followed him as he’d slipped away from his father’s table. The other men, distracted by knife throwing, arm wrestling, or just drunkenness, did not see us leave the feasting hall. Neskaya, in his blood-red cloak, moved like a shadow over the snow. I worried that my own clumsy feet would alert him to my pursuit, but if Neskaya became aware of me he neither stopped nor turned. Though cold as the grave, the night was at least still, with no wind to bite my face or pelt me with the ice from the roofs and eaves. Even so, I missed the fire and spiced drink already, and I wondered why Neskaya hurried so recklessly from these comforts. To find out, I stayed a good bit behind him as he descended the hillock from his father’s gates to the village. I hid in doorways and behind carts as he passed the little wooden houses and shops. When he entered the woods, the sacred grove where we offered to the gods, the holy trees wrapped me in their shadows and obscured me from his sight.

  Sacrilege though it was, I hated this grove of twisted trees, fed for centuries on blood. Even in the perfect stillness, their boughs creaked and moaned, and it seemed to me that the stench of death clung to the soil that nursed them. Why would Neskaya come here? I shuddered as a wolf bayed and hid myself behind a thick trunk to watch him.

  Neskaya cast his hood back and shook his dark hair. His black locks were one of the many things that aroused suspicion among our fair-haired people. None had ever seen such a thing. His hair fell across his face, mirroring the silhouettes of the trees that striped the snow. Neskaya pulled off one of his leather gloves and laid his bare palm against the wood of a tree. Next he went to the nearest tree and touched it the same way, skin to bark. Moving in a circular pattern, he touched every tree, his quickening gate spiraling further and further from the temple. These woods stretched far; I feared I would lose him, or that the wolves would find him, or me. It did not take long before he melted into the dark. I could no longer see him flit from tree to tree, nor hear the crunch of his boots on the snow.

  “Neskaya!” I yelled.

  To my surprise, he’d been standing only a few feet off, regarding me with his shoulder resting against a trunk and his ankles crossed. “Lars,” he said in greeting, and he then turned and walked to a long, wooden bench.

  He sat down, and I sat beside him. I found I could see well, with the moon nearly full and the snow reflecting her light. Neskaya’s black eyes glittered. His lips were full in a way I’d only seen as a result of injury, though Neskaya’s lips swelled without losing their fine shape. Also, they were red—an unnatural red that couldn’t be explained away as ruddiness or health. No, his face was as white as a bone and his lips the color of blood. Though I’d done so before, I removed my glove and touched his lower lip, sure that it would burst under the pressure. When it didn’t, I slid closer to Neskaya and thrust my two fingers beneath his upper lip, drawing it up and seeing the same stark contrast inside his mouth: white teeth against scarlet gums. I ran my fingertips over his top row of teeth and then over his bottom. He allowed this. I wriggled my thumb beneath my finger and then parted the two, forcing Neskaya’s mouth open. As I rubbed circles over his tongue, enjoying its texture, my other hand closed in his hair and inclined his head further back. A little gasp escaped him, and his lips fell further apart. My face moved toward his, eager to taste his mouth, devour his mounds of ruby flesh with my lips and teeth.

  Instead I withdrew and pushed him off a little too forcefully with the hand that held his hair. He didn’t give me the satisfaction of shock or hurt, only looked at me with his steady, unreadable gaze. I’d known him almost ten years and still found myself unable to decipher his eyes most times. “Neskaya,” I hissed. “Why do you not come to my bed anymore? Why do you not ask me to yours?” And then, perhaps because I didn’t want to let him answer, I asked, “Why come to this forsaken place on such a night?”

  “This is a holy place,” he said.

  “That’s no answer,” I said, getting frustrated. I wanted to leave. I remembered the sacrifices hanging from these branches, strangling slowly: horses, hogs, bulls, and men. And soon it would be time to hold the Midvinterblot again, to buy the gods’, the ancestors’, and the alves’ favors with blood.

  As if reading my mind (and I’d thought many times that he could) Neskaya said, “It’s almost time.”

  “Every nine years,” I said.

  “Do you remember last time?” he asked.

  I’d been eleven and had just lost my father to a petty war with a nearby kingdom. I remembered men and beasts dangling above me and priests showering me with blood. Then somebody shoved a few chunks of roasted meat and a cup of ale into my hands, and I squatted in the gore-soaked snow near the fire. As the men and women grew intoxicated, as they coupled and fought, I watched around the edges of the circle of orange light, because now and then a boy with strange eyes that sloped up at the corners and a strange mouth like a berry ready to burst with ripeness appeared, watching me. As soon as I turned to look at him, he disappeared. A few times I’d run into the shadows to seek him, thinking he might be an alve I could catch and demand a wish from. But I never found him, and the thrashing of the dying bodies in the trees, the awful stuff that rained down from them, drove me back into the light. I feared the spirits of the dead and the other alves that lingered in the twilight on this night and had not the courage to be alone among them.

  The next day my mother and I went to live at the King’s great hall. The King and my father had been closer than brothers, and with my father in Valhal, the King welcomed us in his home. My mother went off with the women, and the King took me to meet the sons of the warriors living on and around his estate. Many of them were boys around my age. One of them, to my bewilderment, was the alve-boy from the Midvinterblot. His name was Prince Neskaya, and he’d turned nine years old the night before.

  “Do you remember?” I asked Neskaya in turn.

  “Mmmm,” he answered, without elaborating.

  “I remember seeing you, though I hadn’t met you yet.”

  “Yes, I remember,” he said. “Lars?”

  “Neskaya?”

  “Tonight,” he said, standing and draping his hand over my straw-colored curls. “Come to my bed. Come.”

  He kissed my hairline, turned on his heel, and melded with the forest-shade. The scent of his hair, and of his body beneath his woolen tunic, lingered for a moment, and I wanted to grab hold of it and clasp it to my chest. But a breath of wind whisked it from me and no trace remained of my Neskaya nor his smell. Alone, I waited with only my cloud of frozen breath as a companion. I did not want to rejoin the feasting in the hall, if it could even be called feasting now that the crops had failed for the third summer in a row. I wanted to go straight to Neskaya’s bed and not be held up by a dance or wrestling match. I would be cross if detained, and so I waited to trek back to the King’s Hall.

  I DO not think any of the other men knew about Prince Neskaya and me. I don’t know what they would have said or done if they had. Early in our friendship, I’d been accused of manipulating Neskaya’s affections to get myself closer to the throne. The accusations stopped when I broke enough noses and cracked enough ribs. But more than that, Neskaya’s affections were immune to manipulation.

  When I first moved to the King’s home, I spent my days with a group of about a dozen boys, practicing archery, playing at wooden swords, and training to be great warriors and conquer lands. Neskaya joined us only on the rarest occasions, where he proved himself to be easily the best with a bow and the quickest, if not the strongest, with a blade. Most often, though, I’d see him from the corner of my eye, watching from the shadows. As he had at the Midvinterblot fire, he dissipated before I could turn my head. I asked the other boys about the Prince, but they only told me he was a changeling.

  I could not deny my fascination with Neskaya. I wondered where he spent his days, and I wandered the halls and grounds in search of him. Yet I only ever saw him at the supper table, and by the time I’d made my path through the drunken throng, Neskaya had slipped away.

  Midvinter came again, though the blot fell only every nine years, so
hogs and cows alone were slaughtered for the feast. Spring came, and the gods, alves, and ancestors returned our warmth and light. I took up again with my friends. One fine morning, we were throwing our axes at some large trees beyond the animal pens.

  “Lars.” Neskaya stood a little way inside the glade; I had no idea how long he’d been there.

  “Prince Neskaya?”

  “Come with me, please.”

  I turned my back on the others and followed him without a second thought. He wove among the trees and I trailed along behind. We passed through the gloom of the wood and into a little clearing where Neskaya had his black horse tied. Grasping a handful of mane, he swung his leg over the elegant beast’s shoulder, and then he held his hand out to me. I took it and mounted up behind him without hesitation. Neskaya looked over his shoulder at me and his red lips curled up. Enthralled, and a little afraid, I put my arms around his small waist and he spurred his animal forward.

  We rode all day, through the woods, across newly green fields, through wildflowers that grazed our knees, and finally to the coast. Neskaya guided his mount to an outcrop of rock. We hopped to the ground, and I followed him to the end of the jutting shard of rock. Fifty feet or so below, waves crashed against the stone, spraying foam almost to where we stood. I tasted the salt on the air, feeling exhilarated. Neskaya stretched his neck toward the grey-green expanse and breathed deeply of the sea-smell. His hair and eyes looked blacker, his skin whiter, and his lips redder than I’d ever seen. Impetuously I reached over and grabbed his wrist, squeezed once and let go.

  “Why did you bring me all the way out here?” I asked. “We won’t make it back until late tonight. Won’t your father wonder where you are?”

  He laughed, and I didn’t like the sound. I wouldn’t realize until much later why tragedy tainted his laughter.

  “Are you afraid of wolves?” I persisted. “Bandits? Bears?”

  “I killed a bear at the end of the winter,” Neskaya said.

  I was jealous and impressed; I’d killed nothing bigger than a fox. “Well, why are we out here?” I repeated.

  “Just wait,” he said, and he took a piece of cheese, some dried meat, a round loaf of bread, and a skin of mead from his pack. He removed the thickly woven cloth that he’d worn around his shoulders and spread it on the ground. Before he sat, he touched the side of my hair with his free hand. I flinched away, confused. He laughed his mirthless laugh again. I could think of nothing to do but sit down beside him and refresh myself. We’d been riding most of the day.

  “How long must we wait here?” I asked him, uncomfortable being in the dark.

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Well, this is stupid. I’m bored and wish to go back.” I made ready to stand and demand to be taken home.

  “Do you miss your father?”

  I froze and balled my fists. “What?”

  “Do you?”

  “He sits at Woden’s table in Valhal!”

  “Your mother will choose another warrior soon,” he said, still looking out over the churning sea. “Many of the men in the house admire her beauty.”

  “Be quiet!” I aimed my fist at his face, as I would have done to any of my other playmates, had they spoken so. With the tiniest flick of his head, he avoided my blow and continued talking.

  “My father has had three wives since my mother disappeared,” he said. “But not one of them has borne a son.”

  I expected him to brag about his claim to the throne, but instead—

  “If my father fancied your mother, we could be brothers, Lars-Son. I would love a brother to stand beside me in battle. To go out there,” he swept his hand along the horizon, “and conquer lands and carry home such treasure….”

  “Carry off their wenches,” I added enthusiastically, since the eldest boys of my group favored the phrase. I expected spirited agreement.

  “No,” Neskaya said softly, “I would not take their women.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wish only for a brother, a warrior as my companion.”

  “You are just too young, my friend,” I started to say, content that I possessed superior knowledge in at least one area. “Besides, there are no ships that can cross the sea. I don’t think it would be possible.”

  “There!” Neskaya exhaled, pointing out to the ocean. His other hand clutched my thigh just above the knee, and his eyes widened, sparkling with delight.

  Following the line of his slim arm, I saw nothing but sea foam at first and began to think Neskaya’s witch mother had driven him mad with her singing, as some of my friends gossiped. But then a white flipper broke the surface of the water, followed by a tail and then a dorsal fin. I watched as dozens of creatures traveled across our vision, each three times the size of a man. Miraculous as it was, my heart somersaulted when one of the beast’s heads emerged, crowned with a single, ivory horn. More of the creatures leapt into the air, and as they frolicked, I saw that each of them possessed the same spire at the forehead. I could not decide whether to feel horror or awe.

  “What are they?”

  Neskaya shook his head and continued to watch, enrapt. The sun began to sink, turning the water into a red-purple jewel etched with gold. As quickly as they’d appeared, the horned whales became tiny specks and were gone.

  Neskaya spoke, but not to me. He was trying to reconcile something within his own soul. “All we can see is the surface. But there’s so much more we can’t see beneath. I bet it’s as big as the world down there, underneath the water. There could be anything down there. Things we can’t even imagine. How can we understand anything if we can see so little of it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come,” he said, rising. “I’ll take you back.”

  I cannot say what possessed me then, but I got to my feet and said, “I’ll be your brother, Prince Neskaya. I’ll stand by you.”

  Rather than the ecstatic gratitude I expected, he gave me only a sad little smile and a single nod before turning toward his horse.

  AS I left the sacred grove, I wondered why, of all the boys, Neskaya had chosen me to see the horned whales. I’d always meant to ask him. But as the years hurried past, it never felt right. Neskaya sought no company but mine. Surely it seemed to others that our friendship was a convenience only to him; he appeared when he needed me to accompany him on some adventure and then deposited me where I had stood until he required me again. If I sought him out in the hall or around the town, I could never find him. But he showed me such wondrous things, spoke to me as no one ever had. We were brothers as surely as if we’d shared blood, and as soon as our bodies could comply, we became much more.

  As I entered the hall and rubbed the chill from my hands, I recalled some of our early trysts, and the memories lit a fire in my belly. Neskaya always complied with me, and many times, overcome by my youthful urges, I’d taken him unceremoniously and hard. He allowed this, though he held a higher rank than I and was a better warrior. I’d always wondered why.

  I still wondered as I looked around at the men and women slumped in the corners of the hall or sleeping with their heads down on the long tables. Large hunting dogs curled at their feet, and many dishes lay overturned. The fire burned low in the great hearth, doing little to banish the chill. I inspected a platter, hoping to find a scrap of meat, but the bones of the hog had been picked clean. A usual supper in the King’s Hall meant six hogs, not one. But since the farms had failed to produce for so long, even the richest went hungry. I would have to do the same, though I needed more than meat to satisfy me. Stepping over the sleepers, I made my way to Neskaya’s chamber.

  The fire within burned brightly, and it lit the planes of Neskaya’s naked body, accentuating his musculature. My cock swelled as I watched him, stretched luxuriously on his back across his bed of furs. I’d seen plenty of nude men; we all swam together in the summer. I’d seen my share of women too, but none of them affected me as Neskaya did. He made me feel as senseless as a beast in its breeding season.

  When he heard me enter, Neskaya propped himself up on his elbows and turned to look at me. My gaze met his black eyes and then traveled down his graceful neck, across the plateau of his almost hairless chest, down the crunched-together muscles of his stomach, and to where his cock lay in the little valley where his thighs pressed together. I unpinned my cloak and let it fall in a heap behind me. Then I knelt down to tear at the strips of leather that held my fur boots to my calves.