As if on cue, a handful of women, their arms bare, their hair flowing free, and their bodies wrapped in brightly colored scarves and little else, entered his grandfather’s tent.
Bayr gaped. Women from every clan came to the tournaments. But he’d never seen women like these before. One woman approached Dred and stopped beside him, but she trailed her finger down Bayr’s braid, her face friendly and her gaze warm.
“She will show you how to use your mouth,” Dred said, his eyes twinkling, his tone dry.
“You’ll not stumble for your words when she’s done with you, Temple Boy,” a warrior with a gleaming pate and no braid said, smiling his reassurance.
“He won’t be able to speak at all!” another warrior belched.
“There are many things my son didn’t teach you, many things a man cannot learn in a temple. How many women have you known?” Dred asked.
Bayr shook his head. He’d known no women. Not the way his grandfather meant. His female interactions had consisted of the temple girls, Alba, Ghost, and a handful of villagers and women who worked in the palace. He’d never known women like these.
The woman tugged on his braid and blood surged in Bayr’s loins. She released him and stepped back, expectant. When he stared at her blankly, she began to dance away, but extended her hand as if she wanted him to follow.
“She wants you to go with her, son. See how she beckons you?” Dred murmured.
Bayr stood, hypnotized by the curling fingers urging him forward, by the rhythmic sway of rounded hips and slim arms.
“Just don’t let her get your knife. She knows how to use that too,” he heard his grandfather warn, but his thoughts had already left the circle of men and the smell of roast pig and warm mead to trail after the woman who would teach him how to use his tongue.
Twenty minutes later, he knew a great deal more than he’d known when the night began, but he wasn’t ready for all the lessons the harlot seemed to want to teach him.
“No,” he panted, the urgency of her hands and her mouth making him tremble and quake, but he pulled back and gently pushed her away.
“Why?” she gasped.
He wouldn’t explain it to her. Doing so would take more time and energy than he had, and if she grew weary of waiting for him to spit out the words and began to coax him with her soft body and insistent hands, he might not leave at all.
“Ch-children,” he said instead, hoping she could deduce the rest.
“You don’t want to put a baby in my belly?”
He shook his head.
“Is that not . . . the goal?”
He shook his head again and righted his clothing, keeping his eyes averted from her creamy flesh and splayed limbs. The warriors of Saylok rutted like mindless bulls, spreading their seed across the clans, convinced that it was their only hope. Bayr did not want to father a son he might never know, with a woman who was not his own, the way his father had sired him.
Dagmar had suggested that Bayr’s seed might be the salvation his mother had spoken of, but one man’s seed did not a civilization save, and he didn’t have the arrogance or the desire to test his uncle’s theory. Their father, Saylok, had sought to lay with a woman in every village, and his children were turned into beasts. Bayr did not want to follow in his stead.
When he fled back to the tent and begged for a jug of mead, stuttering through the request, his grandfather raised his eyes to the thirsty boy.
“Your tongue is still tangled,” Dred remarked.
Bayr nodded, wiping his mouth. “I s-suppose I . . . need . . . more i-instruction.” He smirked.
Dred howled with laughter, the sound like a hungry wolf on the hillside, and the men around him joined in, not even knowing why they wailed.
The melee was the final event of the tournament, and it was a contest open only to clansmen. Each chieftain chose ten warriors to compete, and all six clans were represented. Sixty warriors took the field in their clan colors, and only one clan could claim victory. The object was to be the last clan standing, even if it was only one warrior. There were no weapons, and no rules but one: take every man down. Once a man’s body hit the ground, he was required to leave the melee until only one man—or one clan—remained.
Different techniques were employed by different clans, and the game was played year-round in Saylok to sharpen a clan’s skills. A warrior seen as the biggest threat was often targeted first by a handful of warriors working together, but that could backfire as well. If a man fell in the process of toppling another, he too was eliminated. Every clan had known victory in the melee, but one year, before he was king, Banruud and the nine other warriors from Berne so soundly dominated the other clans that all ten of them were still standing when every other warrior from all the other clans had been taken down. Such a feat had never happened before or since.
The king didn’t take part in the melee. His presence on the field was too dangerous to his person and too intimidating to the clans. And no one wanted to tangle with the king for fear that besting him on the field would result in quiet consequences off the field. As king, Banruud was required to be partial to none, but he was of Berne, and his preference was known. He sat, waiting for play to commence, Queen Esa, Alba, and the clan daughters on his left, the keepers behind them, and the clans creating a perimeter on every side. Bayr took a knee in front of the daughters, his hand on his blade, trying to keep his attention from straying from his duties as protector. As one of the clanless, he would not be participating in the melee.
“We’ve only nine, Majesty,” Dred of Dolphys called out, striding forward. “We’re a man short.”
The crowd groaned. They’d been hopeful the melee was about to begin. The king raised his arms to quiet the commotion.
“Then choose another, Dred. Surely you have another warrior from the Clan of the Wolf willing to enter the melee.”
“I claim him. I claim the Temple Boy.” Dred raised his arm and pointed at Bayr.
The crowd crowed and the king laughed.
“He is not of Dolphys. He has no clan. He cannot fight with you. Choose another,” the king replied. Bayr’s heart began to race.
“I claim him,” Dred insisted, planting his feet. “We have not yet chosen a chieftain. But I speak for my clan, as the oldest warrior on the field.”
The crowd grew quiet, confusion rippling in silent waves. Dred of Dolphys was a seasoned contender, and he knew the rules of the melee. It was a contest among the clans. The clanless were not allowed.
“He is of Dolphys,” Dred intoned.
“What are you babbling about, old man?” the king growled. His eyes were hard and his hands curled around his big knees.
“He is the son of my daughter, Desdemona, shield maiden in the Clan of the Wolf.” Once there had been a contest for the women—a battle among the shield maidens—but the king had suspended it. The shortage of women in Saylok had made the clans cautious, and they did not want their women to be warriors. It was a risk they’d become unwilling to take.
The king grew eerily still and the crowd followed suit, the hush of a thousand held breaths. No one knew why the king had turned to stone, but none of them dared break the spell.
“He is fourteen years old, Dred of Dolphys. Why have you not claimed him before? This is highly suspect,” Aidan murmured, the only man not cowed by the king. Yet even he recognized the king’s shock and moderated his tone.