Chapter 3 -  Engraved

After settling Severn and the whores in a wooden cell connected to the horses, Alarick ordered his soldiers to get them some blankets so they wouldn't freeze and went to gather some personal supplies from his own stash that he usually take on every long trip.

He stopped at the library to warn his father he was leaving for some time.

“Han zove uvek agus dur liga, como ele inide hulemi,” Randal said from his seated position on the big poltro.

(He calls and you go, just like always.)

The powerful stature and posture hadn’t left his father, though his hair was getting whiter every year, along with the sadness and despair in his black eyes. Alarick remembered this poltrone, it was his mamkka’s favorite.

He shook his head from the memories, refusing to be caught in the same depression, refusing to look at the portrait on the wall beside his father.

“Yimesilali asifelagi. Han neberi ha teria conhece nu ar. Dur fost iarraidh alehi,” he said, walking away from the comforting warmth of the place that his mamkka loved so much.

(It seems important. He wouldn’t have begged if it wasn’t. You know the creature.)

"Yeah, yeah. Oh, and Alarick?” his father called in Gythanean.

“Yes?” he said, turning around.

“Tame him this time, eh?” his father laughed. “Show him who is the Warlord, for once.”

Alarick smirked. “Yeth, vardekka,” he said.

(Yes, father.)

His father wanted him to settle down, and he wasn’t opposed to that as he once were.

As long as it is with Erriene, of course.

Maudians came from barbarians. That was true. But they weren’t, mostly. Their system of government was different from most countries out there.

Firstly, there wasn’t a king, but there was one Warlord who more or less acts as the King. A Warlord was the man that commanded the country with his voice and his sword, and had to be able to take on any other man that challenged him. Also, he had to be on the field, always.

So despite that position coming from inheritance, he was the Warlord, not his father.

Randal was fifty-one now and he would live a long healthy life because of his frost giant blood, but he was not in any shape to lead an army.

Not because of age, but because of grief. An unexpected grief, that shouldn't have come as early as it came.

Alarick stopped at the door, clenching the door knob in his hands. “You… you should move on, vardekka,” he said in a cautious voice. “It’s been two years. You could still be leading this country with me.”

His father’s eyes went glassy, as they always went when they stepped in this subject.

“I… It feels pointless without him,” his father said finally, and Alarick’s eyebrows went up at the confession.

It was the first time Randal didn’t straight up ignore him and walked away from the conversation.

Aefstine had been the closest thing to a motherly figure Alarick had and the one that married his father. But he, of course, wasn’t the one that birthed him.

Even if he had been a woman, he wouldn't have birthed Alarick. Because the Warlord had to be on field, he also couldn’t afford to be hurt or die easily. It could be the death of their empire.

So their family came from a legacy of children born by frost giants from a warlord’s blood. If the child was born a woman, the giants took her away. If it was a man and human, he would be the next Warlord.

Alarick never knew who the one that birthed him was, but it didn’t matter. Aefstine was his mamkka. He was worse than Alarick in his tantrums sometimes, he remembered, smiling, finally giving in and glancing at the picture that didn’t do his mamkka any justice.

Elf descendants aged slower in appearance, and despite Aefstine always denying his elven heritage, his complexion gave it all away despite not having pointed ears.

His father could barely handle Aefstine. The older his mamkka got, the better he was in getting his way like any elf did- by persuasion and enchanting innocent looks. But Aefstine was such a soft spoken man, innocent in his playful ways.

Alarick opened his mouth to say something else, but his father shook his head, and went back to his book. And so, he left the library with a heavy heart.

Alarick still couldn't handle Aefstine’s death either, or rather, his disappearance. Because that's what really happened.

Nothing final. He just vanished into thin air, as if he’d been a dream all along.

Two years ago, during a cold winter night, a broken bridge and his mamkka calling in a broken, soft voice…

“Do not come any closer, my son.”

Aefstine was barely on his forties, his father was struggling in a battle with a giant and those last words would be carved on the walls of Alarick’s mind forever.