[h3]THE ORPHAN TWINS[/H3]


"I think, sister, that we went about this all wrong..." Kade was standing knee deep in the glass calm waters of the fjord. All around him was a pinkish hue and already small crabs scuttled along the sandy bottom to pick at the hewn flesh of the dead who lay half scattered and half submerged for a hundred yards of stony shoreline. "Did we forget something about our people?"

Kala half grunted a reply as she pulled her axe out of the back of a dead man. The wrinkles on his face and white hair suggested he was old, likely already near to death of old age, but like the rest he had chosen to fight rather than submit. "Maybe."

"I, uh, might have a suggestion..." Two men, both of whom were unlike the dead in physical size and appearance, were kneeling at the waters edge. Both had been hobbled by thick ropes about their ankles, slaves of the former village residents.
"Spit it out!" Kala snarled as she turned on him. The slave stared at her, mouth agape, taking in the image before him. She stood as tall as her brother, the same corded shoulders and forearms, with eyes as black as night. Blood coated her from head to toe, not only from the fighting, but because she had smeared it across her face and abdomen. "I said speak!" She roared at the man who promptly pissed himself.

"I… I... Well, custom..." He managed at master himself she stepped toward him with raised axe. "Custom among your k-k-kin is to lay a c-c-challenge at the f-feet of the lord. Beat him, and the village w-w-would have b-b-been yours."

"Oh." Kala said, though her tone conveyed nothing. Her brother meanwhile barked a sharp laugh that echoed across the fjord. 

"Shouldn't just have gutted him then." Kade smiled ruefully as he dipped his own bloodied sword into the fjord, disturbing the pink waters as he washed the blood from it. "I seem to recall that now."

"Much use your memory does us no," Kala snorted, cleaning her own blade on the cloth of a dead man. "He shouldn't have told me to suck his cock."

"Fair." Kade replied as he returned to shore, looking about him at the destruction they had wrought. It was not a large settlement - just a half dozen longhouses on the edge of the great fjord - nothing more than a fishing village. It had served to house three dozen occupants, slaves aside of course, all of whom had chosen to fight rather than acknowledge the twins as their ruler. It seemed they had forgotten more than a few customs in their exile. 

"You, slave, what is your name?" Kala, clearly thinking along the same lines, walked over to the urine stained wretch kneeling at the waters edge. 

“Athin, lady.” The slave responded, bobbing a head crowned with thick black hair, a whisp of a beard showing on his chin. He flinched away as she squatted down to stare unblinkingly at him for a long moment.

“I think I will let you live, Athin. You may prove useful. Fail us, and well…” Her hand shot out suddenly to grasp the second prisoner by the throat. He gave a gurgled scream and thrashed against her grip as she slowly crushed his windpipe. Never once did she break eye contact with Athin. 

Athin watched in horror as his fellow slave died, slowly, unable to fight his way free of the immense strength that squeezed the life from him. Heels drummed on the stone as the wheezing gasps slowly died away to nothing. Kala released him and stood, before reaching down to drag Athin to his feet by the hair. 

“Let’s go, slave.” She shoved him up the beach. Behind her the slave gasped back to life, trying to breath desperately. Kade, wading out of the water, grabbed the dying man by his ankle and dragged him into the water, pushing his face down into the mud and using his robe to dry the long black blade. Only when the bubbles stopped in the mud did he remove his foot and follow his sister.