Page 210 of Red Rooster

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He dreamed of his mother’s gods.

The All-Father, croaking ravens perched on his shoulders. Thor, every footstep another peal of thunder. Loki, alight with flames, laughing,laughing, as the world crumbled to ash around him. He dreamed of heaving seas, and serpent’s coils, and Balder, tears streaming from his face, clawing his way, alone, from the wreckage.

He dreamed of Ragnarok.

He dreamed of a cock’s crow, a loud bugling, heralding the breaking of the world. The call to the heroes…but he wasn’t one of those, was he?

And then he dreamed of his mother, her touch cool and soft on his face, her smile gentle, lit by the low-burning fire in the grate.“Did you have a bad dream, my little baby?”She reached to the table beside the bed and took up the little bell, folded his small hand around it.“You can always ring it when you need me. I’ll always hear it.”

But Val remembered that his mother was dead, and he opened his eyes with a gasp.

He lay on his back, staring up at the high stone ceiling strung with wires and bare bulbs. Tears slid slowly from the corners of his eyes, slipping into his ears, cold and uncomfortable. Pain pulsed through him, spreading outward from his slow-beating heart. He felt the bones and sinews knitting slowly back together; felt the coolness of air on parts of his body that should have been covered with skin. He could only move a little, and that was brought up short by the cuffs at both wrists and ankles.

“He’s awake,” a voice said.

A shadow fell over Val, and his brother appeared above him. His hair hung loose down his shoulders, silky soft, the only soft part of him. His face was its usual stony mask, revealing nothing. He stared down at Val as if he was an exhibit in a museum, and not his flesh and blood.

“You failed,” he said.

Val licked dry lips with an equally dry tongue. “Don’t I always?”

“You could have chosen to fight alongside me. But you chose to fight me, instead, like always. Do you really hate me that much?”

“Yes,” Val said, just for the satisfaction of saying. For the tiny gratification of watching the corners of Vlad’s mouth flex downward.

Vlad nodded, and sighed. “They won’t execute you.”

“Too valuable for that, huh?”

“But I will punish you.”

Val forced a laugh, hollow and hysterical. It hurt to laugh; it hurt to breathe. “What will you do, oh noble crusader? Impale me on one of your pikes? Add me to your forest? Or will you do what the sultan’s son did, and bend me over a table while I scream for Mother–”

“That’s enough.”

“I’ve been punished my whole life. What can you do to me?”

Vlad studied him a long moment. Then nodded, and lifted his head to glance at the technician who stood on the other side of the table. “Bring the collar.”

No, Val thought, insides shriveling. But with fake bravado, he said, “Are you that petty that you’d torture me because you didn’t get your way? Some prince you are – that’s what you’ve always done, isn’t it? You hurt the people who offend you.” The last he spit out as gloved hands snapped the collar around his neck, its cool weight spiraling his panic up, and up. Someone plugged something into it, a cord of some time. Val snuck a glance to the side and saw a machine that looked like a giant car battery, trailing lines that went up onto the table…and hooked into his cuffs.

“Some crusader you are,” he snarled at Vlad. “You couldn’t even save your own family.”

Vlad moved quick, a hand like a vise clamped on Val’s jaw before he could duck away. “And what would you have done? Compromise? There is no compromise with this evil. You’ve never understood that. Until you do, there can be no compromise between us, either.” He released Val and stepped back.

Val took a deep breath…that quickly turned into short, sharp pants. “Sometimes compromise is the only way to stay alive.” He’d meant to growl it, but it came out a whimper instead.

“And that’s what you want? That’s what you care about? Living?”

“Yes. If you’d ever allowed yourself to enjoy anything in life, if you–”

“My job is to protect my people.”

“Vlad–”

A low hum started up, and he felt the first hair-raising prickle of electricity.