Tale from the past - The last day.

((I posted this on the AO forums a while ago, thought I'd put it here too just 'coz. This is a little background for Crowley, and features him at around his late teens after or towards the end of the Second War. ))

Her arms moved mechanically, stiff as those of a woman thrice Yrsa's age, but Coulajin still took a scrape along his collarbone from the saw-toothed dagger. Loa alone knew where she'd got the thing. Her one eye, yellow and pretty but so dull and dead, widened and she almost dropped the knife. Something inside Coulajin died just a little, deep enough inside that it didn't make him flinch for an instant over slamming his raw, bunioned foot into her midsection and siezing her by the wrists to twist until the wicked blade dropped to the floor. Her mouth opened in a quiet scream, a wordless, keening noise barely louder than the breeze that stirred the trees. "Bitch," he hissed. Yrsa's eye sparkled with something soul-wrenching. Coulajin wanted so desparately to know what it was - loss? Fear? Maybe, please, remorse? He wanted to stare into that eye until he knew. Instead, he kicked her bony legs out from under her, tangled his cloven hand in her red, brittle hair and thrust her head face first into the failing campfire, and now she screamed, through a mouthful of ash but ear-splittingly all the same. Small hope of putting Kas'chai on the back foot now. His free hand scrabbled across the cold-hardened dirt and siezed the dagger awkwardly, more by the bone crossguard than the hilt, and sawed madly at her throat. Too late to make it quick for her now, but he could make the effort to send her on her way sooner. For old times' sake, he thought, with a raw-throated chuckle. Yrsa hadn't wanted him dead. All she'd wanted in the world was to survive. She'd killed to survive, trudged barefoot through the snow for the gods knew how long or how far, shared Kas'chai's pallet then Coulajin's when his brother grew bored of her - and now she was dead. She'd made the wrong choice, although Coulajin was damned if he saw a right choice she could have taken. He hadn't seen a right choice to be made for years. And now she was dead.

He heard footsteps back at the mouth of the tiny cave, and wheeled around. Krogh lumbered out of the darkness, an elven horsebow pointed at Coulajin. He threw up a hand and gestured the bloody scrape across the bottom of his throat, and Krogh, far smarter than he looked, understood. Kas'chai? the big troll mouthed. Coulajin nodded.

"That's no way to treat a lady," Kas'chai chided from the edge of the clearing. Krogh almost leaped out of his skin and sent an arrow thudding into an old pine tree yards from where the tall young troll stood. His brother was good; he twitched a little but kept his face stone smooth. Slouched against the trunk of another pine, Kas'chai looked at his ease. Who was he out to fool? Krogh and Coulajin both knew well enough that the bastard could murder in his sleep.

Coulajin spared only a fraction of a second to calculate the distance to Kas'chai before he sent the bone-hilted knife spinning across the clearing. It wasn't balanced at all for it, and the distance wasn't too favourable, and Kas'chai was fast. Coulajin was superb with knives though, the one thing he had over his brother, and it took a slice out of the older troll's shoulder, who let out a little gasp and wrinkled his nose.

"I hope you both feel better for that," he grinned, dancing behind the tree and poking his head out from behind the shield. Krogh tossed aside the elvish weapon and took a pair of axes from his belt, to Coulajin's relief. Krogh was only fair with the intricate elvish weapons he was so enamoured of; with the thrown axes he'd grown up using he could split skulls at thirty paces.

"It doesn't have to end like this," Coulajin said, tones even.

"My idiot brother," Kas'chai went from treacle to poison like a change of the wind, "You know it does. Maybe it didn't always have to."

"Don't be a horse cunt," Coulajin snapped, "This isn't how it has to be. This is just how you think you want it." His brother laughed, darting off into the forest. Krogh had his axes out, not ready to throw, just held by his sides, and was gripping them so hard it look like the wood must splinter.

"Scowl all you like, whelp," Krogh muttered, "I'd never have hit him." It was truth, he knew, but he wanted to punch the man regardless. Teeth grinding, he ran past Krogh into the cave. The stink was still on the air; the stink of Tragva, the stink of raw meat and the heady musk of troll blood. Poor Tragva. There wasn't anything to be done though; hunting was scarce, when they dared leave the cave at all. Tragva had been dead weight, until a few dark little cogs had turned in Coulajin's mind and he'd realised meat was meat, and all the better if it had to feed five mouths instead of six. Sometimes the memory of that, and how proud his brother had looked when he suggested it one evening, siezed him at the worst times and put a black rot in his belly.

The sword he took out from under his fur pallet was another elvish weapon, made for long fingers and short arms. Coulajin was used to it though, and it was good steel. Movement back at the entrance made him take a good grip of the sword and spin around. It was only Krogh. "We should stay here," the older troll said, "Let them come to us."

"We haven't got an advantage here. We haven't got shit here."

"So we let him hunt us? Hunt us like orcs?" Krogh sneered.

"He doesn't have the advantage either, fool. He just thinks he does," Coulajin grinned, "And that means it might be we have it over him, doesn't it?"
Krogh grunted, twisting his mouth a little. "You sound like your damned father now." Maybe that was meant as a compliment. When Coulajin thought of Jin'pachi these days, it was to remember him skewered through the shoulder by a human's lance and bellowing curses for the orcs he'd counted on for relief; his worst curses were for Orgrim Backstabber, the first and last orc he'd been fool enough to trust. The last thing in the world Coulajin wanted was to take after his father. "Lead on, Crow."

A poor hunter Coulajin might be, but Kas'chai hadn't bothered to cover his tracks. Flecks of purple-red blood and deep prints marked the way for them where the snow had lingered, and badly disturbed earth did it where it hadn't. The forest around them was tranquil and beautiful and deceptive and deadly. There was no birdsong any more, just the breeze in the branches and the deafening silence of a world holding its breath. By rote, his eyes scanned the forest around them, but he didn't really expect an attack, not until they reached the barrow. It was only minutes before he was certain that was where his brother was going; the tracks were as good as a warcaller for it. He would've been certain even if the snow had been unmarred and the earth had told them nothing. It was where he would go; the only place he could think of to go, and sometimes he and his brother were so alike it chilled him. Sometimes he and his brother were so alike he wanted to strike his own reflection. A too-short eternity of dark thoughts and darting eyes passed before the barrow stood before them. It didn't loom or tower; it was no bigger than a small hill, and with the snow covering it completely there was nothing to say it was anything more. A barrow. Far from their home, the trolls hadn't been able embalm the dead properly, or give them anything more than a quick rite to send them on their way to the great nothing, so the priests had done what they could and tried to make a mass grave sacred. Coulajin wished they'd just burned the bodies and had done with it.

"Hahee," tittered a rake thin figure emerging over the top. Cor'doi, a blade in either hand and a manic grin on his horsey face. Kas'chai followed him over, a proud but long-suffering father going after his excitable child - it was hard to think of Cor'doi as anything but a child, even if he had a few years on Kas'chai.

"We had a wager," greeted his brother, "Cor'doi said you'd follow. I said you'd have the sense you were damn well born with and stay in the cave." He grinned, then something seemed to occur to him and he turned to Cor'doi and spat. "Then he said there was too much of me in you for that, didn't you?" That would explain the bloody slash the childlike troll wore across his cheek; with uncharacteristic good sense, Cor'doi let his smile die a little and just kept his eyes on the two at the foot of the hill.

"He's won your cloak, Coulajin. I had half a mind to give him it anyway, to be sure. Every man needs a brother," he chuckled, throwing up one hand. A fireball, dull and half-formed streaked down the barrow at them; Krogh and Coulajin ducked. It unravelled like yarn until it was little more just a wave of pure and unformed heat that streaked over their heads. It would've seared the flesh from their faces if they hadn't moved, even flawed as it was; that bastard was getting good. No sooner had they raised their heads than Cor'doi was at them. He must have leaped after the bloody fireball. The two elf blades flashed; Coulajin batted the one thrust his way aside with a clang, but Krogh went down in the snow, blood spurting between the fingers of the hand covering his face. The mad troll was oscillating from pained groans to boisterous guffaws now; Coulajin saw that Krogh had managed to bury one of his axes deep into his shoulder before Cor'doi's steel bit him back, and pressed the advantage, making a lunge for the maimed arm then snapped his sword around to slash at the other troll's right wrist when he tried to defend against the attack. The laughter died and a scream burst out of the madman's throat; he dropped both his blades in the snow and stared in shrieking horror at his half-severed hand. Skewering him through the stomach was the easiest thing in the world.

Something dark and shapeless flew down the hill at Coulajin. He lashed out reflexively and got a rain of black feathers for his reward. Forlornly, the crow-feather cloak settled in the snow. He looked up at Kas'chai, and realised his brother was wearing his own cloak - raven's feathers, for the elder brother, shimmering like a mirror held to the night. Kas'chai's mouth twisted. "Do you hate it so?"
"It's just a cape," he replied flatly, kneeling slowly - never looking away from his brother - to clean Cor'doi's blood from his sword on the dark feathers. Kas'chai sighed elabourately.

"It's all you've got."

"It's more than I want," he snapped back. Kas'chai sighed again, and started down towards him.

"I'd never have let that jackanapes wear it, you know. I'd sooner have seen it burned."

"I'd see it burned anyway," Coulajin spat, and picked it up to toss at Cor'doi's corpse, "Let him have it. Fuck it, I'll sew one for every shit-brained boywhelp this side of the Portal." Kas'chai's eyes widened and one pale hand clutched protectively at his own cloak. A raven and a crow. Fools might not be able to tell them apart, but they were different as heaven and earth to Coulajin. His brother continued to approach, Coulajin taking a step back for every step he took forward. Little more than a minute had passed and he doubted Kas'chai could manage another fireball so soon, but caution was one virtue he could see some worth in. Their eyes met properly for the first time, memory and hate flashing like lightning between the two brothers.

"And here we are." Kas'chai halted. Coulajin realised how deathly silent the barrows were without the sound of feet crunching on the snow.

"There's enough death here for anyone's fill. You think this place needs another pair of corpses to keep the rest company?" He hated his own words even as he spoke them; words so twisted by pride and pain and hate and fear even he didn't know what he meant them to mean.

"No-o," smirked his brother, "Here we are. And here it ends." Kas'chai's hand darted through the air in front of him, drawing world-bending arcane patterns in the air with a bony white finger. Crackling blue energy lanced into Coulajin, sending him sprawling back. The bastard is getting good, he thought lamely as he lay in the snow, with the tastes of fear, failure and his own blood in his mouth.

"You should have paid more attention to the lessons, little Crow," Kas'chai chided. He threw his stolen sword away with a look of disgust.

The lessons. Coulajin remembered those, try as he might to forget. An Elvish patrol they'd happened on had a mage with them, and while the warriors died to Krogh's axes or Kas'chai's blades, the sorceror had stumbled into one of Coulajin's traps and had the ill luck to survive. Cor'doi and Krogh had been all for eating the elf, and Coulajin would have joined his voice to theirs if he'd known what his brother had planned. Instead of eating the elf they'd fed him every morning for weeks, and Kas'chai had brought out white-hot knives every afternoon; the trolls had tortured the wizard for his knowledge, learning the higher secrets of the universe at knifepoint. Only Kas'chai had learned much before the poor elf expired; the rest had watched, with apathy or fascination or disgust or just simple, bestial pleasure...all except Coulajin, retreating to the cave alone. It was a petty, joyless defiance when what he truly wanted to do was cut the pitiful creature's throat and end it...but even he had never dared defy Kas'chai that far.

If he had, he wouldn't be lying there. He wouldn't be thinking how earth-shatteringly loud the crunch of his brothers footsteps in the snow sounded, or how tall he looked, standing over Coulajin, blocking out the pale sun. Now, at last, they were both silent; there were no words in the world for a moment like this. Dark energies were coiling around Kas'chai's hand like smoky snakes. Of course. He'll end it with his magic. Coulajin should have paid more attention to the lessons.

But he had paid attention. He'd turned his back in disgust, sharpened his blades in the darkness of the cave...and listened.

Coulajin forced the words out; just forming the Elvish syllables rattled his teeth and left his tongue raw. The dark flames around his brother's hand guttered out, and Coulajin rose, and turned his rising into a clumsy slash, and brought the Elvish blade around again to aim a cut at Kas'chai's head. Why? I've lost. I'm just waiting for the final curtain. But Kas'chai wasn't striking back. The clumsy slash had left his brother's sword-hand dangling by a gory thread, and the cut had given him a second smile from chin to ear. Numbly, Coulajin raised his blade and held it at Kas'chai's throat. "It never had to end like this." His brother looked him in the eye and grinned slowly. His severed hand fell in the snow with a sickening plop. Coulajin took a deep, sharp breath, and lowered the sword. "And it still doesn't."

Kas'chai blinked twice like a stunned child...and his left hand darted into his cloak, pulling out a long, wicked knife. He leapt forwards, thrusting the gushing stump of his arms into Coulajin's face. Blood stung his eyes like acid. Fucking lunatic. Coulajin felt the dagger take a chunk out of his stomach, tear at his collar sweep past his jugular twice with less than an inch to spare. Wildly, jerked his sword up again, slashing blindly. He felt the sword lodge in meat and the stabs stopped. Coulajin heard a body falling onto the snow and stumbled back, wiping at his eyes.

He thought he must still have blood in his eyes, because the world was red. Red snow in every direction around them for metres, red all over him. Red gushing from the huge, cleaving wound across his brother's torso and the stump of his arm. He stumbled over and knelt in the red snow beside Kas'chai.

"Marvellous," gurgled Kas'chai.
"I didn't want to..." said Coulajin, dumbly.
"The hell you didn't. Don't lie to me. Not now..." Wearily, Coulajin saw him move his hand to his midesction, pretending to try and stem the wound in his stomach. His brother's movements were sluggish; he fumbled drawing the tiny dagger out of his belt. Weakly, he raised his hand to stab at Coulajin, the blade trembling. His grasp faltered and the knife fell from his fingers. It was disgusting; it was depressing. Kas'chai chuckled.
"From hell's heart..." he began, then spluttered, spraying Coulajin with blood. He grinned. "Look after your hide, little brother. There'll never be a hell big enough for the both of us." And, unceremoniously, he died.

Coulajin bowed his head. He opened his mouth to begin the final words. A brother or a father could speak them in the absence of a priest. The words caught in his throat though, and then his mind was blank. Words are wind, brother, Kas'chai would say. But they weren't, and now, in this place, the good the right words would have done was so obvious. Coulajin's mind stayed resolutely blank and empty, though. He fought down a choking sob and rose to his feet. One foot lashed out at his brother's still body. You made me kill you, you bastard. Just when I'd stopped wanting it. He turned, and picked a random direction, crunching his way through the snow. He didn't get far; it felt like there was a rope around his heart, pulling him back, and before he could think, he was kneeling in the snow again. Bury him. He was cheated of even that, though; the ground beneath the snow was frozen hard as wood. Burn him. There were flints back at the cave, but no fire would burn long in the snow. Coulajin reached down and took up his brothers knife. He carved a chunk of flesh from the corpse's torso and began to chew, blood mixing with tears on his face. It tasted vile. He forced himself to swallow the first bite. His stomach rebelled, and he vomited; the next he knew, he was lying back in the snow, weeping freely, the vilest taste he'd ever known in his mouth.

Be glad. The bastard's dead. It was a bittersweet victory, the smallest, most pathetic Pyrrhic victory. Somewhere, a crow was calling. Call your friends. Have my leavings. And lying in the snow, as the black wings filled the sky overhead, he went somewhere else.

The sun was low in the sky when he returned; a new day being born, or the old one dying. He couldn't tell, he didn't care. His hands were sticky with old blood, and black feathers covered him and the ground around him. Kas'chai's body was unchanged. I must've scared them off. He saw a dead crow at his feet, its head twisted clean off. There were five more around; two looked as if they'd been torn to pieces by some saw-toothed cat. He stood and felt a stabbing pain in his stomach, almost toppling over. The wound in his belly was far shallower than he'd thought. There was a pool somewhere. He forced his mind awake. East, from the barrows. Not far. The blood covering him was cold and clammy; some of the blood caking his face was dry and crisp already. He forced himself in the direction he thought was east, focusing and putting on shaking foot in front of the other. All he had to think about was walking, all he had to feel was the cold, and he didn't look back. In a numb way he knew he would regret that, regret it painfully, later on, but that didn't matter. He couldn't stand to look back now.

When he finally found the water he almost threw himself in it. Instead he knelt, taking a drink. His stomach protested again, but he kept the water down. It tasted slightly shitty, but that was nothing to the taste in his mouth. He cupped his hands and washed the blood from his cheeks and chin. Even when his face was fresh and clean again, he barely recognised the reflection in the pool. An image leapt out at him from the shadows of his mind; his brother, dead in the snow. A lone tear leaked from one eye, and a dark grin sprang to his face unbidden. He wiped the tear away and forced the grin off. Your face is your servant; you command it, just like your arms and legs. Who had told him that? His brother? His father? Perhaps Yrsa, in one of her better times. They were all three dead. Dead lips didn't remember the words. For a while he knelt there, facinated by the face that was so alien to him. He made in grin, made it frown, made it snarl, but when he tried to make it cry he found he couldn't stop it.

He wouldn't go back to the cave, he decided. He had his knife, he could find food. If he returned to the cave he'd stay there in the dark, gnawing his way through the supplies, and when they were done he'd lie down and he'd never see the light again. It was a warming prospect, but he couldn't let himself. Someone had to live. Someone had to walk away. He thought of Yrsa, flesh sloughing off her burnt face, eye pecked out, decaying until there was just a pretty, bleached skull face down in the ashes. Krogh, a big, grizzled skeleton propped up against a tree, resting his bones. Cor'doi, lying in the snow, a stupid, smiling death mask waiting for the wolves. And Kas'chai. Let it be ravens for him. Not mangy crows or starving wolves. He deserves ravens. It was like the old tree-falling-down riddle. Does it mean anything when I walk away, if there's nobody left to see me? Sometimes, nobody lived. For now, Coulajin survived. Rest in peace, all of you. A bitch and three bastards. Rest in peace. I know I never will.

(( oh, i liked this one when i read it on AO frum. thanks for posting here too ))