Gray Lord [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LRJ_Z-ALYz8lw5Qbfo5stJm_R9acKbwM/view?usp=sharing]

Kerlaug…

The river that purifies everything it touches. Surely, it would purify the bloody swords and the stained clothes.

Gray lord looked at his reflection in the cold water that had turned red. A baldy in his early forties with blood sprinkled over his face and an eye patch over his right eye looked back at him. The left eye was bloodshot, resembling his inner anger.

As the stream carried more blood from the sword, he wondered why blood and Rodvin had the same color. He ran his tongue over the section that still had blood, just to be sure if blood tasted like Rodvin. It didn’t…

It tasted better; nothing can beat the taste of brother’s blood.

“What are you all waiting for? Clean yourselves,” ordered Gray lord to his henchmen.

The henchmen walked over the snow and removed their clothes to wash them off. Gray lord felt the chilly wind hit his naked upper body, causing him to shudder. Snowfall didn’t help either. Gray lord was of average height and had a ripped body with multiple scars on his chest and abdomen, the result of his difficult childhood. He had worn dark breeches and leather footwear that day.

As he washed the blood off of his face, Maara brought him a fresh brown tunic. As he wore it and tightened it with a leather belt over his waist, he saw the three bodies. Idiots!

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Maara helped him with his fur coat. He walked over to the three bodies, sprawled on the ground, their blood soaked into the snow. Gray lord looked at their house; it was a small wooden house with a sloping roof filled with snow, and smoke still escaped from the chimney.

The wife’s corpse lay next to a tree; Maara had slit her throat from ear to ear, unable to bear her shouting.

“Please don’t do anything to my son!! Please! Please!” shrieked Maara in a woman’s voice, imitating her voice. Gray lord chuckled. Maara was a huge, muscular man with thick brown hair that cascaded down to the shoulders and a beard tied into a long braid. He wore a green tunic and a belt with holsters for his long knife.

Gray lord looked at the boy’s body sprawled before him, he couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old. Next to the boy lay his brother’s headless body with a bit of blood still spurting out from his neck, forming a pool over the snow and the brown soil.

Sitrig had held a knife around the boy’s neck as the Gray lord commanded in his baritone voice, “Tell me where our father is!”

Vili, held in his place by Gray Lord’s henchmen, cried like a little girl who lost her toy: “Brother! I don’t know. Father left me after I was eighteen. I don’t know where he is. Please don’t harm my son!”

“I have no reason to spare your son then,” said Gray lord casually and nodded to Sitrig. Sitrig thrust the knife into the boy’s heart; suddenly, a foul odor permeated the air, and it turned out the boy had shat himself at the time of death.

“I knew you didn’t know, but hey, it was fun meeting you after a long time. You have a nice family!” mocked Gray lord as his brother’s wife and son lay dead.

On Gray Lord’s signal, the henchmen loosened their grip on Vili. Gray Lord smiled as Vili took the bait and rushed, screaming angrily at him.

“I will kill you!!”

Gray Lord cut off his head with one swift movement of his sword.

He had killed his mother, Ran, when he was a kid. Now, he had killed his long-lost brother, too. Only Floki, his absentee father, was left. He will finally have the gift of orphanhood after tracing his father and killing him. He couldn’t wait for that day.

Where are you hiding, Dad?

He was in no hurry, though; he had all the time in the world and more; he was an immortal, after all.

I will find you, dad.