Chapter 54: Rage
Simon didn’t return to his house to take anything with him. Nothing he’d left behind was worth the ghosts he would see there. He had his sword, and that would be enough to get him where he needed to go. There was nowhere in any world he could find solace, but he did know one place where he could get some answers, and that would have to do for now.
The guards had just managed to lift the portcullis by the time they came outside, but with his sword in one hand and the young Baron’s neck in the other, no one tried to stop him. “I’ve gotten my vengeance from the rest of the Raithewait family,” Simon told the first man to confront him, “and as soon as I get to the gate, you can have young Erik back then unless you want to end the line right here.”
No one tried to call his bluff, which was good because it wasn’t one. The truth was it would be faster if they just cut him down here. It might even be more satisfying. But if he died, then he wouldn’t have her ring anymore, and that meant more to him than walking all the way back up that mountain to the wyvern.
The trip back was uneventful. As they’d ridden south together, Simon and Freya had feared that the zombies were nipping at their heels and would sweep across the world. They’d never come that close, though. After the fall of Schwarzenbruck, they’d become an endemic threat. They’d pop up periodically, but the people of the area knew how to handle them. Some people even believed that there were ways to cure the recently bitten before they turned, though Simon had yet to see any evidence for that claim.
There was a lot he still didn’t understand about this world, but right now, he didn’t care anymore. He just trudged forward from camp to inn and village to town as the mountain he needed to climb loomed into view.
The whole time Varten’s words haunted him, too. It didn’t matter that he knew they weren’t true. All that mattered was the way that they picked at the open wound and made him despair and doubt what he knew. Was it possible that Freya had been unfaithful to him or that she’d never really loved him? Simon knew that their courtship had been more than a little rushed and that he could have been a better partner, but even so, he found it impossible to believe she could lie to him well enough to be true.
Simon tried hard to stay positive whenever his rage faded enough for the despair to seep into his soul. As the trip wore on, this habit, combined with the familiar surroundings, made him more than a little nostalgic. He couldn’t help but think about the way Freya laughed or made fun of the way he pronounced certain words. It seemed like everything along the road brought back some memories, but it wasn’t until he got to a bridge he didn’t recognize that he realized that he’d gone almost a day too far to the north.
No one on the road bothered him, or even noticed him as he turned around and started walking back the way he’d come. Maybe bandits could see his little storm cloud that followed him around wherever he went, or maybe they could see he really wanted an excuse to kill someone. Either way, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the hike up the mountain.
It took two days to get up this time instead of the three days it had taken to get down. Simon was a little amazed that he was in that much better shape, and he even stopped early one night to roast an ewe that he’d taken with his longbow earlier.