Alas, Ganelon was sadly unaware that his coupling with Larkspur had produced a son. The boy is young, still, but I’m told he’s got a bit of an attitude.
Gabriel’s story is invariably linked to that of his daughter, Rose. Their lives, along with those of her partner, Freecloud, have been the subject of numerous songs and stories, so I will spare you the details here.
As for Clay Cooper … Two days after breaking the siege at Castia he stepped through the portal to Kaladar and walked home from there. He was accompanied most of the way by Jain and the Silk Arrows, and by Gabriel, with whom he had set out from Coverdale several months earlier.
I was not present when Clay and Gabriel parted at last, but Jain claims it took place while the sun was setting. She watched their silhouettes from a distance as they shared a few laughs, shed a few tears, and finally embraced. Afterward, she says, Gabriel took Clay’s head in his hands and uttered something too quiet to hear, which one might assume was a heartfelt confession that he owed every happiness of his life thereafter to Clay and Clay alone.
To which, Jain tells us, Clay Cooper responded with a shrug.
On the long journey home Clay spotted several roadside plots that would be greatly improved by the presence of a modest two-storey inn. There would be a stable out back, he decided, and maybe a smithy, in case folk needed simple work done. Inside, sturdy round tables with plush leather seats, and a fireplace far from the stage for those who wished to sit and enjoy the fire’s warmth in relative peace and quiet. Blackheart would be mounted above, and if anyone asked what an ugly, charred, chopped-up piece of wood was doing up there on the wall, well, Clay might just sidle out from behind the bar, kick up his feet, and tell them a tale or two.
By the time he reached town the sun had nearly set. His shadow stretched out behind him, as stoop shouldered and weary as the man it followed down the beaten track that passed for a thoroughfare in Coverdale.
“Clay?” The voice was familiar, the tone incredulous. “Clay Cooper?”
He looked up at Pip, who had stumbled out of the King’s Head with his helmet tucked under one arm. “I’ve been called worse,” Clay said.
“Ha!” Pip attempted to slap his knee and got most of it. “‘Called worse,’ he says. Classic! Hey, when did you get home?”
I’m not home yet, Clay thought. “Just now,” he said. “All’s well, I hope?”
“Better than well, I’d say. You hear about Castia?”
Clay couldn’t help but grin. “I did, yeah.”
“Wild, eh? By the Holy Tetrea I wish I’d been there!”
Pip was young, and had likely never ventured any farther afield than Conthas, or maybe Oddsford, and so Clay forgave the boy for saying something so incredibly stupid. “They ever catch that centaur out by Tassel’s farm?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Catch him?” Pip scoffed. “You mean you haven’t heard?” When Clay shook his head, the lad went on: “Your girl killed it!”
“My …” Clay faltered, since his mouth had begun speaking while his brain was still trying to make sense of what he’d just been told. “You mean Ginny?”
“Not Ginny, no,” said Pip. “Ginny was pissed as Glif!”
Clay grabbed the boy by the shoulders, perhaps a bit more roughly than he’d meant to. “I need you to tell me what happened, Pip. Right now.”
Pip blew a sigh that reeked of stale beer. “Well, that bastard—the centaur, I mean—chased Karl—that’s Ryk Yarsson’s oldest boy—out of the woods and down to that marsh by your place. Your girl saw ’em coming, I guess. Tripped it up with a stick or something. Broke its neck. Crack!” he added, in case Clay needed reminding what a breaking neck sounded like.
“You’re telling me that Tally …my Tally … killed a centaur?”
“She killed a centaur!” Pip said. “You’ve got a little merc on your hands there, Cooper.”
This time Clay’s mouth and mind replied as one. “No fucking way,” he said.
Pip laughed. “And what’s more, young Karl’s been on her like a wasp on a sweetcake ever since. Barely leaves her side, that one, and she seems to like it that way. Poor boy’s fallen hard, I think.”
He doesn’t know hard, thought Clay. He pried his fingers from Pip’s sleeve and forced a smile onto his face. “Good seeing you, Pip.”
“Good to see you, too,” Pip slurred. “I’m glad you’re home.”
Clay set out for the west gate. I’m not home, he told himself. Not yet.
He stopped to relieve himself on the road outside of town. It was true dark now. The stars above were incomprehensibly numerous, and so much brighter than Clay remembered. He craned his neck to look up at them, and despite everything he’d accomplished since seeing them last, he still felt beggared by comparison. It occurred to him that this would always be the case, and Clay decided he preferred it that way.
He walked on, listening to the crickets chirping in the grass, to the wind rustling through the trees, taking long, deep breaths of the chill night air.
And then he saw her, shadow black against the warm light spilling from the open door. It seemed an impossible distance to the end of his lane, an immeasurable stretch from the edge of his yard to the stoop upon which his wife sat waiting for him. She didn’t actually see him until he was a few yards out and Griff came hurtling from inside the house, yapping and scampering madly around Clay’s feet. He knelt to pet him while Ginny stood, crossed her arms, and lifted her chin in that rural-imperious way of hers.
“You’re alive,” she said.
“I’m alive.”
“And Rose?”
“Safe and sound.”
“Good.”
“Tally?”
“Fine. Asleep. You heard about the centaur?”
He nodded. “I heard.”
Her back got a bit more rigid then. Her chin climbed higher still. “That girl doesn’t pick up a sword, Clay. Ever. Do you understand me?”
“No swords,” he assured her. “No axes, or knives, or bows. Not even a sharp stick, I promise.”
That got the chuckle he was looking for. Clay took a step into the light and heard her breath catch.
“Your face …”
He stopped to graze a finger over his latest scar. “Yeah, well. I guess that makes you the pretty one now.”
She laughed, and Clay could have wept for the sound of it.
Ginny reached out to him, and Clay stepped into the circle of her arms like a pilgrim come, at the end of his days, to the last house of the holy. Her scent surrounded him. A loose strand of her hair tickled his nose and gods-be-damned if he was going to scratch it now. Her breath was warm and soft as summer wind on his neck as she whispered, “You’re home.”
And finally, he was.
Acknowledgments
When you’re an aspiring author you don’t (or you shouldn’t, anyway) write with the absolute certainty that your book will be published. It helps, however, to be surrounded by people who are absolutely certain you will be. As it turns out, I was the very last person to know my wildest dream would eventually come true.
The book that became Kings of the Wyld benefited from a great many patient and enthusiastic beta-readers. Chief among these was Devon Pipars, who read it three chapters at a time over the course of a year and always clamoured for more, and Eugene Vassilev, who read it as many times as I asked him to and was as critical and ebullient a friend as an author could ask for.
I would also like to thank those with whom I shared the journey of writing my first, flawed attempt at a fantasy novel: Hollis Steele, Deyna Dodds, and Kaili Grant were champions of a book that might never see the light of day. Still, I am so very grateful.