The words of the slain hold tremendous power.

 

It’s why any sensible warrior is a master of swift endings. Such as an arrow through the eye or a clean separation of head from shoulders. In a pinch, a slit throat will do. Though it really is best to avoid giving your enemy the chance to make even garbled curses out of their last bloody breaths. For even those without the slightest touch of magic have been known to make a curse stick if it’s uttered on the cold brink of death.

 

Eindred the Bloody collected curses in the same way that other warriors collected scars. Even in the wild chaos of battle, he was known to take a knee, pressing his ear to a felled enemy’s laboring lips.

 

May your every loved one die screaming in pain.

 

I hope you die with your eyes stabbed out and your heart in your hands.

 

You will never know happiness.

 

Your existence will be suffering.

 

May your greatest enemy rise from the grave and never leave you alone.

 

The last was his most recent curse, and Eindred wondered if it meant some great murdered brute was tracing his steps, waiting to catch him while he slept.

 

Eindred crossed the peninsula with a company of barbaric warriors, gaining a new curse from every enemy he felled. Not all of them would stick, he knew. But some undoubtedly would. And he would deserve every one.

 

Others in his company treated him with wary, sidelong glances, because surely it was dangerous to travel with one so cursed as he. But Eindred was a force in battle, relentless and unstoppable as an icy winter gale, and so they swallowed their complaints, and contented themselves with leaving a wide berth on either side of his scarred, patchwork arms.

 

Eindred was marching at the back of the company when they came upon the village. It was a collection of squat, wooden homes tucked beneath a snow capped mountainside. From thatched rooftops, wisps of smoke from cooking fires rose, painting the blue sky in pale, meandering strokes. 

 

This company tended to leave such settlements alone, and Eindred was glad for it. No warriors would be found in tiny mountainside villages, and though he might live to fight, he had no interest in wholesale slaughter. 

 

This time, however, the company leader - a silent, brutish man, held up a hand.

 

Their company was running low on food, it turned out, and even from a distance, the warriors could see the village’s sheep - a trail of white spots on the green hillside.

 

Eindred was disappointed when, ultimately, violence erupted in the quiet village, though he did not lay down his thick handled blade.

 

The shepherd boy had refused to give up his master’s sheep, and when he shouted, a blacksmith had burst from his home, wielding a great hammer in his hand. 

 

The battle was short. 

 

When all was done, four lay dead. The shepherd, the blacksmith, and two young men who’d foolishly taken up crude wooden spears. The rest of the villagers huddled, terrified in their homes. The warriors expected to slaughter the sheep with no further trouble, but when they turned back to the field, an individual stood blocking their way.

 

His hair was dark - as the hair in these parts tended to be, and his face was sharp, both nose and cheeks splattered with freckles. Golden eyes beheld the warriors, and he watched them with a steady, measured gaze. Without the slightest hint of fear, he stood before them, his simple robe fluttering in the icy mountain’s breath, and said: “These are simple people. They have little in way of money or goods. It wasn’t for nothing that the shepherd, blacksmith, and teenagers died. They need these sheep. And I cannot allow you to take them.”

 

The other warriors in the company laughed at the young man’s foolishness - for that was what it looked like to them. Eindred did not laugh, however. Though the stranger’s voice was light, the air stirred around him. 

 

It was rare to encounter one who commanded magics. Rare - but not impossible. And so Eindred alone was unsurprised when the young man turned his golden eyes to the heavens and summoned great branches of lightning which cleaved the skies above them. The world erupted and the men around Eindred screamed.

 

Eindred, who’d expected something like this, had already begun running. 

 

Later, he would think it odd that the witch hadn’t bothered to move. But in the heat of battle, with lightning splitting the field at his back, Eindred’s attention had narrowed to the rough point of his blade - and then, the crimson place where it pierced the witch’s chest.

 

The skies silenced as Eindred pulled the wet, crimson blade free of its target. 

 

It took just a moment for the witch to fall, but in that single, infinite moment, Eindred was subjected to the full weight of that golden gaze.

 

Legs folding beneath him, the witch crumpled, collapsing back onto the wild, wet grass. Eindred knelt beside him, grimly eager to hear the curse and be done with it. Surely a curse at the lips of one so powerful as this would finally bring an end to things? 

 

To take one’s own life was an unspeakably shameful end for a warrior such as he. But a curse? Well, one couldn’t help how the wrong curse might speed things along.

 

The witch’s black hair was damp from the dew in the grass, and when he turned, it stuck to the side of his face and neck. His mouth opened and closed. Holding his breath, Eindred leaned in.

 

“-my hut…it’s just past…the next hill over,” the witch whispered. “In it, I keep medicines and herbs. For the villagers. And travelers who pass.”

 

Eindred shook his head. He didn’t understand.

 

Impossibly, the witch smiled. When he lifted a hand, Eindred twitched, expecting to be struck.

 

The witch’s bloodied finger, however, did nothing more than tap his chest. And then, in a wet, rattling breath, the witch, with his great power finally spoke his curse. 

 

“May you live a life of safety and peace.” 

 

Eindred sat, his thick, scarred knuckles braced in the dirt as the cold mountain wind whistled down the hillside at his back.

 

“What?” he whispered. 

 

But the young man’s golden eyes were blank and empty, and the other warriors lay dead in the field. Only the relentless wind snapped and whistled in answer.

 

Eindred left.

 

Within a month, he’d joined up with another company. And it soon became clear  the witch’s death rattle had been a curse of great power indeed. For wherever Eindred traveled, peace inevitably followed. Enemy warriors surrendered and when they didn’t, members within Eindred’s own company had sudden changes of heart. As for Eindred himself, not a single person would raise a blade against him, and Eindred had never been the sort who could raise his own blade against one who had no wish to fight.

 

And so for another month he wandered, hapless, without even the dark purpose of collecting curses which had driven him for the last several years. 

 

He’d been raised with a sword in his hand, brought up knowing full well that his job in life would be to cut short the existence of any who stood against him. Not even thirty, and his soul was exhausted, worn ragged by such an life. And so, he’d sought a way out if it. Eindred had accumulated a terrifying number of curses - curses which would surely have felled lesser men than he. Before everything had gone wrong in the tiny village, he’d been sure it was only a matter of time before they overcame him.

 

But now, the witch’s single curse had overpowered them all.

 

Eindred was safer than he’d ever been in his life. He’d never known such a quiet, terrible peace. 

 

After another month, he returned to the mountainside village. He didn’t have any good reason to return - other than perhaps the distant hope that a villager’s rage might be enough to overcome the curse. As he climbed the grassy hillside, he resigned himself to potential death by club or rake.

 

In the end, he was disappointed. The villagers didn’t recognize him. He’d thrown his sword away weeks ago in a fit of despair, and unable to sell his services as a warrior, he’d been unable to afford replacements for his worn clothes. As he trudged through the village, the stares that followed him were curious, if not a little wary. But in the end, no voices cried out for his death and he marched on.

 

Walking among the sheep (even they had no fear of him), Eindred stopped by the place where the witch had died. White flowers grew in a ring in the grass, surely the result of lingering magic. Proof then, that the curse had been uttered by one who was powerful.

 

It was as he stood, glowering at the flowers and grass, that he remembered the witch’s other last words, and the supposed hut beyond the hill. It was a bitter sort of curiosity which drove him to seek it out. The witch had cursed Eindred in the cruelest possible manner, and he wondered the sort of house one so devious as he kept.

 

The hut was built into the hillside, and green grass climbed over the roof. Two square windows looked out from either side of the door. When Eindred tried the handle, it twisted, but the thick wood stuck. It wasn’t until he thrust one of his large shoulders against the door that it opened with a scrape.

 

The windows, coated in dust and grime, stained the sunlight silver, and the room was painted in a strange, unreal light. Eindred looked from the dark, lifeless hearth to the square breakfast table, to the shelves full of glass jars that lined the room. 

 

He reached for one of the jars, holding it up to the light. Elegant, looping letters read: Primrose. Inside the jar, leafy vines with summer yellow flowers curled against the glass. He set the jar aside, turning to inspect the rest of the room. A knotted, wooden walking staff leaned against a corner, and nearby, a bookshelf was tucked into the wall. Running his thick, callused fingers over the worn spines, he read titles such as: Herbs of the North, Tinctures and Extracts, and The Common Malady.

 

Eindred stayed the night because he had nowhere else to go.

 

He stayed the second night because the witch’s wooden rocking chair was comfortable, and the rocking motion soothed his war-sore back. 

 

By the third night, he’d cleaned the windows and wiped the dust from the house. He might have spent most of his life outdoors, but long ago his mother had taught him the importance of a clean house. That night, before settling into the rocking chair, he coaxed weary life into the damp hearth.

 

On the fourth day, his boredom drove him to read from one of the books.

 

After nearly a month of this, Eindred had read all of the books but one - and the villagers had taken note of the smoke rising from the distant hillside.

 

One night, Eindred was woken from dreams of blood, battle, and knowing, golden eyes, by a pounding on his door. As a warrior, he’d been taught the virtue of dying with a weapon in his hand, but his back was sore, and he couldn’t bring himself to reach for even such a rudimentary weapon as the walking staff. Instead, he lit a candle in the dark before opening the door, wondering if one of the other curses had finally weaseled its way past the witch’s cruel protections.

 

He was not met by a blade or an arrow, but by a pale faced villager holding a bundle of blankets. Inside the blankets, Eindred was surprised to discover a flush-faced child. The villager was babbling, a string of panicked, begging words which hardly made sense to Eindred’s still waking mind. But he understood that the child was sick. Before he could apologize to the poor man and explain that he was nothing more than a warrior, Eindred recalled a paragraph of text. 

 

Reaching out, his scarred fingers fumblingly pulled the blanket down from where it cocooned the gasping child’s face. He frowned, observing the red rash on the child’s skin and listening to the child’s thin, wheezing breaths.

 

He turned then, considering the jars. After reading the labels, he grabbed one, and then another. Wordlessly ushering the villager into the chair, he put a pot of water over the fire to boil. After finding the right book, he double checked the measurements before scooping the herbs into the boiling water.

 

Aromatic steam rose from the pot, and Eindred, after an awkward moment of indecision, scooped the child from her father’s hands. Patting her on the back, he held her and watched, ensuring she took several deep breaths.

 

Within an hour, the girl’s condition was remarkably improved, and Eindred sent the girl and her father away with a small cloth bag of herbs. After they’d gone, he stood for a long while, staring into the fire and idly rubbing his back. 

 

A week passed before another villager dared approach. This one, with a limp. After Eindred supplied another bag of herbs, the next villager visited within the day. And two more came the day after.

 

Offerings soon began appearing on his doorstep. First a basket of eggs. Then a pile of wool blankets, followed by a warm jar of milk. 

 

Eindred felt a stab of guilt at the payments. He’d never been a stranger to death, but now, living in this hut at the village’s edge, his memory of the pallid faces of the dead shepherd and blacksmith and the two teens returned with increasing frequency. But the most common guest in his memories was also the most recurrent visitor in his dreams. The golden-eyed witch haunted him. Worse still, whether Eindred dreamt of him dying in the field, surrounded by sheep, or rocking in the chair Eindred had taken for his own, the man seemed to always be smiling in a way that suggested he knew something that Eindred did not. It was both morbid and unsettling, and Eindred wished the ghost of his final enemy would leave him be.

 

Another month passed, and as winter reluctantly gave way to spring, the villagers insisted that Eindred join them in celebrating the shifting of the seasons. He accepted the invitation, though he thought he probably shouldn’t have. He took the walking stick, and as he strolled through the dirt streets decorated with poles and streamers, he resolved that he would stay just long enough to placate the insistent townspeople before retreating to the quiet hut he’d come to think of as his own.

 

His plans were dashed by a small hand which reached out, clasping tightly around his index finger. When he looked curiously down, he met the bright eyed gaze of a child. He recognized her immediately - for it was the sick child. Or, the child who had been sick. Now her cheeks were flushed with nothing more than excitement, and she laughed with pure delight as she squeezed his rough hand.

 

Eindred had felled giants. But giants did not have wide, mischievous eyes and gleeful, gap-toothed smiles, and so Eindred could do nothing more than meekly follow the babbling girl as she pointed at painted sheep and gawked at fluttering banners.

 

By the time the sun sank low on the pastel horizon, Eindred had eaten more sweets than would agree with him and had been dragged - by the girl, and then grinning villagers - into spinning dances until his aching back finally demanded he stop. 

 

When he returned to the hut, the quiet was newly stifling, and he set about lighting the fire and putting water to boil for tea. 

 

As he drank his tea, he considered the room and frowned. It was missing something, he decided. Two days passed before he decided that the problem was the rocking chair. By itself, it made the room look lopsided and incomplete.

 

Eindred purchased fine wood from a traveling merchant. And though he had no practical reason to build a chair (he only needed the one, after all), Eindred’s fingers, which had previously grown so accustomed to the hack and slice of a weapon, itched for another purpose. It was the first time he’d felt in such a way since childhood - since before the rough men with their braided beards had taken him from his home and replaced his knit toy with a knife. 

 

With his arms laden with wood, Eindred shook off the memory. Instead, an image of the witch slipped, unbidden, like a sigh in his mind. Days ago, Eindred had found, hidden behind the shelves, leather bound journals. Curious, he’d read them, only to discover, written in the same elegant scrawl as the jar labels, the words of the witch.

 

And so now, as Eindred toed open the door and crossed the threshold of the hut, he pictured the witch with his dark hair and freckles writing at the square table. Eindred had been aware of the witch a matter of minutes before he’d plunged his crude blade into the man’s heart, but now he knew that the witch’s favorite food was potato stew, that he was saving money to buy a stringed instrument, and that the wintertime, when the hearth was warm and the rocking chair was draped with thick blankets, was his favorite season.

 

Eindred built the second rocking chair, and then two more dining chairs for the villagers who had begun to periodically visit. It felt good to use his hands in such a way, and he was glad to be able to offer his warm-hearted neighbors their choice of seats.

 

But as spring tumbled into summer, and summer leapt into fall, the silence in the hut grew, and with it - Eindred’s guilt. He could not forget the villagers he’d had a hand in killing. And the beautiful, golden eyes of the witch, who’d lived to care for the villagers that Eindred now loved, haunted Eindred’s nearly every dream. 

 

Eventually, he could take it no longer, and one crisp, cool afternoon in fall, Eindred gathered the villagers around and confessed to them his true identity and what he’d done. 

 

He waited, head hung before them, for one of the dark curses breathed upon him to finally twist fate and compel the hand of one of his betrayed neighbors to give him the end he deserved. In the silence, he held his breath, and it was the most unsettling sensation to realize, for the first time in a long, long while, he did not wish to die.

 

His thoughts were interrupted by a small hand tapping his knee. The girl lifted her hands, and the warrior who could no longer withstand giants, much less the bright eyes of a child, lifted her into his arms.

 

He found that the villagers knew. That they’d figured it out within a week. There’d been talk of attacking him in revenge, they explained. But they remembered how he’d fought, and they feared which of them he might drag into death with him. When another week passed and was observed doing nothing more than cleaning the poor dead witch’s home, they decided it was best to just let him be. Of course, before long the girl had fallen ill, and when he used the witch’s herbs to save her, the village breathed a collective sigh of relief. He’d changed. People did that sometimes. 

 

Surrounded by kindly villagers, Eindred pressed a hand over his face and wept. It was the first time he’d done so since those men took him away from his mother.

 

When Eindred returned home, he knew he should be relieved. But a last, terrible shard of guilt was lodged in a deep, unreachable part of his chest. He might not have personally killed the four villagers (though his presence was bad enough), but his hands remembered the leather handle of his blade, the hesitation, then give as it sank into the witch’s chest. 

 

That day, he’d asked the villagers the witch’s name. And now he had a name to call the last man he’d murdered; the man who’d cursed him so thoroughly.

 

Severin. 

 

At dusk, Eindred wandered out to the fields where the ring of white flowers still grew. The sky was gray with thick, threatening clouds which throughout the afternoon had been steadily darkening. Eindred had previously thought them an omen - of his coming doom at the hands of the villagers. But he’d been wrong. And now, standing before the white flowers in the grass, he turned his face to the clouds and felt the first cool drops of rain fall on his cheeks. 

 

“Severin!” he called out to the skies. Deep within the looming clouds, lightning flashed and low, rumbling thunder shook the air. “It was my hand which ended your life, and with your dying breath you gifted what I thought was a nightmare. Did you know that it would turn out to be a dream?” Eindred asked, voice shaking. “I think you did.”

 

Another white flash lit the clouds, followed by deep, bone trembling thunder.

 

“Though it’s a dream, I’ll never know peace,” he cried to the skies. “How can I? When I live in the home of the one I so coldly murdered? I would leave, but the villagers have my heart - as they had yours. In this state, I don’t think I’ll ever truly know true rest or true peace - despite the great power of your curse.”

 

Lightning flashed, breaking from the clouds and streaking across the sky.

 

“Even now, I’m not sure,” Eindred said as rain pattered across on the windblown field. “If you are my greatest enemy or ally.”

 

As he spoke, a bolt of lightning struck down. It tore through the air, making the whole field flash white. Eindred flinched away from it, instinctively covering his face as the ground rumbled beneath him and thunder shook the air.

 

The voice which spoke behind him, nearly eclipsed by the wind and rain, was the very same which had haunted so many of his dreams. “May your greatest enemy rise from the grave, Eindred, and never leave you alone.”

 

Standing, dripping in the field, Eindred recalled his second to last curse. The one which now seemed a lifetime ago. As lightning flashed again, behind him now and growing more distant, he turned and beheld the figure standing at the heart of the gale.

 

“So you are my greatest enemy then?” Eindred called to him.

 

The witch replied, his golden eyes dancing, “I don’t think it’s so simple as that. Do you?”

 

Eindred could only shake his head. 

 

Thunder rumbled as the witch and ex-warrior beheld one another.

 

“I made a chair,” Eindred blurted, and Severin smiled. “A few actually,” he added, rubbing a hand over the back of his head.

 

“Do I get the new rocking chair or my old one?” 

 

“Any,” Eindred stammered, “Either. Both?” He didn’t think he’d ever felt so wrong footed.

 

Severin’s smile grew. “Lucky for you, I only need one chair. You can keep the old one if you like it. I trust your craftsmanship.”

 

When Severin abruptly turned and began walking across the field, Eindred stood silently watching until the witch stopped and glanced over his shoulder, looking almost annoyed. “Well? Are you coming?”

 

Storm at his back, Eindred asked, “Where?”

 

 “Home, of course. Where else?”

 

“Home,” Eindred repeated and smiled.