“I’ll stay with her,” said Ankran. “You bring help, if you can.”
“No,” said Jaud. “We go together. We are all oarmates now.”
“Who’ll carry her?”
Jaud shrugged. “When you have a load to lift, you’re better lifting than weeping.” And he slipped his arms underneath Sumael and grimaced as he lifted her, stumbled just a little, then settled her twitching face against his shoulder and without another word started southwards, head held high. She must not have weighed much now but, cold and hungry and tired as Yarvi was, it seemed a feat almost impossible.
“I’ve lived a while,” muttered Rulf, blinking at Jaud’s back. “But I can’t say I ever saw a finer thing.”
“Nor I,” said Yarvi, clambering up and hurrying after. How could he complain, or doubt, or falter, with that lesson in strength before him?
How could any of them?
22.
KINDNESS
They huddled in the damp brush, and looked down towards the steading.
One building was stone-built, so old it had settled into the land, a thin plume of smoke drifting from the snow-humped roof which made Yarvi’s mouth water and his skin prickle at misty memories of food and warmth. Another building, which from the occasional muffled bleating was the barn where the sheep were kept, looked to be made from the hull of an upended ship, though how it might have come this far inland he had no notion. Others were rough-hewn sheds almost lost under the drifted snow, the gaps between them blocked by a fence of sharpened logs.
Just outside the entrance, by a hole in the ice and with his fishing rod propped on a pair of sticks, a small boy sat swaddled in furs, and from time to time noisily blew his nose.
“This worries me,” whispered Jaud. “How many will be in there? We know nothing about them.”
“Except that they are people and people are never to be trusted,” said Nothing.
“We know they have food, and clothes, and shelter.” Yarvi looked at Sumael, hunched in every thread they could spare, which was few enough. She was shivering so hard her teeth rattled, lips gray-blue like slate, eyelids drooping, closing, opening and drooping again. “Things we need to survive.”
“Then it is simple.” Nothing unwrapped the cloth from the hilt of his sword. “Steel is the answer.”
Yarvi stared at him. “You’re going to kill that boy?”
Rulf wriggled his shoulders uncomfortably, but Nothing only shrugged his. “If it is a choice between his death or ours then, yes, I will kill him, and anyone else down there. They can join my regrets.” He started to rise but Yarvi grabbed his ragged shirt and dragged him back down, found himself staring into his hard, flat, gray eyes. Close up, they looked no more sane. Quite the reverse.
“The same goes for you, cook’s boy,” whispered Nothing.
Yarvi swallowed, but he did not look away, and he did not let go. Sumael had risked her life for his on the South Wind. It was time to repay the debt. And besides, he was tired of being a coward.
“First we’ll try talking.” He stood, tried to think up some gesture that might make him look less like a ragged beggar at the utter extremes of desperation, and failed.
“Once they have killed you,” said Nothing. “Will steel be the answer?”
Yarvi breathed a smoky sigh. “I expect so.” And he shuffled down the slope towards the buildings.
All was still. No sign of life but for the boy. Yarvi stopped perhaps a dozen steps from him.
“Hey.”
The lad jerked up, upsetting his fishing rod, stumbled back and nearly fell, then ran towards the house. Yarvi could only wait, and shiver. Shiver with the cold, and with the fear of what was coming. You could not expect too much kindness from folk who lived in land as harsh as this.
They spilled from the stone building like bees from a broken hive. He counted seven, each well-wrapped in furs, each with a spear. Three of them had stone points rather than metal, but all were gripped with grim purpose. Silently they rushed to make half a circle around him, spears pointing in.
All Yarvi could do was lift his hands, empty apart from their swaddlings of filthy sailcloth, send up a silent prayer to Father Peace and croak out, “I need your help.”
The figure in the center planted their spear butt-down in the snow, and walked slowly up to Yarvi. She pushed her hood back to show a shag of yellow-gray hair and a face deep-lined, worn by work and weather. For a moment, she studied him.
Then she stepped forward and, before Yarvi could cringe away, threw her arms about him and hugged him tight.
“I am Shidwala,” she said in the Tongue. “Are you alone?”
“No,” he whispered, fighting to hold back his tears of relief. “My oarmates are with me.”
THE INSIDE OF THE HOUSE was low, and narrow, and stank of sweat and woodsmoke, and it seemed a palace. An oily stew of roots and mutton was doled out from a blackened pot into a wooden bowl polished with years of use. Yarvi dug into it with his fingers and had never tasted anything finer. Benches followed the curving walls, and Yarvi and his friends sat on one side of the sizzling firepit and their hosts on the other—Shidwala, and four men he took to be her sons, and the boy from the ice pool, who stared at Sumael and Jaud as if they were elves stepped out of legend.
Back in Thorlby, these people would have seemed beyond poor. Now the room was crammed with riches. Tools of wood and bone were bracketed on the walls, cunning instruments for hunting, and fishing, and digging shelter, and teasing a living from the ice, skins of wolf and goat and bear and seal on every surface. One of the hosts, a man with a thick brown beard, scraped out the pot to hand Jaud a second bowl, and the big man nodded his thanks and started to stuff it in, eyes closed in ecstasy.
Ankran leaned close to him. “I think we have eaten all their dinner.”
Jaud froze with his fingers in his mouth and the bearded man laughed and leaned across the fire to clap him on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” said Yarvi, putting his own bowl aside.
“You are hungrier than us, I think,” said Shidwala. They spoke the Tongue with a strange accent. “And also remarkably far from your way.”
“We are heading to Vulsgard from the land of the Banyas,” said Ankran.
The woman considered that a moment. “Then you are remarkably close to your way, but I find your way a very strange one.”
Yarvi could only agree with that. “If we had known the hardship of it, we might have chosen another.”
“So it is with many choices.”
“All we can do now is see it through.”
“So it is with many choices.”
Nothing leaned close to Yarvi and whispered in his ground-down stub of a voice. “I do not trust them.”
“He wants to thank you for your hospitality,” said Yarvi, quickly.
“We all do,” said Ankran. “You, and the gods of your house.”
Yarvi brushed ashes from the prayer stone that was set into the hearth and read the runes there. “And She Who Breathes Out the Snows.”
“Well said and well reckoned.” Shidwala narrowed her eyes. “Where you come from she is a small god, eh?”
Yarvi nodded. “But here a tall one, I think.”
“Like many things, gods seem bigger when you are closer to them. Here, She Who Breathes Out the Snows is ever at our elbows.”
“She shall have our first prayers waking,” said Ankran.
“Wise,” said Shidwala.
“And you’ll have our second,” said Yarvi. “You’ve saved our lives.”
“Here all the living must be friends.” She smiled, and the deep creases in her face reminded Yarvi of Mother Gundring, and for a moment he was sick for home. “The winter is enemy enough for all of us.”
“We know it.” Yarvi looked over at Sumael, hunched close to the fire with her eyes shut, rocking gently with a blanket about her shoulders. Most of the color had come back to her face.
“You could wait with us, until winter passes.
”
“I cannot,” said Ankran, voice cracking as he set his jaw hard. “I must get to my family.”
“And I to mine,” said Yarvi, though his pressing need was to kill one of his rather than save them. “We must go on, but there are many things we need …”
Shidwala took in their wretched state and raised her brows. “Indeed there are. We would happily trade.”
At the word “trade” Shidwala’s sons smiled, and nodded their approval.
Yarvi glanced at Ankran, and Ankran spread his empty palms. “We have nothing to trade.”
“There is the sword.”
Nothing frowned even harder, cradled the blade a little closer, and Yarvi was painfully aware he had been happy to kill these people a few moments before.
“He will not part with it,” said Yarvi.
“There is one thing I could make good use of.” The man with the brown beard was staring across the fire at Sumael.
Jaud stiffened, and Rulf gave an unhappy grunt, and Ankran’s voice had a harsh edge when he spoke. “We will not sell one of our own. Not at any price.”
Shidwala laughed. “You misunderstand. Metal here is scarce.” She came around the fire on her haunches, reached into Sumael’s collar where steel glinted and drew out a length of her fine chain. “This is what we want.”
Yarvi felt the smile spread across his face. It had been a while, and it felt fine there. “In that case …” He unwound his scarf of frayed sailcloth and drew out his own heavier chain. “You might want this one too.”
The bearded man’s eyes lit up as he weighed it in his hand, then his jaw dropped as Nothing jerked open his own collar. “And there is this,” he said, dragging out the heavy links.
Now everyone was smiling. Yarvi leaned in close to the fire, and clasped his hands the way his mother used to. “Let us trade.”
Nothing leaned to whisper in his ear. “I told you steel would be the answer.”
WITH A FINAL CRASH the rusted bolt sheared away and Nothing’s collar sprang open.
“That was a stubborn one,” said the bearded man, frowning at his ruined chisel.
Somewhat unsteadily Nothing stood from the block, reached with one trembling hand to touch his neck, the skin leathery with the chafing of years.
“For twenty years I wore that collar,” he whispered, tears glimmering in his eyes.
Rulf slapped him on the shoulder. “I wore mine only three, and still I feel light as air without it. You must feel like you could float away.”
“I have,” whispered Nothing. “I will.”
Yarvi stroked absently at the old burns where his own collar used to sit, watching Ankran carefully pack the things their chains had bought them. A fishing rod and bait. A shovel made from the shoulderblade of a moose. A bronze knife that looked like a relic from a time soon after the Breaking of God. Nine arrows for Rulf’s bow. A wooden bowl for drinking. Dried moss to start a fire. Rope woven from wool. Ewe’s cheese and mutton and dried fish. Furs too, and rough over-clothes stitched from fleeces, and raw wool to stuff inside them. Leather sacks to carry it all. Even a sled to pull it on.
What silly things these would have seemed once, what beggar’s junk. Now it was a treasure hoard.
Sumael was wrapped up to her chin in a thick white fur, eyes closed and a rare grin on her face, white tooth showing through the notch in her lip.
“Feels good?” Jaud asked her.
“I am warm,” she whispered, without opening her eyes. “If I’m dreaming, don’t wake me.”
Shidwala tossed Nothing’s open collar clattering into a barrel alongside their chains. “If you want advice—”
“Always,” said Ankran.
“Head north and west. In two days you will come upon a country that fires under the earth make hot. At its edges the streams run with warm water and the fish teem.”
“I’ve heard tales of such a country,” said Yarvi, remembering Mother Gundring’s voice droning over the firepit.
“We will go north and west,” said Ankran.
Shidwala nodded. “And may the gods walk with you.” She turned to go but Nothing dropped suddenly to his knees, took her hand and pressed his cracked lips to it.
“I will never forget this kindness,” he said, wiping tears on the back of his hand.
“None of us will,” said Yarvi.
With a smile she pulled Nothing to his feet, and patted his grizzled cheek. “That is its own reward.”
23.
THE TRUTH
Rulf slipped from the trees with a huge grin on his face, bow over one shoulder and a stringy deer over the other. To leave no one in any doubt as to the quality of his archery he had left the arrow sticking from its heart.
Sumael raised one brow at him. “So you’re not just a beauty.”
He winked back. “To an archer, arrows make all the difference.”
“Do you want to skin, cook’s boy, or shall I?” Ankran held out the knife with the hint of a twisted grin. As though he knew Yarvi would refuse. He was no fool. The few times Yarvi had been dragged out to hunt his hand had stopped him drawing bow or holding spear and he had felt sick when it came to the butchery. His father had scalded him and his brother had mocked him and their men had barely bothered to conceal their contempt.
Much like the rest of his childhood, then.
“You can skin this time,” said Yarvi. “I’ll give you some pointers if you go wrong.”
After they ate Jaud sat with his bare feet to the fire, rubbing fat into the cracks between his thick toes. Rulf tossed the last bone aside and wiped his greasy hands on his fleece jacket.
“Some salt would’ve made all the difference.”
Sumael shook her head. “Have you ever had a thing you didn’t complain about?”
“If you can’t find anything to complain about you aren’t looking hard enough.” Rulf settled back on one elbow, smiling into the darkness and scratching at his thick growth of beard. “Though I never was disappointed in my wife. I thought I’d die at that bloody oar. But since I still seem to be casting a shadow I’ve a mind to see her again. Just to say a hello. Just to know that she’s well.”
“If she has any sense she’ll have moved on,” said Sumael.
“She had more’n her share. Too much to waste life waiting.” Rulf sniffed, and spat into the fire. “And better men than me aren’t hard to find.”
“There we can agree.” Nothing sat a little way from the fire with his stiff back to the rest of them and his naked sword on his knees, polishing the blade with a rag.
Rulf only grinned over at him. “And what about you, Nothing? You spent years scrubbing a deck, will you spend the rest of them scrubbing that sword? What will you do once we get to Vulsgard?”
Yarvi realized it was the first time since the South Wind went beneath the waves that any one of them had talked about what might come next. It was the first time it had looked as if they might make it.
“I have scores to settle. But they have kept fresh twenty years.” Nothing bent back to his frantic polishing. “It can rain blood later.”
“Anything but snow would be an improvement in the weather,” said Jaud. “I will be finding passage south, back to Catalia. Najit is the name of my village, and from its well comes the sweetest water in the world.” He clasped his hands over his stomach, and smiled the way he always did when he mentioned the place. “I mean to drink from that well again.”
“Perhaps I’ll join you,” said Sumael. “It won’t be far out of my way.”
“Your way where?” Yarvi asked. Though they had slept within reach of each other for months he hardly knew a thing about her, and found he wanted to. She frowned at him, as if wondering whether to open a door so long kept bolted, then shrugged.
“The First of Cities, I expect. I grew up there. My father was a famous man, in his way. A shipwright to the empress. His brother still is … perhaps. I hope. If he’s alive. A lot can change in the time I’ve been away.”
And
she fell silent, and frowned into the flames, and so did Yarvi, worrying over what might have changed in Thorlby while he was gone.
“Well, I will not be turning down your company,” said Jaud. “Someone who actually knows where they are going can be a considerable help on a long journey. What about you, Ankran?”
“In Angulf’s Square in Thorlby there is a flesh-dealer’s shop.” Ankran growled the words at the fire, his bony face full of shadows. “The one where Shadikshirram bought me. From a man called Yoverfell.” He flinched when he said the name. The way Yarvi might have when he thought of Odem’s. “He has my wife. He has my son. I have to get them back.”
“How do you plan to do that?” asked Rulf.
“I will find a way.” Ankran made a fist, and thumped it harder and harder against his knee until it had to be painful. “I must.”
Yarvi blinked across the fire. When he first laid eyes on Ankran he had hated him. He had tricked him, watched him beaten and stolen his place. Then he had accepted him, walked beside him, taken his charity. Come to trust him. Now he found what he had never thought to. That he admired him.
All Yarvi had done was for himself. His freedom, his vengeance, his chair. What Ankran had done was for his family.
“I could help,” he said.
Ankran looked up sharply. “You?”
“I have … friends in Thorlby. Powerful friends.”
“This cook you were apprenticed to?” snorted Rulf.
“No.”
Yarvi was not sure why he chose that moment. Perhaps the closer he was bound to this band of misfits the heavier the lie sat on him. Perhaps some spot of pride had somehow survived and chose that moment to chafe. Perhaps he thought Ankran was putting the truth together anyway. Or perhaps he was just a fool.
“Laithlin,” he said. “Wife of the dead king, Uthrik.”
Jaud gave a smoking sigh, and settled down into his fur. Rulf did not bother even to chuckle. “And what are you to the Golden Queen of Gettland?”
Yarvi kept his voice level even though his heart was suddenly thumping. “Her youngest son.”