White Stag

by Kara Barbieri

  “You know why. You’re not supposed to be a girl. Not really.”

  “But I am. My role doesn’t change that.”

  Bjørn faced me, sighing. “You are really pretty, Janneke.”

  I smiled. “Does that mean you’ll give me a pole?”

  The boy bit his lip, then dug in his pocket, holding out something made of iron. “Here. It’s a whistle. You can have it instead of the pole. It means more to me anyway.”

  “Thank you,” I said, my insides warming as I took the whistle. Maybe one day he’d really give me something that meant he cared.

  “Come on.” Bjørn tugged at my hand. “If we don’t find three different animal scats before noon, our fathers will have our heads.”

  “It shouldn’t be that hard,” I scoffed. “Considering you’re standing in some.”

  The boy yelped and jumped away from the bear scat he’d been standing in, and I laughed and laughed and laughed.

  I took the whistle in my gloved hand. It was small and twisted and broken now. But I remembered how its high shriek used to hurt my ears and how I used to laugh every time I blew it.

  Someone came to stand beside me. A hiss escaped from Soren’s lips as he stepped through land burned from the iron in the earth. “Janneke,” Soren said. “Are you okay?”

  His words yanked me out of the past, into the world where I belonged now. Was I okay? I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure how to describe what I was feeling right now. A little warm, a little cold, a little numb. It was like a mixture of ice and fire and nothingness were fighting for my attention. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give in to any of them.

  “I’m … remembering,” I said.

  “Is that bad or good?” he asked, brushing the hair out of my face.

  “It’s neither. It’s just remembering.” I stood, letting the whistle drop.

  “This was your village, wasn’t it?” he asked. He had a hand on my arm like he thought I would fall or run away.

  “Yes,” I said. “Elvenhule. That was the name.”

  “Was it a nice place?” he asked.

  “Before Lydian burned it to the ground? Yes.” I could still hear the pounding of horses’ hooves in my mind, the same as the day the village had been razed to the ground. Closing my eyes, I willed the sound to go away, only to find that it was growing louder. My eyes snapped open. It wasn’t in my head. Without a second thought, I turned to Soren. “Come on!” I made a dash for the trees.

  Soren followed behind me, cursing under his breath. “The iron in the field must’ve muted my awareness.”

  It was stupid. Stupid to stay in such an open place, stupid to let my feelings get to me, stupid to walk out in a field of literal poison toward creatures like us, stupid to become unaware, even for a moment, because now I heard the pounding of horses like thunder in my ears, and I knew more than anyone else what that meant.

  We made it to the forest line before they caught up with us and, instinctively, I scanned the trees for Seppo. A whistle too low for any bird came from above me. I looked up. The young goblin was in a tree. There were no signs of the wolves. His eyes were wide with concern, his hand already reaching for the feather staff slung across his back, but I shook my head.

  Go, I mouthed, hoping that maybe if he could get away, we weren’t totally lost. Hreppir, Breki, Lykka. I felt them deep in the forest; they’d taken a break to rip into a rabbit carcass. Now they were licking the blood from their lips and their ears perked to my call. Guide Seppo to you. He’ll be in the trees.

  Seppo shook his head, but then Soren followed my gaze and he nodded slowly like he knew exactly what I was thinking. With wet eyes, Seppo bounded across the treetops, back into the forest where he was safe for the time being.

  Then I turned back to the ashy field, bow and arrow in my hands, to stare down the goblins that had come for me. The sweet, sheer sound of the metal of Soren’s swords brushing against each other filled my ears.

  “We’re not going to be able to fight them,” he said quietly.

  “I know.”

  The leading figure was, of course, Lydian. He sat tall on a gray-flecked mustang, his blond hair blowing in the wind. Some of it had been burnt off, leaving it uneven on one side. Cuts littered his face and exposed skin, and the reek of iron burns hit my nose as I remembered both his shoulder and leg had been poisoned now. By me.

  “Well,” he said, dismounting. “Isn’t this delightful. My nephew and my sweet little Janneka in the place where it all began.”

  Even though a bubble of fear rose in my chest at his voice, I refused to let it show on my face. Instead, I raised my gaze to the men behind him. I counted fifteen horses; he’d lost some men as well. Good. It’s not like we can take fifteen of them, though.

  “You don’t sound very delighted,” I said through clenched teeth. From beside me, Soren maneuvered slightly so his shoulder was blocking me.

  “You wound me, Janneka.”

  My teeth clenched. That’s not my name. “You’ll live. I’m not yours anymore.”

  “Yes.” He lazily drew two knives from his boots. His greatspear hung from the back of his horse, glistening with poison. “You smell like him now.” He chuckled, like that amused him, and shot a smirk at Soren. “You like her as much as I did, nephew?”

  A snarl ripped through the air. “Watch yourself, Uncle.”

  Lydian sighed. “It’s you two who should be watching yourselves.” He motioned to his riders, and they began to dismount. “I wish I could kill you now, but I need you alive, dear nephew, now that there’s no taint of venom in your veins. I wonder, how did you ever heal from the lindworm bite?”

  “I healed him,” I said. Let him know how strong I am now. Let him know what I can do. Let him smell the power of the lindworm on me, let him smell the death scent of the draugr, let him smell the blood of the goblins I killed, let him smell the wild and the wind and the anger in my veins, so he knows I’m not the same as I was before.

  Lydian raised an eyebrow, interest gleaming in his emerald eyes. “Really?”

  “I am a lot different than I was before, Lydian.” My voice was low and soft.

  His eyes narrowed. “Oh, I’ve always known you would ruin the world.”

  I suppressed a shudder. Lydian would not get to me. He came closer to me with his knives. I was relieved to find they weren’t poison. I kept my bow and quiver slung across my back, knowing they’d be no use in a close fight, and instead gripped the stiletto in my non-ruined hand. Soren was backing off in a different direction, slowly sizing up the many goblins who were about to take him down.

  “Where did you get that weapon?” Lydian asked. “It’s the halfling brat’s.”

  “I took it off his body.” I spat at him and thanked the gods that, because I wasn’t goblin, Lydian couldn’t tell I was lying through my teeth.

  Lydian smiled, his canines poking beyond his lips. I knew that smile. “I didn’t know you had that in you, little girl.”

  I bared my teeth. “You don’t know a lot about me.”

  He lunged with his knives, and I dodged, tumbling away. I couldn’t let talking distract me; that was exactly Lydian’s goal. Distract me. Anger me. Make sure I couldn’t think. “I know everything about you.” He laughed. “I know everything. The fact you can’t see it is maddening.”

  “Says the madman,” I hissed.

  His eyes narrowed, and he leaned closer. “Says the one who sees the truth of you.”

  I let out a snarl of my own. Yes, that was his plan, and he was doing a pretty good job of it.

  He and I danced for a bit; his blades went forward, I rolled in another direction to come up somewhere behind him, him already in position, rinse and repeat. He was playing with me. If he really meant to kill me, then we’d be fighting like we did in the Erlking’s palace; the thought filled me with fire.

  Still, I had some tricks up my sleeve. He lunged and I waited a second too late, until his knife grazed my skin. Then I grabbed the hand holding it and twis
ted hard. The knife tumbled to the ground as I knocked my head back into his, his body now positioned behind me. One of his hands wrapped across my face, groping. Sharp talons made shallow welts as I bit down hard on what I thought was his thumb until the bitter taste of blood was in my mouth. He threw me to the ground with a force stronger than ten men, and I flew back a few meters, tumbling in the dirt. My breath was heavy in my lungs as I regained my bearings, only to see him stalking forward.

  “That’s the problem with you,” he said, placing a well-aimed kick in my stomach as I tried to rise. “You and your kind are so delicate. So soft.” Another kick, this time at my ribs. I rolled away, trying to create some space between us. The stiletto had been knocked out of my hand and was lying there, a few meters away. “A simple little kick and your insides explode.”

  This time, I saw the kick coming—right toward my chest. Risking it all, I rose and wrapped my arms around his leg, bringing him down to the ground. Scurrying above him, I pressed my fingers deep into his shoulder, where I knew the iron burn still poisoned his skin. He screamed and kicked out, his hands knocking me across the face. The force blew me away and again he rose, seething.

  My eyes were blurring as I looked around me. I couldn’t see Soren anywhere. Wildly, I flipped over to search for him. Don’t leave me, don’t leave me.

  Before I could find him, Lydian blocked my view and sat down heavily on my stomach. His hand grabbed my chin, squeezing hard until little rivulets of blood ran down my neck.

  “See, the problem with you is that everyone thinks you’re so pure. The salt of the earth. That’s what they call it. You amaze them.” With his free hand, he wrapped his fingers in my hair, and I cringed away from the touch. “But I know more than anything or anyone else, Janneka. You are an abomination. You should have died the moment you were born. You and him.”

  Saliva mixed with blood as I spat in his face. “The Permafrost disagrees.”

  “The Permafrost will die,” he snarled.

  “Only if we let you kill it!”

  His boots slammed down on both of my hands, forcing them still. “I thought I could save you, change you. I tried,” he said softly. “Really, I did. But you stabbed that nail into my leg, and now we’re here. I’m afraid this is where your story ends. I do apologize. I really did try.”

  His claws lengthened into wickedly sharp talons and a shiver rolled through my body. I’d seen the way goblins preferred to kill humans or humanlike creatures; they ripped the hearts right from their chests.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered, stroking my cheek with the ghost of tenderness. “It’ll be quick. I promise you won’t feel a thing.”

  All I could do was stare as his hand came down.

  Then a voice shouted in the distance. “Lydian!” Soren yelled. Lydian stood and turned toward his nephew, and I rolled over, heaving up everything I’d eaten in the past few days. Disgust made my skin crawl.

  “What is it, Soren?” Lydian looked intrigued. Soren was standing with blood streaming from his body, turning his white hair crimson. Behind him was a trail of bodies. Some moving, some not. “You’re quite the proficient fighter, I see.” He scowled, shooting a loathing glance at the dead. “I thought they’d be enough to engage you for now. I obviously thought wrong.”

  “You need me, right?” Soren asked. “For your stupid ritual.”

  “It’s not stupid,” Lydian hissed. “It will save everyone. It’s for the greater good. I guess you can’t understand that; you’ve been raised by greed and lust.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Soren said. “Willingly. I’ll go with you, and we’ll fight to the death. I know as well as you do that the kill has to be made during combat for it to count to the stag. Maybe you’ll win, maybe you’ll lose. But you can’t force me to fight you, Uncle. You know as well as I that it wouldn’t count to the stag. So, I have a proposition.” Warmth and longing and regret filled Soren’s eyes as he looked down on me. “Let her go. Let her go, and I will fight you to the death. May the new king win.”

  I struggled to my feet. “No!” I screamed. “Soren, no! Don’t. I’m not afraid.” My feet were numb under me, and I staggered forward until I fell. “Soren, please, no. You don’t need to.”

  The soft sounds of boots against the ashes appeared by me, and his lips pressed against the top of my head. “I love you,” he whispered, then he said, a bit louder, “and I release any hold over you by all folk, men, and gods. You are free of any burden or punishment the Permafrost may hold against you in the court of the Erlking or of the clans. I break the binds that tie you and leave you free from my world, from my kind, from me.”

  I crumpled to the ground as white, agonizing pain blazed behind my eyes. It was as if someone had set my mind on fire, letting molten lead drip down my throat until I suffocated slowly. Twisting and contorting, fighting for breath, fighting for a way past the pain of the broken bind, he whispered to me one last time. Three little words that set my heart ablaze.

  The world went black as he walked away.

  20

  IRON FIRE

  A HAND BRUSHED against my cheek, pulling me out of my fitful slumber. My body was tied against one of the skeleton trees, aching after being dragged from the back of a horse. Other places ached too, but I tried to forget about them because those pains were so much worse.

  “Wake up, sweetheart,” a light voice said. It sounded like poison to me.

  I blinked groggily and lifted my head, staring into the green eyes of the goblin who had claimed me as his. It was sick; he was beautiful. I knew goblins had two forms, a natural one and a predator one, but I didn’t think they’d be beautiful in their natural one. I thought no matter what, they’d look like monsters. But this man with his strong jaw and aquiline nose, his crystal eyes and golden hair, he was beautiful. Beautiful and terrible.

  “There’s a good girl,” he said.

  I cringed away from his hand. There was still blood under his nails, long dried now. It wasn’t mine. But it had to be the blood of one of the people I grew up with. This man—no this goblin, this thing—had killed them all.

  I coughed, my throat burning from the water I’d inhaled during the swim underneath the waterfall that let me escape and the smoke from my walk through the ruined village that led to my capture.

  He pressed something to my lips. It tasted like copper and iron. When I spat it on the ground, the red staining the earth could only have been blood.

  “You don’t like the taste, sweetling?” he taunted. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Go eat your young!” I coughed the insult with as much strength as I could.

  A slap had my head reeling. These things were so powerful. Why hadn’t they killed me yet? When would this one finish toying with me?

  “That wasn’t very nice,” he said. “I’m your master now. You should be nice to me. How about we tell each other our names, would that be a good start?” Still, he had that sickly sweet, taunting edge to his voice. I wanted to rip my ears off. Anything not to hear it. “My name’s Lydian,” he said, “but you’ll call me master, you understand?”

  I didn’t respond, so he slapped me again. Then with blood bubbling from my lips, I nodded.

  “Say it.”

  I stared at him defiantly, not allowing anything to pass my lips. He wouldn’t, I wouldn’t let him, he would never own me.

  Another slap made me see stars. “Say it!” The force of his next hit was so strong, my head cracked against the tree I was tied to.

  “I-I u-understand,” I managed to say with a mouth full of blood.

  “You understand, what?” he asked.

  I closed my eyes. This wasn’t real, this wasn’t real, this wasn’t real. I would wake up soon, in my village, and go about my daily chores. This was just a terrible nightmare. But when I opened my eyes, I was in the same place, staring down the same green-eyed goblin. Something inside me broke, and the strength I had dwindled away to nothing.

  “I understand, master.�
�

  Lydian smiled at me. “Now was that so hard?”

  “N-no, master.”

  “Now, what’s your name?”

  My name. I didn’t want him to know my name. I didn’t want him to know the name my siblings and parents called in joy and anger and laughter and love, the name my fellow men muttered in disgust underneath their voices and with grudging respect to my face. It was mine. The only thing left besides the nail stuck inside my boot. But a nail couldn’t help me against this creature that had slaughtered an entire village, could it?

  I willed myself to fight, to refuse, but there was so much pain, so much darkness, and not an ounce of spark still left in my soul. “Janneke,” I said quietly, trying to pretend that my name meant nothing when it really meant the world. “My name is Janneke, master.”

  “Janneke,” he said, smiling. “Janneka, perhaps?”

  “No!” I shouted. Not that. He could have my name, the real one meant to be used by all, but not Janneka. Not the special name meant for a single special person. Not that.

  He smiled. “Janneka, then.” He crouched down so our eyes met. “You and I are going to have a very nice, long time together, Janneka.”

  Then he let me go, and the blessed blackness overcame me.

  The darkness never stayed for long. Even lying in the dungeon with cold fetters around my wrists, every time I drifted off, the screaming of another prisoner or the sweet, poisonous voice of my captor pulled me from my sleep. In the darkness the passage of time was impossible to measure. I could’ve been down here for a week, a few months, even a year, and I wouldn’t know the difference. The smell of blood wafted all around, from other prisoners, from me, from whatever thing the guard was eating. Every so often, a squeal would pierce the cold air and then stop with a sickening crunch.

  Keys jangled and the lock on my cell door clinked open. I pulled myself into a sitting position. Maybe if I sat up, he wouldn’t take me this time. Maybe the smell of blood and pus that came from my chest would disappear. Maybe … maybe …