Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  “They’ve taken over the farms,” Sigrid adds. “The real farms, I mean. Mother grew up in one, on the coast where the Council farm is now, just south of here in the arms of the mountain. Rich land that runs down to the sea.”

  “The soil there is magical, and it is sheltered from the wind . . .” Iduna’s eyes are distant. “The Council took the land from my mother. What is twenty generations of farming worth? How can anybody make up for that?”

  “There’s never enough food now. Children are too small, and it tastes . . . wrong. People eat rats in the city. And in the countryside there are no more frogs.”

  What has happened to the idyllic Antilia of his childhood? Was the place he came to throughout his childhood a lure, a false fantasy? No wonder Ari kept him out of the city. The complaints, the fears people speak of, are familiar: hints of concentration camps, super-jails, the degradation and conglomerations of traditional farms, a powerful and self-serving government. It reminds him all too much of home.

  “At the Council head’s house last night,” he remembers, “there was fish on the table. Can’t people eat fish? And there are seals in the harbour. Can’t people eat . . . that kind of thing?”

  Mother and daughter throw their hands in the air in identical gestures of disgust. “We are prohibited from eating the bounty of the sea.”

  “Prohibited?”

  “Only the rich can eat that which comes from the water,” Sigrid clarifies. “By order of the Council.”

  “But . . . the ocean here is so big.” He pictures it. Only this small island, on a planet full of water.

  “New laws for new times,” says Iduna, sour as a crab apple. She stands. “But now, I am thinking of the prisoners. If they have survived . . . we have no way of knowing.” Her voice doesn’t even shake. Rowan realizes who she reminds him of then: his own mother. “I will organize a wagon train. And you, Chosen, will take a bath.”

  He protests; there’s no time.

  “No one is going anywhere immediately,” Sigrid points out. “And you look terrible. You need to impress the Council, not frighten them.”

  Rowan looks down at himself. His clothes are covered in dirt and blood—his own, other peoples’—and are stiff with sweat.

  He submits to a bath. Water is drawn from a pump behind the house, and heated on the suddenly-blazing hearth. This is poured into a tin bathtub, set up behind a flimsy curtain in a corner of the main room. A younger brother is commandeered to find clean clothes that will fit Rowan, and an old man announces that he will dig around for a leather sheath and belt for the sword.

  Rowan lets them order everything. It’s a relief.

  All the while, the volume of voices builds outside Sigrid’s home.

  Scuttling behind the curtain, he strips and gets into the bath as quickly as he can, embarrassment running under his skin. Children’s faces peer around the curtain at him, giggling, and are shooed away by Sigrid. Warm water, hard, heavy soap, feels like heaven.

  The younger brother finds some linen breeches that will fit, and a white linen shirt, laced with leather at the neck. He will have no choice but to put his dirty Converses back onto his feet. He feels like he’s dressing for some Dungeons & Dragons live roleplay event. But the belt and sheath—those feel good. The sword sits comfortably at last, out of the way but easy to draw, should he need to.

  And he knows he will need to.

  Yonah’s voice comes from beyond the curtain. “Well, let the fools refuse then.”

  “They have a point,” Iduna notes.

  “We should keep people hidden, here, around the city,” Yishay adds. “We should not all head for the prison. That path could easily be a trap; they could slaughter us from the clifftops.”

  “And of course not everyone who accompanies us would be a member of the resistance. Many of them will simply want to see their people again, people who have been incarcerated. We can’t count on them to support us if things turn ugly.”

  “It’s a matter of balancing the risks.”

  “Could the Council really be sincere?”

  Rowan hastily finishes doing up his shirt and emerges from behind the curtain, into the debate. “I will say this: I don’t believe the leader is the kind of guy to leave himself without a backup plan. But he acknowledged me as the Chosen before all the Council. And I have to try and find Ari. I must.”

  Sigrid puzzles over his dirty jeans, studying the rivets and belt loops, and the way the pockets are constructed. God, is everyone going to be wearing Levi’s and singing Radiohead now?

  “And he told me his name.”

  They all look at him. “Well, what is it?” Iduna asks.

  “Brandr.”

  They all think on it. No one speaks a word.

  “It makes him seem . . . human,” Yishay says after a while.

  “A name a shepherd boy could have,” agrees his brother.

  Sigrid meets his eyes, and smiles. It’s a pretty dazzling smile. “I think that this Brandr, he’s afraid. A Chosen one has returned to Antilia. And the people know it.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Open Gates

  When Rowan, accompanied by Sigrid, her mother, and the Whetungs, arrives back at the city square, it is already chaos.

  The sun is over the tallest buildings now. Rowan looks for familiar faces but it’s a blur; the place is packed with people, shouting, calling out. Rowan wonders if they’re all here because of him. It’s a terrifying thought.

  As he steps out of the alley a woman cries, “He is here!” and the cry is taken up and spreads like ripples.

  Rowan’s stomach jolts like he’s on a roller coaster.

  He’s got to play this.

  He jumps up onto a low wall, steadied by Yonah. The crowd shifts and turns like a tidal wave. Murmurs, growing into a shout. It is possible that the Council will order him shot now, here, in front of all these people. Anything is possible. His heart beats in his throat like it’s trying to claw out of his body.

  He sees Bob, waving like a madman and grinning ear to ear. “I knew you’d do it, I knew it!” Bob yells.

  “It’s time,” Yonah says.

  “Time for what?”

  And there’s the old woman from the meeting, and the voluble woman with the baby.

  They’ve all come to see what he will do. They all look at him with hope.

  He draws his sword and raises it into the air, feeling silly.

  The crowd cheers.

  —

  The jail, the farm, is a half day’s walk from the city of Kalmar. There is a second entrance, the South Gate, in a mountain pass near the foot of the vast volcano. But the prisoners, if Brandr keeps his word, will be released by the West Gate, the one closest to the city.

  Rowan, flanked by the Yonah and Sigrid, leads a crowd of Antilians. It’s an eerie echo of his arrival here with Ari; they go through the city, climbing up and up, and come to the place where the land falls. They gaze across the plain, a flat barren place, and looming in the distance, they see the mountain.

  It is interesting, Rowan considers, that the founders of Kalmar set the city in a place where you can’t see the mountain. Is it too painful a reminder of the island’s vulnerability?

  Well, they can see the mountain now.

  As if in response to Rowan’s gaze, the ground shakes slightly, and a dark rumble rolls through the air. Ash leaks out of the top of the great volcano, joining the low-lying clouds above the mountain.

  It’s terrifying.

  Rowan stands at the clifftop, the ancient worn stair cut from the living rock unfurling at his feet. Behind him, he hears the murmurs of hundreds of Antilians. The streets of Kalmar are full.

  Not everyone is here. Yishay is leading an armed group out along the clifftop, keeping watch for Council guards and/or assassins who might attack people on the road from above. Other members of the resistance have remained behind in the city. If any of them see something suspicious, they have a series of messengers posted, ready to run or sai
l to whoever needs the information.

  Rowan has never wished so much for a working phone.

  Antilians by the hundreds follow Rowan, drawn by the possibility of seeing their incarcerated loved ones again like salmon going home to the sea. And it is this very mass—the sheer number of citizens—that provides any measure of safety to this whole expedition. Surely even the Council won’t slaughter their own citizens en masse.

  Iduna has arranged for carts, wagons, and stretchers to come around the long way and meet them on the road, to carry the prisoners unable to walk.

  It’s the best they can do. Rowan gulps, and leads the crowd down the ancient, worn stone staircase.

  There’s the beautiful looping river, reflecting bright silver even under this grey sky against the bright green of the turf. And there’s the huge pale stone, now with a dark gash from top to bottom where he dragged the sword down and out. The road is smooth, packed earth. Rowan leads the people past the stone, his back crawling.

  He looks up. No sign of anyone above. He can’t shake the feeling that the stones, the cliffs themselves, have eyes.

  They go on in silence. The path rises over the river at one point, a stone bridge with a graceful curve. And on. Far off to his left, to the north, Rowan sees a blue line, the sea.

  “We are walking parallel to the shoreline, here,” says Yonah in answer to his unspoken question. “We are almost halfway to the gate.”

  Halfway? Rowan strains to see ahead. What will the Council farm look like? There must be a wall, he considers, to keep people in.

  There is someone up ahead. Rowan is about to touch Yonah’s arm but the man has already seen the figure. “It’s one of our messengers.”

  “Hopefully good news,” Sigrid murmurs.

  Rowan and the Antilians quicken their pace.

  The runner is a young woman, skirts tied up around her knees. She greets Rowan, folding her arms in front of her and clawing down her forearms from elbow to wrist. “Chosen,” she says between breaths. “Yonah, Sigrid, Iduna. Word is that the guards are emptying out of the Council farm, mostly via the South Gate in the mountains.”

  “And the prisoners?”

  “Are preparing to exit the West Gate. Few guards are left, and they claim to be following orders to support the exodus.”

  “The Council kept their word?” Rowan can’t believe his ears.

  “So it seems.”

  Word spreads backward through the line, and there are cheers. Rowan feels his heart swelling with joy. He wants to break into a run, but it would start a stampede. Again, feeling ridiculous, he raises his sword into the air, and walks forward, his heart beating fast and strong.

  “It is you,” Sigrid says. Her face is full of wonder. “Even the Council head, even Brandr—” she revels in using the new name “—sees that you are Chosen. He has had to change his plans now.”

  “New laws for new times!” chirps the old woman, right behind them, breaking into raucous laughter. “New laws for new times!”

  —

  They come around a bend in the road to a place where the cliffs veer seaward, curving across the path in an impenetrable wall. The cliff has been built into and carved here; it’s a fortress of living rock. Two towers spiral toward the grey and empty sky. Set deeply between them is a tall gate made of heavy wood, studded and bound with metal.

  The gates are open.

  Two guards stand in their council livery, but when they see Rowan and the others swing around the bend, they extend their palms outward to show they are unarmed.

  “I wouldn’t want to be them,” Rowan says.

  “Me neither,” says Sigrid. Her eyes are hard. “These are the men who have been terrorizing our families for years.”

  “I don’t want anyone hurt,” Rowan says, anxious. The last thing they need is some kind of frenzied bloodbath.

  Still no sign of any attack from above. Rowan senses Yonah scanning the cliff and the top of the prison wall, as anxious as he himself is. Guards could be hidden out of sight up there, ready to rain destruction down upon them all, bottlenecked here on this damn road with the cliff hemming them in.

  As they come closer to the gateway, one of the guards steps forward.

  “Chosen.”

  Rowan can’t see the man’s face through his metal helmet and faceguard. “Yes.”

  “Welcome.”

  The guards step back and are joined by several of their fellows. Straining, they push the gates open wide.

  Rowan stares. A wide, flat plain slopes toward the distant shore. It looks like a factory farm, rows and furrows wavering across the endless flat space. There is no farm machinery. They’ve done it all with hoes and shovels, ploughs pulled by human beings. At a distance, hugging the rock face, he makes out a tall fence, and behind that, holes are punched through the rock. This is the prison, dank caves in the rock, where so many Antilians have been incarcerated and “re-educated.” A sound comes from there, a steady, bright thwack. The fence is wavering . . . no, it’s coming down. It’s down.

  And a great rag-tag crowd emerges from behind that fence, clambering over the stumps, running, walking, and hobbling toward the open gates.

  “Someone should go inside here,” Yonah says, “and make sure there aren’t guards hidden.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  Rowan strains to see Ari. He prays that he will see him out in front, healthy, unharmed—upright, muscled, sarcastic Ari. But not all Antilians are content to wait on the outside of the gates. Bob Song Tao rushes past Rowan, face distorted with worry and hope; the old woman bobs and weaves, dodging those taller than herself. All around him people are crying out with gladness, running. Yonah sends his great voice out, commanding respect and attention; the crowd slows, and a large contingent swarms the towers and the cliff top flanking the gate. The two guards at the gate identify themselves to Rowan and Yonah as captains.

  “We are only a skeleton force here now,” the larger man says. “We ask your amnesty.”

  “You have it,” says Rowan, with a glance at Yonah, who nods. “How many of you are there?”

  “Two hundred,” says the captain.

  “Where had we best put you?” Rowan can picture it: some of the people will not be able to find their loved ones; people have died here, so many, over the years. And they might want revenge.

  “The barracks would be safe.”

  “Two hundred?” questions Yonah. “Why so few?”

  The captain shrugs. “I do not know. Last night the Council’s messenger arrived, ordering the bulk of us to leave by the South Gate, via the mountain pass.”

  Rowan nods. “That’s what we heard. Are those others headed back to Kalmar?”

  The captain takes his helmet off. He’s a dark man, with a great scar over one eye. “I am not privy to the Council’s plans. I am sorry. I can tell you no more.”

  “What do you think, Yonah?”

  The big man looks up at the sky. “I think the same as always. We can’t know what, if any, treachery Brandr’s planning. Our strength is in numbers.”

  The crowd of prisoners, and the free Antilians who met them on the plain, are almost to the gate now. Behind Rowan and Yonah people jostle, call out names, trying to see.

  The prisoners come flooding out the gate and crash into the welcoming crowd in a great wave. Everyone is calling out, searching. It’s total chaos.

  And then suddenly he is there.

  Ari.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The Meeting Place

  You took your time.”

  They are the same words Ari used when Rowan first fell into his boat; it seems a long, long time ago now.

  Rowan hugs him. He is so happy he can’t speak. Then he steps back, takes a good look, and hugs Ari again. “Are you all right?”

  Ari nods. “I am glad to be out of that place.”

  He smells terrible, looks drawn. A bruise covers half of his face. He looks Rowan up and down.

  “I am glad to s
ee you, Rowan.”

  —

  Why?” Rowan asks. “Why does the Council think that farm is a good idea?”

  The Antilians shrug their shoulders. They are all on their way back to Kalmar, even some of the guards, who have thrown off their armour and livery and joined the throng.

  “I think,” says Bob, “that it is all part of their plan. To take full control of our food sources.” His voice is flat, his face closed. Rowan is worried about him. He was unable to find any of his family in the prison. While it’s possible they were incarcerated further south in the vast compound, it’s unlikely; the guards told Rowan that their orders were to consolidate all prisoners at the north end for the release.

  “Why?” he asks Bob. If politics can distract Bob a little, he thinks, then I’ll ask dumb questions until the cows come home.

  “So they can starve us, if we make trouble. If we can’t produce our own food we can’t stir things up, we can’t rebel when they steal our families; we will do nothing but worry about food. . . .” He trails off, panting a little in the dust stirred by so many feet.

  “My brother talked like this, too,” Sigrid says after a pause, gently. They found her father, and her mother walks with him now, tears streaming down her cheeks. But Sigrid’s older brother, the eldest of the family—and Iduna’s parents, Sigrid’s grandparents—have not, it seems, survived. “A conspiracy. Men always think there is a conspiracy.”

  “But how else would you explain it?” Bob bursts out.

  Sigrid’s hands clench together. “I see no conspiracy. We did this, all of us together. We let Brandr and the Council take our families from us, one by one. Why didn’t we fight?”

  “We would have all died, then.”

  “If I’d killed two of the guards who came for my brother that night,” Sigrid says, face white, “and if he’d killed the other two, yes, we’d both be dead. And the Council would be down four enforcers. And if we had all done that, there would be no Council now, no Brandr, no new laws for new . . .”