The Crowded Shadows

by Celine Kiernan

  Squandered Hearts

  Razi helped Ashkr to remove the leather straps while Christopher and Wynter cleaned Sólmundr’s stomach and hands and bandaged his wound. Then, between the four of them, they lifted Sólmundr into the fragrant nest of furs that he shared with Ashkr.

  Ashkr, silent now and exhausted, took off his boots and his tunic and crawled up the far side of the bed. Carefully, he fixed the covers up around Sólmundr’s chest and took his hand. He looked down on his sleeping friend for a moment, his face tender, then lay down on the furs beside him, watching Sólmundr as he slept. Slowly, Ashkr’s eyes slipped closed, and the two men lay peacefully side by side, their lightly clasped hands rising and falling with the motion of Sólmundr’s steady breathing.

  Razi, standing in the centre of the tent, watched them from the corner of his eye. “Sólmundr will not be fit to travel for quite a while, Ashkr.” Ashkr’s eyes drifted open and he regarded Razi expressionlessly. “If there is any urgency to your purpose here, I’m afraid it will have to wait at least a fortnight.”

  The corner of Ashkr’s mouth twitched. “Sól and me, we not go no further than here, Tabiyb. You not worry.”

  Razi frowned in confusion and he traded a worried glance with Wynter. The Merron were going no further? Had they misjudged this entire situation?

  “You not worry,” whispered Ashkr softly, staring at Sólmundr with surprising sadness. He squeezed his friend’s slack hand. Then his eyes slid shut and his handsome face relaxed into sleep.

  Razi looked questioningly at Christopher. The pale young man was regarding Ashkr with a grim mixture of sympathy and anger. After a moment, he glanced at Razi, shook his head with what looked like despair and resumed tossing the bloody equipment into the cauldron.

  A strange, slithering movement overhead caused them to flinch and look up in alarm. The hides were being drawn back into place over the top of the tent. Unseen hands hauled on the guide ropes and, as they watched, the hides closed over the support poles and the sunlight was blotted out.

  By the time they had gathered Razi’s things and ducked out into the fresh air, exhaustion had, once more, settled on them all. The sunlight and heat was such a shock that it almost sent Wynter staggering. She took a step back and shaded her eyes as people advanced in a rush of sound and colour. Razi’s equipment was taken from his numb hands and brought to the fire for boiling. Hallvor came up, drying her arms and talking excitedly to Embla who was translating for her.

  “Hallvor wish to speak to you, Tabiyb. She want to know why not you burn wounds close? She say you sew together, like shirt, the men, Wari and Sól alike. She wonder …” Embla tilted her head quizzically, and Wynter saw a tender understanding blossom on her face. She murmured something to Hallvor, who paused in her gesturing and gabbled questions and looked for the first time at Razi. He was oblivious to everything, blinking up at the sun and swaying on his feet, his face a blank and happy mask. The healer smiled, and turned away, gesturing as if to say later.

  Embla put her hand on Razi’s arm, and he started, as if noticing, her for the first time. “Embla,” he said, surprised.

  “Aye, Tabiyb.” Embla gently pushed the curls back from Razi’s blood-stained face. “Come.” She led him, unresisting, to the table where their wash kits lay and bowls of fresh water steamed gently in the morning light. “We have took your other things from your bags—clothes, cloaks, blankets. We have washed from them the fire smell. They will be dry soon; you and your family can have clean things to wear, yes?”

  She glanced back at Wynter, gesturing warmly that she should follow. Wynter nodded and looked around for Christopher. He was staggering away through the crowd, heading for the river. People were patting him on the back and saying things to him, and he was shrugging them off and lifting his hand to deflect their questions with weary irritation. Wynter frowned after him for a moment, then turned back to the others.

  Razi stood by the wash table like a lost child, dazed with exhaustion. As Wynter made her way towards him, Embla pushed down on his shoulders until he was sitting on a little folding stool, his elbows on his knees. She took one of the copper bowls of water and began lathering soap onto a cloth. Then she knelt between Razi’s splayed legs, took his hand, and began slowly washing his fingers and his palm free of blood. Razi’s eyes roamed Embla’s face, and Wynter saw the rest of the world fade away for him.

  A man approached with a tray of little wooden bowls and laid it on the table. He placed one of the bowls by Razi, and gestured to Wynter to take the others. They were full of porridge, and the smell made her mouth water.

  Embla had begun to work the warm, soapy cloth up the length of Razi’s blood-stained arm. “I likes this soap,” she murmured. “It is most pleasing, how it makes this bubbles… like foam in sea.” As she lathered lazy, caressing circles from his wrist to the crook of his elbow, Embla ran her eyes all the way to Razi’s face and back again, taking in every detail of his strong, brown body. The breeze lifted her hair and it drifted around them in the sunlight.

  Razi’s eyes grew heavy and Embla’s smile took on a private depth that made the Merron standing at the wash table smirk at each other and raise their eyebrows. Wynter admired their restraint in not clucking like hens. Quietly, she took Christopher’s and her own wash kits from the table and slung them across her arm.

  Embla began to wash Razi’s chest. Razi inhaled, as if testing her scent, and his eyes wandered to her body, then up again to her face. Embla squeezed the cloth against his collarbone and he sighed as a small tide of shining bubbles cascaded down the knotted half-moon of his scar.

  Embla turned her attention to his blood-splattered face, pushing the cloth through his curls, cleaning the blood from his hair. Her movements were not so gentle now, her expression less than tender, and Razi watched her intently from beneath his lashes, his teeth showing white through parted lips.

  Wynter, her cheeks pink, took one of the copper bowls of water from the table and placed it on the tray beside the bowls of porridge. She laid two of the squares of folded linen on top and hoisted the whole heavy burden up with a grunt. She turned to tell Razi that she was leaving, but Embla had pulled his head forward to rest against her shoulder, and her face was turned into the damp tangle of his hair. She was murmuring as she soaped the back of his neck, and Razi’s hand slowly tightened around her waist as her lips moved against his ear. Wynter smiled knowingly, and without a word, she turned to the river.

  Razi’s big mare was hobbled on the green along with Ozkar, both of them contentedly munching grass, shoulder to shoulder with the Merron’s painted horses. As Wynter passed between the lines of fluttering washing, she looked around for Christopher’s chestnut mare. The sturdy little animal was standing apart from the herd, nodding its shaggy head and staring down towards the river. Wynter guessed that this was where she would find Christopher. Carefully, Wynter made her way across the cropped grass, trying not to upset the contents of her tray. To her right, far into the trees, the sounds of sawing and the continuous chopping of hatchets told her that the Merron were hard at work gathering more firewood, or more likely, from the sounds of it, cutting new lodge-poles. Perhaps they were expecting yet more company.

  The ground dropped steeply and she watched her footing as she navigated a precipitous little track down to the water. The sounds of the camp died away, muffled by the steep bank of grass and pushed back by the river breeze. Wynter found herself on a pleasant, sandy little shore, sheltered and peaceful, cooled by the proximity of the water. It was a perfect little haven, away from the eyes of the camp.

  Christopher sat with his back to her, halfway to the water, his elbows on his drawn-up knees, his arms wrapped loosely around his head. Wynter crunched her way towards him. He had removed his boots and his socks, and his feet were pushed deep into the warm sand. How delicious, thought Wynter, her feet itching jealously within the hot confines of her boots.

  “Hello, love,” she said as she came on level with him. He started
slightly, his hands jerking against the nape of his neck, and she chuckled. “Were you asleep?”

  Christopher didn’t answer, but folded his arms across his knees and rested his head against his forearms, his face hidden from her. He still had his hair bound, and the long wounds on his back and shoulder were particularly angry looking in the bright sunlight. He had not yet washed and his pale body was smeared all over with Sólmundr’s blood. With a pang of sympathy, Wynter realised that he was just too tired to care.

  Carefully she laid the tray on the ground and sat down to pull off her boots, wincing at the pain in her back. “Jesu,” she sighed, digging her bare feet into the soft sand. “That feels good.” She leaned back, propping herself on her arms and looked up into the blue sky. Exhaustion sang through her veins, a high unending whine, but the sun felt lovely on her bare torso and Wynter closed her eyes for a moment, soaking up its heat. The world instantly spun away in black and red, and Wynter felt herself falling into darkness. She gasped and sat forward, opening her eyes wide and breathing deep. “Oh!” she laughed, blinking spots from her vision. “Oh! It’s dangerous to close your eyes!”

  Christopher sat wordlessly beside her, a pale, blood-soaked stone in the sunlight. She went to put her hand on his curved back, but there were those awful scratches, so she rested her palm on the nape of his neck instead. He turned his face to her, his cheek resting on his arms. He was spent, the flesh under his eyes swollen into pouches, his narrow face chalky with fatigue. He regarded her without much expression, barely conscious.

  “I brought warm water,” she said softly, “to wash away the blood.” His eyes slid listlessly to the wash kits and basin, then back to her face. “I brought porridge, too.” He continued to watch her without expression, his breathing deep and steady like a sleeper’s. “Are you awake?” she whispered. He nodded, a barely perceptible movement. “Here,” she said and she got to her knees and shuffled around to put the bowl of water and the wash kit between his feet. “You wash yourself; I’ll look after your hair.”

  He lifted his head for a moment to look at the bowl of water, then dropped his forehead back against his arms as Wynter undid his scarf and unpinned his hair. “Oh, Chris!” she admonished softly. “You still haven’t brushed it!”

  His long hair fell down his back in a scruffy mess of knots and tangles. It was still peppered with the many twigs and leaves and bits of debris from the night the Wolves had attacked. Wynter spread it out against his shoulders like a tatty spider’s web, and slowly began picking the rubbish from the worse of its dark snarls. Christopher kept his head down, but at her touch the muscles in his back tensed, and his scarred hands tightened against the tops of his arms, dimpling the bruised flesh.

  “Do you think Sólmundr will survive, Christopher?”

  He answered in a slow, dull rasp, without lifting his head. “I don’t think he wants to,” he said.

  Wynter nodded in agreement “I can’t understand it. He seemed such a strong, vibrant kind of man. I cannot imagine that he would willingly give up on life. You know, I think he only accepted Razi’s help because the pain was so intolerable. Otherwise he would gladly have let himself die.” She frowned and shook her head. “I cannot fathom it, Christopher.”

  “In the end,” said Christopher quietly, “there is only so much a man can stand to lose. When everything he loves, and everything he is, is broken and burnt like kindling, a man comes to understand that the only thing he has any control over is when and how he dies.”

  Wynter did not pause in her work. She kept on working her comb through the mess of his hair, but she stared down on his bowed head with wide eyes and she had to force her reply out past an inexplicable lump of fear. “I don’t understand that, Christopher,” she whispered. “No matter how bad the present, surely every new day is a fresh beginning? Surely every dawn brings the gift of hope?”

  Christopher exhaled a little laugh. “I am glad that you do not understand, girly,” he said softly. “That makes me glad.”

  “In any case,” she continued. “What of Ashkr?” Christopher flinched, his fingers digging deep into the flesh of his arms, and Wynter hesitated, worried that she may have misread the love between the two men. “He …” she said uncertainly. “Ashkr seems to love Sólmundr very deeply. It seems a crime for Sólmundr to have captured his heart like that and then purposely leave him all alone.”

  “Aye,” whispered Christopher. “It is. It is a God-cursed crime. To squander someone’s heart like that. He should never …” he shook his head. “It is a God-cursed crime,” he whispered. “Poor Sólmundr.”

  Poor Sólmundr? Wynter frowned. Christopher must be very tired, to have lost track of their conversation so quickly. She had managed to release most of the terrible tangles from his hair, and she ran the comb easily now from scalp to tip, moving in long, soothing strokes, lifting the heavy locks from his back so as not to touch his wounds with the comb.

  “We must leave, girly.” His voice was distant, muffled within the cradle of his arms. “We cannot stay with these people.”

  She stopped combing. “But Chris, we need them,” she said. Unless… do you no longer think that they are headed for Alberon? Ashkr did say that this is as far as they go.”

  “I have no doubt that they are headed for Alberon,” he said dully. “Once they’re done here, Úlfnaor and Wari will leave most of the others behind and go on to meet the Prince. Sólmundr would have too, had his health not failed him.” Christopher opened his eyes and he stared down at the ground between his feet. “But we cannot stay. Razi. Razi… he …”

  Wynter smiled, thinking she understood. Tenderly, she put her hand on his hair and bent to look at his face. “Christopher,” she whispered. “Do not underestimate the depths of Razi’s tolerance. The nature of Sólmundr and Ashkr’s love is perhaps not so big an issue to him as you might believe. At the palace, it was his fear for you that led—”

  Christopher squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. Wynter was distressed to see real anguish in his face. “What is it, love?” she asked. “Do you think they will take vengeance for Wari?”

  Christopher abruptly pushed the heels of his hands in under his eyes, pressing hard, his lips drawn back. “We just cannot stay, Wynter,” he said. “It is not possible. Razi will never understand. They would be forced to… oh, please,” he gasped. “Please, we must leave.”

  Abruptly he went silent, his body rigid, his blood-stained hands pressed to his eyes. Wynter stroked his arm and his shoulders, alarmed at the quivering strain in his body, the physical tension. When it became obvious that Christopher would say no more, she moved around behind him again and resumed combing. She combed and combed, and gradually Christopher’s hair began to regain its lustre, shining black and violet in the glancing sun, flowing through Wynter’s fingers like cool, dark water. Still he did not lose his iron rigidity.

  “Christopher,” said Wynter carefully. “You have seen the maps of the Indirie Valley. You know how wide it is, how long. You know how deeply forested it is. Alberon could have an entire army hidden there and we still would never find him. We need these people. We need their knowledge. Without them, Alberon may move on before we can make contact, or Jonathon could find him before we do and then all will be lost.” Wynter looked out across the wide swell of the water, her thoughts running ahead, trying to predict what could not be predicted. “Or Alberon’s men may find us,” she said quietly, talking to herself now. “They may kill us before we can let them know we mean no harm, or the cavalry may come upon us… or the Wolves …”

  At the mention of the Wolves, Christopher moaned and lifted his arms to cover his head. Wynter shut her eyes to quell the mindless rush of fear that the thought of them brought to her. She did not want to think about those little girls at the Wherry Tavern, she did not want to think about their fate. The fate she would have shared with them, had Christopher not saved her.

  “Christopher,” she whispered, slipping her arms around his shoulders and
leaning into him. “Christopher.” He jerked beneath her touch, his muscles as taut as quivering iron. He smelled of blood, and of ashes and of sharp, new sweat. “We’re safe here, aren’t we?” she whispered “Your people will protect us, won’t they? They won’t let… they’ll keep the Wolves away.”

  Wynter hated the weakness in her voice; hated this sudden wave of helplessness that had risen up and undone her. She had not known, until this moment, how terrified she was of heading out again. Slowly, she bent her head into the crook of Christopher’s neck and squeezed her arms tight around his rigid shoulders, ashamed and frightened and overwhelmed.

  At first, Christopher remained frozen, as if desperately resisting her embrace. Then, gradually, he uncurled from his defensive crouch and shifted his neck to accommodate Wynter’s head on his shoulder. She felt his hand move across to the back of her head. Wynter began to rock gently. Christopher slid his other hand along the top of her arm and let it come to rest in the crook of her elbow. The two of them closed their eyes.

  Sunshine warmed them and the peaceful sounds of the river emptied their minds. Gradually, their breathing calmed, their hearts slowed and they relaxed against each other, each of them finding comfort in the other’s embrace and in gentle, innocent motion as Wynter rocked them to and fro.

  Frith

  They made their way up the steep little path, silent and numb, bumping into each other as fatigue made them miss their footing. Wynter’s back ached and Christopher limped clumsily along, carrying the copper bowl and towels, his eyes drifting shut even as he walked.

  At the top of the path, they staggered blindly onto the grass, heading for the tents. Suddenly, two huge warhounds butted into their space, slobbering and grinning, panting up into their startled faces.

  “Gread leat,” snapped Christopher, jerking to life and pulling Wynter back. “Leave her be!” He pushed testily at the dog’s blunt heads. They happily ignored him, eager to explore the depths of the porridge bowls. One of them butted Wynter in the stomach. She staggered backwards, upsetting the tray, and that was it for Christopher—he lost his temper.