The Bones of the Earth

by Rachel Dunne

  Scal stood, and set one foot forward. He felt like a newborn horse, shaky-legged and weak. The second step was harder, pulling at the fire-sealed wound, stretching torn muscle. The first foot, again. He did not hold to the wall. He did not clutch at Modatho. He limped, but he walked alone.

  When he stepped outside, he felt the cold against his skin, but it did not reach him. He was of the North, and his blood flowed hot through him. When last he had stood in Aardanel, it had been a place of death and blood and fire. Now, close to a decade since last he had walked down the streets, it was rebuilt in the image of the place it had been before. The same orderly and organized living quarters, the same wide streets. As he walked forward, slow and halting, it felt, almost, as though the years fell away from him. Dropped, and sank into the snow and the ice.

  Almost, but it was not so. There were too many aches in Scal, too many reminders of his cruel third life and his bloody fourth. The past could not be so easily cast aside. Scal, though, had never turned from a thing for it being difficult.

  There’s only forward, little lad, Parro Kerrus had said. A man who looks too long at the past is a man who’s lost.

  The Chief Warden’s cabin was in the same place it had been when Scal was young. He knocked, with Modatho urging him not to, and opened the door without waiting for an answer. Eddin, who had been Chief Warden longer than Scal had lived in Aardanel, had been a tall man with a long face. Kind eyes that had seen too much. He had had a way of making a man feel taller, when he spoke. But he had died, when Iveran first sacked Aardanel. The desk was the same that his had been, but the man behind it was not. Short and fat. Pig’s eyes amid folds of skin. Heavy breaths that, even sitting, wheezed through a half-open mouth. He looked angry to be interrupted, angrier to see Scal. “What’s this?” His voice came out thick, nasal. Modatho had said his name was Temren.

  “Chief Warden,” Scal said, and bowed at the waist, though it sent fire up his side. “I wish to stay here as a ward. I will work, in trade for food and a place to sleep.”

  “Why?” Temren demanded, mistrust heavy in his voice.

  “I lived here for a time, as a child. This place was good to me. Good for me.”

  Modatho stepped forward, hands wringing within the sleeves of his red cassock. “He is penitent, sir. The Parents demand we turn away no man who will serve.”

  “More dog than man,” Temren said, and spat on the floor.

  “I stand for him,” Modatho said, with as much firmness as he could. It was not much, but he was the second priest to stand surety for Scal in Aardanel. That was not a small thing. A string of guilt snaked along Scal’s side, with the pain from his wound.

  Temren looked Scal up and down, and his distaste was plain. Scal kept his face blank, a mask. The Chief Warden snorted, and turned to Modatho. “I don’t care what pets you keep. But if he’s well enough to move around, keep him hobbled and chained.”

  Scal knew the slow boil that began in his stomach, recognized it for what it was. He fought to keep his anger down. This was a new life, and he would not spoil it so soon. “I belong to no man,” Scal said, low and calm. “I will work. I will atone. I will not wear chains.”

  “It’s chains or death, Northman. Your choice.”

  He would not be the man he had been. There was a better man he could be, a man who could stand to be shamed. All men are worthy of being heard, Kerrus had told him, but another man, one that Scal had killed, had told him that the minds of small men did not matter. Kerrus had been right in most things, but not in all. “I will wear chains if I am given a place of my own to stay.” He wished to be a better man, and remaining in Modatho’s constant presence would threaten to undo him. Too, he did not want another priest trying to guide and shape him. The words of a long-dead priest still echoed through Scal, and that was the only priest he would listen to.

  Temren snorted again. “This ain’t a negotiation. If you want to stay here, you’ll stay as a prisoner. You’ve already got the convict’s cross, even if it is fecked up. You’ll wear chains so you don’t kill my boys, and you’ll stay with the parro so my boys don’t kill you. Now get out of my sight.”

  Scal’s hands tightened at his sides. He thought, for a moment, how easy it would be to put a knife in Temren’s throat. Even wounded as he was, Scal knew he would move faster than the Chief Warden. But he had no knife, no weapon at all. His weapons were in the chapel, with the rest of his belongings. More, he was not the kind of man who would do such a thing. Not anymore. He spread his fingers, loosened them from their fists. A wise man knows when to turn from a fight, whispered Kerrus in his mind, and so Scal turned from Temren. Stepping outside, Modatho at his heels, it seemed as though he felt the cold more than he had before.

  Modatho would not meet his gaze as they stood outside Temren’s door. Softly, the parro said, “We will have to get you chained. The Chief Warden doesn’t tolerate disobedience.”

  Silently, Scal thought that Modatho did not know the first thing of disobedience. He did not say so. Nodded instead, and followed the parro to the smithy.

  The smith had chains between his own wrists and a cross in his cheek, just as much a prisoner as any other. Scal wondered if he had ever struck off his own chains. If the thought had even crossed his mind. Some men, Parro Kerrus had said solemnly, grow too comfortable to the things that bind them. The smith fixed manacles around Scal’s wrists, others around his ankles. Gave the heavy key to Modatho. Sheepish, the parro turned away, slipped the key into one of the many pockets hidden in his cassock. As though Scal could not find it if he truly wanted to. The chains felt heavy, short enough that he could not spread his arms wider than his shoulders. Could not step in more than a shuffle.

  Scal was tired, his hurts settling in like a blizzard. This day had not gone as he had hoped, and he wished to sleep, to pray. To think of how he could still be the man he wished to be. He moved slow, limping and shuffling both. Modatho stayed ever at his side. Eyes cast to the ground, and Scal could not guess his thoughts. The irons at his wrists and ankles were like hard and heavy ice, and the cold of them reached Scal as it usually did not. He clanked as he walked, and even the warm shame of it could not burn away the chill.

  Modatho, for once, had little to say. He left Scal alone in the chapel, to the quiet and the cold and the flickering of the everflame. Scal knelt before the flame, and he clanked as he reached one hand up to hold the flamedisk around his neck. The tip of the other pendant that hung there pierced his palm, the sharp snowbear claw. It was only another pain to add to the mix. Kerrus had told him, There is danger in being alone. The priest had not been right in all things, but he had been right in most.

  After a time, Scal went to his belongings. In his second life, he had lived in Kerrus’s hut, had a bed of his own and a small chest to hold his few belongings. He had fewer things now than he had as a boy. They were a man’s needful things, instead of a boy’s squirreled treasures. If the chapel was to be his home, he would make it so.

  He left his sword in the corner, and his knives. He was no longer a man who needed them. The sight of them made him sad. Sick. He put his back to them, facing the everflame as he went through his travelsack.

  Only one thing was not as he expected. There was a stone, green and glimmering in the everflame’s light, and Scal’s sight twisted when he touched it. He saw another man’s hands, holding the reins of a horse. He saw, ahead, the back of a head, brown hair cut short. Rora’s hair.

  The witch-man had carried many stones like this one. He had called them seekstones, said they guided him. Holding it, Scal could feel the tug, as though his mind were trying to flee away from his flesh. South.

  There is a danger in being alone.

  Scal put the stone back into his travelsack. It held the remains of a past life. A life he would sooner forget.

  He ached, and the chains sent the ache deeper. Still. Scal had set out to be the man he should have been, and he had always been taught that obstacles were tests from the Parent
s to see a man’s true character. Cold and pain were things that Scal could handle.

  “You’ll kill yourself,” Modatho said, standing before the chapel’s door. “I’m supposed to be your protector. I can’t let you do this.”

  Scal reached out to put one hand on Modatho’s shoulder. Pushed. Sent the parro stumbling sideways. He walked slow and limping from the chapel before Modatho could find his balance.

  The new day was bright and crisp. Ice crystals shining like stars on the ground, glinting in the air. The world was like a new thing, reborn. It would have been beautiful, save for the loud noises Scal’s chains made as he walked.

  They were gathering before the gate, wardens in blue and prisoners in fur and rags. The group was all men, strong and hard with muscle, and chains between most of their wrists. The wardens carried crossbows, and short swords at their hips. There was a sledge piled high with axes, four others that were empty. The men glared at Scal’s slow approach, the wardens shifting their grips on the crossbows. None spoke to him. Since they did not tell him to leave, Scal followed them through the gates from Aardanel. Two convicts pulled each of the sledges, thick ropes slung over their shoulders. The sledge runners whispered over the crust of snow. Gentle, soothing.

  The group of convicts and wardens passed through forest so thick the sledges could hardly pass, and barren fields of ugly stumps, and spaces where new trees were beginning to stretch their faces to the sun.

  Aardanel was a place for criminals who chose labor over death. They labored in the thick forest, long days of cutting trees and chopping wood that would be sent south. Warming the homes of people who did not know what true cold was. People who had homes, and lives, and hope. There would always be convicts, and there would always be need for firewood. In Aardanel, they thought to the future.

  They stopped in a rough clearing amid proud old trees. There was a pile of new-felled trunks, another pile already stripped of their branches. The convicts formed a line to receive axes from the wardens. The other wardens standing with crossbows raised and set, eyes sharp. Scal joined the line. None of the convicts would stand too close to him. When Scal reached the sledge with the axes, the two wardens there glared at him. One tossed the axe instead, and the convict behind Scal caught it in a clank of chains. The line flowed around him, parting like a river around a stone. Sneering convicts collecting axes from glaring wardens. Moving slow—even if he did not ache, he was wise enough to move slow—Scal leaned down to pull an axe from the pile, the wooden haft cold beneath his fingers. A single sound flowed through the clearing, a whisper of cloth as all the wardens turned as one. Their readied crossbows pointing at Scal. He held the axe loosely at his side and chose a tree, his footsteps loud in the waiting silence. He could still feel the bolts trained on his back as he lifted both arms with the axe, chains clanking near his ear, muscles bunching.

  The swing near tore him in two.

  He stood gasping, black and red warring in his vision. Frozen like a waterfall in winter, not moving for fear of breaking. Not able even to move. Already broken. Only one clear thought made it through the pain, found root in the swirling horror. This, perhaps, is what dying feels like.

  Scal’s fingers were still wrapped around the cold haft of the axe. It may have been the only thing that had kept him from collapsing. He twisted his body, pulled his arms back. What little piece of the blade had sunk into the tree came free, and he could feel the warmth of blood begin to trickle down his side. He had looked at the wound, long and wicked, curving around ribs and stomach. Modatho had said Vatri had been the one to close it with fire and steel. She had done good work. He had hoped the seal would hold.

  No matter. Parro Kerrus had told him, A true penitent will do whatever the Parents may ask. Scal did not know if this was a thing the Parents had asked him to do. If this was the kind of penance they would ask of anyone. He did not claim to hear the Parents, as Vatri had. He only knew that this was a thing that felt right.

  He felled the tree, by the end of the day. It was not so impressive a thing—there were other convicts who felled a dozen trees in the same time. But for Scal, whose right side was stiff with frozen blood, it seemed a miracle. He nearly fell with the tree, blackness taking bites from the edges of his vision and exhaustion making him feel heavy, thick. His hands around the axe were swollen, blistered, bloody. Other hands, he did not know whose, took the axe from him. He followed, when the whole group of them turned back toward Aardanel. Sledges piled high with chopped wood, hauled by strong men with the ropes over their shoulders. Scal followed, and his right boot squelched on the snow, soaked through with blood.

  Somehow he made it to the chapel. Modatho was waiting there, his broad face tight with worry. Inside, Scal knelt before the everflame. He nearly tipped forward into the flames, but as he swayed back he almost thought he heard a whispering. More than the sound of flames dancing on coals. No words that he could make out, but insistent. He leaned forward again, one shaking hand stretching toward the fire.

  “Idiot!” Modatho snarled, grabbing Scal’s shoulder. The touch was light, but it was enough to send him tipping. Scal did fall then, sideways, with a crash like the tree he had felled.

  “I am sorry,” he said aloud. Mumbled it, and did not know who he said it to.

  Scal slept through half the next day. He blamed Modatho for it in part, for he suspected the parro kept more than prayer-herbs in his satchel. Modatho had put a neat line of stitches down his side, though, and so he could not be too upset. The stitches held better, when Scal returned to the clearing to cut down another tree. The parro still had to stitch him up again after, but Scal did not bleed so much, and he did not faint.

  Twice more he went to chop wood with the convicts who glared, the wardens who kept their crossbows pointed at his heart. Twice more Modatho repaired the damage, clucking and scolding and praying each time. Scal felt stronger with each day, and at night, when he lay staring at the everflame before sleep took him, he could hear the fire whispering at the edges again. He thought perhaps it was the Parents’ approval. At those times, he understood Vatri better than he had before. Understood the call to lean closer to the flames, until his skin felt stretched tight over his face, until his eyes watered so badly it seemed as though nothing could wet their dryness. He missed her. But he was not the same man who had known her.

  Two days, he had been given for his redemption. They were happier days than he had thought to hope for. Filled with peace, of a sort, and hope. He was grateful for them, when the world crashed down around him.

  It was the screaming that woke him. Not the screaming of Fiateran words in Fiateran voices, for those were not uncommon things in Aardanel. No, it was the war cries that woke him. The shouting of Northmen beyond counting.

  Scal rolled to his knees. Ignored the ache in his side, for it was a small thing. His fingers reached for the space at his side where his sword usually slept, but they returned empty. Toes curling, legs stretching, and he crossed the room in three strides to the corner, where his sword sat propped. He would run into the night with his sword raised, and cut down any who stood before him. They would die, for being too unlucky, for being too foolish to run. He would wash his blade in blood, and though he would not enjoy it, that would not stop him. He did not fear his death, for when it finally found him, he would welcome an end to the bloodshed.

  He reached for the sword, the tool of all his bloody lives, and he felt fingers crawling over him. His old lives, reaching out to grasp at him, to pull him back. To make him less, to make him worse.

  His fingers fell to his side, and he stared at the sword. His arm felt too light. As though there were a piece of himself missing. And his chest hurt, in a deep and nameless place, where the hands of his past trailed their cold and bloody fingers over his skin.

  He thought of the Northmen swarming around him. Blades bared, jabbing, his flesh splitting before them. No escape, no quarter. His death surging forward, borne aloft by Northern war cries. And himself, sw
ordless and alone, facing them with open arms.

  It was a thing he had not felt before, a heaviness deep in his belly. He did not know better, and so he named it fear.

  Scal wrapped the fear around himself, colder than iron chains. He sat, his eyes stuck to the sword, and he listened to the screams, and he fought to draw breath.

  Modatho burst into the chapel from his hut, wild with fear. “It’s Iveran!” he gasped. Scal knew that was not right, he had killed the man himself, but the fear in him knew no reason. The parro crashed into a table that held candles and herbs, toppled it over. He scrabbled at the floor, pushing aside scattered candles. The scent of herbs sharp in the air. The screams grew louder, Fiateran fear and Northern anger, and Modatho flung open a door into the floor. Stray candles rolled, tumbled over the lip into the hole.

  Clutching his travelsack, what little he owned in the world, Scal hurried across the floor. Modatho disappeared through the hole, wide eyes peering up at Scal from the darkness. Scal glanced to the corner where his sword leaned, and his knives. Glanced only. The sword had nearly meant his death, each time he held it. He dropped into the cellar with Modatho, who hauled at a rope to bring the door thumping into place.

  Darkness swallowed them. The parro’s heavy breaths echoed in the small space, and it sounded almost like sobbing. Before, Scal would have scoffed, thought less of the man. Now he understood. The fear howled in him as well.

  Scal tried to keep his breaths even. To keep his mind calm. He crouched, fingers questing blindly into his travelsack. He found the square of carved wood, the tinderbox that was as precious as life on the road. Moving carefully in the darkness, he set the tinder, a hank of shredded rope, carefully nearby. The steel striker he bent around his knuckles. The jagged piece of flint in his other hand, thumb pressing a piece of charred cloth near the sharp edge, held tight enough to keep his shaking hand still. “Candle,” Scal said into the darkness. It was the only word he could manage. Modatho did not answer, save for a small surprised hiccup in his breathing.