Iron Axe

by Steven Harper

  Sometimes Mother sat on the ground and let Danr crawl into her lap, even though he was almost as tall as she was. She smelled of sweetgrass and sweat, and now those smells made him think of her. He remembered reaching up to touch the small ragged pouch that always hung around her neck. It fascinated him because Mother never took it off, not even to sleep or bathe.

  “Is it magic?” he had asked.

  “Of course not. The Kin lost their magic a thousand years ago when the Stane destroyed the Iron Axe and sundered the world. The Stane lost most of their power. Only the Fae kept theirs. Humans and orcs and merfolk haven’t had magic in a long, long time.”

  Danr reached out to touch the pouch. “If this isn’t magic, what is it?”

  “Truth.” She pushed his hand away. “That’s the most potent kind of magic. Never forget that, my son.”

  And that was all she would say.

  Other times, the village women came to the stable to have their fortunes read. Mother was awful at reading fortunes. The problem wasn’t that her predictions never came true—the problem was that they always came true. Danr knew because he scrunched up in a cow stall whenever she did it so he could listen. When Lorta, wife to Hagbart the smith, came during her third month of pregnancy to ask if her child would be a boy or girl, Mother touched the pouch at her throat and said Lorta would miscarry within two weeks. Lorta ran away in horrified tears, and who could blame her? But in ten days, Hagbart the smith was digging a tiny grave. When Henreth Ravsdottr came to ask if her intended fiancé, Jens, was cheating on her with another woman, Mother touched the pouch and told her Jens was not—he was cheating on her with Henreth’s older brother, Kell. That had been a day.

  Mother always told the truth. Always. It frightened people as much as it fascinated them. Danr himself learned early on not to ask questions he didn’t want the answers to. No one likes the truth was one of Mother’s favorite sayings.

  But now Mother was gone, dead of coughing sickness the winter after Danr turned eleven. True, she worked in the house, but she lived in the stables, and they were rotten cold in winter. Danr begged Alfgeir and his wife, Gisla, to let his mother sleep by their big, warm fire instead of near the stable’s tiny, damp one, but although Alfgeir and Gisla would eat Halldora’s cooking and let her clean their house, they wouldn’t let her share their pristine hearth, no, they wouldn’t.

  “A woman who beds an animal and whelps an animal must sleep with animals,” Gisla snapped.

  Mother’s fever rose higher and higher while her cough grew weaker and weaker. Danr didn’t know what to do. He finally coaxed one of the cows to lie beside her for warmth and pressed her shivering body against its fur while icy drafts stole in through the stable door and circled her pallet like hungry wolves. He couldn’t keep them away, no matter how strong he was. The other cows calmly chewed their cud, unaware of the dying woman and the terrified boy in the stall next to theirs. Danr prayed to Fell and Belinna, to Grick, queen of gods and lady of the hearth, and even to Olar, the king of gods himself, pleading with them to spare his mother’s life. He begged with all the fervor a boy could bring up. But just before dawn, Halldora shuddered once and went still.

  Danr didn’t cry when he wrapped her body in old rags and amulets to Halza that he carved himself. He didn’t cry when he built her funeral pyre in the northern pasture. He didn’t cry when no one, not even Alfgeir, came to help him hold the torch to the wood or watch the flames blaze to the sky. But when Danr came back to the stable and lay down in his stall, alone with the cows, then he cried.

  Chains clanked, startling Danr out of the memories. Ahead of him on the road, a fierce-looking man in a black cloak rode a black horse. He led a line of humans cuffed to a long beam with bronze shackles on their feet. Another man in black rode behind them. Above the second man hovered a glowing figure whose shape seemed to twist. A sprite—one of the Fae come to oversee the slavers.

  Fear settled over Danr. Even the monster inside him cowered. Swallowing, he pulled the steer several paces off the road to let the procession pass. A thousand years ago, just before the Sundering had cracked the continent, a number of the Kin had gone to war against the Fae—and lost. Now, more than ten centuries later, the Fae were still extracting tribute. Except they didn’t dare take it from the warlike orcs, who would leap at the chance to make more war on the Fae, and they couldn’t take it from the merfolk, who merely dove under the sea to avoid paying. And so the Fae took payment from the humans. With no magic of their own, and with the kingdom of Balsia scattered and broken and unable to stand up to a united Alfhame, there was no way for the humans to stop them.

  And it was worse. The Fae had an appetite for slaves that ran beyond the numbers negotiated for tribute. They bought yet more, every human slave they could get their hands on, and many a human became rich selling his own kind to the slavers of Alfhame.

  No one knew how the Fae chose their tributes, but if the slavers descended on your house in their raven-black cloaks and knocked bony fingers on your door, there was nothing you could do, no, there wasn’t. Whispers persisted that it was the worst luck to be on the streets when the slavers arrived. At least Danr was a troll, and immune to slavers. Probably. Possibly. Danr’s hands were cold and he could feel the chains around his own wrists.

  The sad procession clanked by. Exposed and frightened, Danr kept his eyes down. He desperately wanted to abandon the calf and run, but that would only call attention to himself. Besides, if the Fae chose him, he would have to go, and that would be that. No human could resist the Fae glamour, and the law forbade resistance in any case. Danr’s heart beat fast and he tried to tell himself that the Fae didn’t take Stane back to Alfhame, but how did anyone know that for sure?

  Bronze clanked. Someone choked back a sob. Danr told himself not to look, not to see, but the more he tried, the harder it became, and finally he couldn’t help peering up under the brim of his hat.

  He stared at his own self. A second Danr was standing at the edge of the road, jaw jutting pugnaciously forward. Danr yelped and scrambled backward. The second Danr gave a high-pitched giggle that raised the hair on the back of Danr’s arms.

  “Stane!” it laughed. “The bane of Lumenhame!”

  The second Danr leaped into the air and twisted back into the glowing form of the sprite who had been following the second slaver. Terror swept Danr. The second slaver snapped the reins on his horse but made no other acknowledgment. Danr wanted to run, but his feet wouldn’t go. He looked at the slave train while the sprite giggled at him again.

  The train was nearly past, and the people wore expressions of fright or resignation or simple sadness. A boy no more than thirteen or fourteen years old met Danr’s eyes with his own, and he felt the boy’s pain and fear until the chains yanked him forward. He wanted to help, but what could he do? He saw slaves every day. Aisa was a slave. They were part of the world. That didn’t make it right or fair, but he of all people knew the world didn’t run fair. Still, why had the Nine given him so much strength if he wasn’t supposed to use it?

  Still panting, Danr forced his gaze down again, but the image of the boy’s blue eyes stayed with him.

  The slaver bringing up the rear halted his horse. “You there!”

  Danr’s heart stopped in his chest, and his bowels loosened. The Fae wouldn’t be kind to a Stane in their midst, of that he had no doubt. But he forced himself to bring his head up. “My lord?”

  Now the slaver caught sight of his face. “Vik’s balls! Did your mother get beaten with an ugly club before she whelped you?”

  Danr didn’t answer. He had long ago learned that the only answer to taunts was simply to remain silent. The slaver laughed at his own joke, and it suddenly occurred to Danr that he could probably yank the man from his horse and break his traitorous neck before he even understood Danr was moving. The other slaver was only one human, far weaker than Danr, and the sprite was tiny. How hard would it be? The slaves would go free and Danr would be a hero.


  Until the Fae missed the slave shipment. Until the Fae sent more slavers to this district and took more slaves as punishment. Until they used their magics to uncover who had broken the tithe law. And anyway, Danr wasn’t any kind of hero. He was a troll and a thrall. He looked down again.

  “Is this the road to Rolk’s Fork?” the slaver continued.

  Danr blinked. “Yes, my lord.”

  “How long to get there?”

  “Two days.”

  “You’re not as dumb as you look.” He flipped a copper coin at Danr, who caught it without thinking. “Go whelp some children, boy. The elves always need strong backs.”

  He wheeled his horse and rode away. The last thing Danr saw was the boy trudging away under the shimmering sprite. Danr watched the train go, feeling relieved and also feeling guilty that he felt relieved. Someone always had it worse, didn’t they? And he had done nothing to help. The Nine were cruel even when they were being kind. Danr turned and trudged in the opposite direction, hauling the steer.

  The woods ended, and Danr now followed the road through another mile or two of carefully cultivated fields until he came to Skyford. The city was large, considerably larger than Danr’s home village, and surrounded on three sides by a stone wall with a blocky keep that glared down from the center. That was where the earl lived. Skyford had spilled over the original walls generations ago, and a palisade of heavy logs scored a second wall some distance outside the stone one. The fourth side bordered a river that wound down from the mountains. Danr caught a ripe whiff of fish on the breeze as he approached town. Two other roads converged here to enter Skyford proper through a gap in the palisade. Oxcarts and wagons lumbered in and out, as did a number of people. Many of the latter turned to stare when Danr got close enough. Danr felt self-conscious again, but he made himself walk forward, the steer trailing behind. In the distance, he heard a woman weeping. No doubt she had lost someone to a slaver.

  Danr had been to Skyford several times—it was the closest place to sell cattle and crops, and the Oxbreeder family drove a nice herd to the town every year for sale and slaughter. The Oxbreeders, wealthy and respected, usually visited the earl on these trips, but Danr wasn’t allowed inside the keep. He stayed with the cattle, and where else?

  When Danr arrived at the city gate, he noticed over a dozen people staring at him from oxcarts, the street, and doorways of nearby houses. All his life, people had stared and whispered, but he never really got used to it. He wanted to pull the stupid, too-small hat over his face and melt into the ground under all those eyes.

  A young man barely sixteen stood guard at the gate. He watched the traffic in and out with a bored expression until he caught sight of Danr. The boredom fled his face and he gripped his spear more tightly. Danr sighed. Did the guard think Danr was going to attack him here under Rolk’s own sun? The young man’s expression hardened when Danr stopped, and his fingers grew white around the shaft of the spear. People stopped and stared, unabashed.

  “Can you tell me,” Danr said quietly, “where I can find Orvandel the fletcher? I’m supposed to deliver this steer to him.”

  “You can speak?” the guard blurted in surprise.

  A tiny sting pierced Danr’s heart at the guard’s thoughtless insult. “Do you know where Orvandel lives?” he asked.

  The young guard grabbed a child in a page’s uniform by the arm and whispered something in his ear. The boy scuttled away.

  “Sir?” Danr said. “If you don’t know where the fletcher lives, I can—”

  “F-follow the main road until you come to a crossing,” the guard said. “His house is on the corner, the one closest to the river.”

  Danr nodded his thanks and led the steer into town. It must be nice to be a cow. Cows didn’t care if anyone stared at them or whispered behind their backs. It didn’t matter who led them or where they were going.

  Skyford was prosperous, and the streets were paved with logs sawed in half lengthwise and laid bark-side down. It made for a bumpy road, but it also cut down on the mud. The houses were similarly built of logs, and many sat on heavy, shoulder-high stilts in case the river flooded. The areas beneath were used as pigpens or chicken coops. People crowded the byways, but everyone stared at Danr and made way for him. Usually when Danr came into Skyford, he was surrounded by a herd of cattle, and people took less notice of him, but today was different. Danr sped his steps, concentrating on his goal and trying to close his ears to the whispers that rose behind him like a flock of bats.

  An arrow skewered the log at his feet so suddenly it seemed to have sprouted there. Danr jumped backward with a yelp and bumbled into the steer, who bawled. Laughter burst all around them. Danr scrambled to unsnarl himself as best he could and regain his balance beside the half-panicked steer.

  “Playing with your lunch, Trollboy?” White Halli, the earl’s son, sat on a roan horse a dozen yards away, a bow in his hands and a quiver on his back. He was twenty-two—six years older than Danr—and his white-blond hair gleamed like a sword in the spring sunlight. Halli was tall, though not as tall as Danr, with ice-blue eyes and a whipcord build of flat muscle. His rich blue tunic was dyed to match his leggings, and a blade hung from his belt. The two men who rode beside him bore swords as well, and axes hung from their saddles. Danr eyed them with wordless apprehension. White Halli was the last person he wanted to see right now. Automatically his eyes darted left and right, looking for a distraction or a place to run to. But he wasn’t on home ground, and he saw no sanctuary. Even the laughing crowd was sidling away. Whatever entertainment Halli might create with the troll’s boy wasn’t worth the chance of being caught up in it.

  “Take your hat off when you’re in the presence of the earl’s son,” Halli snapped.

  Danr removed his hat with one hand, the other still tightly clutching the steer’s rope. The sun smacked his eyes and drove a spike of pain through his head.

  “I heard you’d come to town,” Halli continued. “You saved me the trouble of hunting you down.”

  “What for?” Danr asked, then added, “My lord.”

  “You know what for,” Halli replied easily.

  “No. I don’t.” Danr did, of course, but he wasn’t going to allow Halli to get away with a silent accusation. A steady loathing for the man grew black and harsh behind his eyes and he let it show in his face, even if his words remained civil.

  A year ago, to give Halli something to do, Earl Hunin had put Halli in charge of keeping order in Skyford. Now Halli patrolled, and the damp cells under the keep grew crowded. So far, crimes seemed to include walking the streets too late at night, public disturbance (which included singing in front of taverns), and owning a poorly shod horse. Rumors slid about like shadows, whispering that Halli was deliberating building up a source of conscripts for the army, even though Earl Hunin had no desire to make war against anyone.

  In his patrols, Halli often came across Danr. Danr, who had accidentally stumbled across Halli going after his cousin Sigrid during the cattle fair five years ago and who had been called, shaking and stammering, into a private conference with the earl. Danr was a mere thrall, so his word meant little, and Halli had simply called Sigrid a liar. It had ended with Halli’s marriage to a pliable merchant’s daughter while Sigrid had been sent south, far away from her family. The sickness of Halli’s presence made Danr feel cold and slimy at the same time.

  “You’ll have to tell me, my lord, what I’m accused of,” Danr said.

  Halli pretended not to notice. “How like the Stane. Not half a brain among your entire race.”

  As before, Danr didn’t respond. He merely stood there in his patchwork clothes, holding the steer’s rope. Halli wanted an audience, but Danr wasn’t going to play to one. Fortunately for Danr, the people on the street kept their heads down and went about their business, refusing to be drawn into Halli’s street theatrics.

  “The Noss brothers, you idiot!” Halli finally shouted. “You killed them and smashed their house last night.” />
  “Are you sure this is true?” The monster inside Danr snapped, but Danr kept his voice even and quiet, though the mix of dislike and anger pushed more words out of him. “Or does the earl merely want to ask me questions about it? I’m sure the son of Earl Hunin wouldn’t want to be wrong and look foolish in public. Especially after he failed to persuade the slavers from taking his people.”

  Halli’s face went hard. The slavers had hit Skyford badly. Not only that, but if Halli made a charge too quickly and turned out to be wrong, he would look the goose in front of his father. Danr had twisted Halli’s investigation around and put him on the defensive.

  Good, Danr thought.

  “What do you know about the attack on the Noss brothers?” Halli asked quickly.

  Danr spread his hands. “Nothing, my lord. I was at home asleep. I’m sure my master, the wealthy farmer Alfgeir Oxbreeder, who I believe dined with your father just a month ago, will tell you that I was at work until after sunset, and then I was asleep in the stable.”

  “With the other animals,” Halli spat.

  It would be so easy to leap at the horse, break its neck with a single blow, bring Halli down with a crunch of bone and spurt of blood. Danr started to make a fist. Halli smiled.