Iron Axe

by Steven Harper

  “Whatever you might tell me,” he said gruffly, “they see me as inhuman, and it’s what they think that counts.”

  Talfi looked ready to object, then closed his mouth instead. Aisa just looked at him over her scarf. Not for the first time, he wished—even ached—to know her face.

  “Talfi told me of the injury to your leg,” Aisa said, changing the subject. “May I see?”

  Glad of the distraction, Danr drew his torn trouser leg up. Aisa leaned over it with the candle, and her closeness sent a small shiver over him.

  “The cuts have scabbed over well,” she said. “I see no sign of infection, but that may not come for two or three days. Talfi, do you have strong ale in your bag?”

  Talfi handed over a clay bottle, and Aisa poured it over Danr’s leg. He winced as ants of pain scurried across his skin. From a pouch at her waist, Aisa took several dried leaves, mixed them with more ale, and applied them to some of the wounds.

  “This will deaden pain and help block infection,” she said. “If you were anyone else, I would tell you to keep this leg warm for the next day or so, but I doubt Alfgeir will allow this. So I will only say that you should exercise care that you do not strain yourself. If it hurts, stop what you are doing.”

  “I heal fast,” Danr said gruffly. “You don’t have to worry.”

  “Hmm.” Aisa sat back on her heels and pulled his trouser leg down. “You are welcome.”

  Danr flushed. “Thank you,” he blurted. “I know you usually charge for … I mean, I don’t have any money … that is, I don’t …”

  She held up a hand. “I will take my payment in the form of three extra guesses today.”

  “Guesses?” Talfi said.

  “Oh … uh …” The flush deepened. This was the first time anyone else had ever heard of the name game, and he wasn’t sure what Talfi would think.

  “Is it Magnus?”

  “Er … no.”

  “What are you doing?” Talfi asked.

  “Perhaps Klaus?”

  Danr chewed a thumbnail, both pleased and embarrassed by her attentions. “No.”

  “Is it Hudl Knopfenstropfer?”

  A small smile snuck across his face. “Afraid not.”

  “What the Vik?” Talfi demanded.

  “He won’t tell me his true name, so I am guessing,” Aisa said. “Perhaps you can help.”

  Light dawned on Talfi’s face. “Oh! I want to know, too. Is it Fred?”

  “You don’t get to play,” Danr said shortly.

  “Hmm. So, what now?” Talfi asked, to Danr’s relief.

  “The village is holding a funeral for the Noss brothers tomorrow,” Aisa said. “At noon.”

  “I should probably stay away from that,” Danr said.

  “You should not,” Talfi replied emphatically. “You should stand up front, show everyone you’re not afraid to be there. You certainly bought the right with that keg of ale.”

  That took Danr by surprise. “I don’t know …”

  “I’ll go, too,” Talfi said. “As an emissary from Skyford, or something.” He leaned back on his cloak, and straw crackled beneath him. “I’m in no hurry to return home.”

  “Why not?” Danr asked without thinking how rude the words might sound. He flushed again, wishing he could take them back.

  Talfi, however, didn’t seem to take offense. “I hate sorting feathers,” he said, a little too casually. Danr cocked his head. There was something else that Talfi wasn’t saying, but Danr decided not to press for details—he still didn’t know all the rules for keeping friends.

  Sounds of revelry continued in the dooryard beyond the stable. Aisa got to her feet.

  “I should go before Frida misses me,” she said, heading for the door. She left a sad, empty space near Danr’s tiny hearth.

  “Aisa,” he called in his gruff voice before he could stop himself. A slight draft from the half-open door made the candle flame dance like a tiny demon. “Uh … thank you for helping with my leg. And for warning me about the villagers.”

  She nodded once and vanished into the darkness outside. Danr stared after her for a long time, not noticing Talfi’s thoughtful look.

  *

  Aisa pulled her ragged scarf more tightly across her face and shivered as she hurried up the dark, muddy road. This place was always cold. She was always cold. Even in summer, when the men stripped off their shirts and women sweated over cook fires, Aisa felt cold. She wore three ragged dresses, bound her hands in rags, and drew a hood across her hair, but still the cold crept in, biting her bones and gnawing her ribs. Only one thing could make her warm again, a thing she loathed even as she yearned for it during every waking moment.

  The village streets were deserted, though she could just hear in the distance thin shouts of laughter from Alfgeir’s farm. Alfgeir’s wife was still serving ale to the men. Aisa shivered. Farek, her master and owner, was among them. It was through him that Aisa had learned of White Halli’s plan to kill … him. The plan had fallen apart, but Farek was likely to come home drunk, and the possibility filled Aisa with dread.

  Like Alfgeir, Farek was a farmer, though his lands butted up against the village, and his house stood at the edge of town. A split-rail fence surrounded the yard, and Aisa slipped quietly through the gate. The moon hung overhead, shedding accusatory silver light over Aisa’s ragged form. Her hands ached with chill. Mistress Frida had gone to a neighbor’s house so the two of them could commiserate over the foolishness of their men, and she had left Aisa in charge of the two children, but they were long asleep, and Aisa felt it more important that he should know of the plot against him.

  Aisa hurried across the frostbitten yard, her mouth set tight beneath her scarf. Mistress Frida’s beatings hurt, and leaving the young ones alone would rate a long one. Aisa reached the front door of Farek’s round house and, heart pounding, lifted the latch. It made a small clatter, and the hinges creaked enough to make her hand shake. Aisa crept into the house like a rabbit sneaking into a guarded garden. A cold draft followed her in. The house’s interior was dark except for a few coals glowing red like wyrm’s eyes on the fire some way ahead of her. Aisa listened. Soft breathing emanated from one of the wide benches that lined the walls. Twelve-year-old Abjorn, wrapped in warm blankets, was still asleep. The crib that held baby Helga was also quiet. No sign of Mistress Frida. With a relieved sigh, Aisa picked her way through the long, narrow main room, remembering to skirt the table. Smells of smoke, dried meat, and diapers that needed changing assailed her. Aisa should probably clean Helga up, but she put it off. Right now she needed a moment to herself. Aisa reached the open hearth just past the table and sat down. It was her allotted sleeping place. She kept it clean as best she could, but some bit of dirt or ash always hung about the spot—and her. The tripod hung empty over the coals like the skeleton of a spider. In the morning it would be her duty to fill a kettle with water and hang it to heat for washing. She would be tired from lack of sleep, but at least he—Hamzu—had been warned.

  Aisa wrapped her arms around her shins and rested her chin on her knees, a shapeless bundle in the darkness. This spot was warm, more or less, and she could think about something besides the constant cold and never-ending hunger. She turned up the pleasurable thought that Hamzu would live, which drew from her a small, satisfied smile. Everyone called him Trollboy, but Aisa refused to use this demeaning nickname. Difficulty was, he had never told her his real name, so privately she called him Hamzu, which meant strong or steadfast in her mother tongue, and then refused to tell him.

  Aisa had felt a kinship with Hamzu from the day she first arrived at this place. Both of them were outcasts, both of them unwillingly served masters who treated them with indifference at best, cruelty at worst. And he was handsome, though he thought himself ugly. Unfortunately she did find his size and easy strength intimidating. Frightening, even. But his liquid eyes and his voice were kind and gentle. Unlike those of other men.

  Aisa’s first master had been her
father, of course. He had been a poor excuse for one. The priests of Rolk, who ruled the green valleys and desert plains of Irbsa and taught the sun god’s wisdom, required a father to love his daughter, protect her, keep her safe. But Aisa’s father, Bahir, had loved dice far more than his children, and his debts kept his two sons working as laborers, but Aisa, a daughter, could earn nothing. When Aisa’s mother fell ill with a terrible, wasting disease, there had been little money for physicians, and Aisa had been forced to learn how to ease her mother’s pain using plants and herbs she could gather for herself. Aisa’s skill grew quickly, but not quickly enough to keep up with her mother’s fading strength, and in the end, she had died, leaving Aisa, now ten years old, to run the house in her place.

  Once Aisa reached marriageable age, thoughts of paying dowry and wedding weighed heavily on Father’s mind. Just after Aisa’s fifteenth birthday, Father wordlessly took Aisa down to the market and handed her over to a man in a purple turban. Only when Aisa saw the silver fall into her father’s hands did she fully comprehend what was happening—Father had sold her into slavery. No dowry to pay, no wedding to hold, and the silver would mean a long night over the dice cups.

  Aisa had been too shocked to resist the heavy shackles clapped around her wrists. Two days later, the man in the purple turban took Aisa and a dozen other slaves aboard a ship intent on crossing the Iron Sea, the small ocean that separated Irbsa from Balsia. Aisa huddled on deck, sick as an elephant in an earthquake.

  The weather grew colder and wetter the farther east they went. Aisa eventually became accustomed to the waves, but not to the water. She longed for the warmth of the desert, for familiar smells of sandalwood and spices, for familiar sounds of good music and calls to prayer, and she silently begged Rolk to give her the strength to cast herself over the side and let her chains carry her to the bottom. But Rolk withheld his strength, and the ship sailed on.

  Once, a group of merfolk, easily twenty of them, hauled themselves dripping over the gunwale to perch there. The men were sleek and flat-muscled. Tattoos of cobalt blue and scarlet red made intricate designs on their arms and faces. The women were also muscular and bare-breasted, and their tattoos were no less intricate. Their tails gleamed a rainbow of jewels in the sunlight. All of them bore weapons—double-headed spears and thin swords. The other slaves yelled in fear, as did the man in the purple turban, but Aisa stared. And stared. She couldn’t break away from them. She had heard of the merfolk, one of the three Kin races, but they never visited the deserts of Irbsa. In person, they were terrible but at the same time alluring for reasons Aisa couldn’t explain, even to herself. The tattoos gave the men a dangerous air that Aisa found both appealing and confusing at the same time. And they all went naked. It took a great deal of power for a woman to appear bare-breasted in public, more power than Aisa had thought a woman could have. Somehow it felt … right.

  The captain, who also showed no fear, greeted the merfolk in a language Aisa didn’t understand. A merman responded. The captain handed over a sack, and one of the mermaids counted the coins within. Aisa continued to stare.

  One of the merwomen noticed Aisa’s gaze and said something to one of the other women. Her voice was low and musical. Both women laughed, and one of them gestured at Aisa to approach. Aisa could not have refused even if she had wished it. One of the merwomen touched Aisa’s face, tracing a design with her finger. Aisa gasped at the sensation, as if the touch had woken her from a dream.

  “You have no face,” the mermaid said. “They stole it. Such a shame.”

  Meanwhile, the other mermaid satisfied herself that the amount was correct. She barked a command, and the entire lot of merfolk dove into the water without another word.

  “What was that for?” the man in the purple turban asked.

  “Toll,” replied the captain. “It is expensive to go this way, but it cuts more than two weeks off our trip, and we can more easily go around the maelstroms that spawn in the middle of the Iron Sea.”

  Aisa looked over the gunwale, aching to see the merfolk again, but all she saw was endless ocean.

  One day, the ship arrived at a city like none Aisa had ever known. At first she thought it was a forest of the biggest trees she had ever seen growing right up to the edge of the ocean, where docks and piers poked into the water like strange fingers. Then she realized that houses of wood and vine hung cunningly among the leaves, as if they had grown there instead of being built, and a system of balconies, bridges, ladders, and staircases writhed in a confusing lattice. People swarmed the docks as well as tree branches and the ground beneath, but they were definitely not human. Waist-high, knobby-limbed creatures with wide faces, sail ears, and skin the color of oak bark scampered out to help haul the ship closer to the quay. They brought with them a damp, earthy smell. Amid the treetops flitted smaller, shimmering beings. Different colors coruscated over them. They moved in ways alien and strange. Aisa couldn’t quite make out what shape they were; her eyes twisted whenever she looked at one for too long. Both the dull fairies and the chaotic sprites were of the Fae, creatures who might live four or five centuries.

  The man in the purple turban refused to make eye contact with the sprite who came to buy the slaves, and the negotiations went quickly. In no time at all, a group of knobby fairies were hauling the slaves off the ship and into the city. Aisa felt small and frightened beneath the tall trees and the swinging walkways. Carefully trimmed ferns and shrubs and flowers made gardens everywhere, and generously wide dirt paths wove among them. Strange sounds surrounded her at every turn. The fairies chattered and gibbered. Feet clumped and thudded on wooden planks. Glowing sprites fluttered. Smells of exquisite cooking and herbs and sea salt mingled everywhere, with none of the heavy scents of garbage, waste, or other refuse Aisa associated with a city. After some time, Aisa noticed humans as well. They moved about the city, looking relaxed and cheerful. Not one looked unhappy. The sight should have reassured Aisa, but it only unnerved her. Who could be happy as a slave? Her stomach roiled. She wanted to tear the shackles from her hands and use them to choke the fairies and smash the sprites from the air.

  There was no more buying or selling that Aisa saw. One of the little brown fairies took her shackles in hand as if she were a horse and led her and six of the other new slaves to a river barge run by more chattering fairies. She spent two weeks on board as it traveled north upriver. This trip was much smoother. No one tried to talk to her, for which she was grateful.

  At last the barge came to a halt in another city, one almost exactly like the one they had left, except this town straddled the river at the edge of an enormous sapphire lake. The air was warm and cloying, and bright birds sang strange songs in the treetops. Bridges arced gracefully across the gentle water. At the urging of the fairies, Aisa and the other slaves disembarked from the barge and clambered down the sides to a wooden dock that smelled of cedar and made Aisa terribly homesick. Did her two brothers even know what had happened to her?

  A hand touched Aisa’s shoulder, and she looked up into the face of the most beautiful man she had ever seen. His golden hair all but shimmered with Rolk’s glory, and his ocean blue eyes cut through bone to her very heart. He had a long, straight nose and fine blond eyebrows that Aisa ached to touch. His rich blue tunic was heavy silk embroidered with silver thread, and he wore a short bronze dagger at his belt. A hunger woke within her, and he leaned down to kiss her forehead. The rest of the world simply went away. Sound and light and scent all vanished. There was only him and the soft caress of his lips on her forehead. Aisa’s knees wobbled, and she thought she might faint. She smelled cinnamon. Warmth flooded her, light and fine and delicious. She could walk across frigid mountains and never feel the slightest chill. Thoughts of the merfolk evaporated.

  “I am Lord Vamath,” he said. “I am king here, and you belong to me.”

  “You belong to me,” Aisa repeated, dazed.

  Vamath gave one short laugh, and Aisa would have clawed her way through a mountai
n to hear a second. “Indeed.”

  “Indeed,” Aisa echoed.

  “You are a little parrot, then.” Vamath fitted a silver collar around her throat, and the touch of his fingers made her feel warm and happy again.

  “A little parrot?” Aisa asked.

  “Exactly.” He smiled like the sun. “Come along now, Little Parrot. You have work.”

  He took Aisa to his house, a palace that occupied three entire trees. Rooms and suites connected by an intricate system of indoor-outdoor staircases festooned the enormous trunk and ran along the branches. The fact that Vamath, her master, was the elven king himself did not impress Aisa in the slightest. She only wanted to please him so he would speak to her or even touch her again. Her duties were difficult—hauling water up long staircases and scrubbing floors and heating baths and cutting wood—but thoughts of Vamath kept a quiet smile on her face, and she barely noticed how her muscles ached or the way blisters broke on her hands.

  One afternoon he stole up behind her while she was making up his bed. The silken sheets hissed under her fingertips as she smoothed them into place, and abruptly Lord Vamath was there. He stroked her neck. The delightful warmth returned, and she didn’t want to move.

  “Little Parrot,” he murmured. “How lovely you are.”

  He pushed her forward onto the bed and thrust her knees open with his own. A wrench tore Aisa in two, and she wanted to scream and cry and fight and run. But she also hungered beyond hunger for Vamath’s touch, longed and yearned for it. Vamath stroked her hair, whispered delights in his beautiful voice while her hands clutched the sheets. When he was spent, he pulled away quickly and left. Aisa knelt by the bed, feeling both ecstatic and nauseated at the same time.

  After that, she understood everything. The elven beauty, the glamour, was a drug worse than the opium some of her countrymen smoked back in Irbsa. Aisa wanted the elven king the way a lifelong drinker wanted wine, and it mattered not one bit that she hated him as well. A word from him made her happy for hours, and a touch thrilled her for a week. And when he took her a second time, she felt the gladness for a month even as she wanted to plunge a dagger into his back. The thought of leaving him, of trying to escape, made her ill.