Iron Axe

by Steven Harper

  In the end, she hadn’t escaped. It had been far worse. One of the other slaves, a young man named Gell, had somehow held himself apart from the elven glamour and wanted to escape. Aisa had used her hatred of the king to force herself into performing a small task—she distracted a fairy with a bit of talk while Gell slipped away, and then lied about Gell’s whereabouts when he came up missing. But Gell had been caught, and under torture, he had revealed Aisa’s part in his escape just before the sprite scoured his brain out of his skull.

  Aisa’s deeds had rated a punishment far worse: sale into exile, away from warmth and light, to a Balsian man who kept her as a servant and a concubine while the cold hunger for her former owner kept her shivering at a dirty hearth.

  Aisa let the heat of the coals bake into her bones, pushing the ever-present chill aside, if only for the moment. At least she didn’t have to worry about becoming heavy with Hunin’s child. Something about the elves stole fertility from humans of both sexes. It was why the Fae needed a continuous supply of human slaves. Aisa felt both relief that she would bear no child to Farek and sorrow that she would never have a baby of her own. Always she was pulled in two.

  A sharp kick to the ribs wrenched her to wakefulness. Aisa gasped at the pain and rolled reflexively away. Frida stood over her, foot drawn back for another kick. Aisa scrambled upright. She had dozed off without noticing, and now it was morning.

  “Get to work, lazy slut,” Frida snapped. “The fire’s almost out, the baby needs to be changed, and the children will want breakfast.”

  “Yes, lady.” Still smarting from the kick, Aisa stirred up the fire, added sticks and logs, then lifted Helga from the crib and set to work.

  Farek’s house, like most farmhouses, was L-shaped, with a heavy curtain of hides dividing the long arm of the L from the short arm. The animals lived in the short arm, and the hearth sat at the juncture of the two arms. Wide benches for both sitting and sleeping lined the walls, and a long table near the hearth was used for preparing food and eating. Foodstuffs, clothes, and tools were stored up in the rafters and in boxes and chests under the benches.

  Farek snored from his bench. Frida shook Abjorn awake and sent him into the stable to milk the cow and clean out the stalls as he did every morning before breakfast. Aisa unwrapped her hands, cleaned baby Helga, wrung the urine out of the dirty diaper into the wastebucket, and tossed the cloth into a second bucket. Later, she would take the urine to Helmut the tanner for sale and bring the diapers down to the river for washing. The infant woke and cried just as Aisa was tying on a dry cloth, so she silently handed her to Frida to nurse. Frida opened the front of her blouse while Aisa poured fresh water into the kettle and hung it over the fire. Frida watched her with hard blue eyes. She was pretty enough, with thick blond hair she wore in a braid coiled at the back of her head, but Aisa did her best to stay out of reach.

  Abjorn emerged from the stables just as Aisa was slicing old bread, cheese, and sausage for the breakfast table. Helga crawled around under the table, and Frida, who had already washed, was putting together flour, water, and scraps from yesterday’s rising to make new bread. Farek awoke with a groan. Aisa shot him a nervous look, then reminded herself that he wasn’t likely to come for her the morning after he’d been drinking.

  “You have a cat on you from all the ale, Farek,” Frida observed harshly. “Wash up. Breakfast is ready.”

  Aisa poured warm water into a washbasin, set it on the bench beside Farek, and edged out of reach, just in case. Farek groaned again, then washed his hands and face, blew his nose into the bowl, and left it for Aisa to empty. She waited to one side until he put his boots on and staggered to the table. He didn’t even look her way, for which Aisa was grateful. The family sat at the table, Farek at the head, Frida at the foot, and Abjorn in between. Helga continued to crawl around the floor, babbling to herself. Aisa’s stomach growled. She would eat the remains of the family’s breakfast while she cleaned the kitchen.

  “Funeral for the Noss brothers is today,” Farek muttered over his bread. “At noon.”

  “Will there be a feasting?” Frida asked. “They have no relatives around here to give one.”

  Farek wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Their sister’s family came in from Skyford, so there’ll be a proper service—and a feasting.”

  “Hmm.” Frida jerked her chin at Aisa. “You, girl, are not to attend. I won’t have people thinking my husband’s slave is part of our family.”

  Frida was being deliberately unkind. Missing a feasting, even for a funeral, was a cruel punishment for anyone, especially after a long, hard winter of near isolation. But Aisa felt a small swell of anticipation. If the family went to a funeral and feasting, she wouldn’t have to cook all day. Even supper would be cold leftovers. Aisa would also have some time to herself while the family was gone. Most of her herb stocks were low from the long winter, and she was still eager to go out and gather more, now that the leaves were green again. It was what she had been doing when she met Danr on the road. But if Frida knew any of this, she would force Aisa to go with the family, so Aisa put an expression of disappointment on her face.

  “Yes, mistress,” she murmured.

  Frida snapped her fingers at Aisa. “Find my red dress, girl. Get a damp cloth to take the wrinkles out, and do the same for Abjorn’s good shirt. Move!”

  A frantically busy morning passed with speed, and Aisa soon had the house to herself. Frida gave Aisa a great deal of make-work to be done while they were gone, but Aisa knew from experience that none of it mattered. If things went well at the feasting, Frida would come home in a good mood and she would forget all about Aisa’s work. If things went poorly, she would arrive in a temper, ready to take it out on Aisa, and it wouldn’t matter if Aisa had lined the hearth with gold.

  With the family safely away, Aisa took up a basket and headed outside. The basket was her secret, her hope, and she hid it in plain sight.

  Aisa was known through the village as someone with a healer’s touch. She knew no magic, but colicky babies dropped off to sleep under her hands, wounds she tended avoided infection, and fevers cooled themselves the moment she entered a house. Caring for her mother had given her an extensive knowledge, and she had learned more during her time with the elves: vervain for headaches and womanly cramps, marigold for sensitive nipples after breast-feeding, black-and-blue cohosh for muscle spasms, birch for painfully dry skin, and so many more. Most women knew at least something of healing herbs, of course, but Aisa came from a foreign land and had lived among the Fae, which gave her additional mystique, which she wore close about her like the rags and scarves. The mystique also meant people feared and mistrusted her, but that somehow made her more effective, as if coming from a foreign land granted her access to secrets no one else could understand, and the villagers asked for her often.

  Aisa clutched the basket close and crept around the side of the house, making for the fields and forests beyond. She needed to refill it so she could keep earning money, for although she was a talented healer, Aisa did nothing for free. Every visit she made cost something. Those who owned coins had to give them up. Those who owned none had to give her some object of value, no matter how small or silly. If there was nothing else, she accepted food to keep her belly full and her limbs strong. Twice a year, when she was by law granted a day to herself, Aisa walked to Skyford with her treasures, where she sold every one for hard coins. Frida had wanted to take a percentage at first, but the earl’s law said that a slave could keep entire anything he or she earned, as long as the money came from outside the borders of the master’s holding. Farek allowed it because renown as a healer increased Aisa’s value. And so her small silver hoard was growing.

  When she had enough, she would run away.

  Not back to Alfhame and the elves. That path was closed to her forever more, and she did not truly wish to return there in any case. Not back to her homeland of Irbsa, where she would be nothing but property and where Rolk had abandoned her p
leas for help. No, when Aisa had enough money, she would travel to the South Sea, where she would heal the sick and use her earnings to buy a small boat so she could sail out onto sun-drenched water and speak with the bare-breasted merwomen until their language danced on her tongue like thin, sweet wine. And then she would tattoo her forehead and cheeks with intricate designs of red-and-blue power. Once she had her face again, she would rip the rags away and fling them into the sea forevermore.

  Aisa shifted the basket. The Farek house was one of several that made up a rough circle of homes around the village center, where the funeral and feasting were being held. Aisa would have to creep past the service in order to get to the woods outside the village. Already a gathering of people was speaking in hushed, respectful tones. One group Aisa didn’t recognize, and she assumed they were family to the Noss brothers, in from out of town. Automatically she looked for Farek and Frida but didn’t see them. However, she did catch sight of Hamzu, tall and strong, hovering at the edge of the crowd. Her heart made a small flutter, like the wings of a small bird, and she longed to stand beside him with his protective hand on her shoulder. Near him was the handsome young man Talfi, the one from Skyford. Aisa had mixed feelings about Talfi. Hamzu seemed to have befriended him, and that was a fine thing, but likable as Talfi was, something about him made Aisa’s eyes narrow and put an itch in her wrapped fingertips.

  On a pair of tables in the center of the village circle were the bodies of the Noss brothers. They were tightly wrapped in white cloth, with flowers and small branches tucked in. From the branches hung amulets and small cloth pouches, which would be burned along with the bodies outside the village after the priest invoked the nine names of Vik, the god of the underworld. The amulets and pouches were vitally important. Without them, the Noss brothers would have nothing with which to bribe Halza, Vik’s cold and merciless wife who brought ice and winter every year, and she would banish them to the frigid depths of Eishame before they even reached Vik for judgment.

  The priest of Olar was also someone Aisa didn’t recognize. He looked barely old enough to be away from his mother. He didn’t even have a beard. His red robe was threadbare, and he wore no gold pectoral. Clearly, the temple at Skyford hadn’t seen fit to send their best to the funeral of a pair of rural farmers. An older man standing among the Noss was glaring at the young priest, and Aisa had the feeling Skyford would soon be hearing about this. She felt somewhat insulted herself, for all that these weren’t her people. It did not seem right to send these young men off to Vik on the words of someone who looked like an acolyte.

  As Aisa reached the edge of the circle of houses, the young priest rang a brass bell to start the death ritual. He intoned something, and the family and several villager women set up a wail and cry, howls of mourning to show respect for the dead and frighten away evil spirits. Aisa hated that sound—it always made her think of her mother. She was turning her back to slip away when she realized the wails had turned into true shrieks of terror.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Danr said out of the side of his mouth.

  “If you don’t come,” Talfi murmured back, “it’s like saying you’re not one of them.”

  “But I’m not.” Danr jerked his head. “Look there—White Halli.”

  The man in question was in the thickest part of the crowd, his two blocky guardsmen standing on either side of him. Halli’s silver-blond hair caught the sunlight as he spoke in low voices to the grieving Noss family, who had arrived from out of town. Once he looked up and met Danr’s eye. The glint in his gaze sent a chill over Danr’s skin.

  “He’s going to speak,” Danr said, “and he’s going to say something bad about trolls to get everyone angry at me. You watch.”

  “Just shut up and enjoy the funeral.”

  In the center of the village circle, the crowd of mourners was trying to edge away from Danr and his ragged hat. The trouble was, that meant they had to edge toward the two corpses lying wrapped on the trestles, so the entire situation created something of a ripple that washed back and forth. Danr stood like a rock, holding his head up and trying to pretend he had nothing to do with it. Then the young red-robed priest rang his bell, and everyone settled down.

  “We call upon Olar, King of Birds, to bless this place, and we call upon Grick, Queen of Grain, to make this a holy stead,” the skinny priest intoned in a surprisingly deep voice. “We bless our brother Lars Noss and our brother Nils Noss and pray that the Nine watch over them on their journey to Vik’s realm. We—”

  One of the wrapped corpses quietly sat up. The priest’s voice died with a wet gurgle. For a moment, no one moved. The second corpse sat up in a soft rustle of bandages. And yet the brothers’ bodies still lay behind on the table. Frozen by surprise and a strange fascination, Danr stared. He couldn’t understand what he was seeing. Tiny sounds whimpered in the crowd. Danr came to realize that the creatures sitting upright on the table were spirits wrapped in ragged bandages of their own, and they were climbing out of their bodies. Their gray translucent flesh rippled like pond water in the sunlight. Horror crawled cold over Danr. Still no one moved.

  A woman screamed, “A witch! A witch called them up!”

  The sound shattered the crowd’s startled freeze. More screams broke out, and everyone stampeded in a hundred diverse directions. Danr’s feet felt staked to the ground. The villagers streamed around him like minnows around a rock. The two guards cleared a way for White Halli, who ran with wild eyes. More cries of “witch!” followed. Dread fascination forced Danr’s gaze toward the two ruined bodies that were clambering off the trestle tables. It occurred to him that he should be afraid, or at least disturbed, but compared to a thirty-foot wyrm, a pair of broken spirits didn’t seem much of a threat. Either that or he had gone so far past fear that he had come out the other side. The cold spirits clambered down from the boards, leaving their shells behind.

  “Draugr,” said Talfi, who hadn’t run away, either, though he had edged behind Danr.

  “What do you suppose they want?” Danr whispered. He forced himself to remain where he was despite the chill fear trickling over him now. Fear was unpleasant, but you pushed through it, like everything else. What else was there to do? He tugged nervously at the brim of his hat.

  In a voice that came from the bottom of a well, both draugr said, “Release!”

  Now Danr did step back. He trod on Talfi’s instep, and Talfi yelped.

  “Release!” the two draugr repeated, though neither of them moved farther away from the corpses on the trestle table.

  “What do you mean?” Danr tried to call at them, though the words came out as more of a hoarse grunt.

  “Release!”

  “You’re supposed to go to Vik’s realm,” Talfi said. “Leave!”

  “Release!”

  Danr took another step back, ready to run but not sure he should. The draugr that had been Nils Noss lurched forward while his corpse lay on the bier behind. Cold nausea made an icy pit in Danr’s stomach and he tried not to think how that leg had been damaged. Still, the draugr didn’t seem interested in moving. Danr chewed his lip. He felt he should do something but didn’t know what. Ghosts came to priests, not farmers and thralls.

  “Release!”

  Danr glanced around the village circle, his mouth dry. Talfi’s face was white. The draugr hadn’t attacked or screamed or called curses upon him or anyone else. All they had done was demand release. And they hadn’t moved more than a few feet from their wrapped bodies. They couldn’t stay here in the middle of the village. The more Danr thought about it, the more wrong it felt. If spirits were to haunt the world, they should skirt the edges of dark places and give the living a chance to avoid them, not stand in the center of a busy village where they would frighten children and disrupt daily life. Someone should do something about it. And there was no one else around.

  Before he could think more about what he was doing, Danr strode past the draugr t
o the table they guarded. He reached under the table with both arms and lifted it, cold corpses and all. Talfi clapped both hands to his head.

  “What are you doing?” he yelled.

  Danr ignored him. Move fast, move forward, don’t think. The table and its sad burden were a hardly noticeable weight.

  A chilly voice whispered wet in his ear, “Release!” Ice clenched Danr’s bowels, but he kept moving. He moved down the road, past the circle of houses.

  “Release!” The voices were sleet on a north wind, and his back prickled, waiting for pain or worse. The dreadful sweet, rotting smell of the corpses mingled with the soft scent of drying flowers woven into the bandages. One of the bodies shifted on the table as he jogged, but nothing touched Danr, though his entire skin crawled cold. He came to a grove of ash trees a short distance outside town. In its shade he set the table. The draugr drifted over to hover near the bodies. To Danr’s eyes, the ghosts looked more sad than scary now.

  “Release!” they whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to them. “I can’t help you. But I’ll ask the priest.”

  He backed away. The ghosts showed no interest in following. A hand touched his shoulder, and Danr whirled. It was only Talfi.

  “What in Vik’s name are you doing?” his friend demanded. “They could have killed you! Or worse!”

  “Worse than what they’re going through?” Danr said. “Come on. We should get back.”

  “Trolls, wyrms, draugr,” Talfi muttered as they went. “What’s next? Giants? Gods?”

  Back at the village, they rounded a corner of one of the houses—it belonged to Anders the thatcher, one of the men who had tried to hang him last night—and suddenly the enormity of what he had done crashed over Danr. His knees weakened, and he leaned against the house wall. Stiff thatching brushed his head as he blew out a heavy breath. One part of his mind was aware of the irony—he had found shelter at the house of a man who had wanted to kill him. A small flock of chickens pecked and clucked amid the stilts under the house, unaware that their owner had only last night tried to stretch the neck of a sixteen-year-old thrall.