Daughters Of The Storm

by Kim Wilkins

  They were stopped now, in a soft grassy glade off the road. Wylm had kept them away from the main thoroughfares, which had made for a sometimes jolting journey. However, the roads to the north-west were not well travelled. The north-western coast of Thyrsland was a dank place, with muddy beaches and hollow forests disfigured by prevailing winds.

  But rumours and whispers had come to him that the Crow King had built his hall on an island off the north-west coast. He hoped for more than rumours and whispers in the north-western inns: he hoped for a route, a map, a vessel to take him there. Wylm glanced at Eni, who was wandering around in the dusk collecting sticks. He also hoped to find somewhere to leave Eni.

  ‘Watch out, lad, it’s dark,’ Wylm called, then realised his warning was pointless. For Eni, it was always dark. He was sure-footed enough, mumbling to himself as he wove about, crouched over, feeling the ground for treasures. Wylm tugged at a slice of stringy rabbit meat with his teeth. What he would give for a soft bed and a proper meal, with turnips and beans and gravy. It wasn’t that he didn’t know hardship: Bluebell had had him stationed at a freezing garrison for over a year, sharing a long, low hall with seventeen other soldiers. It was simply that he didn’t think he should have to deal with hardship. His mother was the queen.

  Now everything had been twisted out of shape, the threads of his destiny balled in a hopeless knot. It would be a measure of the kind of man he was if he could smooth things out, take charge of his future, shape the world to his will.

  But sometimes, he didn’t want to be that man.

  Eni returned and held out his hands to Wylm. Wylm glanced at the collection of sticks and said nothing. Eni put the sticks down in front of him, crouched and reached up for Wylm’s head, taking it in his hands.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ Wylm spluttered, then realised Eni was pointing his head towards the sticks, making sure he had seen them. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, they are wonderful sticks.’ He firmly moved the boy’s hands away, noticing as he did that Eni still wore the gold dragon ring.

  ‘You’ll have to take that off, lad,’ he said, grasping the ring and tugging.

  Eni’s whole body spasmed in protest. He violently pulled away and threw himself on the ground, curling himself around the ring. ‘No!’ he shouted.

  ‘But I need to find an honest woman to look after you. I don’t want somebody taking you for the gold ring then turning you out.’

  It was clear that Eni didn’t understand this explanation. He flinched away from Wylm again, and said in a very clear voice, ‘Bluebell.’

  ‘Bluebell gave you the ring?’

  ‘Bluebell,’ he said again.

  Hearing his stepsister’s name put Wylm in a foul mood. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said to Eni. ‘Come and eat something.’

  The child didn’t move.

  ‘Eat,’ Wylm said, thrusting a hunk of rabbit meat towards him. ‘Come on. Rabbit. Rabbit.’

  But Eni stood and felt his way through the grass to the stream instead. Wylm watched as he bent to drink, then thrust his hands and wrists in the water, then stood and peeled off his shoes and stepped in the stream.

  ‘What are you ...?’ Wylm sighed, finished his meal and stood. ‘What are you doing now, lad?’

  Eni was smiling, giggling, as he trod on the spot in the water.

  ‘What is it?’

  Eni grasped Wylm’s hand and pulled him towards him.

  Wylm shook him off. ‘No, I’m not going in the water.’ He peered at the boy’s feet, and realised he was squishing mud between his toes. ‘Come out. You’ll be cold. You’ll be ...’

  But the boy just kept giggling. Wylm remembered doing the same as a child, and was seized by the mad desire to join him. Impulsively, he slid off his shoes and stepped into the cold water. Mud squashed up between his toes.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said to Eni, ‘you’re right, it does feel good.’

  ‘Mud, mud, mud,’ Eni sang, surprisingly tunefully.

  Wylm laughed, wriggling his toes in the mud as the sun disappeared behind the world.

  Wylm woke to the sound of shouting in the distance. He sat up, addled for a moment by the morning light. Eni slept curled under a blanket next to him, arms wrapped around a bunch of sticks. It was their fourth morning together. The shouting continued, gruff voices arguing. He realised they were speaking the language of Is-hjarta, the language of the northern raiders.

  ‘Wake, boy,’ Wylm said, prodding Eni. ‘We need to hide.’ The two of them out here in the open, barely armed, while raiders were on the road. Wylm had never felt so vulnerable. The stories of their cruelty were well-known. He hurried Eni to his feet, packed swiftly and led the horse off into the trees, where they crouched quietly among the saplings and the dewy grass. Eni seemed to understand instinctively that they were in danger and he needed to be silent, his dark eyes rolling back and forth as they had the day Wylm had killed his father. An unexpected pang of guilt. But then Wylm brought an image of Bluebell to his mind’s eye, and the guilt washed away.

  The shouting continued. Wylm picked up a word here and there on the wind. They were arguing over the spoils of a raid. The thought that he would have to somehow make his way to see a raider king made his stomach hollow. Was he just to stroll up and greet the king of such men? Surely his throat would be slit before his greeting had left his tongue.

  First, survive this close call. Second, get Eni to safety. Third ... the desire to run. The desire to leave all this behind him. But his mother was imprisoned at Bluebell’s will. A good son would not run away.

  The argument stopped and their footfalls on the road drew closer. Five of them in dirty clothes, with long beards and hair. As they passed, just one hundred feet away, he noticed one man had his hair tied in a long, tight plait. On the back of his neck, Wylm could see the tattoo of a raven.

  Hakon’s men. If, indeed, Hakon yet lived.

  He opened his mouth to call out, but the words froze in his throat. It was not safe with Eni, he told himself. He was not prepared, he had not yet decided what words he would use, in their strange tongue, to explain himself.

  But he knew he didn’t call out because he was frightened.

  They passed, and Wylm sat down heavily, his back against a tree trunk. The sun climbed higher and Eni sang a soft little song to himself. Wylm waited. Waited some more. Then when he was certain they would be safe, he grasped Eni’s shoulder. ‘Time to keep moving,’ he said.

  Eni understood the intent if not the words. Wylm saddled his horse and soon they were on their way.

  The wind freshened from the west as the day wore on, and they moved due west out of the shelter of trees. They stopped to eat at an exposed place where the lungs of the ocean exhaled upon them furiously. Once again, Wylm tried to get Eni to eat the leftover cold rabbit, but the boy didn’t want food. They mounted the horse and kept moving. Salt and seaweed were thick in the air. Wylm became alarmed that they hadn’t seen another human since the raiders that morning. Would he find an inn soon? Or even a hunter’s cabin among the rocks and growling pines? Any sign of life?

  The sun was moving into its low position in the sky when the vista opened up and he could see beyond wild rocky cliffs to the grey sea. And there, finally, was a village. A white-painted inn sat in the middle of it, with little crooked stone houses huddled around it. Laundry and fish hung in equal measure on long ropes between houses.

  ‘We are at the sea,’ he told Eni.

  But Eni could already smell it. He had lifted his nose to the wind and was wrinkling it curiously.

  ‘Do you think you’d like to live by the sea, Eni?’ Wylm asked, and already his mind’s eye was taken over by the fantasy. A cosy house, a warm maternal bosom, a wiry fisherman father, bleak weather outside the shutters, a warm fire ... then he wondered if the fantasy was for Eni or for himself. ‘I think you’ll be happy here,’ he muttered as he urged the horse forwards.

  The alehouse was bright and full of folk and fire. Men who smelled of fish and seawater sat on lon
g benches gulping drinks and laughing, while their wives chased fat children around or hung about their husbands’ necks with shining faces. He had rarely been in such a happy place.

  ‘Sit here,’ he said to Eni, finding a dark corner. ‘Now I must take your ring, but just for a day.’ He gently reached for Eni’s hand and the gold ring.

  Eni snatched his hand back. ‘Bluebell,’ he said.

  ‘Here,’ Wylm said, withdrawing from his belt a trinket he had been carving over the last few days. He had taken a thick stick and turned it into a long, skinny rabbit. Eni’s hand closed over it, feeling its contours eagerly.

  ‘The ring, Eni,’ Wylm said. ‘Just for a day.’

  Eni didn’t even notice Wylm slipping the ring off his hand, so delighted was he with the rabbit-stick. Wylm pocketed the ring securely, then went to the hearthpit, where the alehouse wife was turning a spit of fat fish over the fire. ‘Hello,’ he said.

  She turned her plain, ruddy face to him. ‘Evening, sir.’

  ‘You are very busy tonight.’

  ‘The fishermen just came back. They’ve been away a week in deep water.’

  Wylm looked around with fresh eyes. Yes, a celebration. That’s where the sense of merriment arose from. ‘I need a room and a meal for the young lad and me,’ he said.

  She glanced over at Eni. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He’s blind.’

  ‘Looks more than blind. I’ve seen a two-year-old playing with a stick like that, not a big boy who should have been sent to apprentice.’

  Wylm felt a pang for Eni that he didn’t expect. ‘He is as he is,’ Wylm said, ‘and I need to find a good, caring home for him here. I have to travel a long way and for a long time.’

  ‘Good luck,’ she said darkly. ‘If it can’t catch a fish or bear a baby, it has no place in Græweall.’ She indicated around her with a free hand. ‘The whole village is here. You can ask around if you like. But we are too small to support somebody who isn’t able-bodied.’

  Wylm scanned the room. Was there a couple without children? An older woman alone?

  The alehouse wife’s voice softened. ‘Go on, sit down. I’ll bring you some food and ask a few questions for you. And I’ve got a room out the back for you and your lad if you don’t mind sharing a bed.’

  Wylm returned to his seat. Eni was on the floor now, playing with the rabbit-stick, heedless of how his long skinny legs and jutting elbows marked him as a boy too old for strange noises and playing on muddy rushes. Wylm watched him a while, thoughts turning over and over. What misplaced pity had brought him into this situation? He had killed the boy’s father. He intended yet to extract revenge on Bluebell, the most famed warrior in the land. And here he was, minding a simple boy as though he were a softhearted woman. He should have killed the boy when he had the chance.

  Curses. He couldn’t kill the boy. He had been incapable of it. No matter that his heart welled with dark thoughts, he wasn’t pitiless. How he longed to be pitiless.

  The alehouse wife arrived with their meals — ale and fish and hot buttered beans — and said, ‘Old Florrie is going to come talk to you.’

  ‘Old Florrie?’

  ‘She’s my husband’s grandmother. She wants to meet your boy.’

  Wylm nodded. Old Florrie would do. Once Eni was off his hands, he could get on with the next stage of his plans, unencumbered.

  ‘Come on, Eni, sit up at the table. Food.’ He waved the plate under Eni’s nose and the boy felt his way to his seat, carefully placing the rabbit-stick aside, and began eating with his fingers.

  ‘Can’t you even use a spoon?’ Wylm said, forcing the spoon into his hand.

  Eni could use a spoon, once reminded to pick it up, but it was still a messy affair. Wylm gulped his ale and waited for the arrival of Old Florrie.

  She was nothing like he expected. No warm bosom and soft smile. She was all bones and hard surfaces, cheeks like scythes and a cold glint in her eye. ‘Is this the boy?’ she said, without further introduction.

  ‘Yes. His name is Eni.’

  She grasped Eni by the chin and forced his face up so she could examine it. ‘He’s blind, then?’

  ‘He can still get around very well.’

  ‘Boy, is that true? Can you still get around very well?’

  Eni was silent, sightless eyes swimming. Florrie released him with a derisive sniff. ‘No, I’ll not take him. Nobody here will take him. He’s of no use.’

  ‘Perhaps a woman who’s lost a child?’

  ‘We don’t mourn dead children long here,’ Florrie said. ‘I had six and only three lived. It’s the way in these parts. If it’s not the sea that swallows them, it’s the creeping cold that gets in their chests.’

  Wylm didn’t notice that Eni’s hand had crept across the table until he felt it slip under his own, looking for security. Anger boiled up inside him. Anger at Eni, at Florrie, at Bluebell, at the whole world for putting him in this situation.

  But then he remembered the ring. And it all fell into place in his mind.

  ‘Never mind, then,’ Wylm said to Florrie. ‘I’ll keep the lad.’

  Florrie shrugged and turned away. Wylm closed his hand over Eni’s. ‘Never mind,’ he said again, more softly. ‘I understand your true value, and I know an ally who might too.’

  The raiders had been heading south, so that meant Wylm had to head south, retracing his steps. They were on foot, he on a horse. He could catch them. It was a grey morning when they set off, the fog had barely lifted and the seaweed smell in the air almost choked him. But he put Eni on his horse, the gold ring restored to the child’s limp finger, and he rode hard and long.

  A few hours back along the road, he stopped to rest the horse and give Eni a break. He stood by a narrow stream that ran over rocks, stretching his aching back and practising the sentence over and over in his head in the northern language. But no matter how he said it, it could be construed as an invitation to immediate and violent death. He changed the phrasing, hoped he had the words right. Said it over and over under his breath.

  Wylm realised that there had been quiet for a while. He turned and scanned for Eni. Couldn’t see him.

  ‘Eni?’ he called, heading towards the trees. No doubt the boy was collecting twigs again. ‘Where have you got to?’

  A rustle in the bushes.

  Wylm paused, his left foot flexed as though to take another step. ‘Eni?’ he said, hating the note of fear in his voice.

  Then they were around him, five hefty men in leather and fur, emerging from behind trees he hadn’t even suspected as hiding places. And one of them had Eni hard against him, hand over the child’s mouth.

  Wylm’s lips tried to form words, but nothing would come out. White hot fear sheeted through him.

  The biggest in the group leaned forwards, resting the edge of his axe against Wylm’s shoulder. ‘Boo,’ he said.

  The raiders forced Wylm, hands bound, to march deeper into the glade, leaving his horse and pack behind. Every time he tried to speak, one of them would smack him around the head and shout, ‘Quiet!’, so he did as he was told. Eni was being carried over a burly man’s shoulders, crying quietly, every now and again saying the word ‘rabbit’ mournfully and Wylm presumed he had lost his plaything. At length they came to an encampment, and Wylm realised he was in much deeper trouble than he could have imagined. With his eyes he counted twelve on the ground, sitting around fires, sharpening blades, fletching arrows. Who knew how many more were in tents, especially in the largest tent, which was painted with a raven insignia on a red sea.

  ‘Ragnar!’ the man who held Wylm called, throwing Wylm onto the ground and putting a foot on his chest to stop him moving. ‘Come and see this.’

  From the tent emerged a solid, muscular mass of a man with a giant red beard. To Wylm’s surprise, the big man beckoned Ragnar not towards Wylm, but towards the boy, who stood uncertainly between them all.

  The big man reached out and flipped Eni’s arm into the air, s
howing Ragnar the ring.

  Wylm saw his chance. ‘It is the ring of the royal family of Ælmesse,’ he cried. ‘This child is the unacknowledged son of Bluebell the Fierce, the grandson of Æthlric Storm Bearer. I have brought him to you.’

  Ragnar turned and seemed to notice Wylm for the first time. ‘You speak our tongue?’

  ‘I am trained in diplomacy. I am the son of Æthlric’s queen, Gudrun of Tweoning.’

  Ragnar nodded to the big man. ‘Let him stand. Unbind his hands.’ He crouched as Wylm sat up and offered his hands to be untied. ‘Why do you bring him to us?’

  ‘I want to kill Bluebell. I have heard that Hakon still lives and I want an alliance with him to take her down. Her father is sick, dying. Now is the time to act.’ Please don’t kill us, please don’t kill us.

  Ragnar considered him, lips pursed among the bright whiskers. ‘How do I know you are who you say you are?’

  ‘He could be making it up,’ the big man said.

  ‘The child has the ring,’ said another.

  ‘So take the ring and kill them both.’

  ‘Hakon would want to see them.’

  Wylm caught his breath. The whispers were true. Hakon hadn’t died at his brother’s hand.

  ‘He has a randrman who could tell if they were lying.’

  ‘The boy can’t lie. He’s simple.’

  Laughter erupted. ‘Bluebell’s son is a simple.’

  ‘Hakon will enjoy that joke.’

  Their voices swirled around him and he struggled to keep up with what they were saying. But he heard one word over and over: Hrafnsey. The Island of Ravens.

  Finally, Ragnar made his decision. ‘If these two are who they say they are, Hakon will want them alive. We sail this evening.’

  ‘We are going to see Hakon?’ Wylm asked.

  ‘You’d best not be lying,’ Ragnar said. ‘For Hakon’s randrman will know and it will be the axe’s edge for you.’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ Wylm said boldly. ‘I fear no practitioner of magic.’ But he did. There wasn’t a thing about this situation he didn’t fear.