He puffed his cheeks out and gave a weary sigh. He’d left Thorn. Naked. In his bed. No clothes at all. For this. The gods knew he’d made some awful decisions but that had to be the worst. Damn standing in the light, he should’ve been lying in the warm.
Rauk was kneading his shoulder with his pale hand. “Hope it heals soon. Can’t stand in the shield wall with a bad arm. You stood in the wall?” There’d have been a barb in that question, once, but now there was only a hollow dread in his voice.
“Aye, on the Denied.” There’d have been a pride in that, once, but now all Brand could think of was the feel of his dagger sinking into flesh and he’d a dread of his own as he spoke. “We fought the Horse People there. Don’t know why, really, but … we fought ’em. You?”
“I have. A skirmish against some Vanstermen, few months back.” Rauk gave another long sniff, both of ’em chewing at memories they didn’t much like the taste of. “You kill anyone?”
“I did.” Brand thought of the man’s face, still so clear. “You?”
“I did,” said Rauk, frowning at the ground.
“Thorn killed six.” Brand said it far too loud and far too jolly, but desperate to talk about anything but his own part in it. “Should have seen her fight! Saved my life.”
“Some folk take to it.” Rauk’s watery eyes were still fixed on the mud. “Seemed to me most just get through it though, best they can.”
Brand frowned at the burned out wreckage that used to be a village. Used to be some folks’ lives. “Being a warrior … not all brotherhood and back-slapping, is it?”
“It’s not like the songs.”
“No.” Brand pulled the two shields higher up his shoulder. “No it isn’t.”
“They took my sons. They took my sons. They took my sons …”
Master Hunnan had been talking to a woman who’d got away when the Vanstermen came. Now he strode back over with the thumb of his sword-hand tucked in his belt, gray hair flicked by the wind about a frown harder even than usual.
“They came at sunset two days ago. She thinks two dozen but she’s not sure and I reckon fewer. They had dogs with ’em. They killed two men, took ten for slaves, and five or so were sick or old they let burn in their houses.”
“Gods,” whispered one of the boys, and he made a holy sign over his chest.
Hunnan narrowed his eyes. “This is what war is, boy. What were you expecting?”
“They’ve been gone two days, then.” Brand cast an eye over the old men, and that young lad with the bad leg. “And we’re not the fastest moving crew you ever saw. We’ll never catch ’em now.”
“No.” Hunnan’s jaw worked as he stared off hard-eyed toward the north. Towards Vansterland. “But we can’t let this pass either. There’s a Vanstermen’s village not far from here. Just over the river.”
“Rissentoft,” said Sordaf.
“You know it?”
He shrugged. “It’s got a good sheep-market. Used to drive lambs there with my uncle in the spring. I know a ford nearby.”
“Won’t it be watched?” asked Brand.
“We weren’t watching it.”
“There we go, then.” Hunnan worked his sword hilt from the sheath then slapped it back in. “We cross at this ford and head for Rissentoft. Get your skinny arses moving!” And the master-at-arms put his head down and started walking.
Brand hurried after him, speaking low, not wanting to start an argument in front of the others, they’d got doubts enough as it was. “Master Hunnan, wait. If it was wrong when they did it to us, how’s it right if we do it to them?”
“If we can’t hurt the shepherds, we’ll have to hurt the flock.”
“It wasn’t sheep did this, nor shepherds neither. It was warriors.”
“This is war,” said Hunnan, his mouth twisting. “Right’s got nothing to do with it. King Uthil said steel is the answer, so steel it has to be.”
Brand waved his hand toward the miserable survivors, picking over the wreckage of their homes. “Shouldn’t we stay and help them? What good will burning some other village do just ’cause it’s across a river—”
Hunnan rounded on him. “Might help the next village, or the one after that! We’re warriors not nursemaids! You got a second chance, boy, but I’m starting to think I was right after all, and you’ve got more Father Peace than Mother War in you.” Looking at Mother War’s handiwork behind them, Brand wondered whether that was such a bad thing. “What if it was your family died here, eh? Your house burned? Your sister made some Vansterman’s slave? Would you be for vengeance then?”
Brand looked over his shoulder toward the other lads, following in a meager straggle. Then he gave a sigh and hefted the two shields.
“Aye,” he said. “I guess I would.”
But he couldn’t see how any good would come of this.
FIRE
“Reckon I need a new sword.”
Thorn tossed her father’s rattling down on the table.
Rin gave the blade she was working on another grating stroke with the polishing stone and frowned over at her. “This seems familiar.”
“Very. But I’m hoping for a different answer this time around.”
“Because you bedded my brother?”
“Because there’s going to be a battle, and Queen Laithlin wants her Chosen Shield suitably armed.”
Rin set her stone aside and walked over, slapping dust from her hands. “The Queen’s Chosen Shield? You?”
Thorn raised her chin and stared back. “Me.”
They watched at each other for a long moment, then Rin picked up Thorn’s sword, spun it over, rubbed at the cheap pommel with her thumb, laid it back down and planted her hands on her hips. “If Queen Laithlin says it’s so, I guess it’s so.”
“It’s so,” said Thorn.
“We’ll need some bone.”
“What for?”
“To bind with the iron and make steel.” Rin nodded over at the bright blade clamped to the bench, gray steel-dust gathered under it. “I used a hawk’s for that one. But I’ve used a wolf’s. A bear’s. Do it right, you trap the animal’s spirit in the blade. So you pick something strong. Something deadly. Something that means something to you.”
Thorn thought about that for a moment, then the idea came and she started to smile. She pulled the pouch from around her neck and tipped the smooth and yellowed little lumps out across the table. She’d worn them long enough. Time to put them to better use. “How about a hero’s bones?”
Rin raised her brows at them. “Even better.”
THEY STOPPED IN AN ash-scattered clearing by the river, a ring of stones in the center blackened as if it had held one hell of a fire.
Rin swung the big bag of tools down from her shoulder. “We’re here.”
“Did we have to come so far?” Thorn dumped the coal sacks, stretching out her back and wiping her sweating face on her forearm.
“Don’t want my secrets stolen. Talking of which, tell anyone what happens here I’ll have to kill you.” Rin tossed Thorn a shovel. “Now get in the river and dig out some clay.”
Thorn frowned sideways, sucking at the hole in her teeth. “I’m starting to think Skifr was an easier master.”
“Who’s Skifr?”
“Never mind.”
She waded out to her waist in the stream, the water so cold it made her gasp in spite of the summer warmth, and set to cutting clay from the bed and slopping it onto the bank in gray shovelfuls.
Rin put some dull lumps of iron-stone in a jar, along with the black ash of Thorn’s father’s bones, and a sprinkle of sand, and two glass beads, then she started smearing clay around the lid, sealing it shut.
“What’s the glass for?” asked Thorn.
“To trick the dirt out of the iron,” murmured Rin, without looking up. “The hotter we get the furnace the purer the steel and the stronger the blade.”
“How did you learn all this?”
“I was apprentice to a smith called G
aden. I watched some others. I talked to some sword-merchants from down the Divine.” Rin tapped at the side of her head and left a smear of clay there. “The rest I worked out for myself.”
“You’re a clever girl, aren’t you?”
“When it comes to steel.” Rin set the clay jar carefully in the middle of the ring of stones. “Back in the river, then.”
So Thorn sloshed out shivering into the stream again while Rin built the furnace. She heaped coal up inside, stones outside, and mortared them with clay until she’d built a thing looked like a great domed bread-oven, chest high, with an opening at the bottom.
“Help me seal it.” Rin dug up clay with her hands and Thorn did the same, smearing it thick over the outside. “What’s it like? Being a Chosen Shield?”
“Dreamed of it all my life,” said Thorn, puffing herself up. “And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather serve than Queen Laithlin.”
Rin nodded. “They don’t call her the Golden Queen for nothing.”
“It’s a high honor.”
“No doubt. But what’s it like?”
Thorn sagged. “So far, boring. Since I swore the oath I’ve spent most of my time standing in the queen’s counting house, frowning at merchants while they ask her for favors that might as well be in a foreign tongue for all I understand them.”
“Wondering if you made a mistake?” asked Rin, digging up another handful of gray mush.
“No,” snapped Thorn, and then, after a moment spent squashing more clay into the cracks, “Maybe. It’d hardly be my first.”
“You ain’t at all as tough you make out, are you?”
Thorn took a long breath. “Who is?”
RIN BLEW GENTLY ON her shovel, the coals rustling as they glowed bright, then she got on her belly and rammed them deep into the mouth of the furnace, puffing out her cheeks as she blew hard, over and over. Finally she rocked back on her heels, watching the fire taking the coal, flame flickering orange inside the vent.
“What’s happening between you and Brand?” she asked.
Thorn had known it was coming, but that didn’t make it any more comfortable. “I don’t know.”
“Not that complicated a question, is it?”
“You wouldn’t think so.”
“Well, are you done with him?”
“No,” said Thorn, surprised by how firm she sounded.
“Did he say he was done with you?”
“We both know Brand’s not much at saying things. But I wouldn’t be surprised. Not exactly what men dream of, am I?”
Rin frowned at her for a moment. “I reckon different men dream of different things. Just like different women.”
“Couldn’t have taken off running much sooner, though, could he?”
“He’s wanted to be a warrior a long time. That was his chance.”
“Aye.” Thorn took a long breath. “Thought it’d get simpler when … you know.”
“But it didn’t get simpler?”
Thorn scrubbed at her shaved head, feeling the bald scar in the stubble. “No, it bloody didn’t. I don’t know what we’re doing, Rin. I wish I did but I don’t. I’ve never been any good at anything but fighting.”
“You never know. You might find a talent at working bellows too.” And Rin dropped them beside the mouth of the furnace.
“When you’ve a load to lift,” muttered Thorn as she knelt, “you’re better lifting than weeping.” And she gritted her teeth and made those bellows wheeze until her shoulders were aching and her chest was burning and her vest was soaked through with sweat.
“Harder,” said Rin. “Hotter.” And she started singing out prayers, soft and low, to He Who Makes the Flame, and She Who Strikes the Anvil, and Mother War too, the Mother of Crows, who gathers the dead and makes the open hand a fist.
Thorn worked until that vent looked like a gate to hell in the gathering darkness, like a dragon’s maw in the twilight. Worked until, even though she’d helped carry a ship each way over the tall hauls, she wasn’t sure she’d ever worked harder.
Rin snorted. “Out of the way, killer, I’ll show you how it’s done.”
And she set to, as calm and strong and steady at the bellows as her brother at the oar. The coals glowed up hotter yet as the stars came out above, and Thorn muttered out a prayer of her own, a prayer to her father, and reached for the pouch around her neck but his bones were gone into the steel, and that felt right.
She sloshed out into the river and drank, soaked to the skin, and sloshed back out to take another turn, imagining the bellows were Grom-gil-Gorm’s head, on and on until she was dried out by the furnace then soaked with sweat again. Finally they worked together, side by side, the heat like a great hand pressing on Thorn’s face, red-blue flames flickering from the vent and smoke pouring from the baked clay sides of the furnace and sparks showering up into the night where Father Moon sat big and fat and white above the trees.
Just when it seemed Thorn’s chest was going to burst and her arms come right off her shoulders Rin said, “Enough,” and the pair of them flopped back, soot-smeared and gasping.
“What now?”
“Now we wait for it to cool.” Rin dragged a tall bottle out of her pack and pulled out the stopper. “And we get a little drunk.” She took a long swig, soot-smeared neck shifting as she swallowed, then handed the bottle to Thorn, wiping her mouth.
“You know the way to a woman’s heart.” Thorn closed her eyes, and smelled good ale, and soon after tasted it, and soon after swallowed it, and smacked her dry lips. Rin was setting the shovel in the shimmering haze on top of the furnace, tossed bacon hissing onto the metal.
“You’ve got all kinds of skills, don’t you?”
“I’ve done a few jobs in my time.” And Rin cracked eggs onto the shovel that straight away began to bubble. “There’s going to be a battle, then?”
“Looks that way. At Amon’s Tooth.”
Rin sprinkled salt. “Would Brand fight in it?”
“I guess we both would. Father Yarvi’s got other ideas, though. He usually does.”
“I hear he’s a deep-cunning man.”
“No doubt, but he’s not sharing his cleverness.”
“Deep-cunning folk don’t tend to,” said Rin, flipping the bacon with a knife blade.
“Gorm’s offered a challenge to King Uthil to settle it.”
“A duel? There’s never been a finer swordsman than Uthil, has there?”
“Not at his best. But he’s far from his best.”
“I heard a rumor he was ill.” Rin pulled the shovel from the furnace and dropped down on her haunches, laying it between them, the smell of meat and eggs making Thorn’s mouth flood with spit.
“Saw him in the Godshall yesterday,” said Thorn. “Trying to look like he was made of iron but, in spite of Father Yarvi’s plant-lore, I swear, he could hardly stand.”
“Doesn’t sound good, with a battle coming.” Rin pulled a spoon out and offered it to Thorn.
“No. It doesn’t sound good.”
They started stuffing food in and, after all that work, Thorn wasn’t sure she’d ever tasted better. “Gods,” she said around a mouthful, “a woman who can make fine eggs and fine swords and brings fine ale with her? It doesn’t work out with Brand I’ll marry you.”
Rin snorted. “If the boys show as much interest as they’ve been doing I might count that a fine match.”
They laughed together at that, and ate, and got a little drunk, the furnace still hot on their faces.
“YOU SNORE, DO YOU know that?”
Thorn jerked awake, rubbing her eyes, Mother Sun just showing herself in the stony sky. “It has been commented on.”
“Time to break this open, I reckon. See what we’ve got.”
Rin set to knocking the furnace apart with a hammer, Thorn raking the still smoking coals away, hand over her face as a tricking breeze sent ash and embers whirling. Rin delved in with tongs and pulled the jar out of the midst, yellow hot. She swung it o
nto a flat stone, broke it open, knocking white dust away, pulling something from inside like a nut from its shell.
The steel bound with her father’s bones, glowing sullen red, no bigger than a fist.
“Is it good?” asked Thorn.
Rin tapped it, turned it over, and slowly began to smile. “Aye. It’s good.”
RISSENTOFT
In the songs, Angulf Clovenfoot’s Gettlanders fell upon the Vanstermen like hawks from an evening sky.
Master Hunnan’s misfits fell on Rissentoft like a herd of sheep down a steep flight of steps.
The lad with the game leg could hardly walk by the time they reached the river and they’d left him sore and sorry on the south bank. The rest of them got soaked through at the ford and one lad had his shield carried off by the current. Then they got turned around in an afternoon mist and it wasn’t until near dark, all worn-out, clattering and grumbling, that they stumbled on the village.
Hunnan cuffed one boy around the head for quiet then split them up with gestures, sent them scurrying in groups of five down the streets, or down the hardened dirt between the shacks, at least.
“Stay close!” Brand hissed to Rauk, who was straggling behind, shield dangling, looking more pale and tired than ever.
“The place is empty,” growled the toothless old-timer, and he looked to have the right of it. Brand crept along a wall and peered through a door hanging open. Not so much as a dog moving anywhere. Apart from the stink of poverty, an aroma he was well familiar with, the place was abandoned.
“They must’ve heard us coming,” he muttered.
The old man raised one brow. “You think?”
“There’s one here!” came a scared shriek, and Brand took off running, scrambled around the corner of a wattle shack, shield up.
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