“So do I,” he said.
“No more than me.” Runa dumped her cloak at my feet. She’d already shucked her boots and wool leggings. She pulled her tunic over her head and strode over to the pool naked as the day she was born.
The rest of us stripped down to the skin and slipped into the scalding water, hissing as the steam hit our wounds, then heaving sighs of contentment as the pain faded away. We were too tired, and had been through too much together, to feel any awkwardness. And the mist and milky white water provided some level of privacy, as much as it mattered.
The heat melted my muscles and my mind. I released my hair from its braid, tilted my head back, and let the water lap at my neck. We didn’t talk or sing. We just took pleasure in the silence.
SEVENTEEN
“Leif and I could hear his screams from the prison.”
Vital’s voice was deep and sad. We had set up camp a few miles into the Blue Vee Forest, and now all stood by the fire, waiting on Juniper. The Sea Witch was off alone, readying herself for the long prayers that were needed when a friend died too young, or for an unjust cause.
We would hold Warrick’s last rites as the moon rose high in the sky, in the way of the Quicks.
Vital glanced at me, and I nodded for him to keep going.
“The Cut-Queen hit him with her reed, over and over, in the name of Fen. She meant for us to hear his pain.”
“She planned to kill one of us next, then let the other go to spread word of the horror.” Leif stood by Vital’s side, shoulder to shoulder.
Trigve pulled out a flask and handed it to me. “I bought some Vite in Mista before you arrived,” he said. “I figured we’d need it.”
I took a long, fiery drink, and then gave the flask to the Quicks. “He died bravely,” I said. “He fought me with all he had. The Cut-Queen hadn’t crushed his spirit—he was fierce right up to the end.”
Vital sighed and nodded. “Then we will see him in Holhalla.”
Juniper returned and began her prayers. They were part dance, part gestures, part song, part chant. Midway through, she had me kneel and hold my hands over the flames so the heat could burn away any dark spirits that might have clung to me as the bringer of Warrick’s death.
We all felt better afterward. Warrick was gone, his soul sent on to Holhalla by a loving Sea Witch. Now the Quicks could heal.
I passed around the Vite, and we talked long into the night. I told Trigve what had happened in the Cut-Queen’s village, and I told the Quicks about our time with the Sea Witches and Mother Hush.
Last of all, I spoke of Elan Wulf, of her refusal to fight me at the end, of how I slit her throat and spilled her blood, of how she died in my arms, of how she dissolved into a blinding beam of light.
“A witch resurrection,” Vital whispered a few moments after I’d gone quiet.
“Yes,” I said.
It was well after midnight, but I could still feel the warmth of the hot springs in my bones. Warrick’s funeral had spent me emotionally, but I was calm. Content.
“So Mother Hush sent us into the middle of a witch battle.” Runa took a long drink of the fire liquor and swallowed. “As if it were nothing more than another Mercy-kill, as if we were nothing more than mercenary warriors, paid for slaughter. As if we didn’t deserve to know what we were getting into.”
Juniper put her hands up, palms out. “It is not that simple, Runa. She thought we could help. And so we did. Her plan wasn’t as heartless or cunning as you make it out to be. She was seeking the greater good.”
Runa gave Juniper a shrewd look. “Did she tell you the truth, Juniper?”
Juniper paused for a moment, and then shook her head.
Runa shifted on the ground and kicked another branch into the fire. “Everything I’ve heard of witches confirms what I saw in the Merrows. They take no interest in the wider world and are mainly concerned with themselves.”
Ovie leaned back, crossed her ankles, and shot Runa one of her rare half smiles. “Aren’t we all?”
I held up my hands like Juniper, palms out. “It didn’t work anyway. The Cut-Queen might be gone for now, but she will rise again. She knew I had planned to kill her. She’ll come back all the stronger after this resurrection.”
Runa shrugged, her strong shoulders pressing into waves of dark hair. “Let her start a Witch War then, if she lives. What does it have to do with us?”
“It will be the first Witch War in centuries.” Juniper pulled up the hood of her Mercy-cloak, and her face fell into shadow. “This is no small thing.”
I nodded. She was right.
Leif and Vital had been quiet during our talk of the Cut-Queen, sipping Vite, eyes on the fire, thoughts on their dead companion, no doubt.
I turned to them and took the flask when Vital handed it to me. He was younger than I’d thought at first. His fear and exhaustion in the marsh had made him appear older. But no beard grew on his smooth face—he was seventeen at most.
“What will you both do next?” I asked. “Where were you headed when you were forced to cross the marsh?”
Vital looked up, blue eyes meeting mine. “Warrick had a twin brother named Calder. They hadn’t seen each other in two years, ever since his brother took up with a band of Quicks who left to hunt the Green Wild Forest, north of Blue Vee—they crossed the marsh before the Cut-Queen ruled the reeds. Warrick had gotten word that his mother had died, and he wanted to see Calder and tell him. We knew the risks and went anyway. We were Warrick’s Blood Brothers.”
“Blood Brothers?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Quicks tend to have two or three close companions—they take an oath of blood to never leave the others’ side.” Leif ran his finger across his palm. “We slit one another’s hands and let our blood mingle. It’s an old tradition, passed down from the warrior blood pacts in the sagas.”
I pressed my thumb into my palm and remembered the blood oath the Mercies and I had taken the night we’d decided to go to Blue Vee.
Trigve nodded. “In Ergill’s Saga, Ergill makes a blood oath with his closest friend, Jerrick, before they set off to hunt the dragon. And they both keep the oath to the end.”
“Yes.” Leif paused. “We won’t break our blood pact. We will carry Warrick’s message to Calder and spend the winter with the Green Wild Quicks, hunting the red deer and caribou that run through those woods—it’s the northernmost of the Seven Endless Forests, a sea of pine and juniper trees that stretches on until the edge of the world.”
Leif’s eyes lit up when he spoke of the woods.
“You are all welcome to join us,” Vital added, “if you like to run and hunt and are good with a bow.”
“Liar.” Runa eyed the arrow-filled quiver on the ground beside Vital, and then nudged it with her toe. “We aren’t welcome. The Quicks don’t take in Boneless Mercies. We are too grim. We aren’t boisterous or merry.”
Vital grinned. “We will make the rare exception.” He picked up his bow and held it out to Runa. “Here, let’s see what you can do.”
Runa reached for the bow … and then brought her hand back to her side. “No. We can’t join you. Not yet. We are headed down a different path.”
Vital dug in his pockets and pulled out a bit of beeswax, which he began to rub into the bowstring. “Aye. You are going to try your hand at the Blue Vee Beast, I think.”
“Yes,” I said.
Both Quicks looked at me then, but it was Leif who spoke first.
“Give up that path, I beg you. Come hunt with us this winter. The other Quicks will accept you after I tell them what you did in the marsh, how you freed us and killed the Cut-Queen. We will spend the season running through the snow, eating what we kill, visiting Night Markets, getting drunk by the fire, telling old tales. It’s a marvelous life.”
Vital nodded at his Blood Brother’s words, then leaned forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be seduced by that beast and by the gold. Don’t let the creature take you as it has everyone else
, Frey. Come with us. It is a wonderful life, as Leif said.”
“It does sound marvelous, Vital. Truly.” I took another swig of Trigve’s Vite and stood. I motioned to Runa, and she rose and followed me into the dark beyond the fire.
“What do you think?” I took Runa’s arm and pulled her closer to me so we could whisper. “We might not get an offer like this again. Should we give up Blue Vee and go with the Quicks?”
Runa opened her mouth, closed it, and then shrugged. I slid my arm around her waist, and we stood in the dark, side by side, pondering.
I attempted to send my mind down two paths again, as Trigve had taught me. I slowed my breath and imagined one path, north, to the Green Wild Forest, and one path west, to Blue Vee. I closed my eyes and waited for the light to come, to shine on the right road, the correct choice … But after several breaths, both paths remained shadowed.
“We can ask Ovie,” I said, finally. “Or Juniper. See if they’ve changed their minds.”
Runa’s eyes met mine. “What about the beast?”
“Someone else will kill it.”
“Will they?”
I didn’t answer. I was thinking about what Runa had said earlier, that the Sea Witches were only concerned about themselves.
If we followed the Quicks north and ignored Jarl Roth’s plea for help, would we be any better?
* * *
Later that night, I lay awake beside the dying fire, staring up at the stars as if my future were written there. My limbs were intertwined with Ovie’s, our breaths in rhythm. I heard wolves howling in the distance—we were in the far west now, and they were much more common here. Their song sounded wistful, full of hidden meanings and long-lost secrets.
Juniper slept beside Vital. She seemed to like the thoughtful blond Quick. She lay wrapped in her cloak, Vital’s arms around her, his chin buried in her thick green hair.
The sight of it made me smile.
Trigve was nestled into my back, in Juniper’s usual place.
“I killed a Willow,” he whispered, when the wolves had quieted and everyone had fallen asleep. “On my way through the marsh. A scout, I think.”
“You did? How?”
“She had a knife to my throat before I heard her coming. She held me captive for several hours and seemed to be listening to the reeds, waiting for further commands. She was tall and strong and swift, but that didn’t protect her from the marsh snakes. One bit her leg, and I saw my chance. I drowned her, Frey.”
“Good,” I said.
But he turned away from me, toward the fire. “Is it? I want to heal, not kill. Violence is not in my nature.”
“I know.” I shifted forward and pulled Ovie closer into me, careful of her wounded shoulder. She breathed in deep, and I felt her ribs move against my chest. Her hair was free from her braids for once, and I rested my cheek on her head. She smelled like snow.
“All of us will now arrive in Jarl Roth’s Great Hall with blood on our hands,” I said. “We are true warriors.”
“Does it matter?” Trigve paused. “I thought you and Runa might have changed your minds about going west, after the offer from the Quicks.”
“We talked, yes, but made no decision. Part of me wants to follow my heart and go with Vital and Leif. The thought of it … It makes me glow inside, like the Northern Ice Lights dancing over fresh snow. But part of me also hungers to go on to Blue Vee and do the right thing. The greater thing.”
“You will have to decide soon,” he whispered.
The wolves started howling again, and the sound made me think deep things, dark things—our saddest Mercy-kills, Siggy’s death, dying children, the sagas, the witches, all the things the Vorse have forgotten, and all they never knew.
EIGHTEEN
Leif had heard that Calder’s band of Quicks was hunting near the village of Nils, in the northwest. Nils was a tree-town—meaning it was one of the few villages deep inside a Vorse forest, rather than hovering at the edge. We all had at least five days of walking the Blue Vee Forest together before the Mercies and I had to turn straight west, to Blue Vee.
If we were still going to Blue Vee, that is.
We covered about twenty miles a day, moving fast, even running when we hit clear, open stretches of the trail. Only a few main roads ran through the Blue Vee woods, but we didn’t see many other travelers, which suited us fine. Our company numbered seven now, and the passing woodcutters and farmers tended to duck out of our way as we crossed paths, rather than the other way around. Which, I thought, was a nice change.
The pine trees in the woods were tall and straight, with an elegant, noble air, like thin, graceful kings and queens, nodding stoically as we passed. Our feet stirred up their brown needles as we walked, and I found the rustling noise rather comforting. The air was cold, but it had not snowed since those first early flurries the night we decided to seek out the Blue Vee Beast.
I knew, though, that the weather would not hold for long. I could feel the snow in the air, feel its frigid bite at the back of my throat when I breathed in.
On our second day with the Quicks, Juniper pulled me off the trail at high noon. She told me she’d appeared to Mother Hush in a dream the night before, and warned her of the Cut-Queen and her resurrection.
“Are you angry?” she asked. “I should have asked you first. I wasn’t sure the dream-walking would work. We are moving farther and farther away from the Merrows.”
“No, you did right, Juniper. Hush should know.”
Juniper nodded, her gray eyes worried. “What do you think it would mean if the Witch Wars return to Vorseland?”
A raven cawed in the top branch of a nearby pine tree, and we both looked up. I watched it for a moment, then turned back to Juniper. “It would mean the world is shifting. Trigve says that time moves backward as well as forward and that the age of the sagas will continue to rise and fall throughout the centuries, like the rise and fall of the sun.”
Juniper took my hand in hers, our fingers intertwining. “Runa was right. The Sea Witches have been too isolated, too caught up in themselves. A Witch War would end this, for better or worse.”
* * *
It didn’t take long for Leif and Vital to discover Runa’s affinity for archery. She stared at Vital’s bow with so much yearning as we walked—they couldn’t help seeing it. They demanded she go hunting with them our second night in the forest, and she came back an hour later, laughing and joking, holding a pair of snow-white boreal rabbits in each hand.
I hadn’t seen Runa this happy since the shooting contest with Aarne, and it warmed my heart.
Ovie, Juniper, and I continued to practice the Seventh Degree beside the fire, but Runa now spent her time constructing arrows out of pine branches. She and the Quicks had been taking turns using Vital’s bow, but they hoped to run across a Night Market soon. I heard Runa tell Leif she’d take up the death trade again to get the money for her own bow, if that’s what it took.
Runa had hated being a Mercy more than any of us, so it meant something when she offered this.
We feasted every night on stories, as well as Vite and wild game. We laughed and ate and drank, and we talked of everything and nothing. Trigve recounted obscure myths he’d read in books, and the Quicks talked of the Great Hunts of old. Juniper told tales of the Sea Witches and the goddess Jute. I tried to recall all the epic legends Siggy had shared with me on cold winter nights when it was just the two of us, from the tale of the Lone Girl in the Blood Frost Saga to the story of Midnight, of her bravery during the Raven War, as told in the Sea and Ash Saga.
I didn’t tell stories from the Witch War Chronicles. None of us did.
Only Ovie and Runa declined to tell any tales. Ovie because she rarely spoke, and Runa because she was Runa.
There was an ease among us all, even after so few days. Killing the Willows had brought us close.
Juniper slept next to Vital now, and I often caught them talking softly beside the fire or standing shoulder to shoulder
, praying to the stars.
On the fifth night, the mood around the fire shifted from contented and carefree, to thoughtful and melancholy. Everyone seemed to move slower, shoulders hunching as we gathered firewood.
No one spoke of it, but we all knew a crossroads was coming. We’d passed the tree-town of Welkin earlier, and the path would fork soon—one direction going to the Destin Lush Valley of Blue Vee and Roth’s Great Hall, and the other north, toward Nils, and the Skal Mountains, and the Green Wild Forest.
Runa, Ovie, and I sought out our Sea Witch during her evening prayers on that last night. We found her underneath a twisted, ancient juniper tree, a cluster of dusky berries dangling above her head.
I grabbed a handful of the berries and rolled them between my palms, releasing the sharp, earthy scent. “Which is it to be—north with the Quicks, or west to Blue Vee?”
No one spoke for a moment. This was a decision that would not be made lightly by any of us.
I closed my eyes and listened to the soft voices of the Quicks in the distance, preparing food by the fire. I listened to the wind blowing through the tops of the pine trees far above. I listened to the sound of my heart beating out its strong, Lion Star rhythm.
I turned to Runa. “Your desire to follow the Quicks is as clear as the midsummer sun.”
She nodded. “Never have we had so much as now. Let’s follow Vital and Leif and spend the winter in the Endless Forest. We will hunt and live and be free … And nothing evil in this world will be able to touch us.”
I turned to Juniper. “You must choose a path as well. Which is it?”
Juniper pursed her lips and blew over her right shoulder. “Mother Hush wouldn’t have given us the secret to slaying this giant if she didn’t think we stood a fair chance. The people of Blue Vee need us. We stick to the original plan and go west.”
I nodded. “What say you then, Ovie?”
Ovie’s eye met mine. “If we don’t like the look of the place when we get there, or feel we truly can’t defeat this monster, then we will leave. But if we can aid Jarl Roth in this battle, then we are obligated to do so. It is right. It is heroic. It is in keeping with the old ways. The hearts of Boneless Mercies beat just as strongly as any Vorse warrior’s.”
The Boneless Mercies Page 16
