Sisters of the Fire

by Kim Wilkins

  ‘What have you seen?’ she asked the guardsman who stood on duty.

  He pointed. ‘Two raiders.’

  She peered down into the dark. Two figures did indeed stand on the other side of the ditch, one of them waving her arms. ‘They’re women,’ she said.

  ‘They could still be raiders,’ somebody said from behind her.

  The dark and the mist made it hard to make out detail. ‘Or they could be running from raiders,’ she said.

  The one who waved pushed back her hood and waved again, her little face white in the gloom.

  ‘That’s my sister, Rose,’ Bluebell said with a gasp of recognition. ‘Let her in. Let them both in.’ She hurried down the stairs two at a time and leapt onto the grass. ‘Let them in!’ she commanded, and the guardsmen gathered around the gate and hauled it open, lowered the footbridge.

  Bluebell ran across it and folded Rose in her arms. ‘Come inside, quick,’ she said, standing back. ‘You and your companion.’

  ‘It’s Rowan,’ the other figure said, and Bluebell tried to make sense of this but couldn’t. A trick of the light? It didn’t matter. Raiders were about.

  ‘Inside, quick,’ she said again, turning. Guardsmen waited along the footbridge with burning torches that threw grim shadows on their faces. She wondered if Rose now knew that Bluebell had kept Rowan’s location secret all these years. Then she dismissed the thought. They were at war. Those trivial hurts of the heart were of no consequence now.

  Bluebell brought her sister and niece to the hall, sat them by the light and warmth of the hearth, and had food and drink fetched for them. As they ate, they told her their story in fits and starts – quietly so as not to wake the sleeping bodies – until she had pieced it all together. Rowan had fallen under some enchantment, Rose had rescued her, but Skalmir had been left behind. Rowan, a seven-year-old, now looked years older. Bluebell had to stop herself from recoiling from the girl, so unnaturally grown. She forced herself to reach across and touch Rowan’s tattoo. She felt as warm and soft as she ever had.

  ‘And this is the same tattoo that Dardru wore?’

  ‘Yes. It marks me as Rathcruick’s daughter.’

  ‘You are no such thing,’ Rose exclaimed.

  Bluebell had enough tattoos – across her back and collarbones, encircling both arms – to know how much they could hurt. The idea of her niece having to endure that pain on her silky child-skin made her shudder.

  ‘You will save Snowy, won’t you, Bluebell?’ Rowan asked.

  ‘That I will, little chicken,’ she replied, aware that the pet name no longer suited this young colt. ‘But he will have to wait. We are at war.’ She gestured around at the warriors who spoke in low voices, the besieged families. ‘Rosie, you have come at a bad time. Sæcaster isn’t safe.’

  ‘It is with the Ælmessean army here, surely. Is Father here too?’

  ‘He sleeps in the dead duke’s bed. He tires easily. Ash is here too. She’d been wandering like a ghost on the south-west cliffs. I found her and brought her back.’

  ‘Ash has returned?’ Rose lit up.

  ‘She isn’t well, but she is with us and that is a start. Father will be so pleased to have so many of his daughters in one place. A reunion of his family was what he said he wanted above all things, back at the start of the summer.’

  ‘But Willow is not here,’ Rose said.

  ‘She may be closer than you think.’

  Rose looked puzzled, but Bluebell shook her head. ‘The morning. All explanations can wait until morning. You are tired. I am tired. I will have somebody take you upstairs to the small chamber where Ash sleeps.’

  Rose stood, but Rowan remained resolutely seated in front of Bluebell. ‘You go, Mama,’ she said. ‘I have other things I need to talk about.’

  ‘But, Rowan, we have travelled so far and –’

  ‘I am not tired,’ she said, but the dark shadows under her eyes said the opposite.

  Rose looked from Rowan to Bluebell, and Bluebell tilted her head slightly to indicate she should go.

  Once her mother had disappeared up the staircase, Rowan leaned forwards.

  ‘Whose daughter am I?’ she asked.

  Bluebell wasn’t sure how to answer.

  ‘Oh, I know who provided the seed from which I grew,’ Rowan continued. ‘Heath is his name.’

  ‘I know. But you oughtn’t –’

  ‘Yes, yes. I oughtn’t. I’m aware I oughtn’t. The peace between kingdoms relies on me not telling anyone. But my question goes deeper than that. Who should I consider my father? The man who provided the seed? The king who thinks I’m his, who has seen me kept from harm all these years? The hunter who raised me in the woods and whom I love with all my heart? Or Rathcruick, who wants to elevate me as the queen of the Howling Wood and from there all of Thyrsland?’

  ‘Is that what Rathcruick wants?’

  ‘Yes. So he says. I’m to accept him as my father before that can happen. But answer my question: whose daughter am I?’

  Bluebell regarded the young woman by the flickering light of the fire. Her sudden intensity reminded Bluebell that she wasn’t a little girl any more.

  ‘Perhaps you are nobody’s daughter,’ Bluebell said. ‘Perhaps you are your own thing.’ She thought of her father, how she loved him and worried for him and grew frustrated with him. ‘Perhaps you are just Rowan.’

  The guardsman who had shown Rose upstairs approached them. ‘Excuse me, my lord. Princess Ash asked me to pass on a message.’

  Bluebell turned to Rowan. ‘Go on upstairs and join your mother,’ she said. ‘Sleep well and your mind will feel less troubled in the morning.’

  Rowan climbed to her feet and headed off silently.

  Bluebell stood and joined the guardsman. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She was trying to leave.’

  ‘Leave the hall?’

  ‘Leave Sæcaster. She was wound up tight, desperate.’

  Ash must have heard about the white dragon somehow, but until Bluebell had seen it with her own eyes, it didn’t exist. Raiders existed, and they could be anywhere out there. ‘She isn’t to leave.’

  ‘Yes, my lord. That’s what I told her.’

  ‘None of the three of them. I want them kept up there, or in the hall. But none of them are to set foot outside. Tell your men.’

  ‘I will, my lord.’

  Bluebell turned her eyes up, wishing she could see through the wooden ceiling into the room upstairs. Was Ash sleeping now? Was she desperate, pacing, ranting to Rose and Rowan about dragons?

  It didn’t matter. Ash would have to stay in Sæcaster, whether she liked it or not.

  Twenty-eight

  The fog lifted in the early hours of the morning, while the sky was still velvety blue and stars were only beginning to fade. Willow opened her eyes when she heard men’s voices. A deep, low chant. She was curled at the end of a ship, her puddle of blankets pulled around her and over her. Rough men surrounded her on all sides. She knew Maava would not blame her for being indecorous while she was doing His work. Such manners and niceties were for weaker women. But the men’s stares and jokes, guttural and foreign, made her feel exposed. Nested in her bedding, they couldn’t harm her. Now she sat up and looked around, only to see a group of men standing around a bleating lamb, chanting. Hakon was among them.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, horrified.

  He turned, held a finger to his lips to silence her. Ragnar knelt and cut the lamb’s throat, and blood pooled on the boards.

  They were making a sacrifice to their heathen god.

  Willow was enraged, speechless. She closed her eyes and prayed for the angel voices to block out the sounds of their shouts and cheers. Just yesterday, she had felt such pride knowing the trimartyr banners were being raised over the battlefield, but the Ælmessean army had come – not Wengest, but Bluebell – and the raiders had lost. A bloodbath under the sign of Maava. And rather than seeing their fallen companions as martyrs who would
now spend forever in the Sunlands, the scouts who had seen it all told tales of their souls returning to the Horse God’s hall, for an eternity of drinking and wenching. It had made her shudder. Now this.

  She opened her eyes again. They had hung the sacrificed lamb off one of the masts where it dripped blood and fluid onto the boards below. The sails were dropped, the ship began to move. All smelled of salt water and blood and seaweed and sweat and raw wet wood. Above her a tangle of ropes and square, coloured sails clattered in the morning breeze.

  She went through the motions, sick in her soul. Folding away her bedding, her morning routine taken with no privacy and only her anger to shield her from curious eyes. Eventually Hakon brought her some bread and cheese to eat and sat with her a little while on the wooden board that had become her seat.

  She glared at him.

  ‘What is it?’ he said impatiently.

  ‘I thought this was a trimartyr army.’

  ‘We lost one hundred and eighty men yesterday on Maava’s watch,’ he said simply.

  ‘It was nothing to do with Maava. It was Bluebell who killed them.’

  He slapped her knee. ‘And now you kill her? You see? And when you do, they will all say Maava’s name again.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because you believe in Maava deep in your heart and love Him with all your being?’

  He shrugged, his gaze skimming out over the water.

  Willow took a deep breath, told herself that some miracle would yet make him see.

  ‘We may be able to take the city from the sea, and if that looks unlikely we will simply set fire to everything. Burn their houses, their ships, their docks to the ground. If we can’t have it, then nobody else can either.’

  Willow experienced a small twinge of regret, but then hardened her heart. Heathens. Burners of chapels. They had offered such high insult, and it could not go unrepaid. ‘My destiny is upon me,’ she said. Her hand went to the pommel of her sword and her mouth grew dry. ‘Kin slayer,’ she said softly, her own voice foreign to her for a moment.

  ‘Are you equal to this, wife?’ Hakon asked, his eye glittering intensely.

  ‘I am.’ A hot shiver moved through her and she knew it was Maava, filling her with strength. ‘I am glad she is here. It is time to end this.’

  Hakon leaned in and kissed her, lips tight against each other, then pulled back and began giving orders in his own tongue. Willow licked her lips. They tingled from the kiss. She looked to the sky and smiled, warm and safe in her Lord’s grace. Today would be a day Thyrsland remembered forever.

  Bluebell woke when the door to the hall was opened and a shaft of bright morning sun fell on her face. She was instantly alert, sitting up with her hand over her eyes to shield them. Her father stood in the doorway.

  ‘I let you sleep,’ he said. His armour and weapons had been cleaned since yesterday, so he gleamed in the sunlight. ‘You were on watch until late.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Everyone who saw you.’ He smiled, his eyes crinkling. ‘Eat and dress. They are in sight of the harbour.’

  ‘They are?’ She got to her feet. ‘You should have woken me earlier.’

  ‘There is time.’ He indicated the soldiers who crowded around the porridge pot at the other end of the hall. ‘There are four ships. At most, they have two hundred.’

  ‘Two hundred raiders. They are like rats,’ she said, brushing out her hair with her fingers and weaving it into a rough plait. ‘They will be in among the crooked streets, setting fires and looting houses. We must drive them back at the docks.’ She wound her hair in a knot and searched about in her pack for pins.

  ‘Of course we will. This is an easy battle to win.’

  ‘I don’t like overconfidence,’ she said. ‘Are you recovered from yesterday?’

  ‘Completely.’

  She didn’t believe him.

  ‘I will lead the army,’ he said.

  Now she believed he had deliberately woken her late so she wouldn’t ask too many questions about his stiff leg or interfere with plans already set in motion. ‘As you wish, Father. Let me find my steward and eat, and I’ll meet you at the east gate.’

  Æthlric nodded, then left her. She was two steps towards the porridge pot when the door to the stairwell opened, and Ash emerged. She looked as though she too had just woken, but her eyes were wild.

  ‘Bluebell!’ she gasped.

  ‘What is it? Are Rose and Rowan well?’

  ‘They are both sleeping. I didn’t hear them arrive. I …’ She grabbed Bluebell’s wrist with a claw-like grasp. ‘I must go.’

  ‘No,’ Bluebell said.

  ‘There are two dragons.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ She had been expecting this.

  ‘I have seen it in a dream. I –’

  ‘Raiders, real raiders, are outside. You can’t go, it’s not safe.’

  ‘It’s not safe for anyone if I stay here, though,’ she said, falling to her knees. ‘Please, sister. Please.’

  Bluebell didn’t have time for this. ‘Ash, if there is another dragon, we will deal with it after we’ve defended Sæcaster, which is under siege by raiders. Raiders we can see with our eyes.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No!’ Bluebell roared. She hated to treat Ash roughly, but the day had started without her. She gestured to a nearby guardsman, who hurried over. ‘Take my sister back up to the hall chamber and see she stays put.’

  ‘Please, Bluebell, please,’ Ash said, but Bluebell turned her back and went instead to find her steward. She was too angry to eat. It was time to put on her armour and go into battle.

  Ivy was curled around Eadric and Edmund, but she hadn’t slept even for a moment. Hilla had been reassigned by Crispin to cooking duties in the city square, and even though Ivy knew that every able body was needed to help, there was something about being left alone with the boys that made her feel boneless with vulnerability. She had hidden here in the bower, pretending to the children that all of the noise and commotion outside was a game, smiling and smiling over the fear. She daren’t leave them alone even for a second, and so she hadn’t even been to greet Bluebell. She could imagine too well how fearsome she would appear to Edmund in her mail and helm with her weapons rattling. Soldiers were steel and sharp edges; the boys needed skin and curves.

  Ivy supposed she must be doing a good job of it: despite her sleeplessness and her raw fatigue, they slept easily. She watched them in the grey light of the shuttered bower. Little Edmund’s thumb was firmly wedged in his mouth. Eadric’s eyes moved back and forth under his lids. How she loved her boys. How she feared for them.

  Then the door burst open and made her jump. Crispin and several other men stepped in, all deep voices and beards and careless noise. The boys were awake in moments, looking around, sleepy and frightened.

  ‘My lady, it is time for you to take the children somewhere safer.’

  ‘We are safe here,’ she said, but it sounded like a question.

  Crispin sent the men forwards with a confident hand gesture. ‘You will be taken to the hall tower where the rest of your family wait.’

  ‘Why the tower?’

  ‘You can lock it from the inside if you need to, and it’s stone so it won’t …’ He glanced at the children and dropped his voice. ‘It won’t burn easily.’

  She stifled a gasp.

  ‘We hope for all to be over within a few hours, and there is a standing guard at the hall. I can’t spare men to watch the bowerhouses as well.’

  Ivy rose. She hated it when he spoke to her as though no sweet words had ever passed between them. ‘As you wish, my captain,’ she said. ‘Come on, boys, we’re going up to the tower for a little while.’

  ‘Mama, I’m hungry,’ Eadric said.

  ‘We will eat something soon, darling, I promise you.’ And they were herded out into the morning light, then up to the hall. Crispin didn’t even say goodbye.

  Ash opened the shu
tter and peered out. The ships were ploughing into the harbour. The combined forces of Seacater and Blicstowe were pouring out the gate and down the cobbled hill to meet the invaders. Then lightning seemed to flash across her field of vision and her mind’s eye transformed them all into walking corpses. Before she could even catch her breath, the vision was gone.

  She turned her back to the shutter and closed her eyes.

  ‘Ash?’

  Her eyes flew open.

  It was Rose, awake now and sitting up, climbing to her feet, pulling her close in a hug. ‘Sister, you are back among us.’

  ‘I never should have come,’ Ash said against her hair.

  Now Rowan was awake, sitting up in her blankets and gazing up at Ash. Her eyes looked strange, unfocussed, the pupils shrunk to pinpoints. Rowan seemed to wake fully then, shaking her head as if to clear it.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Ash said, falling to her knees beside Rowan, grasping her face in one oustretched hand and turning it from side to side. ‘You are brimming with undermagic and you have grown so unnaturally.’

  ‘Ow,’ the girl said, flinching.

  ‘Ash, let her go, you’re hurting her,’ Rose said, dropping between them and prying Ash’s hand away.

  Time seemed to slow as Ash and Rowan locked eyes. Ash saw her niece’s pupils dilate, become huge. A prickling sensation crept over Ash’s scalp.

  Ash leapt back from Rowan and scrambled to her feet. ‘I shouldn’t be here. He’s coming for me. He’s coming for me.’

  Rose grabbed her. ‘Who? What are you talking about? Rowan, go and fetch a guardsman.’

  ‘No, don’t!’ Ash cried. ‘You must let me go. I am a danger to everyone.’

  The door opened and Ivy came in, ushering her two little ones ahead of her. She saw Ash and her mouth formed a perfect ‘O’ of surprise.

  ‘You look like death,’ Ivy said, by way of a greeting. ‘So skinny! Where have you been?’

  ‘I am death,’ Ash said. These babies were so soft skinned and sleepy faced that she hardened her resolve. She didn’t care if she was murdered by raiders, she was leaving. She brushed past Ivy to the door, slammed out and thundered down the stairs.