Sisters of the Fire

by Kim Wilkins

And she pulled with all her might, sending Bluebell pitching down the stairs.

  Bluebell felt the first three thumps to her body, then everything went grey.

  Sæcaster burned. Willow was helping Hakon away. Father was dead. Unweder’s body still lay near the duke’s gate.

  But all Ash could focus on was Bluebell, long and blonde and bloody and crumpled on the stone stairs at a horrible angle.

  ‘Bluebell, Bluebell,’ she said, over the noise and heat and confusion. She picked up her sister’s hand, felt its limpness. ‘Breathe. Talk. Be alive. Please, please, be alive.’

  She put her ear against Bluebell’s back, listening for a heartbeat but unable to hear anything over the noise of war. She could see, though, that the raiders were pulling away, would escape on their ships.

  Ash weighed the harbour with her mind and knew what Bluebell would want her to do. She stood and hurried down the stairs, calling out to all she passed, ‘Let them go! Let their ships sail!’

  Crispin, the captain of the guard, caught her. ‘My lady?’

  ‘Help me,’ she said, glancing back, moulding the lie. ‘Bluebell wants… she wants them to leave unimpeded.’

  He gave her a curious look, but Bluebell’s name worked the magic it always did. ‘Let them retreat!’ he began to call, and slowly Bluebell’s army and Ivy’s guard withdrew. One by one the ships limped away, some of them barely manned.

  Ash planted her feet on the wooden boards of the dock, took a breath and began to stir the water, pulling at the currents. With a great effort of her mind’s will, she grasped the tide and dragged it so that the raiders’ ships were sucked out towards the mouth of the harbour. She could feel the ships resisting her and closed her eyes, trying to shake them off her. Then, once the open ocean’s force was within her reach, she brought its mighty weight down upon them. Waves – giant rollers – began to crack and thunder around them, shattering them to pieces and carrying their debris far far out to sea.

  But now, here came the tide, rushing back into the harbour. She opened her eyes, realised that the warriors were all still amassed on the docks. Ash had to stop the water crushing the wooden boards when it returned, so she desperately tried to grab its force and slow it. Her hands shot out reflexively in a stop gesture, but it was almost too late. The first waves were arriving.

  She turned and crouched, a futile move to shield herself, throwing her arms up. The water followed the direction of her hands as though they were deliberately giving orders. Up and up a cloud of water went. When Ash saw, she only had to think of the flaming roofs of Sæcaster for the sea to know where to go. The wave, disembodied from the tide, fell like salt rain on the burning city.

  She turned, soaked and gasping. All was in disarray. Bodies and men crying in agony, others on their knees with their faces turned to the sky. She wove her way between them, thighs aching and heart pumping as she ascended the slippery, wet stairs as fast as she could. Bluebell hadn’t moved.

  ‘No. No, no.’ She bent over her, grasped her sister’s limp hand.

  Then Bluebell’s hand tightened on Ash’s, nearly crushing her fingers.

  ‘Thank all the gods,’ Ash cried, as Bluebell began to stir. ‘Go slow, sister. You are badly hurt.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ Bluebell said, and she flipped over and struggled to her knees. She loosened and removed her helm, gazing down helplessly at the harbour. ‘Where is Willow? Where is Hakon?’

  ‘They headed to their ships. I crushed them in the harbour. Listen, can you not hear the horns of victory?’

  ‘Victory?’ Bluebell said and shook her head, settling in a sitting position. Her cheek was scraped and blood dripped off her chin. ‘My father is dead, Willow is … lost.’ She turned her face up. ‘And it appears to be raining sea water.’

  Ash eyed the bloody slash through Bluebell’s mailed shoulder. ‘Are you in pain?’ she asked.

  Bluebell smiled grimly. ‘I have never hurt more than I hurt now.’

  Ivy grabbed the boys and raced downstairs to the hall to welcome back the city guard. Men everywhere, stinking of sweat and blood and victory. She couldn’t see Crispin anywhere in the hall so she went out into the sunshine, with baby Edmund on her hip and dragging Eadric by the hand. The wounded were being laid out on the grass. Her heart ran hot with fear. She didn’t dare to look at their faces to see if one of them was her beloved.

  Then he was there, and all her fear evaporated. She let go of Eadric’s hand and impulsively threw her arm around his neck. ‘Crispin!’

  He gently pulled her hand away and stepped back. ‘My lady.’

  She smiled at him. ‘If I cannot publicly kiss the captain of the guard on such a day, then when can I?’

  He leaned towards her and said in a low, barely audible voice, ‘Be sensible.’

  She noticed then the smears of blood on his mail, and felt very young and foolish.

  Rose joined them a moment later, with Eadric’s hand in hers. ‘You have a little runaway here,’ she said.

  ‘Rose, this is Crispin, the captain of my guard. Crispin, my sister Rose.’

  He nodded once at Rose. ‘I am sorry about your father.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He began to pull away. ‘If you’ll excuse me, my ladies, I have to assist with bringing in the injured.’

  Ivy wasn’t ready for him to leave. She had been longing for the comfort of his arms, of some tender words that restored her to her usual place in the world. ‘Must you go just yet?’ she blurted.

  He fixed her in his gaze and the expression he wore … was it pity? Scorn? She recoiled from it.

  ‘I will see you in good time, my lady,’ he said tersely. ‘When the dead and wounded are accounted for.’

  He turned away from her and moved into the crowd. She followed him with her eyes until he was lost among jostling, shouting bodies. Then she turned to Rose and took Eadric’s hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘We don’t want him lost in this crowd.’

  ‘You are in love with Crispin, aren’t you?’

  Ivy averted her eyes.

  Rose pressed on. ‘Do you want my advice?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she said, and when Rose opened her mouth to give it anyway, Ivy raised a finger to her lip. ‘I don’t,’ she said again. ‘Especially not from you.’ She knew what Rose would say, about love and about good sense and about the fates of kingdoms that rested on their soft shoulders. All of it was already known to her. But Crispin’s destiny and hers were now bound, in secrets and in blood.

  Willow drank the sea. Over and over she tried to claw towards air, only to gulp then slide under again. Her eyes stung, water bubbled around her ears. And she put her fate in the hands of Maava.

  If you want me to live and give you heathen lands, you will save me.

  Something hit her head. Every nerve alert, she reached for it. A piece of a ship, about as big as a table. She grabbed on with all her might, groped her way forwards until her upper body was out of the water. Above the surface, it was a calm clear day. Her piece of wood was being thrust towards the shore, north of the harbour. She shook her head to clear her eyes of water, and blinked around her.

  Bodies floated on the heaving currents. She counted them with her eyes. Dozens. Some, like her, grasping the surface of the water then disappearing again. Too far away for her to help. She would be the only survivor. Many hundreds of martyrs were made at the battle of Sæcaster, but Maava’s favourite, Willow, was spared.

  Then she saw Hakon. She would have thought him any of the raiders, floating face down in the water, but she recognised the black triangle on the back of his hand. Their wedding tattoo.

  The angel voices brewed, began to rub against each other. Will you honestly leave your husband to die?

  ‘He’s a heathen,’ she said to them, her voice creaking over the salt that lined her throat. ‘He’s already dead.’

  Are you sure?

  A sign. Where was the sign she needed? Her piece of driftwood would soon cras
h directly into his body.

  She looked to the sky for a sign.

  Perhaps Maava was sick of her, always asking for signs. She lay on her belly and reached out. As the wave pushed her forwards, she grasped the back of his shirt. The weight of his body pulled her off the driftwood. Splinters sliced through her palm as she tried to hang on. One hand on Hakon, one hand on the driftwood, feeling her weight slowly sinking.

  ‘Hakon!’ she screamed at him, making her throat raw. ‘Hakon!’

  With all her might, she pulled his upper body onto the driftwood, then climbed over him. Pulled again, heaving him up. Her shoulders burned. She turned him on his side and sat across his ribs.

  Water spewed from his mouth. He coughed. He was alive. The driftwood was crashing towards the shore. There were rocks. There would be pain.

  Willow braced herself.

  A short period of black followed, then she was blinking her eyes open and feeling pain in every part of her body. She was on gritty sand, Hakon kneeling over her. Warm blood ran down the side of her face.

  ‘What happened?’ she said.

  ‘You are safe. You are cut but nothing seems broken.’

  Willow closed her eyes, relished the feel of air moving in and out of her lungs. Maava had saved her.

  ‘Willow?’

  She opened her eyes again, and saw that Hakon looked down on her mournfully. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  He hooked his finger inside the wound on his cheek and said, ‘Maava’s miracle has passed.’

  If Willow was not so full of pain and exhaustion, she might have thought to run. Now he would know she had deceived him. Now he would not bring Maava to the heathens.

  But then he put his head in his hands and said, ‘We failed to take the city in His name. We slaughtered a lamb to the Horse God. Maava has punished me.’

  Willow realised that failure had convinced Hakon of Maava’s great power more than all the small successes had. She knew then that it had been right to save him, and she promised she would stop asking the angels for reassurance, stop asking her Lord for signs. She had a rightness inside her, and she would trust it from now on.

  Willow struggled to sit. She could see now that her legs were bruised and grazed and cut; the mail had protected her upper body. Her head swam and she put her hand on the back of her scalp and felt another gash. Her fingers came away bloody.

  She put her bloody hand on Hakon’s shoulder and said, ‘He may yet forgive you.’

  Hakon lifted his head.

  ‘When Is-hjarta is converted. When the war on the southlands begins. Who knows when His favour will once again turn to us? All I know is we must keep trying.’

  Hakon nodded, took her hand roughly. ‘I promise Maava. I promise you. We will wipe all of the heathens out of Thyrsland together.’

  Bloody and bruised, they rose to their feet and began to walk north.

  Thirty

  Bluebell was a soldier, and so she knew that no matter how raw with grief she may be, if the battle wasn’t over there was no time to grieve. While the siege of Sæcaster was definitively decided, there was the matter of her friend Skalmir, still imprisoned by Rathcruick’s tribe. She made arrangements for Æthlric’s body to be wrapped in a winding sheet and transported to Blicstowe, then left her army behind, holding their heads in lament on the grass outside the duke’s hall, and procured a horse for Rowan. Before the sun had even risen to the midpoint of the sky, they had crossed the fortifications of Sæcaster and were making their way for the Howling Wood.

  Rowan was light and young, and her horse was no match for Torr’s speed and strength. Bluebell was itching to move faster, to have this over with. She wanted to send for her hearthband and meet them back at Blicstowe, to prepare herself for what came next.

  But what did come next? Father’s funeral, certainly. A mighty pyre would be built for him, and firelight would stain the giant’s ruins behind his hall. Then a feast – Bluebell wondered if she would ever eat again, her stomach was sour with ill feeling – then … well, then it would be her moment to take over. The gold circlet that Æthlric sometimes wore would be transferred to her own brow. The keys to the hall would pass into her hands. All of the things she had been preparing for her whole life were now looming, and instead of feeling excited and fulfilled, she just felt tired.

  He was dead, and it was her fault. Though Ash thought it was her fault but truly, if Bluebell had released Ash as she wished, Unweder would never have come to Sæcaster in dragon form.

  Bluebell glanced at Rowan. Her tattooed cheek was visible, and she looked noble and graceful but so very young. That arrow shot had been nothing short of miraculous. Even now, she still wore the bow and quiver on her back, to return to Skalmir when she saw him, she had said.

  ‘You were incredible,’ Bluebell said. ‘I can’t wait to tell Snowy about that shot.’

  Rowan kept her eyes directly ahead of her. The wind moved in her dark hair, and for a moment she looked so like Rose as a child that Bluebell felt a pang in her heart, remembering times when her father was young and full of vigour.

  ‘Do you think we will be able to save him?’ Rowan asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Will you kill Rathcruick?’

  ‘If he gets in my way. Yes. Why?’

  Rowan glanced across at her. They were entering a wooded valley. Birdsong clattered around them. ‘I feel sorry for Rathcruick.’

  Bluebell told herself to be patient. ‘He imprisoned you. He forced that tattoo on you. He robbed you of part of your childhood. Why exactly do you feel sorry for him?’

  ‘Because he lost his daughter and he loved her so much.’

  Bluebell fell silent, reminded freshly of her own grief.

  ‘I feel sorry for all the Ærfolc,’ Rowan continued. ‘They have lost their lands and been forced to the margins of the world.’

  ‘They lost them fairly, in battle, as all people who lose their lands do. As would we, should the raiders come south and win.’ Bluebell made her voice softer. ‘Little one, you will one day be a great queen, and compassion is one of the marks of a great queen. But so are firmness and decisiveness. Toughness.’

  ‘There is Ærfolc blood in me,’ Rowan said.

  ‘And Thyrslander blood in larger measure. The Ærfolc aren’t your people. We are your people. Your mother’s family. Wengest and his family.’

  Rowan lost a little of her stiffness of spine. ‘Wengest,’ she said simply. ‘Will I have to return to him?’

  ‘Yes. Do you bear no love for him at all?’

  Rowan turned to her, eyes flashing. ‘In fact, I bear too much love for him, for somebody who is not in any way my blood. The other man, Heath, is a stranger.’

  ‘You’ve met him. When you were little.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You liked him.’

  ‘What is he like?’

  Bluebell considered how to answer this. Finally, she said, ‘Your mother loved him so much that she risked everything. She defied every demand I made not to see him.’

  ‘She defied you?’ Rowan chuckled. ‘I cannot imagine it.’

  ‘Rose does what her heart tells her,’ Bluebell said. ‘And it told her to love Heath and keep loving him, despite good sense. If your mother loves him, he must be a good man, don’t you think?’

  Rowan didn’t answer.

  After a while, Bluebell asked. ‘Why don’t you want to go back to Wengest?’

  ‘It’s not that. I just don’t want to leave Snowy.’ They had travelled further along the road now, into deep shade. Rowan grew alert in her saddle. ‘We are here,’ she said. ‘The gate is nearby. We should leave our horses.’

  Bluebell reined Torr in and dismounted. She walked him about for a few minutes then hitched him to a tree and patted his withers. ‘Back soon,’ she said, though she didn’t know how soon. Rose had warned her time passed differently where they were going, and she worried for Torr and untied him. She didn’t want him here for days without any
chance to find food or water.

  Rowan took her hand and said, ‘This way.’

  They walked a hundred yards away from the road, uphill, and came to a dolmen, that stood to about Bluebell’s hip height.

  ‘This?’ Bluebell asked. She had been expecting a grand barrow, like the ones out on the moors of Ælmesse.

  ‘Dardru’s spirit is in me. I can cross any gate,’ Rowan explained. ‘They are all laid out in a pattern that the Ærfolc understand.’

  Bluebell struggled to reconcile Rowan’s great power with the girl that stood before her. ‘I am in your hands,’ she said simply.

  Rowan spread her fingers on the top of the dolmen, where a curlicue pattern had been carved. Bluebell braced herself for something to happen.

  But Rowan said, ‘Before we go, I want something from you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You expect me to go back to Folcenham, to Wengest, and to pretend I know nothing of my real father, that I haven’t seen my mother and know nothing of her lies. He will see with his own eyes that I have spent time under enchantment and no doubt arrange for the fat preacher Nyll to pray over me daily.’

  Bluebell winced. ‘Yes, I do expect that. I expect it because I will have no heirs of my own, and you will be –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Rowan said impatiently. ‘And I will do this, as long as you hold a promise to me.’

  Now Bluebell felt uncomfortable. The peace between Ælmesse and Netelchester would only hold if Rowan did as she said she would. ‘Well, tell me what it is and I will see how I feel about it.’

  ‘I want you to marry Snowy.’

  This request was so unexpected that Bluebell laughed out loud. ‘What? No.’

  Rowan stood, spine erect, her hand on the dolmen. Deeper in the wood, a bird began to sing and it almost sounded like a laugh. ‘Promise me, Bluebell. Or the whole of Thyrsland will be in disarray.’ There was flint in her eyes, and Bluebell once again recoiled from her, acutely and suddenly conscious of her strangeness. Her unnaturalness.

  ‘Why do you want me to marry Snowy?’

  ‘Because he loves you and he will be lonely when I am gone.’