Sisters of the Fire Read online

  He ate his supper with Rowan and Sister Julian then took his leave. Rowan cried a little, but he said he’d be back to see her in a day or so, and Sister Julian saw him off.

  ‘If anything troubles you, anything at all …’ he said.

  ‘I’ll send for you immediately.’ Her eyes darted to the watchman who stood at the outside corner of her little house, his dark hood pulled over his head.

  Skalmir tried to smile reassuringly. ‘They won’t come to the village.’

  ‘I hope you are right.’

  Long shadows striped the road on his way home, and he dragged his feet because he knew what awaited him: a body to burn.

  Strike and Stranger came pounding out of the undergrowth when they heard his footfalls draw near. They were hunting dogs so he never had to worry about them going hungry, and in fact he saw the telltale splash of feathers and blood on the road that assured him they had already eaten. Still, he walked right past Lang’s body – grown stiff and grey now – and through the house to freshen their water and take a moment to rub their heads.

  He was putting off the inevitable.

  Skalmir was not a superstitious man, but he did not want to burn Lang’s body so close to his house. In a chest by his bed, he found the sword Wengest had given him when Rowan had first come to live with him. Its edge was dull so he took his time sharpening it, then hunting for a belt to hang it on. In the same chest he found an old cloak that he hadn’t worn for many years, and set about his bleak business.

  He knelt beside Lang, forced himself to look. First, he snapped off the arrows and threw the flights into the hedges. Then he lay out the cloak and rolled Lang into it. Blood had run down the man’s face and dried black in his hair. Skalmir folded the cloak around his face and upper body. It wasn’t long enough to cover his calves and feet, where Skalmir grasped Lang’s body and began to drag him into the woods. He knew of a rocky clearing a few hundred yards in where he could build a pyre. Slowly, as the afternoon deepened to twilight, he made his way into the woods with his grim burden. Birds watched from their perches in the oaks and lindens. The quiet of the forest enveloped him. The body bounced behind him up a rocky slope. Finally, he was there.

  Skalmir left Lang crumpled on his side while he collected deadfall and built an ankle-high pyre. Night was falling before he wrangled the big soldier’s body onto it, splashed it with fire oil, then used a flint to light it.

  He stood back, said a prayer to the Horse God. Take this brave man into your train. Sparks spiralled up into the sky. The firelight lit the leaves and branches in soft orange tones. The heat flushed his face and he stood back a little, head bowed, as the fire rushed up and over Lang to turn his mortal remains to ashes.

  A noise.

  Skalmir whirled around and saw them – the man with the thorn headdress and the tattooed woman, both dressed in skins. He fumbled at his hip for the sword but the woman already had a bow and arrow trained on him, so he put up his empty hands.

  ‘I am a hunter,’ he said. ‘Not a soldier.’

  The man stepped forwards, touched the woman’s shoulder and said, ‘Down, Dardru.’ She lowered the bow.

  ‘He tried to kill us,’ the man said, pointing at the pyre.

  ‘I guessed that,’ Skalmir said. ‘I won’t try to kill you, but you should know that Rowan has gone. I have sent her far away. Don’t come looking for her any more.’

  The man smiled. His face was almost pleasant, and the lines around his eyes told Skalmir that he had seen many summers. ‘What is your name, hunter?’

  ‘Skalmir.’

  ‘You are from the Ice-Heart?’

  ‘I am a son of Netelchester. I don’t know the source from which my blood runs. I am a foundling.’

  ‘My name is Rathcruick. My daughter’s name is Dardru. They were her arrows that took down this … cutthroat.’ He spat the last word as he indicated the pyre with a dismissive gesture. ‘Our war is not with you. He sought us out, in the hopes of killing us on our land, in our homes.’

  Skalmir shook his head. ‘I have lived and worked in this forest for many years and never seen evidence that anyone lives here, let alone could call the Howling Wood “our land”.’

  ‘And yet it is,’ Dardru said, her face defiant by the firelight. She was a meaty woman, a circular tattoo of intricate swirls on her left cheek. ‘Who are you to gainsay us?’

  ‘The keeper of the wood.’

  ‘You see only a sliver of the wood,’ Rathcruick laughed. ‘My people have been here since the time of the giants.’

  Skalmir wanted to disagree, to tell them that he knew the woods better than anyone, but despite their reassurance that they meant him no harm, he didn’t want to anger them. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we can go on avoiding each other, now that Rowan is gone.’

  ‘She isn’t gone,’ Rathcruick said. ‘She will fly over us tonight, as she so often does, on her way to other places.’

  ‘As long as she’s in her own bed in the morning, I don’t care what she dreams,’ Skalmir said firmly. ‘I repeat: don’t go looking for her. Your people aren’t wanted in our towns and villages.’

  Dardru snorted. ‘The feeling is mutual.’

  Rathcruick smiled again, the pleasant, open-faced smile that was so at odds with the foreboding bramble-horns upon his head. ‘We don’t need to go looking for her,’ he said. ‘She will come to us in her own time. We can wait.’

  Skalmir said nothing. They didn’t know Rowan as well as he did. She was strong-willed but ultimately obedient, and her guilt over possibly contributing to Lang’s death would make her very cautious now.

  ‘Come, Dardru,’ he said to his daughter. ‘Let’s leave the hunter to burn the dog.’

  They turned and disappeared back into the forest. Skalmir watched the place where they had stood, tensed, half-expecting them to change their mind and come back to kill him. Everyone knew Ærfolc weren’t to be trusted.

  But they didn’t return, and the fire’s first burst of heat and light had diminished, so it was time to leave Lang to fall into embers and head to his own bed, to his empty house, without Rowan.

  Ten

  Bluebell’s task was as straightforward as Torr’s steady stride and as crooked as Thrymm’s hind legs. One of her sisters had a sword forged with troll magic and designed to kill her. She had four sisters, therefore all she had to do was find and ask each one of them.

  But she had no idea where Ash was, no idea where Willow was (in fact, had many times wondered if she were dead), was under a curse never to return to Bradsey where Rose lived among undermagicians, which left Ivy, who was the last person in the world who would know what to do with a magic sword unless that was her new favourite word for a cock.

  Bluebell didn’t imagine that any of them would knowingly harbour an instrument of her death nor seek to use one against her. Rather, she supposed the trollblade – the randrman had called it Griðbani – had fallen into a sister’s hands without them knowing its significance. The work ahead of her ought to be a simple seek-and-destroy mission, but the seeking was going to be anything but simple.

  She pondered this as she sat, hugging her knees, under a moleskin tent by the Gemærea. A thunderstorm had split the dark sky overhead and tipped an ocean of rain upon her and her army. The summer days had been long and hot since leaving Hakon’s nest, and the sea breezes all too soon behind them. This storm had been brewing for days and not a single man or woman minded it. Some had even gone out in the rain to wash the stink of sweat and travelling grime off their bodies. Bluebell hadn’t. She had been imagining scrubbing it off in a warm bath, and once an idea was fixed in her head she almost never let it go. A fast leak in the tent ran along the inside seam and dripped hurriedly in the corner, creating mud among the grass. Bluebell stuck to the dry corner, not yet ready to lie down and sleep. Perhaps she would when the storm passed. Travel made her weary, but not so weary she could sleep through booming thunder. Thrymm was already asleep, pressed hard against her hip. Not
for the first time, she envied the life of a dog. Bright, brief, simple.

  Just across the river was Bradsey, the least populated kingdom in Thyrsland. The land was mostly moors and fens, ridges and rocks. Lean hunting, wretched farming. Undermagicians lived there, drawn by the isolation. Also Ærfolc, the strange, red-haired first inhabitants of Thyrsland, whose tribes had been driven west by her own ancestors, generations ago. Towns were spread a long way from one another, and were often poor and half-empty. The king, Renward, was barely a king. He was the head of the wealthiest family, yes, but the army he commanded was thin and toothless. Bradsey could have been her father’s years ago, had he a mind to take it. But taxing their resources wouldn’t have raised enough to pay to administer their levies, so he left them alone. Ælmesse and Netelchester had heavy joint defences stationed on Bradsey’s northern border against Ice-men, and in the past Bluebell had travelled through the rough countryside many times.

  No more, though. Last time, she had upset the undermagicians. Most of them. She had been warned never to return. And yet, Bradsey was where Rose lived and she needed to see her, to ask her about the sword.

  A dark thought slithered in behind that one. What if Rose knew it was a trollblade? What if Rose was angry at her for not doing more to reunite her with Rowan? For taking Wengest’s side? For exiling Heath?

  Bluebell dismissed it. No matter how angry her sisters might be with her, they surely knew all she did was for the good of her family, her kingdom.

  So ought she assemble her hearthband, and boldly cross the river and march through Bradsey, arms and armour ringing proudly? Ought she brave the undermagicians and their jealousy of her good favour with the Horse God? No undermagician could compete with swords and spears and axes if surprised, but undermagicians were notoriously unsurprisable. Even the randrman had said he knew she was coming. She wondered if he had an inkling she was going to kill him too or if the limit of one’s own life was always unseeable, by nature of one’s perspective inside it.

  No. Rose was close in miles, but unreachable nonetheless. Bluebell wouldn’t enter Bradsey, and certainly wouldn’t risk the lives and minds of her best fighters among the sly whispers of undermagicians.

  That left only one course of action: pay a visit to Ivy in Sæcaster. Ivy may have heard from Willow, who was her twin and closest to her, since Bluebell had last been to the busy port town – how long ago was that? She remembered Ivy had a belly full of her second baby that time and seemed to have outgrown the worst of her childish faults. Ivy was also surrounded by a court that largely saw Bluebell as the enemy. The northern earls of Netelchester had most reluctantly come to the peace deal with Ælmesse, and Bluebell and her father had a particularly well-earned reputation for having killed many friends and relatives before the peace. Perhaps one of them had left Griðbani in Ivy’s possession, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

  The rain began to ease. Bluebell rose and pulled out a raincloak, threw it over her head and passed once around the encampment, offering murmured words of encouragement to the night watch, sharing jokes and jibes with starstruck young men who knew they wanted to be like her one day but couldn’t see how it would ever be possible. She dropped in on Sighere’s tent, found him awake and told him of her plan to get their horses – sent to Fifelham to await their return – and head with her hearthband to Sæcaster.

  ‘Do you think it a wise course of action?’ she asked him.

  ‘They say Guthmer is very ill.’

  ‘I don’t care about Guthmer. You understand I need to find and talk to every one of my sisters?’

  The corners of Sighere’s mouth turned up. ‘I find it impossible to believe any sword can kill you, my lord. Especially one made in a raider’s forge.’ Ice-men were known for the poor quality of their steel, compared to southlanders and especially Bluebell’s home town of Blicstowe, where the smith’s guild was powerful and disciplined. ‘Especially wielded by one of your sisters,’ he continued with a chuckle.

  ‘Never underestimate magic,’ Bluebell said. ‘Besides, I am tired of this army. I can’t wait to divest myself of its command and head east. A trip to the seaside, Sighere?’

  He nodded. ‘As you wish, my lord. Always, as you wish.’

  The fog came, so thick that Ash and Unweder were pinned inside for nearly a week. On the first two days, Ash was grateful. The dragon scale weighed heavily on her mind. She could never allow Unweder to see it, so she had sewn it into the hem of her cloak with the treasures her sea-spirit friend had left her, and it rattled and rasped in there among them. After four years as Unweder’s companion, when her destiny seemed an abstract thing situated beyond the veil of the everyday, it was finally present – bright and hot – and she found herself paralysed by the weight of fear in her limbs.

  Ash had to kill a dragon, and she had to do it before Unweder found out.

  As the days inside wore on, her nerves began to fray and her scalp itched furiously, even though she had practised no new magic. Her low-level deception, the inaudible murmur of intentions counter to her companion’s, now threatened to burble to the surface noisily and messily. Unweder had some Sight, all undermagicians had a little, but they all knew how to hide their thoughts from each other, too. If Unweder suspected her of anything, it might be because she evaded his gaze or was too often lost in her own thoughts: the ordinary ways people knew they were being lied to. Ash held herself together outwardly, but her heart and mind pulled in all directions. Scheme after scheme formed and failed in her imagination. She knew only that if she could keep Unweder hunting to the north, the south – and the dragon cave – was hers. She imagined that if she could find and destroy the beast without his knowledge, he would never find his quarry and they could part company at last and she might return home.

  These imaginings seemed too precious and perfect to be in any way possible.

  With the fog came rain, of course, and unseasonable cold. They lived inside a cloud, eating the dried fish that hung over the hearthpit, immersed in long stretches of unpunctuated silence as Unweder mixed his potions and Ash sewed or ground grain for bread.

  The fog passed, as everything good or bad eventually does.

  Ash woke to the cry of gulls, opened her eyes and saw that the light was different. Unweder had opened the shutter and a wedge of sunshine had fallen on her feet. The sliver of sky she could see was pale morning blue. The wind was gusty, cold. The shutter creaked with its inhalations and exhalations.

  She turned on her side. Unweder sat on the bench, pulling on his shoes.

  ‘Off already?’ she asked, her heart speeding a little. ‘Back towards the north?’

  ‘Back towards the north,’ he affirmed. ‘I am being led there by some lodestone inside me.’

  She was too relieved to ask further.

  ‘Will you come with me today, Ash?’ he asked.

  Her mind scrambled for an excuse. ‘One of us will need to stay and catch some fish or collect some seaweed.’

  ‘Very well. Then I will fly.’ He stood. ‘If I skim along the coast for a few miles, I may see something that can’t be seen from the beach or the cliff.’

  Another gull’s cry. He cocked his head. ‘Ash,’ he said. ‘Will you catch me one? It will take too long to set up a trap and wait.’

  Ash’s stomach lurched. The more sentient the creature, the more she hated what he had to do to take other forms. Nevertheless, she never turned him down, because he had adhered to her one demand: that he kill no more humans.

  She stood and pulled on her shoes. ‘Come along, then.’

  Outside, the sky was perfectly clear. The fog had all been chased away by the gusting wind. She could hear the sea now, the tide full and roaring. The sun was a yellow-white glare behind them, making their shadows long on the dewy ground. Flocks of gulls swept back and forth above them. The world was all air and movement and light, high contrast to the still, stuffy days they had lately spent indoors.

  Ash kept her eye on one bird in particular.
Nothing remarkable about it. Perhaps she could try to find a lame bird, or an old bird, but she was keen simply to bring one down. She cursed herself for a hypocrite; she ate the flesh of animals, why should she care so much for a bird? It’s what they go through.

  She took a breath and braced her mind, reached out and pulled it towards her. The bird fought, flapping its wings madly, but was no match for the tiny hands on the wind that Ash could control. She slammed the bird down at Unweder’s feet. It struggled and flapped and cawed, and Unweder bent over it, placed his own magic fingers upon it, and slowly – unbearably slowly – squeezed the life out of it.

  Almost all the life, and therein was the necessity of the slowness. The creature needed to be suspended upon the moment of death for Unweder to steal its form, and so minutes passed, the bird black eyed and crazed with shock and pain. Its caws echoed in Ash’s mind sharply. It fought Unweder down to the last beat of its heart.

  Then stillness, silence. Unweder, crouched by the bird’s body, uncorked the little jar he kept hanging inside the sleeve of his cloak and, using his forefinger and thumb, made a minute pulling motion from the bird to the jar. ‘Pouring its soul inside,’ as he liked to call it.

  When he was done, he stood and gave her the uneven smile she so rarely saw. ‘Thank you, Ash. I will be back in the evening.’

  A whole day without him. She breathed.

  ‘Take the bird’s body inside for me?’

  Ash scooped up the bird – impossibly light – and went inside. She laid it by the door, but couldn’t stand its deathly stillness, its uncanny warmth, one of its legs crooked as though still fighting Unweder, so she covered it with a cheese cloth. The shutter was still swinging to and fro on the wind, so she stood to close it. Out the window, she could see Unweder making his transformation. It was as fast as the bird’s death had been slow: a blur of colour and shape and then Unweder had vanished and a white seagull took to its wings. She watched a while as it cruised away, and she thought about how strong the wind was, and wouldn’t it be convenient if he simply slammed into that rocky outcrop and never came back.