Sisters of the Fire Read online

  Not that there were many passersby. The track was rough and ill-defined, winding in and out of groves and over rocky hills, plunging down into a valley to meet a stream Torr had to swim through, soaking Bluebell’s legs in the process. The rhythm of the day played out around riding, resting, adjusting her route by the sun, then riding again, until she came in the afternoon to an abandoned village surrounded by stands of hazel and fields overgrown by nettles. The architecture of the houses – the rounder gable finishings and smaller doors and shutters – told her that they had been built more than a generation ago. Seven houses and two stables stood around a rectangular stone well. The earthworks around the well had partly washed away, meaning the stream now ran through the village and had crumbled walls on two of the houses. Not one roof was intact. Decades of mud and leaf litter had layered and hardened over the cobbled road. Bluebell reined Torr in and dismounted, and led him around the village twice to cool down. While he drank at the stream, she went to the nearest house and pushed open the door.

  Creeping vines had grown through the roof, and the house smelled of animal droppings. The sound of frantic scurrying told her rats had nested here. She eyed the hole in the ceiling. The sun lined up with it almost perfectly, its fierce brightness making her squint. She returned her gaze to the house, the hot flash of the sun still on her vision. The collection of looms told her this had once been a weaver’s cottage, and as she went from house to house, looking for somewhere bearable to stay the night, she found more looms among the dusty benches and chests. This had once been a village of clothmakers, probably an extended family. Perhaps they’d kept sheep in the fields beyond the stream. Their dynasty’s end might be blamed on their distance from viable port towns, or perhaps something as simple as an illness that took them one by one. Bluebell unlatched an ancient chest and flipped it open, found rotted cloth and tarnished bronze cups inside.

  Bluebell chose the house with the least damaged roof. Clouds moved over the sun and then fanned apart again, and she couldn’t predict whether or not rain would come. She tended to Torr then shut him in the old stable, then came back inside to spread her oilskin on the floor with a blanket layered over it. Although it wasn’t cold, she longed for the comfort of a fire in the hearthpit. Around the house were enough broken twigs and woodfall to build a measly fire, and she dribbled fire oil on it to make it crackle and roar. She pulled food from her pack and settled down to eat. The only sounds she could hear were birds and the wind in the trees. She missed Thrymm. The dog was a good hunter who could catch her a rabbit or a pheasant to roast, but more importantly she was another beating heart, a pair of ears to listen.

  The afternoon seemed too long and hollow. She ate disconsolately, the hard bread dry in her mouth. Bluebell wasn’t ordinarily given to melancholy, but this strange, empty village seemed to have a dismal pall hanging over it. Her father’s words from Byrta’s funeral feast came back to her. Death will come to you too, one day. Out there somewhere was a weapon forged with magic to kill her. Sword of her doom. So here she was far from company and comfort, wandering the low roads and sleeping in rain or ruins, in the faint hope she could find Ash and the fainter hope Ash could help her. Bluebell grew angry with herself. She should be hunting for Hakon with her men; she should simply put the trollblade out of her mind and if or when it came to her, in a traitor’s hands, then she should fight bravely and win. But she was afraid. Not of losing such a fight, although the idea that the sword was magic niggled in her guts. No, she was afraid that if it was one of her sisters wielding the weapon as the randrman suggested, Bluebell would have to kill her. Bluebell did not want stories of her deeds, when told over fires in halls all over Thyrsland, to remember her as a sister-killer.

  With these thoughts, Bluebell passed the long afternoon before taking Torr on one last walk around the village and into the edge of the woods to eat in the long grass. Bluebell took a drink from the well, then returned him to the stable, and made her way to her own bed. She curled on her side and promptly fell asleep.

  She woke in the dark, only it wasn’t quite dark. A half-moon in the clear sky shone through the crack in the ceiling, casting a soft blue-silver light against her half-closed eyelids. Bluebell became aware of sound and movement, opened her eyes fully, and felt her heart go cold.

  A woman stood by the hearth, winding thread onto a spindle. Another woman stood at the loom by the window with her back to Bluebell, humming softly and expertly moving the shuttle through the thread. Both women were translucent, the same blue-silver of the moonlight. They didn’t seem to have noticed Bluebell, who sat up in her bed and reached for the Widowsmith, even though she knew a sword was no use against ghouls.

  From outside, Bluebell could hear footfalls, voices. She scrambled to her feet, stood uncertainly. The spinning woman ought to be looking directly at her, but her eyes were fixed beyond Bluebell, through the other side of her. Bluebell waved her sword. The woman didn’t notice. She lifted it and slammed it down into the woman’s skull in a killing blow. The woman didn’t flinch, and nor was she injured. She was as immaterial as smoke.

  Bluebell went to the door and opened it, gazed out at the street with her skin creeping. The village was bustling with movement. Ghostly men having conversations with each other by the well. Ghostly horses pulling translucent carts laden with folded bundles of cloth. Ghostly children calling to each other as they chased a ghostly duck, quacking down the dark street.

  Bluebell heard snorting and neighing, and turned to the stable. Had Torr been joined by a band of ghostly horses? She returned to the house, pulling up sharply as the spinning woman walked into her and directly through her on her way outside. Bluebell experienced a sensation like frost creeping around in her stomach. She quickly gathered her things and ran to the stable, where Torr was kicking against the door.

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ she called to him, unlatching the stable door and grasping him firmly around the neck with her free arm. She pressed her cheek against his, eyes on the ghostly stablehands waxing saddles in the corner, and said softly, ‘I know. I know. They frighten me too.’

  Torr snorted, more softly now, and allowed himself to be led back into the stable. Bluebell picked her way around ghost horses and ghost dogs, keen to avoid a return of that creeping frost sensation, to find the bridle and saddle, and the two sturdy leather packs Torr wore on his rump. She prepared him for the road as quickly as she could, then led him out of the village and onto the dark, rutted road. She did not mount him; she felt the way ahead with her feet and led him around rocks and ruts that he wouldn’t see in the dark. An hour or two out of the ghost village, she heard little footfalls behind her. At first she thought them a deer or some other innocuous creature, because they didn’t run to gain on her. But then she noticed that if she slowed, so did the footfalls. If she stopped, her pursuer stopped.

  Clutching Torr’s reins in her hand, she slowly turned to look behind her.

  A ghostly child, who looked to be about eight or nine, held up a hand to her. Bluebell’s skin rose in gooseflesh. None of the other ghosts had been aware of her presence.

  ‘Leave me be!’ she called. Torr whinnied anxiously.

  The child approached, its hands spread out as if asking for a hug. Bluebell itched to draw her sword, even though it wouldn’t help. ‘Go away!’ she cried instead, making a shooing motion. ‘Come not near me.’

  The child abruptly stopped. Bluebell could see now it was a little boy, with curly hair and a too-big tunic on. ‘I saw them all die,’ he said in a tiny, lisping voice. ‘I am the last alive.’

  ‘You are not alive,’ she said.

  ‘The well made us sick. None of us knew.’

  Alarm prickled under Bluebell’s skin. The well made them sick? She and Torr had drunk from the stream that ran from it.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded.

  ‘The earth was full of poison. It got in the water. They all died, except me.’

  ‘Oh, you are dead. You are very
, very fucking dead,’ she said.

  The ghost child paid no heed. ‘Will you take me back to the village?’ he said. ‘I am so lonely.’

  Bluebell cast her eyes at the horizon. Light was beginning to break. Impulsively, she turned and vaulted onto Torr’s back and drove him forwards, fast, away from the child, who ran along behind them for a dozen yards but then fell too far back. Sight of him was lost around the next bend.

  She slowed Torr. In the dawn half-light they made their way carefully down the rutted track. Bluebell’s pulse flicked hard at her throat. A whole village dead. A poisoned well. She had drunk from it, and so had her horse. But she felt fine and he seemed to be fine also. They had only drunk a little and anyway, at least fifty years had passed since the villagers had died. As light came to the land and the horrors of the dark faded, Bluebell reassured herself that all would be well.

  In her hurry to leave, she hadn’t thrown on her heavy cloak. The sun was soft and warm on her face and wrists as it rose and shone down upon her, lifting her mood. Around midmorning they entered an ancient holloway, a tunnel of green where the track had been worn down so far that roots were visible. Gnarled trees that looked as though they had never been coppiced bent overhead, overgrown with brambles and vines and blocking out the sun. The sound of Torr’s hooves and the sound of birds and nothing else, not even a breath of wind as the sun climbed beyond the shadowy tunnel on a still, hot day.

  Because of the quiet, she heard the hoofbeats long before they approached. Bluebell remembered her cloak, her desire to remain unrecognised, and pulled Torr to a halt. She climbed down, untied the pack and pulled the cloak out, accidentally pulling out her roughly rolled-up blanket. It landed in a muddy puddle. She bent to pick it up, hung it for now on Torr’s rump, and pulled on her cloak, lifting the hood over her head just as two riders came into view around the bend. Bluebell took her time folding the blanket and storing it, hoping they would simply ride past her and on their way.

  ‘Well, what have we here?’ one said to the other. ‘A woman travelling alone.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how far you pull down your hood, my darling,’ the other said to her directly, ‘we saw your hair. We saw you were a woman.’

  They laughed.

  Bluebell swore under her breath. They pulled up, of course, and she studiously ignored them. They were voices, not faces. She concentrated on organising the things in her pack, tying it and tightening it, hoping her silence would embarrass them and make them go away.

  She heard one of them dismount.

  ‘Do you need any help, my flower?’ he said. ‘Is there anything in that pack that we can carry for you?’

  ‘Leave me be,’ she said. ‘I need no help and I want no trouble.’

  The other dismounted. Bluebell pulled her hood around her face and stole a glance at them. Both were young; perhaps not even in their twenties. Both were handsome with strong bodies, one blond and one of sandy, freckly colouring. Clearly brothers. What made men with such gifts – youth, health, vitality – turn to a life on the low roads, thieving for a living? Or were they simply opportunists? Did they ride out this morning for quite some other purpose and see a lone woman and believe that their very youth and health and vital masculinity gave them the right to exercise their will on her?

  They advanced with a casual saunter.

  Red mist. ‘I said to leave me be,’ she said again. ‘I meant it.’

  They laughed, kept coming.

  Bluebell pushed back her hood, had her sword in front of her in a moment. ‘All right, fuckers. Come on then.’

  Both froze.

  One brother, the sandy one, grasped the other’s shoulder and said, ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘No,’ the blond one replied, and she saw in his face the stubborn anger of a man who was frightened and embarrassed all at the same time. ‘She may be ugly but she’s just a woman. I don’t threaten that easily.’

  ‘I am more than a woman,’ Bluebell said. ‘I am your king’s eldest daughter. You know my name and you know my reputation. Now back on your horses and be on your way.’

  Bluebell could see his face working, could almost read his thoughts. She was without her shield, without her helm, without her hearthband, without her dog. They were a long way from anywhere, and she was outnumbered.

  ‘You know who she is, brother,’ the sandy one said. ‘Don’t be a fool.’

  The blond man reluctantly turned away. His brother was already at his horse.

  ‘I don’t threaten that easily,’ Bluebell said, repeating his words in a mocking, girlish voice. ‘She’s just a woman.’

  The blond man spun back towards her, and her heart thudded because whether she liked it or not about herself, she thrilled to the fight.

  ‘No!’ his brother called to him.

  His jaw visibly trembled, but then he turned and they rode away.

  ‘You don’t own the world or anyone in it,’ she called after them. ‘Remember that always.’

  She climbed back on Torr and took off into the morning sunshine.

  In and out of woods and glades, with only Torr and her own heartbeat for company. From time to time, she thought she heard an echo of hoofbeats. Would those brothers come after her? But when she slowed Torr and stopped to listen, all she heard was the wind in the trees, distant sheep bleating. Three times she stopped and listened for the phantom hoofbeats. Three times she heard only silence.

  The cramps started that afternoon. Low in her gut. At first Bluebell dismissed them as the familiar herald of her monthly courses, but by morning she was in the grip of the heaving shits and knew it was the well water.

  Torr, for his part, seemed tired but otherwise fit, so she kept riding. She stopped frequently to relieve herself, thanked the Horse God she didn’t have the vomits as well, and steered herself inexorably back towards civilisation in the hopes of finding an inn where she could rest in comfort.

  She was still a long way from the high roads when she smelled peat smoke and followed her nose down to a collection of houses surrounding a tiny inn. Just in time – she couldn’t ride another mile on her stinging arse and perhaps somebody would have a remedy on hand for stomach flux. She had only drunk from the well once. She wouldn’t die. Or so she told herself over and over through gritted teeth.

  But as she rode down towards the inn she saw that the roof had fallen and all but the front façade was scorched. It was little more than a burned-out ruin, and she pulled Torr up in front of it and sat there staring, sweating, blinking back tears of exhaustion and pain.

  ‘It’s all burned down.’ A voice behind her.

  She didn’t turn, pulled her cloak over her head. ‘I can see that.’

  ‘I knew your father.’

  Bluebell peered sideways at the man, who had come to stand next to her, and was gazing up at her with a smile.

  ‘You did?’

  ‘I fought proudly alongside King Æthlric at the battle of Withing. Before you were born, I believe, Princess Bluebell.’

  ‘Bluebell,’ she said. ‘Or my lord.’

  ‘As you wish, my lord,’ he said sheepishly.

  ‘That’s better.’

  ‘If you need a place to stay, my lord Princess Bluebell,’ he fumbled, ‘my home is just here.’ He indicated the little hut next to the inn, where the peat smoke smell came from.

  She considered him. He was tall, stooped, grey; perhaps a few years older than her father. He’d been a good soldier in the Ælmessean army and she really couldn’t go further without rest and help.

  ‘What is your name?’ she asked him.

  ‘My name is Grimbald the humble. My home has very few comforts since my wife died, but it would be an honour to host you.’

  ‘Grimbald, I have drunk bad water and have stomach flux. I am ill.’ She blinked back the heat behind her eyes and for a moment her vision swam. ‘I am very ill.’

  His face crinkled with concern. ‘Let me help you, my lord Bluebell,’ he said, offering his hand to help her do
wn. She dismounted unsteadily, her stomach lurching. ‘Go inside. Lie down. The chamber pot is beside the bed. I will see to your horse and fetch you some ale. Can you eat?’

  Bluebell shook her head, her stomach flipping over at the thought. She pushed open the door of his house – neat as a pin, whitewashed, brass sconces for tallow candles – and launched herself out full-length on her front on his bed. The straw ticking of the mattress poked her through the thin blankets. She lay with her eyes closed a long time, heard him come and go, leaving a cup beside her. Finally she sat up and drank the ale, but it decided to go straight through her.

  Grimbald pulled the curtains around the bed and she spent the afternoon behind those grey curtains, shitting hot liquid into the chamberpot that he duly and uncomplainingly emptied for her every time. She had never been more grateful for a person’s help in her life, never been more humbled by quiet kindness. When the cramping slowed and stopped for a few hours of reprieve, she was keen for distraction. He offered her food once again, but the thought of it made her stomach shiver.

  ‘What happened to the inn?’ she asked. ‘Why haven’t they rebuilt it or pulled it down? Do you not worry it will fall over onto your house?’

  Bluebell sat up on the bed, having drunk a mixture of bayberry and comfrey to help settle the flux. She was hopeful that the worst was over but still feeling sick and weak. He sat by the hearth, stooped over, an elongated shadow on the dark wooden wall.

  ‘It only happened recently,’ he said. ‘A matter of weeks ago. The owner … she perished in the fire. We are still waiting to see if her brother will come up from Fengyrd to claim what’s left.’

  A shadow crossed his brow and Bluebell grew curious.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘It was a terrifying night. None of us around here will forget it.’

  ‘Lightning strike?’

  ‘Worse. Undermagic. A powerful sorceress …’ He shook his head.

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I’m in need of distraction. Tell me.’

  He pulled his knees up, his long hands resting over them. Outside, the sun had begun its slow descent. The candles were not yet lit, and a little soft light was admitted through the slats of the shutters.