Sisters of the Fire Read online

  The elderly woman who ran the stable at Nether Weald received both Bluebell’s roan grey stallion, Torr, and Bluebell’s money gratefully. ‘I’ll take good care of him,’ the woman said, reaching up to rub Torr’s withers.

  ‘The extra coin is for your silence,’ Bluebell said.

  ‘I know. You and King Wengest will always have our silence.’ She smiled, her face crinkling pleasantly.

  Bluebell always forgot her name and always felt vaguely guilty about it. She nodded towards Torr. ‘He doesn’t like many people, you know. But he likes you.’

  ‘He’s a good judge of character,’ the woman replied proudly. ‘Come on, big fellow. I have some lovely oats for you.’

  Bluebell emerged from the stable, whistled for Thrymm and set off down the road on foot. The way to Skalmir’s house would be quicker on horseback, but there wasn’t enough there for Torr to eat – he had a mighty appetite to go with his mighty heart – and she was unsure how long she would stay. In the past, she was almost guaranteed to spend at least one night. But things had changed.

  She followed the path into the woods. The deep ruts of carriage wheels had collected muddy puddles that stank and buzzed with insects. Either side of the road, the hedges were covered in banks of wildflowers: cow parsley and roses and flowering blackberry vines. Nettles and thistles straggled among them. The canopy was thick, admitting only threads of sunlight. Thrymm stopped to sniff everything, but Bluebell kept her purposeful stride. She heard hoofbeats behind her and turned. Rowan’s teacher, Sister Julian, on her bay palfrey. Bluebell moved into the middle of the road and held up her hand, and Sister Julian stopped.

  ‘My lady,’ Sister Julian said.

  ‘It’s my lord,’ she said. ‘Or Bluebell.’ Nobody who spent any time with Bluebell would mistake her for a lady.

  ‘My lord,’ Sister Julian said, the faintest pull of disapproval at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Have the day off,’ Bluebell said. ‘I’m going to spend some time with Rowan.’

  ‘She oughtn’t miss her lessons.’

  ‘I’ll teach her … some kind of lesson,’ Bluebell said. War strategy? The quickest way to kill a man? How to shit in the wild? She would come up with something.

  Sister Julian already knew she was defeated. ‘Could you at least make sure she finishes hemming the apron she made? And check her fingernails. She had blood under them the other day from gutting a rabbit, and she hadn’t even noticed.’

  ‘Absolutely. Absolutely I will do those things. You go ahead and enjoy your day off.’

  Thrymm had disappeared into the undergrowth chasing something. There was a squawk, a rattle of leaves.

  Sister Julian offered her a cautious smile. ‘It is marvellous weather. Maava has blessed us.’

  At that moment, Thrymm tore out of the undergrowth with a half-dead pheasant in her mouth. She dropped it in the mud at Bluebell’s feet, and it flopped around pathetically. Bluebell would have to cut its head off with her knife, but guessed this might be too much for Sister Julian’s sensibilities.

  ‘Bad dog,’ she said, as the bird continued to flap about on her feet. Thrymm sat back and licked her lips, her big head resting on Bluebell’s thigh, eyes turned upwards guiltily.

  ‘Good day to you then, my lord,’ Sister Julian said, turning her horse around.

  ‘You too.’

  As soon as the horse retreated, Bluebell pulled out her knife, crouched, and cut the bird’s head off. Blood under the fingernails? Bluebell had once had to wash somebody’s blood out of her ear. What would Sister Julian make of that? She rubbed Thrymm’s muzzle. ‘This will roast up nicely,’ she said to her. Thrymm wagged her tail so hard it made an impression in the mud.

  Together they walked the mile into the forest to Skalmir’s house, then Bluebell whistled Thrymm forwards and the dog went bounding to the door, pawing at it until it opened and a little voice said, ‘Thrymm!’

  Rowan poked her head out a moment later and waved happily. ‘Bluebell’s here!’ she called. ‘Snowy, Bluebell is here!’

  Skalmir’s two little hunting dogs ran out and joined in a sniffing frenzy with Thrymm, then the three of them began to play around each other, even though Thrymm was three times their size.

  Bluebell jogged the last twenty yards. Rowan ran out to the front gate and Bluebell swept her up in a ferocious hug. The older Rowan grew, the more she looked like her mother, Rose. For Bluebell, it felt almost as though she had travelled back in time and was looking at her sister instead of her niece.

  ‘Watch this,’ Rowan said the moment Bluebell put her down, and she began cartwheeling on the path. After four she fell on her bottom and picked herself back up, scooping one of her dogs into her arms. ‘My record is eleven.’

  ‘Double it and you’ll be strong enough to lift up Thrymm,’ Bluebell said, making a show of feeling the little girl’s arm muscles.

  ‘Would she let me?’

  ‘If I told her to.’

  ‘How many cartwheels would I have to do to lift Torr?’

  ‘Even I couldn’t lift Torr. But if you get to fifty in a row, I will take you riding on him.’

  ‘Hello, Bluebell.’ This was Skalmir, who stood at the threshold.

  ‘Snowy,’ she said, looking up with a smile. Would her visit be awkward? Well, what did she care? Plenty of people were awkward around her. She strode forwards and grasped his hand firmly, then let it go and handed him the dead pheasant. ‘Thrymm caught us some dinner.’ She slipped past him into the house. ‘I told Sister Julian to stay home. I’ll watch Rowan today and we can cook together, can’t we, little one?’

  ‘Yes, and you can come home early and have a proper dinner with us, Snowy,’ Rowan said.

  ‘I do as I’m told.’ Skalmir shrugged. He was a good-looking man with golden skin and white hair. It was Bluebell who had given him his nickname, and not just for his snowy hair. His appearance suggested that he drew his bloodline from the raiders who inhabited the far north, although he had no knowledge of who his parents were: he had been found as a baby, abandoned outside the great study halls of Thriddastowe, then adopted and raised in Netelchester by one of King Wengest’s thanes.

  Bluebell liked him. She liked the fact that he looked like a raider – tall, strong, fair – but wasn’t throwing an axe at her as they usually were. She also liked the fact that he was always willing to get naked with her after Rowan went to sleep, though after last time, she vowed she would be a little more cautious.

  ‘Not in the house, Rowan,’ Snowy said, and Bluebell looked around to see Rowan had sat on the floor and was energetically plucking the pheasant.

  ‘Go on, you take it outside and give its guts to the dogs,’ Bluebell said.

  ‘Come on, doggies,’ Rowan said, and Thrymm, Strike, and Stranger followed happily.

  Bluebell undid her sword belt and let it drop on the bench that ran the length of the house. ‘Have you been well?’ she asked.

  ‘Have you?’

  She spread her arms. ‘As you see me.’

  ‘Heading north?’

  ‘Yes, to Blackstan’s court. I’m hoping to open negotiations about Rowan marrying one of his sons. How many does he have?’

  ‘Six, I believe. And a daughter. Isn’t Rowan a little young?’

  ‘To marry? Yes. To be promised to a family? Not really. You know I was promised to Wengest when I was eight. Then when I was sixteen he got a look at me and asked for Rose instead.’

  They both laughed, then Skalmir ventured, ‘He would have been lucky to have you.’

  Bluebell shook her head. ‘Enough of that.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He smiled tightly, then turned to the door, where he found his shoes and bent to lace them on. ‘I have to go to the village today,’ he said. ‘The smokehouse is full and Wengest will be expecting some fruits of my labour, no doubt, so I’d best go talk to the meat merchant. I can be back for dinner, if you’re determined to cook.’

  ‘Rowan can do the cooking. I’ll watch.’


  He nodded. ‘Will you take her out shooting?’

  ‘I’m not much of an archer.’

  ‘No, but she is. More impressive than the cartwheels, I promise you. Take her. She’ll want to show you.’

  Bluebell sometimes wished Skalmir was a warrior rather than a hunter, then he might have taught Rowan something more useful, like how to lift a sword. ‘Very well, I will.’

  He straightened, fixed her with his blue gaze. ‘She’s excited to see you. You haven’t visited us in a long time.’

  ‘I get here when I can. Go on with you. Haven’t you got business in the village to attend to?’

  He clearly wasn’t afraid of her steely tone. Of course he wasn’t. That was the problem with fucking them.

  ‘I’ll be back in a few hours, then,’ he said, before heading off down the front path.

  Bluebell and Rowan spent the morning salting and spitting the pheasant, buttering the cabbage, and steeping the marrow in broth. Only when everything was prepared and ready to cook over the hearth did Bluebell invite Rowan out into the wood to show off her archery.

  They roamed off into the mouth of the hunting wood: a narrow muddy path, crowded on all sides by hedges and overhanging branches, laden with thick summer foliage.

  ‘Do you know your way around the wood well enough to get us back?’ she asked Rowan.

  ‘Yes, of course. Snowy leaves little markers. See?’ She pointed out two round grey stones balanced on top of each other. ‘Wherever there’s one of these, there’s another hunting path. Come on, let’s go down this one.’

  Then they were tramping over thick undergrowth and deep leaf fall, picking their way down rocky slopes. Bluebell could hear the trickle of running water. Rowan led her down to the edge of a stream, where the rushes grew thick on one side, and the elms bent over it on the other.

  ‘Snowy lets me swim here on very hot days,’ Rowan said, marching up to the thick trunk of a birch and pulling out a piece of charcoal. She marked three crosses on the bark, one under another, then tramped back. Twenty feet. Fifty.

  Bluebell followed at a distance. ‘Really? From this far?’

  Rowan pulled herself up straight and queenly. ‘Really,’ she said, and waited until Bluebell was standing at her side. Then she retrieved three arrows from her quiver and kept them in her little palm. Nocked the first while the other two protruded between her fingers, waiting. She went very still.

  Thwack. She nocked the next one. Thwack. And then the last. Thwack. It took less than five seconds for her to send an arrow sailing squarely into each cross.

  Rowan turned to Bluebell, beaming.

  Bluebell had to laugh. The girl was seven. Seven. ‘Good work, little chicken. Though I am disappointed you haven’t picked up that sword I gave you.’

  ‘It’s too heavy.’ She handed Bluebell her bow. ‘This is light. Snowy made it for me.’

  ‘Run and fetch your arrows. See if you can do it again.’

  So she did, and this time one of them missed but Rowan was jiggling with excitement now, so could be forgiven. They ran through the whole process a few times then remembered they had better cook dinner before Snowy returned. Rowan slid her hand into Bluebell’s and they trod in the impressions left by their feet on the way in.

  ‘Bluebell, why haven’t you been to see us in so long?’ Rowan asked finally, as though she’d been wanting to ask it all along but waiting for the right moment.

  ‘I have been busy. It’s busy work being a king’s daughter. When you are older, you’ll see.’

  ‘I thought you and Snowy had a fight.’

  ‘No.’ The opposite. The perfect opposite. He had declared he loved her, but she wasn’t a thing to be loved.

  ‘He was sad after last time. Did you make him sad?’

  ‘I don’t know the inside of Snowy’s heart,’ Bluebell muttered. That was the other problem with fucking them: sometimes they fell in love. No matter that she was no prettier than a millstone and her nose was smashed to bits. But she’d never expected such folly from Skalmir. He had been her favourite, damn it. ‘But I did nothing to make him sad.’

  Rowan’s hand slipped out of hers, and Bluebell walked a few paces before realising the girl was not following her. She turned, wondering what sulky nonsense Rowan was indulging, but Rowan was not sulking. She was standing, very still, her head cocked slightly.

  Bluebell narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Can you hear it?’ Rowan asked.

  Bluebell listened. Robins. Rustling leaves. Soft paws in the undergrowth. She shook her head. ‘Hear what?’

  ‘Singing.’

  Bluebell strained her ears. Now she could hear her own pulse, but no singing. A shadow walked her spine. ‘Come on. Inside now.’

  ‘I hear it sometimes. Nobody else ever can.’

  ‘Nobody lives in the forest, and deer don’t sing. You must be imagining it.’

  ‘No, it’s not a person singing,’ Rowan said, skipping to catch up. ‘It’s … something else.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Why do they call it the Howling Wood?’

  Bluebell shrugged. ‘Perhaps it used to be full of wolves, before your great-grandfather enclosed it and hunted them out.’

  Rowan walked along beside her, her head bowed so her long dark hair fell over her face. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I imagine it’s the wood singing.’

  ‘Woods don’t sing.’

  Rowan didn’t answer. Bluebell glanced at her. A strong line of second sight ran in her family; had Rowan inherited it? At times like this, she longed for Ash’s company, her quiet wisdom.

  Bluebell was about to suggest it might be poachers, but didn’t want to alarm Rowan so instead she said brightly, ‘Perhaps it’s the wind in the trees. Then you’d be right; it would be the wood singing.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Rowan answered, sounding entirely unconvinced.

  ‘Come along. We’ll start the fire and while the bird is roasting I’ll get that sword into your hands for a bit of practice.’

  Rowan groaned, and followed her to the house.

  Around the wood and across the river in two days’ comfortable riding, Bluebell and her hearthband reached Fifelham, the main town in the northern kingdom of Lyteldyke. But even though they had sent a messenger five days ahead of them, even though they approached with Ælmesse’s standard high, nobody came out to greet them. The guardsmen at the tower recognised Bluebell and let them through, and their stewards took the horses and told her and her men to go and wait in the king’s hall, but it was empty, the hearthpit cold, the tables all pushed against the walls. Ordinarily, the hall would be bustling with preparations for a feast to welcome them.

  ‘What is this?’ Sighere asked her in a quiet voice, as they waited. ‘Did our messenger not arrive?’

  ‘I need food and drink,’ Gytha grumbled.

  ‘Hush now,’ Bluebell said. ‘Until we’ve spoken to Blackstan, we can’t know why they are so unprepared for our visit.’ She glanced around the hall, so much smaller than her father’s, with the double hearth and low roof favoured by the northern kingdoms as proof against the cold. The door swung in, admitting light and a small, slight man dressed in green and amber.

  ‘My Lord Bluebell,’ he said, shuffling towards her with head bent. ‘You will not remember me. I am Wulfgar, eldest son of Blackstan.’

  Bluebell sized him up: Rowan couldn’t marry this one; not because he was almost twenty, but because he looked as though a strong wind might snap him in two. ‘We sent a messenger,’ she said, taking his hand.

  ‘I …’ He looked around, and she noticed dark shadows under his eyes. ‘I don’t know where my father is.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘He was meant to be back by now. He took my mother and my brothers up to North Hall – our northern residence – for some time away hunting and fishing. He left me and my sister in charge down here. But he’s not back.’

  Alarm rose in Bluebell’s blood. North. Raiders. ‘
When were you expecting him?’

  ‘On the turn of the summer.’

  ‘That’s ten days behind us.’

  ‘Yes. I have wanted to ride north to find him but Annis … my sister … she is afraid to be left here without me.’ He dropped his voice, almost as though he suspected Annis was nearby, listening. ‘I fear the worst. North Hall is close to Merkhinton.’

  Merkhinton was a stronghold in the mountain foothills, set up precisely to keep raiders from Is-hjarta out of Thyrsland. But it was a robust stronghold with eight hundred men. If it had fallen, word would have reached them by now. Wouldn’t it?

  ‘Nothing and nobody would have got past Merkhinton,’ she said reassuringly. ‘But we will travel there now to see that all is in order, and if you give us directions, we will also stop to pay our respects to your father and brothers at North Hall.’

  The relief was visible in his posture. ‘My lord, I would be so grateful.’ His eyes were shining with unshed tears. Lofric sniggered behind her. She held her tongue. Life would eventually teach that idiot about compassion and humility.

  ‘It would be our honour,’ she said to Wulfgar. ‘Put all worry out of your mind.’

  Within an hour, Sighere had the route to North Hall mapped out, and Bluebell was saying goodbye to a pale and shaking Prince Wulfgar near the gatehouse.

  ‘Close your gates until I send somebody back to you,’ she instructed him. ‘It will either be King Blackstan or one of my men with news. You are well fortified here. You need fear nothing for your own safety, or that of your sister.’ She turned to her hearthband. ‘Back on the road,’ she commanded, and urged Torr forwards.