“You? The bravest woman who ever drew breath?” He smiled at her, and for a moment was nothing more than her jolly, maddening husband, the one she had loved for so long and through so much. “Come, now. I will not let anything harm me. I would not dare, my lady.”
She knew she could not stop him without a furious argument, and she also knew that the demands of Man’s Pride might seem foolish and dangerous to her but were real and important among men, especially for a king. “Promise me at least that you will stay in the back, then,” she said at last. “Promise me you will not ride up to the front where one of those demons can see you and shoot at you.”
He gave her a look—the always-love, but with a hint of grievance. “If you insist.”
“I do. Even if there are hundreds of Norns up there, it will not be worth your being killed. Remember the things we have still to do, Simon. Remember your promises to Isgrimnur.”
He nodded briskly. “I know. Don’t shame me, Miri. I remember. I remember all of it.”
She went to him then and kissed his cheek, felt the tangle of his beard scratching against her cheek. Just the smell of him, of his neck and hair, made her ache with desire. “So do I, husband. Every bit of our story. And I want to share the rest of it with you, not mourning you.”
He watched her leave the tent. She had known him so long that she knew exactly what his gaze felt like, even from behind.
Nezeru brought Saomeji water. He let her pour it into his mouth without a word or even meeting her eyes, as though he were a dying animal.
“By your skills you have saved us, Singer,” she told him, and her gratitude was not feigned. Saomeji did not answer but only lay back against the stone, breathing regularly but shallowly.
Their hiding place had at first seemed like no hiding place at all, a great split stone the size of a barn that sat near the top of the hill, broken in two halves like a dropped melon. The massive sections stood several paces apart, and anything between the two halves should have been visible from a long distance. But the Singer had used a skill that he called “stonesinging,” and now Nezeru’s entire company, including the mortal Jarnulf, their horses, and even monstrous Goh Gam Gar, sheltered between the rough hemispheres, apparently invisible to all searching eyes—at least those of mortals. Nezeru had watched a company of armed men search for them less than a bowshot away, oblivious to their hiding place, although Nezeru could see the mortals clearly, as if through no more than a faint mist.
“What do they see?” Jarnulf asked quietly as another trio of mortal soldiers blundered past, clearly unable to understand how the Norns had managed to vanish on a surrounded hilltop. Late afternoon was now fading into twilight; the growing darkness turned the mortals into clumsy children, stumbling and bumping into each other, unable to find safe footing in their heavy armor, even as their quarry sat observing them from only a few paces away.
“They see only stone,” said Saomeji, still laboring for breath. His eyes were as reddened as if he had just stepped out of a violent windstorm. “Just as they hear us no better than were we surrounded by the stone they imagine is there. But you still must keep your voices low.”
“You tried to lead us into a trap, slave,” Kemme hissed at Jarnulf.
“I will not bear that burden,” the mortal said. “I would have taken you across the road several leagues north of here. You know that is true.”
Kemme darted a look at Makho, but the chieftain’s face showed no liking for the dispute, so Kemme turned away again. He had seated himself at the edge of the stone, the boundary of Saomeji’s song-of-unseeing, and now he glared at the mortal searchers like a hungry animal. He raised his bow as if to aim. “Look at the vermin. I could spit all three of them with one shaft.”
“And then the rest would come running,” Makho said in a quiet but blade-sharp voice. “And they would all wonder how a Hikeda’ya arrow leaped out of a solid stone. Do not be so impatient, hand-brother. You will get your chance soon enough.” He turned to Jarnulf, and all outward emotion vanished from his face—Nezeru found it more chilling than his earlier angers. “You say you did not want this, but I am not sure. Give me answers or I will kill you myself, mortal, no matter the noise.” Everyone else had fallen silent, watching them. The chieftain held up the piece of torn green surcoat stitched with the twin dragon symbol. “This is the emblem of the Erkynguard, the soldiers who kill for the royal household that now rules in our old capital of Asu’a. Many hundreds of them surround this hill. What are they doing so far north of their own lands? Did you plan to meet them and exchange messages, or simply to lead us to them so that we Hikeda’ya would be killed, and you could claim bounty from the mortals?”
Saomeji stirred beside her, and Nezeru wondered what the Singer would do if it came to a fight. She had clearly underestimated his skills—few of even the most accomplished songmasters could manage what the halfblood had done to hide them.
Jarnulf met Makho’s stare, his face as empty of expression as the chieftain’s. Nezeru felt even more certain the mortal was Hikeda’ya-bred—surely no ordinary man of his race could hide his feelings so completely. Or did he think he was invincible? She knew Makho could not be defeated the same way twice; next time the chieftain would be prepared for the stranger’s surprising speed.
“I told you that the king and queen of the High Throne were journeying to the great city in Rimmersgard the northmen call Elvritshalla,” Jarnulf said. “Every mortal in these lands must have known it—don’t blame me because you chose to ignore it.” He made the gesture Defense Against Falsehood. “The royal party should have been long past us on their way back—the weather must have delayed their return—but remember, I said we should cross the North Road two days ago near the forest and strike east. You are the one who would not trust me and insisted we find another spot. No, Makho of the Talons, I think it is your suspicions that will kill me.”
“He is too insolent,” Kemme said. “Give him the death he expects, then we do not have to hear his lies. He is a spy who has led us into a trap.”
Jarnulf smiled grimly. “Of course I have. And what better way for me to make certain of that than to die in the same trap? Do you think that when it is dark, and we try to break free, these short-sighted Erkynguards will be looking to see which of us are Hikeda’ya and which of us are the Hikeda’ya’s mortal slaves—slaves whom they despise even more than you?” He shook his head. “Kill me if you will—or at least you may try.” He let his hand drop to his blade. “It might not be so easy as you imagine. But if you do not wish to test me now while enemies surround us, then tend to your own affairs, and I will tend to mine.”
Jarnulf bent and took a short, charred stick from the fire, then walked back down the narrow space between the split stone to his pack, which was farther along the crevasse, near the giant Goh Gam Gar.
“What are you doing, mortal?” Makho demanded.
He did not look back. “Writing out my death song.”
• • •
Kemme, Makho, and Saomeji, who was fast regaining his strength, huddled in urgent talk, plotting a path they could take when the blue-gray evening had gone fully dark. Already dozens of the mortals’ torches had bloomed at the bottom of the hill.
Nezeru understood the situation, though she had been excluded from the discussion: Saomeji had said that he could not long maintain the protective illusion in daylight, and it was clear the mortal soldiers would wait sensibly for morning, as if the hilltop were a besieged castle, instead of hunting for the Hikeda’ya in the dark. That meant the best time to try to break out would be in the last hours before the sun returned, when the mortals were at their weakest and most timid. But even with the aid of darkness and a little surprise, she did not think their queen’s hand would survive—not all of them, at least. The queen’s Hikeda’ya were so few, and the mortals were so many—!
Mother of All, give strength to your servant. My l
ife is yours. My body is yours. My spirit is yours. Nezeru calmed herself with the familiar, soothing litanies of duty she had been taught long before her first woman’s blood. Better to die fighting to escape, she told herself, than to die hiding like lowly animals. We live for the queen so we must die for her as well, without complaint. Otherwise our oaths are meaningless.
Halfway down the hidden space between the great stones, past the giant’s hairy bulk, she saw the pale-haired mortal scratching away with his burnt branch on a dry, scraped goathide he had taken from his pack and unrolled across his lap. Makho had risen once to look at what he was writing, but had walked back shaking his head. Nezeru was curious, and her body ached for something to do, even just to rise and walk a few steps.
As she passed the giant, who had looked asleep, Goh Gam Gar opened one of his blood-tinged eyes. As always, she found it hard to meet that only partially animal stare. The creature’s voice was a deep rumble. “Death is coming, little Blackbird.”
Nezeru hesitated. “Of course it is. Death comes for all—except the Queen of the Mountain. But death is only a door, and the Garden is on the far side.”
“Nicely said.” Goh Gam Gar scratched his hairy belly with a clawed finger as wide as Nezeru’s wrist. “For someone who has never died.”
As she clambered over his mighty legs, almost sickened by the bristling fur scratching against her ankles, Nezeru felt the deep rumble of the monster’s laughter.
The mortal had make crude symbols all over the hide, lines and branching forks and simple shapes. She thought it looked artless, and was almost saddened for him, that his death should be celebrated with such an indistinguished scrawl. As she watched, he finished the final row and held it at a little distance to examine his work. She thought the charcoal-scratchings looked like something a child would make on his first day learning from the Chroniclers.
“Does it say something?” she asked. “What kind of marks are those?”
“Those marks are the old runes of my people, from the time before we became your people’s slaves,” he said without looking up. “It is my death song. You should understand that. Sacrifices make them too—especially you Talons.”
For a moment she was almost pleased he understood the difference, knew something of the sweat and blood and suffering it had cost her to become not just any Sacrifice, but a Talon of the Queen. “But we do not write our songs on skins.” Nezeru still had not decided what to make of the mortal, but this was something she could understand. “We sing them after we have taken our sacred oath.” She remembered the ageless cavern where the ceremony had taken place, the crack in the floor that had spilled heady, sweet fumes that rose from the holy Well, and the inhuman voices that had sung so softly and sweetly in the dark deeps. “Little more than a circle of seasons has passed since that day—I remember it as clearly as if no time had passed.”
“You are fortunate, then, Sacrifice Nezeru, that yours is safely sung. My people do it differently so I am not so lucky.” He gave her a keen look that she could not decipher. “Go and ask the giant to come here.”
Uncertain, but also wondering what the mortal planned, Nezeru crept back up the crevasse to where Goh Gam Gar lay, big as a toppled haywain. He did not open his eyes until she told him that Jarnulf wanted him, then he grunted and rolled over. He did not stand, but crawled on hands and knees the several paces to the end where the Rimmersman sat, blocking most of the width of the crevice as he went, forcing Nezeru back to Jarnulf’s side.
“Do you wish me to crush your skull?” Goh Gam Gar asked the mortal with what sounded like honest curiosity. “I did not take you for a coward, little man, but perhaps you would prefer to die on your own terms?”
Jarnulf’s smile was icy. “When I die, I aim to take as many with me as I can, Jarl Hunë. I suspect you would be a rough partner for such an enterprise.” His pale blue eyes looked a blank gray in the gathering dark. “I do not think you love Chieftain Makho, the one who gives you pain.”
“No. I do not love him.”
“Then help me play a small trick. I am not death-sung like these Hikeda’ya. My last song must fly high and far, so that the old gods of my people can see it from Himnhalla—from the starry heavens.”
“Do you wish me to throw it?” The giant watched as Jarnulf wrapped the hide around the arrow shaft, the ashy symbols now hidden. “I fear I will crush it instead.”
“I can send it farther and higher with my bow than you can, even with those great thews of yours,” Jarnulf said. “All I need you to do is to remain where you are and block the space between the two stones, so that Makho and his angry friend Kemme cannot see what I do.”
“And what will you do in return? A slave like me is too poor to do favors, especially for doomed mortals, and I already helped you once.”
Nezeru did not understand what the giant meant. Helped the mortal how? When?
“The doomed part is not up to you, Goh Gam Gar,” Jarnulf replied. “As for my repayment, that will be for you to decide one day. Tell me, do we have a bargain?”
The giant laughed and stole a casual glance over his massive shoulder. At the far end of the crevice, beyond the horses, Makho and the other two Hikeda’ya were still planning either escape or brave death. “It would be a good joke, I think, but when the time comes for you to repay me, the jest may no longer be so much to your liking.”
“We have both worn collars,” said Jarnulf. “They do not take away a man’s honor—or a giant’s, is my guess. I will live by my bargain.”
“Very well.” Goh Gam Gar tilted himself so that he blocked all view across the passage from the far end. “Talk to your old gods. You might ask them why they hate giants so much that their servants have always tried to slay us.”
“If I meet them tonight, I promise I will ask.” Jarnulf rose to a crouch, arrow in one hand, and took up his bow. “Ah,” he said, “I nearly forgot the last touch to my death song. There will be plenty of blood later, I think, but I need a little now to make the words powerful enough for the gods to hear.” He drew the point of his arrow across the muscle of his leg, freeing a stripe of blood. He then rolled the hide in it, smearing it with a red that looked almost black in the twilight. “I will go only a short distance,” he said to Nezeru. “You will be able to watch me.”
“What do you mean?” she demanded. “I thought you only meant to loose an arrow. You can’t leave this place! You will give us away.”
“There is no one nearby. Ask Goh Gam Gar.”
The giant flared his immense nostrils. “He speaks the truth. The men with armor have all gone down to the bottom of the hill to wait.”
“You have your own bow, do you not, Sacrifice Nezeru?” Jarnulf fixed his pale eyes on hers but she could not guess at his thought. “If I do anything more than what I have said, feel free to put an arrow in my back. Can you see? There is no cover in this direction for a long distance. I know the skills of those trained by the Order of Sacrifice. You will be able to kill me easily.”
“I cannot let you disobey our chieftain,” she said. “If you go beyond this stone, I have no choice but to put an arrow in you.”
“And I am going, arrow or no,” he told her. “But here is something else for you to consider while you ponder whether to hasten my death by a few short hours. Why did your Singer and Makho sneak off in secret earlier to meet with a mortal?”
“What?” She was so surprised it was all she could do to keep her voice low. “What nonsense is this?”
“When you and Kemme were sent to scout the land ahead. Your chieftain told the giant to watch me, but Goh Gam Gar was lax, and I slipped off to follow them.”
“Slipped off? I’ll wager the beast let you go.” At least now she knew the earlier favor that Goh Gam Gar had mentioned. But she still could not make sense of what Jarnulf had said. “Why do you say Makho met with a mortal? How could that be?”
“Because I saw it. It happened in the last hours of darkness, before you two brought the whole of the Erkynlandish army down upon our heads. Saomeji and your chieftain met with a rider who came up the great road from the south.”
“A messenger from Nakkiga—” she began.
“Do you think after spending much of my life among both kinds that I do not know the difference between the scent of your folk and that of mortals like myself? If you had seen them, even from a distance as I did, you would not have mistaken the stranger for anything but one of my race, either. Face to face with the Singer and Makho, he was like a short-legged dog among buck deer. Your comrades showed no surprise at his arrival, and talked with him for some little time, then the mortal got back onto his horse and rode away toward the south.”
“Not toward the army that surrounds us? Because they were behind us, coming from the north.” She shook her head. “That only makes your lie more obvious, Huntsman. Where would he come from in this wilderness, if not out of the numbers of this mortal army?”
“That I cannot say, unless he was a wide-ranging scout, but he wore no insignia I could see, only an old cloak, as though he did not wish his identity to be too obvious. In any case, why would your chieftain have a secret meeting with a member of the army that hunts us?” He stood. “Now, I must send my song to the gods—and you must decide whether to feather my back or not, Sacrifice Nezeru, because the others will be done with their talking soon.”
She watched in near disbelief as he turned his back on her and edged to the end of the space protected by the cleft boulder and Saomeji’s song. She nocked an arrow and drew her bow, but as with the child on the island of the bones, she could not find the conviction to let fly. At last she lowered it again.
“Go, then and be quick,” she whispered. “But if you take a step beyond that fallen log I promise I will kill you. Your gods will never know your name, but the ravens will pick your bones long before the sun has found its way back into the sky.”