It was an arrow, but not one of the Norns’ black shafts. It looked like mortal work, and made in haste at that, the rawhide cord irregular where it wrapped the arrowhead, as though a broadhead from one arrow had been used to repair a different one. But what was most unusual about it was the roll of blood-smeared parchment wrapped around the shaft and tied tightly with another rawhide thong.
Miriamele looked it over. “You said this was found close by, in the road? It certainly doesn’t look to be one of ours.”
“No, Majesty,” said Kenrick.
“It looks like the arrow of someone who has been living rough,” said Eolair. “And it isn’t the first. We found several more like this one on the hill this morning—but only sticking in trees. As far as we could discover, not a one of these hit any of our soldiers. All those who had been shot, it was Norn arrows that pierced them.”
“Unpeel that bloody hide,” said Simon. “What is it?”
Eolair took his knife and handed it to the queen. She cut the thread and unwound it, then unfurled the hide so carefully and gently that Simon groaned at how slowly she did it. This was the first thing that had happened since the previous day that even came close to making Eolair smile, but he still did not feel solid enough for that: whatever was holding him together seemed more fragile than even that slender rawhide cord.
“What kind of letters are those?” the queen asked, holding up the latticed hide. Untidy rows of strange characters filled it, drawn in black. “Eolair, can you read this? Tiamak?”
Eolair had seen things like it, but could not remember where. He shook his head.
“I can, Majesty,” Tiamak said. “Or at least I think I can.”
“Is it Wrannaman writing, then?” Simon asked in surprise. “That would be a strange turn!”
“No, sire.” Tiamak took the hide from the queen, then squinted as he tilted it toward the nearest torch. “These are the runes that Rimmersmen once used.”
Simon squinted and frowned. “That doesn’t look like Rimmerspakk.”
“It is, but the runes are different. I said ‘once used’. These are the old signs, the ones they brought from their former land, across the sea of icebergs. Only the Black Rimmersmen still use them in Osten Ard now. The Norns’ slaves.”
“But why would four or five Norns have a slave?” Eolair asked. “So far from their border? It makes little sense, unless one of the White Foxes was some kind of royalty.” He turned to Tiamak. “Can you read what it says?”
“As I said, this language is old Rimmerspakk, the ancient version of what I learned. I will try to make what I can of it.”
It took him a little while. As Tiamak puzzled through possible meanings, Binabik came in from the cold morning to say that the last of their rams had been found, which meant that even the four-legged members of the troll’s own small party had survived. When he saw what the Wrannaman was doing, he leaned close to look over his shoulder.
“It is not being much like the Rimmerspakk I can read,” the troll admitted.
“I think I have the sense of it now,” said Tiamak, looking down to the translation he had written on a parchment: “‘I travel with the Hikeda’ya,’ it says. ‘I am not one of them, but I will stay with them. This is what I must do. They travel on a mission to Urmsheim. I do not know why, but the mission is important to Nakkiga. The queen of the Hikeda’ya has awakened from her long sleep. The North is full of rumor and preparation for war. I heard one of this company say that the queen seeks the witchwood crown. I do not know what that means, but it is important to them. What I do know is that the queen of the north lives again, and while she lives, she plans our deaths.’” Tiamak cleared his throat. “It is signed ‘Jarnulf of the White Hand’.”
Eolair suddenly felt as if something was shifting beneath him, not a fixed, solid thing like rocks and earth, but a tangle of plans and assumptions that had seemed strong enough to bear them up only a few short hours before.
Queen Miriamele looked as troubled as Eolair felt. “Strange . . . and frightening. Do you know who this Jarnulf is, Count Eolair? Kenrick? Have any of you heard of him or this White Hand?”
As heads were shaking, Sir Kenrick held out his hand again. “Also we found this, which was lying near the arrow. It seems to have fallen loose when the arrow struck the ground. My man said he thought by the angle it had stuck in the mud that the arrow must have been fired from high up on the hillside.” The captain opened his hand, exposing a shiny something on a slither of silver chain.
“He Who Always Steps On Sand!” Tiamak cried, an oath Eolair had only heard the little man use when he was badly surprised. Coming forward to look more closely, the count saw it was a circle of silver dangling from a silver chain. A silver feather was laid across the circle, along with another shape Eolair could not quite make out. “This is the sign of the League of the Scroll,” Tiamak said hoarsely. “But ours are gold, not silver—and there has never been any Jarnulf in the League!”
King Simon stared at the silver charm, then swung his feet off the cot and turned to the Hand of the Throne. Eolair sighed, foreseeing what was to come.
“Old friend,” Simon told him, “this attack, all of this—well, it changes things.”
Eolair felt no surprise, only a small sadness. “Yes, sire. Of course it does. I will tell my great-nephew Aelin that I cannot go back with him to Hernysadharc. Give me time only to write a letter to Queen Inahwen.”
“Of course, of course.” But something in the king’s face said that even this morning’s discoveries, strange and ominous as they were, had not disturbed him like the death of the young harper, nor could much distract him from it. “Yes, I’m sorry, but that’s it, old friend. We can’t do without you—not now.”
“Of course, sire. I understand.” And in that moment, Eolair was not really certain that any such ordinary plans or frustrations mattered. It seemed the shift of balance he had sensed earlier had been just a hint of something even larger, a great and heavy pivot that would change the world so much that, no matter what they did, its full force would soon be upon them.
PART TWO
Orphans
Heaven took my wife. Now it
Has also taken my son.
My eyes are not allowed a
Dry season. It is too much
For my heart. I long for death.
When the rain falls and enters
The earth, when a pearl drops into
The depths of the sea, you can
Dive in the sea and find the
Pearl, you can dig in the earth
And find the water. But no one
Has ever come back from the
Underground Springs. Once gone, life
Is over for good. My chest
Tightens against me. I have
No one to turn to. Nothing,
Not even a shadow in a mirror.
—MEI YAO CH’EN
24
Terrible Flame
In the wild lands north of Kwanitupul, the swamp called the Varn stretched in a broad tongue of wet lowland all the way to the shores of the Unhav, the wide lake that the city people of Nabban called by a name in their own language, Eadne. The grasslander riders knew this northernmost part of the Varn well: In spring and summer the people of the Thrithings hunted here for birds and fish and otters (whose pelts the stone-dwellers prized and paid for handsomely), so the grasslanders had learned the safe ways through this treacherous, trackless landscape while they had still been children.
“Why do the city men even come to live here?” Fremur asked. “They are not like us or even the Varnamen. They will be eaten by crocodiles or ghants. They will stumble off the safe tracks and drown.”
“Only a few of them,” said Unver. “Then the rest will drain the Varn and build farms.”
Fremur hoped that wasn’t true, but he had learned long a
go not to argue with Unver. The tall, quiet man did not say much, but what he said was usually correct.
“Impossible,” said Odrig, Fremur’s brother, who was the thane of their clan even though their father still lived. “Only a coward would believe that stone-dwellers could take our land. We will push them into the ocean.”
“Only a coward or a fool,” said Drojan, looking to Odrig for approval.
Unver did not say anything, and his hawk-nosed face remained impassive, but Fremur could almost feel the man’s anger tighten, like the stretching of a bowstring. Unver thumped his heels against his horse’s ribs and rode a little way ahead, picking his way through the tufts of reeds and the muddy pools on ancient tracks that would disappear again with the first rains of autumn.
“Fool,” said Drojan again, but not as loudly as he might have. Like Odrig, Drojan was barrel-chested and strong, but though Odrig might be as tall as Unver, Drojan was a head shorter and a great deal slower. If Drojan had not been Thane Odrig’s friend and lackey since childhood, Fremur felt sure he would not be insulting Unver so freely.
Odrig laughed. “No need to pick fights,” he said. “There will be blood to spill soon enough.”
Fremur was not entirely certain himself how he felt about Unver. The tall man was no one’s friend, and he had made it clear many times that he thought Fremur little more admirable than his elder brother Odrig. Still, there was something about pale-skinned Unver that Fremur could not ignore, some quality of purposeful reserve, of unusual thoughts unshared. Old beyond his three decades, uninterested in boasts or contests or drinking until he staggered, Unver was simply not like the other Thrithings-men.
If Fremur was uncertain of his feelings about Unver, he was in no doubt how he felt about his brother Odrig, the thane: he hated him. Odrig was one of the largest, fiercest men in the Crane Clan. He had acted like its leader since he was a youth, but when their father Hurvalt had been god-struck seven summers earlier, Odrig had inherited the clan’s bones and banner in fact as well as in his own estimation. Hurvalt still lived, but the old thane was now little more than a simpleton. Odrig had ruled the family since that moment, and had made that hard old man, their father, seem like a soft, soft woman. Fremur was no coward, and in a different clan he might have thrived, but his older brother treated him like a child.
No, he thought. Not like a child. Like a dog. Kick me when he pleases and throw me a bone if it suits him. If he were not my brother and my thane, if he were simply another clansman, I would have put a knife in him years ago.
Sometimes Fremur thought of simply leaving the Crane Clan for another—the Fitches or Kestrels, or even the Antelopes up in the Meadow Thrithing, whom he had seen once at a gathering and admired for their tall, handsome women. Sometimes he even thought it would be better to wander unhomed and without a clan than to continue putting up with Odrig’s abuse, but he could not leave their sister Kulva to suffer alone.
It seemed strange to hate his own flesh and blood so, but time and again Odrig Stonefist had proved himself worth hating.
• • •
They rode swiftly through the hills that hemmed the marshy lowlands, but paused before descending into the wide valley. The settlement stretching before them was mostly dark, but here and there a torch burned along the wooden stockade, and Fremur thought he could see movement above the gate. Unver, as usual, rode a little way apart from the others, bent low over the saddle and wrapped in his long, dark cloak so that it was hard to tell by moonlight where horse ended and rider began.
Odrig reined up and scanned the wall. Inside lay the paddocks where the settlers’ cattle and sheep were kept, along with the greatest prize of all, their horses. The stone-dweller’s beasts might not compare to Thrithings-steeds, but they were still useful for crossbreeding, and even more useful for selling to Varnamen and others who could not afford the prices at Nabbanai horse markets.
Odrig stood high in his stirrups, scanning the darkness. Much as he loathed him, Fremur had to admit his brother had the look of a proper grasslands thane. Odrig had taken a wife, as a thane should, and had long ago grown out his man’s beard. Unver and Drojan, despite being more or less the same age, still had the long mustaches and smooth chins of unmarried men, while Fremur’s own mustaches did not even reach the bottom of his jaw.
“Where are Tunzdan and his damned cousins?” Odrig growled, but a moment later a nightjar’s call echoed three times from the nearest hill. “There. Good.” He bared his teeth in a grin. “Now we wait for Bordelm to start the celebration.” He looked to Unver. “If this plan of yours doesn’t work, be sure I’ll leave you behind to be skinned by the city-men.”
Unver only stared back at him as though the thane hadn’t said anything worth hearing.
For long, tense moments the Crane-men sat and waited, motionless as stones. Then, along the far edge of the settlement, a great fire blossomed on the palisade. Suddenly the night was full of cries, both the shouts of Bordelm’s clansmen and the cries of startled sentries at the tall wooden gates. Torches bounced along the top of the gate as the other guards rushed back and forth, trying to make out what was happening on the far end of the settlement.
Odrig now lifted his horn to his lips and blew three short blasts, then dug in his spurs and set off down the hillside at a gallop with Drojan and Unver just behind him. Fremur clapped heels into his horse’s ribcage and followed them. A larger force of mounted men were sweeping down from one of the other hillsides—their cousin Tunzdan and his own sprawling family-clan, more than a dozen Cranes with a taste for plunder and violence.
At Unver’s suggestion, Bordelm and the others had brought buckets of pitch to smear along the palisade logs before setting the fire, and the scheme had clearly worked: as Fremur and the others neared the settlement, the moonlight was outshone by the unsteady orange glare of the burning wall. Fremur heard shouts and screams from inside the settlement as the stonedwellers woke to discover that something terrible was happening. Every now and then an arrow would fly from inside the walls, gleaming red for a moment in the firelight, but the Crane clansmen had arrows of their own, wrapped in pitchy rags; within moments, dozens of flaming missiles were being shot back over the wall, starting fires in roof thatch all over the settlement.
The clansmen quickly reached the gate in the high wall. The guards had deserted it to run toward the fire on the far side of the settlement. Unver climbed on top of his saddle, balancing with his arms spread. The moment his horse was close enough, he leaped up and caught the top of the gate, curling his fingers around two of the sharpened posts, then pulled himself over. A moment later the bolt slid back and the gate opened.
Odrig laughed. “See, they are inviting us in, my blood-drinkers! Let us not shame their hospitality by refusing!”
Fremur caught at the reins of Unver’s black horse and led it through the gate. The tall man took it back without a word and vaulted back into his saddle, then spurred forward. Fremur stayed close behind him.
Inside, the settlement was ablaze. People were running all directions in disorganized terror, but it was easy enough to tell the mounted Thrithings-men from the Nabbanai settlers, who wore flapping night-shirts or were barely half-dressed. Some of the guards had never made it across to the burning wall on the far side of the settlement, and turned now to stand against Odrig and his raiders. As the smoke swirled and the shrieks of women and children and the death cries of men rose into the night sky, these guards became the center of knots of resistance.
The Cranes did not care—they did not intend to wipe out a settlement of many hundreds, not with less than half a hundred men of their own. Their goal was the fenced paddock at the center of the village where the animals were kept.
Fremur had been on raids before, but never against such a large target. Before tonight the men of the Crane Clan had confined their attacks to isolated farmsteads or the lands of absent Nabbanai lords who seldom had eno
ugh men to protect their holdings from determined assaults. But this was a very different kind of strike, and Fremur could not help wondering how Odrig would deal with the obvious success of Unver’s idea. Odrig already disliked the tall, quiet man, who alone among the Cranes did not treat Fremur’s brother as his lord and master.
Most of the clansmen were already headed toward the paddocks at the center of the settlement, but Odrig stopped to take on a Nabbanai settler who was intent on defending his village with a billhook. The settler had no armor and wore only a long shirt, but Odrig seemed to be enjoying the sport, slashing at the man’s hands where he held his makeshift weapon and blocking the man’s return swipes, laughing all the while.
His brother laughed frequently, but Fremur had learned early in his life that when Odrig was laughing, someone else was usually bleeding.
Odrig now began inflicting cuts on the settler, slashing his face and arms so that the man’s nightshirt was ribboned with blood. Fires had started in many other places throughout the settlement now and smoke was spreading everywhere.
“Come, Mouse!” Odrig shouted to Fremur. “Take an ear or his nose for your own—a trophy!”
Fremur had always hated the name his brother gave him, little more than another way of calling him a weakling and coward, and he did not want to watch Odrig toying with the settler, who was now weeping and stumbling in the mud as Odrig inflicted cut after cut on him. Instead he spurred away toward the center of the village.
Much of the palisade was aflame now, and scores of roofs had caught as well. Fremur could hear the awful cries of those trapped in the burning houses, men, women, and children, but he felt no pity.