* * *
The morning and afternoon passed by in tense silence. It was as though the storm and subsequent events had cast a thick blanket over the smithy and Ysabon put herself to work scrubbing things that didn’t need scrubbing just to keep her hands busy. Even her two small grandchildren picked up on the tension. The baby fussed, her cries small and muted in the heavy atmosphere of the house and little Alam, only three years old, played on the kitchen floor with his carved wooden horses, glancing nervously at his mother from time to time as she knit by the hearth.
Ysabon came in from the smithy as the afternoon sun hid behind heavy grey clouds and evening started to creep up on the horizon. She’d cleaned and set everything as much in order as she could and finding little else to do there she dried her hands and went into the warm kitchen. She forced herself to eat some of the bread and soup Irosenna set in front of her, but the thick broth tasted like sand and the nervous lump in her throat made even swallowing difficult.
“They’ll be back soon,” Iarofina said softly as Ysabon cast another glance toward the door.
“They should have been back now. We’d have heard them coming in toward the village.” Even as she said it, Ysabon’s ears strained, hoping to hear the scrape of skis and the jingling of harness. But there was only silence, as though the setting sun had commanded the world to hold its breath.
It was Alam who heard the skis first. The women sat by the fire, subdued, Ysabon and Iarofina pretending to read while Irosenna carded deep red wool from the basket at her feet. Alam stood in a chair, his face pressed to the window, fingers tracing the crystallized lines of frost on the outside of the thick glass.
“Shhees,” he said suddenly, excited. He tapped the windowpane.
Ysabon was up instantly, her knees protesting the sudden movement. She threw open the door and peered into the gloom. The clear sound of skis, of someone coming fast, echoed through the chill air. One set of skis. Her shoulders started to shake from holding the tension in and her heart was loud in her ears.
One set of skis. A figure emerged and Ysabon cried out in joy as her daughters pressed close against her back, looking over her shoulder.
It was Ialnor. Alone, and unarmed.
He skied right up to the house, his face gaunt with exhaustion and his dark eyes hollow and wide with fear.
“We were attacked,” he said and started to say more but Ysabon shook her head.
“No, come in, and then tell the story. Are you hurt?”
He waved her off, shaking his head, and continued to gasp for breath as he bent like an old man to loose his skis. Ysabon helped her nephew undo the bindings, checking him over as subtly as she could for wounds. She knew from hard experience that the untried didn’t always register when they’d been struck. Iarofina turned away in a flurry of yellow skirts and went to the kitchen, poking the stove to life again as she hung a kettle in the great hearth.
“We got to the bridge without mishap,” Ialnor started. He waved away food and ran his big hands through his hair as though checking to see that he still had a head. “The storm must have washed it out. The whole middle was smashed up and the river’d taken the pieces away. No way to cross there. Weyth wanted to turn back, get supplies and make the run to the ford in the morning, but Costric and his sons overrode him.” Ialnor paused again and swallowed hard. He looked at Ysabon and she wished she could smother the grief and guilt shadowing his gaze. “I, too, wanted to press on. A little hunger wasn’t going to hurt us. We went downriver to try the ford but didn’t even make the crossroads. They came out of nowhere. Clicking and a horrible, keening screech were the only warnings.”
Ysabon pressed a mug of hot tea, laced with sedative herbs, into his shaking hands and he stopped to sip it on reflex.
“They’re horrible things,” he said after a moment. “I never thought they’d be so big and they stank. That sheep I found, Ysabon, the one in the river. The hulks smell like that, rotting and dead. Weyth yelled for us to split up, to get away. I saw Costric go down and his sons turned back. But we should have been faster on skis. Has no one else returned?”
“Not here, though if you all split up someone might have made it to the village by another route.” Ysabon said the words more to comfort him than from any conviction. She could only guess at the fate of the other four men who’d set out that morning. She prayed to the gods of war and iron that one of them had made the ford, had reached the garrison, but doubted those prayers would come to much.
“No,” Ialnor said, “don’t spare me, Aunt. I saw the bright splash of blood, I heard Costric’s screams.” His dark, empty eyes met her own and what she saw there broke her heart. Ialnor didn’t see this cozy room, nor his family gathered and safe. In his eyes lurked a frozen, desolate landscape populated only by fear and death. “I ran. I dropped my axe and left them, as fast and as far as I could.”
“And if you’d stayed, you’d be dead and eaten, just the same.” Iarofina’s voice was high and tight and Irosenna put a hand on her shoulder, shaking her head.
“We have to tell the widows and the village council.” Ialnor looked as though he meant to rise and do it immediately.
“Drink your tea. It’s dark now and there’s no telling what lurks in the night. We’ll stay shut up tight and dark the windows. In the morning we’ll send word.” Ysabon laid her head in her hands and rubbed stiff fingers into her temples.
She and her daughters pulled dark cloths over the windows and dimmed the lamp on the kitchen table. Ialnor went grudgingly to bed but exhaustion took him over and Ysabon didn’t have to wait long to see him sleeping beneath the heavy green wool blankets. Her daughters collected the sleeping children and piled into their own bed, leaving her alone before the great hearth with her thoughts.
Other than a broken nerve, her nephew had returned unscathed. But the mission had failed and as far as Ysabon knew, the garrison was still unaware of the pack of widowhulks murdering their way around the vicinity of Westedge. It seemed a stupid hope that someone from the garrison would notice the widowhulks on their own. She doubted the creatures would bother to cross the river when there was so much sport to be found nearby.
The best option was to gather another small group and race for the ford. On skis in good weather it would still take most of the day’s light to get even that far, which meant the garrison wouldn’t be alerted until nightfall. At best the village had to survive another night. Ysabon shivered despite the heat from the glowing coals. How many more would die tonight? And how many more a night after?
Someone had to go in the morning. The village council would have to form another party. Even as she thought about it, Ysabon bowed her head. Costric and Weyth had come to her because they wanted more men. If there were others willing to endanger themselves in the open to reach the garrison, they would have stepped forward. But they hadn’t. No, the majority of the men and women in the village would stay at home and hide by the fires, praying for someone else to save them.
Just as she had that very morning. Just as she did now, cowering here alone in the flickering light behind dark curtains.
Ysabon took a deep breath and rose slowly to her feet. She walked around the kitchen, smudging a bit of coarse wheat flour missed on the table’s edge with her fingers, then stroking her hands over the rough stones of the hearth. The kitchen smelled of herbs and woodsmoke, of happiness and home. At last her gaze lifted and came to rest on her sword.
She’d left this home, this very hearth once for the sake of that sword. She’d wanted glory and money, going off to join a mercenary band, following in her grandmother’s footsteps. Unlike her ancestor, Ysabon had returned, older, injured, and pregnant. In the wake of children and helping her ailing brother and his young son with the forge, that sword was all that remained of a young woman who’d dreamt of riches, wars, and fame.
Ysabon stretched her arms up and lifted the blade down. The scabbard leather was warm and hard, cracked and worn and old. But
still serviceable, with a little care.
She pushed out through the door into the forge, shivering in the airy smithy as the night wind crept down the vents. In the distance Ysabon thought she heard something cry out and she froze, her hand closing on the rough hilt. After a moment, hearing only the sighs of the wind in the eaves, she moved again, setting the sword down.
It took her only a few minutes in the near darkness to gather what she needed. Ysabon turned up the wick on the lamp and unsheathed the blade. It wasn’t as rusty as she feared, though dulled with age. Oils and sheepskin revived the old sheath and warmth slipped into her bones and her heart as she went through familiar motions. Cleaning gear, sharpening a sword and grinding the nicks out after a battle. These were things she’d reveled in, telling stories with her fellows around fires with bellies full of wine they’d earned, each ache and cut a badge, a story.
After hours of work, as her scarred left arm complained sharply for a while and then fell silent with a numbing ache, Ysabon pulled the old copper wires off the hilt and slowly wrapped new leather. In the dim light the sword looked reborn. She stood and brought it around in an arc, testing the feel of the blade in her hand after so many years. Muscles used to other tasks protested but she smiled through the aches. Her feet shuffled into positions her mind had half-forgotten.
Smiling grim and determined, Ysabon returned to the kitchen and fell asleep in her chair before the fire, the sword in its sheath across her lap.