The rain had slackened off and the sun shone on polished armour, and sharpened blades, and smiling faces.
It was hard not to feel much better.
Guilt Is a Luxury
The snow had all melted and left the world cold and comfortless. The icy slop that stood for ground seeped into Rikke’s boots and spattered up her sodden trousers. Cold dew dripped endlessly from the black branches, through her sopping hair, onto her soggy cloak and down her chafed back. The wet from above met the wet from below around her belt, which she’d been obliged to tighten on account of having hardly eaten anything in the three days since she killed a boy and watched her home burn.
At least it couldn’t get any worse. Or so she told herself.
‘Would be a fine thing to be on a road,’ she grumbled as she tried to tear her foot free of a tangle of clutching bramble and only succeeded in grazing herself worse.
Isern had an unnatural trick of finding only the dry parts of a bog to put her feet on. Rikke swore she could’ve danced across a pond on the lily pads and never got her feet wet. ‘Who else might be tiptoeing down the roads now, do we suppose?’
‘Stour Nightfall’s men,’ said Rikke, sulkily.
‘Aye, and his uncle Scale Ironhand’s, and his father Black Calder’s. The thorns may scratch your downy-soft skin, but a lot shallower than their swords would.’
Rikke cursed as the clutching mud near sucked her boot right off. ‘We could make for some high ground, at least.’
Isern rubbed at the bridge of her nose like she never heard such folly. ‘Who else is having a high time on the high ground now, do you imagine?’
Rikke pushed her chagga pellet sourly from her top lip to her bottom. ‘Stour Nightfall’s scouts.’
‘And Scale Ironhand’s, and Black Calder’s. And since they’re there, swarming on the roads and the hills like lice on a log, where should we be?’
Rikke slapped an insect dead on the greasy back of her hand. ‘Down here in the valley bottom, with the brambles, and the mud, and the bloody shitty biters.’
‘It’s almost like an unfriendly army swarming over your land is an inconvenience in all kinds o’ ways. You’re used to reckoning the world your playground. Beset by dangers now, girl. Time to act like it.’ Isern slipped on through the thicket as quick and silent as a snake, leaving Rikke to struggle after, pointlessly cursing.
She liked to think of herself as quite the rugged outdoorswoman, but in this company she was a towny oaf. Isern-i-Phail knew all the ways, that was the rumour. Even better’n her daddy had. Rikke had learned more from watching her the last couple of weeks than she had from that fool Union tutor in Ostenhorm in a year. How to build a shelter from ferns. How to set rabbit traps, even if they hadn’t worked. How to reckon your course from the way the moss grew on the tree trunks. How to tell a man from an animal in the forest just by their footfalls.
Some folk said Isern was a witch, and no doubt she’d a witchy look and a witch’s temper, but even she couldn’t magic food out of rocks and bogwater at the arse-end of winter. Sadly.
As the sun sank behind the hills and left the valleys colder than ever, they wriggled like worms into a crack between boulders, pressed together for warmth, while outside the wind picked up and the slow drizzle turned to a stinging sleet.
‘Reckon you could find a stick in this whole valley dry enough to take a flame?’ whispered Rikke, rubbing her cold-fish hands together in her smoking breath then wedging them in her pits where, rather than getting warmed themselves, they only served to chill her whole body.
Isern hunched over the pack that held their dwindling supplies like a miser over his gold. ‘Even if I could, the smoke might bring hunters.’
‘Guess we’ll stay cold, then,’ said Rikke in a small voice.
‘That’s the birth of spring for you, when your enemies have stole your daddy’s hall so you’ve got no nice warm firepit to curl up beside.’
Rikke knew what folk said about her, and maybe her head didn’t have the right parts in the right places, but she’d always had a sharp eye for things. So in spite of the gloom and Isern’s nimble fingers, Rikke saw the hillwoman only ate half as much as she handed over. She saw it, and was thankful for it, and wished she had the bones to insist on fair shares, but she was just so damn hungry. She stuffed her shred of dry meat down so quickly she swallowed her chagga pellet too without even noticing.
While she licked the wondrous taste of stale bread from her teeth, she found she was thinking of that lad she shot. That bit of dyed cloth around his scrawny neck, like mothers give sons to keep the cold off. That hurt, confused look he’d had. The same look she used to have, maybe, when the other children laughed at her twitching.
‘I killed that lad.’ And she sniffed up a noseful of cold snot and spat it away.
‘Aye.’ Isern trimmed off a chagga pellet and stuck it behind her lip. ‘You killed him all to bits, and robbed everyone who knew him, and cut all the good he might ever do out of the world.’
Rikke blinked. ‘Well, you’re the one split his skull!’
‘That was a mercy. He’d have drowned on your arrow for sure.’
Rikke found she was rubbing at her back, trying to get her thumb up to where that shaft had been, but she couldn’t quite reach. No more than that boy had been able to. ‘Don’t reckon he deserved it, really.’
‘Deserving won’t make much difference to an arrow. The best defence against arrows is not a life nobly lived but to be the one who shoots them, d’you see?’ Isern sat back against her, smelling of sweat and earth and chewed chagga. ‘They were your father’s enemies. Our enemies. Wasn’t as if there was any other choice.’
‘Not sure I even made a choice.’ Rikke picked at her sore fingernails as she picked at the memory, over and over. ‘Just fumbled the string. Just a stupid mistake.’
‘You could as well name it a happy accident.’
Rikke hunched into her cold cloak and her bleak mood. ‘No justice, is there? For him or for me. Just a world that looks the other way and doesn’t care a shit about either one of us.’
‘Why should it?’
‘I killed that lad.’ Rikke’s foot twitched, and the twitch became a quiver up her leg, and the quiver became a shiver all over. ‘However I turn it around … just doesn’t feel right.’
She felt Isern’s hand firm on her shoulder, and was grateful for it. ‘If killing folk ever starts to feel right, you’ve a worse kind of problem. Guilt can sting, but you should be thankful for it.’
‘Thankful?’
‘Guilt is a luxury reserved for those still breathing and with no unbearable pain, cold or hunger demanding all their fickle attention. Long as guilt’s your big problem, girl …’ Rikke saw the faint gleam of Isern’s teeth in the gathering darkness. ‘Things can’t be that bad.’
She slapped Rikke’s thigh and gave a witchy cackle, and maybe there was some magic in it after all because Rikke cracked her first smile in a day or two, and that made her feel just a bit better. Your best shield is a smile, her father always said.
‘Why haven’t you just left me behind?’ she asked.
‘I gave my word to your da.’
‘Aye, but everyone says you’re the most untrustworthy bitch in the whole North.’
‘No one should know better than you what the things everyone says are worth. Truth is, I only care about keeping my word to folk I like. I seem untrustworthy because there are only seven of those outside the hills.’ She made a fist of her tattooed hand, trembling tight. ‘To those seven, I am a rock.’