Ayaminu’s inspection continued for a long moment. She seemed to make little distinction between disturbed snow and tumbled bodies. “The Hikeda’ya were stealing food,” she said. “I doubt they would have bothered to harm anyone, but they were discovered.”
“What of it?” Sludig was barely containing his anger. “Do you make an excuse for them because they are your kin? I don’t care what you call them—Norns, White Foxes, or Hiki . . . what you said. Name them as you like, they are monsters! Look at these poor people! The war is over, but your immortal fairy cousins are still killing.”
Ayaminu shook her head. “My kind are not immortal, only long-lived. And as recent battles have shown, both my folk and our Hikeda’ya cousins can die. Thousands of them have done so in the past year, many at the hands of mortals like you.” She turned to stare at Sludig, but her face was all but expressionless. “Do I excuse this murder? No. But if the Hikeda’ya were hungry enough to steal from a mortal settlement, they must have been very hungry indeed—to the point of madness. Like my own folk, they can survive on very little. But the north has suffered from the Storm King’s frosts a long time.”
“We Rimmersmen have suffered from this endless winter too, without needing to destroy entire villages!”
Ayaminu gave the young warrior a bemused look. “You Rimmersmen who came out of the west a mere few centuries ago and killed thousands of my people? And just this year brought death to so many of your Hernystiri neighbors?”
“Damn it, that was not us!” Sludig was trembling. “That was other Rimmersmen under Skali of Kaldskryke—Duke Isgrimnur’s sworn enemy!”
The duke put his hand on Sludig’s arm. “Quiet, man. That argument has no ending.” But at this moment, with his insides knotted by the sight of the dead villagers—his dead villagers, the people God had given him to protect—Isgrimnur could not look on the Sitha-woman with any kindness. But for the golden hue of her skin, the fairy-woman could have been one of the Norns, the corpse-white creatures whose murderous work lay all around him. “Remember that our memories are not as long as yours, Lady Ayaminu,” he said as evenly as he could manage, “and neither are our lives. I gave you leave to come along with us at the request of your Lord Jiriki, friend of our king and queen—but not to pick fights with my men.” In fact, it had only been the strong urgings of the newly crowned Simon and Miriamele that had convinced Isgrimnur to let the Sitha-woman accompany them at all, and he was still not certain he had made the right decision.
He looked down the hill, where his men waited in disordered ranks stretching half a league back down the Frostmarch Road. They were Rimmersmen for the greatest part, along with a few hundred soldiers from other nations who had missed most of the fighting in Erchester but had been hired to reopen the empty forts along the northernmost borders between the lands of the royal High Ward and the defeated Norns. If any of them had expected the White Foxes simply to slip harmlessly back across the border, they were now learning otherwise.
“This village was Finnbogi’s.” Bulky, shaggy-bearded Brindur, brother of the thane of Skoggey and an important thane in his own right, had survived the final battle at the Hayholt but had left a great deal of blood and most of one of his ears behind. His helmet sat oddly over the bandages. “I saw him die just outside the castle gate, Your Grace. Had his head torn off by a giant who threw it over the Hayholt wall.”
“Enough. And enough of this place, too.” Isgrimnur waved his hand in angry disgust. “God preserve me, I can still smell the foul creatures even through all this blood—as though they were here only a moment ago.”
“It is not likely . . .” began Ayaminu, but fell silent at the duke’s violent gesture.
“We should have rounded up all the White Foxes when the battle ended,” Isgrimnur said. “We should have taken their heads, prisoners or no, like Crexis when Harcha fell.” He looked to the Sitha. “That works for fairies as well as for ordinary men, doesn’t it? Cutting their heads off?”
Ayaminu stared at him but did not answer. Isgrimnur turned his back on her and crunched away through the drifts, back to his waiting soldiers.
“Your Grace, a rider is coming. He bears Jarl Vigri’s banner!”
Isgrimnur blinked and looked up from his map to scowl at the messenger. “Why do you shout so, man? There is nothing strange in that.”
The young Rimmersman colored, though it was hard to see against his burned-red cheeks. “Because he does not come along the eastern fork of the road, from Elvritshalla, but the western fork.”
“Impossible,” said Sludig.
“Do you mean from Naarved?” demanded the duke. “What nonsense is that?” He stood, bumping the makeshift tabletop with his belly so that the stones meant to represent armies jiggled and jumped. “Why would Vigri be in Naarved when he’s supposed to be protecting Elvritshalla?” Vigri was one of the most powerful Rimmersmen lords after Isgrimnur himself. He and his father before him had been some of the duke’s most steadfast supporters. It was impossible to believe that the jarl, as earls were called here in the north, would wander away from his sworn duty. Isgrimnur shook his head as he pulled on his fur-lined gloves. “Thank the Ransomer my Gutrun is still safe with our friends in the south. Has everyone in these lands run mad?” He pushed his way out of the tent with Sludig close behind. The Sitha-woman Ayaminu followed, quiet as a shadow slipping along the ground.
The messenger and his horse were wreathed in the plumes of their frosty breath. Beyond them the immensity of the Dimmerskog forest covered the eastern side of the road in snow-blanketed green, the trees silent as sentries frozen at their posts, rank upon rank until they disappeared into white mist.
“What do you have for me, fellow?” the duke demanded. “Is it truly from Vigri? Why is he not at Elvritshalla, defending the city?”
The dismounted rider did his best to bend a knee, but he was clearly almost too cold and weary to stand. “Here, Your Grace,” he said, holding out a folded parchment. “I am but the messenger—let the jarl himself speak.”
Isgrimnur frowned as he read, then waved to his carls. “Give this man something to eat and to drink. Sludig, Brindur, Floki—we must have words. My tent.”
Inside, the men crowded around the duke, anxious but silent. Ayaminu had come in as well, but she stayed to the shadows as ever, still and watchful.
“Vigri says that the White Foxes have been returning north through our lands for over a month, mostly in scattered handfuls that stayed far from our towns and villages,” Isgrimnur began. “But one large group, well-armed, and many of them mounted, were too big to ignore. This one traveled slowly. Vigri says they are carrying the body of a great Norn leader back to Sturmrspeik—perhaps even the queen of the Norns herself.”
“A body?” said Ayaminu from her place near the doorway. “Perhaps, but it is not the queen’s. Utuk’ku Silvermask is not dead. She has suffered a terrible defeat but we would have known if she had perished. And although her spirit was present at Asu’a—the place you call the Hayholt—her bodily form never left Nakkiga. She still waits inside the great mountain.”
Isgrimnur frowned. “Well, it is some other notable of the White Foxes whose body they carry, then. It doesn’t matter. Vigri says this group have kept together in a small army, and because of that they plunder broadly as they go. They did great damage along the outskirts of Elvritshalla, so Vigri came out to challenge them with much of the city’s strength, several thousand men. The Norns fought fiercely, but at last he drove them away into the wilderness. Once he had done that, though, he did not feel he could simply let them escape.” He glanced down at the letter, frowned again. “Merciful Aedon grant us good luck, he says he has trapped all those White Foxes—hundreds of them—in a tumbledown Norn border fort on the very outskirts of their land, at Skuggi Pass.”