And here they had been left, in the darkness. To wait for who knew what.
As Finree slowly got her breath back the pain began to creep up on her. Her scalp burned, her head thumped, her neck sent vicious stings down between her shoulders whenever she tried to turn her head. But no doubt she was a great deal better off than most who had been trapped in that inn.
She wondered if Hardrick had made it to safety, or if they had ridden him down in the fields, his useless message never delivered. She kept seeing that major’s face as he stumbled sideways with blood running from his broken head, so very surprised. Meed, fumbling at the bubbling wound in his neck. All dead. All of them.
She took a shuddering breath and forced the thought away. She could not think of it any more than a tightrope walker could think about the ground. ‘You have to look forward,’ she remembered her father telling her, as he plucked another of her pieces from the squares board. ‘Concentrate on what you can change.’
Aliz had been sobbing ever since the door shut. Finree wanted quite badly to slap her, but her hands were tied. She was reasonably sure they would not get out of this by sobbing. Not that she had any better ideas.
‘Quiet,’ Finree hissed. ‘Quiet, please, I need to think. Please. Please.’
The sobbing stuttered back to ragged whimpering. That was worse, if anything.
‘Will they kill us?’ squeaked Aliz’ voice, along with a slobbering snort. ‘Will they murder us?’
‘No. They would have done it already.’
‘Then what will they do with us?’
The question sat between them like a bottomless abyss, with nothing but their echoing breath to fill it. Finree managed to twist herself up to sitting, gritting her teeth at the pain in her neck. ‘We have to think, do you understand? We have to look forward. We have to try and escape.’
‘How?’ Aliz whimpered.
‘Any way we can!’ Silence. ‘We have to try. Are your hands free?’
‘No.’
Finree managed to worm her way across the floor, dress sliding over the dirt until her back hit the wall, grunting with the effort. She shifted herself along, fingertips brushing crumbling plaster, damp stone.
‘Are you there?’ squeaked Aliz.
‘Where else would I be?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Trying to get my hands free.’ Something tugged at Finree’s waist, cloth ripped. She wormed her shoulder blades up the wall, following the caught material with her fingers. A rusted bracket. She rubbed away the flakes between finger and thumb, felt a jagged point underneath, a sudden surge of hope. She pulled her wrists apart, struggling to find the metal with the cords that held them.
‘If you get your hands free, what then?’ came Aliz’ shrill voice.
‘Get yours free,’ grunted Finree through gritted teeth. ‘Then feet.’
‘Then what? What about the door? There’ll be guards, won’t there? Where are we? What do we do if—’
‘I don’t know!’ She forced her voice down. ‘I don’t know. One battle at a time.’ Sawing away at the bracket. ‘One battle at a—’ Her hand slipped and she lurched back, felt the metal leave a burning cut down her arm.
‘Ah!’
‘What?’
‘Cut myself. Nothing. Don’t worry.’
‘Don’t worry? We’ve been captured by the Northmen! Savages! Did you see—’
‘Don’t worry about the cut, I meant! And yes, I saw it all.’ And she had to concentrate on what she could change. Whether her hands were free or not was challenge enough. Her legs were burning from holding her up against the wall, she could feel the greasy wetness of blood on her fingers, of sweat on her face. Her head was pounding, agony in her neck with every movement of her shoulders. She wriggled the cord against that piece of rusted metal, back and forward, back and forward, grunting with frustration. ‘Damn, bloody— Ah!’
Like that it came free. She dragged her blindfold off and tossed it away. She could hardly see more without it. Chinks of light around the door, between the planks. Cracked walls glistening with damp, floor scattered with muddy straw. Aliz was kneeling a stride or two away, dress covered in dirt, bound hands limp in her lap.
Finree jumped over to her, since her ankles were still tied, and knelt down. She tugged off Aliz’ blindfold, took both of her hands and pressed them in hers. Spoke slowly, looking her right in her pink-rimmed eyes. ‘We will escape. We must. We will.’ Aliz nodded, mouth twisting into a desperately hopeful smile for a moment. Finree peered down at her wrists, numb fingertips tugging at the knots, tongue pressed between her teeth as she prised at them with her broken nails—
‘How does he know I have them?’ Finree went cold. Or even colder. A voice, speaking Northern, and heavy footsteps, coming closer. She felt Aliz frozen in the dark, not even breathing.
‘He has his ways, apparently.’
‘His ways can sink in the dark places of the world for all I care.’ It was the voice of the giant. That soft, slow voice, but it had anger in it now. ‘The women are mine.’
‘He only wants one.’ The other sounded like his throat was full of grit, his voice a grinding whisper.
‘Which one?’
‘The brown-haired one.’
An angry snort. ‘No. I had in mind she would give me children.’ Finree’s eyes went wide. Her breath crawled in her throat. They were talking about her. She went at the knot on Aliz’ wrists with twice the urgency, biting at her lip.
‘How many children do you need?’ came the whispering voice.
‘Civilised children. After the Union fashion.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. Civilised children.’
‘Who eat with a fork and that? I been to Styria. I been to the Union. Civilisation ain’t all it’s made out to be, believe me.’
‘A pause. ‘Is it true they have holes there in which a man can shit, and the turds are carried away?’
‘So what? Shit is still shit. It all ends up somewhere.’
‘I want civilisation. I want civilised children.’
‘Use the yellow-haired one.’
‘She pleases my eye less. And she is a coward. She does nothing but cry. The brown-haired one killed one of my men. She has bones. Children get their courage from the mother. I will not have cowardly children.’
The whispering voice dropped lower, too quiet for Finree to hear. She tugged desperately at the knots with her nails, mouthing curses.
‘What are they saying?’ came Aliz’ whisper, croaky with terror.
‘Nothing,’ Finree hissed back. ‘Nothing.’
‘Black Dow takes a high hand with me in this,’ came the giant’s voice again.
‘He takes a high hand with me and all. There it is. He’s the one with the chain.’
‘I shit on his chain. Stranger-Come-Knocking has no masters but the sky and the earth. Black Dow does not command—’
‘He ain’t commanding nothing. He’s asking nicely. You can tell me no. Then I’ll tell him no. Then we can see.’
There was a pause. Finree pressed her tongue into her teeth, the knot starting to give, starting to give—
The door swung open and they were left blinking into the light. A man stood in the doorway. One of his eyes was strangely bright. Too bright. He stepped under the lintel, and Finree realised that his eye was made of metal, and set in the midst of an enormous, mottled scar. She had never seen a more monstrous-looking man. Aliz gave a kind of stuttering wheeze. Too scared even to scream, for once.