"Are you going to bring the other one, too? Or is he dead?"
He stopped where he was. A woman's voice. Across the way, from the shadows there. Thorkell stood still, cursing fate and himself: in equal measure, as always.
He looked left and right. No one nearby, no one to have heard her, a small blessing that might save him, and Bern. The tavern's wall torch guttered and smoked in its iron bracket. He heard the steady noise from within. The same sounds from any tavern, everywhere a man might go. But, shouldering the body of his son, hearing a woman address him from the dark, Thorkell Einarson felt a strangeness take hold: as if he'd entered a part of the world that wasn't quite the royal city of Esferth in the Anglcyn lands of King Aeldred—a place for which he could not properly have prepared himself, however experienced he might be.
Given that unsettling thought, and being an Erling and direct by nature, he drew a breath and crossed the roadway straight towards the sound of the voice. When he drew near—she didn't back away from him—he saw who this was, and that stopped him again.
He was silent, looking down at her, trying to make some sense of this. "You shouldn't be here alone," he finally said.
"I have no one to fear in Esferth," said the woman. She was young. She was, in fact, the younger daughter of King Aeldred, in a thin cloak, the hood thrown back to reveal her face to him.
"You could fear me," he said slowly.
She shook her head. "You wouldn't murder me. It would make no sense."
"Men don't always do sensible things," Thorkell said.
She lifted her chin. "So you did kill the other one? The first man?"
Not at all sure why, he nodded his head. "Yes. So you see, I might do the same again."
She ignored that, staring at him. "Who was he?"
He was in such a strange world right now. This entire conversation: Aeldred's daughter, Bern on his shoulder, Stefa dead in the alley. A shipmate once. But for the moment, he told himself, he had one goal and the rest had to follow, if he could make it do so. "He was an Erling mercenary," he said. "From Jormsvik, I am almost certain. Not a trader, pretending to be."
"Jormsvik? Surely not! Would they be so foolish? To try raiding here?"
She knew of them. He hadn't expected that, either, in a girl. He shook his head. "I'd not have thought so. Depends who hired them."
Her composure was extraordinary. "And this one?" she asked, gesturing towards the body he carried. "The one you didn't kill?" She was keeping her voice low, not alerting anyone yet. He held to that, as to a spar.
He was going to need her. If only to have her not call the watch and have him seized. He wasn't a man to kill her where she stood; it was true, and she'd guessed it. Too sure of herself, but not wrong. Thorkell hesitated, then rolled the dice again, with an inward shrug.
"My son," he said. "Though I have no idea why."
"Why he's your son?" He heard amusement, laughed himself, briefly.
"Every man wonders that. But no, why he's here."
"He was with the other?"
"I… believe so." He hesitated, threw dice again. There wasn't much time. "My lady, will you help me get him outside the walls?"
"He's a raider," she said. "He's here to report on what he finds." Which was almost certainly true. She was quick, among everything else.
"And he will tell his fellows that he was detected and his companion captured or killed and that you will be ready for them, coming to find them, even. His message will be that they must sail."
"You think?"
He nodded. It was plausible, might be true. The part he didn't tell her wouldn't affect Esferth, only Bern's own life, and not for the better. But there was only so much a father could do once a boy was grown, fledged, out in the world.
The woman looked at him. He heard the tavern behind him again, a rising and subsiding noise. Someone shouted an oath, someone cursed back amid spilling laughter.
"I will have to tell my father, tomorrow," she said finally.
He drew a breath, hadn't realized he'd been holding it. "But you will do that… tomorrow?"
She nodded.
"You would really do this?" Thorkell asked, shifting his stance under the weight he carried.
"Because you are going to do something for me," she said.
And so, with a sense that he was still treading some blurred border between known things and mystery, Thorkell drew another breath, this time to ask her the question he probably ought to have asked as soon as he'd seen her out here alone.
He never did ask it; his answer came in another way. She laid a sudden hand on his arm, holding him to silence, then pointed across the street.
Not to the tavern door or the alley, but towards a small, unlit chapel two doors farther up. Someone had stepped outside, letting the chapel door swing shut behind him. He stood a moment, looking up at the sky, the blue moon overhead, and then began to walk away from them. As he did, a shape detached itself from blackness and padded over to him. And with that, Thorkell knew who this was.
"He was praying," Aeldred's daughter murmured. "I'm not sure why, but he'll be going outside now, beyond the walls."
"What?" Thorkell said, a little too loudly. "Why would he do that? He's going to his rooms. Had enough of the celebration. His brother died."
"I know," she said, eyes still on the man and dog moving down the empty street. "But your rooms are the other direction. He is going outside."
Thorkell cleared his throat. She was right about the rooms. "How do you know what he's doing?"
She looked at him. "I'm not certain how, and I don't like it, but I do know. So I need someone with me, and Jad seems to being saying it will be you."
Thorkell stared at her. "With you? What is it you want to do?" "I want to pray, actually, but there isn't time. I'm going to follow him," she said. "And don't ask me why."
"Why?" he asked, involuntarily.
She shook her head.
"That's moon-mad. Alone?"
"No. With you, remember? It'll get your son out of Esferth." Her voice changed. "You swear you think it will deter them? The raiders? Whoever they are? Swear it."
Thorkell paused. "I'd say yes in any case, you know, but I do think so. I swear it by Jad and Ingavin, both."
"And you won't run away to them? With your son?"
That would be a thought she'd have, he realized. He snorted. "My son will want nothing to do with me. And I'd be killed by the raiders for certain, if these are who I think they are."
She glanced down the street again. The man and dog were almost out of sight. "Who are they?"
"The leader's name won't mean anything to you. It's someone who will want areport that Esferth and the burhs are unassailable."
"We are. But same question back: how are you so sure?"
He was used to this kind of talk, though not with a woman. "Different answer: I'm not certain. This is a raider's guess. My lady, we'd best move if you want to follow that Cyngael."
He saw her take a breath this time, and then nod. She stepped into the street, lifting her hood as she did so. He went with her, along an empty, moonlit lane that seemed of the world and not entirely so. The tavern noises receded, became sea murmur and then silence as they went.
The man below was an honoured guest, a prince, companion of the Cyngael cleric the king had been watching for all summer. Ebor, son of Bordis, up on the wall-walk by the western gate, answered a quiet summons and came down the steps to that lilting voice.
The gates loomed in the dark, seeming higher from down on the ground, newly reinforced this past year. King Aeldred was a builder. Ebor saw a man with a dog, greeted him, heard a courteously phrased request to be allowed outside for a time, to walk under moonlight and stars, feel wind, away from the smoke and noise of the great hall and the town.