Queens of the Sea

by Kim Wilkins

  Skalmir took his quiver and bow on his back in case he needed to eat along the way. Thrymm lay on the bed and he stroked her head gently. She licked his hand.

  ‘You stay here where it’s warm. I’ll be back before you know it.’ Thrymm knew her way around the family compound, and which doors to beg at if she got hungry or lonely. Skalmir headed out into the dewy morning and set course for the stables.

  The smell of hay and leather greeted him. It was too early for the stablehand to help him, so he chose a lean, fast horse and went about finding a bridle and saddle.

  Then the ringing started. All the tower bells, one after the other. His veins bloomed with heat.

  The Ærfolc were attacking, and by the ringing of the bells the army – what was left of it – was being called to fight. That meant they were inside the walls.

  Inside.

  A little whimper drew his attention. He turned around. It was Thrymm. Alarmed by the bells, she had followed him.

  ‘They will come for us first,’ he said, grabbing her scruff and dragging her out of the stableyard. ‘Go.’ He opened the gate that led from the king’s compound into the grassy gardens around it.

  She looked at him.

  ‘Go!’ he said again, and slammed the gate shut.

  Skalmir stood there a few moments, gathering his thoughts. He could flee, but he did not know which gate the Ærfolc were attacking from. Besides, perhaps he could do good. He wasn’t a soldier but he was a sharp shot with the bow and arrow.

  Bluebell wouldn’t want him anywhere near conflict.

  Then he thought of the thatchers who had come to finish off the repaired gatehouses, camped in the west of the city. They did not know the streets and alleyways they could hide in. That decided for him what he would do.

  He dashed across the stableyard and back past the bowerhouses. Kitchen staff and off-duty guards and counsellors and hall-hands were emerging into the cold and frightening dawn. He kept running, out through the gate to the city. Soldiers everywhere.

  Skalmir shot off down a laneway, away from the main thoroughfare. In a gap between houses he saw them, the enemies.

  They were not Ærfolc. They were tall, fair, with plaited beards and bearskins and mail and helms and sharp spears.

  Raiders.

  Heart in his mouth, he kept running down the laneway, navigating his way through the back ways of the city, pumping his limbs so the horror and disbelief didn’t take him to his knees. At one corner he saw an old man lying slain at his doorstep, his wife dead beside him, her arm still around his back. The air was filled with the sounds of crying and fear.

  Skalmir skidded to a stop, turned around. Turned a circle. The horror had hold of him. Suddenly life made no sense. Raiders surged through the city, its hundred well-trained but not battle-hardened soldiers trying to defend it. No time to call up the remaining army from the surrounds. He would die. For certain he would die.

  His heart thundering, he climbed up onto the sill of the nearest house. Hand over hand, he muscled himself up onto the roof. He was too distant from the action, so he picked his way over the thatching to the edge, then jumped a yard to the next roof, nearly losing his footing. Crouched, one hand on the thatching. He crested the roof and sat astride it, looking over the next roof to the parade of raiders, of which he could only see the northern-most edge.

  Loaded an arrow into his bow.

  Thwack.

  He had never killed a man before. It was horribly easy.

  Skalmir loaded another arrow. When he had taken four down, they noticed and shouted at him and each other and he knew they’d come to find him. He shot another, then shouldered his bow and headed back the way he had come.

  This time, his foot hit a patch of mouldy thatching and slid. He thought for a moment that he would not fall: it couldn’t be possible that in this most portentous of moments, a fall should finish him off.

  But the air did not catch him, and he heard his own shout of fear before everything went dark.

  Willow walked slowly among the noise and blood and chaos, as though she walked in a cloud of her own that enveloped her, protected her, lifted her out of this time and place. History would tell of this moment, the trimartyr queen on her procession through the city, stepping sure-footed over the injured and the dead as her army, led by her fearless husband Hakon, flowed into the city like poison into veins. Citizens ran through the open gate behind them, but the army were under orders to move only forward, to the king’s compound, and put every living thing to death. Somewhere in there were the people and the creatures Bluebell loved. Not one of them would be suffered to breathe beyond this night.

  Untouched by blade or brutish hand, she walked on until she arrived at her father’s hall. Bluebell’s hall.

  Willow’s hall now.

  She threw open the doors and her men streamed in behind her, hacking at cowering folk and brave old soldiers. She barely heard, barely saw. Her eyes were fixed on one goal only.

  Up the stairs to the riser.

  Willow smiled, and sat on her sister’s throne.

  Eleven

  On the first night Rowan went to seek Connacht’s help, the mist billowed around the fells and she breathed clouds all the way to the sacred grove. He did not come. On the second night it was clear and the sky teemed with stars. Still he did not come. On the third night, heavy in her heart and cold and damp from drizzle, she once again returned home without the advice she sought.

  What she suspected must be true: her inability to open the crossings was also an inability to contact Connacht’s ghost. Several times a day she tried to force the crossings open, until sweat beaded on her brow and her ribs hurt. But they would not budge.

  Then the news came, off the mighty arterial of the Giant Road and through narrower and narrower veins where only more adventurous merchants and poor families sought to travel, and Heath brought it to Rowan on the fourth day.

  ‘Blicstowe has fallen,’ he gasped, having run from the front gate and slammed the door open. ‘They say Bluebell and the entire army have disappeared.’

  Rowan, who was making bread, went cold from her scalp to her toes. That was Rathcruick’s game. She pulled her hands out of the bowl she had been kneading in, and wiped them on her apron, speechless.

  The horror dawned on her in increments. Rathcruick must have made his way to Marvik to deal with the Crow King and his wife. Bluebell and her army had been lured into the forest. Snowy was left behind unprotected in Blicstowe.

  Heath caught her by the elbow. ‘Rowan,’ he said. ‘The crossings must be opened. The Ælmessean army must be set free.’

  ‘I’ve tried,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried until it feels all my bones will bleed.’

  ‘Go to the druids,’ he said. ‘They are old and set in their ways, but they may know what to do.’

  The druids: a trio of old men who lived in a cave on the western side of the hill. Rowan had met them once, and felt their judgement of her youth, her femaleness. She hadn’t time or patience for old men. But now things had become desperate.

  Rowan looked up at Heath, and she could see fear in his eyes. A Thyrsland without Bluebell, without the might and integrity of Blicstowe …

  ‘I will go now.’ She untied her apron, left it in a bunch on the table. ‘And I will run.’

  Rowan hurried out of the town and down the path. Instead of going to the sacred grove, she picked up the track through rough pastureland that led to the western side of the fell. Here, the ground became rocky, and the path unkempt, a choice between walking through mud or nettles. Rowan chose mud, picking her way as carefully and quickly as she could, until she saw the mouth of the cave and slipped inside.

  ‘Hello?’ she called, her damp shoes kicking up fine dust between the stones on the cave floor. Her voice echoed in the still, cold air. She moved in deeper, eyes adjusting to the dark. Before her lay a series of large flat stairs, roughly hewn out of rock, and leading downwards. She thought she glimpsed the faintest glow of fireligh
t. Hands either side of her to steady herself, she made her way down the lightless stairs.

  The stairs slowly curved around, until the glow of firelight and the smell of peat smoke became stronger. ‘Hello?’ she called again.

  ‘Who is there?’ demanded an imperious voice.

  ‘Rowan Leh-an-Heath,’ she said, using the patronymic name they would understand. She descended the stairs a little faster, nearly slipping. ‘I need urgent help.’

  Her foot hit the bottom stair and she found herself looking at a round, firelit room with a high ceiling where the shadows and smoke gathered. Even with the hearth ablaze, the chill was present. The druids wore rough cloaks of pale grey. One had a beard as long as his torso. One was so thin she could see the veins in his wrist pulsing under his ancient, blurred tattoos. The third was the youngest, his white hair thin and his gaze disdainful.

  ‘Sit with us,’ said skinny-wrists, indicating a flat rock by the hearth.

  She did as she was told. The cold of the rock seeped through her dress.

  ‘What is the nature of your problem?’ said the disdainful one. ‘Do you need a love potion to trick some poor young man?’ He laughed cruelly, and Rowan was tempted to tell him that young men were not as interesting to her as young women and see if he still found it funny.

  She explained quickly. Long-beard nodded throughout, the disdainful one closed his eyes while he listened. Only skinny-wrists appeared to be alarmed at all.

  ‘We can’t open the crossings,’ the disdainful one said at the end of her explanation.

  ‘I don’t need you to. I need you to help me understand why they are all muted to me.’

  Long-beard climbed to his feet and came to sit next to her, his pale blue eyes burning into hers. ‘He took it,’ he said, in an odd staccato voice. ‘Rathcruick took away your ability.’

  Rowan’s stomach lurched. ‘No. That’s not possible.’

  ‘Not forever,’ he said. ‘He’s put a spell on you. Can you not feel it?’

  Rowan shook her head.

  ‘I can. He must have touched you. Laid a charm on you somewhere.’

  ‘He didn’t …’ Then she remembered the round bruise from Rathcruick’s thumb that still hadn’t faded from her wrist. She pulled back her sleeve to show it to the druid. ‘He grabbed me here. Very hard. You see. There’s still a bruise.’

  Long-beard gently lifted her wrist towards his eyes. The other two had gathered around now, and peered at it.

  ‘Get the seeing-eye,’ skinny-wrists said.

  ‘It’s only a bruise,’ disdainful said.

  ‘You don’t have to like her to help her,’ skinny-wrists said. ‘We are not immune to war, and war will come if the trimartyrs have Blicstowe. They will kill the druids first.’

  Every time somebody mentioned what had happened, Rowan’s heart lurched anew. Snowy would be all right, wouldn’t he? He was clever and resourceful.

  Disdainful shuffled to the stone shelves against the far side of the room and lit a candle. He moved achingly slowly. He rummaged among the objects there and returned with a bronze circle only an inch across, with a long handle. He threw a handful of dried herbs onto the fire and a pungent, almost sickly smell filled the air. The smoke became bluish, thick. He waved the instrument through it and the circle caught some of the smoke and held it there.

  Long-beard took the seeing-eye from him and held it above Rowan’s wrist, peering through it at the bruise. ‘Ah,’ he said.

  ‘What can you see?’ she asked.

  ‘Look for yourself.’ He offered her the instrument.

  She took it. The handle was warm, almost too hot to hold. She positioned it so she was gazing at the bruise through the swirling smoke caught in the circle, and what she saw made her recoil. The bruise, no larger than Rathcruick’s thumb, was crowded with tiny, wriggling creatures; like larvae but with shadowy nascent wings. Reflexively, she tried to brush them off, dropping the seeing-eye.

  ‘Careful, lass.’

  ‘How do I get rid of them?’

  ‘They will get rid of themselves. They are nearly ready to fly. As the bruise fades, they will disappear. Another week, perhaps, and it will be gone. Your ability should return to you.’

  ‘Another week? We need Bluebell out of the forest now.’

  ‘She has no patience,’ said disdainful. ‘Young and hot-headed.’

  ‘Is there another way?’ Rowan asked, ignoring him. ‘What if I cut it out?’

  ‘That would certainly work but I wouldn’t recommend it,’ skinny-wrists said. ‘And don’t ask us to do it for you.’

  Rowan thought about her soft flesh. About the pain. She shot to her feet. ‘Thank you,’ she said, already feeling at her waistband for her knife.

  ‘Don’t spill your blood in here,’ long-beard warned.

  She was already on the stairs, running from the druids and up towards the light. The sky was cloudy but no rain fell, and she found a dry rock to sit on and rolled back her sleeve before she could think too deeply about what she had to do.

  The skin was thin there, and the veins close to the surface. She would have to scrape off the mark rather than cut it out, lest she sever the thick path of blood and bleed to death. With the tip of her blade, she made the first score across her flesh. Tiny bubbles of crimson followed in the knife’s wake. Then another, crisscrossing lines, teeth gritted against the searing sting. Mist began to descend around her. Then, when the whole bruise was scored, she turned the knife’s sharp edge against it and began to scrape. As she did, her blood dripping on the rock, she thought about Rathcruick and the violent rage in her belly distracted her from the pain.

  When she was done, and her wrist was a raw seeping wound, she slipped off her shoes and unrolled the long socks that were gartered around her knees. First one and then the other she wrapped around the cut, blood blooming through them almost instantly. She tied them tightly and found her way, on cold, aching bare feet, through mud and over rocks to the sacred grove.

  It was still day time, so she wouldn’t find Connacht’s ghost, a creature of the night. But nonetheless she found the clearing and the standing stones: this was certainly a crossing, and from here she would open them all. She had no idea how long it would take Bluebell to realise and get her army out, and her heart was a stone of fortitude: she would simply hold the crossings as long as she could.

  Painful wound. Icy feet. She opened her arms, closed her eyes, and …

  Like a long deep sigh from the centre of the forest, the crossings opened. The mortal dread she always felt as they moved gripped her, but still she held. At first she held them for love: for Snowy, for Bluebell who was bossy but had such a strong heart, even for the cooks and stewards who had been kind to her when she visited Blicstowe. An hour passed. The muscles in her shoulders ached. Then she held the crossings open for moral duty, because the city was the largest in Thyrsland and everyone in it was in danger, or running from it, or already grieving the lost. Another hour. Then she held them for fear. With raiders – violent trimartyrs – in the south-west of Thyrsland, King Renward would fall and then so would all the tribes. The Crow Queen despised heathens, and Ærfolc were the most heathen of all. Finally, with her arms now numb, with hours of stiff pain behind her and ahead of her, she held the crossings open for hatred. For Rathcruick.

  As the afternoon darkened to dusk, and she forced her mind and her body not to succumb to fatigue, a shadow flickered at the corner of her vision. She snapped her head around, but whatever it was had disappeared into the mist. A shimmer of dark then it was gone. Something had escaped the crossing, from the other side of the wood. A weary horror shivered over her. She dropped her arms, slammed the crossings shut.

  Rowan bent over double, back and shoulders groaning. Blood rushed back towards the wound making it ache sharply. If Bluebell wasn’t out by now, there was nothing more Rowan could do.

  She made her way home. The fact that she had held the crossings so long should have made her proud and perhaps it did
, deep under the layers of pain and shivering exhaustion.

  Heath leapt up as she came in, searching her face with concerned eyes.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘I do not know,’ she replied, and he caught her and put his arms around her. ‘But I hope they are free, for I have suffered.’

  In a smiling voice against her hair he said, his voice rumbling in his chest, ‘I finished making the bread.’

  Rowan stood back. ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Sit,’ he said. ‘I’ll feed you and dress that wound properly, and you can tell me what happened.’

  Rowan sat, her feet so close to the hearth they could almost catch fire, and she let her father look after her.

  The following day, a cold snap came to Druimach, a foretaste of the winter on its way. Since Rose had left, Heath had taken to sleeping by the fire in the main room. Rowan expected this was about giving her privacy, or perhaps his own sweet, infuriating awkwardness around her, which didn’t yet seem to be diminishing. Rowan had the whole bedroom to herself, with its small shallow hearth, and now her blankets were not quite enough. With the aches and stinging pain of the day before, sleep wouldn’t come; it fluttered on and off her eyelids.

  A soft thump.

  Rowan sat up.

  There it was again, outside. Below the shutter. All her senses were alert, her ears faintly ringing.

  Thunk.

  Not an animal. Too big. It sounded as though someone were trying to gain purchase on the wall outside, to pull themselves up to the window. Rowan focussed her attention in the dark. Was that a flash of pale fingers under the shutter?

  She rose as quietly as she could, reached for where her bow lay on the bench, but knocked over the quiver. Arrows clattered to the wooden floor.