by S T Gibson
"My girl, this is the third time this week you’ve come up empty-handed."
"That’s not my fault! The boys—"
"Are your responsibility. And after that cock-up with the silversmith—"
"I conducted myself perfectly! It was Jakko who rushed in and wrestled the gun away from that merchant. He got spooked and shot Rasmus on accident!"
"And who’s fault is that? The student’s or the teacher’s?"
Helvig wanted to defend herself, but she bit her tongue and held her peace. She would need all the goodwill he had to spare in order to convince him to let her keep her unorthodox prize, and she didn’t want to waste it on an argument she had never been able to win.
"Well, I haven’t come back with nothing today, papa; quite the opposite."
"Oh? Then I must be going blind in my old age, because I don’t see these wonderful spoils anywhere. Have you got a king’s ransom of jewels tucked up under your hat? Perhaps you’re hiding land deeds in your bodice?"
Helvig was accustomed to his rough teasing, and she saw the love and concern underneath. She popped a boot up on the edge of his throne.
"Answer me this; how did the Finns win their wars when they were so terribly outnumbered? You must recall, you told me the stories so many times I can recite them in my sleep."
The Robber King sighed heavily. He could bluster and chastise all he wanted, but at the end of the day, he was nothing if not indulgent with his daughter.
"They searched field and fen for the most powerful sorcerers they could find. Stationed them along the coast to whistle up winds that would destroy Swedish ships and confuse their sails."
"And so even the smallest nation was able to make the great northern empire tremble! Imagine what men of fortune could do with the powers of magic on their side. We could enchant horses to throw their riders, summon a thick mist to disorient merchants while we ambushed, hypnotize wealthy ladies and snatch the diamonds right off their bosoms!"
She was weaving her own kind of spell with words, caught up in the act of creation. Her father merely blinked at her behind knit eyebrows.
"Where is this going, Helvig?"
Helvig swept her arm towards Gerda as though she were introducing a young lady into high society.
Wilhelm nudged Gerda gently forward, and the pale girl approached the king with a bird-like wariness in her eyes. Some of her flaxen hair had been pulled free from her plaits by the snag of branches, and then hem of her dress was filthy, but Helvig still thought she looked every inch a sorceress, as beautiful and terrible as a bedtime story.
"I have brought you a powerful witch, papa," she continued. "I snared her on the roadside as she was out and about her dark business. Mind that charm round her neck; she knows the old language and is cunning in the ways of heathenry."
A small, curious crowd had gathered to give Gerda a once-over, muttering between themselves. But despite the drama being played out in the center of camp, the bustle of everyday life continued undeterred. This was unsurprising. She had never known all the men to stand at attention for any occurrence, except perhaps the time some of the night girls from Gothenburg paid their camp a visit.
The Robber King stroked his beard in thought, surveying Gerda from toe to crown. Helvig didn’t dare speak while her father deliberated. His word was the only law the brigands obeyed, and he would not be rushed in his deliberations.
The King poked a thick finger at Svíčka.
"What’s that bird there on her shoulder?"
Helvig thought on her feet. Rasmus wasn’t the only one who could spin a tale quick as a whip.
"It’s her familiar, father. A bit of the devil’s own soul left to guard her and guide her in the ways of magic."
"And that twine round her wrist?"
"We couldn’t have her running off, and who knows what kind of dark incantations she can weave with those fingers?"
"She’s too thin. Does she eat?"
"Well, the succor of sin saps the strength from anyone."
He nodded at Gerda’s bandaged hand, and the thin smear of blood that had dried along her wrist. Helvig hadn’t cut her very deeply, but she hadn’t scrimped on the blood she’d drawn either.
"Damaged?"
"That’s my fault, I’m afraid. I had to put her to the test to be sure of her authenticity."
The Robber King took a long draw from his pipe. Then he handed it to his daughter and beckoned Gerda closer.
"Come here, enchantress. Let me look at you."
Helvig stepped behind her father to watch the proceedings with her knuckles pressed to her mouth. She didn’t have his approval yet, but she had his attention, and that was half the battle.
When Gerda didn’t move, she jerked her chin towards the ground and mouthed kneel!
Gerda took a few steps forward and sank to her knees onto the soggy ground with a grace Helvig had only ever imagined the nobility possessed.
"Do you traffic with the Devil, girl?" Helvig’s father asked sternly. He had raised his voice for the benefit of the onlookers. "Have you suckled at his breast or written your name in his book?"
Gerda cast a wary glance to Helvig, who widened her eyes and raised her eyebrows. She could only do so much for Gerda if the witch wasn’t willing to play along, and if Gerda wanted to call this whole thing off by confessing to her deception, this was her chance.
Helvig doubted she would, however. Her alleged powers were the only thing keeping her from getting robbed blind.
"I have met devils aplenty on my journeys through the dark of the woods." Gerda's voice had taken on the same eerie formality she had used when addressing the men who attacked her, a hint of the ancient threaded through her words. "Some took the forms of animals or humans, others spoke to me out of the ether and the trees."
"And what are their names, these devils?"
"I cannot say."
The Robber King leaned back in his seat and made a grunt that came from deep in his chest. He beckoned to Helvig and she leaned in, her arms folded across her chest.
"Are you pulling my leg?" He asked quietly.
"What? No!" Helvig dropped her voice to a vehement whisper and leaned in even closer, cheeks burning with embarrassment. "She’s a witch, and a useful one! Moreover, you can’t prove that she isn’t."
"I don’t have time for any of your nonsense. What am I supposed to do with her? What will she eat; where will she stay?"
"With me, of course!"
"We have our rules, Helvig. A body works, a body eats, simple as that. Everyone here has got to have a skill; if they aren’t thieving, they need to be pulling their weight tending to the horses or keeping the blades sharp."
"When she’s not witching, she can cook or darn socks or—"
"Your Majesty?"
The faces of the royal family snapped over to the interloper. It was not the young witch still kneeling on the ground, but Jakko instead. He stood with his hat clutched in his hands.
"Yes?" The Robber King asked.
Jakko gestured to Gerda as though showing off his finest mare. "I’d like to lay a claim on the girl, seeing as it was I who first stole her. It’s within my rights, Your Majesty."
Helvig was so furious she saw spots.
"You didn’t find her; I found her! I spotted her first and I carted her home!"
"Well I grabbed her, so she’s mine."
Helvig passed her father’s pipe back and marched up to Jakko, practically fuming smoke from the ears. Her father’s interrogations she had expected, but she wouldn’t tolerate being publicly challenged by some twelve-year-old upstart who thought taking what other people had rightfully stolen made him a man.
"You can’t call grabsies when you stood there pissing your pants from fright when she threatened to turn you into a toad."
Jakko threw his hat on the ground, all pretenses at civility lost.
"You’re a liar!"
"What would you even do with something so pretty and powerful, stupid boy? You just w
ant to steal her because you can’t find a sweetheart who will put up with your horseshit."
"Neither can you, ugly goblin," Jakko said with a sneer.
Helvig boxed his ears, and he took a swipe at her. This was the last straw for Helvig, and the anger bubbling up in her chest erupted as she slapped him across his smug face.
It felt good, to hit back. Violence had nursed and raised her, and she never had a more trustworthy companion than the strength of her own fists.
Jakko lunged on her and in an instant they were tussling in the dirt.
The Robber King looked on patiently, puffing on his pipe. Some of the men who had gathered to watch Gerda’s presentation lost interest and wandered off to find entertainment they hadn’t seen a hundred times before. Others hollered out obscene encouragements, or swapped money for bets. Helvig hardly noticed. She was too busy bruising Jakko’s ribs with her knees and batting away the fingers clawing at her face.
Jakko fought dirty, letting out a string of curses as he swung wide with his bony elbows. He had joined the camp six months ago as a nasty little boy with blood on his hands and had only gotten crueler with age and experience. But she was still bigger, and would be for a few years yet.
He tried to pull out a fistful of her hair and she socked him in the nose, hard. He raked his nails across her cheek but by this point, Helvig had managed to wrestle atop Jakko. She pinned him down with an elbow to his shoulder and bit him on one of his unwashed ears. The boy gave a yelp and scuttled out from underneath her. His nose was bleeding freely.
Chastened for a time, Jakko pressed through the small crowd of onlookers with his ear throbbing red. Helvig pulled herself to her feet and straightened her vest, spitting on the ground where Jakko had just lay. She could taste blood on her mouth: his, from his new wound, and hers, from the lip he had split open with a fist.
Helvig locked eyes with Gerda, still kneeling mere feet away with an ashen face. Her formal mask had slipped, and there was shock in her eyes, perhaps fear as well.
Helvig reddened with embarrassment, and she smudged the blood off her lip with what she hoped was a dainty gesture.
Jakko's curses echoed distantly for a moment as he fled, and then all was calm once again.
"Apologies, my king," Helvig said once she had caught her breath. Adrenaline and jealousy still buzzed like bees in her stomach. "But as you can see my prize is just as valuable as silver or gold. I beg you to welcome her into camp. She is an ally, and a powerful one at that."
"And how am I supposed to know this slim-hipped little 'ally' of yours isn’t going to steal the horses while we sleep?"
"If she gets a funny look in her eye, I’ll tickle her with my knife. I’ll keep her in line, Father, I swear it."
The Robber King kneaded his brow with a mammoth hand.
"Since you found her, she’s your responsibility. Just like that stinking deer of yours."
Helvig’s heart leapt with hope.
"And isn’t Bae well behaved? Haven’t I taken such fine care of him?"
"Keep your witch on a short leash. I don’t want her giving the men any heartsickness or brackening our drinking water. And if she can’t pull her weight she’s out on her ass Helvig, end of story."
Bored now that the King had passed his ruling, the men who had gathered began to mill about once more. Some of them mumbled about the princess' strange taste in friends, or about witches having found their winter hideaway, but Helvig clapped her hands together for joy and beamed at Gerda.
"Hear that? Now thank the King for his graciousness."
"Thank you," Gerda said, rising to her feet.
"Wilhelm, go find the witch something to eat," The Robber King said. "She looks like she’s about to keel over. You can untie her, and if she causes any trouble for you just dunk her in the river to straighten her out. Helvig, a word if you please."
He gestured for her sit on a fur by his feet. Despite how much she wanted to bound after Gerda and congratulate her for impressing the king, Helvig happily obliged. She had warmed herself by the fire at her father’s feet since she was a tiny child. It was a sacred place where she had always been well-protected and well-advised.
The Robber King propped his elbow on his knee, leaned in close, and squinted an eye at her.
"I may be an old man, but I’m not as stupid as these boys. That girl is not a witch."
Helvig took a gulp of air. A fool's optimism seemed like the best choice in this situation.
"Maybe not. But she could be."
"If you wanted a friend so badly, I could have just found you one."
The tips of Helvig’s ears flared red, and she glowered at the ground. She had never been able to bluff him, not even for an instant. He had taught her better than to take people at face value, and she should have known he would not be so easily beguiled by Gerda’s runes and unnerving eyes.
"I wanted her. Is that so terrible? It’s boring here all winter when no one new arrives and we’ve got nothing to do but hunt and gamble and argue. She was interesting, so I took her. I thought that was allowed."
Her father took one last puff of his pipe, then tapped out the ash on the ground and began to clean the bowl with his shirttail.
"Listen you me. There are no saints among us. We cheat and pillage and profit off the misfortune of others, and sometimes we spill a little blood to win the day. But we aren’t kidnappers. Why don’t we kidnap people, Helvig?"
"Because kidnapping invites retaliation," The Robber Princess grumbled.
"What happens when one of the nearby villages come looking for their lost daughter with torches and pistols? Then we have to scatter again, and there goes our plans of passing a quiet winter working these roads. Her clothes are too fine for her not to belong to anyone."
"There isn’t a town anywhere around, just deer paths and trade routes. She isn’t out here because she’s lost."
"In that case she’s walking the borderlands in December because she wants to, and that should give you even more pause."
Helvig’s heart, so full only moments before, felt like it was being drained in a winepress.
"She said she was heading north, chasing some fairy story. It’s miles from here to the nearest Sami village; she would have died out there, papa. It made me sick to think of her freezing to death."
"That’s her prerogative. Maybe her business really is witching or maybe it’s something you want nothing to do with. She may look harmless, but the worst devil is the one you’ve never met before."
Helvig scuffed at the ground with the heel of her boot.
"Do I have to take her back, then?"
The Robber King leaned back in his seat, releasing Helvig from the grip of his undivided attention. "Not after the show you’ve made of things, turning her out like a Rus tsarina for all the men to marvel out. She’s your charge now so you mind her. But if I were you, I would sleep with one eye open. That one is smart, and she’s not keen on passing a winter here with us, I can see that much."
"I’ll convince her," Helvig declared. It couldn't be that hard to win over another girl. Age and nature would make natural friends of them.
"You can try. But I’ll remind you that tying people up and stabbing them is no way to win allies. Was that really necessary?"
"I wanted the boys to believe she was dangerous so they would keep away and give us some peace and quiet."
The King made his rumbling thoughtful sound again.
"You’ve always had a thief's appetite for the world, Helvig. Stuffing your pockets with every beautiful thing you can find without asking who it belongs to or where it’s come from. But people are not baubles to pluck up as you please. They require finer finesse."
Helvig continued to wear a furrow in the ground with her boot, brooding loudly without having to say a word.
Her father drew a deep breath and then cleared his throat. He had a reputation for laughing in the face of fear and had once finished a card game with a piece of shattered liquor bottle sti
cking out of his leg after a tussle with a disgruntled tavern-goer. But now, he looked a bit trepidatious.
"Listen to me, Helvig. I understand how important it is for a growing girl to have, well…a companion, of her own age. Someone to share her interests and celebrate her successes. I am sorely sorry that pickings are so slim among the castoffs of genteel society. So I don’t begrudge you feeling the need to rope a girl out on the road and carry her home as plunder. But that…isn’t how most young ladies make the acquaintances of other young ladies."
Helvig smiled wickedly.
"Ah, but I'm not a lady. I am a princess, and princesses should always have their way, and I am a thief, and thieves always take what they want. Just like you took me."
The Robber King let out a laugh and squeezed Helvig’s shoulder.
"You’ve always been sharp, my little brigand. You would do so well in the city with a proper education. I wonder some days if I’m not doing you a disservice bringing you up so far from society and its charms."
Helvig leaned her chin against her father’s hand. The warmth from the fire was making her eyelids heavy, and his presence brought her more comfort than wine or gold.
"Hang society. I would rather sleep with the reindeer every night and eat nothing but pinecones and roots if I didn’t have to answer to anyone. You’ve done a fine job raising me."
The Robber King ran a thumb over Helvig’s cheek, then looked over to Gerda, who was lingering near one of the larger fires with a piece of brown bread held between her hands. She was dipping it into a pot of rabbit stew and smiling wryly between bites at Rasmus, who was engrossed in telling one of his tall tales.
"Any girl who can survive on her own out here and keep her head is hardy indeed, and a fine friend for my daughter."
"You see why I wanted her."
"Perhaps. Perhaps she will decide to make camp with us of her own volition, at least for a little while." Gravity settled over his features. "But if she decides to leave, you can’t keep her here. Do you understand?"
Helvig watched Gerda scoop the last bit of broth from her bowl and suck the final drop from her fingers. A terrible pang went through the Robber Princess’s chest.