Deep Water

by Pamela Freeman

  The girl who had giggled, Edwa, lay on the bed, trying to pull her shift down around her buttocks. She was bleeding, too, the blood oozing down her inner thighs. There were bruises on her legs and arms. Her long hair was loose and snarled.

  “Please . . .” Edwa said, raising her face in supplication to the man who stood in front of her, his left arm raised high as though about to strike her. Hawk. Edwa’s face was dark with bruises all down one side. Hawk lowered his arm and began to undo his trouser drawstring.

  “Come to your senses, have you?” he snarled.

  Bramble could feel the woman whose eyes she saw through move her lips, her tongue, wanting to say something, to protest. But she had clearly learned that protesting brought nothing but blows. She dug her fingers into her own palms in an effort to keep quiet.

  Bramble desperately wanted to be somewhere else, to not see. She was shocked to the core. Hawk was black-haired. Black-eyed. Like her. She had known that he and his men were using the girls, but to see it. To see a Traveler, as he looked to her, abuse a gold-haired girl… It went against all her prejudices, all that she wanted to be true.

  Come on, Acton, she thought, where are you? Get in here and save them. Then she realized that she was urging on the invasion. She didn’t know which made her sicker, the impending rape or her own thoughts.

  The noise started outside: yells, the crash of swords and shields, screams. Hawk spun around at the sounds, his back to both women. He fumbled to pull up his trousers.

  The woman dropped the blanket to the floor and jumped on his back as he bent over. She grabbed his belt knife at the same time. He straightened explosively, trying to throw her off. She locked her arms around his neck and strained to pull his head back, but he was too strong.

  “Edwa!” she yelled, “take the knife.”

  Hawk was trying to drag the woman off his back, but she was holding on with all her strength. Edwa put out both hands for the knife. The man whirled and the knife slashed across the back of her hand, drawing blood. She ignored the wound and his clubbing hands and grabbed the knife, holding it confidently, as though she had been longing for this moment. With both hands now free, the woman dragged back his head. As soon as his throat was bared, Edwa raised the knife and plunged it deeply into his neck. Blood spurted out, poured out all over her. Hawk fell to the floor with a wet gasp, dead already. Bramble was ashamed of how satisfied she felt as he collapsed.

  The other woman ran to the door and shut it, then began looking around for something to barricade it with. Her red-gold braid lay over her wrist, matted and untidy. Bramble was abruptly aware of her smell. It had been a long time since anyone had let these girls wash.

  “Help me move the bed against the door, Edwa,” the woman ordered, but Edwa just stood, looking at the knife and the body.

  The woman took her by the shoulder and shook her. “Don’t you understand? They’ve come for us! I knew Acton wouldn’t leave us here! All we have to do is keep Hawk’s men out until after it’s over and we’ll be safe.”

  Edwa focused on her face, her blue eyes becoming less clouded. “They’re here?” she whispered. The woman nodded. She began to dress herself hurriedly, dragging on shift and dress and snatching up a man’s leather belt to girdle herself. She shook Edwa again, and this time Edwa moved, but not to help. She went down on one knee and got Hawk’s other knife out of his boot. It was much longer, a dagger for fighting rather than the eating knife they had used to kill him.

  The woman nodded. “Good. We might need that.” She went to the other side of the bed and began to push it toward the door. “Come and help, Edwa! We can’t let Hawk’s men use us as hostages!”

  Edwa was staring at the two knives, one in each hand. She put the smaller one against her wrist and drew it down slowly. Blood welled.

  Bramble expected the woman by the bed to jump up and grab the knife, but she stayed very still. “Edwa?” she said gently.

  “They mustn’t see, Wili. They mustn’t see me,” Edwa whispered, finding a new place to cut and pushing the knife in.

  Wili straightened up from the bed and turned to look fully at Edwa. The blond girl was painted in blood. Her hair was as dark as a Traveler’s now, and her face was smeared and purple with bruises. Bramble could feel Wili’s heart beating in deep, heavy thumps. Her sight blurred as the girl’s eyes filled with tears.

  “That won’t kill you, Edwa,” she said with a break in her voice. “It’ll just make you more bloody.”

  Edwa looked up at Wili. Her eyes were dry and bleak. She nodded slowly, as though Wili had told her something hard to understand, but important. She dropped the belt knife and, bringing her other hand up in the same movement, thrust the long dagger in under her breastbone. Then she crumpled to the floor.

  Wili sat down on the bed, as though it didn’t matter anymore if Hawk’s men found her. She stared at her hands. The nails were bitten down to the quick. Bramble could feel the knot of grief between her breastbone and her throat, and feel something else as well, a kind of heaviness that made movement impossible, even the movement that would be needed to cry.

  The door slammed back and Acton sprang into the room, his sword and shield ready, blood and sweat running down his cheeks. He saw Wili first, and shuddered to a halt, visibly changing from berserker to concerned friend.

  “Wili! Are you all right?” He closed the door behind him.

  Wili’s eyes overflowed and she started to cry. Not the choking sobs of grief, Bramble thought. That would come later. These were the tears of relief. She brushed them away almost angrily and stood up.

  “I’ll survive,” she said, and looked at Edwa.

  Acton knelt beside Edwa’s body. He put down his shield but not his sword and reached his shield hand to touch the knife hilt that stood out from her shift. It had an antler handle, Bramble saw, left rough for a better grip. Edwa’s hold had loosened and her hands had fallen away to lie empty and soft on the wooden floor. Acton closed the dull blue eyes and looked up at Wili.

  “She didn’t want you to see her — anyone to see her, after what had happened.” Wili’s voice was astonishingly calm, the tears gone.

  “You didn’t stop her.” His tone wasn’t accusing, not even wondering. He just said it.

  “Her choice,” Wili said. “I understood why.”

  Acton nodded slowly and stood up. He picked up his shield and gripped his sword more firmly. Bramble saw the fury build in him again and, like Wili, she understood it.

  “Close the door behind me,” he said. “I’ll be back for you.”

  Wili nodded. He faced the doorway and then hesitated, turned back, as if he were impelled to ask.

  “Friede?”

  Wili shook her head. “She died in the attack. Took three of them with her, too, because they weren’t expecting a cripple to fight.” Her voice was bitter. “I should have fought harder. Maybe they would have killed me as well.”

  Acton raised his hand in denial, the sword pointing up. His eyes were dark with fury and determination. “You are the treasure we have saved from this wreck,” he said. Bramble felt the warmth spread out from Wili’s gut at his words, as though she had been waiting for a judgment, a death sentence, and had instead received a reprieve.

  Acton went out the door in a rush, back into the shouting and screaming and hard, thudding noise. “Kill them all!” he shouted as he went, sword ready.

  Wili began to cry again, sinking down to the floor and letting her head droop. The tears washed Bramble away gently, like a soft slide into sleep.

  All she could feel was her heart, beating too fast, as though it was going to spasm. She couldn’t catch her breath. It took all her strength, but she pulled back from the mind she was in, from the body’s distress. She could see little except some cracks of light. A small room. Maybe a storeroom. Her hands were bound with cloth. The air was cold; her breath was the warmest thing here. His breath; it was a man, again, but she couldn’t tell whom. His mind had a faintly familiar taste to
it, but he was so frightened that all personality had been stamped out.

  A door in the wall opposite crashed back and a red-headed man appeared. He was followed by a stocky blond with big shoulders. Together, they hoisted the man under the armpits and dragged him out the door, then threw him down onto the cold ground of a yard behind a big building. Hawk’s house? Bramble wondered.

  Acton and Baluch were standing there, their clothes smirched with blood, their eyes red with exhaustion. Acton was cleaning his sword with a snatch of cloth, paying great attention to the detail around the hilt. Baluch looked at him in concern, and then cast a quick glance at a corner of the yard. The man she inhabited looked too, and shuddered. A woman’s body lay sprawled against the wall of an animal shed. Bramble could hear pigs inside squealing for food, that terrible squeal that sounded like they were having their throats cut.

  Acton was very definitely not looking at the body of the woman. The red-head and the blond came back to the yard and dragged the corpse away, and only then did Acton look up, in time to see Asgarn pass the two and come on without a glance. Acton sheathed his sword as though he were glad to put it away.

  Asgarn was in high spirits. He was just as bloody as the others, and just as tired, but he was smiling in satisfaction.

  “That’s a good day’s work,” he said. He clapped a hand on Baluch’s shoulder. “Maybe you’ll make a song of it, eh? The Saga of Hawk’s Hall.”

  Baluch shook his head. “The Saga of Death Pass, maybe.” Bramble wanted to smile. He’d clearly been thinking about it already, probably while they were making the trek through the pass.

  “There’s no one left?” Acton said.

  “Except this one.” Asgarn casually kicked the man on the ground. “When you say, ‘Kill them all’ that’s what we do.” Acton winced. “You did want them all dead, didn’t you?”

  “The men,” Acton said. “I wanted the warriors killed.”

  “Ah . . .” Asgarn shrugged. “Well, next time you’d better tell us that first, lord of war.” He turned away and kicked the man again, hard, on the shoulder. “So, what do we do with him, then? You want me to finish him off?”

  “No!” Acton said. He looked at the man more closely, and was surprised. “You’re one of ours, aren’t you? One of Swef’s thralls? Uen, isn’t that your name?”

  Baluch looked at Uen in surprise. Uen was looking up in hope. Bramble could feel the welling up of pleading; he was trying not to beg. She recognized his mind now. The thrall who had been ploughing the day Hawk came to visit Swef’s steading.

  “One of ours?” Baluch said. His voice was dark. Shaking. With compassion, or something else?

  Acton reached down to help Uen up, but Baluch put out a hand and stopped him.

  “If he’s one of ours,” he said, his voice flat, his hand on his sword hilt, “why was he the one who killed Friede?”

  Acton froze and pulled his hand back. Put it on his sword hilt. Uen’s heart had started to thump and leap wildly with panic, and memories flooded his mind. Bramble caught at them with determination. She had liked Friede. She wanted to know the truth.

  Uen’s memory was one of noise and shouting and rushing; rushing through Swef’s big, new-smelling hall, its walls barely smoothed. The rushes on the floor made him stumble, he was running so fast and, unlike the men around him, who were just hacking at anyone they met, he was searching for someone. Friede. He was frantic, looking for her, running and dodging because he had no time to fight, he had to find her first, before any of Hawk’s men. But he was too late.

  She was in the kitchen. She had wedged herself in a corner and was using a stool as a shield and her crutch as a weapon. So many years of hobbling had made her arms strong. There was a man on the ground in front of her, his skull stove in. She was keeping the other two off, but only barely. One man’s sword cut into the stool and as he wrenched it back the stool came with it, dragged out of her hand.

  “Stop!” Uen said, and leapt toward them, pulling on the men’s shoulders with wild hands. “Stop! This one is mine.”

  They turned in exasperation. “What?”

  “My lord Hawk gave her to me. She’s mine!”

  They sneered at him, dark eyes scornful. “Oh, it’s the traitor. Hah! Take her, then, oath breaker.” Their backs were toward Friede and she took the opportunity to hit twice more, hard, with full control. They dropped like felled bullocks and Friede and Uen were left staring at each other.

  “Traitor?” she said with venom.

  “They were going to attack anyway,” Uen said, desperate. “This way I got to save you.”

  She raised her crutch and hit at him, but he pushed it sideways.

  “Oath breaker!” she shouted.

  “I never took an oath! I’m a thrall, remember!”

  She paused, considering, her green eyes cold. “That’s true. Good. You’ll go to the cold hells, then, not to Swith’s Hall.” She raised her crutch again deliberately.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I spit on you,” she said, and brought the crutch down.

  A scream rose in Uen’s throat and he brought his sword around in a great flat circle. He had no skill, but he was very strong from years of physical work. The stroke almost cut her in half. Then he fell on his knees and gathered her into his arms and wept.

  Now, in the courtyard, he wept again, the tears a mingling of grief and fear. He held out supplicating hands to Acton. His bladder loosened and urine gushed down his legs, but he barely felt it.

  Acton drew his sword in one movement and swung it, much as Uen had swung. As the sword bit into Uen’s neck the water rose, but it was blood this time and it was warm, sickeningly warm, so that Bramble wanted to vomit at the touch and at the memory of the cold fury on Acton’s face and the thwarted desire on Baluch’s. He had wanted to kill Uen himself, but he had waited too long to act. As the blood swamped her she heard Asgarn laughing.

  “That’s it! Kill ’em all,” he said.

  Uen’s Story

  I’D DO IT again. Even having to kill her, I’d do it again.

  It was sweet to see them go down under the dark-hairs’ swords. They weren’t expecting anything, and they died like flies. Hah!

  By all the gods that are, I am not an oath breaker. What were Swef’s people to me? Gaolers. I am, I was, a thrall. If the only freedom I could have was death, then I took it with both hands.

  Better than thralling. Better than carrying muck and being used as an ox, as though I was no better. Better than being yelled at and struck at when I was too slow and never thanked, no matter how hard I tried.

  Except by Friede. Oh, and that friend of hers, Wili. But it was Friede who set the example. She was so kind, always.

  I didn’t expect her to hate me.

  But I’d still do it again.

  Because Swef was very loud, talking about the new land, the fresh land, the big land that had room for all. But it was too late for my people, wasn’t it? Too late for the ones the Ice King had already conquered, who had to go cap in hand to the southerners to beg for living room. My father went. We were a small valley. There weren’t enough of us to fight for new land. We kept to ourselves, we did, and that had worked well enough in the bountiful days, but when the King clawed our land away from us we had no allies to turn to.

  So my father, who was chieftain, and his brother, who would have been lord of war if we’d fought, went to the Moot and asked for land. But none would give it. And then they asked for honorable service, as oath men to a chieftain. But none would give it. So rather than have their families starve, they agreed to thraldom, until they had worked back their price, which was the price of feeding them and housing them and clothing them, and so would never be worked back, not in a thousand generations, but they didn’t realize it then because they were not clever, like Swef. Not cunning, like Swef. Not evil.

  I was fifteen. I had been the chieftain’s son and they made me do women’s work. I would have accepted a man’s job. I could
have been a shepherd, or worked at a trade like smithing. Even being a tanner would have been honorable. But no, I had to feed the pigs their swill and carry chamber pots and scour cooking pans. It was shameful, and I hated them all. Except Friede, because she was kind to me and because her red hair reminded me of home.

  My father and my uncle could not stand the shame. They raised their voices and then their hands to their captors and they were punished: the first time a beating, the second time the left hand cut off, the third time death from spearing. “I will keep no insolent servants,” Swef said in his pride. My mother killed herself that night and took my two baby sisters with her. Because she was a thrall they would not give them a proper funeral pyre. The wood was too precious, Swef said. They buried them, like the carcass of an animal gone off in the summer heat.

  That was the moment I decided to kill Swef, if I could, when I could; as the clods of dirt covered my sisters’ shrouds and took my mother from my sight.

  I said nothing. I did nothing. I worked hard and made him trust me. When the time came to select the staff for the new steading, there was no question but that I would go, too. He thought I was loyal, but I took no oath except the oath to make his death. That oath I kept.

  When Hawk sought me out and asked me to lift the bars on the hall door, I was glad. But I made sure Friede would be safe. She would have been safe, too, if only she’d listened to me . . .

  I only have one regret. I wish that I had let her kill me, because then I would have had a warrior’s death. At a woman’s hands, I know, but Friede had a heart as strong as any warrior’s, and I am sure the men she killed are feasting with Swith in his Hall.

  But mostly I wish that the Ice King had been satisfied before he ever ate my home; before our beautiful valley was crushed and ground in his grasp. While I waited for them to drag me out to Acton, I set myself to remember all of it I could, because I am the only one who remembers. All the others are dead, and when I cease to remember, that valley, green and shining and lovely, will vanish altogether. Hawk’s people say there is no such thing as Swith’s Hall; that we will go onto rebirth if we have lived well. But I would rather not be reborn. I would rather go on remembering; go on keeping my valley alive, until the Ice Giants eat the sun.