by Box Set
He turned around before the other man could see the emotions in his face, then stepped outside and helped his men find gear and food. When they had finished, the sun was cresting the mountaintops.
Otec looked his men over. They wore mismatched gear and bedrolls packed with supplies. But their faces were determined. Dobber nodded to him.
Otec nodded back and then headed toward the front of the Shyle men. They watched him warily. But no one argued or tried to usurp him.
Someone touched his arm and he turned to find Ivar and the twins behind him. “We’re going with you.”
Otec shot a look back at Seneth, who merely waved him on. “They insisted,” he called, smiling. “I think they’re more your men than mine now.”
Otec nodded. Though they were just boys, he was grateful to at least have some allies.
He didn’t have to fetch Matka. She was already waiting for him in front of the clan house doors, her swords gleaming silver at her back. Grumbles turned to shouts of outrage.
Destin started past Otec, but he grabbed the man’s arm. “She was their slave,” he said firmly. “She did not know of their plans. And she saved me from them so that I might warn everyone.”
Destin glared at him. “She was the one writing that book—doesn’t sound like a slave to me.”
Otec studied the men behind him, saw their hatred, and knew that they did not believe him. “Show them your back,” he said.
Matka’s gaze shot to him, anger and humiliation flashing in turns across her face. But she dropped her swords and bedroll. Then her coat. Then she turned and lifted her shirt, exposing the cuts and bruises across her skin.
“By the Balance,” Ivar said.
Shivering, Matka shoved her shirt down and turned to face the men, her clothes already laced with snow. “They killed my mother and my sister. If I can, I will spare you my fate.”
“Wasn’t one of them your brother?” Destin said, but the heat was gone from his voice.
“He was the one who did that to me,” she answered.
“You could have fought your way free,” he pointed out. “It’s not like you were never alone.”
“They would have killed my other sister if I’d rebelled—she’s still in Idara.” That wasn’t exactly true, but Otec knew she couldn’t tell the clansmen she was hoping the Raiders had changed their minds.
Destin hesitated before stepping forward, picking up her coat off the ground, and handing it to her. “You could have told us at any time, and we would have helped you.”
“I believe that now.” Matka looked at Otec as she said this. She pushed her arms into the coat and fixed the toggles at the front.
Otec handed her the bedroll and swords. “Are you sure you’re up for this? Yesterday you were nearly dead.”
She glanced up as the owl passed overhead. “You don’t need to worry. They’re not done with me yet.”
She strode away. He watched her, shivering as he remembered his curse and the fairy’s promise.
* * *
They crossed the summit just before nightfall and descended rapidly. Just before full dark, Otec found what he’d been looking for—a cave. It was occupied. But even a bear didn’t stand much chance against a hundred clanmen.
In the cave, which seemed to be made of columns of receding rock, they roasted bear meat over a roaring fire. No one spoke much. Otec lay down next to Ivar and the twins, who immediately fell asleep.
The ground was full of rocks. Otec could normally sleep anywhere, but he couldn’t stop worrying about his family. He even wondered what had happened to his dog, Freckles, and then decided he’d rather not know. He didn’t miss Thistle, though. If the Raiders stole her, they were at the losing end of the bargain.
He finally gave up and went to the cave mouth. Matka was there, the light from the small fire she’d lit highlighting the planes of her face as she chewed on her nails. Otec sat beside her.
“On summer nights,” she whispered, “the nights are shadow upon shadow. But in the winter, the snow changes everything, reflecting the silver moonlight. Instead of shades of evergreen and slate, the hue is the blue-gray of smoke. I wish I had my charcoals.”
Otec watched her hands twitch and knew the itch to create something was just under her skin. “The fairy—how long has it been following you?”
“Do not say it out loud!” she whispered harshly.
He scooted closer. “She already knows you can see her.”
Matka drew in a ragged breath. “How do you—”
“She spoke to me.”
“What?” Matka gasped. Her head whipped around, but her face was cast in shadow so Otec couldn’t see her expression. “But men never see them!”
Jerking his head toward the sleeping clanmen, he shushed her. She nodded and leaned toward her small fire, motioning for him to come closer. “They don’t like smoke.”
“Why?”
She looked away, fiddling with a torn fingernail. “She’s been following me since I was a child, but she never spoke to me before the night she warned me that Immortals were near.”
Otec sat back. “So that’s how you knew the Raiders were there.” She nodded. “And the fires—the luminash?”
Matka tore off a piece of her fingernail and spit it into the fire before starting on another one. “I asked her for help—I knew I’d never get you free otherwise.”
“But I thought you said they were tricksy and cruel?”
In a jerky motion, Matka bit off another piece of nail, this time drawing blood. She didn’t seem to notice. “I made them a deal.”
Otec leaned forward, taking her arm in his hand. “What? What is it?”
She wiped the blood onto her furs, then sat on her hands. “It doesn’t matter. It’s done now, and it won’t come to pass anyway. I’ll make sure of that.”
His brow furrowed. “What won’t come to pass?”
She shook him off and rose to her feet. “It doesn’t matter.” She lifted up the edge of her blankets and climbed inside.
He watched her turn her back to him. “Matka, could they help us save my family?”
She glanced back at him, the light from the fire casting dark hollows under her eyes. “I have nothing left to bargain with. They’ve taken everything I have.” She rolled back over, tugging the furs over her head.
“What about me?” Otec asked softly. “What can I offer them?”
“There’s nothing more they want from you,” came the muffled response from under the blankets.
“Do you swear it?”
“I do,” she answered.
He believed her. He wanted to go to her, to hold her as he had that night at the clan house. But judging by the stiff set of her shoulders, she wouldn’t let him.
Chapter 15
At first light, the company of Shyle clanmen continued down the pass. With the sun came warmth, which softened the snow into slush that quickly turned to mud. Without fresh snow to cover the tracks, evidence of their families and their captors became more abundant. Otec froze at the sight of a half-buried piece of wood. He wouldn’t have noticed it at all, except for the familiar blond color of fresh wood.
He crouched down and pulled the carving from the sticky mud. Then he took a bit of snow from the shade under a bush and scrubbed the white crystals across the ruined surface.
It was a beaver—the beaver he’d carved for Holla. Split exactly down the middle, the edges too cleanly cut to have been made by anything but a blade. Otec’s eyes darted around, looking for any signs of blood.
“Something happened here. Something bad,” he murmured to Matka as she knelt beside him. He took a deep breath and thought he could smell fish and smoke on the breeze. He rose, his knees cracking, to face his clanmen. “If the Raiders manage to escape across the sea, they’ll be beyond our reach. Come on.”
Otec started off at a trot with Matka at his side, the men falling in behind them. They must have kept up that pace for an hour when he saw the smoke, billowing in a bla
ck, churning mass.
Finally, they reached the end of the pass and saw the basalt cliffs, which appeared to be made up of hundreds of columns rising vertically out of the sea. A cruel breeze blew off the choppy, dark waters. About half a league to the west, Otec saw the city of Darben.
Gasping for breath and pressing the heel of his hand into the ache in his side, he followed the pillar of smoke rising in the east. He stepped closer to the edge of the steep cliffs. A third of a league away was a village that had been built into a shelf of, about halfway between the cliff-top and the beach.
“Matka, bring out your telescope,” he called. She did so and peered through it as he squinted into the distance, trying to make out what was going on through the haze of smoke.
“Down on the beach,” she said breathlessly. “The Idarans are fighting with the Darbens.”
“Our families!” Destin cried. “Are they there? Are they safe?”
“Yes!” she said. “Bound and gagged. The Idarans are forcing them into the boats.”
Otec took off running, the rest of the clanmen right on his heels. Moving along the edge of the mountain that broke off abruptly into cliffs, they scattered an odd mixture of animals—sheep, goats, cattle, horses, and even a donkey. And then Otec recognized the donkey—Thistle. The Raiders had taken the animals they’d wanted and abandoned the rest.
Otec heard it first, the screams and shouts of battle, followed by the sound of knives and blades doing their dark work. “Ivar, Ake, and Arvid, stay in the back!” he hollered without turning to look for them.
They reached an archway at the head of a narrow flight of stairs that had been carved into the sides of the cliffs, with nothing but air between the men and the abrupt drop-off. About halfway down was the village of Darbenmore.
Coughing at the smoke billowing into his face, Otec took out his axe and shield and rushed down the zigzagging stairs. He charged headlong into the wide shelf the village had been built upon. The houses were made of wood, and most were burning, pyres for the dead he could see turning to ash inside. He shot past the first house, the heat reaching out with fat, greedy fingers to singe his hair and blast heat against his skin.
Standing in the center of the main path was a woman. She screamed at the sight of the clanmen, soot mixing with the tears streaming down her face. The men simply parted around her while she continued screaming.
On the other side of the village were more stairs. The clanmen started down, and without the smoke to block the view, Otec felt dizzy at the sharp drop-off. Below, fewer than fifty Darben men were retreating toward the stairs. When they saw the clanmen they backed off, coming to a stop at the bottom of the cliffs.
The Idarans saw the clanmen too, and boats loaded with stolen cargo began pulling away.
Otec was the first one off the stairs. “Free them or they’re lost to us forever!”
His men charged forward onto the docks, anger giving them power. Otec launched himself at a Raider who was trying to force one of the older women—by the Balance, it was Enrid!—onto a boat. Otec cut him down before he could even turn.
With a swing of his shield, Otec bashed another man’s face in. He passed Enrid his knife and she immediately set about freeing herself and the children.
Otec ducked a jab from a Raider, using his shield to block the other blade. Then he drove his axe through an opening in the man’s guard, hitting him square in the chest. The man fell and did not rise again.
Otec lunged toward another Raider when he heard a scuffle directly behind him. He whipped back around and saw that Enrid had launched herself onto the back of a Raider who must’ve been about to kill Otec. With a primal scream, she drove her knife into his side.
Otec pivoted, his axe arcing toward the man and connecting with his chest. Still screaming, the Raider staggered back and landed with Enrid in the freezing black water.
“Enrid!” Otec cried. The Shyle didn’t know how to swim, and even if they did, their heavy winter clothes would drag them down. He stepped to the edge of the dock and saw dozens of women and children in the water, heads bobbing, mouths gasping. None of them made a sound. Otec jerked off his coat, preparing to go after them, but long poles appeared in front of him.
The men of Darben were lowering long fishing spears, butt first, into the water, drawing the Shyle safely to shore. Choking and sputtering, Enrid held onto a pole.
Otec whipped around, looking for another Raider to kill. But they were all dead. He scanned quickly and found the Argon boys near the back of the docks.
Other clanmen lay belly first, fishing more people out of the water. Otec was just about to help them when he heard someone shout his name.
Pushing his way to the end of the dock, he stared at the boats already in the water, white sails unfurling. His gaze raked over them. Some were nearly full of Raiders who had obviously abandoned their slaves in favor of surviving. Others were loaded with Otec’s people. “Holla, Storm, Wesson, Aldi, Eira, Magnhild, Bothilda, Helka!”
A half dozen voices rose up to answer—he recognized them instantly. He whipped around and saw them. His family. His younger brothers and all his sisters stuffed in a boat, so close he could make out all the details of their faces. It was Holla screaming for him, reaching out even as Storm held her down.
Otec grabbed fistfuls of his hair, not knowing what to do or how to reach them. The remaining boats were sunk or drifting, and he had no idea how to operate one even if they were usable. Determined to reach them one way or another, he stripped off his coat and was starting on his boots when Dobber grabbed his arms. “You can’t swim!”
Otec tried to shrug him off. “It doesn’t matter.”
Matka darted in front of him, her hand up. “Stop!”
“I have to save them! I have to!”
She grabbed his shirt in her fist. “We will. We’ll go after them. I swear it, but jumping in that water will only get you killed.”
Knowing she was right, Otec called out to his family, “I’ll come for you! I won’t give up!” His gaze went to the other boats—the ones with only Raiders inside. He drew his bow from his back. “Clanmen, we’re going to need those boats.”
His men lined up beside him, drew back their bows, and cleared the stolen boats of vermin. When they were drifting, Otec shifted his gaze to the boats moving out to sea. He watched Storm disappear from view.
Otec turned to face his clansmen. Many of them were crying and holding their wives and children in relief. With a quick count, he realized that nearly one hundred of their clan members had been saved. Watching their joy through the lens of his own loss, Otec felt as though his heart was being encased by ice.
“Dobber!” one of the men cried. Otec watched as a woman was pulled from the water, her face pale as death. Coughing wetly, she reached for Dobber, who cried out and ran toward her. She was his mother, the only family he had left.
Otec straightened his shoulders and marched toward the men of Darbenmore. “I need those boats. And I need people who can operate them.”
A man stepped forward. “I will help you, clanman. They killed my wife and daughter, but you saved my son.” The boy he motioned to follow him appeared to be about twelve years of age.
Using hooks, they hauled one of the overturned boats toward shore. Fifteen men of Darbenmore helped them haul in the boats they could reach, and then climb in those boats and go after the vessels that had drifted farther into the bay.
Otec locked gazes with Destin. “You and the rest of the men, help the Darbens bring in the boats.”
He turned then to see Dobber set his mother gently down on the shore. The waves lapped hungrily at her feet, as if they had tasted her once and craved to do so again. Otec could see she was dying. Though he didn’t want to, he moved toward his friend’s side.
“All your life,” his mother gasped, “you protected them. But when it mattered most, you left us. You ran. And my boys died.”
Otec’s mouth fell open. He should not be hearing this. He
started slowly moving away.
Dobber shook his head. “They killed Father as if he was nothing. And then they looked at me, and I knew they would kill me too.”
She turned away from him. “I’ll be with my real sons soon. And you’ll remain here, alone. Because that’s what you chose when you abandoned us.”
Otec felt a shell crunch under his feet. Dobber whipped around and their gazes locked. Dobber cried out. “Don’t—don’t tell anyone.”
Otec could only nod.
His mother laughed. “He won’t have to. You’ll wear the mark of your shame for the rest of your life.”
“Dobber, she’s not thinking clearly. She’s—”
But she only cackled and then her eyes shut. Her breathing grew increasingly labored, and then it stopped. The rising tide kept coming, stealing her back into its embrace.
“Dobber, I left too, when I probably should have stayed. It doesn’t mean—”
Dobber rose to his feet, a growing darkness in his gaze. “Don’t.” He pushed past Otec without looking back.
Chapter 16
It was agreed that Enrid and the other women would stay in Darbenmore until Otec sent word that it was safe for them to return to the Shyle. The remaining clansmen piled into ten boats, each carrying around fifteen men. Nineteen men from Darbenmore came with them, to work the single-square-sailed vessels and navigate the mystery of the ocean.
The men of Darben assured Otec that they could maneuver their vessels much faster than any Raider. The plan was to come upon the Raiders and flank them on both sides, then board the boats, kill the Raiders, and set the women free. The fact that none of the men from the Shyle could swim was not discussed, but it hung over the men like rot on a carcass.
Otec made sure Destin was in the boat with him—he didn’t want the man sowing dissension. Otec also kept the Argon boys close; they mostly ate and slept, so it wasn’t too hard to keep an eye on them.