The Boneless Mercies

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  Ovie’s speech stirred me, as she had meant it to. I wanted to raise my ax in the air, tilt back my head, and shout heltar into the night sky.

  Juniper made a Sea Witch sign for valor, and then stepped forward. “One vote for the Quicks, and two for Blue Vee. What will you decide, Frey?”

  I held the Sea Witch’s gaze. “Ovie is right. We should try to kill this beast if we think we can. It is the heroic choice. I say we go west to Blue Vee.”

  * * *

  Afterward, I stood in the shadows next to Trigve. We both watched Runa as she split wild goose feathers with her knife and attached them to arrows with nimble fingers, eyes intent upon her work, lips pulled tight.

  She’d accepted the decision with silence and grace, but she was the one who would suffer the most from it.

  Siggy and I had met Runa three years ago. She’d sought us out in the southern village of Gyda and hired us for a Mercy-kill. It wasn’t until we arrived at an isolated crossroads near the Black Knife River that we discovered the Mercy-kill was for herself.

  Mercy-suicide was rare in Vorseland, but it wasn’t against any laws, old or new. Siggy had done a few throughout the years, a dozen perhaps. Though I learned later that she’d never had a request from someone so young.

  I remembered Runa as looking very beautiful and very tall. Her expression was solemn in the light of the fading sun, and determined.

  She’d looked straight at me, then Siggy. “Can you shoot a bow? I’d like to be pierced with an arrow through the heart.”

  I was still an apprentice at the time and didn’t have my Mercy-cloak, so Siggy had taken Runa’s bow from her. She aimed, drew back the arrow … and then lowered the bow again. Siggy handed the bow back, eyed the dark-haired girl head to toe, and then smiled. “There will be no Mercy-kill tonight. You are coming with us to learn the death trade. We don’t have much, but we have each other.”

  Runa nodded, just once, and that was that.

  She burned the bow later. She threw it into the fire, and we never spoke of it again.

  * * *

  “Tell us a tale, Runa,” Leif said. “You have yet to do any storytelling. Tell us a tale of heroes and tragedy and archery.”

  The Quicks were no fools, and they knew by our moods that we had chosen to continue to Blue Vee. We’d all finished our meal of wild mushrooms and grouse in silence, no one wanting to broach the subject.

  Runa looked up at Leif, and to my great surprise, nodded. “I know such a tale.”

  She paused, just long enough to glance at me before turning back to the fire. “There were once two sisters who roamed the dark and mysterious southern Ebba Woods. Their father had married a woman forty years younger, but she made a good bargain of it, for he kept her well. He was the best archer in the jarldom—he had gone on some of the last Elsh raids with Jarl Oluf’s son and brought back what wealth was left on those foreign shores.

  “The father taught his daughters the skill, and the two young girls were better shots than any grown man in the nearby village. They always had enough to eat during the long winters and spent many happy nights beside the hearth, crafting arrows using the feathers of the rare Red Wren, the scarlet tips marking them as unique and special to their family alone.

  “Time passed, and the sisters grew up. Their father began to feel his age. He could no longer run through the forest graceful as a deer. He forgot little things, then bigger things, and soon he could remember nothing at all. And so their mother had him Mercy-killed—an arrow through the neck at sunrise on a hill covered in wildflowers. The sisters came home from the Ebba Woods to find their father burning to ash. The mother left, declaring a desire to roam and see the wilderness of the eastern plains, but the sisters stayed in their father’s home and spent their days hunting and running and keeping him alive in their hearts.

  “One winter a pack of Fremish men crossed the border into Vorseland. They were a group of wolf-priests—the unsanctioned clerics who drink yew berry poison until they lose themselves to it. Many had been driven from their own land for performing dark, secret rituals on kidnapped villagers, and this group was worse than most.

  “They entered the town of Ebba on a moonless winter night, and the sisters awoke to screams. They grabbed their cloaks and their bows and ran to the center of the village. The Fremish men broke down doors and invaded homes—cries of pain and terror filled the air. The younger sister went from house to house, shooting the wolf-priests through open windows. She was cunning as a fox, and ten times as brave. Meanwhile, the older sister climbed a roof, aimed, and fired off every arrow in her quiver. She killed with perfect, mindless precision, and bodies began to cover the ground.

  “The last pack of men moved toward the village well, howling at the night sky, their shaggy gray cloaks rippling in the wind. The older sister slaughtered them between one breath and the next. By dawn, all two dozen of the wolf-priests lay dead. The elder sister rejoiced. She went searching for her younger sister, to celebrate their victory and the heroic rescue of their village … And she found her, facedown near the town well, a red-feathered arrow through her heart.”

  The flames of the fire rose up, and a log crumpled into the embers with a thud. Runa jerked, her head twisting to the left.

  I saw her expression, and it was grief and pain and remorse.

  Runa held out her hand for the flask of Vite, and drank long. “The village of Ebba praised the sister for what she’d done,” she said. “The night had been dark, they said. It was an accident. Think of how many lives you saved. But she didn’t listen. She burned her younger sister on the hill where her father had died, and left the town for good.”

  Runa took another sip of Vite, stood, and then walked away from the fire and into the shadows.

  She had killed her own sister. She’d been carrying the weight of it all this time.

  I found her a while later by the same ancient juniper tree.

  “This is why I set aside the bow for so long,” she whispered when she saw me.

  “Yes. But you have mourned long enough.” I took a deep breath and again smelled the sharp, herbal scent of the juniper berries. “Let yourself be happy, Runa. Go with the Quicks. I will come find you afterward, if I survive, and will stay with them for as long as they will have me. I swear it.”

  She hesitated, and for a moment I thought she would agree. But then she reached forward and grasped my forearm, her fingers closing around my elbow. “No. You and Ovie are right. Blue Vee is the noble choice. I will join you, and together we will attempt to kill this giant. It’s courageous and heroic. It’s what my sister would have done.”

  I returned her grasp, wrapping my hand around her muscled forearm. “Heltar,” I whispered. “Heltar.”

  * * *

  We parted ways with the Quicks the following day, when we reached the forked path in the road. We said our good-byes, and they turned and walked north.

  The Mercies and I watched them until they disappeared between the trees.

  NINETEEN

  All the villages we passed were quiet, unnaturally so.

  The people eyed us warily as they moved about, with none of the warmth and easy welcome we’d found in Mista. Even the animals seemed quiet—dogs didn’t bark and birds didn’t sing. It was as if the entire world were holding its breath, trying not to draw attention to itself.

  Vee was the old Vorse word for valley, and Blue referred to the blue mist that often rose up from the sweeping grasslands come evening. There was one main road to Blue Vee’s Great Hall, passing through the fertile valley of Destin Lush and crossing through steadings and villages and open woodlands of birch and aspen.

  I imagined it was a very beautiful place in the summer—sheep grazing in meadows and fields of barley waving in the breeze.

  Or it had been, at least, before the beast.

  Some people had nailed wooden bars across their doors, and others had put up fences of sharpened stakes. This wouldn’t stop an attack, but perhaps it gave the resid
ents some peace of mind.

  “No men,” Runa said as we crossed through the third hamlet. “There are no young men. Only elders, women, and children.”

  A hollow-eyed woman with a dark-haired infant on her hip heard Runa’s comment and looked over at us. “They’ve all fled. The ones who still live, that is.” The baby began to cry, and she rocked back and forth to soothe it. “They are hiding in the Blue Vee Forest.”

  “They should have taken their families with them.” Ovie’s expression was cool, but there was fire in her voice. “It was cowardly to run off and leave you all.”

  The mother gave a tired shrug. “Then who would tend to the injured? Who would see to the chickens and the cows and the pigs? And how would our children survive the winter without a home and hearth? We have no choice but to stay.” She paused. “The beast attacks the men first—if they returned, they would die like all the rest.”

  I turned and watched a girl our age leading a cow across the muddy town square. She was strong, with muscled arms and a graceful gait—there was something of Runa about her, which I liked.

  She caught me staring and drew closer. “You seek Mercy-work? There is none. Not here. We all die soon enough without your help.”

  I shook my head. “We wear the cloaks, but we no longer deal in the death trade.”

  “You come to offer yourself to Roth, then? To hunt the beast?”

  “Yes.”

  If she was surprised to see four women offering themselves as warriors, she didn’t show it. “The beast comes in the night,” she said, green eyes hard. “Always in the night. I haven’t slept in weeks. I’m turning into shadow.”

  Juniper reached forward and put her hand to the girl’s cheek. “I will pray for you.”

  “It won’t help. You should leave here. Return to where you came from, and don’t look back.”

  I took a step toward her and rested my hand on the cow’s side, letting its heat warm my fingertips. “You should flee yourself. Take this cow and hide in the forest. You will have milk, and meat, if it comes to that.”

  “I can’t.” She moved brown hair off her forehead with two calloused fingertips. “Mother broke her leg and needs my help. She said the gods will protect us … but I’m not counting on it.”

  She smiled again. This girl had a sharp wit that had not yet been dimmed by her fear and exhaustion.

  I might have asked her to join us if she hadn’t mentioned a mother. And if we were still Boneless Mercies.

  “We’ve come here to kill this night stalker,” I said, “and don’t mean to fail.”

  She tilted her head and scrutinized me for a long moment, then turned and disappeared into one of the thatched homes without another word. No doubt she believed me about as much as she believed her mother about the protection of the gods.

  * * *

  On the second day, we came across the first fully abandoned village.

  Most of the houses had been burned, and the town was nothing but piles of gray ash. We explored the huts that were still standing, looking for bodies. Juniper found a young boy behind a bed. His tiny skull had been crushed.

  “Dead for a few days, maybe longer,” Ovie said.

  “And yet no one has come for him.” Juniper touched the boy on the temple. “He’s so young.”

  Runa pulled her flint box from her pack and looked at me. I nodded. Juniper said a prayer over the boy, and then Runa set the house on fire, with him inside. His soul would reach Holhalla.

  We first caught sight of the Great Hall on the morning of the third day. We cleared a group of trees and there it was, capping the top of a high hill, overlooking the valley of Destin Lush, the Skal Mountains in the far distance. It was as beautiful as a Gothi tapestry.

  Surrounding the base of the hill rose a stone wall with twenty-foot gates—it would take us several more hours of walking before we reached them.

  We passed a handful of charred hamlets on the way but didn’t stop to explore. These villages had been burned weeks ago, perhaps months. Besides, our eyes were fixed ahead, toward the Great Hall and all that awaited us there.

  Its walls began to shine in the late afternoon light as we got closer, the sun reflecting off the metal of the many shields that hung from its sides. The Mercies and I had been in a handful of Great Halls during our travels in the death trade, but none so grand as this.

  “Two hundred men could fit inside,” Ovie said with a nod of her chin. “Easily.”

  “I doubt there are two hundred men left in all of Blue Vee.” Trigve shifted his pelt of wolf to keep the cold wind off his neck, and then looked up at the sky. “It’s a good thing we’re close to the end of our journey.”

  Runa followed his gaze and nodded. “A storm is brewing.”

  Clouds soon drifted across the sun, and snow began to fall. We were covered in soft white flakes by the time we reached the thick wooden gates of the wall, pale flecks dotting our black Mercy-cloaks like stars in the night sky.

  Two men stood guard, one young and one older, both with blond, braided beards and thick eyebrows—father and son, I thought. They wore leather armor over wool tunics, and fox pelts across their shoulders. The younger man eyed our cloaks with interest, but the older one merely glanced at them.

  “You seek an audience with Jarl Roth?” The father’s voice held a whisper of the Blue Vee accent, the same as the villagers we’d met earlier. The people here often spoke in lower tones, the vowels held on the tongue and drawn out. It was a pleasant sound.

  I nodded. “Yes. We have answered his plea for aid. We’ve come to kill the beast.”

  The son raised his eyebrows. “Women, and Boneless Mercies at that. Very unusual. Roth will be pleased, regardless. No one has come in weeks. People are beginning to despair.”

  The accent also sang through his voice, an echo of his father’s.

  Trigve once said the western Vorse accent was the closest dialect modern Vorseland had to the cadence of the ancient sagas.

  “Many warriors have come,” the older man said. “They feasted in the jarl’s Hall and boasted of their cunning and strength. All have died.”

  Trigve stepped forward, chin raised. “These four women are the Boneless Mercies who slayed the Cut-Queen of the Red Willow Marsh and drove the Willows out of the reeds. If you haven’t heard of the deed yet, you will. The marsh is safe again because of them.”

  I took a step forward as well. “Mother Hush of the Sea Witches sent a raven to the jarl. He’s expecting us.”

  The father eyed each of us slowly, then knocked his fist three times on the right-hand gate. I heard a man grunt as he lifted a heavy bar from the other side.

  The twenty-foot doors creaked on their large iron hinges as they opened. The snowfall had lessened somewhat, and I noticed now that the thick wood was marred by two great dents, one on each side, where it had cracked under force.

  The son saw me looking and swept his hand toward the doors. “Logafell. She tried to break in twice, early on, but the gates held. Then she began to attack the villages of the valley.”

  Runa jerked her head to the right and caught the guard’s eye. “The beast is female?”

  “Yes.” He ran a gloved hand down the braid in his beard and shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “A female giant with long white hair.”

  “Nante, nante.” Juniper pressed her palm to her heart, and then swept her fingers out in front of her, making the Sea Witch gesture to cast off the dark.

  Trigve and I exchanged a glance as we filed through the gates.

  We made our way up the hill on well-worn steps, passing free-roaming livestock—ducks, geese, chickens, and a few cows. I spotted various huts, the blacksmith’s, and then the barracks, now abandoned. The stables were also empty. Sheep roamed across a neglected training yard—no men had practiced there in some time. A bathhouse was off to the left, with steam rising from a hole in the roof.

  Three older women tended a fire pit, which was lined with stone and covered with turf
. I sniffed the air—roasted pig. My mouth watered.

  No guards stood at the grand, iron-studded doors to the Great Hall, which surprised me little. If the rumors were true, Roth couldn’t afford to waste men on unnecessary guard duty—he’d sent what remained of his best warriors out into the Sleet Heath at the end of summer to track the beast to its lair. And the men had still not returned.

  I put my shoulder against the carved wood of the heavy front door and pushed.

  Snow swirled around us as we entered the Great Hall of Blue Vee, gusts of cold wind making the flakes dance.

  We were alone.

  I looked up at the soaring roof, rafters the size of pine trees, then glanced about me. I saw long trestle tables lined with simple benches, and a double-headed battle-ax hanging from a hook on the wall—it appeared well oiled and well used. An open stone hearth sat in the middle, wood crackling. Two rows of intricately carved pillars stretched the length of the building, depicting scenes of hunting and battle.

  Richly colored tapestries covered the walls and gave the Hall a warm, cozy feeling, despite the vast, open space. I knew that some of them hid doors that led to passageways—passageways that opened to narrow sleeping quarters or led to back doors and underground cellars. It was the same in all Great Halls. As Boneless Mercies, we’d entered through these passageways. The main doors were for the jarls and their families. And for the warriors.

  To the left, a giant yew tree rose in a blaze of red berries and narrow, bright green needles. Its trunk twisted up and up until its top branches broke through a hole in the timbered ceiling and stretched out into the sky.

  I turned and closed the door behind us with another shove of my shoulder. The sound echoed down the Hall.

  “It’s too quiet.” I blinked, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. There should have been warriors practicing swordplay and children running about and dogs sleeping under tables. “I hadn’t expected Roth’s jarldom to be as troubled as this.”