Peaceweaver

by Rebecca Barnhouse

  Birds called to each other from the trees. Behind her, Unwen panted. The steady rushing noise of the river came from her sword-hand side. She could no longer hear the men, nor was there any sign they had been missed.

  A stone bit through her shoe, and a cobweb caught in her hair, but she ignored them. She felt like a nightwalker from the old stories, strong and certain in the dark woods. If only Unwen would hurry! She heard an “oomph” and turned to see the slave, no more than a shape in the darkness, coming around a tree. Hild waited, then started forward again.

  Shouts sounded in the distance. She smiled and kept moving. The men would never find them now.

  The darkness grew total, but Hild hardly slackened her pace. She leapt over a stone, yanked her cloak from a branch that grabbed at it, and kept moving.

  A scream shattered the night.

  Hild stopped so fast that Unwen bumped into her.

  They stood without speaking, the noise of Unwen’s breathing masking the sounds Hild listened for: footsteps, voices, bodies moving through the forest.

  The scream came again. Then a sound Hild didn’t know, an inhuman cry that sent a shiver down the back of her neck. Something flashed like fire in front of her eyes. She blinked, but nothing was there.

  Suddenly, she knew she had to go back.

  No! she argued. I won’t!

  But her desires didn’t matter. A summons drew her like a royal command.

  “No!” she whispered through clenched teeth. But even as she said the word, she turned to grip Unwen’s shoulder. In a low, urgent voice, she said, “You have to keep going. Don’t stop until you get to your people. Here.” She pushed the food bag into Unwen’s hands. “I’ll catch up with you.”

  The slave didn’t answer. Hild fought the irritation that surged through her. She didn’t have time to explain, even if she could have; she needed Unwen to do what she said, and do it fast. “Do you understand me?”

  Unwen stared at her, and in the starlight filtering through the tree branches, Hild recognized not the fear or the protest she expected in her eyes, but a strange, fierce joy.

  Hild drew back as if she’d been slapped.

  More than ten winters of loyalty and what Hild had taken for love—gone in an instant. Unwen had no care for Hild, not anymore. Instead, she was intent on finding her home, her people, her far-minded daughter.

  Unwen was no longer a slave.

  “Go, then. And the gods go with you,” Hild said. As she spoke, the powerful compulsion took hold of her. She couldn’t fight it. She had to leave now. Without another glance, she tore off through the forest, heading back toward the men she’d escaped.

  • • •

  Hild passed tree, stone, bush, and bramble, leaping, dodging, running full tilt, the sword in her hand. The blanket lay somewhere behind, snagged by branches. In the darkness, she could somehow feel her way without slowing, without stumbling, as if something was guiding her feet. What she was running toward, she didn’t know.

  But she recognized the same feeling she’d had before, back when she’d saved her cousin’s life. She might not be able to control it, but this time, she was still aware of herself. A part of her was still Hild.

  And despite the desperate urgency she felt, there was room in her heart for the hurt of Unwen’s leaving. “I didn’t make her a slave,” she whispered angrily. “The gods did. She knows that.” Yet another part of her knew that if the gods had made her a slave, she, too, would have done everything in her power to go home again.

  “How could she leave me?” she asked herself, then remembered that she was the one who had commanded Unwen to go. “But she could have argued, just a little!”

  A branch sliced at her face, grabbing at her hair and pulling strands of it free from its knot. Ahead she could hear confused noises, muffled shouting, a horse neighing in terror, and someone—or something—moving through the woods.

  Hild ran faster, the sword gripped tight, all thoughts of Unwen banished from her mind. Her senses focused on what was before her. She couldn’t stop if she wanted to, but now she didn’t want to stop. Whatever it was, she needed to get to it.

  Through the trees, she could see the glow of fire. A smell like rotting meat assaulted her nose, and ahead of her, something grunted angrily. She heard a terrified whinny and the sound of hooves—a horse was crashing through the woods toward her. She stepped out of the way just in time as it passed her.

  Closer now, nearer the campfire, she could see another horse, lying on the ground, entrails spilling onto the dirt. Near it lay a man, face turned away from her. She didn’t stop to see who it was.

  Gripping the sword hilt, she wove past a tree. Thorns yanked at her cloak, pulling her up short. She fumbled with the brooch that fastened the cloak, tugging at the pin until it came loose, and let the cloak fall to the ground as she ran. She stepped on something that made her foot recoil—someone’s arm. She didn’t look down.

  As she burst into the space where the campfire blazed, a movement caught her eye. She turned.

  A shadow lurked in the trees. A bear? It was too big to be a man.

  Sword out, Hild ran.

  “My lady! Stop!” someone yelled, and a hand reached for her. She pushed it aside and kept going. A rancid smell threatened to choke her, but she gulped air through her mouth. Ten sword lengths away now, she could see how enormous the creature was. Five sword lengths and the flickering firelight illumined the green fur, matted with gore. The creature raised a huge rock in its claws, bigger than any man could lift. Below, on the ground, lay Mord. Firelight reflected in the whites of his eyes.

  He’s nothing to me, Hild told herself. Why should I help him? But the words didn’t stop her, even as someone grabbed her arm. Thialfi. She shoved him away with strength she knew wasn’t hers and kept going.

  The stench made her eyes water, but she blinked and focused on a spot just under the creature’s raised arm.

  Around the tree, and now! Her sword met resistance but she pushed and pushed again as Mord twisted out of the way of the falling rock.

  She didn’t have time to watch him—he’d have to take care of himself. The creature roared. It turned toward her, wrenching her sword arm. She gasped in pain.

  She tried to pull the blade free, but it was too deeply embedded in the monster’s body. The creature moved toward her, its fangs so close she could see the spittle dripping from them. The terrible red maw leered down at her, its fetid reek making her retch. Again she pulled, but now, when she needed it, her strength was ebbing away.

  She dropped her hand from the hilt and took a step back, stumbling over a root and righting herself. Horror threatened to overtake her.

  The creature stopped and Hild stared at its green fur hanging in clumps like seaweed.

  She’d seen it before—in her dream.

  It raised its head and screamed, the sound ripping through the dark woods. Her eyes cringed shut. She backed away but a tree blocked her escape. She was hemmed in.

  She forced herself to open her eyes. Even if she’d had the sword, her strength was no match for the creature’s.

  She was going to die.

  It peered at her through red, inhuman eyes set far back in its face, then swung its claw.

  Hild didn’t move. There was no place for her to go.

  The creature screamed again, and Hild thought her skull might shatter from the sound. Maybe it had shattered. She couldn’t get her breath. She watched the creature as if from a distance, as if she weren’t standing a hand’s breadth from it. As if she were already dead.

  It brought its claw to its chest, then turned and loped away, melting silently into the darkness.

  Hild swayed. Her knees buckled and she sank to the ground.

  “My lady!” a man called out.

  Blackness enveloped her.

  NINETEEN

  A CRACKING SOUND INTRUDED INTO HER DREAMS, WAKING her. It was still night. A black sky pressed down on her; fingers of cold pinched at her scalp, her
face, her feet. Rocks dug into her hip bones and shoulders. Her wrist ached.

  The cracking noise came again—somebody breaking sticks for kindling. Sparks from a campfire floated into the trees, and above the bare branches, she could see stars, hard and bright. A voice reached her ears, one man speaking softly to another.

  Memories rushed back: a man lying on the ground, a horse with its belly slit, the arm she’d stepped on, the creature she’d fought.

  The creature! What was it? Where was it now? Hild sat bolt upright, heart pounding, pain flaring in her ribs and her arm.

  She blinked in the darkness, the scene around her coming into focus. A few footsteps away, Mord sat by the fire. Seeing her sitting up, he raised himself and limped toward her. On the other side of the fire, Thialfi sat with a stick in his hand, his face lit a lurid red by the flames.

  Hild moved her hand to the ground beside her, under the blanket, hoping to find her sword. It wasn’t there. Then she remembered where she had last seen it: buried in the monster’s chest.

  Mord lowered himself to one knee beside her, grimacing as he did.

  “Is it still alive?” she whispered.

  He gave her a curt nod.

  “And the men. Did … did we lose anyone?”

  “Your slave is missing.”

  Hild looked at him. Did he not realize what she and Unwen had done? Did he not know that she had almost escaped him? His face, contorted by pain, revealed nothing.

  “And—” He stopped. It wasn’t just physical pain he was feeling. Hild held her breath, waiting to hear.

  Mord shook his head, his eyes cast down, his thumb going to the scar on his lip. “Brynjolf’s dead.”

  Hild stared at him. Brynjolf? Not Hadding, not Gizzur, not the Geats, but Brynjolf? She closed her eyes for the space of a breath. Then, locking the information tightly away, refusing to think about it just yet, she looked back at Mord. “How badly are you hurt?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll be right by sunup.”

  She doubted that. “What about the horses?”

  “Gizzur’s horse was killed, my lady. The others—if they’re alive, they’ll come back.”

  “And the other men?”

  “They’ll mend.” He looked into the dark, and when Hild followed his gaze, she could just make out the shapes of two men, shadows against the darker shades of the trees, the firelight barely revealing their presence. When he turned his head in the other direction, she understood that they were surrounded by guards, even if she couldn’t see them. She would never be able to get away.

  She lowered her voice to a whisper. “What was it that attacked us?”

  Mord shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Thialfi says his people speak of a creature that lives in the fens.…” His voice trailed off.

  “Will it come back?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I’m alive thanks to you, my lady.”

  The sincerity in his voice took her by surprise and she gazed at his dirt-streaked face. He had a cut on his cheek, but it didn’t look deep. Firelight gleamed on the white scar above his lip. His eyes, usually so evasive, were trained on hers and she looked into them, trying to understand him.

  “I don’t know how you did what you did,” he said. “But Bragi’s wrong. The gods are with you.”

  There was an awkward silence. Mord rose to his feet, grunting as he did so, and limped back to the fire.

  She watched him go and saw that Thialfi was looking at her, an expression on his face that she couldn’t read. Suddenly, it hit her. Mord might not know that she’d tried to escape, but Thialfi did.

  Someone had thrown a blanket over her and she rearranged it before she lay back down, shaky from the effort of sitting up. Firelight glowed on the branches above her and she watched it flickering.

  Had the gods been with her? Saving her cousin, the atheling, the heir to the throne, that she could understand. But giving up her freedom to save Mord? Why would the gods want that?

  The creature was out there somewhere, alive. And so was Unwen, armed with only a knife. It didn’t matter what weapon the slave had with her—she was no match for the monster’s strength if it found her. Hild closed her eyes to banish an image of Unwen being attacked, her body ripped open by the creature’s claws. She hoped what she was seeing was a product of her own fear, not a vision.

  She trembled and pulled the blanket up to her chin. Her cloak was gone; she remembered dropping it in the woods. She would have to wait until morning to find it.

  Finally, carefully, she allowed herself to think about Brynjolf. Only it wasn’t Brynjolf she was thinking of; it was Beyla. Who would tell her about her brother? Hild wanted to pull her friend into an embrace, to protect her from the pain. She pictured a crowd of women—aunts, neighbors, cousins—enveloping Beyla like a flock of crows, mourning with her, trying to ease her sorrow. It wouldn’t help.

  Had the arm she’d trodden on been Brynjolf’s? She shuddered and tried to push the memory away, but it kept coming back.

  How could he be dead? Although he’d been made a member of the men’s troop, he was still a boy, full of fun and merriment. If it weren’t for the endless fighting, and the unceasing need for new warriors, he’d be at home in the boys’ troop, practicing the kinds of moves that might have saved him. He’d still be alive.

  She could hear the way he’d snort with laughter when she and Beyla teased him, and see his broken-toothed smile. She’d always envied Beyla for having a brother. She still envied her, even with the pain she would carry with her for the rest of her life, the empty place Brynjolf had left behind. Brynjolf! How could he be gone?

  Tears spilled onto her cheeks and wet her hair.

  Birdsong woke her. She raised herself to her elbows, blinking her swollen eyes open. Shafts of sunlight broke through the trees, illuminating autumn mist. Hadding, standing beside the fire, saw her sitting up and limped over to put something on the ground beside her before retreating again. Her cloak. She reached for it gratefully, burrowing into it against the cold.

  In the daylight, it was both harder and easier to believe that the previous night’s events had been real. Harder because the creature seemed like something from a story told to frighten children, or from a nightmare, not something a person should ever truly encounter in this life. But when Hild looked around her, at the broken branches, the blood on the ground, it was all too easy to believe what had happened. Especially when she saw Brynjolf’s body in a little clearing not far from her, his hands and sword arranged over his chest to hide his terrible wounds. She took a ragged breath and looked away.

  Behind an oak, she could just make out Gizzur sitting on the ground, his palm resting on a mound of rock, his knees drawn up, his face pressed to them. She watched him curiously for a moment before she realized the mound was his horse, its belly split open. Quick, foolish tears pricked at her eyes. He must have felt the same way about his horse as she had about Fleetfoot.

  She shook the tears away and rose, moving to the fire. Hadding stood beside it, an oatcake in each hand, chewing on one of them and eyeing the other. She glanced at him to see if he was wounded, but the limp she’d seen earlier appeared to be his normal clubfooted gait. Below his helmet’s mask, his beard had more bits of twigs and leaves in it than usual.

  “Here, my lady,” he said, offering her the oatcake he’d been just about to bite into.

  She took it, forcing herself not to cringe at the layers of dirt on his fingers. With Unwen gone, had he been assigned to her? Brynjolf would be a better choice, she thought, then remembered that Brynjolf was dead.

  Hadding pushed a log nearer the fire for her and she sat, looking around for the other men. Mord and Thialfi were over by the riverbank, but the other two Geats were hidden from her view. Wherever they were, she knew their weapons would be in their hands. They were the ones who had warned Mord not to take this route to the river; they were the ones who had heard stories of a creature that lived in the fens.


  A bird warbled somewhere in the woods, unconcerned with the secrets hidden behind the trees.

  As the fire warmed her, Hild’s strength began to return. Her eyes finally detected the Geatish brothers standing watch, as motionless as trees. The horses had returned, too. Some of them, anyway. When she looked more closely, she saw that Fire-eyes wasn’t with them. Nor was the pony.

  Mord and Thialfi came back, Mord grimacing from his wounded leg. Not far from where Hild sat, Gizzur and Hadding started to dig a grave. In this hard ground? She knew the blaze from a funeral pyre would call too much attention to them, but she wasn’t surprised when Gizzur finally set down the rock he was using to dig with.

  “We’ll cover him with stones,” Mord said. Something in his voice made her wonder if this was the first time he had lost someone under his command.

  She stood, beckoning to him. “Your leg,” she said when he limped up to her.

  He nodded and sat on the log she’d just vacated so she could examine the place above his knee where the creature’s claws had raked him. Thialfi brought her water and handed her a little bag of herbs. When she washed the blood away to see how deep the wound was, Mord gritted his teeth but made no sound. She crumbled dried leaves of heal-all into her palm, mixing them with ashes and spit to make a paste. As she stirred them with her fingers, she chanted the words Aunt Var had taught her:

  Take the poison, cast out evil.

  Be strong against venom.

  You are heal-all.

  Then she patted the concoction onto Mord’s wound. He knew as well as she did that the wound would fester or it would heal, depending on what pleased the gods. If they looked kindly on him, the herbs might help.

  As she leaned over to tie a cloth around the wound, a sound from the woods drew her upright.

  Mord rose, unsheathing his sword, the bandage hanging from his leg. The other men stood alert, weapons in their hands.

  Steps came toward them through the bracken. Mord pushed her behind him.