Sunlight blinded me at first. Even after my eyes adjusted to the bright light beyond the wood, it took my mind some time to process what I saw.
There was no cabin.
No barn. No paddock for the pigs and dairy cow. Not even the water trough had survived.
Everything I saw was reduced to ash. Ash and scorched, black ground.
I stumbled forward on legs which felt like they had been filled with wet sand, my arms clenched tightly around my stomach. Even our little herb garden had burned. I fell to my knees at the edge of the field of ashes, where the thyme and chives had once grown, and sank my fingers into the cold, gray dirt.
“Ma?” I whispered.
She could have gotten away. Even with her bad leg, Ma could still run. And the Ironwood held many places to hide.
“Ma!” I yelled.
My vision wavered with tears. The apple tree beside the house still stood, although half its leaves were scorched, and the ground was littered with fallen apples. What a waste. The apples had always been picked up and taken to the root cellar when we lived—
Lived. My mind snagged on the past tense, and my stomach clenched violently. I gagged, spitting into the ashes.
“Ma!” I screamed, although it came out a sob.
I staggered to my feet and bumped into Fenris’s chest. He wrapped his arms around me; I buried my face in his chest as thick, ugly sobs wracked my body.
“Jael and Egren,” I finally managed to whisper. “Fenris, we’ve got to find my brothers. Ma might even be with them, somewhere in the woods. We’ve got to—”
Fenris closed his eyes and shook his head. Then, without a word, he took my hand and led me gently away from the ruins of the house. We walked together past the charred ribs of the barn and paddock and to the edge of the potato field. It was the same field where Fenris had once come to me, I thought dimly. That felt like a lifetime ago, now.
There, along the edge of the field, were three rectangular mounds of black earth.
The far mound was smaller than the others. Tilting my head, I stared at it. I felt like I stood on the edge of some vast and terrible darkness, just waiting to swallow me up. Why was one mound smaller than the others?
Egren.
Shock, pain, and grief shot through me. The feeling was so sudden and fierce that I sank to my knees in the dirt, my arms clenched around my sides as though I might fall to pieces if I didn’t physically hold myself together. Time got very slow and very strange. The dancing golden leaves of the ash trees bordering the Ironwood froze in the air; the full heads of the grasses behind Fenris stopped waving.
Of course Egren’s burial mound was smaller.
He was still a child.
The air filled with a sharp, keening cry, like a wounded animal, or someone rushing headfirst into battle. I had enough time to wonder what sort of creature made such a horrible noise before realizing—it was me.
I fell forward, as if I could no longer support my own weight, and cried my loss into the thick, black earth.
Eventually, I became aware of the warmth of Fenris’s solid weight beside me. I leaned into him and let him pull me from the ground. My tears had soaked the front of my shirt, and still I was sobbing in slow, terrible gasps. I felt completely emptied, as though there was nothing inside me but cold ashes and smoke.
“I’m so sorry,” Fenris whispered into my hair.
I shivered against his chest, unable to speak.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, “but we can’t stay. Sol, there was a man here when you came out of the woods. A man on horseback. He fled when he saw you.”
I shook my head. Why would I care about a man on a horse? Why would I care about anything, now?
Fenris pulled me to my feet. We stood together, our arms interlaced, and stared at the black burial mounds that held my mother and brothers.
“These are new,” Fenris said, finally. “The graves were dug after the buildings burned.”
I stared blankly ahead, not fully comprehending what Fenris was trying to tell me. Or was he trying to tell me anything?
“Someone cared for your family, Sol.”
He was trying to comfort me. It was a distant, detached thought, like noting the rosy evening hue of a faraway cloud. What did it matter that someone buried my dead? These mounds were just dirt. Give them a winter, another spring, and they would become nothing more than grass-covered hills. My family didn’t even have a stone cairn to mark them.
“It’s not right,” I whispered. My voice came out cracked and broken.
Fenris’s arm tightened around me. “It’s not.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, it’s not right to leave them. I can’t leave them with nothing. I need something to...”
My voice broke as my mind spun. I wanted to give my family something special, something of value, but what? I owned nothing; even the shirt I wore originally belonged to someone else. The coins in the cave were Fenris’s, and Ma, Egren, and Jael would have scant use for them now.
Fenris and I could build cairns, I realized. We could spend the rest of the autumn here, pulling stones from the ground, heaping them over my family. We could pile stones until their burial mounds blocked the very heavens.
But I wanted something now. Something I could leave them today, as an offering. As an apology.
“My wreath,” I said. “Fenris, bring me my bridal wreath.”
“What?”
My fingers clenched around his arm. “Bring me my wreath.”
His eyes widened in his pale face. “Sol, I can’t leave you. There was a man—”
“The wreath.” My voice was hard and flat, and the words fell like snow from my lips. “I need to mark the graves. I need to do something.”
Fenris glanced back, toward the burned ruins of the house, and into the Ironwood. Then he looked up, at the distant, burning sun, already sinking into the trees.
“You’re fast,” I pleaded. “Please. Get the wreath. Leave me with them, just for a little longer.”
He hesitated just a moment before vanishing in a cloud of golden sparks. I watched his wolf’s enormous, black shape disappear into the woods. Already, Fenris’s loping trot seemed to be happening somewhere else, somewhere very far away. I sank to my knees again, watching the burial mounds through burning, swollen eyes. I thought I should talk to them, to explain all that had happened since I’d vanished into the forest. But the words didn’t come.
A small golden finch darted through the branches in the forest beyond the graves. One of the tiny white butterflies that had lived in the kitchen garden drifted lazily through the air, reminding me of ash, spinning upward from a bonfire. Somewhere in the distance, crows screamed. A soft noise rippled out of the woods beyond our ruined home. It took me some time to place that sound. I’d never heard that deep, gentle purr this deep in the Ironwood because my family had never owned horses.
It was a whinny. A soft, nickering whinny. The kind of noise horses made when they greeted each other. I frowned and blinked at the burial mounds. The whinny was a gentle, welcoming noise, but for some reason it had made me feel cold all over.
I forced myself to my feet, staggering on legs which had gone numb. When I turned, the soldier’s fist hit my temple, and the world went black.
THE MONSTER’S WIFE: CHAPTER TWELVE
“Slit his throat!”
That was a man’s voice and very close to me.
“What?”
A second voice, also male, came from slightly further away.
I tried to scream but gagged on a mouthful of cloth. My arms were pinned behind my back, and the rough hands holding my wrists together tightened until the pressure made me wince. When I forced my eyes to open, I saw only the dim gray of a cloth sack pulled over my head.
“Just do it, dammit.”
Thick fingers pinched my breast, and I flinched.
“She’s a nice one, isn’t she?”
Someone growled just above my ear. “Don’t. Slit its damn throat
, and cover us in the blood. And then hope to the stars that’ll be enough to throw the beast off our trail.”
“Seems like a waste of a nice mount,” the second man drawled. His double meaning sank in slowly, and my stomach curled.
“Stop fucking around and go!” the man holding my arms spat. “You didn’t see Evenfel. You have no idea what’s coming after us.”
I froze. Evenfel. A second later a sharp whinny pierced the air, and something hot splashed across my face and chest. The air filled with the rich, thick scent of blood, and I gagged again. Calloused hands grabbed my cheeks, forcing my head up.
“Don’t you throw up,” the first man growled. “You’re worth too much to me to have you choking and dying.”
Something heavy hit the ground before me with a sickening thud. The horse, I realized. My stomach clenched again, and a cold, sick dread traced up my spine like skeletal fingers.
“Now what?” asked the second man.
“Run,” the gruff voice behind me replied.
The man shoved me in the shoulder blades and forced me to stagger forward a few steps. Then he lifted me into the air. I fell forward like a sack of flour across the broad, warm back of a horse, with my legs on one side and my head on another. The mount shifted nervously beneath me, and I stretched out my arms, sinking my fingers into the horse’s mane. I had only enough time to wish I knew how to make the horse do something, run into the Ironwood preferably, before the man with the calloused hands climbed up behind me and smacked the horse. We lurched into motion.
CLINGING TO THE HORSE’S mane and neck, I managed to loosen the sack tied over my eyes. The gag over my mouth was far more stubborn, but I felt slightly less panicked once I could see the ground passing beneath the hooves.
We were following the road, of course. The horse’s body had been splashed with the blood of her companion and, when I tilted my head forward, I saw her eyes were wide and wild. I felt her heartbeat stuttering through her chest as her sides heaved against my chest, and my heart broke for the poor animal. She’d just seen her companion murdered, and now she was being forced to gallop through the gloaming coated in its blood.
But run she did. In less time than I’d have believed possible, we reached town. I recognized the white slatted fence of Attin’s yard. His barn was almost luminescent in the gathering darkness. The horse’s hooves pounded over the spot where Bryn and the twins had thrown mud in my face. By the Realms, had that only been a few months ago? Now the memories felt so distant they may as well have happened to someone else.
We galloped straight through the center of town, passing the village square with its wooden stage and spreading oak trees. Bryn kissed me under those oak trees, once, when their sturdy branches held the colored lanterns of the Harvest Festival. Doors slammed around us as the man behind me turned our mount toward the docks that lined the Körmt. They were afraid, all these rich and important families with their elegant homes. They may have buried my family, once the flames died down, but no one in this town would try to save me from King Nøkkyn’s soldier. Although I was certain they were watching our progress from their windows.
I pressed my face into the horse’s blood-streaked mane. Suddenly, I no longer wanted to see the town.
A few moments later, the horse’s hooves clattered hollowly against wooden planking, and I realized we must have reached the docks. The soldier’s hand tightened around my waist. I heard a solid, flat smack as he hit the horse’s flank. The horse lurched; for a sickening moment I was certain I’d be thrown off and crushed beneath its hooves on the dock. Then it crashed back down, prancing and jittering against solid wood that echoed beneath its hooves like a massive drum.
I opened my eyes as the man yanked me from the horse’s back and threw me over his shoulder. The horse met my eyes. Its sides and mouth were flecked with foam, and its wide, white eyes rolled wildly. The man was standing on the broad, flat surface of a barge, and the horse danced uncomfortably across the slowly rocking surface. There was hardly room for the beast between the stacks of raw lumber crowding the deck. I marveled for a moment at the fear that could drive a beast to make the leap from the relative safety of the docks to the cramped surface of a darkened lumber barge.
The man holding me took off at a run. My abdomen collided with his hard shoulder, forcing air from my lungs. I tried to cry out, but the gag stopped me. I pounded his back with my fists; he ignored me. His feet slammed the deck as he raced away from the horse, weaving in and out of the tall stacks of lumber.
He reached the boat’s far edge, stopped, and pulled me from his shoulder. Below us, the Körmt river lapped softly at the sides of the great barge. The man took a deep breath.
“I’m tying your hands together,” he warned gruffly. “Don’t fight me, or I’ll make it hurt.”
I stood, mute and motionless, my arms held behind me in one meaty fist, as he wrapped a coarse cordage tightly around my wrists.
And then he threw me from the boat.
My scream was lost in the folds of wet fabric filling my mouth. It turned into a sharp cry of pain a heartbeat later, when my head and back hit something hard enough to turn my vision white. I lay stunned, staring at the darkening sky, as the soldier’s heavy boots hit the deck beside me on a much smaller craft. The indigo darkness above us already held one tiny star, shining bravely against the darkness. The wishing star, Da always called it.
“Who in the Nine damned Realms do you think you are?” someone growled from behind me.
“Get out of my way!” the soldier yelled.
I turned on my side, just enough to see the snarling bear sigil on the soldier's chest. King Nøkkyn’s sigil. The soldier was bent over the side of the boat, sawing frantically at the ropes anchoring this small skiff to the side of the barge. Throwing off the scent, I thought, dimly. First covering us in blood then leaving the horse.
Another pair of legs, covered in faded and torn trousers, stomped with boatman’s shoes into my field of vision. A fisherman, I guessed. Or a smuggler.
“You get the ever-loving fuck off of my boat,” the fisherman barked.
The soldier’s legs straightened and I lost sight of the bear sigil’s snarling maw. “You take us to the castle, and you’ll see riches like you’ve never imagined.”
They both fell silent. The boat rocked quietly beneath us. My back and bound arms sang with pain from my sudden, sharp landing against the wood, but the rest of my body felt cold and numb. Throwing off the scent was a good plan, I realized with growing horror. How would Fenris find me once we’d slipped into the water?
I yanked at the rope pinning my hands behind my back, but my flailing just made the rough cord bite more deeply into the skin of my wrists. If only I could leave a clue for Fenris to track me, perhaps tear off part of Týr’s shirt and leave it on the shore—
The night air was suddenly broken by a tremendous, primal howl that exploded from the depths of the Ironwood. I felt it in my very bones, shaking me to the marrow as it echoed across the vast, still waters of the Körmt. It was as if the forest itself screamed in rage and loss. Crows yelled in response, filling the darkening sky above me.
Fenris. It had to be Fenris; nothing else in the Nine Realms could produce that cry of rage. Still, the sound raised the hairs on my arms and legs. I’d never heard him scream before.
“What the—” the sailor muttered.
The soldier moved quickly, like a dancer. In a breath his legs were behind the fisherman’s, and he’d lifted the smaller man off the deck of his boat. What little light the sky still held glinted off the cold blade pressed to the boatman’s neck.
“That’s what chases us,” the soldier hissed. “Now, cast off. If you hesitate, you know damn well what will find us.”
Hesitate! I tried to scream. Fenris will reward you! But, with the gag in my mouth, my words were nothing but the muffled screams of a trapped animal. The soldier sat down heavily next to me and pulled the back of my shirt until he’d dragged me into a crouch.
“Stop it,” he said. “Keep going on like that, and you’ll vomit. You’ll choke, and you’ll suffocate.”
I bit back my cries and turned to face my abductor for the first time. He was older than I’d expected. The last of the day’s light revealed a hardened, deeply lined face with close-trimmed, gray hair. He looked scared.
The boatman moved quickly around us, scurrying across the deck, winding ropes and pulling out a long, curved oar. The little skiff moved so smoothly across the water that I almost didn’t realize we’d begun moving at all. I cried out as we slipped past the docks. The sound was well muffled by the gag in my mouth.
I waited to see Fenris’s dark form come roaring down the road and through the buildings of the town. I waited for him to jump into the Körmt, overturn this little boat, and pull me from the dark water.
He did not appear. Faster than I could have imagined possible, the little boat turned a corner in the Körmt, and the only town I’d known for my entire childhood vanished from sight.
“I’ll need a light,” the fisherman rasped. His voice was hardly louder than the hiss of water passing beneath the skiff’s hull.
“No.” The soldier’s reply was low and hard.
“Just through the narrows,” the boatman insisted. “If we run aground on the Witch’s Tit, we’ll never make the castle.”
There was a moment of tense silence. The boat rocked under us, and I turned back to the shore where the dark trees of the Ironwood pressed against the velvet edge of the Körmt. I squinted, as if I could will the darkness to resolve itself into the sleek, shifting lines of Fenris’s great body. But there was nothing.
The soldier sighed and came slowly to his feet. “Fine,” he whispered. “But don’t hang it from the mast. I’ll hold it myself.”
There was the rustle of cloth and the scrape of flint and tinder. A small, orange light blossomed into life, bathing the deck of the skiff in a gentle glow. The soldier picked it up. He stopped before me, swinging the lamp so close to my face I could feel the meager heat of the oil flame against my cheek. I narrowed my eyes at the light.
The Complete Fenris Series Page 22