Dávgon’s body jerked, his head held up against his will.
“You dishonor your men,” Bávvál tsked.
Before another prisoner could be called forward, the crowd closest to the gates parted as they exclaimed crude epithets. The soldiers in the inner circle drew their weapons. A mounted soldier rode up to their ranks and dismounted, then faltered, alarmed to find himself face to face with the High Priest. The head of the guards stepped through his men, taking the hapless soldier aside to speak with him in hushed tones.
Voices that had been whispers became boisterous as the crowd grew restless. Those that were already rude became strident. Bávvál himself grew angry at the interruption in the spectacle he had devised. Finally, the head of the guards escorted the newly arrived soldier to where the High Priest waited.
The soldier bowed deeply. “I bring word from our scouting party.”
“And?” Bávvál prodded, his ire exacerbated by the heat of the sun.
The soldier looked uncomfortable but stepped closer to the High Priest. Lowering his voice he said, “The boy and the Jápmea have eluded our men.”
“Eluded your men,” Bávvál’s voice rose. “They are but children.”
The soldier glanced warily at the scene around him. “They are Jápmean and one is a Piijkij.”
Dávgon chuckled softly. A guard kicked him in the gut. He grunted, but his rasping laugh resumed, as he said, “I believe I have won, Bávvál.”
The High Priest’s head snapped around. His hatred of the man before him clouded out any other thought. His words came out in a shrill shriek. “Cut off his head!”
Startled, the guard holding Dávgon pushed him to the ground, pinning him beneath the weight of his foot. Another guard drew his sword, then kneeled. He brought his blade down on the prisoner’s neck. The laughing stopped but Dávgon’s head remained attached.
“Off!” screamed Bávvál. “I said off. Cut it off!”
The blade came down again. And again. The tip of the sword broke off in the ground. Still, the soldier hacked at the slack body until the head rolled free.
Bávvál lunged forward. He grabbed the head and held it up to the crowd to see. Blood streamed down his arms and onto the white sleeves of his robe.
“The gods’ will has been done!” he shouted, then dropped the head on the ground and walked away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN THE WHITE LIGHT of pain cleared from Marnej’s eyes, he looked up to where the roots had broken. The belts once secured to them were now wrapped around his aching wrist. He shifted and felt the stabbing outline of each branch he’d brought down in his fall.
He swore to himself, then called out, “Dárja.” When no immediate response came, he thought to add, “Are you there?” But after the protest his ribs made at uttering her name, it seemed a waste of breath. She was there. She was injured. She couldn’t walk.
One long moment passed into another. Dárja didn’t appear, nor did she respond.
Marnej’s certainty turned to doubt. Had she crawled away and left him? She’d said she would, had she been left on her own.
“Dárja.” He called out louder though it hurt him to do so. He heard the edge of alarm in his voice.
Marnej rose onto his elbow, then sat up gingerly, but he still couldn’t see above the rim. He uncoiled the belts encircling his wrist. The two lengths of leather weren’t long enough to wrap around the closest tree trunk, even if he could somehow reach it. The sinking realization that he might be stuck in this hole crashed down on him. Then a dark crown of hair inched forward until Dárja’s entire dirt-stained face appeared above him. She looked down at him, as if she were silently judging his worth.
Finally, she extended her hand, her braid dangling like an untrustworthy root.
“Hand me the belts,” she said. “I’ll secure myself to the tree and then help pull you up.”
Marnej was about to object that she wasn’t strong enough to pull him up. He stopped himself. Who knew what she could do? I need to stop thinking like an Olmmoš, he told himself.
Marnej stood and handed Dárja the belts, careful to keep his movement smooth as doubt crept into his thoughts. Dárja disappeared from view. The small distrustful part of his brain called him a fool. She can just take the belts and leave. She’d thought him capable of the same treachery. He tried to slow his breathing as he waited for her to reappear. When she stretched over the precipice to reach down her arm, unfamiliar relief washed over him.
Dárja’s hard-calloused hand grasped Marnej’s wrist. He pulled against her, at first cautiously, then with surety. He dug his toes into the sluffing dirt, struggling against a landslide of soil and rock. Dárja grunted, straining to draw him up. Then his free hand latched onto a sturdy root and he scrambled up and over the lip of the pit, his cheek in the scruff of a crowberry bush. Catching his breath, Marnej sat up. His left hand was stained red with unripe berries where he had clawed through the undergrowth.
Dárja leaned against the tree trunk, rubbing her wrist. Her brow furrowed. “What?”
Marnej realized he’d been staring, trying to reconcile his misgivings with the fact that she’d once again helped him escape.
“You’re covered in blood,” he said, voicing the first thing that came to mind.
“Instead of gaping,” she said pointedly, “cut a branch so I can bind my ankle.”
Dárja’s rebuke stung more than Marnej cared to admit. It reminded him that they were allies by circumstance, not by choice. He bit back his retort, telling himself he could just walk away and leave her. He had no need for her sullen company. Yes, he owed his life to her, but he could discharge that debt. He would find a horse, put her on it, and point her north to her kind. But even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t that simple. Dárja was more than a way for him to escape. She was the only link to his father—and, more importantly, to the truth about himself.
Marnej picked up his sword from where it had landed in the crowberry bushes. He stalked off to the closest sapling, hacked at its trunk until it fell, and tossed it to Dárja.
In turn, she tossed him his belt.
Marnej caught the belt, noting the ugly smirk on Dárja’s face as she tore her tunic’s hem into strips. He fastened his belt about his waist, tucking his sword into its scabbard.
“I’d like to be near water,” she said.
Marnej glanced up. Dárja had braced both sides of her ankle with the bent sapling and had bound it with the cloth strips she’d torn from her tunic.
“In case you’re gone for a long time,” she said, looping her belt around herself while seated. “I’d like to be near water.”
Marnej bristled at the command in her voice. He turned on his heel, determined this time to walk away. He tromped through the crowberry bushes and made it as far as a tight clump of birch saplings before logic overtook his resolve. She was right. He could be gone for hours, perhaps days. It was also possible he could be caught by soldiers and never return. The slow-dawning appreciation of what that meant felt like a rock in the pit of his stomach.
“What’s he like?” Marnej asked, his heart pounding with the sudden need to know. “My father, I mean.”
A long silence stretched after his question in which only the wind and the birds answered him. When he could no longer bear the insult of being ignored, Marnej looked over at Dárja. He’d expected to see her smug expression staring back at him. Instead, she sat, looking lost, blinking, tears in her eyes. He froze, unsure of what to do. If she’d attacked him with a sword or a knife it would have been more welcome than her tears. He took a step forward. Dárja’s hands flew to her face and she roughly brushed them across her eyes.
“He’s driven by his love for you,” she said, her voice thick and broken.
Her words drove the breath from him like a punch to the gut. He’d been told Irjan was a traitor to the Brethren—a traitor to himself and his dead mother. All the dark stories and furtive whispers came rushing back to him, threatening to push him down to hi
s knees. He hated Irjan. He’d always hated him.
Marnej’s turmoil turned to anger. “How can you say that? He killed my mother. He left me. He turned his back on his duty!” Marnej paced in a circle, finding his way through the feelings that clouded his mind and choked his breath. “He spent his life . . .”
“He spent his life trying to get you back,” Dárja cut him off, her dark eyes narrow and hate-filled. “And when he failed, he spent the rest of his life in prison, punishing himself for how he had lost you. He didn’t turn his back on his duty.” She spat in disgust. “He sacrificed everything. For you! He sacrificed himself. Kalek. Me. We all paid a price for his duty to you—his precious son.”
Marnej whirled, ready to unleash every injury and injustice he’d kept inside of him all his life. “Don’t you . . .”
Dárja sat up straight. “Shut up!”
Marnej sputtered. “Don’t tell me . . .”
“There’s something moving,” she hissed. “Out beyond my sight.”
Hooves crashed through the forest undergrowth. Marnej spun in time to face a mounted soldier, charging at him. He rolled to one side, coming up on to his feet, aware that the rider was alone. At least for the moment.
Marnej hoped the rider’s momentum would carry man and mount into the pit, but the soldier stalled his horse, bringing it sharply around to bear down on him once again.
Marnej drew his sword, but was distracted by Dárja, who labored to get to her feet. She was drawing her weapon. She can’t stand and fight, he thought. The soldier charged again, his blade raised to strike. Marnej ducked in time as the clang of metal on metal reverberated through his arm. He ran around the horse, placing himself between Dárja and the soldier. The horse reared up. Its hooves clawed the air before coming down with such violence that the earth shook beneath Marnej’s feet. He readied himself. Both hands grabbed his hilt, his legs bent, poised to defend. The soldier sneered and wagged his sword tip. Then the sneer morphed into an ugly grin as the man’s attention shifted past him.
Marnej glanced over his shoulder. Dárja leaned against the trunk of a white birch with her sword drawn, her expression wooden. He couldn’t tell whether fear or determination ruled her, and he didn’t have time to think on it when the soldier spurred his horse, cutting around him, riding directly at Dárja.
The moment the horse skirted around Marnej, Dárja had an instant to decide how best to defend herself. With one hand she held her sword. With her free hand she drew the knife from her belt. Taking the short blade by its tip, she whipped her arm forward, sending the knife hurtling at the advancing soldier. The blade flew wide. The momentum pitched her to the ground, and pain shot up her leg, radiating through her whole body. Aware of her vulnerable position, Dárja rolled onto her back as she sliced the air with her sword. Angry sounds of rider and horse filled her head. She swung again, attempting to cut the horse’s legs out from under it. The animal reared, its hooves looming over her head, black and menacing. She rolled again, coming up against a tree.
Time seemed to slow as Dárja waited for the hooves to crash down upon her. Then the horse screamed, and the animal stumbled sideways away from her. Its head arched unnaturally. Its eyes were wild. She scrambled to her knees as the soldier fell from his saddle, a bone-handled knife jutting from his neck.
Marnej dove for the horse’s reins, barely catching them. The horse shrieked and reared again, then back-stepped, dragging Marnej across the ground. Then, in one swift motion, he pulled himself to standing and heaved himself into the saddle. The horse dropped its head and kicked wildly, wanting to shake him free. But Marnej held on until the animal surrendered with one last obdurate shake of its shaggy head.
Dárja stood, leaning against a tree, as the animal snorted and pawed the ground. She smelled the sweaty tang of the horse’s ebbing fear and wondered about its song, what it might sound like. But Marnej cut short her musing when he leaned down and stretched out his arm.
Dárja sheathed her sword, then scanned the area for the knife she’d thrown. She hated the idea of leaving a weapon behind, but there was no time to look for it. With one hand she took hold of Marnej’s arm and gracelessly pulled herself up behind the saddle rise. She’d just swung her good leg over the back of the horse’s rump when the animal started at the sound of far-off shouting. Dárja cried out in pain as her tender ankle banged into the horse’s flank.
Marnej twisted around to look at her.
She looped her arms around his waist. “Go! Just go!” she said.
He nudged the horse’s sides and the animal bolted into the rangy woods ahead.
Looking back over her shoulder, the forest was a green blur behind them.
“I think he was a scout,” she called out.
“We need to put as much distance between us and them as we can,” he said, his voice just audible above the horse’s hoof beats and the wind whipping past them.
Marnej leaned forward, pulling Dárja with him as he urged the animal to go faster. With her injured ankle bouncing, she cursed out loud the horse beneath her as she clenched her teeth to hold back a howl of pain.
Behind them, the sounds of trailing soldiers grew louder. Marnej tucked himself lower, wedging Dárja’s hands in the fold of his body. The saddle rise battered her ribs, crushing the breath she held. A faint whirring passed her ear, followed by a solid thump on a receding tree, and then another thump.
“They’re in bow shot range,” she managed to yell.
Marnej veered the horse sharply to the left and then right as arrows flew past them. Pine branches slashed them on both sides. Dárja thought she heard hooves behind her, but she didn’t dare look to see if the sounds were real or imagined.
Suddenly, Marnej sat up, bringing Dárja with him. His head shot back over his shoulder one way and then the other.
“Hold on tight,” he said and ducked down again.
“I am!” she yelled, her strength beginning to fail as her body drifted away from Marnej and the horse.
For one glorious moment, Dárja registered a reprieve from agony. Then she saw the earth fall away as the three of them flew over a ravine. Dárja screamed and was still screaming when she collided on the ground with Marnej and the horse.
It was twilight when Dárja awoke, lying beside a fire. Every part of her body ached. Even a shallow breath hurt. She eased herself up to sit, but her head spun like a spindle, and she immediately laid back down.
“What happened?” she croaked, her tongue thick and dry.
“You fell off the horse when we jumped over the gulley,” Marnej said, not meeting her eyes.
Then she remembered. The soldiers.
He raised his hand to calm her. “We’re safe,” he said, adding a branch to the fire.
A moment passed where Marnej disappeared in a pine-scented haze, then from behind the smoky veil he casually said, “I picked you up, and we rode on.”
Dárja closed her eyes. “The fire? How?”
“The soldier had supplies,” he said.
As Marnej spoke, Dárja became aware of the saddle blanket beneath her. Her hand brushed against the coarse wool. She nodded her head, thankful, but unable to say the words before darkness reclaimed her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MARNEJ POKED THE FIRE, listing the reasons why he should stay and why he should just go. Go and he would be free. Free of it all. His father. The Brethren. The lies, and the truth. Stay and he might be reunited with his father. Pathetic, he thought. He’d lived his whole life without his father. Why did he need him now? Indeed, why did he need him at all?
Marnej looked at Dárja, who slept. The flames of their fire lit her face. There was a softness in her features that was not evident when she was awake. He wondered what it had been like for her to grow up with his father. Had Irjan watched her sleep like this? Had he held her close and soothed her nightmares when she was little? No one had done that for him. His childhood fears and nightmares were his own to conquer or risk a beating.
He
poked the fire again, sending embers flying into the air. Whatever Dárja believed, his father was a traitor. He’d left his people to live with the Jápmea. He had chosen sides. If Irjan had truly wanted Marnej, he would’ve come back to the Brethren. Dárja had lauded his father’s sacrifice. But what had Irjan sacrificed? A father who loves his son should be with his son, not living among the Immortals.
Marnej leaned back to look at the sky, as though the faint stars could give him direction. But the rosy dusk offered him nothing but time to think. He rested his head on the crook of his arm and took a deep breath, closing his eyes, willing himself to sleep. The scent of crushed pine needles and decaying leaves, at once fresh and sour, held his awareness at the surface. He listened to the fire pop and sputter. Dárja shifted, the sound of her deep, even breathing momentarily interrupted.
Marnej opened his eyes. He couldn’t sleep. Not with this light sky, he thought. And not with soldiers lurking somewhere out there. But it was the growing sense that he’d made the wrong decision that caused him to sit up. I have no business being with an Immortal, he told himself. The Jápmea were his enemy. Maybe he couldn’t go back to the Brethren, and maybe he couldn’t change the fact some part of him was like her, but he was Olmmoš. He was human. That meant he wasn’t like her. He didn’t have to be like her. He didn’t need those voices and the Song to hide. He could take care of himself without them—without her.
Besides, she’s better off without me, he reasoned.
Without him around, Dárja could hide in the voices. She could travel north to her people on her own. Then she would be where she needed to be, and he would be where he needed to be. On his own. It’s for the best, he decided, rolling onto his feet. A trail of pine needles and leaves scattered as he walked to where he’d ground tied the foraging horse.
The horse raised its head at his approach, its ears twitching. Marnej reached out his hand and stroked the animal’s neck. The beast snuffled appreciatively. He looked over to where Dárja slept. He would leave her everything. He would just take the horse and ride west. His tracks would draw off the pursuing soldiers, and she would be safe. It was better this way. It was better for all of them this way.
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