“Do you believe your fate would have been different had you been with these men?” he asked, his tone measured. “Cowardly is looking at the truth and calling it a lie.”
With his comrades staring at him, the youth puffed himself up to argue.
Osku cut him off. “From the time they take their first step, the Brethren begin training to kill. None of us stand a chance against that. No freshly weaned pup. No veteran of battle. Without the strength of numbers we will be killed like these men. And you? You’ll be just another body for us to drop at your mother’s threshold.”
The men grew restless.
“What are we to do then?” a voice rang out.
“We send the fastest back to bring the rearguard forward,” Niilán said without hesitation. “When we have our army behind us, we go after these killers and hope that we are not the ones caught by surprise.”
The general murmur of assent heartened Niilán, who silently wondered whether reason or fear drove these men around him. Aloud he asked, “Who among you consider yourselves fastest?”
A few hands rose.
“Go,” he said. “Bring up the rearguard. Explain the condition of these scouts, and impress upon the commander a need for haste.”
The three men who had raised their hands turned and swiftly wove their way through the white birches until they disappeared into the deep shadows of sloping pines.
“Who has the sharpest eye?” Niilán asked. “And who have been called the keenest hunters?”
More hands rose. Coarse mocking caused some to withdraw their upstretched arms.
“Spread out in pairs,” Niilán said. “Look for signs that might tell us something of the Piijkij and the direction they went.”
The volunteers scattered.
Those left behind waited for Niilán’s instruction.
“You two,” he pointed at the youth who had protested earlier and another standing next to him, “lay the bodies out as best you can. Let us give them what small respect there is to give.”
Niilán divided the rest of the duties among the remaining men. “If fortune smiles upon us,” he said, “the rearguard will be quick.” Then with a lingering look to the dead, he added, “But we may also be here longer than we might like.”
With the men set into motion, Niilán had a moment to consider both what he surmised and what it implied. The Brethren had been routed at their fortress. Those Piijkij who survived had not hesitated to kill these soldiers—soldiers they might have once led into battle. Niilán had served under their command. He had witnessed their deadly skills. They were unmatched. He knew he had been right to call for support before continuing on, and only the untried would fault him. The problem was, he now belonged to an army filled with fledglings and upstarts where rank ruled over knowledge.
CHAPTER TEN
DÁRJA SHIELDED HER EYES to look up at Marnej, seated on the shaggy horse. Relief flooded through her, followed by bitterness.
“You were going to leave?” he asked, eyeing her newly hewn staff.
His incredulous expression proved too much for Dárja. “I thought you had left,” she said, her rancor rising to the fore.
Marnej jumped off the horse to land in front of her. She took an uncertain step back, and readied herself for a fight, as she had with the bear.
Marnej stood his ground but did not advance. His neck flushed red beneath the layer of grime. “That’s the second time you have dishonored me.” His voice rose. “You were asleep. I went to scout the area, to see if we were still followed. Which we’re not—being followed, that is. We’re two leagues from farms to the east and there are hunter’s tracks to the west of us.”
Dárja opened her mouth but couldn’t trust herself to speak. She wanted to scream. She wanted to wipe away the arrogant set to his features. Instead, she limped around him toward the horse.
“I wouldn’t have left you,” he said to her back.
Dárja snorted but kept moving forward one painful step at a time.
“Are all your kind so filled with suspicion that you can’t believe what you have been told?”
Marnej’s derisive tone stopped her in her tracks.
“You expect me to believe the word of a Piijkij?” she jeered, struggling to turn around.
“I’m not a Piijkij!” he shouted.
“You will always be a Piijkij.” She spat out his title as though it was a nasty taste in her mouth.
“Is that what you think of my father too?” he pressed.
Dárja’s reply died on her tongue. Marnej’s breath came and went in a quick succession that made his nostrils flare.
“We’re wasting time arguing,” she said, turning with a hopping half-step to face the horse again.
“You didn’t answer me,” Marnej said, repeating his question. “Is that what you believed of my father?”
“No,” she said without facing him.
“I thought not.”
The contempt in Marnej’s sharp laugh set Dárja’s teeth on edge.
“You hold him in high regard and you condemn me when we’re both Piijkij,” Marnej continued to harangue her. “I didn’t choose to be a Hunter. You can lay that at my father’s feet. But here I am, turning my back on everything I’ve ever known to help you escape. You. A Jápmea.”
Dárja spun, nearly stumbling. “Call yourself that ugly name too!” She leaned heavily on her staff. “I didn’t ask you to help me escape.”
“No. But without me, you’d still be trussed up like a pig on a spit,” he said.
“And without me, those Olmmoš that you call family would have torn you limb from limb,” she snapped.
Marnej took a step forward to stand over her. “Well, neither one of us would be here if you hadn’t been on the battlefield, pretending to be a warrior.”
Dárja’s eyes narrowed. “Pretending to be a warrior? You ask those Olmmoš soldiers I killed if I was pretending. I only wish I’d had a chance to kill you. I would’ve, you know. I still might.”
Marnej didn’t doubt Dárja for a moment. But her threat rankled, and her eyes continued to follow him as if she were the wolf and he the prey.
“What have I done to you?” he demanded, his voice rising. “Is it because I’m Olmmoš and you’re Jápmea?”
Dárja’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “I’m Jápmemeahttun. Or can’t your ill-formed Olmmoš mouth say it properly.”
Marnej inwardly damned the crisis of conscience that had made him return to her side. He should’ve kept on riding west. There’d been nothing craven about leaving her.
“I know you would’ve as happily gutted me as talked to me,” he spat. “But you and I are strangers. We’re nothing to each other.”
“I am nothing to you,” Dárja said, her emphasis thick with disdain. “That’s right. I’ve always been nothing, compared to you.”
Marnej wanted to shake her. He wanted to wipe away the injustice of her scorn and hatred. “I don’t understand.”
Dárja reared back, as if she thought he might strike her. “It doesn’t matter.”
Marnej stood his ground. “Yes! It does. You blame me for something I know nothing about.”
Dárja leaned forward within inches of Marnej’s face. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“Then take the horse,” he snapped, stepping back from her. “Go back to your Immortals.”
“Immortals,” she scoffed. “Is that what you think? What you Olmmoš believe?” Her laugh came out harsh and ugly. “Haven’t your kind killed enough of us to know that we’re not immortal?”
Marnej started to argue, but Dárja spoke right over him. “We’re not immortal. Our lives are just different than yours.”
“Then help me understand!” Marnej shouted, his frustration fueled by the sense of loss he’d kept locked away inside of him.
She shook her head. Her long braid shivered down her back. “Even if you could understand, there’s nothing you can do,” she repeated, shifting her weight with effort. Her sh
oulders rolled forward and she swayed.
Marnej reached out to grab her arm, but Dárja straightened. She tightened her grip on her staff, her knuckles turning white with the strain.
“We should go,” she said.
Marnej stood rooted, stinging from the bite in her tone. If spiteful determination is all that’s needed, he thought, then left off the rest as he watched her halting progress toward the horse. Each labored step drew out more of his own shame.
He stepped forward and slid a hand under her elbow. He’d expected her to wrench her arm away. Instead, she wordlessly accepted his help as he shifted the saddle blanket from her shoulder to his.
Marnej snuck a glance at Dárja as he helped her lean against the horse’s neck. Her eyes were squeezed tight, her expression pinched. He tossed the wool blanket onto the horse’s back, recalling how she’d laid upon on it, sleeping as he’d ridden away. His guilt settled into disgust in the pit of his stomach. It doesn’t matter if she can find the voices if she can’t walk, he admonished himself.
Marnej straightened and smoothed the blanket’s folds. When the horse shifted, Dárja rebalanced herself with her wooden staff to stand apart. The silence between them became unbearable. It felt like an accusation. One that he couldn’t deny. He briefly thought to ask her what she’d meant when she’d said there was nothing that could be done. But now that they stood so close together it seemed impossible to speak of it. Everything was complicated. Nothing was clear. He almost missed the days of his boyhood when the rules were set and he had only to worry about his training. But even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t true. His boyhood had been anything but simple.
“It will be easier for us to ride together without the saddle,” he began, looking to her for an objection. When none came, he continued. “We should avoid the cartways, but it would be best if we found the voices.”
Dárja’s shoulders rose and fell with a long sigh. “It won’t work. Neither of us is skilled enough to bring the horse into the Song with us.”
The animal, which had begun to graze upon the low shrubs, raised its head. Marnej patted the animal’s neck to soothe it, but his own irritation with a new and unfamiliar world made him want to ride into whatever awaited them, and be done with it.
“But, I saw you and my father and the other Jápmemeahttun,” Marnej argued, his voice controlled as he carefully pronounced Jápmemeahttun. “You appeared out of nowhere astride your reindeer.”
Dárja turned her head enough for Marnej to see her profile. “The binna we ride have a free spirit. They’ve spent their lives with us. We know their song and they know ours.” She turned to fully face him. “I can’t really explain it beyond that. I know this horse has a part in the Song of All but I don’t understand it. It would take the skill and strength of someone fair older than me, an almai or a Taistelijan, to bring it in against its will. It’s complicated.”
Marnej’s confused expression made Dárja aware that her explanation had only raised more questions. She tried to remember how she’d brought herself and her binna in and out of the Song of All when they’d migrated north to escape the Olmmoš. The recollection immediately brought Irjan to mind, and her heart skipped a beat, reliving her panic when Irjan had suddenly spurred his reindeer into the snowy forest, before disappearing. She’d followed, fearing she’d never see him again. But she couldn’t recall exactly how it had happened. It felt as if it was by instinct that both she and her binna acted as one. One moment she was riding after Irjan with the voices around her, and the next she was in the silence of the Olmmoš realm.
She hadn’t the time then to think about how strange it had felt because she’d no sooner crossed over than she was fighting off Olmmoš soldiers. The hurt she’d felt realizing that Irjan had not been escaping from the Jápmemeahttun, but rather seeking out his son threatened to crush her once again. Only this time she couldn’t draw her blade on Marnej as an enemy Olmmoš and the one who could take her beloved bieba from her because he was helping her return home. And, there was no Irjan here to intercede between them, to command Dárja to return to the Song, even as Marnej pushed him to fight. Irjan was in the Pohjola, waiting. Perhaps not for her, but at least for his son.
Dárja’s regret escaped her in a long shaky sigh. “Besides,” she continued, “we’re so far from the Pohjola and there are so few voices left that it’s been hard for even the two of us to move into the Song.”
Marnej drew his hand across his forehead, as if he were wiping away the furrows. But the tension in his shoulders told Dárja her answer still didn’t sit well with him.
She didn’t want to argue anymore. And she didn’t want to admit she’d never really given the matter much thought. She’d never had to.
“I don’t understand,” Marnej said, more a confession than an affront. “You talk about the Song as if I should understand. But I don’t understand. I hear voices. Yours. Mine. Others that I don’t recognize.”
Dárja could see that his agitation was building, and she cut him off, but this time gently. “The Song of All is everything. It’s all the voices. Everything has a song.” She put her hand up to forestall his interrupting her. “Those voices you hear, the one’s you don’t recognize, those are the rocks, the trees, the streams. They are the birds and animals. The Jápmemeahttun. They are everything around us.”
He gave her a sharp look. “You didn’t say Olmmoš.”
Off-guard, Dárja hesitated. “No. I suppose not.” She paused again. “I’ve never heard an Olmmoš within the Song of All. I don’t know why the Olmmoš don’t have a part. But if they did, we wouldn’t be safe.”
What she didn’t say was that this was why the Elders had kept Irjan a prisoner, and why they would also fear Marnej. Irjan and Marnej were both Jápmemeahttun, but they were both also Olmmoš, Marnej even more so.
“Could we just try?” he asked.
It took Dárja a moment to realize that Marnej had returned to his earlier question about the horse. And his earnest expression reassured her that he didn’t seek to provoke her. Rather, he held a glimmer of hope. She didn’t share his optimism, but it made her willing to consider his request.
“All right,” she said, keeping her reluctance well-hidden. “Help me onto the horse, then climb up behind me.” Dárja didn’t know if being seated on the horse would make it easier to bring the animal into the Song of All, but she dared to sound confident.
“Close your eyes,” she said. “Focus on the voices. Center yourself on them and follow them.”
Dárja closed her eyes, desperate to hear the soothing sounds of the Song, and to feel a part of something again, instead of feeling alone and besieged. She tried to ignore Marnej’s physical presence behind her, the twitch of his leg muscles as he attempted to get comfortable, and the heat of his breath as he finally relaxed. Dárja pushed herself to go deeper within and shut herself off from the Outside. Then, as if emerging from the cool depths of a lake, voices came rushing into her, one overlaid upon another. She added her own to them. She felt the energy of the horse beneath her, the vibrancy of the trees surrounding them, and then, like unsettling intrusion, she felt Marnej. She didn’t have to turn around to know that he was within the Song.
She felt as much as she heard his question. “Now what?”
Rather than answering Marnej, Dárja focused on the horse’s throbbing pulse just beneath its skin, trying to reach out to it with her own life force. Recalling the animal’s sad chorus, and the longing it contained, she pushed her own song into the background, hoping the horse’s song would come to the fore and give her the answer she needed. When it broke through it was a low murmur. A muttering.
I was once free.
I ran with the herd.
I was once free.
I ran with the herd.
Then the song swelled, so forceful and so foreign, more feelings than words. But gradually Dárja made sense of it.
We ran with the sun.
We ran with the stars.
&nbs
p; Wind rushed.
Grasses bent.
Snow fell.
We are now tied.
We are now bound.
Back swayed.
Flesh cut.
Our path is not our own.
In answer, Dárja cast into the Song of All an image of the horse, running across the tundra, master of its life.
Be with us now.
Be free once again.
The horse shook its head with an agitated whinny. Muttering replaced the powerful images.
I was once free.
I ran with the herd.
I was once free.
I ran with the herd.
Dárja encouraged the horse once more, but was again disappointed. She allowed herself another moment in the Song to bask in the connection of everything around her, even the stubborn horse, even Marnej, his song as much a part of the All as hers. Then Marnej moved behind her and she sensed that he was urging the horse forward. The horse, however, stood still, eating berries and leaves.
“It won’t move,” Marnej said.
Dárja almost pointed out it was a horse, and what did he expect. But she thought better of it.
“It’s not in the Song. I can’t make it enter and I can’t bring it in,” she said. “If we’re to travel by horse, then we’ll need to travel outside of the Song.”
Marnej shifted behind her. She imagined he’d squared his shoulders. She’d seen him do it on several occasions in their short time together. She was coming to understand it was as much a gesture of acquiescence as resolve.
“We have a great distance to travel,” he said.
He was right. Even if they could ride the length of the long day, they were still many days from the Pohjola.
Dárja listened one more time for Irjan’s song. Please. Her wistful plea echoed in her mind. When he didn’t answer, she let her own internal voice go quiet. The other voices grew distant and faint. Cut off again, the vibrant thrum of her world collapsed into the oppressive silence of the Olmmoš realm. But this time her stomach held and her limbs recovered more readily than they had previously. She wondered if it became easier with each shift. The prospect unnerved her. Did it mean she was becoming less Jápmemeahttun? She didn’t want to be Outside. She didn’t want it to be easy. She wanted to be home. She wanted to be back with Kalek and Okta, and most of all, with Irjan. She swallowed back the lump that had formed in her throat.
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