It chilled her, more so than the biting wind or frigid winter’s night, to see so many as young as her amongst the pile of dead. Useless and small, they seemed, and yet they had still been handed a spear and told to fight. It reminded Mithrid a wider world existed outside the hovels of Troughwake, one that asked children to fight, and that it was marching on without her. She was at peace with that. To Mithrid, Troughwake was a hollow in a world of sea-fog she hoped would never lift.
Between the packed fingers of the crowd, she caught the eyes of the others. Bogran stared at her across the pit. Nearby, Remina and Littlest stood wrapped in the protective embrace of Mam Hag, her hands clamped over their eyes.
Mithrid was allowed to watch, and watch she did. She drank in the warmth of the fire as it crept to and fro across the corpse pile until the pit roared with flame.
As the fuel began to dwindle, Mithrid found Bogran once more amongst the crowd. His head kept twitching to the left, encouraging a look past the crowds and further along the beach.
Mithrid couldn’t make out his mouthings before the headman approached the pit to make the customary offering to Njord and his voracious sea. The old words.
‘Always and forever, to the sea. Waves break and tides wane, ships break asunder, split in twain. What the sea claims she yearns to eat, all drowned sailors kneel at her feet. Take their souls down to the deep, oh Njord. Let no evil touch them. We’ll hear their songs in crashing waves, laments of those in death’s cold accord. Always and forever, to the sea.’
‘To the sea,’ spoke the crowd, in monotonous unison.
Mithrid mouthed the words. She had never quite understood the offering. If the sea wanted to eat what she claimed, she shouldn’t have vomited it up on the beach.
‘And to the empire,’ somebody else called. That response was even more mechanical.
Her father tugged at her sleeve. Together they slipped into the departing crowd in silence. Mithrid looked for the gang in the press of people, many of which had the distinct reek of fish. At one point she saw Bogran, but he was whisked away as the queues for the ladders formed. Mithrid always imagined it as a siege, pretending they were an army of rogues assaulting the walls of a great fortress. If she’d had a wooden sword, she would have swung it.
Villagers peeled off onto their respective levels. Amidst the jostling, sharp nails grabbed Mithrid’s forearm. It was Remina Hag.
‘Midnight,’ she breathed as she brushed past her, no friendlier than a stranger.
Immediately seized by the claws of both dread and excitement, Mithrid chose the former and shook her head. Remina’s scowl faded amongst the crowd.
The click of the door shut out the bustle.
‘Bed,’ ordered her father, pointing to her cocoon of a room, its diminutive walls more cloth than wood.
Mithrid placed her hands on her hips. ‘Don’t you eat that beetle.’
He patted the box on the shelf. ‘It’s your mother’s.’
She watched him, playing suspicious for a moment.
Her fingers stank of the pit-fire. Of driftwood char and corpses. Mithrid shuddered, as if a ghost had wafted by her. Chewing one of the sickly mint leaves her father insisted on gathering, she splashed cold water on her face and scrubbed with sand.
The girl wrapped herself in her woollen blanket and kneaded some of the knots from her pillow with her head. Father came to stand at her curtains, hands thrust deep in pockets.
‘I…’ he harrumphed. ‘I am only stern with you because I care too much,’ Father replied. ‘You, you call us old ones, but another winter and you’ll be one of us. Soon enough, you’ll have to stop playing and start thinking like an elder. If you don’t grow, don’t learn, it might be you down in that pit. Just like Fisle.’ He hesitated, rare emotion finding its way to his weathered surface. ‘And I refuse to burn another soul I love. Your mother would say the same.’
Mithrid shut her eyes tightly, feeling the scar wrinkle. Saying no more, Father retreated, drawing the curtains shut and leaving her to sleep.
All Mithrid did was listen. She’d grown used to her father’s evening ceremony. The scrape of the chair to the spot by the window. The salty winds blowing through where he unlatched it. The pulling of the floorboard he thought she didn’t know about. And at last, the quiet, muffled squeaking of a cork being loosed from the mouth of a bottle.
An hour passed. Whenever Father shifted in his chair, or sipped too loudly on his firewine, Mithrid feigned snoring. Another hour, and it was he who slumbered, snoring with the indulgent, sonorous gurgling that only half a bottle of grog can yield. He sounded like a saw blade rattling back and forth across a rusty pipe.
Mithrid snuck from her bed to peek between the curtains. Her father’s balding head rested against the chair back. The bottle lingered in his hand, teetering on the floorboards. Mithrid couldn’t remember the last time he had actually fallen asleep in his bed. It was too big, he’d said of it one morning, when she had dared to press him about it.
She bit her lip once more, drawing blood from where she’d chewed it all evening, mulling over her father’s words. Warnings, more like. Threats. Again, Mithrid felt the fragility of her world, felt the carelessness of childhood slipping away. Duties and work and responsibility were abhorrent compared to races and fights and odd books washed up by the sea. If it was to slip from her grasp, she would hold on for long as she could.
With a quiet tut, Mithrid fetched her blanket and trod softly towards Father, tiptoeing over the spots in the floor that creaked. Careful not to wake him, she draped the blanket over his broad chest before looking at the fingernail of moon breaking through the clouds. Somewhere high on the cliff, a watchmen sounded a low note on a ship’s bell.
‘Midnight,’ Mithrid breathed, as she crept to the door. It required some patience to make sure the latch and bolt didn’t squeak, but at least the hinges were freshly greased. Mithrid had made sure of that the previous evening. Picking up her shoes and coat, she slipped into the night.
The bitter air took her breath away, Mithrid hurriedly donned her coat and forced her feet into her shoes as she walked. The walkway of boards and tarred rope was dark, empty, and Mithrid dashed along it, keeping an eye on the torch glow above. The watchmen were tired old souls who had eyes only for the sea or the clifftops. Pirates and marauders were the only things that caught their attention, not a gang of children up to no good.
Mithrid saw other shapes in the shadows, swarming to join her. Only four of them tonight: Remina, Bogran, and Bull.
They descended silently, jumping from the rungs and onto the wet sand. Clinging to the cliff face, they jogged along the beach, heads low and silence reigning. Only the sea and moon were witness to their creeping.
Only when they were far enough from view of Troughwake and tucked into a crevice in the rock, did Bogran speak.
Mithrid shrugged off her hood. ‘Where are the others?’
‘Crisk and Littlest could not be trusted with this. They’d only let it slip.’
‘Agreed,’ Remina whispered.
‘Think they found it?’ asked Mithrid, uttering the question they had all spent the day wondering. She saw the unease in the others’ wide eyes in the faint glow of the village. The pit was nearby, but its fires had long since died. It was now a black void in the beach.
Bull spoke up. ‘What if they burned it?’