I had to save them. They were my one victory, my one purpose in all of this. When I looked at them, I no longer saw Eidr’s bloodied, limp hand or Yske’s soulless eyes. I saw only a friend and a child who deserved a chance at life. I saw someone I could save.
I gathered moisture from the dewy grass and stroked it across the baby’s lips. He began a frail, wheezing lament.
“Let me feed him.”
Sixnit slowly sat up, her flat cheeks pale over narrow chin and cracked lips. My heart twisted at the sight of her, but I managed a smile and passed her her son.
The Algatt guard glanced over, but he did not stop her as she unlaced the front of her shift, took the baby in her arms and offered him a breast. He did not latch on, fumbling and flailing feebly, but her skin and the scent of milk soon soothed him.
“Thank you.” Sixnit’s voice was soft, toneless in a way that told me she was as raw and shocked as I was. She looked at the guards askance, but her eyes did not focus until her son began to feed. Then something of herself seemed to return; she turned her vacant gaze down and stroked his fine black hair.
I thought that she would say more, would at least ask about her husband, but she didn’t. She knew his fate, and she knew the reality of our situation as well as anyone else in the tent.
I looked down at my knees. “What did you call him? I… I wasn’t there for the naming.”
“There wasn’t one.” In response to my quizzical look, she clarified, “We were waiting for you to come back.”
Neither Eidr nor Yske had mentioned that, likely to spare me the burden. I opened my mouth to say something in return, but my words paled. I’d been at the child’s birth, so it was appropriate that I would be there at his dedication, but not necessary – especially considering the reason for my absence. It was a gesture of kindness and friendship that, in the end, had excluded the baby’s own father from the ceremony.
“Quiet,” one of the guards finally commanded, her hard-lined face framed by smears of blue paint – nearly black in the distant firelight – and the axe and short spear she wore across her back.
We lapsed into silence. The other captives glanced at us curiously, but no one else dared to speak. Finally, when the guards had changed and night closed in, an older man broke the stillness. He was Erd, Albor’s chief blacksmith and one of my father’s distant cousins, though little family resemblance or intimacy remained between us. His muscular arms were bound behind his back – the Algatt had only bound those they perceived as a threat – and the lines on his face permanently entrenched with grey.
“When they realize what you are, they’ll kill you, Eangi.”
The mention of my title made my skin crawl. My gaze flicked to the guards.
When I didn’t say anything, Erd rubbed his bearded chin against one shoulder. “I saw you head up the mountain.”
I weighed his words, trying to uncover what he wasn’t saying. He didn’t know my crime, no one but Sixnit did, but he was the one who cut my collar off. That meant he’d seen just how furious Svala had been with me.
Sixnit watched me quietly.
“I made the climb,” I affirmed.
“Why?” the man asked.
I hesitated. If any of the villagers found out that I had been banished for letting an Algatt traveler into the Hall of Smoke, a week before they razed the village, I was as good as dead.
Guilt welled up in my throat. I had offered Omaskat hospitality on sacred ground and blatantly ignored a charge from Eang to kill him. No wonder the goddess had let the town fall.
Gods below. Was all this really my fault?
“It’s an Eangi matter. Svala had a vision,” I evaded, battling to keep my voice even and that chasm of grief from devouring me. “An owl called me up the mountain.”
All Eangen were familiar with Eang’s owl messengers. They were not truly owls, at least not according to legend; they were constructs of feathers and divine magic, infused with the final breaths of one of Eang’s sisters, who had been executed for a grave betrayal.
“But you gave the dead their rites?” One of the other young women asked, her voice hoarse from crying. “When you came back?”
The guilt plunged back into my stomach, making me want to retch. “No.”
My people stared at me, anguish and horror written across their faces. Even Sixnit, already pallid, lost a little more of her color.
“There was no time,” I said, desperate to explain my failure to myself and to them. In truth, there was no excuse. I should have begun the rites as soon as I stepped into the village. I had been too focused on Eidr and Sixnit and the baby and escape, and now the souls of our loved ones were bound to the earth until I or an Eangi from another village could release them.
Release them to a High Hall where I could not follow, not until Eang forgave me. But what hope did I have for that, now?
“Eang spared her,” Sixnit asserted. “That’s why she was up the mountain.”
“The Algatt spared her and us, and only for slavery,” an older woman, Ama, scoffed. She, like Erd, was another of my distant relations. “Saw that babe in your arms, I say, and think you’ve got more in you, both of you. You’ll be whelping Algatt come mid-winter.”
I ground my teeth to stifle a stab of fear. The rest of the younger women looked equally perturbed, though we were aware of our destiny. We had been raised in its shadow as, year after year, women and girls vanished into the Algatt mountains. Most of them were never found.
“Eang spared her,” Sixnit reasserted, her voice growing tight.
“If Eang wanted to spare someone, it would not have been Hessa,” Ama snapped. “She would have given us Svala or Ardam. But Ardam is dead in the Hall, and Svala’s likely just as dead in the woods.”
“The woods?” I repeated numbly. Why would the High Priestess of the Eangi be in the woods? Had she been who the riders were searching for, outside the burning town?
“Yes, last anyone saw her, that’s where she was. Praying and unarmed.” Ama’s eyes bored into me for another hateful moment. Then her attention snagged on a miserable little boy, who had begun to cry quietly in a corner of the tent. “So, with Hessa we will die. Don’t cry, child. Bravery, now.”
The possibility of Svala’s escape, and the terrifying hope that came with it, died in the pain of Ama’s insult. It burned, yet Sixnit’s defense of me burned still deeper. Yes, Eang had spared me – but only for punishment.
* * *
That night the rain resumed. The Algatt put us in a tent but permitted no fire and did not lower the flaps, leaving us exposed to the splatter of rain and the watchful eye of the guards. We were given food – rations of bread and hard cheeses, stolen from our own village. The older women organized and distributed it, feeding our bound companions by hand.
Outside the wall of heavy skins, fires flickered. Some of the Algatt sang, recalling the history of their alpine god Gadr, the battles of past years and anticipation of their future rest under Gadr’s Great Mountain in the High Halls. Some of their tales blended with ours; stories of how Gadr had been born of the Gods of the Old World and how he, together with Eang and a dozen others, had slain their forebears and claimed the High Halls for the Gods of the New World.
But that was where the similarities ended. Where Eangen songs went on to tell of how Eang came to rule over those Gods of the New World, the Algatt’s songs spoke of how Gadr had justly rebelled and come to dominate the mountains of the north. Unable to slay Eang, he set his worshipers, the Algatt, to raid and harry the Eangen until the end of days.