When I climbed out of the water, I was numb with cold. I ran to the line of laundry strung behind the Hall, near the vegetable garden. Elna never had a chance to gather the clothing before the storm hit. I beat the blood back into my thighs with my palms, and then I grabbed a large wool cloth, wrapped it around myself, and went inside.
I crossed the Hall, leaving a trail of wet footprints. I walked down the east corridor, stopped at the second door, and knocked.
The door opened slowly. “Is it over?”
I nodded, and my sister grabbed me. Her face pressed into my shoulder, and her fingers clenched my tunic at the waist, squeezing the cloth into her fists.
TWO
Aslaug used to say that all great tales begin with a journey and a quest.
She would lower her voice and whisper stories of Vorseland and the world beyond our steading. She told me of the Jade Fells, a wild, secretive people who lived in the Skal Mountains. They slept during the day and roamed the night like wolves, drinking blood and eating the hearts of their dead.
She told me of the wolf-priests of Frem and the Relic Hunters of Finnmark and the hedge-fighters and Butcher Bards of Elshland.
She told me of the evil Pig Witches, of the mysterious Drakes, of the Bone Women and the Whistlers and the Gothi nuns.
Each winter, her rich voice blended with the sound of the crackling wood in the hearth fire as she recounted the tragedy of the Child Wizards and the Moss Witch Massacre of the Western Hills.
She told me the stories of the Thirteen Crones—a fellowship of cunning female jarls who ruled Vorseland when Aslaug’s grandmother was a child.
She told me all the tales, both ancient and modern. She told me of the first Witch War, and the second, which was called the Salt and Marsh War. She told me how, on a warm summer night during a rainstorm, the Cut-Queen and her army of Pig Witches attacked the Sea Witches of the Merrows in a great battle of magic and blood. The Salt and Marsh Witch War raged across Vorseland for years. The Cut-Queen would die in battle, and peace would return for a handful of seasons, but there was always another resurrection, always another battle.
Finally, after the Battle of the Hawk and Hummingbird, the green-cloaked Sea Witches defeated the brown-cloaked Cut-Queen and her followers. They captured the queen, and this time the Sea Witches beheaded her, boiled her body down to the bone, and crushed her bones into dust. She did not rise again.
Juniper, the Sea Witch queen, took her women back to the famous Scorch Trees in the Merrows, and the second Vorse Witch War came to an end.
I would press my cheek to Aslaug’s neck as she spoke and breathe in the smell of leather and wool and straw. I would tell her that I wanted to be a Sea Witch like Juniper when I grew older. I would tell her that I wanted to fight wolf-priests and go on quests and find adventure and cross an Endless Forest. I would tell her I wanted to win a jarldom, like one of the Thirteen Crones.
“You can do anything you set your mind to, little Torvi,” she’d say. Unlike my mother, Aslaug believed I was capable of great things.
Her stories had thrilled me as a child, made my blood sing. I would shiver, despite being near the fire, and Aslaug would wrap me in her strong arms and tell me of the Boneless Mercies—women who had roamed Vorseland for centuries, killing the old and the sick and then finally dying themselves, forgotten, poor, and alone. On and on and on, until a young Boneless Mercy named Frey pursued glory and found a monster.
Bards in Great Halls everywhere sang of Frey and her companions—Aslaug said she knew a dozen or so Frey songs, and there were at least a dozen more.
My favorite stories were always about Frey. Her fight with the last Vorseland giant Logafell in a cave under the Skal Mountains. Her cunning and bravery during the second Witch War. Her travels with the Aradia Witches through the Sand Sea. Her time roaming the Green Wild Forest with Indigo and the Quicks.
“Will there ever be another Vorse hero like Frey?” I’d ask Aslaug, not for the first time.
“Yes,” she’d whisper. “When we need her, she will come.”
* * *
Morgunn and I sat on a thick wool rug in the main room of the Hall, near the central hearth. We were eating a simple supper of bread and aged cheese.
Outside, a spring thunderstorm howled unhindered across our stretch of green Ranger Hills.
I used my thumb to pick up crumbs from my wooden plate, my elbow touching my sister’s. The two of us were alone on a thousand-acre farm. We hadn’t seen another living soul in four weeks.
I hadn’t been to Trow since the snow sickness, though it was only ten miles to the north. I’d watched smoke rising from that direction a dozen times over the last several days.
Before he died, Viggo told me that a pack of marauding Fremish wolf-priests was moving through Vorseland. The wolf-priests did this every few years, but never had they stayed so long or burned so many hamlets.
“I was at the Evil Stepmother Tavern in Trow last night, Torvi, and I spoke to some neighboring shepherds.”
I was wrapped in Viggo’s arms, my chest pressed into his, and his low voice vibrated through my body when he spoke.
“Those flame-hungry wolf-priests set a village on fire thirty miles from here. They’ve left the Borders and are moving through Cloven Tell.”
“Should we be worried? I thought they burned only a few villages, never isolated farms. One came to the Hall a few months ago, but Mother quickly took care of her.”
Viggo sighed and moved his hands over my hips. “I don’t think so. The other shepherds at the tavern informed me that Jarl Meath had hired bands of Quicks to roam the Middlelands, slaying wolves.” He paused. “Usually the wolf-priests are too high on yew berry poison to do much more than set a few fires before the Quicks drive them back south. But I gather that one of their leaders is more tenacious than in previous years, less poison-addled, more ambitious. I’ll keep an eye out for them from the hills—your farm is hidden from the main road, and all should be well. Just be ready to flee the Hall if needed.”
I nodded, my lips sliding against his skin. “Stop worrying, shepherd. You’ve got a naked girl in your bed. Do something about it.”
He turned me over and kissed me from my chin to my ankles. Cold skin and warm lips and beating hearts. I forgot about wolves and fires and the rest of the world.
Two days later, Viggo was dead.
I sat up and threw another log onto the hearth fire. Morgunn inched closer to the flames. She was fourteen, four years younger than me and shorter by five inches. We had the same dark, curly hair, but she had a small, short nose and round cheeks, whereas my nose was long and straight, and my chin as pointed as my ears, like an Elver. Morgunn was short and soft, and I was tall and strong.
My sister’s eyes were an odd shade of indigo like my own. Our irises shone violet in moonlight, a trait we’d inherited from our father.
Morgunn’s eyes looked innocent still, in a way I knew mine no longer did.
We shared the work now. We cooked and cleaned and fed the animals and scrubbed our clothes clean in the stream. We were surviving. More than surviving.
We slept when we wanted, ate when we wanted, and no one from the outside world bothered us. So far.
“Torvi?”
“Yes?”
“You’re worried. I can see it in your eyes. It’s the smoke, isn’t it.”