Morgunn clutched the knife to her chest and met my gaze. “There is someone outside, I swear it.”
I nodded. I grabbed my cloak from the nail by the left door and pulled the hood over my head. No flame would withstand the rain, so I left the lamps and kept my dagger. I walked down the Hall steps slowly, then moved forward into the shadows, one foot after the other, toward the barn and the low, sod-covered summer storehouse.
Ten steps, twenty, fifty …
My eyes began to adjust to the dark.
I saw her.
A girl my own age, perhaps younger. She was slumped on the ground, her back pressed to the outer wall of the barn. She wore a dark cloak over an undyed tunic, no boots. Her bare feet were slick with mud.
“Are you a priest?” I shouted.
She didn’t move. Lightning blazed, and I saw the girl’s face, bloodied and bruised.
“Are you a priest?” I asked again. “One of the Fremish wolves?”
Her arm snapped forward. She grabbed the edge of my tunic and yanked me to the ground. I dropped the dagger, and mud smacked against my open palms. My knees sank into the muck, and rain hit the back of my neck.
The girl turned her head, and her hood fell back. Her scalp was naked, scraped bare to the skin.
She was no wolf-priest.
She was a shaven-skulled Pig Witch.
“Witch,” I said, shouting it into her face, into the rain, into the wind. “Witch.”
“No,” she screamed back. “It’s not what you think.”
We stared at each other in the dark. Raindrops splashed the top of her skull and slid down her brow. She wiped them away with a flick of her hand.
“They were going to burn us,” she said. “They were going to burn us alive.”
THREE
The Pig Witches were Stregas—sorcerers—who lived on the Boar Islands in the Quell Sea. They scraped their heads clean and powdered their faces and scalps with coral dust.
My mother had often warned me never to speak to a Pig Witch, never to let one near me, never to witness their prophecies, or buy their pig magic. She’d said that their spells were unnatural and evil and that even a Strega’s shadow had power.
But my mother was dead, and I would make my own decisions now.
I brought the girl into the Hall, silent and dripping, and sat her at the long table near the fire. I put a plate of bread and cheese in front of her and then poured her a small horn of Vite.
She loosened the clasp of her cloak, and it dropped to the floor. She downed the liquor in one long drink and then began to eat quietly and quickly. She’d been hungry. Very hungry.
The girl had a strong chin and clever eyes that seemed very large under her bare skull. She was my height and had the elegant, graceful bearing of a jarl’s wife, with the strong arms and hard waist of a farm laborer. Four purple bruises lined her neck, each the size of a finger.
She finished the last of the food, pushed back the plate, and then looked at me with a direct gaze that displayed both gratitude and pride. Her eyes were the same smoky shade as Viggo’s and rimmed with red from exhaustion.
She’s been through Hel, I thought, but she’s not beaten yet.
“My name is Gyda,” she said.
“I’m Torvi, and this is my sister, Morgunn.”
Morgunn leaned against the far edge of the table, chin down, black curls hiding her face. She still held the cheese knife in her right hand, blade at her side, where the girl could see it.
My sister looked up when I said her name. She narrowed her eyes and turned to Gyda. “You’ve eaten our food and drunk our liquor. It’s time to talk, Strega. Who tried to burn you, and why?”
“A pack of wolf-priests tried to burn me, the same ones who’ve been ransacking the Middlelands this last month.” Gyda glanced toward me, then back to Morgunn. “The yew berry poison makes them love the smell of fire and the sound of screams. Burning me would have brought those filthy curs great joy. I’m glad the gods denied them the pleasure.”
The girl ran her palms over her bare scalp and suddenly began to laugh. It was deep and hearty, a full, body-shaking laugh that echoed down the hall and bounced off the rafters.
Morgunn and I began to laugh with her. We couldn’t help it—her laughter was such a cheerful sound. Free and wild.
Who was this strange girl we’d plucked from the storm and taken into our home?
Gyda rose to her feet and looked at Morgunn. “Put down your knife, girl. I won’t harm you.” She paused. “I’m out of the rain. I’m fed and warm and away from those wolves. I may look exhausted, but my heart beats with jubilation. I didn’t expect to live through the night.”
Morgunn set her knife down slowly but kept it within reach.
“And I’m no Pig Witch,” Gyda added. “I’m a druid—I was born on the Boar Islands, but we druids are no friends to the Stregas. We shave our heads to protect ourselves from their magic, but that is all you will find in common between us.”
“Tell us how a Boar Island druid ended up outside our Hall in the middle of a rainstorm,” I said, “and we’ll stop pestering you with questions, at least for the night. I swear it.”
Gyda paused so long I thought she wasn’t going to answer. She took a sip of Vite and then looked at me. “This pack of wolf-priests is led by a woman named Uther. She’s as tall as the goddess Howl and as brawny as the goddess Tor. She leads a band of ragged, starving girls. They are all fearlessly devoted to the wolf-priest goddess Skroll. I’ve been tracking this pack since Owl Lake, seventy miles to the south.”
“Have you sworn an oath to hunt wolves, like the Quicks?” I scanned the girl’s body, but I saw no dagger sheathed at her waist and none at either calf.
“No. I’m looking for a sword, not vengeance—but I will tell you more about this later.” She paused again. “I finally caught up with the wolf-priests in the nearby town of Jord, where they stopped long enough to set a fire.”
I felt Morgunn tense next to me. “What did they burn?” she asked.
“Everyone. Everything. Uther believed the town to be sheltering a Quick who had killed seven of her wolves.”
“Were they?” I asked.
“Yes.” Gyda drew closer to the hearth and stretched out her palms to warm them. The mud on her feet had dried and was starting to flake off onto the floor. “The Quick was just a boy of seventeen, with deep blue eyes and a smile like sunshine. I know because I tried to rescue him. I stole a dagger and stabbed two of the howling, poison-drunk guards before they caught me.”
“How did you escape?” I asked.
Gyda ran her palm across her skull. She did not want to answer my questions—the strain of it was making her right hand twitch. “Uther stripped us of our blades and our boots and tied us to two stakes so that the wolves could watch us burn. But before the fire began to lick our feet and turn our skin to ash…” She paused. “A thunderstorm blew in and put out the flames.”
Morgunn shifted slightly. “Did you raise the thunderstorm, Pig Witch?”
“I’m no Pig Witch, damn it all.” Gyda laughed, but it was quieter this time, with a touch of sadness. “The clouds covered the moon. A strong wind and a hard rain hid everything else. The night went as dark as death. Lightning sparked across the sky and struck one of the wolves. She burst into flames. In the chaos, I wriggled free of my bonds and then cut the Quick’s. We ran together full out for miles. A group of the wolves followed us, despite the storm.”