‘I don’t think your uncle Robert likes me.’
Ash flipped back the blanket so Sighere could slide into the bed beside her. ‘Because he put us in separate rooms?’
‘That was my first clue.’ He nuzzled against her neck in the dark. ‘Will he cut my throat if he finds me in here with you?’
‘He won’t know. It’s the downside of having such a large estate. What goes on in the bowerhouses is forever a mystery.’
‘We have been here more than a week. When will he warm up to me? I’m likeable, aren’t I? You like me. Even those wretched hunting dogs like me.’ He slid his hand up her nightdress and stroked the curve of her hip. ‘He’s very protective of you.’
‘I look the most like my mother. His sister. He’s said it enough times. She died when she was a few years older than I am now. I think it’s hard for him.’ Perhaps that was all, but Ash suspected, too, that she aroused protective feelings in too many people, even Sighere. Sometimes she wanted to stamp her foot and shout that she had survived four years living in holes in the ground with an undermagician, that she could control the tide.
Or at least, she had been able to, in the past. She closed her eyes as Sighere stroked her, listening to the soft waves of the bay lapping in the distance. ‘I came here when I was a child,’ she said. ‘I had a cough that would not go away, and Father thought I would be better here where the weather was warmer and more humid. Ivy and Willow came with me, newborn and motherless. With two little babes to mind, nobody in the household cared much if I came or went and I ran quite wild. Then one day, they seemed to realise I wasn’t sick any more and sent me back to Blicstowe.’
‘Ran wild?’
‘Yes. Climbing trees, swimming naked, spending hours on the beach in the long summer evenings building cairns from the big flat rocks, seeing how many I could balance before it all toppled over. I found an injured gull once and brought it back and kept it in my room, but it died overnight. I was young so I slid it under the bed to hide it and got the rough edge of Myrtle’s tongue when it started to stink.’
Sighere’s hand had closed over her breast. ‘Swimming naked, eh?’
She pushed his hand away, laughing. ‘That’s all you heard?’
He sat up, threw back the covers. ‘Come on.’
‘Sighere, it’s autumn. It’s night time. We’ll freeze.’
‘Then we’ll come back here and warm up afterwards.’
Ash smiled up at him in the dark, then stood and kissed him. ‘Let’s go.’
They slipped out of the bowerhouse barefoot in their nightshirts and Ash immediately regretted her decision. The air was mercifully still, but the dew on the grass was icy. Strike and Stranger, the two little dogs who had belonged to Skalmir Hunter, followed them a little way down the path then wisely turned back to where it was warm. Ash and Sighere made their way down the path out of Robert’s estate, and then down the short but muddy road to the rocky beach. The stones were large and round, and they picked their way over them to the sand. The water was calm, shushing softly against the shore, and a half-moon refracted across the waves a long distance out.
Ash closed her eyes and inhaled. The smell of salt and seaweed, and inside her the smallest stirring of her magic, stiff and weak. But it was still there.
When she opened her eyes Sighere had already left his nightshirt on the sand and was wading out, his white buttocks catching the starlight. She laughed, pulled off her own clothes, and ran in after him. Every inch of her rose in goosebumps, her nipples pulled into peaks. She caught him around the middle and turned him to kiss her. She was waist deep in the unforgiving water; he up to his hard thighs.
‘Just don’t look down,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I’m not at my most impressive at this temperature.’
Then she leaned on him so they both fell into the water up to their necks, and then it became apparent that this was likely to be the stupidest thing they had ever done.
‘Sighere, I’m sure I’m going blue.’
‘Let’s go back inside.’
He was first out of the water, she withdrew slower, turning to consider the moon and the stars and the waves and feel that stir again. Her eyes went to the west. She thought about Linden’s map.
‘Are you coming?’ Sighere said.
She ran to catch up with him, scooped up her nightdress and took his hand. ‘Have you ever been to the Brencis?’
‘Why would anyone go to the Brencis? Nothing there but bones and birds.’
Naked and icy and dripping with autumn water, they quietly returned to Ash’s bower.
The Barrow’s End alehouse in the centre of town was heaving with drunkards as midnight approached, and Bluebell and her hearthband were among them.
The evening had started out solemnly, remembering their fallen colleagues and telling soft stories about them into the bottoms of their mead cups. But then the stories grew funnier and more outrageous, and the new members of the hearthband – Frida, Hroth and Hregen – struggled to keep up with the truth. When Hroth, the younger of the two brothers, asked Bluebell earnestly if Lofric really had successfully battled six men with a sword in each hand while drunk, she put away her smile and nodded slowly. ‘Why would you doubt my word?’
Intimidated, he shut up and believed her.
The night of drinking was also a way of welcoming her new thanes. Hroth and Hregen were tall enough to have to duck under the roof beams. They had gigantic feet. Hregen, the older, was dark-haired and scowly faced, while Hroth was almost pink-cheeked with sweetness. All that mattered to Bluebell was that they fought like champions, and they fought together well, their four arms becoming as effective as eight on the training field. The other was Frida, only daughter of a southern farmer, who had resisted every path set out for her and taught herself how to wield a blade so well that her father finally offered her to the Ælmessean army. Bluebell had watched her for over a year, and knew she had the strength, the skill and the intelligence to be part of the hearthband. With her mousy hair cropped short and nearly a full foot shorter than Hregen and Hroth, she almost looked like a young lad. If an enemy underestimated her, all the better. Sal had been moved into Kara’s position as third-in-command – second now that Sighere was away (and damn, didn’t Bluebell miss him: he was the one who always stayed sober enough to make sure she didn’t start a fight).
They were young. Sighere was the same age as her, and some of the lost thanes not much younger. But not a single member of this group had seen a twenty-fifth birthday and it made her, now in her thirties, more alert to the autumn’s chill.
Over by the blazing hearthpit, a drunken young couple danced to a harpist, and bodies bumped up against each other on their way to and from with cups and plates, their shadows making the firelight wheel and flicker. Bluebell could taste the peat smoke on her tongue, and the room was hot enough with fire and people to make sweat trickle between her breasts. Her companions’ faces were shining and flushed. The warmth and the noise whirled around her happily. These were the best of times, drunk in the company of her hearthband. Her very young hearthband.
Then somebody started shouting something about the fire. The voice came from the other side of the room so Bluebell felt no alarm. She assumed somebody had dropped something into the hearthpit. But then the panic began to spread and Bluebell stood, and could see no fire.
A round-cheeked woman stood at the open door of the alehouse. ‘Fire!’ she cried, and over the din Bluebell finally made out her words. ‘At the gatehouse!’
Bluebell was on her feet, her thanes in her wake, elbowing through the crowd. Outside, the bells were clanging in the dark. Sobriety and chill night air were on her all at once, and the blaze of firelight and smell of smoke drifted from across the square. Shouting and confusion, armed men running to and from the well to the gatehouse stairs. Bluebell ran towards them.
‘What happened?’ she barked.
‘Three travellers came to the gate. We thought they were pedlars,’ one of the men gasped at her, handing up a bucket of water. Another man took it and water slopped over the edge of the bucket and into Bluebell’s face.
She wiped it off with her sleeve. ‘They set this fire?’
‘With flaming arrows,’ he called, dashing back to the well. ‘Then they ran.’
‘Has someone gone after them?’
He jabbed a finger towards the open gate. Bluebell hurried over, and could see down the slope that two of her guards had a man on the ground, who was shrieking at them in a strange language.
Ærfolc language.
‘Come with me,’ she said to Sal, who followed her down the slope. She stopped where the Ærfolc fellow lay on the ground, and he fell silent when she arrived.
‘Speak our language,’ she said.
‘Rathcruick declares war on Ælmesse!’ he said.
‘Where are your friends?’
‘They got away, my lord,’ the guard said to her. ‘They’re light on their feet.’
She looked the guard up and down; his sash strained across his belly. ‘Hmm.’ Then she returned her attention to the woodlander. ‘Do you have anything else to say?’
‘Rathcruick declares war on Ælmesse!’ he spat. ‘Rathcruick declares war on Blicstowe and Queen Bluebell.’
Bluebell turned and stalked away.
‘Shall we kill him or imprison him?’ the guard called.
‘Let him go. I’m not afraid of him or Rathcruick,’ she said. The fire had been brought under control but it was clear the west gatehouse, only built last year, would have to be repaired, if not replaced.
‘Let him go?’ Sal said, clearly stunned.
Bluebell turned. She did not like Rathcruick. She did not trust Ærfolc and especially not Woodlanders. She already had one bogle charm to her name, and suspected some kind of mischief if she killed or kept the man. ‘This way, he tells Rathcruick we are not afraid.’
She strode back to the square, perfectly sober now and wishing Sighere and Ash were nearby to give good counsel. Rathcruick declaring war? What nonsense was that? What trouble was the petty little chieftain planning?
Within a week, repairs began on the watchtowers. The clouds and fog had lifted to a bright cool day, and Bluebell was running drills with the standing army in the damp fields behind the giants’ ruins. As well as these full-time soldiers, she also commanded another eight hundred in the king’s army: men and women who were ordinarily farmers and brewers and builders and idle sons of merchants, and who trained for two days in every month. Combined at fifteen hundred soldiers, it was the largest and best-equipped army in Thyrsland. The idea of Rathcruick declaring war was ridiculous. He had a tribe of thirty at most. Yet the fires had aroused an itch of worry in the back of her mind that she couldn’t quite scratch away.
The field was divided into quadrants: targets for spears and throwing axes; hand-to-hand combat practice with spears, swords and shields; formation drills; and a muddy corner where the soldiers ran up and down as fast as they could while carrying heavy loads without slipping, dodging stones fired at them from slings. Everyone rotated through the quadrants twice, and Bluebell strode between them, occasionally pushing in to correct someone or to show off: nobody could throw an axe with her precision and strength and part of being a much beloved leader meant provoking slack-jawed admiration from time to time.
She stayed out of the mud, though. She had nothing to prove in the mud. She was born sure-footed. Unlike poor Rose, who had spent her childhood tripping over her own feet. Bluebell smiled thinking about her sister, about the childhood they’d shared. Ash too, although she’d been quiet and conciliatory and hadn’t participated in the violent quarrels.
Bluebell stomped up the slope to the edge of the field and watched from above for a while. Sal was trying very hard to impress her, working with the swordsmen. He held that a good swordsman should be able to graze an opponent’s eyebrow in training with faultless precision, but his training group remained unconvinced. Bluebell had no doubt Sal was able to perform such a feat, but somebody’s eyeballs would be on the grass by the end of the day if he kept insisting. The rest of her hearthband were in among the soldiers. Frida was brilliant with the formation group, commanding shield walls and flanking manoeuvres quickly and tightly, knocking her spear on the helm of anyone who broke the line.
Bluebell was about to give the command for the second last switch for the day when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned, peered at the man picking his way over the puddles in the white stone ruins. He was tall and pinch-faced, and she knew him from somewhere.
‘My lord,’ he said, kneeling before her.
‘Cadwell,’ she said in surprise. ‘Why have you come?’ Cadwell was alderman of Æcstede, a hunting and logging town outside an oak forest half-a-day’s travel north.
He stood. ‘We have trouble,’ he replied, and she knew what he was going to say before he said it.
‘It’s Ærfolc, isn’t it?’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘How did you know?’
‘We had some warning, but didn’t take it seriously. What are they doing, setting fire to things? Pissing in the corners like dogs marking territory?’
He shook his head. ‘We are under attack. They emerge from the forest and we engage them and they simply disappear back into the trees. We have no standing guard and not enough of us to chase them into the forest.’
‘But are they not a small group?’
‘They are a hundred,’ he said, but his eyes flickered.
‘A hundred? You do not sound certain.’
‘I have not seen them,’ he confessed.
Bluebell disdained nothing more than leaders who did not go to war. ‘But your men have seen a hundred?’
‘Some say a hundred.’
‘And some say?’
‘Ten. Twenty.’ He shook his head. ‘All we know is they have killed hunters and loggers, raided homes, and seem to be everywhere at once and then nowhere at all. We need you.’
Rathcruick was not lying then. Ælmesse was under attack. By ten, or twenty, or a hundred men, who emerged and disappeared into the forest.
Ælmesse was under attack.
‘We will mobilise at dawn,’ she said to him. ‘You can ride back with us, join us in battle.’
He rubbed his hip theatrically. ‘I am not fit for war any more.’
Bluebell eyed him reprovingly. The problem was not his hip; it was his heart. ‘I see. Perhaps you can ride back swiftly this evening and tell them we are on our way.’
Bluebell brought Snowy, Gytha and her hearthband to a war meeting in the state room that afternoon. Now she felt Sighere’s absence keenly, and Ash’s too: even without her magic, her sister understood these devils; she could see the pitfalls Bluebell was blind to.
The wind had picked up and bumped the shutters softly. Torchlight flickered around the room and a greasy tallow candle on the table sat at the corner of a vellum map of Æcstede and its surrounds. The town was surrounded on three sides by forest, and many hunters lived inside the forest itself, on plots of wooded land marked out by ancient boundary stones. Neighbours to wolves: they were hard people.
‘We will have to go into the forest after them,’ Bluebell said, pacing the room.
‘They’ll be sitting in trees with bows and arrows,’ Gytha said. ‘They will lay traps.’
‘Or worse, he has something in the forest that we have not seen or even imagined yet,’ Sal said. ‘A troll, maybe.’
‘Trolls have never been seen this far south,’ Frida said.
‘Doesn’t mean they don’t have one.’
Bluebell shushed them. ‘Sal’s right. They may have something lying in wait for us. But we cannot draw them out for they simply won’t come. They will stay in the trees and they will kill more hunters.’ Her eyes flicked to Snowy’s profile. He had been a hunter, unprotected in his little house in the woods. ‘We have to go in.’
Snowy, who had been staring at the map, looked up at her. ‘Trolls. Arrows. These aren’t your greatest threats. You know what he will try to do.’
Bluebell did know. ‘If he draws us into his side of the forest, at least we can defeat him there. And if we are not back in three days, you send for Rowan to get us out.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Hregen asked.
‘Rathcruick has the power to open and control crossings,’ Snowy explained. ‘Stone monuments that you may not even see until you are upon them.’
‘How do we go in safely then, my lord?’ Gytha asked.
‘You aren’t coming,’ Bluebell said. ‘You’ll stay here and take charge of the city again.’
‘But I could come this time. It’s only a few days away.’
‘No. I’m not making your babe motherless.’
‘No,’ Bluebell said, more forcefully, and Gytha glowered at her. ‘And as for how we do it safely? War isn’t safe. But I’ll take four hundred with me.’
‘Four hundred?’ Frida said.
‘Yes, and whether that’s four for each of their warriors or forty, I do not care. We will smash him and his tribe to pulp, and that will be the end of Rathcruick. We may not be sneaking scoundrels like them, but we are many and we have the sturdiest shields and the strongest spears and the fastest feet.’
Snowy was shaking his head. ‘But, Bluebell, maybe that is his game. Trap you in the woods and come for Blicstowe.’
‘Yes, yes. Maybe it is his game. But we are talking about Ærfolc here. There will be half an army left here still … even with only our walls we can keep out the Ærfolc for a week or more, if they could organise themselves to lay siege. Say Rathcruick does have a hundred. Say he managed to drum up support from some of the others. They will dash their brains against the walls of Blicstowe for days and get nowhere. And by then, Rowan will have us out.’
Snowy opened his mouth to speak again, but Bluebell quieted him with a tiny shake of her head. He knew better than to gainsay her in front of her hearthband.
She turned to the others. ‘Sal, take my thanes and go and find me my four hundred. Older warriors, less likely to get spooked. Organise them into bands and tell them to be ready to march at first light. Gytha, go home and get some sleep: you look wretched. Get that babe off your tits so your husband can give it calf’s milk at night. I need to sit here and think about formations for woodland fighting. Father took me on a few small campaigns, nothing like these numbers.’
One by one they left, Gytha pointedly slamming the door, leaving only Snowy. He came to her and stilled her pacing with two strong hands on her shoulders. ‘Do not underestimate Rathcruick.’
‘Four hundred men is not underestimating him.’ She smiled. ‘Do you think he has a troll, too?’
Snowy laughed. ‘I don’t like you going to battle.’
‘That’s as foolish as not liking a dog for licking its balls. Going into battle is what I do, Snowy.’
‘I know.’
‘At least it’s close. A day or two, Woodlanders crushed into the undergrowth, and I’ll be home again. What is he thinking, Snowy? What is going on under those ridiculous blackberry twigs he wears? He cannot possibly think he can defeat me.’
His eyes went to the bogle axe, which she now wore at her belt.
‘Something unexpected. That’s what Niamma said.’ She kept it close for fear that any further attempts to get rid of it would see it found buried in her husband’s skull one night. ‘Snowy, I have no choice. Ælmesse is under attack. Good families who pay their taxes to us to protect them are being killed. I must go.’
‘I know.’
‘Two days. If there is no word from us, then ride directly to Druimach and get Rowan.’
‘I will.’ He touched her beloved cheek. ‘Take all care.’
‘Oh yes,’ Bluebell said. ‘I will be marching into that forest with my eyes wide open.’
Skalmir didn’t watch the army withdraw from the city at dawn. He had heard them, a subdued hubbub of voices and ringing armour where they had gathered in the city square. The standing army all lived in the upper quarter of the city, their houses provided for them by the king. Snowy knew he had no place when Bluebell was organising her army. He had learned to let her go and be without her, to stifle his fears. He lay in bed and closed his eyes, maybe even dozed a little longer. Then he heard the gates open, the withdrawing feet, the clanging as the gates closed again.
He rose, dressed, and went to the hall kitchen to find some breakfast. The cooks always had porridge or fresh flat cakes for those in the family compound. Today’s cook, a tiny little woman named Saxa who had taken far too much of a shine to him, loaded his plate with cheese and oatcakes and cold meat until he had to still her wrist to make her stop. She giggled, and he gladly left her behind to sit in a corner of the hall and eat, while two guards leaned against the door talking softly to each other about how they wished they’d been called to the battle today.
Then he whistled to Thrymm and headed to town. He was overseeing the rethatching of some of the poorer houses in the western-most parts. The day did not warm. He trudged home in the middle of the day only to find the square deep in commotion. From the army houses, soldiers were emerging, saying goodbyes to tearful wives and uncomprehending children. The clink of mail and the march of feet for the second time this day; only a few hours after Bluebell departed. But this was the remains of the standing army, and Skalmir wondered what had happened to make them assemble.
Up at the huge round stone that marked the centre of the square, Gytha was shouting orders. Skalmir’s blood cooled. Something wasn’t right.
‘Gytha,’ he called, pushing his way through the soldiers. ‘Gytha, what is happening?’
‘We had word this morning that Rathcruick and his army are attacking from the south,’ she said. ‘Directly out of the wood that surrounds Delgar. They’ve set fire to the village and are heading this way.’
‘But that is in the opposite direction to Æcstede.’
‘Do you not see? This was the trick that Rathcruick set us up for,’ Gytha said, raising her voice over the clang of weapons and shields. ‘He caused some trickery that made them see a hundred men when there were only ten, to lure Bluebell and half the army out of town so they could attack us from the other direction. Delgar is only two hours from here, one and a half if we push hard.’
‘How many are you taking?’
‘Four hundred. It’s the number Bluebell took.’
‘But that will leave us unprotected.’
Gytha turned her face to him with an exasperated expression. ‘You heard Bluebell last night. Our walls can keep a tiny Ærfolc army out, and I’m bringing a hundred from the king’s reserve up here in case. I will be a matter of hours away. We will return by nightfall or sooner if we hear you are in trouble.’ She laughed. ‘Triumphant in war. Maybe Bluebell will take me seriously again.’
Skalmir opened his mouth to protest again, but she held up a sturdy finger.
‘Snowy, you are much loved, but you are not a soldier, and you are not a member of Bluebell’s war band. This is my decision to make and I am doing precisely what your wife would do. They are only Ærfolc.’ Her eyes roamed over the assembling army. ‘Ah, it feels good to be in the world again.’
‘Back by nightfall?’ he said.
‘I am certain of it. We will need a warm place to drink to our victory. I’m leaving Wigar at the front gatehouse in charge. He will alert you if there is anything to worry about. Go about your day. And let me get about mine, yes? I have an army to organise.’
Skalmir stepped back as she pushed past him. She seemed to be relishing the role of being a war leader, after being stuck home with a baby.
‘Don’t trust Rathcruick!’ Skalmir called after her.
She raised her hand but didn’t turn around. ‘Well, obviously. He is our enemy.’
Go about your day. Bluebell had said it to him often enough, and often enough he’d submerged his worry and got on with life. But this time, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t push it all the way down.