THERE WAS A marching song playing at a dirge pace in her head — in Baluch’s head. Bramble felt relief at being back with Baluch, despite the severe cold. Vision came back with a rush of white, dazzling. Snow, everywhere. Rough ground underfoot, invisible under the snow. Cliffs on one side, a high, rocky white slope on the other. Oh gods, Bramble thought. We’re in Death Pass again! On the slope lay tons of snow which would crash down to bury them all at the slightest sound. Even though Bramble knew that the raiders — the invaders — had made it through unscathed, the sight of that burden of snow made her nervous, threatening with the same kind of impartial animosity as the Ice King. The silence was intense; the men pushed through the snow so slowly that even Baluch’s sharp ears could only just catch a faint susurration at each step.
Acton was in front of Baluch, his gold head shrouded in hat and scarf, his shield slung over his shoulder, but his back unmistakable as he waded slowly through the breast-high snow. For a moment, hysteria flickered in Bramble. How had she become so shagging familiar with Acton’s back? But she was, or Baluch was, or both. Baluch could see the profile of the man next to Acton — it was Asgarn, which vaguely surprised Bramble. Asgarn hadn’t seemed the type to volunteer for something as chancy as this. Perhaps, she thought, the lord of war picked his men. Part of Bramble found that amusing; that Asgarn might have been caught in his own snare, and then she wondered why she assumed Asgarn had been laying traps, why she just plain didn’t like him.
Acton and Asgarn led, just as in all the ballads, the two thickset men ploughing gradually, silently, toward the gap between cliff and slope, toward the triangle of ridiculously blue sky. Bramble had always imagined this day as being cloudy and gray, but it was a beautiful day, crisp and sunny.
The man next to Baluch stumbled and flung out a hand. Baluch grabbed it and hauled him back up. The man’s gasp sounded overly loud and the entire band paused, terrified, in mid-step. A thin trickle of snow slid off a rock on the lower slope. They froze in place, waiting. Baluch was praying, Bramble realized, opening himself to the gods, but the gods refused to come. There was only a long moment of fear before the trickle of snow stopped.
They began moving again, slower than before despite the cold. Baluch’s hands and feet were numb but his cheeks burnt and his mouth ached every time he drew a breath. For a while it seemed that the end of the pass was as far away as ever, that they would trudge through burning cold forever. But gradually, inevitably, the triangle of blue grew larger. Then the snow was not breast-high, but waist-high. Then thigh-high. Knee-high. Then the triangle of blue stretched to cover the whole sky, and they were out of the pass, standing on a lip of ground looking down into the valley, slapping each other on the back in congratulation, but silent still.
Silent, because below them in the morning light lay Hawk’s steading. Smoke rose from its chimneys, but no one was about yet. There were no guards. The steading was undefended in early spring, because Death Pass was its defense. Silently, Acton drew his sword and settled his shield onto his left arm. The others did the same. Acton nodded to them, all fifty of them, and slapped Baluch on the arm. For a moment his face was serious, then he grinned at them, the joy of battle alight on his face. Baluch smiled involuntarily and hefted his sword. Bramble could feel the tension in him but also the excitement and, with it this time, a sense of grim purpose. Acton saw it in his face and nodded, a darker expression in his eyes.
“Let us take our revenge,” he said so quietly that the others had to strain to hear. “Make them regret their treachery.”
“Yes,” Asgarn said. “Kill them all.”
Baluch raised his sword high in acknowledgment, and the others copied him. The sun shimmered off their blades and blinded Baluch; and for a moment it became morning sunlight on water and the water rose to blind Bramble in its turn.
Blood in her mouth. Blood trickling down from her lip onto her chin. Her back was against a wall, and her legs were unsteady. The woman — yes, this was definitely a woman, a young woman clutching a blanket to her naked chest — lifted a hand to wipe away the blood. The movement brought back sight, and Bramble wished it hadn’t. They were inside, in a small wooden room with a shuttered window and a bed. It smelled of woodsmoke and sex and fear.
The girl who had giggled, Edwa, lay on the bed, trying to pull her shift down around her buttocks. She was bleeding, too, the blood oozing down her inner thighs. There were bruises on her legs and arms. Her long hair was loose and snarled.
“Please . . .” Edwa said, raising her face in supplication to the man who stood in front of her, his left arm raised high as though about to strike her. Hawk. Edwa’s face was dark with bruises all down one side. Hawk lowered his arm and began to undo his trouser drawstring.
“Come to your senses, have you?” he snarled.
Bramble could feel the woman whose eyes she saw through move her lips, her tongue, wanting to say something, to protest. But she had clearly learned that protesting brought nothing but blows. She dug her fingers into her own palms in an effort to keep quiet.
Bramble desperately wanted to be somewhere else, to not see. She was shocked to the core. Hawk was black-haired. Black-eyed. Like her. She had known that he and his men were using the girls, but to see it. To see a Traveler, as he looked to her, abuse a gold-haired girl… It went against all her prejudices, all that she wanted to be true.
Come on, Acton, she thought, where are you? Get in here and save them. Then she realized that she was urging on the invasion. She didn’t know which made her sicker, the impending rape or her own thoughts.
The noise started outside: yells, the crash of swords and shields, screams. Hawk spun around at the sounds, his back to both women. He fumbled to pull up his trousers.
The woman dropped the blanket to the floor and jumped on his back as he bent over. She grabbed his belt knife at the same time. He straightened explosively, trying to throw her off. She locked her arms around his neck and strained to pull his head back, but he was too strong.
“Edwa!” she yelled, “take the knife.”
Hawk was trying to drag the woman off his back, but she was holding on with all her strength. Edwa put out both hands for the knife. The man whirled and the knife slashed across the back of her hand, drawing blood. She ignored the wound and his clubbing hands and grabbed the knife, holding it confidently, as though she had been longing for this moment. With both hands now free, the woman dragged back his head. As soon as his throat was bared, Edwa raised the knife and plunged it deeply into his neck. Blood spurted out, poured out all over her. Hawk fell to the floor with a wet gasp, dead already. Bramble was ashamed of how satisfied she felt as he collapsed.
The other woman ran to the door and shut it, then began looking around for something to barricade it with. Her red-gold braid lay over her wrist, matted and untidy. Bramble was abruptly aware of her smell. It had been a long time since anyone had let these girls wash.
“Help me move the bed against the door, Edwa,” the woman ordered, but Edwa just stood, looking at the knife and the body.
The woman took her by the shoulder and shook her. “Don’t you understand? They’ve come for us! I knew Acton wouldn’t leave us here! All we have to do is keep Hawk’s men out until after it’s over and we’ll be safe.”
Edwa focused on her face, her blue eyes becoming less clouded. “They’re here?” she whispered. The woman nodded. She began to dress herself hurriedly, dragging on shift and dress and snatching up a man’s leather belt to girdle herself. She shook Edwa again, and this time Edwa moved, but not to help. She went down on one knee and got Hawk’s other knife out of his boot. It was much longer, a dagger for fighting rather than the eating knife they had used to kill him.
The woman nodded. “Good. We might need that.” She went to the other side of the bed and began to push it toward the door. “Come and help, Edwa! We can’t let Hawk’s men use us as hostages!”
Edwa was staring at the two knives, one in each hand. She put the smaller one against her wrist and drew it down slowly. Blood welled.
Bramble expected the woman by the bed to jump up and grab the knife, but she stayed very still. “Edwa?” she said gently.
“They mustn’t see, Wili. They mustn’t see me,” Edwa whispered, finding a new place to cut and pushing the knife in.
Wili straightened up from the bed and turned to look fully at Edwa. The blond girl was painted in blood. Her hair was as dark as a Traveler’s now, and her face was smeared and purple with bruises. Bramble could feel Wili’s heart beating in deep, heavy thumps. Her sight blurred as the girl’s eyes filled with tears.
“That won’t kill you, Edwa,” she said with a break in her voice. “It’ll just make you more bloody.”
Edwa looked up at Wili. Her eyes were dry and bleak. She nodded slowly, as though Wili had told her something hard to understand, but important. She dropped the belt knife and, bringing her other hand up in the same movement, thrust the long dagger in under her breastbone. Then she crumpled to the floor.
Wili sat down on the bed, as though it didn’t matter anymore if Hawk’s men found her. She stared at her hands. The nails were bitten down to the quick. Bramble could feel the knot of grief between her breastbone and her throat, and feel something else as well, a kind of heaviness that made movement impossible, even the movement that would be needed to cry.
The door slammed back and Acton sprang into the room, his sword and shield ready, blood and sweat running down his cheeks. He saw Wili first, and shuddered to a halt, visibly changing from berserker to concerned friend.
“Wili! Are you all right?” He closed the door behind him.
Wili’s eyes overflowed and she started to cry. Not the choking sobs of grief, Bramble thought. That would come later. These were the tears of relief. She brushed them away almost angrily and stood up.
“I’ll survive,” she said, and looked at Edwa.
Acton knelt beside Edwa’s body. He put down his shield but not his sword and reached his shield hand to touch the knife hilt that stood out from her shift. It had an antler handle, Bramble saw, left rough for a better grip. Edwa’s hold had loosened and her hands had fallen away to lie empty and soft on the wooden floor. Acton closed the dull blue eyes and looked up at Wili.
“She didn’t want you to see her — anyone to see her, after what had happened.” Wili’s voice was astonishingly calm, the tears gone.
“You didn’t stop her.” His tone wasn’t accusing, not even wondering. He just said it.
“Her choice,” Wili said. “I understood why.”
Acton nodded slowly and stood up. He picked up his shield and gripped his sword more firmly. Bramble saw the fury build in him again and, like Wili, she understood it.
“Close the door behind me,” he said. “I’ll be back for you.”
Wili nodded. He faced the doorway and then hesitated, turned back, as if he were impelled to ask.
“Friede?”
Wili shook her head. “She died in the attack. Took three of them with her, too, because they weren’t expecting a cripple to fight.” Her voice was bitter. “I should have fought harder. Maybe they would have killed me as well.”
Acton raised his hand in denial, the sword pointing up. His eyes were dark with fury and determination. “You are the treasure we have saved from this wreck,” he said. Bramble felt the warmth spread out from Wili’s gut at his words, as though she had been waiting for a judgment, a death sentence, and had instead received a reprieve.
Acton went out the door in a rush, back into the shouting and screaming and hard, thudding noise. “Kill them all!” he shouted as he went, sword ready.
Wili began to cry again, sinking down to the floor and letting her head droop. The tears washed Bramble away gently, like a soft slide into sleep.
All she could feel was her heart, beating too fast, as though it was going to spasm. She couldn’t catch her breath. It took all her strength, but she pulled back from the mind she was in, from the body’s distress. She could see little except some cracks of light. A small room. Maybe a storeroom. Her hands were bound with cloth. The air was cold; her breath was the warmest thing here. His breath; it was a man, again, but she couldn’t tell whom. His mind had a faintly familiar taste to it, but he was so frightened that all personality had been stamped out.
A door in the wall opposite crashed back and a red-headed man appeared. He was followed by a stocky blond with big shoulders. Together, they hoisted the man under the armpits and dragged him out the door, then threw him down onto the cold ground of a yard behind a big building. Hawk’s house? Bramble wondered.
Acton and Baluch were standing there, their clothes smirched with blood, their eyes red with exhaustion. Acton was cleaning his sword with a snatch of cloth, paying great attention to the detail around the hilt. Baluch looked at him in concern, and then cast a quick glance at a corner of the yard. The man she inhabited looked too, and shuddered. A woman’s body lay sprawled against the wall of an animal shed. Bramble could hear pigs inside squealing for food, that terrible squeal that sounded like they were having their throats cut.
Acton was very definitely not looking at the body of the woman. The red-head and the blond came back to the yard and dragged the corpse away, and only then did Acton look up, in time to see Asgarn pass the two and come on without a glance. Acton sheathed his sword as though he were glad to put it away.
Asgarn was in high spirits. He was just as bloody as the others, and just as tired, but he was smiling in satisfaction.
“That’s a good day’s work,” he said. He clapped a hand on Baluch’s shoulder. “Maybe you’ll make a song of it, eh? The Saga of Hawk’s Hall.”
Baluch shook his head. “The Saga of Death Pass, maybe.” Bramble wanted to smile. He’d clearly been thinking about it already, probably while they were making the trek through the pass.
“There’s no one left?” Acton said.
“Except this one.” Asgarn casually kicked the man on the ground. “When you say, ‘Kill them all’ that’s what we do.” Acton winced. “You did want them all dead, didn’t you?”
“The men,” Acton said. “I wanted the warriors killed.”
“Ah . . .” Asgarn shrugged. “Well, next time you’d better tell us that first, lord of war.” He turned away and kicked the man again, hard, on the shoulder. “So, what do we do with him, then? You want me to finish him off?”
“No!” Acton said. He looked at the man more closely, and was surprised. “You’re one of ours, aren’t you? One of Swef’s thralls? Uen, isn’t that your name?”
Baluch looked at Uen in surprise. Uen was looking up in hope. Bramble could feel the welling up of pleading; he was trying not to beg. She recognized his mind now. The thrall who had been ploughing the day Hawk came to visit Swef’s steading.
“One of ours?” Baluch said. His voice was dark. Shaking. With compassion, or something else?
Acton reached down to help Uen up, but Baluch put out a hand and stopped him.
“If he’s one of ours,” he said, his voice flat, his hand on his sword hilt, “why was he the one who killed Friede?”
Acton froze and pulled his hand back. Put it on his sword hilt. Uen’s heart had started to thump and leap wildly with panic, and memories flooded his mind. Bramble caught at them with determination. She had liked Friede. She wanted to know the truth.
Uen’s memory was one of noise and shouting and rushing; rushing through Swef’s big, new-smelling hall, its walls barely smoothed. The rushes on the floor made him stumble, he was running so fast and, unlike the men around him, who were just hacking at anyone they met, he was searching for someone. Friede. He was frantic, looking for her, running and dodging because he had no time to fight, he had to find her first, before any of Hawk’s men. But he was too late.
She was in the kitchen. She had wedged herself in a corner and was using a stool as a shield and her crutch as a weapon. So many years of hobbling had made her arms strong. There was a man on the ground in front of her, his skull stove in. She was keeping the other two off, but only barely. One man’s sword cut into the stool and as he wrenched it back the stool came with it, dragged out of her hand.
“Stop!” Uen said, and leapt toward them, pulling on the men’s shoulders with wild hands. “Stop! This one is mine.”
They turned in exasperation. “What?”
“My lord Hawk gave her to me. She’s mine!”
They sneered at him, dark eyes scornful. “Oh, it’s the traitor. Hah! Take her, then, oath breaker.” Their backs were toward Friede and she took the opportunity to hit twice more, hard, with full control. They dropped like felled bullocks and Friede and Uen were left staring at each other.
“Traitor?” she said with venom.
“They were going to attack anyway,” Uen said, desperate. “This way I got to save you.”
She raised her crutch and hit at him, but he pushed it sideways.
“Oath breaker!” she shouted.
“I never took an oath! I’m a thrall, remember!”
She paused, considering, her green eyes cold. “That’s true. Good. You’ll go to the cold hells, then, not to Swith’s Hall.” She raised her crutch again deliberately.
“I love you,” he said.
“I spit on you,” she said, and brought the crutch down.
A scream rose in Uen’s throat and he brought his sword around in a great flat circle. He had no skill, but he was very strong from years of physical work. The stroke almost cut her in half. Then he fell on his knees and gathered her into his arms and wept.
Now, in the courtyard, he wept again, the tears a mingling of grief and fear. He held out supplicating hands to Acton. His bladder loosened and urine gushed down his legs, but he barely felt it.
Acton drew his sword in one movement and swung it, much as Uen had swung. As the sword bit into Uen’s neck the water rose, but it was blood this time and it was warm, sickeningly warm, so that Bramble wanted to vomit at the touch and at the memory of the cold fury on Acton’s face and the thwarted desire on Baluch’s. He had wanted to kill Uen himself, but he had waited too long to act. As the blood swamped her she heard Asgarn laughing.
“That’s it! Kill ’em all,” he said.