I’D DO IT again. Even having to kill her, I’d do it again.
It was sweet to see them go down under the dark-hairs’ swords. They weren’t expecting anything, and they died like flies. Hah!
By all the gods that are, I am not an oath breaker. What were Swef’s people to me? Gaolers. I am, I was, a thrall. If the only freedom I could have was death, then I took it with both hands.
Better than thralling. Better than carrying muck and being used as an ox, as though I was no better. Better than being yelled at and struck at when I was too slow and never thanked, no matter how hard I tried.
Except by Friede. Oh, and that friend of hers, Wili. But it was Friede who set the example. She was so kind, always.
I didn’t expect her to hate me.
But I’d still do it again.
Because Swef was very loud, talking about the new land, the fresh land, the big land that had room for all. But it was too late for my people, wasn’t it? Too late for the ones the Ice King had already conquered, who had to go cap in hand to the southerners to beg for living room. My father went. We were a small valley. There weren’t enough of us to fight for new land. We kept to ourselves, we did, and that had worked well enough in the bountiful days, but when the King clawed our land away from us we had no allies to turn to.
So my father, who was chieftain, and his brother, who would have been lord of war if we’d fought, went to the Moot and asked for land. But none would give it. And then they asked for honorable service, as oath men to a chieftain. But none would give it. So rather than have their families starve, they agreed to thraldom, until they had worked back their price, which was the price of feeding them and housing them and clothing them, and so would never be worked back, not in a thousand generations, but they didn’t realize it then because they were not clever, like Swef. Not cunning, like Swef. Not evil.
I was fifteen. I had been the chieftain’s son and they made me do women’s work. I would have accepted a man’s job. I could have been a shepherd, or worked at a trade like smithing. Even being a tanner would have been honorable. But no, I had to feed the pigs their swill and carry chamber pots and scour cooking pans. It was shameful, and I hated them all. Except Friede, because she was kind to me and because her red hair reminded me of home.
My father and my uncle could not stand the shame. They raised their voices and then their hands to their captors and they were punished: the first time a beating, the second time the left hand cut off, the third time death from spearing. “I will keep no insolent servants,” Swef said in his pride. My mother killed herself that night and took my two baby sisters with her. Because she was a thrall they would not give them a proper funeral pyre. The wood was too precious, Swef said. They buried them, like the carcass of an animal gone off in the summer heat.
That was the moment I decided to kill Swef, if I could, when I could; as the clods of dirt covered my sisters’ shrouds and took my mother from my sight.
I said nothing. I did nothing. I worked hard and made him trust me. When the time came to select the staff for the new steading, there was no question but that I would go, too. He thought I was loyal, but I took no oath except the oath to make his death. That oath I kept.
When Hawk sought me out and asked me to lift the bars on the hall door, I was glad. But I made sure Friede would be safe. She would have been safe, too, if only she’d listened to me . . .
I only have one regret. I wish that I had let her kill me, because then I would have had a warrior’s death. At a woman’s hands, I know, but Friede had a heart as strong as any warrior’s, and I am sure the men she killed are feasting with Swith in his Hall.
But mostly I wish that the Ice King had been satisfied before he ever ate my home; before our beautiful valley was crushed and ground in his grasp. While I waited for them to drag me out to Acton, I set myself to remember all of it I could, because I am the only one who remembers. All the others are dead, and when I cease to remember, that valley, green and shining and lovely, will vanish altogether. Hawk’s people say there is no such thing as Swith’s Hall; that we will go onto rebirth if we have lived well. But I would rather not be reborn. I would rather go on remembering; go on keeping my valley alive, until the Ice Giants eat the sun.