Interlude
Where’s Hessa’s son?” A large boy sauntered into the ring of pounded earth. His wolfish eyes scanned the crowd and his body was honed by labor and training, but his cheeks were still soft and wore only the first hint of a beard. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen—four years older than Berin and I were on this hot, dusty festival day. Those lupine eyes, however, were too old for his face. They were sharp and guarded, hiding a ravenous hollow beneath.
A boy with much to prove, my mother would say.
Every muscle in my body tensed. There were many strangers in Albor, gathered for the summer festival that had brought celebrants, warriors, and priests from across Eangen to the Morning Hall. A gathering like this naturally led to games and rivalry, and, as befit a people still named after the dead Goddess of War, martial contest.
Crowds gathered all around Albor’s walls, backed by lines of tents and wagons and tethered horses. The air smelled of dust, sweat, and cooking food. Faces from every Eangen clan pressed in, marked out by slight variations in their hair and clothing. Pale-skinned Algatt and dark-skinned Soulderni were almost as numerous, and ale flowed under the hot sun.
“I’m here.” Berin shouldered through the throng and stopped with his toes at the edge of the ring—to step over the rope barrier would be to accept a challenge and commit to a fight.
At eleven my brother was already tall, with broadening shoulders and a deceptive thinness to his face that tricked the eye into thinking him much older. Still, he was a child, and murmurs rippled through the assembly.
Seera shoved up to my side, followed closely by Ovir and Esan.
“Who’s that?” Seera asked me in a low voice.
“I’ve no idea,” I whispered back, shuffling to the side to give her more room. She didn’t really need it—where the approach of womanhood had gifted me round cheeks and broadening hips, it had made her lean and willowy. But her posture demanded space, and I was in no mood to rile her.
“Do you live up to your mother’s legacy, boy?” the young man in the ring asked, pacing and eyeing my brother in a way that made my skin crawl.
Seera snorted and exchanged a toothy grin with Ovir and Esan.
“What an assling,” Esan muttered. At fourteen he was as gangly as Seera, though taller, and bore the disproportionately large hands, feet, and nose of many boys his age. Ovir was stockier, inching closer to the muscular frame and heavy strength that would mark him in adulthood.
Berin stepped over the rope line. Some older figures in the crowd laughed at his brazenness, amused by the spectacle, but Berin didn’t seem to catch that. His chest puffed. “Don’t waste my time. Face me and find out.”
I lunged and grabbed the back of his shirt. My own toes stuttered, almost over the line of the fighting ground.
“Berin, don’t listen to him,” I hissed. “This is stupid!”
The challenger’s eyes flicked to me. “Aw, your little sweetheart’s afraid for you, Son of Hessa. He’s already in the ring, love. No turning back now. Unless he’s a coward?”
Berin’s body stiffened and he tugged from my grasp. “I’m no coward, and that is my sister,” he said coolly. “Her name is Yske.”
“Oh, the twin!” The challenger grinned and spun back on the crowd, beckoning someone else. A young woman parted from the press, a few years his junior and carrying her own battered practice sword. Without a moment’s hesitation, she stepped over the rope line. “I’ve a sister too. Doubles, then?”
“No,” Berin snapped and stepped in front of me, blocking his opponent’s view. “She doesn’t fight.”
The challenger gestured to his sister’s feet, already in the ring. “Pity, she’s already here. Looks like you’ll have to fight both of us alone.”
Hands pressed into my back. I squawked and twisted to find Seera trying to shove me into the ring. “Seera!”
“You can’t let him fight alone!” she scolded, appalled by my apparent stupidity. But I saw the fear in her, too. Berin would, at the least, be humiliated today.
“You go!” I swatted at her, a strike she easily batted aside.
“I wasn’t challenged!”
“Yske’s not good enough,” Esan interjected, and I was almost grateful, even if shame burned on my cheeks.
“At least she can distract one of them, give Berin space to breathe,” Seera hissed.
Hurt gouged deeper than fear. My cousin was suggesting I let myself be beaten like a pell.
Ovir looked uncertain. “That’s—”
All at once Seera shoved me. I stumbled into the ring and Berin turned, staring from my feet to my face with wide eyes. I stared right back. For the first beat of my heart, I was too petrified to move. With the second beat came anger, hot and blazing. I spun back on Seera, but she only smirked, hiding her former appalled expression with an arrogant turn of her lips.
“It’s your own fault you’re terrible,” she reminded me, as she so often did. “Learn or get hurt.”
Ovir leaned out and offered me his own wooden sword, urgency in his eyes. “Focus on protecting yourself.”
My heart pounded. I scanned the crowd, looking for an adult who might intervene, but everyone here either respected the rope boundary and the customs of the ring or was too cowardly to speak up.
If I’d been a few years older, I would have simply walked away. I might have talked Berin out of this foolishness and broken tradition. But in that moment, there was no going against expectation. I was a child—the rules of the world were still black and white, and the crowd might as well have been a stone wall.
“Find Thray,” I hissed to Ovir, accepting the sword. Someone else passed me a shield. I didn’t see who—I wasn’t paying attention, and nearly dropped it on my foot.
“Your mother—” he started to say as I fumbled.
“Not her! Find Thray.” I turned to stand next to Berin. I was shaking, the shield heavy in my left hand and the sword firm in my right, but my quaking was more from anger than fear now. I hated Seera. I hated this arrogant challenger who had goaded my brother into the ring.
And I hated myself, because Seera was right. I started to heft the shield, felt my shoulder already begin to burn, and braced my elbow on my hip.
Berin glanced down at me. He looked how I felt, his expression a mixture of fear and anger. “Stay behind me and out of the way.”
I couldn’t figure out how to talk, so I just made a bitter sound. Trying not to get bloodied was something I’d had a fair amount of practice in. And from the way our opponents watched us, with overexaggerated patience, enjoying our scrambling, I certainly wouldn’t be leaving this ring without pain today.
I risked one glance back at the crowd. Seera still watched, arms laced over her flat chest, with Esan beside her. Ovir was nowhere to be seen. Had he gone to find Thray, like I’d asked?
I turned back to our challengers, raised my shield into a low guard, and pressed my sword into its rim. My shield arm continued to quake, but I gritted my teeth.
Berin followed suit, half a pace ahead of me with his sword behind him, hidden from our opponents’ view.
They took up their own shields, found their stances, and a horn blew.
Our opponents immediately began to move and I fixed my gaze on the sister, expecting her to come at me. But she didn’t. She charged Berin, and the brother sprinted for me.
What happened next was a blur. I threw up my shield just in time to block a thrust to the face. The sword deflected but the rim of his shield slammed into mine so hard, my shield cracked off my head. Blackness burst across my vision.
Before I could fall a second hit took me in the stomach, then my eyes were full of sunlight and my mouth with blood and grit. I twisted in pain, uselessly trying to protect myself.
The light cut off as someone stepped over me, then resumed its blinding burn.
I blinked, caught an agonized breath, and rolled. Berin. Where was he? Was he all right?
There. Through a flutter of dusty lashes I saw my brother beating back his challengers with his sword alone. His shield was gone, toppled into the crowd and out of play, and blood ran from burst skin around his eye. I’d spent enough time with Aita to recognize how he favored his side, and he kept his left foot forward instead of his usual right. He was hurt, and the match would be over in moments.
Rage welled up, high in my chest. It pressed into my throat, on the edge of eruption, and for the space of two rattling breaths I had a choice—subdue it or let it free.
The challenger feinted toward Berin, thrusting out his shield to catch my brother’s sword. Meanwhile, he stabbed at Berin’s belly— nearly the same move he’d used on me. But before either strike landed, he twisted away, throwing up his shield to protect his head.
Berin fell for the ploy. He lunged, throwing himself into a thrust for his opponent’s exposed torso. As he did, the sister darted in, slamming her sword across the back of Berin’s head. Berin staggered.
I didn’t see if he fell. My rage erupted—rage for Berin, rage at Seera, rage at my own inability and the injustice of this stupid, stupid contest.
I howled and launched myself off the blood-splattered dust. The sister and I went down in a heap, all bones and fists, clumsy weapons and feral shrieks.
I slammed my fist into her face. I tore out one of her small braids and ground it into her mouth. I felt my knuckles shred on her teeth but there was no pain to it—her howl of startled agony alleviated mine.
A hand grabbed my hair. My victim’s brother dragged me off her and tossed me away. I hit the ground and rolled twice, then scrambled up and threw myself at his legs. He went down too and I climbed him, ignoring a smashing sword hilt, struggling against flesh and muscle until I felt his throat. I slammed all my weight down on his windpipe.
Hands clawed at me from behind—the sister again. I smashed my elbow into her face, but lost grip on the brother at the same time. My fingers raked skin like claws.
We rolled. My back hit the earth and a fist struck my face. Once, twice.
Nothing. Blackness. Then a face rimmed in white hair, full of sunshine. I blinked dust from my eyes and started to cry. I didn’t sob, or make a sound. Everything hurt too much for that. But tears cut down the sides of my face, one trailing into my ear in a hot, unpleasant droplet.
“Hush. Don’t move,” Thray, my cousin, soothed. She was tall and strong, with an oarsman’s muscled shoulders, and broad hips and thighs that gave her the solidity of an oak beneath her light linen tunic. Her skin held a rich Eangen undertone, cast with freckles, and her smile was double-edged—kind for me, furious at the situation.
The fight rushed back to me as Thray straightened and looked around the ring. People immediately slunk back and I saw Berin sitting close to me, one leg bent before him and the other extended as an older man felt at his foot. He met my gaze over cheeks streaked with blood and dirt, but I saw bright tears hidden in the corners of his eyes. He looked shocked. Boyish. Vulnerable. And it made my heart twist.
Our opponents were on the other side of the ring, surrounded by a handful of their own friends or kin. Both had numerous injuries, but it was the claw-marks on the young man’s face that caught my eye, and the fact that his sister was missing two teeth. Blood streamed down her chin and she glared at me with murder in her eyes.
I looked down at my bloody knuckles and nails. I felt no satisfaction. My temper was depleted now, leaving only an empty kind of humiliation—and dawning horror at what I’d done.
Thray, daughter of Sixnit and the fallen immortal Ogam, spoke. “I hope you feel shame,” she said, returning her eyes to our opponents and letting them drag to Seera, who scowled more fiercely to hide her embarrassment.
“Did you think it would be glorious, beating children?” Thray asked the brother and sister who’d so unfairly challenged Berin. “I see you’re barely more than children yourselves, but that is no excuse. You are pathetic, attention-hungry cowards, and you are no longer welcome here. Go home to lick your wounds, and know you’ve disgraced your kin in the sight of Albor and the Priesthood.”
My heart swelled, full of justice and the fire of righteous indignation. The pair started to leave, half dragged by those around them, but they looked back as they went. The looks they cast Berin and me reignited my anger, offering a blistering, ecstatic relief.
This time, I swallowed it down. This time, I pushed it away, stowing it back into the iron lock-box of my chest.
But my shame now refused to be contained. My own wildness, my savage disregard for other human beings, disturbed me. What if I’d had a real blade? What if I’d been stronger, been better? What if I’d had the skills to truly do harm?
I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears as the murmuring of the crowd returned to a full, riotous clash of voices—laughter, chatter, shouts and mutters.
I had no answer to those questions. Because I would never, ever let myself find out.