It was the dumbest thing she’d ever seen, two men trying to kill each other while everyone else just stood there watching. The merra was cursing steadily under her breath—with phrases even Rora was impressed to hear—as she watched the fighting, her hands clenching around each other.
It’d only been a few minutes since Anddyr and Joros had disappeared into the air, but time felt like it was crawling by. It always felt that way when things were going on around you that you weren’t doing anything about. It was one of the feelings Rora hated most. It wasn’t helplessness, it was uselessness, and that was the worst.
Not that Scal wasn’t handling himself well. He was bigger than the man he was fighting, but slower, too. It’d twisted her head, at first, to see the other man wearing a furry white cloak—she’d thought Scal’d shrunk, until she remembered his cloak was over her shoulders. Must be a Northern thing, those white cloaks. She didn’t know how long they’d been fighting before she and the others had come up to watch, but she could tell they were both getting tired. They were a good match, that much was clear. She knew how it’d go. One of them would slip soon enough. It was what always happened in a fight like this, one of you got tired first. And because they were so matched, the other one wouldn’t hesitate. Rora didn’t much like the thought of sitting around and just watching Scal die, but there wasn’t much she could do. It’d be stupid, risking her own neck for someone she barely even liked. You took care of yourself, that was the first rule in the Canals, the most important rule no matter what the packheads might say.
She looked over to see how Vatri was handling it all, since she seemed to have a liking for Scal, but the merra was gone.
There was a choking noise next to her, and Rora looked over to see Aro white-faced and pointing. Down. She craned her neck over the edge of the ridge and saw a yellow point skittering among the ice of the cliff.
If they were a pack, this little group Joros’d assembled, Rora knew that the merra was the expendable one. Joros didn’t even want her along, he wouldn’t care if she died. And to a point, Scal was expendable enough. He was a fist, a bruiser, and there were always more of those to find. A fist was only useful so long as he could keep fighting, and after that point he was less than useless. Joros’d left Scal to whatever stupid trouble he’d got himself into, so he didn’t much seem to care what happened to the Northman neither. You did what your packhead thought was best, that was the second rule in the Canals, and even if Rora didn’t know why, Joros seemed to need her and Aro for something. They weren’t so expendable.
Down among the Northmen, she could see all the swords and knives and axes. Not new weapons, not by a long ways, but she knew they’d be plenty sharp. Men like them, trained fighters, they always kept an edge on their weapons. And the merra, halfway down the cliff now, it wouldn’t take more’n one good swing to cut her in half.
In the Canals, you took care of yourself first, and did what you were told second. But there was another rule in the Canals that came in between the first and second ones, a rule that didn’t ever get talked about. Between taking care of yourself and listening to the packhead, whenever you could, you took care of the rest of the pack. There were people the packhead could stand to lose, but that didn’t mean you had to sit by and let it happen.
And if this group was her pack now, pretty soon she’d be watching about half her pack die and doing nothing about it.
She swore, using some of the words Vatri’d been using because they were so nicely descriptive, and swung to Aro. “You stay put, y’hear? Move one fecking hair and I take your whole head off.” He nodded, wide-eyed, and stayed put as Rora swung over the edge of the cliff.
It wasn’t much different from climbing down into the Canals, when it came down to it. The hand- and footholds weren’t as clean cut, the ice was slipperier than bricks even after a good storm, and it was a longer climb, sure, but Rora’d had years of climbing down into the Canals fast as she could. Vatri’d got a good start on her, but the merra wasn’t much of a climber, that was clear. Kept slipping or stopping, holding on tight to the ice like she was afraid of falling. Rora could just about see her regretting her choice, and every other choice that had led up to her clinging to an ice wall high above the ground. It didn’t take too long for Rora to near catch up to her, just a few lengths above the ground, but that was when the cheering started.
Rora twisted around, saw all the Northmen waving their arms and weapons. From as high up as she still was, she could see down into the middle of the ring. Scal was on his back, tripped, scrabbling backward toward his sword. He wouldn’t be fast enough. The other Northman had his sword lifted up in both hands, point aimed down right at Scal’s heart, his face twisted up. Vatri screamed—Scal’s name, just once, loud enough to ring off the ice louder’n all the cheering.
It distracted the smaller Northman for just a second, but that was all it took. Scal’s hand moved, and then there was suddenly a little knife in his opponent’s throat, blood spouting. The man’s sword clattered onto the ice as he scrabbled at his neck. Faintly, Rora could hear his gurgling. Then it was drowned out by more screaming, raw fury, as all the Northmen surged in toward Scal.
He was already on his feet, holding a sword—his, or the other Northman’s, it didn’t matter, it was a blade. And then there wasn’t any more standing and watching. There was just fighting, and Scal was going to die.
Rora pushed herself off the ice, dropped for a bit, rolled over her shoulder as she landed. There was a twinge in one leg as she sprang up to her feet, and she knew there’d be a big bruise on her shoulder in no time, but she didn’t let those slow her down. She pulled her knives out, the long one with the broken blue stone and a plainer, shorter one Tare’d given her after her first contract. She started forward, toward all the huge, hulking Northmen who had their backs to her, and used a small person’s best defense against a tall one: started slashing at the backs of legs, knees and ankles when she could get them, anything to slow or immobilize. Tare’d always told her to avoid fights like this, where bodies were pressed so close together you could hardly get any room to move an arm. Tare’d taught her how to fight a few people at a time—hells, once she’d had to fight off five Rats in an alley—but she wasn’t used to this sort of fighting. It helped, though, being short. She’d never’ve thought she’d be thankful for it. She slipped in between the big bodies, hamstringing as she went, carving her way toward the center of the ring.
The first body she tripped over was the Northman Scal’d been fighting, dressed all in white with a little bone knife in his throat. Rora didn’t give the body more’n a glance before righting herself and pushing forward again. There were more bodies littered on the ground here. Scal’d been busy. She still couldn’t see him around all the big Northmen, but she had to think they wouldn’t still be fighting forward if he was down and dead. It was hopeful, in a way.
And then someone crashed into her from behind, sending her toppling over. She landed half over a dead Northman, her face pressed into his spilled guts, and a weight lying across her back. She started struggling, kicking out with her legs, swinging her knives backward, anything to get free. Yellow cloth covered her head, and Vatri hissed in her ear, “Stay down!” Then there was an inhuman roaring, and the merra’s scream ringing in her ear as she pressed Rora down into the dead man.
It got real quiet, after, or maybe all the sound was just drowned out by the echoes in Rora’s ears. The merra was dead weight on top of her, not moving. Rora rolled and pushed up, shoving the merra off her back, and then paused on her hands and knees, gaping.
All the men who’d been fighting a second ago, stomping over dead men to get at the one Northman, were all down now, not a muscle moving. All down like dead men, except for the one still standing in the middle, his sword held up to block a blow that wasn’t going to fall anymore. Scal looked over at Rora, the only other person moving, their eyes meeting over all the bodies. The place was quiet as a crypt, and maybe it was one now.
Rora turned to the merra. She was as unmoving as all the Northmen, but Rora pressed her hand against the side of Vatri’s neck and there was still a thump there, under all the hard, ridged skin. “She’s still alive,” she said, expecting Scal to be at her side. He wasn’t, though. He was just standing in the same place he had been, his sword hanging down and dripping blood on the ground, staring down at all the Northmen lying around like rag dolls. He was covered in blood, head to foot, and there was no knowing how much of it was his. Rora gave the merra a few slaps across the face, but it didn’t wake her up. Muttering to herself, Rora stood up and picked her way over the bodies to Scal. “Hey,” she said, but he didn’t answer. His eyes were somewhere far off, somewhere she couldn’t reach. She stretched up on her toes, reached up high as she could, and gave her arm a good swing. He reacted to the slap the way the merra hadn’t, his eyes blinking and finally focusing on her, his hand reaching up to touch his cheek. “I need your help with the merra,” she said when she was sure she had his attention.
He nodded, like his mind was still off wandering, but he wiped his sword clean on the nearest body and sheathed it over his shoulder, following her back to the spot of yellow. He moved slow, like he was walking through a dream, like he expected all the Northmen to get back up and start fighting again.
“She did this?” he asked. His voice was still the normal rumble, but it sounded different, somehow. Rora couldn’t put a finger on it, not with her head spinning like it was.
“She must’ve. What’d you do, to make ’em all attack like that?”
He shook his head, avoiding her eyes. He didn’t show emotion much, and Rora was a little lost to see it now. It didn’t help that she couldn’t really figure out what emotion he was finally showing either. He was a hard one to read, and he didn’t give any kind of answer to the question. When they got to Vatri, it was like he put on a mask, his eyes getting sharp like normal, his face going flat and smooth as a slab of cut stone.
They hunkered down together next to the merra, and Scal lifted her up so that one of his hands was supporting her head, and with the other hand pulled the waterskin from his belt. It was as covered in blood as the rest of him, some of it dripping down onto the merra’s face with the water he squirted out. It worked better’n the slapping Rora’d tried, because Vatri’s eyes fluttered open, even if they didn’t seem to focus on anything. The water dripped down around her gasping mouth, faint pink trails where it touched Scal’s blood. “What did you do?” he asked her.
“Not me,” the merra said weakly, and one of her hands lifted up to touch her chest. That didn’t make any kind of sense to Rora, but it seemed like it was enough for Scal, since he gave a small nod. Vatri started pushing herself up, trying to sit. She shook her head, like she was trying to clear out something inside it. “We should go. They’ll wake up soon.”
“Then they are not dead?”
“No. Just . . . sleeping.”
Scal stood, pulled Vatri to her feet. The merra swayed, held on to Scal’s shoulder to keep from falling.
“Why am I not also sleeping?” Scal asked.
The merra reached out to tap a finger against his chest. “You have the Parents’ protection,” she said, and then her mouth stretched in a weird way. It took Rora a moment to realize it was supposed to be a smile. “I told you, I didn’t do this. I also told you they have a particular interest in you.”
“She must’ve hit her head,” Rora said, but neither of them even seemed to hear her.
“What happened here?” the merra asked Scal, motioning to all the Northmen, and then grimaced. “I mean . . . before me, what happened? Why did they attack you?”
Scal frowned, and Rora expected him not to give her an answer either. Turned out he was just taking a long time to talk like he always did, like he was thinking his words over five times before he said them. “I did a thing that needed to be done, but should not have been,” he finally said. His eyes drifted across the ground and Rora followed them to where they stopped on the Northman with the little knife in his throat. “It was a thing that was not the way of the North. I”—and he shook his head, his eyes leaving the dead man and going back to Vatri’s face—“am not truly of the North.”
Rora’d never felt more invisible, or less like she wanted to be somewhere. She looked up to the edge of the cliff where she’d come from, saw Aro’s head poking over, his arms sticking out, one waving and the other pointing deeper into the pit. She cleared her throat to get Scal and Vatri’s attention, pointed the same way Aro was. “Joros’s that way,” she said. “He might need some help.”
And then there was a scream, echoing down from the way Rora’s finger pointed. Rora looked at Scal and he looked back, and something passed between them—something that was shared by people who were used to doing even after they thought they couldn’t move anymore. It was a look, a kind of test, that said something like If we both go do this, we’ll each have to do less. A silent sort of agreement between people who were used to cleaning up the stupid messes others made. So Scal scooped Vatri up and held her over his shoulder, and he was right at Rora’s side as they jogged deeper into the pit.