It must have been cold. Scal could see the wardens’ breath frosting in the air. Thousands of little crystals forming and dancing and disappearing. They were shivering, the twenty wardens. Chattering teeth loud in the still air. Gloved hands scraping against rough coats as they chafed arms. Four fires, and the wardens huddled as close as they could without burning their boot tips. Scal had told them they should not build fires, though they had not listened to him. For them, fire was life in the cold. It could be death, too. They knew it. They would chance that, for the warmth.
Scal was thirteen, nearly a man, and he sat alone. A distance from the fires, the warmth a faint caress against his skin. He did not need the heat. Parro Kerrus said it was the Father’s fire that kept him warm. The wardens said he was a demon in man’s skin. Brennon would always scoff and say, “You’re North-born. Of course you can handle the cold.”
Scal wished Brennon were here now. Brennon had a way of making the mood light, and it was lonely on these patrols. Lero was friendly during the day, when chance put Scal and the light-footed scout together. Once they made camp and the others were around, he never as much as looked at Scal. Joined the others in their disdain. Athasar spoke to Scal most, after Lero. Talking was the only way to give orders. To the wardens, all of them, it was easiest to simply act as though he did not exist. Scal had learned long ago to not bring attention to himself. Had learned to live with solitude. The wardens had stopped actively hating him, though it had taken months. They had not wanted to bring a Northman on their patrols. The group of scouts was meant to find Northmen, keep them from getting too near to Aardanel. Kill Northmen, if they could.
Chief Warden Eddin’s trust had made Scal glow with pride. With the joy of being useful, of helping and learning. It had lasted only a few moments, until Athasar had begun shouting. He had heard them arguing long into the night, though he had hidden in the chapel. Prayed to the Parents, again and again. Until the words had grown blurred in his head. Until he did not even know what he prayed for. Even after living side by side with Scal for six years, the wardens still expected him to turn wild. Eddin and Parro Kerrus were all that kept them from throwing Scal to the snows. Here he was anyway, in the snows. Sitting in the deeps of the Northern Wastes. Kerrus would have laughed and said the Father had a healthy sense of humor.
Brennon had joined him in the chapel as the sun began to poke at the windows. Prayed for a time, from the other side of the everflame. “You’ll do fine,” he had finally said. Eyes willing it to be the truth. “I’m sure you’ll learn plenty, so that’s good. It’s only another year until I reach my majority.” He had flashed a smile then. It was harder to stop Brennon smiling than it was to stop Fat Betho cursing. “Then we can face the snows together and get out of this place, hey? There’s gotta be somewhere your piss doesn’t freeze on the way out.”
Brennon had been right; there was much to learn from the wardens. They did not teach Scal much of it, not willingly. He watched, though. Watched and learned, so that when Brennon was old enough to be given the choice to leave Aardanel, Scal could keep them alive through the cold journey south. So they might find a better place, a better life. A free life.
“What’s that?” Monarro said, voice rising high with sudden fear. He had the sharpest ears in the patrol. The camp fell silent in a hurried hush.
Scal strained his own ears. Only the wind swirling through the trees. The fires biting at the cold air.
Thump.
The wardens, almost as one, drew in a sharp breath and held it. Hands inched toward swords, bows, knives. The wind slowed. As if it, too, strained to hear what sounds the night held.
Thump.
They scrambled to their feet in a rattle of weapons and chain mail, hissing for quiet. Scal rose slowly, quietly. Hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. That had been one of Athasar’s terms. That Scal be allowed no weapon. As if one boy could kill twenty wardens with a knife. As if he knew what to do with a knife. He had never felt the absence of a weapon until now.
Thump.
Some of them were looking at him. Eyes wild with suspicion. Forcing his hands to still, Scal looked to Monarro. The warden’s head was swiveling slowly, eyes tight shut. Scal could almost see his ears straining to pick up sound. Athasar, stood near Monarro with his greatsword clutched in one meaty fist, motioned the others to silence.
Thump.
Monarro’s hand shot up, one gloved finger pointing. Without a moment of hesitation Athasar set off in that direction, the others ghosting after him. Passing close by, Lero hissed at Scal, “Stick near me.” Scal did not need to be told twice.
Their feet crunched on the hard snow, making stealth useless. They might have done as well charging forward, screaming battle cries. But they snuck. Moving forward slowly. Orderly. The light from the fires faded too quickly, leaving only the faint moonlight to guide them. Scal had good eyes—it was why Eddin had made him a scout—but fear had his gaze jumping at every sound, every flash of movement. The wardens sometimes startled at nothing out here in the wilderness, but even Scal knew this was not nothing.
Around the bundled bodies of the wardens, Scal glimpsed a faint flicker of light. Low to the ground. Not moving. A small point, growing larger as they crept up to it. A few of the wardens split away, circling around to either side. Trying to surround what they were approaching.
There was nothing special about the spot. A small space between the trees, a torch stuck into the crust of snow. Nothing of note. Until Scal saw why the torch had been left. Whoever had done this had wanted to make sure they would find it. That they would see all of it.
Radis, one of the sentries, was—had been—one of the worst among Athasar’s company. Still, Scal would never have wished this thing upon him. He had been nailed to the tree, big spikes of metal stuck through his shoulders—thump, thump. His throat slashed. A deep cut that left his head lolling grotesquely. Scal could not tell if that had been before or after his stomach had been cut open. Guts spilling out all over the snow. Blood dripping slow from both gaping wounds.
Scal bent over and heaved. His meager dinner splattered over the snow. Looked like Radis’s guts. He heaved again. Lero joined him. He was dimly aware of others making the same helpless retching noises all around the space.
“Pull yourselves together, boys,” Athasar growled.
With great effort, Scal straightened up. Swallowing sour-tasting spit, fixing his eyes on a distant tree.
“Why?” one of the men was muttering. “Why? Why?”
“Iveran,” the captain said in answer, and one of the wardens began to retch again.
For all its poverty, Aardanel was a stronghold by Northern standards. Northmen made raids when they could—rarely on Aardanel itself, but on the supply and prisoner chains that flowed into the camp. It had been worse in the last year, worse than Kerrus said he could remember, and he had been there a long time. There had been no new prisoners for nearly a year, when they had typically arrived every other month. They were all killed on the way. Supplies stolen. Bodies left to freeze in the snow. Meals had been even more slim than usual in Aardanel. More and more dying of hunger and cold. No one asked Fat Betho where he had found meat. No one wanted to know. Aardanel was crumbling.
All due to Iveran. A Northman chief whose tribe was picking slowly and ruthlessly away at the prison camp.
Grimly, Athasar said, “Back to Aardanel. Now.”
“Why?” one of the wardens asked again, the only one who had managed to find his voice, weak as it was.
“Because Iveran already has a head start.” With that, Athasar set off, away from the direction of their camp and its four fires.
Scal made himself look at Radis again, swallowing down the bile that threatened to rise. A torn-off branch had been nailed to the tree next to Radis’s shoulder. Stuck straight out, his arm lashed to it. One finger—the only one that had not been cut off—pointed straight at Athasar’s back. Straight toward Aardanel.
The storm clouds hung low above their heads as they trudged through the trees. Threatening snow but without so much as the scent of water to support it. It was an altogether different smell. The smell of a cold night. The smell of Kerrus’s chapel. The smell of smoke, and fire. He looked up at the sky and felt sick. Not storm clouds. Smoke clouds.
Athasar, looking grim, called them all near to say, “We’re close, boys, but I’m not sure what we’ll find. It don’t look good.” He sent Lero and two others ahead to see what had happened. That left Scal with no defense, though Lero’s near-friendship was little enough protection. The others soon turned to stare at him. Some fingered their weapons, the same look in their eyes as the convicts’ sometimes had. The look of needing to tear. To destroy. To kill, because it was the only thing that made sense. “If you had anything to do with this . . .” one of them muttered, but Scal could not pick out who. He wished for a knife again.
The scouts came back pale-faced and shaken. “Wall’s gone,” Lero said, sounding like he could not believe his own words. “Burned down, some still burning. Few of the buildings are on fire, too.”
“Any sign of Iveran?” Athasar asked.
Lero shook his head. “No sign of no one but birds. Place looks—” He stopped, going paler. Scal knew what he had been about to say. They all did. Dead.
Setting his face, Athasar said, “We move in slow, boys, and stay together until we know . . . well, until we know. Weapons ready, eyes sharp.”
Athasar did not tell Scal to come with them, nor did the captain tell him to wait behind. So Scal went slow, sneaking through the trees with the rest of them. The smell of smoke was stronger now. Filling his lungs, filling his stomach with heavy fear. He prayed as they walked. Reciting every prayer Kerrus had taught him. Begging the Parents for mercy. For things not to be as bad as everyone thought. For everything to stay the same. The Parents are always merciful, Kerrus had told him a hundred times. Sometimes it just doesn’t fecking feel like it right away.
The trees surrounding Aardanel had long ago been cut down to build the camp, so Aardanel stood in the center of a wide swath of open ground. They were coming from the east, and they should have had to circle around the tall wooden palisade to the main gate. But there was no palisade, no gate. Melted snow. Burned dead grass. Ashes. A still-burning section of wall to the north holding out. Flames tickling the sky. Smoke boiling up to mask the clouds.
Fire is the most powerful thing there is in this world, Kerrus had told Scal, hovering his hand above the everflame. It speaks its own language, and “mercy” isn’t a word it knows.
“Steady, boys,” Athasar said, his face as drawn as any of theirs. “Eyes sharp.”
They moved forward again, leaving the trees behind. Scal’s back prickled. Expecting at any moment to be hit with one of Iveran’s distinctive white-fletched arrows. For a group of fur-wrapped Northmen to come screaming toward them. As Lero had said, though, there was no sign of anyone.
Dead.
Ravens cawed as the patrol picked their way over the ashes and entered what was left of Aardanel. Smoke hung low, making it hard to see. Not hard enough that Scal did not see more than he would have liked. From so far away, even sharp-eyed Lero had not been able to see beyond the smoke. This close up, it was red. Red everywhere. Not so long ago, the patrol had found one of the prisoner transports Iveran had butchered. Scal had seen more of it than he had wished, and this was just like it. Only more. All red. All death.
Bodies lay like a carpet along the main street through Aardanel, wardens and prisoners alike. Men and women and children. Most of the faces familiar. Some faces too bloody or beaten or cut up to recognize. Arms and feet and heads lay scattered around with none to claim them. Those white arrows, fletched with feathers from the snow eagle, stuck out of many bodies. But most were cut open or smashed up. The smell of fire was not enough to cover up the stench of blood and death, of guts and bowels and urine. Scal’s stomach roiled, but nothing came up. It was too vast, too horrible, to be real.
They were near the barracks where the wardens slept, and Monarro pointed to it with a shaking finger. A body had been nailed to the door. Cut up like Radis, only this one was missing a head. None of them needed a face to know who it was. Only Chief Warden Eddin wore black-dyed uniforms. A raven perched on his shoulder, plucking at the gaping wound of his neck.
Others were heaving now, adding more mess to the scene. Scal could not find it in him to join. What was the point? This was no more than a nightmare. He would wake up soon, and tell Kerrus. The parro would tell him how even bad dreams were a gift from the Mother. Glimpses of what-might-be, he would say, or what-might-have-been. We should all be thankful we only see a small portion of what Divine Metherra could show us—that, my boy, is mercy.
His feet were moving. He did not know when he had started to move. That was the way of dreams. Running. Jumping. Slipping over the bodies and gore. His boot punched through bone, a skull, blood and brains spraying up his breeches. It did not matter who it was, had been. Not in a dream. He only kept running.
The chapel was gone, too close to the palisade to escape burning. Even with the snow red-spattered all around, it was not hard to pick out Kerrus’s red cassock. He was on the ground in front of what was left of the chapel, lying there in his thin old robe like he had had no time to put a coat on. Not that a coat would have done him any good, then or now. Fur could not stop a sword. There was no point in trying to stay warm after the sword had gone through and the blood had gone out. He had always told Scal he would be smiling when he went to meet the Parents. But there was no smile on his wrinkled face. No joy in his fixed eyes.
Next to him, Brennon was not smiling either. He had found a knife somewhere. It was clutched still in his fist, unbloodied. It had not done much good against the arrow sticking out the side of his neck.
Scal’s knees were cold in the few inches of pink snow. He did not remember kneeling down. His hand shook as he reached out and wrapped his fingers around the snow-eagle feathers. Yanked the arrow out of his friend’s neck, arrowhead scraping against bone. The arrow came free, bloody almost half the length of the shaft. Little chunks of meat sticking to the arrowhead. Mercy, Kerrus had told him as they had watched the wardens burning a dead child, has nothing to do with fairness.
The shouting came dim to his ears, and the sounds of metal against metal. Unimportant. He could not pull his eyes from the arrow. His thumb smoothing down one of the white feathers, the vane rough against his skin. A single sluggish drop of blood collected slowly at the tip of the arrowhead, stretching out until it held on by a thread-thin line, and fell gently onto his thigh.
It was silent inside the shell of Aardanel. Silent as the dead.
“Ruuli?” a gruff voice called out, searing through Scal like an arrow. His fingers tightened around the fletching, crushing the delicate feathers. “Ruuli, where are you?” The rough Northern tongue. The language of Scal’s forgotten childhood. The memories were gone, but the words stuck, somehow. “Ruuli!” Closer now. “There you are, Ruuli. What are you—”
Scal stood. The arrow in one fist, Brennon’s knife in the other. He faced a big, gaping Northman, twice Scal’s size, wrapped in blood-spattered furs. A big sword hung down by his side, dripping with blood. Lero’s blood, and Athasar’s, and Eddin’s, Brennon’s, Kerrus’s.
“You are not Ruuli,” the Northman said, eyes narrowing. Scal shook his head, silent. The man drew in a deep breath and bellowed, “To me!”
They came running. Nearly twoscore Northmen. Dressed in furs. Covered in blood. Bristling with weapons. A dozen arrows were aimed at Scal’s heart. Swords and axes and maces were hefted ready to bash and cut. They had already killed a few hundred today. One more life would be as nothing to them. Scal did not know if his own life was worth much at all anymore.
A man stepped through the battle-ready crowd. Small for a Northman—little bigger than Scal, half grown as he was. A thick yellow beard framed his face, beads and bones braided into it so he rattled with every step. The crew wore a motley of colors. Brown bear and black wolf and gray fox. But this man wore only white. Thick snowbear pelts, wrapped with bleached leather, spotted with dirt and blood. A snowbear head snarled from atop his own head, a hood whose muzzle was brown with old blood. An enormous cloak of purest white. Scal had never seen the man before, but he knew. Iveran Snowwalker. Iveran-of-the-ice. Iveran the Coldhearted. Chief of the Valastaa Clan. Scourge of Aardanel.
“Well,” he said gruffly. “Eddin had a Northman.” Iveran paced slowly toward Scal, placing his feet carefully around the bodies. He carried a short spear in his left hand and a curved sword in his right, both held at the ready. “You speak, ijka?”
Scal stared flatly. Fingers flexing around the shaft of the arrow, the hilt of the little knife.
“Boy is an idiot,” one of the Northmen muttered.
Iveran waved his sword for silence. “Idiot or no, he is one of ours. I will not have his blood spilled. Ijka.” He shuffled closer, eyes fixed on Scal’s face. The unfamiliar word sounded like both comfort and command. “Why not put down that knife, eh? We will have a talk. Your blood is come to claim you.”
My blood? Scal wondered dimly. North-born. Northman devil. Yellow-haired and blue-eyed, just like Iveran and the others arrayed behind him. He shared their blood. Numbly, he shook his head. “I am not one of you.” His mouth formed the hard sounds of the Northern tongue without any thought, as if he had been speaking it all his life. The very act betrayed the words, and he could feel his cheeks start to burn with shame.
Iveran grinned. An eerie echo of the snowbear’s snarl. “Of course you are, ijka. Too much time with the southerners, is all. We have fixed that problem.”
The shame vanished, swallowed up by a rage that boiled through him. There was a snap as the arrow’s shaft splintered inside his fist, head and fletching falling to the ground; the knife burned in his hand, a screaming demand. Iveran’s grinning face swam up before him. There was shouting. Hands grabbing at his heated skin. Unbelievably, laughter.
The fury drained away slowly. He lay belly down on the ground, his arms twisted up behind his back. A great weight across his legs. A boot pressing one side of his face into the snow. He caught a glimpse of Iveran, the little knife buried in his shoulder. He was laughing as he pulled the knife out, its tip red with blood. He said, smiling, “Not one of us? You lie to me, ijka.”
They trussed him up like a pig. Lashing his wrists and ankles around a thick branch that took two of them to hoist. Scal’s rage was gone, leaving only a festering shame behind. Even that did not burn so badly as his muscles after the first few hours.
He had put up with much abuse in Aardanel, but Kerrus had always told him that insults were no more than drops of water. Water could never harm a flame. Violence is weakness, he had said, and the best way to fight is with compassion. Let your grace be your shield, and your generosity your sword.
Well. Parro Kerrus had been good all his life, and what had it gotten him? A sword through the chest. A cold and lonely death. Scal had tried to be good, too, to prove he was more than a barbarian Northman. To make Kerrus proud. To make some kind of good life for himself. And it had gotten him strung up between two Northmen. Hanging-down head staring right at one fur-covered arse. All the people he had ever cared about dead and gone.
“How goes, ijka?”
Scal twisted his burning neck to the side, where Iveran paced along, grinning. The white furs on his left shoulder were faintly pink, but the chieftain showed no lingering pain. Scal turned his head away. The choice of which arse to look at was an easy one.
“No hard feelings, eh?”
It was not easy to manage, but Scal filled his mouth and spat to the side. The slime hit Iveran’s hip. Slid slowly until it froze. One of the Northmen growled, but Iveran lifted a hand. He was smiling still, but his eyes were as cold as the air.
“You will thank me one day, ijka,” he said, and jogged away to the head of the twisting column.
Never.
They made camp in the light of the sinking sun. Scal’s two bearers untied him long enough to lash him to a tree. Arms stretched back, wrapped around the trunk, twisted so the pain in his shoulders was a constant, aching throb. They kept his ankles tied together, too, as though he could rip the tree from the ground and run off. Not too likely. He was a distance from the main camp, where they gathered around a big cook fire and traded stories and songs. Just as it had always been with Athasar’s patrol. He was even farther from the camp than the supply sledges and the bushy, half-wild dogs that pulled them. The message was clear enough.
Not far enough away, though. He could hear everything they said, clear as light. He listened to the Northmen brag of how many they had killed that day. How many exiles and wardens they had taken down. Stories of their last moments, their begging. Laughter. Scal felt that hot fury start to rise again. One of them brought over a battered wooden bowl of some kind of steaming stew, held it to Scal’s lips. The boy took a mouthful of the thick broth and spat it back in the Northman’s face. The big man started bellowing, hands clawing at his face as the hot stew dripped. The stew cooled quickly in the night air. The man’s hands went instead for Scal. One curling through his hair, holding his head still. The other forming a fist. It fell once, twice, before the others could drag him away. He took a fistful of Scal’s hair with him, leaving the boy with a bleeding scalp and mouth. Iveran stood before him, arms crossed over his thick chest, frowning.
“He does not belong, Iveran,” the man with a handful of Scal’s hair shouted. “His blood is cold. Leave him for the snows.”
Iveran ignored him, crouching down next to Scal. Holding the boy’s eyes. “Too much time with the southerners messes your head,” he said, tapping a thick forefinger hard between Scal’s eyes. “Makes you think backward. You got your head wrong, ijka. We are your people. You are where you belong.”
“You killed my people,” Scal said, the words thick around a mouthful of blood.
Iveran’s fist thumped into Scal’s forehead, the back of his head bouncing off the tree trunk. Colors danced in front of his eyes. “Wrong, ijka.”
Bloody spit dribbled down Scal’s chin, and Iveran’s face wove in and out of focus. Scal forced the words to come out clear. “I will never be one of you.”
“That is what you want, eh?” Iveran held something in front of Scal’s face, and Scal forced his eyes to cooperate, to focus. It was the little knife. Brennon’s knife. The knife he had stuck in Iveran’s shoulder. It was still dotted with blood, or rust. Hard to tell. “We have seen what southerners do to their prisoners. You want to be a southerner? Then you are our prisoner.”
The knife swam closer until Scal’s eyes could not follow it. Iveran’s hand grabbed his aching jaw, held him still as the knife cut, once, twice. Deep cuts. All the way through so Scal could feel the knife’s point scrape jarring against his teeth. He could taste the blood as it washed down his cheek from the prisoner’s cross. Scal drew a sharp, surprised breath, but he kept his scream trapped behind closed teeth and his eyes on Iveran’s face.
The chieftain stood slowly, his expression hard to read. It may have been because Scal was still dizzy from all the blows his head had taken. But it seemed like Iveran meant to say something.
“I have vasrista with the boy.” It was the man who had attacked Scal; red welts ran down his face from the stew. The killing rage was gone from his eyes, but he looked no kinder.
Iveran pressed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Leave be, Einas,” he said with a tired sigh.
“Honor will not wait,” the man said sternly.
The chieftain was quiet for a long time, and Scal could feel the eyes of the whole clan on him. His eyes were working better now, but he let them stay unfocused. Not looking at any of the Northmen. He had no idea what they were all waiting for, but he did not expect to like it. The cold air sucked through the cross on his cheek as he breathed. It was the wrong cheek, for a prisoner. He was not a true prisoner.
“Make the ring,” Iveran said at last. A small cheer went up from the men before they turned away. Iveran squatted down next to Scal once more, but Scal kept his eyes far away. “Listen to me, ijka. You have insulted Einas. Warm blood or cold, he will not stand for that. He has claimed vasrista on you. You know the word?” He paused, waiting, but Scal showed no sign of hearing. “It is a challenge against honor. You insulted his, so he calls for satisfaction. You will fight him, hand to hand, body to body, until one falls.” Iveran’s eyes passed critically over Scal. “He will beat the shit out of you, no doubt of that. Might even kill you. It would save me the trouble.” Iveran stood, spat onto the ground next to Scal, and walked away.
The two Northmen who had been carrying him all day came over to untie him from the tree and march him to a clear patch of ground. The others had kicked the snow away, exposing the brittle dead grass beneath, and now gathered in a ring around the spot. They parted to let Scal get shoved through, then closed the gap.
Einas was there, on the other side of the ring. About three good paces away. Stretching his arms and back, loosening his legs. Scal stood still, waiting, arms hanging heavy at his side. His fingers tingled with the blood rushing to them. His shoulders were aching lumps. Blood filled his mouth, the cross like a fire in his cheek. The pains felt right, matching the hurt that rumbled low inside him.
From somewhere around the ring came Iveran’s voice: “Begin.”
Einas did not move fast, but he did not need to. Scal was not going anywhere. As the big Northman rushed bellowing toward him, Scal stared flatly and thought of all the things Parro Kerrus had ever told him. Inaction can be a man’s wisest course of action.
Einas barreled into him, leaning down to ram his shoulder into Scal’s stomach. Wrapped his arms around the boy, propelled him backward into the living border of the ring. There, crushed between Einas and other Northmen trying to shove them back into the ring, breath gone in a mighty whoosh, Scal remembered, Violence is the answer of a small mind.
They were pushed away by the ring of Northmen. Einas stumbling back a step, Scal trying to draw in breath. Then Einas stepped close once more, fist jabbing against the side of Scal’s ribs. Revenge is a fool’s game with no end.
“Fight, boy!” Einas shouted in his face, spittle showering from cracked lips and rotten teeth. The rest of the Northmen took up the cry. Scal stood still, if slightly bent, torso aching and breath coming hard. Einas’s big fist thumped him in the center of the new-carved X on his cheek, sent him stumbling to the side and seeing stars once more. He who provokes a fight is weak, but he who retaliates is weaker still.
Einas brought his fist up against the bottom of Scal’s jaw, snapping his head back, lifting him off his feet, and sending him into the barrier. Arms caught him, steadied him. Shoved him back toward Einas, whose fist connected solidly with Scal’s nose. Bone crunched and blood poured. If a man should break your arm, extend to him the other one.
Scal thought at first that his eyes were bleeding, washed with red. His heart thumped loud, painful within his bruised chest. Someone was bellowing a wordless, endless animal noise, full of mindless rage. His throat hurt, and his hands as they sang through the air to be met with the solid thump of yielding flesh. The pain in his arms melted away, escaped through his knuckles that tore and bled but did not hurt. He spun like the wind, and his fist against a jawbone felt to him like a breeze. A blow caught him on the ear, another pounded against his ribs. But Scal was fury itself, anger given physical shape, and his body kept moving without being told. Until something terribly solid hit him between the legs and brought him and the screaming both to a shuddering stop.
Scal lay curled on his side in the snow, bleeding and bruised and shaking and hating himself. He blinked up through watering eyes to see Einas bent over him, mouth moving but his voice a mouse’s whisper. Blood flowed from his nose and mouth and a split eyebrow, the same blood that covered Scal’s knuckles. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his face against the frozen grass. The cold ground cooled his blood, soothed his battered body. He wanted to sink into the earth and disappear forever.
Love your enemies, for they teach you what you’ll never become.
The world rushed back in. Voices talking and laughing. Feet crunching on snow. The sigh of blood running across his skin. He tried to open his eyes again, saw Einas crouched before him. Grinning.
“Sorry for that, boy,” the big Northman said cheerfully. “Could think of no other way to stop you.” He held a hand out to Scal, to pull the boy to his feet. Scal kept his hands cradling his delicate parts. Einas did not seem to take offense, and grabbed Scal by the back of his coat instead. Scal’s knees were weak as Einas set him on his feet, but they held. He kept his eyes down at the ground, watching the blood drip from his nose to splatter on the frosted grass.
A hand clapped him on the shoulder, nearly knocking him back down. Iveran said, “We will warm that blood of yours yet.”