The village of Nether Weald came into view in the late afternoon. Bluebell let Torr walk the last half mile and then handed him to the stableboy, careful to unhook her shield and hoist it onto her shoulder. She wore her helm and mail byrnie despite the heat of the day. She stopped long enough to drink from the village well and give Thrymm a rest, then she fitted her helm back on her head and began the walk to Snowy’s. As she passed a small cottage on the last street of the village, she heard the door open behind her and a little voice call out, “Bluebell?”
Bluebell glanced over her shoulder and saw Rowan. She immediately turned back. “Rowan?”
The girl held her finger to her lips. “I’m not supposed to be outside.” She looked at her position in the doorway and said, “I’m not really outside though, am I?”
“Hardly at all. But why are you here? Is Snowy with you?”
Thrymm stuck her nose through the narrow space between the door and its frame and sniffed Rowan’s hands. Rowan patted her absently. “This is Sister Julian’s house. She’s gone to the village but I mustn’t be seen. Snowy is back at home. I want to go home so badly, but I can’t. Papa left a guardsman named Lang because of the woodlanders and then he got shot in both eyes with arrows and died on our front path and Snowy was beside himself and now I’m here and I think we’re all waiting for you.” This all came out on one long, teary breath.
“Go back…shot in both eyes?”
“By the woodlanders. Whoever did it was a good shot, Bluebell! I think it was the big woman, the one called Dardru. She told me she was the best archer in Thyrsland.” She dropped her eyes. “That was the day I said they could take me to the singing tree. I think I’m to blame for all this happening.”
Bluebell gave Rowan a rub on the head. “If you are, then you’ll have to learn to live with it. Kings and queens always have heavy consciences.”
“You look so fierce in that helm. I can only see the bottom of your face and your eyes are in shadows.”
“It’s my job to look fierce.”
Rowan glanced up the street. “I’d better go inside before Julian sees me. Tell Snowy I love him. Tell him I’m so very bored inside and I can’t wait to come home. You’ll fix everything, won’t you? That’s why you’re here?”
“Once I’ve talked to Snowy, I’ll fix what I can, little chicken. Off you go inside, and mind you stay away from the shutters and don’t watch people walking by.”
Rowan ducked inside and the door closed. Bluebell heard the latch fall into place and headed back to the path that wound into the woods. Every sense was on high alert. She didn’t like arrows; they were hard to hear coming, and whoever had killed Wengest’s guardsman was obviously a highly skilled archer. Her hand rested on the pommel of her sword, palm itching to kill something. Thrymm sensed Bluebell’s vigilance and was similarly alert, her ears pricked up, her nose raised to catch a scent.
Into the woods, Bluebell and her war dog went. The afternoon breeze didn’t quite reach underneath Bluebell’s helm to cool the sweat in her hair. She trod as quietly as she could, still aware that she was tall and big and armed, and the things that lived in the woods could probably hear her loud as thunder. She would have made a terrible hunter. From time to time a sound among the trees had her turning, sword half drawn. But the sounds were only branches falling, or hares bounding away, or ground birds scratching in their nests. When Skalmir’s house came into view, she relaxed a little.
Strike and Stranger came tearing out barking, and Skalmir’s deep voice boomed after them, “Heel!” He followed them and saw her, his shoulders slumping. She could see in his face that he was exhausted, worried. His golden beard, usually neatly trimmed, was ragged.
“Thank the Horse God you are here,” he said.
She bounded up the path. “I saw Rowan in the village. She told me what happened.”
His eyes went to the trees around them. “Let us go inside. I don’t feel safe out here anymore.”
Leaving Thrymm outside to guard the door, they went into the house. Bluebell removed her helm and shook out her hair, grateful to have the weight and heat off her head. Skalmir sat at the side of the hearth, his knees spread wide, elbows resting on them, head in his hands.
“It’s not safe for Rowan here anymore.”
Bluebell didn’t sit. She paced. “Have you told Wengest?”
“Wengest left the guardsman. The one who got killed.”
“Rowan said the woodlanders had killed him. Who are they?”
“First Folk. They say they live in the Howling Wood but I have never seen them before now.”
“And Rowan had met them?”
“Yes. She believes there’s a tree in the wood that sings—”
“She told me about that. I thought she was imagining things.”
“They found her one day and lured her off. I got to her just in time.” He ran his hand over his beard. “They call her the little queen. At first I thought they meant that they knew she was Wengest’s daughter, but now I’m not so sure…”
“You did well to get her out of the wood, but she must leave Nether Weald. I will take her with me to Blickstow and we will find safe haven for her in Almissia. Maybe she can go to my uncle Robert, who raised Ivy and Willow.” That thought gave Bluebell pause: Neither Ivy nor Willow had turned out particularly well. Though her old horse, Isern, who was pastured there, seemed happy enough.
“Wengest won’t allow that.”
“Let me worry about Wengest.”
“I will miss her.” He pressed his lips together after he spoke, as though he wished he hadn’t said it.
“Then come with her. You can remain her caretaker. We don’t have a remote wildwood the size of this for you to hunt in, but we can find something for you to do…”
Skalmir smiled up at her. “And will you come to visit us more often if we are closer to Blickstow?”
She kicked him lightly in the ankle, exasperated with him pushing his affection on her. “Whether I visit you or not is hardly worth thinking about now.”
“If I’m going to give up my home, my livelihood, the graves of my wife and children…” He trailed off and Bluebell turned away and let him be.
“For now, all that’s important is that I take Rowan with me to Blickstow,” she said. “Tomorrow. You can join us or not. Come later or not. I swear to protect you but cannot swear to comfort you. I am not built for comfort.” She turned and spread her arms. “As you see.”
He laughed, but whatever he was about to say next was drowned out by the sound of Thrymm barking loudly, tearing off and growling, then yelping.
Bluebell had the door open in half a moment. Thrymm lay on the path ten yards away, an arrow protruding from her back. Bluebell’s heart seized.
“No!” she cried, hurrying down the path and skidding to her knees next to her dog.
Thrymm was still breathing, whimpering softly, licking her lips.
“Ah, there, my girl. There,” Bluebell said softly, feeling around the arrow. Her fingers came away bloody, but the small volume of blood told her the arrow had not penetrated an artery. She cracked off the shaft.
Skalmir was on his knees next to her. “The poor girl.”
Bluebell stood and drew her sword. “Take my dog inside and remove the arrow cleanly.”
“Bluebell, no. The woodlanders are sharp shots.”
“I am fast on my feet. As was Thrymm. She isn’t dead.”
“They won’t hurt us unless we hurt them. Thrymm must have attacked one of them. Maybe they’ve been watching the house to see if Rowan returns.”
“Fetch me my helm.”
He put his hand on her arm to stay her. “They won’t hurt you if you don’t—”
She shook him off violently, boiling over with rage. “I said fetch my helm! Whoever attacks Thrymm attacks me. I go now to defend myself, my kingdom, my people, of whom I am the guardian!”
Skalmir took a step back, a wounded expression on his face.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said. “Just tend to Thrymm and let me deal with this.”
Within a few seconds he had her helm and she jammed it on her head. She stalked off into the woods, heart thundering, pulling all the anger out of her fingers and toes and limbs and banking it. She needed her thoughts to be clear and vivid, not overheated. Blood drops on the ground. Thrymm had wounded whomever had hit her, and the path led into the trees.
Bluebell heard a whispering split the air and in an instant had her shield up. The arrow thunked into it, and the next, and the next, as Bluebell crouched behind it. The archer stopped to grab more arrows and Bluebell advanced over the undergrowth toward a thickset woman, twenty yards away, with coppery hair and a round tattoo on her cheek. The one called Dardru. She had her bow loaded and pointed at Bluebell and Bluebell could see the ragged tear in her right forearm from Thrymm’s jaws. It made her arm tremble.
“Stop!” Bluebell commanded.
Dardru didn’t stop. Here came the next arrows, but her arm was wounded and tired and they whizzed past Bluebell, who batted them away easily with her shield as she ran forward, knocking the woman to the ground. Dardru was still trying to fit another arrow to her bow so Bluebell stomped on her bow arm and she cried out in pain. Bluebell felt bones crack under her shoes.
Foot on the woman’s arm, Bluebell lifted her sword. But Dardru raised the arrow clenched in her hand and drove it hard into her own heart before Bluebell could deal the killing blow.
“Our woods,” Dardru said, as blood started bubbling out of the wound, so dark it was almost black.
“No,” Bluebell replied, lowering her sword. “We fought a war with your people and we won.”
“Our woods,” she said again, closing her eyes.
Bluebell stood by and waited for her to die, then sheathed her unused sword and headed back to the house. She slammed the door behind her and pushed a bench up against it, then went to the back door and heaved a barrel inside to bar that as well. Only then did she turn to Skalmir, tending to Thrymm on the floor by the hearth. His hands were bloody and his hunting knife lay on the ground next to the broken arrow.
“We have to get out of here quickly,” she said. “Can she travel?”
“No. If you want Thrymm to live, we need to keep her still for a while.”
Bluebell stroked Thrymm’s muzzle. “There, girl. Good girl.”
“I’ve gotten the arrow out. It seems to have missed her lungs. We just wait to see if the bleeding stops now.”
“You’re a good girl,” Bluebell said again, and Thrymm cautiously licked her hand. “No, no, you stay still.”
Skalmir’s dogs sat back and watched, as though especially reverent at the idea that one of their own was terribly injured.
“Did you find who did this?” Skalmir asked, pressing a cloth into the wound.
“A woman.”
“With the circular tattoo on her cheek?”
“Yes.”
“Dardru,” he said.
“She’s dead now.”
“Her father will be angry,” Skalmir said. “Rathcruick.”
“He can be as angry as he likes. I didn’t kill her. She pierced her own heart rather than die at my hand, and he’ll see that when he comes to take away her body.” Adrenaline was dragging its way out of her veins now, her heart slowing, her breathing returning to normal.
As Skalmir lifted away the cloth, she could see the tidy job he had done cutting out the arrow. He was a hunter: He knew where skin and gristle and bone were in animals.
“Thank you,” she said to him. “Do you think she will live?”
“The bleeding is slowing. I’ll pack the wound with angelica and thyme to stave off infection, but I think we should stay here tonight and head off in the morning. The pain and shock of moving her might kill her.”
“Very well,” Bluebell said, and gave Thrymm one last gentle head rub before standing and stretching her legs, pulling off her helm and beginning to pace the room.
“Don’t pace, Bluebell,” he said. “You make me nervous.”
“Why do you think you can speak to me that way?” she snapped.
He looked up. He had a smear of Thrymm’s blood across his cheek. His clear blue eyes met hers in challenge.
“Forget I said that,” she mumbled.
He stood, bloody hands at his side, and moved close to her. Kissed her hard. All the anger, the frustration, the strong currents of feeling she was perpetually managing and holding down, sensed an outlet, a clear path toward light and freedom.
“Clean off your hands,” she said on a rasping breath. “Let’s go.”
The long evening had turned to dark and Skalmir was asleep beside her, but Bluebell didn’t sleep. She lay for hours, her brain ticking over, making plans. Then she heard Thrymm whimpering from the next room and rose to look in on her.
By soft firelight, Bluebell could see the dog was dreaming. Bluebell stroked her ears and she opened her eyes but didn’t try to move under the blankets Skalmir had carefully laid on her. The fire was low, so Bluebell added more wood and stoked it. Thrymm closed her eyes again.
What was that noise?
Bluebell’s body sprang to alert, but as she listened more closely she realized the sound was distant. Singing. She went to the shutter and unlatched it, opened it an inch, and listened out into the dark wood. Voices, singing a melancholy song that rose and fell on the breeze. They were singing for Dardru, their fallen companion. Bluebell listened for a while, then closed the shutter and latched it again. She sat by Thrymm, hugging her knees to her chest. The singing continued, faint and mournful, long into the night.
Skalmir opened his eyes to morning light. He could feel the warmth of another body behind him and smiled as he remembered Bluebell was here. Their second morning together, the longest she had ever stayed. The rest of his troubles tumbled into his mind only after he had smiled, but the first feel of her—now he rolled over—and sight of her, long fair hair falling over her face, made troubles easier to bear. Sometime during the night Thrymm had joined them, and Bluebell lay asleep, curled on her side, with the dog pressed against her. Thrymm’s eyes were open, and she looked at Skalmir guiltily, not sure if she was allowed in the bed. The fresh bandage he had applied last night was unspotted by blood. Skalmir reached across Bluebell’s body and rubbed the dog’s head, and she closed her eyes and huddled closer to her mistress.
Bluebell didn’t sleep through more than a few seconds of being watched. Her eyes opened and her body filled with its usual intensity and power.
“What is it?” were her first words to him.
“Thrymm’s better.”
Bluebell shifted her head, saw Thrymm against her, and patted her gingerly. “Is that right?”
Thrymm licked her softly.
“Ah, she’ll live, but I don’t know if she’ll do battle anytime soon,” Bluebell said. “If ever again. War dogs often grow timid after an injury like this one. Curses. I don’t want to have to train a new one.”
Even though she spoke practically, Skalmir could see by the light in her eyes that Bluebell was happy her companion had survived.
“I expect we have to move on today, then,” Skalmir said. He had enjoyed the last two nights, playing house with Bluebell even though she had been armed (when she wasn’t naked or sleeping) and had likely been playing siege, checking the doors and shutters, accompanying him outside with her sword and shield when he went to get food or water or firewood.
The sound of approaching horses ended their morning cheer. Bluebell was out of bed in a heartbeat, reaching for her clothes. “Is it Sister Julian?” she asked. “Your woodlanders aren’t horsed, are they?”
“Must be someone from the village,” Skalmir said. His first thought was that it was ill news from Rowan and he, too, scrambled out of bed and into clothes.
A thundering on the door. “In the name of King Wengest, unbar this door!”
“Did you send to Wengest?” Bluebell asked him.
“No.”
She pulled her brows down, strode out and across the room, pulling her sword free and throwing the door open. Skalmir saw the expression on the men’s faces and nearly laughed. The last thing they had expected was to be confronted by Bluebell the Fierce.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
Skalmir approached, more congenial. “What do you want of us?”
“I am Harack and this is Ned. The king sent us,” the elder of the two men said. He was florid and plump, while his companion was tall and wiry. “We’re to take the little girl home to Folkenham.”
“She’s not here,” Skalmir said, pulse thudding at his throat. “I moved her for her own safety. She’s in Nether Weald. I can take you to her.”
“As you wish.”
“Did Wengest not come with you?” Skalmir asked. “Is Rowan to travel with strangers?” His heart felt tight. Rowan was unhappy about being decamped to Sister Julian’s; how was she going to feel about spending two days on the road with two unknown men? Had that thought never crossed Wengest’s mind?
“The king is lately married, hunter. He has no time for travel. His new wife will be the child’s custodian.”
Bluebell turned to Skalmir. He read in her face that she understood how he felt. “You will travel with them,” she said.
“The king has not asked for—”
Bluebell silenced them with one irritated glare. “This hunter stays with the girl,” she said. “Go back to Nether Weald and wait at the mouth of the wood. Skalmir will join you within an hour, and he will accompany you all the way to Folkenham, and you will provide him with food and shelter along the way. If Wengest has a problem with any of that, you tell him Bluebell commanded it.”
“Yes, my lord,” the younger man, Ned, said.
Harack was more grudging in his compliance, but he agreed nonetheless. As soon as they were gone, Skalmir hurried to Rowan’s bedroom.
“She’ll be safe with Wengest,” Bluebell called after him.
“I’d rather she was going to Blickstow,” Skalmir replied. “I’d rather she was going with you. She’d be safer.”
“They may look like half-wits but I’m sure they are high up in Wengest’s retinue,” Bluebell said. She was in the doorway now. “What are you doing?”
“Packing her dresses and dolls.” He threw things on Rowan’s bed, rolled them up tightly. Concentrating on the task at hand stopped him from feeling too helpless and bereft. He didn’t know what the future held for him and Rowan, but at least he would be with her the next few days.
“Wengest will have plenty of dresses and dolls ready for her.”
“But these will be familiar to her,” Skalmir said. He grabbed the leather bag that hung on the back of Rowan’s chair, and began to push the things into it. “Everything is about to change for her.” He stood. “I don’t know how long I’ll be away.”
“I’ll make sure everything is in order here. I’ll stay another night with Thrymm.”
“What shall I do with Strike and Stranger?”
“I’m on my way south soon, and Thrymm isn’t well enough to travel with me. I intended to leave her with a very kind woman who looks after Torr in Nether Weald. I can take your dogs, too.”
“Thank you.”
He grabbed his traveling pack and shoved some clothes in it, then found himself standing in the center of the house he had built with his own hands, about to leave. “The Horse God willing, I will be back here one day soon,” he said. Without Rowan.
“The house will still be standing,” Bluebell said. “Don’t look so lost.”
“I’m not lost.” He reached across and took a strand of her fair hair between his fingers. “Where are you headed?”
“I need to continue hunting for my sisters. I’ll collect my hearthband at Withing and head deep into trimartyr country to see if Willow has taken up refuge there.”
“Tweening?”
“Yes. Last fucking place in the world I want to visit, to be honest.” She brushed away his hand. “Send me a message when you’re safe in Folkenham. Let me know how it goes.”
“I will.” He wanted to tell her he loved her, but last time he did that she ignored him for a few months. “It was good to see you,” he said instead.
“I agree,” she replied with a twist of the lips that could have been a smile.
Skalmir gave Strike and Stranger a last affectionate pat and was on his way.
By midafternoon, Rowan had traveled as far as she was able. Skalmir reminded Harack and Ned that she was a child and couldn’t spend any longer in the saddle, and they made for the nearest village, a tiny lakeside community fifteen miles out of their final destination, Folkenham.
Rowan had not taken the news that she was leaving the Howling Wood, Snowy’s house, the life she knew, with any kind of good grace. It had pained Skalmir to see her face fall, her brow turn pink just as it had when she cried as a tiny girl. He was uncomprehending that Wengest could have expected her to travel so far and so sadly with strangers, which made him wonder what kind of father Wengest would be to her once she was with him again. As he rode on a borrowed horse with Rowan sitting in front of him, between his arms, he wondered who would love her as much as she needed to be loved.
Around ten miles outside of Nether Weald, she’d appeared to accept her fate. By the time they stopped for the day, she seemed her usual self.
“Come on, Snowy,” she said, grasping his hand while Ned and Harack waited at the stable for somebody to take their horses. “Let’s go and look at that lake.”
He allowed himself to be led away from the stables and along the dirt road, where the smithy clanged and the market stalls hung with hares and waterfowl. As they approached the grassy bank of the lake, Rowan kicked off her shoes, lifted her skirt, and began to run, sloshing out into the water until it was up to her thighs. Her legs looked impossibly thin and white in the afternoon sunshine. Skalmir slipped off his own shoes and rolled up his pants to join her. The sky was cloudless, blue. Dragonflies darted across the water weed and lilies. He could feel the sun on his back, a light breeze moving the cloth of his shirt. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. She looked up at him, the sunlight in her hair, and, fixing him with her clear gaze, said, “I will always love you, Snowy, even though we are apart. I am used to being apart from people I love, though, so I know I will be all right.”
“Perhaps we won’t be that far apart,” he said lightly. “I will come to Folkenham to see you.”
She wrinkled up her nose. “I don’t like the sound of Papa’s new wife.”
“You don’t know anything about her.”
She shrugged. “I know that she’s not my mother. Or you. Or Bluebell or even Julian. She is nobody I love.”
“You may come to love her.”
“My heart is already full enough, Snowy.” She leaned against him. “You’re not to worry about me. I’m big enough to look after myself.”
“If you say so, my darling girl,” he said, rubbing her shoulder. “And I will do my best not to worry.”
Dawn broke on a grim, wet day. Skalmir lay a few minutes listening to the rain outside the inn. Traveling to Folkenham was going to be a miserable affair. He turned to see if Rowan was awake.
Rowan wasn’t there.
He sat up, called her name. No answer. That’s when he saw the trunk pulled up against the wall, directly under the shutter, which had been left open.
I’m big enough to look after myself.
“No, no,” he said, running to the window and looking out. The street, the lake beyond. Dreary, gray, hammering rain. How had he not heard her slip out? Where had she gone?
But he knew already. She had gone where her heart and spirit were always drawing her, back to the Howling Wood.
Rowan had gone to find the singing tree.