Seacaster burned. Willow was helping Hakon away. Father was horribly maimed. Unweder’s body lay in a black and bloody heap. Grithbani, though safely slid inside her belt, was still intact.
But all Ash could focus on was Bluebell, long and blond and bloody and crumpled on the stone stairs at a horrible angle. She abandoned Athelrick and started down the stairs.
“Bluebell, Bluebell,” she said, over the noise and heat and confusion. She picked up her sister’s hand, felt its limpness. “Breathe. Talk. Be alive. Please, please, be alive.”
She put her ear against Bluebell’s back, listening for a heartbeat but unable to hear anything over the noise of war. She could see, though, that the raiders were pulling away, would escape on their ships.
Ash weighed the harbor with her mind and knew what Bluebell would want her to do. She stood and hurried down the stairs, calling out to all she passed, “Let them go! Let their ships sail!”
Crispin, the captain of the guard, caught her. “My lady?”
“Help me,” she said, glancing back, molding the lie. “Bluebell wants…She wants them to leave unimpeded.”
He gave her a curious look, but Bluebell’s name worked the magic it always did. “Let them retreat!” he began to call, and slowly Bluebell’s army and Ivy’s guard withdrew. One by one the ships limped away, some of them barely manned.
Ash planted her feet on the wooden boards of the dock, took a breath, and began to stir the water, pulling at the currents. It was easier than ever. Her returned power flexed in her muscles. With barely any effort of her mind’s will, she grasped the tide and dragged it so that the raiders’ ships were sucked out toward the mouth of the harbor. She could feel the ships resisting her and closed her eyes, shaking them off her. Then, once the open ocean’s force was within her reach, she brought its mighty weight down upon them. Waves—giant rollers—began to crack and thunder around them, shattering them to pieces and carrying their debris far, far out to sea.
But now here came the tide, rushing back into the harbor. She opened her eyes and realized that the warriors were all still amassed on the docks. Ash had to stop the water crushing the wooden boards when it returned, so she desperately tried to grab its force and slow it. Her hands shot out reflexively in a stop gesture, but it was almost too late. The first waves were arriving.
She turned and crouched, a futile move to shield herself, throwing her arms up. The water followed the direction of her hands as though they were deliberately giving orders. Up and up a cloud of water went. When Ash saw, she only had to think of the flaming roofs of Seacaster for the sea to know where to go. The water, disembodied from the tide, fell like salt rain on the burning city.
She turned, soaked and gasping. All was in disarray. Bodies and men crying in agony, others on their knees with their faces turned to the sky. She wove her way between them, thighs aching and heart pumping as she ascended the stairs as fast as she could. Bluebell hadn’t moved but Father had hobbled over and now sat with her, a look of terror on his face.
“Dead!” he cried. “She is dead! I see the Horse God standing over us.”
Ash’s heart seized in her chest. She dropped to the stair next to Bluebell and loosened her helm, pulled it off. Bluebell’s face was slack, her skin pale. Ash’s frantic fingers found the vein in her throat. Her pulse was weak and thin.
“Not dead,” she said softly, sadly. “But dying.”
Athelrick bent his head to Bluebell’s chest, spreading his maimed and bloody arms over her ribs. “Take me!” he cried. “Take me into the Horse God’s train, but leave my daughter. Give my life to her.”
Ash could feel the air grow thick with the smell of horse and leather. It was true. The Horse God was nearby, and he had come for somebody. But did it have to be Bluebell? Along with her own power, some of Unweder’s was in her, too.
“Father,” Ash said. “You would give your life to save her?”
He looked at her. Tears ran through the soot on his face and beard. “What use am I?” He held up the blackened stumps of his forearms. “I am old and weak. There is enough life between us for one king; it should be her.” Then his eyes grew sharp. “Ash? Can you…?”
Ash closed her eyes, reached for the Horse God in her mind. She felt him as a huge, powerful force, hard as stone yet warm as sunlight. The question formed in her mind and was answered instantly. Yes, he would make the trade. She only had to be the conduit for Athelrick’s life essence, and the echoes of Unweder’s power would make that so. The air bristled. She opened her eyes.
“I love you, Ash,” Athelrick said.
“I love you, Father.” She withdrew Grithbani and held it angled up so the point was facing Athelrick. The runes on the hilt glowed blue.
Her father rose to a crouch, then fell onto the blade. A spurt of blood, and he collapsed over Bluebell’s prone form.
Ash placed a hand on his back, the other hand around Bluebell’s hip. Rushing through her, cold as frost and hot as fire, came Athelrick’s life force. She was dimly aware that the Horse God had retreated. The thick air thinned, became smoky and briny again, but she was crushed under the weight of sensations and memories. Not memories of events that Athelrick had experienced on his senses; they all went with him and the Horse God. No, these were the memories of his living essence. Every heartbeat and breath drawn, every pulse of thought and twitch of limb. They rocketed through her and toward her sister, faster and faster, harder and harder, until Ash could not hold back the tide anymore, and her mind turned gray.
When Ash opened her eyes, her hand was still on Bluebell’s hip. Neither Bluebell nor Athelrick was moving. A small group of Seacaster’s guardsmen had assembled, looks of horror on their faces.
“Bluebell!” Ash cried, clambering to her feet. With a huge effort she tried to roll her father off Bluebell. “How can you stand there?” she said to the guardsmen. “Help me!” Two of them pressed forward and rolled Athelrick. He thudded onto his back on the stairs, the trollblade protruding from his chest.
Ash leaned down next to Bluebell and shook her. “Wake, sister. Wake.”
Bluebell murmured. Her eyes flickered open. She looked at Ash, then her head fell to the side. Her eyes fixed on her dead father, then closed again. “No,” she managed.
“She lives!” Ash cried. “She lives! Get her to the infirmary!”
Ash stood and reached for Grithbani. She couldn’t leave the deadly blade out here for anyone to take. She yanked hard and it came free from her father’s chest, then began to crumble in her hand. Startled, she dropped it. When Ash held the sword for Athelrick to fall on, Grithbani had fulfilled the kin-slaying purpose for which it was forged. As it hit the ground, it turned to dust.
Ivy grabbed the boys and raced downstairs to the hall to welcome back the city guard. Men everywhere, stinking of sweat and blood and victory. She couldn’t see Crispin anywhere in the hall so she went out into the sunshine, with baby Edmund on her hip and dragging Eadric by the hand. The wounded were being laid out on the grass. Her heart ran hot with fear. She didn’t dare to look at their faces to see if one of them was her beloved.
Then he was there, and all her fear evaporated. She let go of Eadric’s hand and impulsively threw her arm around his neck. “Crispin!”
He gently pulled her hand away and stepped back. “My lady.”
She smiled at him. “If I cannot publicly kiss the captain of the guard on such a day, then when can I?”
He leaned toward her and said in a low, barely audible voice, “Be sensible.”
She noticed then the smears of blood on his mail, and felt very young and foolish.
Rose joined them a moment later, with Eadric’s hand in hers. “You have a little runaway here,” she said.
“Rose, this is Crispin, the captain of my guard. Crispin, my sister Rose.”
He nodded once at Rose. “I am sorry about your father.”
“Thank you.”
He began to pull away. “If you’ll excuse me, my ladies, I have to assist with bringing in the injured.”
Ivy wasn’t ready for him to leave. She had been longing for the comfort of his arms, of some tender words that restored her to her usual place in the world. “Must you go just yet?” she blurted.
He fixed her in his gaze and the expression he wore…Was it pity? Scorn? She recoiled from it.
“I will see you in good time, my lady,” he said tersely. “When the dead and wounded are accounted for.”
He turned away from her and moved into the crowd. She followed him with her eyes until he was lost among jostling, shouting bodies. A little flint of fury lit in her heart. How dare he? She turned to Rose and took Eadric’s hand, her protective instincts flaring into life.
“Thank you,” she said. “We don’t want him lost in this crowd.”
“You are in love with Crispin, aren’t you?”
Ivy averted her eyes.
Rose pressed on. “Do you want my advice?”
“No, I don’t,” she said, and when Rose opened her mouth to give it anyway, Ivy raised a finger to her lips. “I don’t,” she said again. “Especially not from you.” She knew what Rose would say, about love and about good sense and about the fates of kingdoms that rested on their soft shoulders. But her sister underestimated her if she thought Ivy could not manage Crispin. Was she not born of kings?
Bluebell ebbed in and out of gray, aware of noise and voices, but experiencing it all as though it were a dream. A bad dream, where Father had died and his hands were missing. A howling pain sat around the crown of her head. She remembered something about Ash, and a dragon, but surely that had been another dream.
But then a glimmer of thin light, and she opened her eyes and Ash was sitting there, wet and bloody, right next to her. “Ash?” she said. “Where am I?”
Ash smiled weakly. “The infirmary. Seacaster. How much do you remember?”
And with that simple question, the pain came roaring back. It had been real. Father was dead. She groaned.
Ash stroked her hair. “Go slow, sister. You have been badly hurt.”
Bluebell licked her lips. “Where is Willow? Hakon?”
“They headed to their ships. I crushed them in the harbor. Listen, can you not hear the horns of victory?”
“Victory?” Bluebell said, and she struggled to sit up. Every bone in her body ached. “My father is dead…” Her breath caught and she bent over her knees, moaning.
“Are you in pain?” Ash asked.
Bluebell lifted her head. “I have never hurt more than I hurt now.”
The physician bustled over, past the rows of other wounded, when she saw Bluebell was awake. “Lie down,” she commanded. “I have not yet assessed all your injuries. Though how you are still alive, I do not know.”
Ash smiled tightly. “It’s a miracle,” she said. “The gods were on her side.”
The physician did not smile in return. “Well. My lord Bluebell, there is somebody here who may yet cheer you on this dark day.”
“Who is that?” Bluebell asked.
The physician stepped aside and indicated Skalmir, who was limping toward her. She climbed to her feet, despite Ash’s protestations.
“Snowy,” she said, the crushing weariness and grief of the day roaring over her.
Slowly, he approached, stopped in front of her with an expression of empathy and concern. “My love,” he said.
“My father died,” she managed to say, then stopped speaking in case she cried.
Snowy stepped forward, opened his arms, and she let herself fall into his embrace.
Willow drank the sea. Over and over she tried to claw toward air, only to gulp then slide under again. Her eyes stung; water bubbled around her ears. And she put her fate in the hands of Maava.
If you want me to live and give you heathen lands, you will save me.
Something hit her head. Every nerve alert, she reached for it. A piece of a ship, about as big as a table. She grabbed on with all her might, groped her way forward until her upper body was out of the water. Above the surface, it was a calm clear day. Her piece of wood was being thrust toward the shore, north of the harbor. She shook her head to clear her eyes of water, and blinked around her.
Bodies floated on the heaving currents. She counted them with her eyes. Dozens. Some, like her, grasping the surface of the water then disappearing again. Too far away for her to help. She would be the only survivor. Many hundreds of martyrs were made at the battle of Seacaster, but Maava’s favorite, Willow, was spared.
Then she saw Hakon. She would have thought him any of the raiders, floating facedown in the water, but she recognized the black triangle on the back of his hand. Their wedding tattoo.
The angel voices brewed, began to rub against each other. Will you honestly leave your husband to die?
“He’s a heathen,” she said to them, her voice creaking over the salt that lined her throat. “He’s already dead.”
Are you sure?
A sign. Where was the sign she needed? Her piece of driftwood would soon crash directly into his body.
She looked to the sky for a sign.
Perhaps Maava was sick of her, always asking for signs. She lay on her belly and reached out. As the wave pushed her forward, she grasped the back of his shirt. The weight of his body pulled her off the driftwood. Splinters sliced through her palm as she tried to hang on. One hand on Hakon, one hand on the driftwood, feeling her weight slowly sinking.
“Hakon!” she screamed at him, making her throat raw. “Hakon!”
With all her might, she pulled his upper body onto the driftwood, then climbed over him. Pulled again, heaving him up. Her shoulders burned. She turned him on his side and sat across his ribs.
Water spewed from his mouth. He coughed. He was alive. The driftwood was crashing toward the shore. There were rocks. There would be pain.
Willow braced herself.
A short period of black followed, then she was blinking her eyes open and feeling pain in every part of her body. She was on gritty sand, Hakon kneeling over her. Warm blood ran down the side of her face.
“What happened?” she said.
“You are safe. You are cut, but nothing seems broken.”
Willow closed her eyes, relished the feel of air moving in and out of her lungs. Maava had saved her.
“Willow?”
She opened her eyes again and saw that Hakon looked down on her mournfully. “What is it?” she asked.
He hooked his finger inside the wound on his cheek and said, “Maava’s miracle has passed.”
If Willow was not so full of pain and exhaustion, she might have thought to run. Now he would know she had deceived him. Now he would not bring Maava to the heathens.
But then he put his head in his hands and said, “We failed to take the city in His name. We slaughtered a lamb to the Horse God. Maava has punished me.”
Willow realized that failure had convinced Hakon of Maava’s great power more than all the small successes had. She knew then that it had been right to save him, and she promised she would stop asking the angels for reassurance, stop asking her Lord for signs. She had a rightness inside her, and she would trust it from now on.
Willow struggled to sit. She could see now that her legs were bruised and grazed and cut; the mail had protected her upper body. Her head swam and she put her hand on the back of her scalp and felt another gash. Her fingers came away bloody.
She put her bloody hand on Hakon’s shoulder and said, “He may yet forgive you.”
Hakon lifted his head.
“When Iceheart is converted. When the war on the Southlands begins. Who knows when His favor will once again turn to us? All I know is we must keep trying.”
Hakon nodded, took her hand roughly. “I promise Maava. I promise you. We will wipe all of the heathens out of Thyrsland together.”
Bloody and bruised, they rose to their feet and began to walk north.