Elsewhere, Lette found Balur leaning against Athril’s broken town gates. The heads of a few city guards had been mounted on makeshift spikes. She arched an eyebrow at him.
“I am getting fidgety when I am not having much to do,” he said by way of explanation.
Next to them, a slow but steady stream of people was making its way into Athril. Farmers for the most part, Lette would say. Some alone, some dragging their families in their wake. A spattering of merchants in among them. More would follow. It would take a little longer to dislodge the more comfortable ones from their city homes. But they would come. From all over Kondorra. Eventually the weight of this human tide would force them out of their comfortable homes, make them wash up here at Will’s feet.
Balur’s eye skipped over each and every one.
“You’re keeping Will safe,” she said with a sudden smile. “You big softy.”
“I am not knowing what you are talking about,” said Balur, not meeting her eye.
“You’re worried about him,” said Lette. “You’re worried about spies from the Consortium. So you’re standing here and keeping an eye out for them. Because you care. Because beneath that tough grizzly exterior, you have the soft, squishy heart of a six-year-old girl.”
“He was losing my hammer,” Balur grunted, with a vehemence that made the travelers on the road into town look up and shy away. “He is being lucky that I have not ripped his intestines out of his arsehole and throttled him with them.”
Currently Balur appeared to be armed with a savage piece of iron, which had perhaps once been a fence post.
“But you are guarding him,” said Lette. “You’re doing it anyway.”
Balur grunted, used his scanning of the crowd as an excuse to not meet her eye. Lette thought. “Not for Will’s sakes then.” The pieces fell into place.
“For mine,” she said.
Balur ground his teeth. Finally he just said, “We are being tribe.”
Lette, though, felt anger rising. “So,” she said. “You’re not protecting him. You’re protecting me.” It was not a question, but she expected an answer all the same.
Balur just stared at the crowd.
“That one,” he said. “Concealing a sword under his cloak.”
“He’s come to fight,” Lette snapped. “For Will. For what he represents. And you are deflecting. You say we’re tribe. And I know what you mean by tribe. I know the importance of that word to you. But if we’re tribe, the only member of it that needs protecting is you before I unseam you and piss on your guts.”
She closed on him, didn’t take her eyes off his face, daring him to test her.
He glanced at her, knew it for a mistake, looked away fast, but not fast enough.
“I don’t need your fucking protection!” she snapped.
The crowd definitely heard that one. They paused, started to bunch. “Keep fucking moving,” she snapped, not sparing them a look. “Before I chop your balls from your bodies and send you all chasing after them.”
That seemed to do the trick.
Balur, though, still wasn’t meeting her eye.
“I don’t—” she started to repeat.
“Old Lette didn’t need protection,” Balur said.
That put a stumble in the step of her argument. “What do you mean, ‘old Lette’?” she asked.
Balur shrugged. It looked like two continents trying to get it on with each other. “I am meaning the Lette who we left behind in Vinland. The Lette who was pocketing a sack full of gold, and spitting in a god’s eye. I am not meaning the Lette who is making puppy eyes at some fool of a farm boy. I am not meaning the Lette who is hesitating before she is planting the blade hilt deep. I am not meaning the Lette who is worrying about a herd of fools”—he nodded savagely at the crowds—“before she is worrying about herself. I am meaning the Lette who I was working with, and was living with for ten years, who I was trusting my life with. I am meaning the Lette I am waiting to see return.”
He ground his teeth hard. The metal of his fence post was groaning under the pressure of his grip.
Lette felt herself thrumming, like a bowstring after the arrow is loosed. But she had yet to work out where the arrow had been aimed.
“So,” she said. “I am not supposed to have ambition? I am not supposed to have goals? That’s what people do, Balur. They live. They desire. They strive to change. I am trying to make myself better.”
“Better at what?” Balur snapped. His voice was full of contempt. “Better at being one of these cattle?”
“Better at being someone who can sleep at night,” she spat back, not giving him an inch. “Better at being someone who can look her reflection in the eye.”
“Oh,” Balur scoffed. “So you are having a conscience now?”
Lette hesitated. That was a little close to the bone. “No,” she said. “But I’m trying to grow one.”
Balur looked at her. Yellow slit eyes boring into her. “Truly?” he said. He sounded as hurt as she felt. “You are truly wanting to be more like them?” Again he swept a hand at the passing crowds. They were shying away from them, pressing into the far wall of the archway, looking straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact.
“Well…” she said. “Not exactly like them. Like them with balls. And brains.”
Balur laid a hand on her shoulder. Her knees asked politely if that could never happen again, please.
“We are having that,” Balur said. “We are having balls. We are having brains. And we are having fun. We are having success. That is why we are being tribe.”
Lette looked at him. The big, brutal psychopath, more loyal to her than she ever had any right to deserve. And she said something she knew would cut him to the core.
“They’re my tribe too.”
Balur was eight feet tall. He was covered with armor thicker and stronger than any steel plate. He could wield a two-handed war hammer like it was a child’s plaything. He had a mouthful of teeth like knives. He weighed more than half a ton.
And she had just taken all the fight out of him.
He took his hand off her shoulder, stepped back, almost a stumble.
“We’re tribe, Balur,” she said. “But I’m human too.” She shrugged. “Always will be. Can’t shake it.”
A ghost of a smile passed over Balur’s face. It looked like the smile had enjoyed a particularly grisly death.
“Was always knowing there was being something funny about you.”
It was her time to lay a hand on him. His forearm was thick and heavy beneath her palm. “This isn’t the end, Balur,” she said. “You know that, right?”
He nodded. “Just the beginning of the end.”
She looked away. More words wouldn’t help. Balur wasn’t really a words sort of person. Unless she spelled it out for him in a message made of body parts, perhaps. But, ultimately, that was the sort of thing she was trying to avoid these days.
“At least,” she said, “I’m not the one going about armed with a fence post.”
“It is not being a fence post.” Lette knew they were through the worst of it because Balur was willing to sound offended. “It is being the hand of a temple clock.”
She sighed. And he questioned her desire to change. “You defaced a god’s temple for a weapon?” she said.
Balur shrugged. “Well at this point it is being clear that we have pissed off every deity in the heavens above. I am figuring, at this point, fuck it.”
She tightened her grip on his arm. “Yeah,” she said. “Fuck it all.”