Kushiel’s Dart

He had sunk to his knees behind the Skaldi’s horse, exhaustion compelling the obedience that nothing else would. Whoever said the Cassiline Brotherhood was a humble order, lied. His chest heaved, and his hair had come completely loose from its tidy club, rimed with frost. He glared through it at me.

"Joscelin," I murmured, cupping his cold face in my hands. He jerked his head away and spat at me. I felt Gunter’s hands on my shoulders, drawing me away, tucking me under one massive arm.

"Look at him!" he said jovially. "A proper wolf-cub, he is! Let him spend the night with the hounds, then, eh?"

There was no shortage of willing hands to wrestle the Cassiline into submission. Laughing and shouting, a group of young men dragged him away; to the kennels, I could only surmise. I was spun around again by Gunter’s grasp, propelled staggering into the warmth of the great hall.

"Shame on you, Gunter Arnlaugson!" The exclamation came from a woman, against whom I fetched up like a bit of flotsam, stumbling away awkwardly. She was young, and pretty enough by Skaldic standards, with sun-colored hair and sharp blue eyes. At this moment, she had both hands planted firmly on her hips, and her eyes were narrowed. "The poor thing’s half-frozen and terrified to death, and you’re bragging about bed-rights! No wonder you’ve not found a woman to warm it before this."

A round of laughter echoed from the rafters, and my fiercesome Skaldi lord looked down and shuffled his feet, before coming up with a retort. "Ah, Hedwig, you know I’d no need to go raiding over D’Angeline borders if you would have me, lass!" he said, grinning. "Now there’s no telling what this little one can teach me, and you’ll be sorry for the loss of it!"

"Not tonight, you won’t." Despite the laughter his retort won, her reply was no less acerbic. "A bowl of warm soup, and a turn by the fire, that’s what you need, isn’t it, child?" she said kindly.

"She’s a barbarian, Hedwig, she can’t understand a word of it," someone said good-naturedly.

"I understand," I said in Skaldic, struggling to make my voice heard. Still shivering under my fur cloak, I sank to my knees and grasped her work-roughened hand, kissing it. "Thank you, my lady."

Embarrassed, Hedwig snatched her hand away. "Gods above, we’ll have none of that here, child! We’re not savages, we don’t make slaves crawl on their knees!" Gunter had not said as much, I thought, rising, and filed the thought for future usage. Clapping her hands, she shouted for a bowl of soup and ordered room made at the hearth for me. There was grumbling, but she was obeyed.

I was in no shape to protest, even if I’d been minded to, which I was not. I took my seat by the fire, and the roaring heat of it slowly thawed the ice at the marrow of my bones. I could see Gunter in the hall, half a head taller than any other man there, boasting and making the best of the situation.

Later I learned what that night should have been obvious; Hedwig’s father had been the lord of the steading, until his death. Gunter had won the leadership by might of arms, but had failed thus far in his campaign to win Hedwig’s heart, and some of her father’s legacy of command still clung to her.

If I do not love the Skaldi-and I cannot, for what they sought to do to the land to which I was born, and which is ever a part of me-it is not in me to hate them, either: I knew kindness at their hands. If I knew cruelty-and I did-it was no more and no less than the cruelty they inflicted upon each other, for theirs is a harsh and warlike culture. But it is not without its beauty, even if it is born of blood and iron; and as I have learned, it is not without compassion.

Skaldi drink deep when celebrating, and they celebrated that night. Enough mead to drown a village flowed, and there were songs and fights and constant laughter. No one kept a close watch on me, and I daresay if I had wanted to slip away, I could have done so. But where would I have gone? I was in no condition to flee across miles of snowy wastes, through hostile territory. I thought of finding Joscelin, freeing him, and attempting the flight, and I shivered.

So it was that I stayed, while my new Skaldi masters sang and boasted and drank, and worried about Joscelin freezing in the cold, until a hand shook my shoulder and I woke with a start, to realize I was drowsing. It was Hedwig, who took me kindly to her room, shooting baleful looks at an only semi-abashed Gunter. There she made up a pallet for me, of straw ticking and heaped blankets, alongside her own bed, and I curled up like a dog myself and let sleep, honest sleep, claim me.

Chapter Forty-One

Thus began my period of slavery under the ownership of Gunter Arnlaugson, Skaldic chieftain of one of the westernmost steadings held by the tribe of the Marsi-under the aegis, I would learn, of the great war-leader Waldemar Selig, Waldemar the Blessed.