Deep Water (44 page)

The other woman ran to the door and shut it, then began looking around for something to barricade it with. Her red-gold braid
lay over her wrist, matted and untidy. Bramble was abruptly aware of her smell. It had been a long time since anyone had let
these girls wash.

“Help me move the bed against the door, Edwa,” the woman ordered, but Edwa just stood, looking at the knife and the body.

The woman took her by the shoulder and shook her. “Don’t you understand? They’ve come for us! I knew Acton wouldn’t leave
us here! All we have to do is keep Hawk’s men out until after it’s over and we’ll be safe.”

Edwa focused on her face, her blue eyes becoming less clouded. “They’re here?” she whispered. The woman nodded. She began
to dress herself hurriedly, dragging on shift and dress and snatching up a man’s leather belt to girdle herself. She shook
Edwa again, and this time Edwa moved, but not to help. She went down on one knee and got Hawk’s other knife out of his boot.
It was much longer, a dagger for fighting rather than the eating knife they had used to kill him.

The woman nodded. “Good. We might need that.” She went to the other side of the bed and began to push it toward the door.
“Come and
help
, Edwa! We can’t let Hawk’s men use us as hostages!”

Edwa was staring at the two knives, one in each hand. She put the smaller one against her wrist and drew it down slowly. Blood
welled.

Bramble expected the woman by the bed to jump up and grab the knife, but she stayed very still. “Edwa?” she said gently.

“They mustn’t see, Wili. They mustn’t see me,” Edwa whispered, finding a new place to cut and pushing the knife in.

Wili straightened up from the bed and turned to look fully at Edwa. The blond girl was painted in blood. Her hair was as dark
as a Traveler’s now, and her face was smeared and purple with bruises. Bramble could feel Wili’s heart beating in deep, heavy
thumps. Her sight blurred as the girl’s eyes filled with tears.

“That won’t kill you, Edwa,” she said with a break in her voice. “It’ll just make you more bloody.”

Edwa looked up at Wili. Her eyes were dry and bleak. She nodded slowly, as though Wili had told her something hard to understand,
but important. She dropped the belt knife and, bringing her other hand up in the same movement, thrust the long dagger in
under her breastbone. Then she crumpled to the floor.

Wili sat down on the bed, as though it didn’t matter anymore if Hawk’s men found her. She stared at her hands. The nails were
bitten down to the quick. Bramble could feel the knot of grief between her breastbone and her throat, and feel something else
as well, a kind of heaviness that made movement impossible, even the movement that would be needed to cry.

The door slammed back and Acton sprang into the room, his sword and shield ready, blood and sweat running down his cheeks.
He saw Wili first, and shuddered to a halt, visibly changing from berserker to concerned friend.

“Wili! Are you all right?” He closed the door behind him.

Wili’s eyes overflowed and she started to cry. Not the choking sobs of grief, Bramble thought. That would come later. These
were the tears of relief. She brushed them away almost angrily and stood up.

“
I’ll
survive,” she said, and looked at Edwa.

Acton knelt beside Edwa’s body. He put down his shield but not his sword and reached his shield hand to touch the knife hilt
that stood out from her shift. It had an antler handle, Bramble saw, left rough for a better grip. Edwa’s hold had loosened
and her hands had fallen away to lie empty and soft on the wooden floor. Acton closed the dull blue eyes and looked up at
Wili.

“She didn’t want you to see her — anyone to see her, after what had happened.” Wili’s voice was astonishingly calm, the tears
gone.

“You didn’t stop her.” His tone wasn’t accusing, not even wondering. He just said it.

“Her choice,” Wili said. “I understood why.”

Acton nodded slowly and stood up. He picked up his shield and gripped his sword more firmly. Bramble saw the fury build in
him again and, like Wili, she understood it.

“Close the door behind me,” he said. “I’ll be back for you.”

Wili nodded. He faced the doorway and then hesitated, turned back, as if he were impelled to ask.

“Friede?”

Wili shook her head. “She died in the attack. Took three of them with her, too, because they weren’t expecting a cripple to
fight.” Her voice was bitter. “I should have fought harder. Maybe they would have killed me as well.”

Acton raised his hand in denial, the sword pointing up. His eyes were dark with fury and determination. “You are the treasure
we have saved from this wreck,” he said. Bramble felt the warmth spread out from Wili’s gut at his words, as though she had
been waiting for a judgment, a death sentence, and had instead received a reprieve.

Acton went out the door in a rush, back into the shouting and screaming and hard, thudding noise. “Kill them all!” he shouted
as he went, sword ready.

Wili began to cry again, sinking down to the floor and letting her head droop. The tears washed Bramble away gently, like
a soft slide into sleep.

All she could feel was her heart, beating too fast, as though it was going to spasm. She couldn’t catch her breath. It took
all her strength, but she pulled back from the mind she was in, from the body’s distress. She could see little except some
cracks of light. A small room. Maybe a storeroom. Her hands were bound with cloth. The air was cold; her breath was the warmest
thing here.
His
breath; it was a man, again, but she couldn’t tell whom. His mind had a faintly familiar taste to it, but he was so frightened
that all personality had been stamped out.

A door in the wall opposite crashed back and a red-headed man appeared. He was followed by a stocky blond with big shoulders.
Together, they hoisted the man under the armpits and dragged him out the door, then threw him down onto the cold ground of
a yard behind a big building. Hawk’s house? Bramble wondered.

Acton and Baluch were standing there, their clothes smirched with blood, their eyes red with exhaustion. Acton was cleaning
his sword with a snatch of cloth, paying great attention to the detail around the hilt. Baluch looked at him in concern, and
then cast a quick glance at a corner of the yard. The man she inhabited looked too, and shuddered. A woman’s body lay sprawled
against the wall of an animal shed. Bramble could hear pigs inside squealing for food, that terrible squeal that sounded like
they were having their throats cut.

Acton was very definitely not looking at the body of the woman. The red-head and the blond came back to the yard and dragged
the corpse away, and only then did Acton look up, in time to see Asgarn pass the two and come on without a glance. Acton sheathed
his sword as though he were glad to put it away.

Asgarn was in high spirits. He was just as bloody as the others, and just as tired, but he was smiling in satisfaction.

“That’s a good day’s work,” he said. He clapped a hand on Baluch’s shoulder. “Maybe you’ll make a song of it, eh? The Saga
of Hawk’s Hall.”

Baluch shook his head. “The Saga of Death Pass, maybe.” Bramble wanted to smile. He’d clearly been thinking about it already,
probably while they were making the trek through the pass.

“There’s no one left?” Acton said.

“Except this one.” Asgarn casually kicked the man on the ground. “When you say, ‘Kill them all’ that’s what we do.” Acton
winced. “You did
want
them all dead, didn’t you?”

“The men,” Acton said. “I wanted the warriors killed.”

“Ah . . .” Asgarn shrugged. “Well, next time you’d better tell us that first, lord of war.” He turned away and kicked the
man again, hard, on the shoulder. “So, what do we do with him, then? You want me to finish him off?”

“No!” Acton said. He looked at the man more closely, and was surprised. “You’re one of ours, aren’t you? One of Swef’s thralls?
Uen, isn’t that your name?”

Baluch looked at Uen in surprise. Uen was looking up in hope. Bramble could feel the welling up of pleading; he was trying
not to beg. She recognized his mind now. The thrall who had been ploughing the day Hawk came to visit Swef’s steading.

“One of
ours
?” Baluch said. His voice was dark. Shaking. With compassion, or something else?

Acton reached down to help Uen up, but Baluch put out a hand and stopped him.

“If he’s one of ours,” he said, his voice flat, his hand on his sword hilt, “why was he the one who killed Friede?”

Acton froze and pulled his hand back. Put it on his sword hilt. Uen’s heart had started to thump and leap wildly with panic,
and memories flooded his mind. Bramble caught at them with determination. She had liked Friede. She wanted to know the truth.

Uen’s memory was one of noise and shouting and rushing; rushing through Swef’s big, new-smelling hall, its walls barely smoothed.
The rushes on the floor made him stumble, he was running so fast and, unlike the men around him, who were just hacking at
anyone they met, he was searching for someone. Friede. He was frantic, looking for her, running and dodging because he had
no time to fight, he had to find her first, before any of Hawk’s men. But he was too late.

She was in the kitchen. She had wedged herself in a corner and was using a stool as a shield and her crutch as a weapon. So
many years of hobbling had made her arms strong. There was a man on the ground in front of her, his skull stove in. She was
keeping the other two off, but only barely. One man’s sword cut into the stool and as he wrenched it back the stool came with
it, dragged out of her hand.

“Stop!” Uen said, and leapt toward them, pulling on the men’s shoulders with wild hands. “Stop! This one is mine.”

They turned in exasperation. “What?”

“My lord Hawk gave her to me. She’s mine!”

They sneered at him, dark eyes scornful. “Oh, it’s the traitor. Hah! Take her, then, oath breaker.” Their backs were toward
Friede and she took the opportunity to hit twice more, hard, with full control. They dropped like felled bullocks and Friede
and Uen were left staring at each other.

“Traitor?” she said with venom.

“They were going to attack anyway,” Uen said, desperate. “This way I got to save you.”

She raised her crutch and hit at him, but he pushed it sideways.

“Oath breaker!” she shouted.

“I never took an oath! I’m a thrall, remember!”

She paused, considering, her green eyes cold. “That’s true. Good. You’ll go to the cold hells, then, not to Swith’s Hall.”
She raised her crutch again deliberately.

“I love you,” he said.

“I spit on you,” she said, and brought the crutch down.

A scream rose in Uen’s throat and he brought his sword around in a great flat circle. He had no skill, but he was very strong
from years of physical work. The stroke almost cut her in half. Then he fell on his knees and gathered her into his arms and
wept.

Now, in the courtyard, he wept again, the tears a mingling of grief and fear. He held out supplicating hands to Acton. His
bladder loosened and urine gushed down his legs, but he barely felt it.

Acton drew his sword in one movement and swung it, much as Uen had swung. As the sword bit into Uen’s neck the water rose,
but it was blood this time and it was warm, sickeningly warm, so that Bramble wanted to vomit at the touch and at the memory
of the cold fury on Acton’s face and the thwarted desire on Baluch’s. He had wanted to kill Uen himself, but he had waited
too long to act. As the blood swamped her she heard Asgarn laughing.

“That’s it! Kill ’em all,” he said.

I
’
D DO IT
again. Even having to kill her, I’d do it again.

It was sweet to see them go down under the dark-hairs’ swords. They weren’t expecting anything, and they died like flies.
Hah!

By all the gods that are, I am not an oath breaker. What were Swef’s people to me? Gaolers. I am, I
was,
a thrall. If the only freedom I could have was death, then I took it with both hands.

Better than thralling. Better than carrying muck and being used as an
ox,
as though I was no better. Better than being yelled at and struck at when I was too slow and never thanked, no matter how
hard I tried.

Except by Friede. Oh, and that friend of hers, Wili. But it was Friede who set the example. She was so kind, always.

I didn’t expect her to hate me.

But I’d still do it again.

Because Swef was very loud, talking about the new land, the fresh land, the big land that had room for all. But it was too
late for my people, wasn’t it? Too late for the ones the Ice King had already conquered, who had to go cap in hand to the
southerners to beg for living room. My father went. We were a small valley. There weren’t enough of us to fight for new land.
We kept to ourselves, we did, and that had worked well enough in the bountiful days, but when the King clawed our land away
from us we had no allies to turn to.

So my father, who was chieftain, and his brother, who would have been lord of war if we’d fought, went to the Moot and asked
for land. But none would give it. And then they asked for honorable service, as oath men to a chieftain. But none would give
it. So rather than have their families starve, they agreed to thraldom, until they had worked back their price, which was
the price of feeding them and housing them and clothing them, and so would
never
be worked back, not in a thousand generations, but they didn’t realize it then because they were not
clever
, like Swef. Not
cunning
, like Swef. Not
evil.

I was fifteen. I had been the chieftain’s son and they made me do women’s work. I would have accepted a man’s job. I could
have been a shepherd, or worked at a trade like smithing. Even being a tanner would have been honorable. But no, I had to
feed the pigs their swill and carry chamber pots and scour cooking pans. It was shameful, and I hated them all. Except Friede,
because she was kind to me and because her red hair reminded me of home.