A thin, dark hand on a delicate wrist, whorled with knotted bones and age. A hand that all my life had pressed kindness or punishment upon me. A hand that tomorrow would have taken mine and showed me my fate.
Old Charani’s hand.
It fell as the sword sliced down again, and again, in an awful, ceaseless rhythm until she stirred no more. Beside her, Dika and Erha were on the ground too, and all of them wore crimson slashes like sashes.
Kizzy started forwards but I held her back. ‘Kizzy, we need to find Mamă and Kem!’
We tore our gaze from the bodies, searching. In the far corner of the camp where the bears were staked, Albu was rearing, his white fur singed dark and streaked with ash. His muzzle was leaking red spots of blood to the ground, and he slashed with his front paws, swiping at the men’s arms. His long claws were marred with gore, and several men lay broken before him, dragging themselves away.
But more were advancing, swords raised. Beside him was a mangled heap of brown fur. Dorsi was dead, and the remaining men were drawing closer to Albu. ‘He’s still tied to his stake!’ shouted Kizzy. ‘Where’s Mamă?’
The first thing Mamă would have done if Albu were threatened would be to free him, so he could either flee, or fight freely. He was doubtless our best warrior.
And then, in step for once, we both turned our gaze along the burning circle of the wagons and saw our home at the same moment, flames eating it faster than any other.
‘Mamă!’ Kizzy’s scream seemed to tear my own throat. ‘Kem!’
Kizzy ran at the wagon, and I followed, but it was too late. I could see a thick length of wood throttling the doors, which we never locked. The awful cruelty of the sight made me stumble.
The men had shut them inside.
The shutters were ashen already, and the curtains swallowed by flames. Those curtains had been dyed purple with elderberries, stitched with blessings. Mamă’s bed was beneath them, and when she rose at dawn to feed Albu I’d untangle myself from Kizzy’s stifling grasp and lie down in her cooling sheets, place the fine material of the curtains across my face, breathe in the mingled smells of cooking and herbs and Mamă.
Seeing them gone was to know, even as Kizzy danced at and away from the licking flames, trying to rip open the door. Know with the same certainty I knew my sister’s face, my own hands.
Mamă and Kem were dead.
Pain slammed into my stomach, and I bent double, holding myself together. They had died trapped, not even able to fight for their lives. Not even able to raise their eyes to the sky one last time. Rage flared inside me like a swallowing flame.
Mamă and Kem were dead.
But Albu was not.
I straightened and picked up Mamă’s axe where it lay in its block beside our flaming wagon. The men’s backs were to me, occupied with Albu’s flailing paws. I raised the axe.
One of the injured men crawling away cried out a warning, and another turned to see the axe coming towards him. He stepped aside, alerting his companions. The men scattered and converged, darting clear and circling closer to me, like buzzing black flies, but in the moment they scattered, I reached Albu.
He kept them back, bellowing, as I swung at the leather connecting the stake to the chain. Two desperate hacks, and the bear was free. He stood fully, swiping behind him, the chain flying. His claws caught one of the men across the cheek, spilling blood.
As he reared, I saw what Albu had been crouched over: a small, shivering shape.
I darted between Albu’s thrashing paws. My broken heart swelled.
‘Kem!’ I pulled at my brother’s shoulder, shaking with relief, and he cowered away. ‘It’s me, we have to go!’
He looked up at me, his owl eyes swollen with tears, but as his soot-stained hand reached out to me, an arm came around my waist, and with the force of a hook, yanked me back.
I dropped the axe. I could see Kem’s knuckles whiten into a fist. Albu bounded forward, raising his paw to strike, but he had left Kem exposed. I held out my empty hands, just as I did in training. His wet nose touched me for just a moment, flaring nostrils filling my whole palm, his breath searing.
‘Kem!’ I said. ‘Take Kem! Go!’
Albu did not hesitate. He scooped up my brother like a salmon, throwing him onto his enormous back. Kem’s hands tightened in his fur as the men rattled their swords, raised them to hack, but Albu was fast with fear and fury. He turned and ran from the smoking camp, into the thick trees beyond.
Some of the men started after him, but the one holding me stayed them.
‘Leave it!’ he called. ‘Catch the girls.’
He stank of smoke and sweat. My hands were covered in blood from Albu’s muzzle, and I threw a wish to the forest that he was not badly hurt.
The man threw me into the bears’ caged cart. I landed on something soft and sobbing. Dika’s son, Morsh. He squealed as I crushed his leg, and I shifted off with a murmur of apology.
He didn’t respond, only curled tighter into his ball. As I looked around for Kizzy, I saw no one over sixteen was alive except Fen, whose divining day had fallen three weeks ago. He had a peculiarly shaped bruise on his cheek, and it was flaring the same blue and purple as Old Charani’s wagon.
I could not bear to look, but knew our mothers and fathers, older sisters and brothers lay slain in the ring of our scorched homes, or else were caught and burned inside them. My nostrils were full of the smell: wood-smoke and something sweeter, like meat. I swallowed down bile.
‘Mamă. Mamă.’ Morsh’s murmurs span away from his lips like prayers, face slick with snot and soot. I placed my hand gently on his shoulder.
‘Have you seen Kizzy, Morsh?’
He shrank back from my touch, still muttering.
I looked around the survivors. ‘Has anyone seen Kizzy?’
Terror sank me deep inside myself, a gnawing cold like an icy stake through my chest. Had the men killed her, too? We were tall for our age, and she better formed than I. And her face had been twisted with such rage – could they have mistaken her for older?
Fen crawled forward to peer through the bars of the cage. His face was heavy with worry too – he loved my sister, though I don’t think he had admitted it to even himself. But when Old Charani had flattened her rough palm over his mere weeks ago, and told him he was an aurar, a goldsmith, and that before the year was out a woman would be placing a promise ring onto his finger, his eyes had searched for Kizzy.
‘There!’ His arm stretched out through the bars. ‘She’s alive!’
I heard her before I saw her, howling like a demon. She was heaped over two men’s shoulders, writhing, hissing and biting. She was thrown into the cage a moment later, still kicking.
One of the men who threw her in was the same man who had caught me, only now his appearance was altered. He had scratch marks all down his face, and I saw Kizzy’s hands had been bound behind her back with one of their sashes. I felt pride in her then, and my own sickening shame at being taken so easily.
He spat at her as the cage door closed and she scrambled upright, tripping over her skirts, and spat right back, banging her head against the metal slats.
‘Kizzy,’ I reached out to her, but even I was afraid. ‘Kizzy, calm.’
She wheeled around on her knees, and her black hair was matted with blood, her dark, lovely face frenzied as a cornered wolf’s.