“No, you’re taking her because she has to go.”
“Because she has the Long Eye?”
“Because she has the Long Eye so strong it’s killing her.”
Scenn looked over at Rikke, then. Small, dark eyes he had, but she saw the sharpness in them. Beware of clever men, her father told her once. But beware most of clever men who look like fools. “What do you say, girl?” And he spat a bit of gristle into the fire and pointed at her with the stripped-bare bone. “If you can see the future, tell me mine.”
Rikke leaned forward then, the fur slipping from her shoulders, and she turned her burning left eye on him and opened it wide. He flinched back as she raised her left hand, pointing with her forefinger towards the glittering stars, and spoke in ringing tones her prophecy.
“I… see… you’re going to get fatter!”
Laughter around the fire at that. An old woman with just one tooth laughed so hard she nearly fell over, and a young one had to slap her on the back till she coughed up a shred of meat.
Shivers tapped his ale cup against hers and Rikke took a swig and settled back into her fur. There weren’t a lot of things would bring someone to Slorfa, but they made good ale, the hillmen, her head was dizzy with it. Or maybe that was the sickness of the Long Eye. Hard to tell the difference. Scenn frowned, settling his bulk cross-legged.
“She has a sense of humour, then. She’ll need that, up in the High Places. There are few laughs at the forbidden lake.” He frowned towards Isern again. “Do you really think this little shred of gristle, this little snot with the ring through her nose, is beloved of the moon?”
Isern spat ale in the fire and made it hiss. “What would you know about it, Scenn-i-Phail, who carries our father’s hammer?”
Scenn stuck his beard out at her. “I’d know as much as you, Isern-i-Phail, who carries our father’s spear. Just because he loved you best, don’t think you learned the most from him.”
“You’re joking, you sheep-fucker! Our father hated me.”
“He did. He loathed the guts and face and arse of you, head to toe.” Scenn paused a moment. “And you were his favourite.”
And the two of them burst out laughing together. They might not have looked much alike but their laughter was the same. Mad, cackling peels that sounded halfway to wolves howling while overhead the full moon hung fat and round, and they smashed their cups together and sent up a fountain of ale and drained what was left and carried on laughing.
Shivers watched them, face in shadow. “This’ll be a long month, I reckon.”
“No,” said Rikke, snuggling into that smelly fur and shutting her eyes. “This hasn’t happened yet.”
“Always upwards,” gasped Rikke, shading her eyes against the sun and squinting uphill.
“That’s going into the hills for you.” Isern wasn’t even out of breath. Nothing ever tired her.
“Where are we headed, exactly?” asked Shivers, his boots crunching on the dirt path.
“To the forbidden lake.”
“That much I know. I’m asking where it is.”
“If they told everyone where it was, it wouldn’t be very forbidden, would it?”
Shivers rolled his eyes. Or eye, at least. “Do you have any straight answers, woman?”
“What use are straight answers in a crooked world?”
Shivers gave Rikke a glance, but she was too out of breath to do much more than shrug. “How… do we get there… then?” she asked between her wheezes.
“My brother Scenn knows the way. He is a turd in the shape of a man, but he’ll help. We’ll head to his village first, which is a turd in the shape of a village. Slorfa, they call it, at the head of the valley four valleys on.”
“Sounds… a long way,” muttered Rikke.
“One foot in front of the other will get it done with time.”
“How many brothers do you have?” asked Shivers.
“Eleven of the bastards, and each more like a dog’s arse than the last.”
Rikke raised her brows. “You don’t… talk about ’em much.”
“We all had different mothers,” said Isern, as though that explained the whole business. “My upbringing was less than happy. An ordeal, d’you see? Living through it once was bad enough but had to be done. Remembering it is a thing I aim to avoid.”
Isern stopped on a heap of rocks, and pulled out a flask, and splashed water over her head and some more in her mouth and offered it to Rikke.
By the dead, she was weary. She stood, swallowed water, wiped sweat from her forehead. It was springing out about as fast as she could drink it. Her vest was soaked through. She reeked like a haystack after the rains. The air was cool, but her eye, her eye was always hot. Burning in her head. There’d been a time, she was sure, when she could run and run and never stop. Now a few paces had her panting, and her head pounding, and her sight swimming, ghosts haunting the edges of her vision.
She looked back the way they’d come, out of the hills over the crinkling valleys towards the lowlands. Back down the long miles walked towards Uffrith. Into the past.
“Let’s make some footprints,” grunted Isern, turning back to the steeply climbing trail. “The forbidden lake won’t be coming to us, will it?”
Rikke blew out so hard she made her lips flap and wiped a fresh sheen of sweat from her forehead.
“Need to ride on my shoulders?” asked Shivers. Most folk couldn’t even have told he was smiling. But she knew how to tell.
“Never, you old bastard,” she growled, setting off. “More likely I’ll be carrying you.”
“That I’d like to see,” Isern threw over her shoulder, and stones scattered from the heel of her scuffed boot and down the bald track.
“No,” muttered Rikke, closing her eyes. “This hasn’t happened yet.”
“Found you!” shouted Leo in that piping voice with the strange accent, catching hold of Rikke’s foot and dragging her out of the hay.
She’d soon realised they’d be man and woman grown by the time he found her if she’d stayed in her first hiding place, up among the rafters where the pigeons nested. She’d enjoyed looking down on him hunting around the barn, but when he wandered off to look elsewhere she got bored and dropped down, burrowed into the hay and left one boot sticking out where he could see it. Games are only fun if they’re close, after all.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
He was pretty, Rikke thought, even if he wasn’t the cleverest. And he had an odd manner and talked strange. But being brought up in the Union would do that to a boy, maybe, and for pretty you could forgive a lot.
She was glad he was here, anyway. Nice to have someone her age to play with. She liked to pretend she was happiest on her own, but no one is, really. Her da was always busy having the long talks with the grey-bearded bastards where everyone frowned and shook their heads a lot.
Shivers would tell her stories sometimes, about his travels around the Circle of the World and all the different styles o’ strange folk he’d killed there, but she felt there was something odd about a friendship between a little girl and one o’ the most feared warriors in the North. He said he didn’t mind but she didn’t want to push it.