He caught her up, leaving their guards and servants behind. “By the dead, I’m glad you came.”
“I’ve always wanted to see the North.”
“So you’ve come for the sights? Not to make sure I don’t do something reckless?”
“I can do two things at once.” That one eye slipped across to him, and she nudged her mount closer to speak softly. “This is important. We need allies.”
“I know how Northmen think,” said Leo. “I grew up with them.”
“Of course. These are your friends. I am only here to help. Haven’t I been a help to you in Ostenhorm?”
“You’ve been a bloody marvel in Ostenhorm.” In fact, she’d proved so good at running the governing meetings that he’d stopped attending altogether. He was still lord and master and had the last word, as she was always telling him. But why use it when her words sounded so damn good? “I do worry about my mother, though—”
“There’s no need.”
“She’ll see Jurand drilling the men, raising more, she’s no fool—”
“Clever people are prone to believe what they want to, Leo, just like everyone else. What your mother wants most in the world is to think the best of you.”
Leo blinked. “Oh.”
“I told her you are growing up and taking your responsibilities seriously, and the new companies are all part of your plan for lasting peace. You are raising more soldiers because Northmen only respect force. Our talks with Stour will go that much better if he knows we are well armed. She was full of praise for your strategy.”
“Oh,” said Leo again. That was a first.
“And then I begged for her help and loaded her down with enough work on the new tax system to keep five clever people busy. What your mother wants second most in the world is to feel useful.”
Leo felt that witless smile on his face. The one he usually ended up with when he came to Savine with a problem, then found she’d solved it weeks ago. With her on his side, how could he fail? “What the hell would I do without you?” he murmured.
“Luckily for you…” And she touched him firmly on the thigh with her riding crop and caused a pleasurable stirring in his trousers. “It is not a problem you will ever have to face.”
And they rode from the trees into the open.
He gave a delighted laugh to see the gates of Uffrith, dappled sunlight shifting on its lichen-spattered walls. He remembered how it had felt the first time he came here, as a boy—the excitement, the romance, the freedom—to be in the North, the land of heroes!
He spurred on, through a cluster of new huts and houses, leaving Antaup and Jin and the rest behind with the carriage and the wagons. Savine kept pace with him, through the gates and clattering down the cobbled way beyond, the dirty-faced people in their colourless clothes gazing up in wonder as they passed. A lot had changed. New buildings where Stour Nightfall burned the old ones, maybe. Grander buildings, stone and slate rather than wood and wattle.
“Good old Uffrith!” He took a long breath of that familiar air. Sheep, dung, woodsmoke and sea salt, but sweet with happy memories for him. “I spent the best years of my childhood here. I know every alley of the place!”
“That wouldn’t be too difficult.” Savine gave a scornful little laugh. “I thought you said this was one of the North’s greatest cities?”
“It is.”
He had to admit, seeing it fresh through her eyes, used to the scale of Adua and the pomp of the Agriont, it looked a mean, poor, primitive place. For some reason, that nettled him. “Things might not be so grand here as in Midderland, but they’re honest,” he snapped. “They’re good people. They have a code and they stick to it. They’re great fighters. Brought up with swords in their hands. Rikke will be a staunch ally. She’s one of the warmest, truest, most straightforward people I know!”
Savine looked calmly away from him. “Perhaps you should have married her.”
They rode on in silence.
Leo knew the pattern of the crooked rafters in the Dogman’s hall by heart. Remembered climbing among the carved animals, trees and faces, squatting in the shadows, watching the Dogman argue with his Named Men below. The bench with the worn black sheepskin was still there, where the old chieftain used to listen to his people’s complaints, pointed chin propped on one fist. The firepit still glowed, ripples of red and orange rustling through the embers, the heat pressing on Leo’s face as he came close.
But there’d been changes. The hall had always bustled with life in the Dogman’s day. Now there was a brittle silence which made Leo feel guilty over his every footstep. At this time, in this season, the shutters should’ve been wide open and the sea breeze washing in. Now hides were hung in the windows, painted with circles of runes, sinking the hall into gloom. There was a new smell, sweet and strange and sharp, like burned cakes. There were skulls on the wall in a shadowy herd. Horned and antlered skulls of ram and bull and stag and great animals he didn’t know. Animals of the utmost North, maybe, where the sun doesn’t shine and the world blurs into myth.
“Leo! Savine! I’ve missed you.” And Rikke swaggered from the shadows, arms spread wide, dangling with bracelets and thongs and charms, into the shaft of light from the smoke-hole.
Leo almost shrank back in shock. There was a great dark stain across her face. A tattoo, black runes, black lines, black arrows in a crescent from her cheek, covering one side of her forehead, to the bridge of her nose. Her right eye was turned white with just a milky pinprick in the centre, while the hungry pupil of the left had swallowed the whole iris, yawning like a grave-pit.
“Ah.” She waved a hand in front of her face. It used to be round, soft. Now it was all sharp ridges and shadowy hollows. “All this? I forget.” She tapped at her skull with one long finger, the hair on the left all clipped back short while on the right it was grown to wild tufts and tangles. “Can’t see it from in here, but I’ve heard it said the tattoos and the eyes and all can be… off-putting.”
“Not at all,” croaked Leo. “Just… unexpected.”
The gold ring through her nose shifted as she smiled. He didn’t know the words for that smile, but warm, true and straightforward weren’t the ones. “You remember I used to have fits? Leo remembers, I reckon.” And she winked at him. She’d had one the first time they’d lain together, after all, both stark naked in a hay pile. “This is the cure.”
“The cure?”
Rikke stuck her fingertip in her milky right eye. “This eye fought the other, so it had to go. My visions come much cleaner now.” She leaned close and muttered it out of the corner of her mouth, “Don’t shit myself no more neither. And I’m still me!” She punched him on the arm. Good-natured, but hard. “More or less.”
“Could I look closer?” asked Savine, stepping towards her, not put off in the least. “I have seen a very great number of painted faces, but never such fine work.” And she put a finger under Rikke’s chin and tipped her face gently into the light. “I think it’s beautiful.” And she traced the lines of the tattoo with her fingertips. “It could not be more… you.”