Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (7 page)

I
t took Nora five days
to get back to the woodlands she knew. She told herself she would just be passing through Owen’s Ridge. Pick up some extra supplies and winter clothes to get to Dernberia and leave the north. Where to? She didn’t know yet. But her feet knew her heart and led her back home. In the chestnut grove below the Ridge, she could smell burned wood lingering on the wind. The charcoal clamps in the woods were cold and abandoned. Only prickly, empty chestnut shells were strewn here and there, peeking out among the dense fallen leaves. The ground before her was red and brown and wet from the constant rain that had set in on her way back across the Plains.

Owen’s Ridge stretched along one main road that led up to the coastal road on one end and into the woods on the other. The village sat on a natural shelf of land, a sheer cliff that rose suddenly as though the earth had bowed before it in a time long past. The only way to climb up was a steep stone path that ran up in long curves, twisting this way and that way until it finally reached the top. At the foot of the cliff ran a small brook that pooled in the woodlands around the Ridge, attracting wild ducks and geese to rest before their flight south. Those birds were lucky ones, fed by the excited girls and boys who begged their mothers for breadcrumbs. And so some of the animals lingered longer than they should, becoming fat and lazy, and the unlucky ones who tarried landed in the cooking pots and ovens as autumn roasts. Those ducks were a lesson in life: that greed was bad and luck a thing of perfect timing. Farther up the brook was a huge stone slab laid across smaller stones, serving as a bridge to the winding path, but it was covered in lichens and thus treacherous to cross.

Nora hunkered down under a chestnut tree at one of the pools, among the empty shells covering the forest floor, and threw them into the water. She had no food left. She had run the last day on nothing but water and was feeling weak and hungry for it.

The ducks had all gone.

There were no children skipping down the stone path, being scolded by their anxious mothers.

And above, she could hear no sounds of the village. No dogs barking, no geese cackling. No human voices. She’d been right. The coalers had fled in fear. But it didn’t make her feel any better.

There was another way to the village, one that led far around it, following the brook. She could walk around and come up on the far side. Not many families lived here at the neck of the woods, mainly woodcutters, hunters, the herdsmen who settled down for the winter with their smaller flocks of sheep, and the ewes that hadn’t been slaughtered for the winter. Only a handful of houses were built of stone—and the bakery, the smithy, and the inn, of course.

In front of the inn, the dirt lane had been cobbled with stones, a proper road. A small space in front of the smithy served as the unofficial town square. On most days, the villagers gathered there to exchange news and gossip, or sheep and goats. She’d helped Rannoch shoe the Vale’s horses. Young girls made themselves up and waited in the square for the young men to tell them how pretty they were, spending the summer nights dancing to music and stealing off into the woods for quite a different kind of dancing. There the spring tide fire roared. There the autumn fires warmed cold hands. There Nora had shared a sip from the same cup as Wolfe at her handfasting.

She fell asleep leaning against the tree trunk and woke at dusk. Shouldering her empty backpack, Nora climbed the steep stone way. As she reached the top, she crouched low, spying over the last cuff of rock to see what was up there.

The square was empty.

The flat cobblestones still shone with a wet gleam. The waxing moon snatched a peek from behind the clouds before veiling his face once again. Most of the houses were burned, leaving behind charred beams like raised fingers. The door to the smithy was gone, a gaping dark mouth. The torches at the inn were flickering in the wind, and behind the colored glass windows shone the only light to be seen in the whole village, right down to where the bakery once stood, the large bread oven now a tombstone looming in a forlorn heap of rubble, sagging like the shoulders of a widow.

Two men stood in front of the inn. Men wearing swords at their sides.

Nora hoisted herself up the rock and crouched down behind a bench. She slid her knife out and clutched it tightly. In the shadows, she ran to the smithy and pressed herself against the stone wall. After a moment she looked around the corner to the inn. The men were talking to each other in low voices. One had his back turned to her and was scratching his head. She passed along the wall to the far side of the smithy. To the front, facing the square, was where Rannoch had set up his shop with the forge. The old men liked to come and stand at the door or at the windows, chatting with Rannoch as he beat something into shape. Nora made her way to a window and climbed through, crouching low. It was strangely silent in the forge. The chatter, the men laughing and grunting, the hammering, the hissing, Rannoch cursing and shouting at the men not to tell lewd jokes in front of Nora—it was all gone. The only thing left was ashes and moonlight. And that smell. The smell of meat gone bad. It was the smell that made her feet step forward.

And in the dark, she saw something. A familiar shape. Beside the anvil lay a man’s body, a body without forearms. The corpse was bloated and stank, and white maggots were wriggling and falling out of the dark rim of the severed neck. She doubled over, retching, holding the anvil tight. Face pressed against the cool iron, she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. The head was gone. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need his face to recognize him. There was the smith’s apron. And the white cotton shirt with the new patch at the elbow. Nora had sewn it just before the handfasting. She swallowed down the dry heaves and hid her head in her hands. What had she been expecting? There would be no coming back home. No reconciliation. Owen was right. She had been chasing an illusion. Her world lay broken, chopped into ruins, rotten, full of maggots.

Don’t look at him. Oh gods, don’t look!

Nora flattened herself on the floor next to the body when she heard a commotion in the street. She crawled deeper into the shadows, away from the wriggling white mass. Through the other shop window she could see the inn door open and bright light spill onto the cobblestones. A young girl fell on the ground between the two guards. It took Nora a moment to recognize Becca, the innkeeper’s daughter. Becca’s normally artfully-styled blonde hair was a mess, and instead of her pristine, fashionable clothing, she wore nothing but her torn undergarments and bruises on her face.

“You beast!” Becca screamed and scrabbled to get up.

The two guards paid her no notice. One bent inside the inn’s common room and called something. There was laughter from within. Nora pressed herself closer to the wall. She watched the girl scurry around the square, throwing all the loose cobblestones she could gather at the guards and the inn. Then she turned and ran toward the smithy. Nora quickly moved through the second doorway into her old kitchen, wondering whether Becca would enter the building. For a long time, it had seemed that Owen and Becca might…but Becca’s mother had found a more promising future husband among the merchants of Dernberia. And so Becca’s visits had stopped abruptly. Nora heard Becca run past the smithy.

Nora hesitated. She risked a glance over to the inn. Three men were standing in the light now. One was fastening up his trousers, slapping one of the guards on the back. They seemed to be in no hurry and like they were having a good time. She loosened her grip on her knife and then tightened her hand around the hilt once more. It was still there. In the shifting reality around her, she had one constant. The knife was still there. She moved through the kitchen, through the doorway, and into the garden.

Her garden was trampled. Sheets and clothes were strewn among the beds and rows of vegetables in disarray. Nora saw her own trunk split on the side, its contents scattered among the winter cabbage. Her brother’s few books, spines snapped and pages torn. And they had been so expensive.

The garden was fenced in by trees, old trees that grew on the edge of the Ridge. Here stood oak and beech and sycamore. Nora ducked under the leafless branches and listened for noise. Before her, the white of Becca’s garment shone clearly in the dark night. The other girl was standing at the edge of the Ridge, one arm around the trunk of the oak tree to steady herself, barefooted among the dead leaves, eyes as wild as her sobs. One false step and she’d topple over the cliff. But maybe that was what she was planning to do anyway. It was a bad plan, though. You could fall and break your neck, true. But you could also fall and only break your legs. With the men at the inn, lying helpless with a broken leg or two was not an option. Nora sneaked up as quietly as she could and held a hand over the girl’s mouth. She bucked and struggled, and Nora fought to keep her away from the edge and close enough to whisper into her ear.

“Becca! Becca, it’s me. It’s Nora.”

Becca threw herself into Nora’s arms wide-eyed. For a moment the two girls embraced, both trembling.

“I thought you died,” Becca wept. “I thought you all died.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Becca sobbed. “There was fire in the night. Someone shouted that the bakery was burning. And it was, but then there were these men. All these men. And they…they killed everyone, my father, your father. And then, and then…the heads, they piled the heads before the butcher’s. And the women and children were…” Becca couldn’t speak on. Her formerly pretty face was a mask of grief and bitterness. Nora held her tight until she quieted.

Becca looked up with red eyes, wiping the tears from her cheeks with her fingers. Her eyes went wide as she took Nora’s hands. The red marks around Nora’s wrists were still visible. Though the pain had gone, the stiffness was still there.

“What happened to you?” Becca asked.

“Nothing like what happened to you,” Nora said, squeezing Becca’s fingers before letting them go.

“Where’s Owen?”

“He’s…” A choke stopped her. “Everything’s going to be all right now.”

“No, no, Nora. You don’t know.” Becca’s blue eyes were wide in terror and she grabbed Nora’s cloak, speaking in a hoarse whisper. “You don’t know what they’re like. And now you’re here, and they’ll get you too and we’ll all die.”

Their heads snapped around as they heard someone stumble over a chair in the garden and curse drunkenly. Becca flattened herself against the oak tree. Nora squeezed her arm and melted into the shadows. Her palms were sweaty. She signaled Becca to crouch down low. Becca mouthed,
“Stay with me.”
Nora shook her head and held up her knife. Becca snapped into a rigid pose. Her eyelids closed and her lips quivered as though saying a prayer. But the gods were dead. Long gone. The wights, who the people thought were gods until they saw they could bleed, were dwindling. All cut down by the Living Blade. If it existed, the Living Blade brought nothing but death.

“Hey up, duck.” The man was standing in the garden now, peering at the trees with a beer stein in his hand.

Nora could just make him out in the pale light. He edged closer, his feet going high over the random obstacles that lay in his way. He was tall and strongly built. His dark blond hair had been groomed carefully, and he wore no beard. He walked with confidence, though his run-in with the chair had made him limp a little. He looked not much older than Nora herself, nor as drunk as she would have liked him to be. He wore a shirt and trousers, but no armor, and he carried no weapon as far as Nora could see, only a leash in his other hand. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Her first instinct was to run. Run far away. Her second thought was more coherent. Run to the Vale. Raise the alarm. Get help. Get Wolfe and his father to come back here on horseback and ride this rabble down. Her hand tightened its grasp on the knife’s hilt. But Becca would have to suffer through one more night. There was no other help. They were alone. It would be like slaughtering animals, wouldn’t it? How many animals had she cleaned in her cooking life? Sneak up close. No leather jerkin, no coat, stab under ribs from behind. Stab hard.

Rannoch’s voice echoed through her mind.
Stab hard
, he had said when they were slaughtering the pigs just a few days ago. Or was it a week or two? Seemed to be another life entirely. He’d said,
Skin’s tougher than you think
.
And every life fights
. Was that why they had cut off his hands? Because her father fought back? Her jaw hurt from gritting her teeth. When she unclenched them, her jaw clicked audibly.

The man was closer now. He stood under the branches of the first tree. His lips were full and soft.

“There you are, duck.”

Becca whimpered.

“Don’t you want to play no more?” He swung the leash playfully round.

“Go away,” Becca said, dangling one foot over the rim of rock. “Please just go away.”

“Come away from that edge. You’ll hurt yourself if you fall. We don’t want to get hurt now, do we?”

Nora edged around the tree trunk. Focus on the knife’s edge. Work fast. Clean up when you’re done.

“Please just go away.” Becca started to weep once more.

Nora stepped softly on the wet leaves, crouched low. Her feet made no noise. Her fingers were cold, so cold. And her head was so hot, blood pounding in her ears and cheeks.

“You know I can’t do that, duck. I can’t let you hurt yourself now, can I?”

The man let the leash drop before Becca’s feet.

“See?” he said, raising his empty hands. “Nothing to be afraid of. Now step away from the edge.”

“No.” Becca shook her head. Her ash-blonde hair shone silver in the moonlight.

“I said step away!” The man’s voice changed now. It was harder, with a steel edge that reminded Nora of Prince Bashan, the jerk.
Gods, Owen! Let him be safe!
At least he wasn’t here.

“No!” Becca screamed in defiance.

For a moment, only Becca’s sobs could be heard over the wind. The man lifted his shoulders and squared them. He sighed. Just a few more steps before she could reach him. Nora halted and held her breath behind him. Stab hard.