Thyran
Three days of something close to peace. She reorganizes the storage. I hunt. We eat together at the table. She tells me the venison is overcooked, and I tell her the fish are in the wrong order again. Neither of us means any of it. Both of us know.
She sleeps against me at night. Her back to my chest, my arm around her, the comb on the table where she sets it after braiding her hair. The hall is warm without tending the fire. My body heats the stone and the stone holds it and she sleeps through the night without dreaming.
On the fourth day, they come.
I hear the footsteps before I see them. Boot leather on packed snow, the rhythm of a formation. Human feet, human weight, human pace. Not Jotunn. The stride is too short and too even.
I'm at the door before Eseld looks up from the shelves. She sees my face, and her hands go still on the jar she’s holding. She sets it down. Wipes her palms on her trousers. Reaches for the knife at her belt.
“Stay behind me,” I say.
“No.”
I open the door.
Twenty men. Armed, armored in leather and iron. Their breath fogging in the cold. They've come up the path from the south in a tight column and they are standing in front of my hall in a line that is meant to look impressive and does not.
The one in front is older. Lean face, gray at the temples, a scar running from his jawline to his ear. He wears an officer’s insignia on his shoulder. He squares up at me with the expression humans wear when they want to appear unafraid and are not succeeding.
“I'm looking for a woman,” he says. “Eseld Farthidatr. Military deserter. Saboteur. We have reason to believe she’s in this territory.”
“Who are you?”
“Commander Stennard. Southern division.” He looks past me into the hall. “If you're harboring a human fugitive, I have orders to retrieve her.”
“You're standing in Jotunn territory,” I say. I fill the doorway. His men shift behind him. “Your orders don't mean anything here.”
“Thyran.” Eseld’s voice behind me. Steady.
She steps around me. She is small beside me, the top of her head level with my elbow, and she walks past me and stands in the open doorway and looks at the officer and his twenty men and does not take a step back.
Stennard sees her. His expression changes. Something cold and satisfied settling into his face.
“Eseld. It’s been a long time.”
“Not long enough.”
“You know why I'm here.”
“I know what you want. You want me back. You want a deserter in chains as an example for the others. You want to show the army that no one walks away.”
“What I want,” Stennard says, and his voice hardens, “is a war criminal returned to face justice. You destroyed a dam. Three villages downstream. Civilian casualties.”
He turns to me. Then turns to the empty space behind us, as if addressing anyone who might be listening. Playing to an audience of Jotunn he expects to be watching from the ridges.
“Ask her. Ask your wife what she did. Ask her about the bodies in the mud.”
I look at Eseld. She is standing very still, her hands at her sides. Her face is calm, her breathing is even. I have seen her like this before, in the storage alcove with a knife in her hand, the flat look that means she has made a calculation, and the answer is clear.
She steps forward. Past me. Toward Stennard and his men.
“I brought down a dam.”
Her voice carries. Not loud. Not raised. Plain. Direct. Unhedged.
“Three villages downstream. Civilians. I saw what was left. I carry that every day.”
Stennard opens his mouth. She doesn't let him.
“My commanders told me those villages were evacuated. They told me the targets were infrastructure. I placed the charge and I lit the fuse because I trusted the chain of command and I did not verify. That was my failure. The intelligence was wrong. The villages were full.”
Her hands are still at her sides. She is not crying. She stands in front of twenty armed soldiers, claiming her worst thing in the open air. She is doing it the way she does everything. Precisely. With no exit built into the sentence.
“I stopped. I walked away. I will not go back.”
She looks at Stennard.
“You didn't come here for justice, Commander. You came here because I know which officers gave those orders. I know who lied about the evacuations. I know which names go on which reports. And I walked away before anyone could make sure I stayed quiet.”
Stennard’s face goes tight.
“She’s my wife,” I say. I step forward. Stand behind her. Not in front. She chose to face this, and I will not take that from her. But I am here. “Clan. And you're standing in Jotunn territory with armed men and no invitation. I'm asking you to leave.”
“And if I don't?”
I look at his twenty men. I look at him. The heat coming off my body has intensified and the air around me shimmers and his men can see it and they don't understand what they're looking at but they understand it’s not normal.
“Then I stop asking.”
Stennard holds my gaze for a long time. Then he steps back. One step. Another.
“This isn't over,” he says. “I'll come back with more men. Enough men.”
“Bring them.”
They leave. The column forms up and moves south down the path and I watch them until they disappear around the ridge. Eseld stands beside me and watches them go. Her hand finds mine. Her fingers are cold.
“He'll come back,” she says.
“Yes.”
“With more men. Enough to be a problem.”
“Yes.”
She’s quiet for a moment. I see her thinking. Her eyes on the terrain to the south, reading the approaches the way she reads everything.
“I can handle this,” she says. “The smoke compounds, the terrain. I know where the chokepoints are and where the footing gives and where to place the pots for maximum coverage. I can stop a bunch of men without killing any of them.”
I look down at her. Small. Fierce. Her hands already planning, her mind already running the calculations.
“Not alone,” I say.
She looks at me. Studies my face.
“Then who?”
The answer is heavy. It costs something I have not wanted to pay.
“The clan,” I say.
Hrothgard is an hour’s walk east. The clanhold. I have not been there since I walked in to tell them Vortek was dead. The silence that followed me out of that hall has not lifted until now.
The path is the same. The same rock formations on the ridge, the same turn where the trail drops between two outcrops and opens to a view of the valley below.
Vortek and I walked this path a hundred times.
To trade, to drink, to sit in the great hall and argue with the other hunters about tracks and weather and who had the better kill.
Eseld walks beside me. Her hand in mine.
I walk into the great hall with her.
The hall is full. Evening meal. Jotunn at long tables, firelight on a range of faces — blue and gray and pale — the noise of conversation and the smell of food and the sound of people. It hits me in the chest. I had forgotten how loud the living are.
Haldrek sits on the raised seat at the far end. Older than I remember. His white hair thinner, his face heavier. He sees me come through the door and for a moment something crosses his face. He smooths it before anyone else catches it. But I see.
I walk the length of the hall. Every Jotunn in the room turns to watch. The hermit. Walking through the great hall with a human woman’s hand in his.
Haldrek looks at me. Looks at Eseld. Back at me.
“You want us to fight for a human.”
“I want her to live.” I hear my voice echo in this hall, and it sounds wrong. Too rough. Too unused. “I can't do this alone.”
Silence. The fire crackles. A child at the far table stops eating to stare.
“There are soldiers in our territory,” I say. “Human military. Armed. Looking for my wife. They'll come back with more men and they'll bring violence with them. Into our land.”
Murmuring. Some of the warriors shift at their tables. Territory is a word that gets attention.
“Why should we bleed for your human?” A Jotunn at the nearest table. Broad, scarred. Not hostile. Genuinely asking.
“They're not staying out of the Wastes,” I say. “They came to my door. Armed. They'll come back.”
“Then defend your door.” The scarred Jotunn looks at me. “You were a hunter once, Thyran. You killed the ridge bear that took three goats in one season.”
“There'll be at least twenty of them. Maybe more.”
A woman at the back table stands. Heavy-built, arms folded.
“Then we send them home bleeding. This isn't about the human. Armed men marched through our territory without asking. What happens when they decide the Wastes are worth taking? That ends the day we let them walk in and walk out carrying one of ours.”
“She’s not one of ours,” the scarred Jotunn says.
“She is if the market law holds,” the woman says. “Bride price was paid. If that isn't clan business, nothing is.”
The hall erupts into argument. Voices overlapping. Some want no part of human affairs. Some are calculating the cost of letting armed soldiers patrol Jotunn land unopposed. Some are looking at Eseld with curiosity, some with suspicion.
Eseld stands beside me and says nothing. She lets them argue. She is not performing grief or remorse or humility. She is standing in a room full of strangers who are deciding her fate and she is quiet and still and her hand is warm in mine.
Eira stands. She’s been sitting near Haldrek, watching. Her gaze moves from me to the hall, and she speaks with the voice of a woman who has buried people and has no patience left for cowardice.
“Has he ever asked for anything?”
Silence.
“He buried his brother. He sat in that hall. He didn't ask for food or company or help. Not once.” She looks at me. “He’s asking now.”
The silence stretches. I feel Eseld’s hand in mine, small and still and warm.
Haldrek studies me from the raised seat. He’s calculating. Territory and principle and pride and the cost of saying no to a man who has never asked.
“We don't fight for the human,” he says finally. “We fight because no one invades Jotunn territory.”
I bow my head. Not submission. Gratitude. The weight of being alone lifting off me by a fraction. By enough.
We walk home with warriors at our backs. Six of them, armed, moving through the Wastes in loose formation. They don't talk to me. They don't need to. They're here.
Eseld walks beside me. Her hand in mine. Her grip tight.
“Thank you,” she says. Quiet. Just for me.
I hold her hand. The hall appears ahead of us, smoke from the chimney, warm stone and solid timber. The warriors fan out along the ridgeline without being asked. Taking positions. Settling in.
Eseld opens the door and walks through and I follow her in.