22. Harper
22
Harper’s first night in Pelenor was miserable. Between her teeth chattering, the screech of unfamiliar wildlife far too close for comfort, and Brand’s thunderous snores waking her seemingly every minute, Harper awoke the next morning feeling almost as tired as when she had lain down, and ten times as achy from the tree roots and rocks that had stabbed into her back all night. She groaned and sat up, rolling her neck and shoulders to try and ease the pain, as Aedon bounded into camp with a grin on his face and something dangling between his fingers.
Harper raised an eyebrow. Her stomach grumbled. “Morning.”
“Good morning, Harper. Ready for breakfast, I hope.” He held up the young boar. “Do you want to skin it?”
Harper’s eyes widened, and she stuttered a non-committal response.
“You don’t do that back home?”
“Well, yes, if you’ve got a skinning knife, but I’m a terrible cook,” she admitted, chewing on her lip.
Aedon batted a hand through the air. “Pfft. Any skill can be learned. You obviously haven’t had a good teacher. Apprentice yourself to Ragnar. He’s a master of the campfire.”
Harper stood and smoothed the creases in her tunic, but swiftly gave up and ambled over to Ragnar. He rebuilt the fire, blowing on the smoldering embers and dressing them with fresh old man’s beard—the same lichen she used in Caledan to start fires—and kindling sticks to breathe new life into it.
As she watched, scooting closer, Ragnar quietly pulled over a flat-topped rock and set to work. He skinned the small animal, extracted the innards, and cut the joints of meat precisely and cleanly with a small knife, just as Harper would have. It was nothing she did not already know, had not already done a hundred times, though rarely on an animal as fine and meaty as that. The knife had the extensive wear of a much-loved tool. Its worn handle was similarly patched up like her own, and the tiny blade precise in his rough, knobbly fingers. Once Ragnar had finished, she helped him skewer the steaks upon sticks, then sank them into the earth to hover over the fire.
Ragnar nodded in approval. “Good. Come with me. Time to find some tea and berries.”
He led her up the hill, browsing beneath the trees, though there was little growing under the dense canopy, until they chanced upon a clearing. “Aha! This will do.”
The morning sunlight trickled down in beams laden with dust motes, giving the clearing an ethereal feel. Dew hung upon every leaf and blade of grass, and small mammals rattled the bushes as they went back and forth, not frightened by their presence.
Birds watched them with bright, glossy eyes from the branches of the trees, some carving through the air over their heads. Harper could not help but smile. There was something in the air here. So much more life and colour than there seemed to be in her small village in the rainy mountains.
Ragnar pointed to a plant that looked very similar to a raspberry bush, though the fruits were a bright, vibrant orange. “Pick those fruits—careful not to bruise them, please—and I’ll collect the leaves.” He gathered up a fold of his cloak, and Harper turned up her shirt to hold the fruit. She bent to pick the fruits one by one, surprised to find them large, juicy, and tender.
“Try one,” Ragnar said. She looked up to see him grinning at her as she examined one closely, a wrinkle of suspicion across her nose.
She glared at the fruit, then bit into the tiniest corner of it. Flavour exploded over her tongue, a sweet, nectar-like juice the likes of which she had never tasted in County Denholme’s sour and shrivelled produce. “Oh!” She gobbled the rest of the fruit in a hurry, emitting a groan of pleasure. “Mmm. That’s incredible.”
They continued picking the fruits and leaves. Harper watched how carefully he snicked off each leaf, avoiding the thorny vines, his fingers slow and deliberate. Her cloak grew heavier as it collected more and more of the morning dew, but the quickly rising sun was warm, easing the stiffness and chill of her limbs.
“Where are you from, Ragnar?” she plucked up the courage to ask, seeing as he had been kindest to her so far.
He didn’t glance up as he continued working. “Keldheim. It’s a city in the mountains of Valtivar, the dwarven kingdom far to the south of here.”
He is a dwarf! Excitement fluttered. She had heard of them in the tales from travelling bards. Now she had met one in the flesh. She tried to observe Ragnar without openly staring, taking in every detail of his wiry beard that was plaited and adorned with beads and ornaments, the likes of which she had not seen before. Harper’s mind already exploded with ideas born of the snatches of stories she recalled. “What’s a dwarven city like?”
Ragnar stopped to consider. “I suppose much like any other city, but ours are deceptively large—part underground and part overground. Keldheim was founded upon one of the oldest springs in the country. It wells up from deep under the earth, with the sweetest, most pure water you have ever tasted. The city is full of water. Fountains and aqueducts everywhere. Every house has running water, something you don’t see in many of the overground cities in Pelenor. It’s an architectural and engineering masterpiece. Keldheim delves deep beneath the earth, and its highest heights are at the summit of the mountain, Keldberg, which is given its name by the spring.”
Harper paused picking berries, drawn by the rapture on his face. He spoke of it with love and awe, as though he longed to be there. It sounded far more grand than she had envisioned. “Why did you leave?”
His face clouded over and he dropped back to his task, his motions more brusque.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s not a problem.”
“It sounds like a beautiful place. Do you miss it?” she asked tentatively.
“It is, and I do.” His shoulders hunched, closed to her as he turned away.
Harper went back to her task, kicking herself for offending her new teacher when he had been so instrumental in securing her a meal for the night and somewhere to belong.
“I am not welcome there any longer,” Ragnar eventually said in a low voice. “I do not belong amongst the people. We are too different, and that is not tolerated.”
Harper nodded past the lump in her throat. He sounded so desolate. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. Something in his words resonated with her—she had not really felt like she belonged, either.
He grunted. “It’s been a long time since I set foot there. I’m as much at peace with it as I can be.”
Harper wondered how old he was, but she did not ask. I’ve caused enough offense today.
He surprised her when he spoke again. “How about you? You said your bracelet was precious to you—that it was from your childhood. Did your parents give it to you?”
She paused her picking to run her fingers over the worn leather thong and the cold metal bead. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t remember ever having a family. My youngest memories are with other orphans on the streets—I don’t have too many of those. But this is something I’ve had for as long as I can recall. I assume it came from my family, but I have no idea who they were. I always wondered.” She looked up to find him assessing her keenly, and unease filtered through her.
But Ragnar’s expression softened, and so too did the stiffness in her shoulders. She supposed she had asked personal questions of him—it was only fair of him to pry in return. “Hmm. It sounds like a hard life. I’m sorry. Come on now. That should be enough berries.”
She followed him back through the forest to the camp, where the smell of roasting boar made Harper’s mouth water. Fat crackled and spat as it dripped into the flames. At Ragnar’s instruction, Harper ground up most of the berries and smeared them onto the meat to make a sweet glaze, whilst he boiled some water in the pot, adding the leaves and remaining berries to it and setting it aside to steep.
Whilst they worked, she could not help but pause to watch. Brand and Erika danced around them, engaged in some sparring. Erika wielded her slim twin blades like lightning, whilst Brand’s gigantic two-handed sword cut the air—and never landed. Harper watched his muscles flex and bulge and the twist of Erika’s hard, wiry body with awe. She winced as Brand brought down his giant blade, which looked unstoppable and as if it would shatter every bone in Erika’s body—but he could not catch her. She was a blur as she slid away, like water parting before him. There one moment, gone the next. After a while, they tossed the blades aside and engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Despite the size difference, Erika held her own against the giant winged man, and from the way he grunted and growled, Brand did not seem to be going easy on her.
“All right, all right. Call it a draw, you two,” Aedon drawled as he strolled into camp. He ran a hand through his tousled hair as he dropped his sword and scabbard by the fire before tumbling into a heap next to Harper.
“Where have you been?” Brand turned to address him with a grumble, his chest heaving. Erika wiped her shining brow on her sleeve and sat to clean her weapons.
“Scouting the area. Why do you always make it sound like I’m lazing about?” Aedon complained, a hurt edge to his voice, but Harper saw the mischievous twinkle in his eyes that told her he was used to this jesting.
“Because you normally are,” Brand growled.
“Hey, I resent that. Whilst you two were playing war games, I was keeping you all safe. Can you two keep the racket down, by the way? I could hear you a mile off. Lucky there’s no one about.”
“We need to move on.” Authority filled Erika’s quiet voice. Brand and Ragnar nodded.
“Of course,” Aedon said. “It’s unwise to linger.”
“Then we’ll be off after breakfast.” Erika stared at Ragnar.
The dwarf waved his spoon, pausing from stirring the tea. “It’ll be done momentarily.”
Silence fell as they tucked into the hearty breakfast. The tender meat melted on Harper’s tongue. It was a strange feeling to eat fresh meat—not dried, salted strips of whatever she could get her hands on, or tough lean rabbit—with a sweet, rich taste she had not expected. She savoured it, not caring that juice dripped down her chin.
The tea had a tangy, surprisingly bitter yet refreshing taste, and she sipped at the pot as they passed it around. She enjoyed the sweetness of the glaze and the sourness of the tea as they mingled upon her tongue. As she took her turn sipping at the tea, she looked into the flickering tongues of the fire, her eyes glazed over in thought. There’s really no way home. Harper wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
It seemed like she found herself on some kind of exciting adventure. On the run with a Dragonheart and a rag-tag band of outlaws, who were each more curious than the last. She could tell they had secrets. From the shared glances, so laden with secrets, to the way they cut each other off mid-sentence and glared at her, as if she might unravel their mysteries.
Compared to this, it was hard to yearn for serving loud, ungrateful customers until the small hours of the night in a dark, oppressive, smelly inn. She glanced around. It was a beauty worlds apart from the woods she knew. Here, even the colours of late summer were so much brighter, the full beauty of the landscape undiminished. Not the faded, dull, grey woods she knew, where darkness and shadow ruled. It made a quiet piece of her heart sing. The tiny sliver that dreamed of more, the fragile thing that never truly dared to believe it would amount to anything. And yet now, she found herself on precisely the kind of wild path she had always dreamed of. When she locked away the fluttering panic that never seemed to leave her now—worries of Betta, and for herself amidst a storm of uncertainty—there was a thrill there. One she wanted more of like a thirst to slake.
Her mouth twitched into a small smile. Perhaps it had been the game of chatura the previous night that had persuaded her they were not so bad after all, or perhaps she was a fool. She had not quite decided. The more she thought, the more she realised how thrilling it was. It wasn’t as if she had left anything behind. Just her books, her small amount of coin, and an assortment of worthless treasures—pretty stones, carved sticks, nothing of note. And Betta, she thought with no small twinge of guilt, but she pushed it aside. Betta was a grown woman, who had survived long before she had come along. Betta would be pragmatic, Harper hoped, when the woman realised Harper was gone. She could take the coin and use it to feed herself if needed, Harper hoped. She would get by like she always had—and so would Harper.
“You all right, Harper?” asked Aedon, tugging the pot from her grasp to have some tea. “You look lost in thought.”
“I’m good.” Harper grinned, the first true smile she had in a good, long while. Aedon looked at her quizzically, but she only turned her smile back to the fire, savouring her full stomach and the buzz deep in her belly at the promise of the unknown adventure at her feet.