Chapter 3
Indrie has inadvertently met back up with the warrior who knocked him over in the hallway.
He's still tall, impossibly so, towering over Indrie by more than a head, and still holding that giant axe, resting across one shoulder, effortless. Still covered in those fearsome tattoos that disappear beneath his furs, patterns Indrie has never seen before, all sharp angles and interlocking lines that are probably meant to show he’s killed six thousand people and drank their blood.
And still, despite all of that, he’s strangely kind.
Indrie is following him. He's not sure what else he was supposed to do.
The blond man had handed him off, the advisor had washed his hands of him, and the castle he'd spent five years surviving in was being systematically emptied behind him.
His options, as far as he could tell, were: follow the tattooed warrior with the axe, or stand alone in the courtyard until someone decided what to do with him.
He’s afraid of what that decision might be, so he follows.
The camp is set up near the shoreline, a sprawl of tents and firepit rings and stacked provisions arranged in an organized fashion that surprises Indrie.
He'd expected, well, he doesn't know what he'd expected.
The stories he'd heard about the Northmen painted pictures of chaos and carnage, of blood-soaked camps where captives were chained to posts and the ground was littered with the evidence of brutality.
This looks more like a well-organized merchant camp.
There are supply lines, cooking stations, a section that appears to be dedicated to weapon maintenance.
Everything has a place. Everything is in its place.
A large number of Northern warriors, both men and women, linger around the fires and between the tents, talking and eating and looking imposing.
Several of them look at him as he enters the area, sharp, appraising glances from faces marked with scars and tattoos and the weathered tan of lives spent under open sky, and Indrie unconsciously steps closer to his escort.
The red-haired man notices. He waves a hand at the onlookers, a dismissive flick of the wrist, and remarkably, they all go back to what they were doing.
A few nod at the man first, a sign of deference, and then their eyes slide away from Indrie, interest extinguished.
The man says something conspiratorial under his breath, a low, rumbling string of words delivered with the cadence of a joke, and grins at Indrie, wide and genuine, all teeth.
The expression transforms his face from intimidating to almost boyish, and Indrie's lips tilt in a small smile even though he has no idea what the man is saying.
It's the strangeness of it that gets him. The absurdity. This morning he was asleep on his threadbare mat, and now he's being escorted through an invading army's camp by a man who could cleave him in two but is instead making jokes he can't understand.
The man deposits him on an overturned log near one of the larger firepits, pats his shoulder once, carefully, mindful of how fragile Indrie must look to him, and disappears between two tents.
Indrie sits with his satchel in his lap and his hands clasped over it and waits.
He doesn't know what he's waiting for. He doesn't know what happens next.
He watches the camp move around him with the careful attention of someone looking for an escape route, even though he knows, in the rational part of his mind, that there's nowhere to escape to.
The red-haired man returns with a bowl of stew and a waterskin.
Indrie takes both in surprise, blinking up at the warrior who is holding out food to him, casually, naturally, feeding a captured enemy without hesitation.
The stew is thick and brown and smells of salt and herbs and actual meat, and the waterskin is full and cool when Indrie's fingers close around it.
He thanks the man, even though he knows the words won't be understood, because his mother taught him gratitude before she taught him anything else and it's one of the few things he'll never unlearn. "Thank you."
The man seems to understand the tone, if not the words. He gives Indrie another grin and a nod and then he's gone again, called away by someone across the camp, his axe swinging at his side as he goes.
Indrie eats.
The stew is not good, exactly. The meat is tough and the broth is oversalted and there's something in it that might be turnip but might also be boot leather.
But it's hot and it's substantial and there's enough of it to fill the hollow ache in his stomach that he's grown so accustomed to he'd forgotten it was there.
He eats every bite. He drains the waterskin.
He sits by the fire with the empty bowl in his hands and stares at the flames and tries not to be noticeable.
The warmth of the fire seeps into his skin, loosening muscles he didn't realize he'd been clenching.
His shoulders ease down from where they've been hiked up near his ears.
The crackling of the wood is a sound he knows, at least, the same in any language, in any kingdom, and he focuses on it, lets it anchor him while everything else spins.
Someone notices him anyway.
Another redhead, this one with more belts than should be necessary, each one hung with tools and pouches and a pair of short swords that clank together when she moves, drops onto the log beside him with a broad friendly grin and bright eyes and the energy of a person who has never once in her life hesitated to introduce herself.
She's close to his age, maybe a year or two older, with freckles scattered across her cheeks and a scar that nicks through one eyebrow. Her hair is much darker than the man’s, but he still wonders if they’re related. There are no redheads in Kalkoa.
She starts talking to him in the most broken version of his native tongue he's ever heard.
It is, without exaggeration, atrocious. Her accent mangles every vowel, she conjugates nothing correctly, and she strings words together in an order that should be illegal.
She says something that he thinks is meant to be hello, are you the new person but comes out closer to sorry, you are new meat?
It's enough to make him laugh.
The sound surprises him more than anything else that's happened today.
It comes out of him unbidden, startled loose from somewhere deep in his chest, and he doesn't even know how long it's been since that sort of noise came out of him.
Months. A year, maybe. He can't remember.
The woman lights up at the sound, clearly pleased with herself, and launches into another string of butchered sentences that Indrie has to piece together with effort.
She eats her own food, a bowl of the same stew, which she consumes with genuine enthusiasm despite its questionable quality, and gestures wildly around them.
She points at the fire and says the word in her language.
Points at the sky. The tents. The water.
The ship anchored in the bay. Each word is delivered with exaggerated care, placed in his hands one at a time, and Indrie realizes she's trying to teach him.
He repeats the words back, careful with the unfamiliar shapes they make in his mouth.
Fire. Sky. Tent. Water. Ship. The sounds are harsh compared to his own language, all hard consonants and guttural stops, but there's a rhythm to them that he starts to hear after the first dozen.
She corrects his pronunciation without mockery, just a shake of her head and a repeat of the word, slower, until he gets it close enough to earn an approving nod.
They finish their food, but she doesn't leave.
She sits beside him for several hours as the sun arcs across the sky and the camp shifts around them, naming things, pointing out people, naming them.
She introduces herself as Dagny, presses a hand to her chest and says it twice, Dagny, Dagny, until he nods, and then points at him expectantly.
He tells her his name and she repeats it back with only minor fumbles.
In-dree. Close enough. He nods and she beams at him, delighted, radiant with it.
She shows him her dual short swords, drawing them from her belt with a flourish and holding them out for his inspection.
They're beautiful weapons, well-maintained, the blades oiled and the grips worn smooth from use.
She mimes a few strikes, quick, precise movements that shows she knows how to handle them, and then, to his astonishment, holds one out to him. Handle first.
Indrie stares at it.
He has never held a weapon in his life. Servants in Kalkoa don't carry blades.
Slaves certainly don't. He's never even been allowed near the armory, and the closest he's come to a sword is the small knife he has in his satchel for cutting herbs and bandages. He’s not even allowed a knife sharp enough to perform surgeries or extract objects from the skin.
But Dagny is watching him with expectant eyes and an encouraging nod, and he reaches out and takes the sword before he can think better of it.
It's lighter than he expected. The balance is different from anything he's held, the weight in the blade rather than the handle, pulling his hand forward.
He doesn't know what to do with it, hasn't the faintest idea how to hold it properly, and he's sure he looks ridiculous.
But it feels nice to hold a blade for once in his life.
Powerful, in a small way, and he turns the sword carefully in his hands and feels something loosen in his grip on himself.