Grimenna Read online

  “Jorn!” she cried.

  “By my beard!” he exclaimed and a smile broke across his dirty face. “If it isn’t the little shepherdess from Birchloam. What in the name of all the shining stars are you doing here? I thought Renn was going to fetch a pardon, not a sheep herder’s daughter!” Over his shoulder was a string of fish that gleamed like oblong pearls against the dark of his matted furs.

  “What happened to your leg?” she asked in alarm as he hobbled towards them.

  “Got torn off my horse by a Folka beast,” he said. “I’ll be lame for a while yet.”

  “The Folka whose head Renn brought back to the Keep?”

  “The very one,” he smiled painfully. “But what are you doing here? Where is your father, where is your mother?”

  Tears whelmed in her eyes at Jorn’s compassionate tone, and she furiously blinked them back as she explained what had come to pass. Jorn shifted his weight painfully on his crutch as he listened, his brow furrowing with troubled thoughts.

  “Ceitra branded your father?” he hissed angrily. “Your mother’s been sent to the Quarry?” He reached out and laid a firm hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry girl,” he said. “With whatever is left in me I will help to right this.”

  “Where is Terg?”

  “I think he might be dead. He left to find a bigger hunting party a while back and we haven’t heard of him since.” His eyes lifted to Renn’s. “This is utter madness.”

  They made their way back up into the cave through a slanted hole of a door that led into a storeroom of sorts and out into the main room of the cave. Ulrig was hunched over the fire busy sorting through a small wooden box and drinking freely from his cup of Cures All. He looked up to them and shook his head at Renn.

  “What did you do to the poor girl?” he asked with alarm. “Did she fall off a cliff?”

  “Very nearly,” Paiva griped and went to find her own drink to cure the aches in her bones. Ulrig chided Renn and went back to his box while Jorn hung his fish alongside the string of pheasants.

  “Ulrig,” Renn nodded. “Can you make her some shoes? I can’t stand watching her walk around like a drunken Wilderman any longer.”

  “Already at it,” Ulrig nodded, smiling at Paiva’s further reddening cheeks.

  — «» —

  They ate the fish for supper and drank copious amounts of Cures All as daylight waned to dusk. Ulrig had pulled a needle out of his box and began sewing together a pair of shoes out of leather and felt scraps.

  “The needle,” he said, drawing it through the hole he had punched. “I came from a world built of iron and stone. When I arrived out here I could not tell you how much I learned a needle was worth. More than a castle. It can sew your clothes, sew your wounds shut, pry out splinters, tell you which way is north… I cannot name you all its uses for there are too many. A man who owns a needle in the Wilderlands might well call himself a king.” Paiva watched his gnarled hands work in the firelight, suddenly aware of just how precious such a small tool was.

  The shoes were a rustic implement with heavy stitches, but they did well to protect and warm her battered feet. Afterwards Ulrig bundled her up with furs to sleep in and she went to lay down exhaustedly before the fire while he and Renn had a conversation in low murmurs. For the first time since her arrival on the far side of the river, she felt truly safe.

  The next morning Renn had disappeared again down to the horses with Jorn and Ulrig let her bathe in a spring on the other side of the cave while he washed her clothes and hung them up to dry in the sun. She was filthy and stayed in the cold water until she was numb. She garbed herself in an old shirt and breeches from Ulrig until her own dress was dry. When she fetched it, hanging in the trees, she noticed Ulrig had put his needle to work again and patched the holes she had torn in the hem. She then helped Ulrig with stretching hides between trees to dry in the sun and wind. They had been stewed in fowl liquid made from the brains of the killed animal, and once dried in the sun they would be worked supple. She had many questions for Ulrig and a voracious curiosity about the Wildermen’s ways.

  Ulrig was only too happy to share his wisdom with her, which was much. He told her how Jekka procured for him the things he could not acquire in the woods, like yeast and linens and iron tools. Sometimes, he said, he made the trek to Birchloam himself and traded wild meats and his leathers for salt and grain in great quantities Jekka could not carry up by herself. Tools were essential to survival, and the newly branded had to make do with crude weapons to defend and hunt with. Metal was a precious commodity. Ulrig spoke of a band up north that had learned to smelt ore from the mountains. He had traded his first Berg horse for his first knife. When he had acquired a knife he had acquired the ability to carve wood.

  Now it was much easier — he could go freely into the lowlands when he so chose, and Jekka was keen to collect things for him in exchange for herbs and plants he gathered for her that she could not find in the lowlands. He named a great number of plants he collected for her, including a flower he called Bettledrops that Paiva could not recall from her father’s books, which only grew on a certain rocky crag at a certain time of the year. To Jekka it was a precious commodity, for supposedly Hexava used it to cure the pain in her joints, which made her much more amiable. Paiva realized that half of the medicines in Hexava’s shop were bootlegged from across the river.

  Along with outfitting the apothecary shop with precious botanicals, Ulrig also outfitted all men who came to him with weapons, for he remembered well the feeling of being unarmed and helpless. Just like a long beard, a Wilderman with a metal weapon was considered well-seasoned, for he had earned it through many years of tribulations.

  “It is amazing,” Ulrig said, “how metal things can define a man. Metal is one of the strongest of all elements. Cleaved from the earth, able to break both stone and wood… but each element has a weakness, just as it has its strength. Metal is not completely impervious, but how useful it is.”

  “What is the strongest?”

  “A man’s will, of course.” He smiled. “To his will he bends both iron, stone, and wood, and uses them against those greater then himself.”

  When they were done with the hides, they went down to a spring in the rocks and washed their hands, then gathered buckets of the water to bring to Ulrig’s patch of Tarweed growing on the south side of his mountain. These they tended to while Ulrig continued his talking. She realized that despite his shabby appearance he was remarkably resourceful and inventive. He told her how there was enough out here for a man to live a contented, simple life. He was able to provide plenty for himself and those that were in need. In exchange, he was granted the protection and help of younger, stronger hands than his.

  “But what about thieves?” Paiva asked. “Surely there are those that would take from you without asking.”

  “Oh indeed. As you can see, I am but one old man. When I was younger I was swift enough and able enough to deter any threats, but in my winter years I have been raided many times. Most times I had sent word out to the older Wildermen, for we are loyal to each other. It was only when Renn arrived that I haven’t been bothered. He has a formidable way about him. No one gets too far with any stolen items. I don’t often let people into my camp if I can’t find a use for them, and I have no use for thieves.”

  “Who do you allow to camp then?”

  “Oh, the common liar, the heretics, the wrongly accused, the insane. They come and go. Some find other gangs to join, some find pardons, some die.”

  “You’re pardoned yourself, no? Why wouldn’t you try to find somewhere safer to live?”

  “You mean in the lowlands? No, never go back there. The forest is my lady. Sometimes she’s hard to bear, sometimes she’s cold and empty, but other times she’s so full of life she leaves me enchanted. I wake up every morning and tell her how beautiful she is.”

  A call from b
elow drew their attention to Renn looking up at them with Runa and Jakbur in tow. Ulrig gave Paiva a worried look and shrugged.

  “I suppose you don’t really have a choice if you want to come to Maggra’s with us,” he said. “Might as well.”

  Paiva hopped down to the trail and Renn swung her up on Jakbur’s bare back. He mounted Runa swiftly and led them together up and over the west side of the mountain. She clung to Jakbur’s mane as the horses took to the slope, their bodies arching and dipping as they found footing along the narrow decline of rock and root. When Renn was sure Jakbur was content to follow his mother without trouble, he tossed Paiva the reins and led the way ahead.

  Paiva began to relax and come to grips with the Berg, allowing him free range of motion and never pulling on his reins so hard to cause him to throw his head. Jakbur was content to follow Runa and this seemed to please Renn.

  They came to a plateau where the land became even again and the trees, a mixture of birch and pines, filled the air with a fresh, invigorating scent. She began to have a lonely feeling, as if the world around her were too large and her own being too small. She was humbled by the great expanse of forest, and it made her feel like a desolate speck of dust in an infinite cosmos. Her presence felt suddenly small and meaningless, her plight to save something greater than herself overwhelming.

  “What are you thinking about?” Renn’s voice broke through her thoughts. She found him looking back at her with narrowed eyes. A shaft of sunlight fell into them and she noticed for the first time his eyes were truly blue — a metallic, shimmering blue that in the absence of light made them look like liquid silver.

  “Ulrig told me you are a Virtue,” she said.

  A grim smile pulled at his mouth.

  “He has told me that as well,” he said. “I thought it was another of his stories to help guide me through the woods. Face your fears with firmness, don’t let the Folka fill your heart with the shadows of their terror… That kind of nonsense a foolish boy needs to hear to help him go to sleep in the dark of the woods.”

  “He said your mother was a Spirit.”

  “Ulrig says many things.” He turned back round to face the woods. They lapsed into silence for a long while after that and Paiva felt it weigh on her heavily. She heard him sigh, then he halted Runa and swung her around to face them.

  “What is a Virtue?” he asked. “I mean, yes, I understand the whole part about a Virtue being the child of a spirit and a man, but what is their purpose? I mean … I have no unnatural powers that I am aware of. Neither did my mother. As far as I know I am just a man, nothing more and nothing less.”

  “You are a man,” Paiva said. “Just as I am a simple girl from Birchloam. A Virtue has powers over the humors of the human heart. Our hearts are the compass of our souls and the soul is that strange thing that connects us to the spirit world beyond this physical one. Whatever magic is in our souls can be used for the greater good or for the worse. Like how Varloga can conjure nightmares. He has no magic, unless we give it to him. With us it is more powerful. And there is no reason I cannot use it to help raise the Good Spirits.”

  A sad smile spread over Renn’s lips. His eyes fell away from hers as he shook his head.

  “You could just be blind,” he said. “You could just be a fool.” Then he turned Runa around and spurred her into a trot back up the mountain slope.

  Jakbur nickered and cantered after her, in a panic of being abandoned.

  — «» —

  That evening Ulrig tittered about plucking pheasants and preparing an enormous amount of food. Renn sat before the fire, whittling a piece of wood and smoking his pipe. Jorn dozed by his side, his lame leg propped on an upright length of firewood with his head nestled into his chest where it mostly disappeared into his beard. She amused herself by looking over Ulrig’s shelves of wares, inspecting their odd contents.

  She wasn’t at it long when of a sudden Ulrig dropped his head to the stone floor, looking at his feet as if they were trying to tell him something.

  “What is it?” she asked, wondering if he was suffering from an odd bout of achy bones.

  “The stones are rumbling,” he said. Renn rose and followed him outdoors, leaving Jorn asleep by the fire. Paiva hurriedly followed after. They went to stand atop the cave and look down the southern side of the slope. There was a thick fog shrouding the twilit hills and Ulrig peered down into it eagerly.

  “What is it?” she asked him.

  “That would be my pack of Wilder-whelps.”

  There was a rumbling that came. It started far below them and rose into a clamor of stampeding hooves and tearing branches. She stepped back towards Renn, alarmed and nervous.

  “What is it?” she whispered fiercely.

  He smiled. A moment later dark shapes burst through the thinning trees, heaving bodies lurched up the steep slope — Berg horses, running madly up the incline, their hooves striking rock and their bodies tearing through the thickets. On their backs were the figures of furry men, their bearded faces obscured in the low light. They came in from the fog like hounds out of hell.

  The horses galloped wildly towards the camp and came to a sliding halt before the cave. She heard laughter and jeering, saw the gleams of grins in bearded faces and heard the deep breathing of frenzied horses. She thought perhaps there were ten of them in all and they swarmed together in a mass of fur and hide.

  “Ulrig!” called a great bearded man who dwarfed the horse he swung down from. Paiva caught the unmistakable odor of Crowbill’s swill from him. The man nodded to Renn and Paiva, seemingly unsurprised to find a girl in his camp.

  “I brought you a trophy,” the Wilderman boomed to Ulrig. Ulrig’s bushy eyebrows shot up in delight and he scampered down to get a closer look at the other men. He stopped of a sudden, teetering on a rock as he stared at a man that was sitting on a Berg with a gag in his mouth and his hands bound behind his back. Ulrig swung his head back angrily to berate the Wilderman.

  “Ennig!” he roared. “Warden Yulin is not a trophy!”

  Paiva started in surprise and peered down at the disheveled figure strapped to the Berg. Ennig roared with a drunken laughter and slapped his knee. “We found him slinking outside of Crowbill’s camp,” Ennig called down. “That was after us being chased by a pack of hounds. Said he wanted to talk with you and demanded we bring him back to Far Reach. Pretty high and mighty for a lone warden.”

  Ulrig ordered Yulin to be brought down off the horse and his bonds removed. Two Wildermen quickly sprung from their horses and moved to obey Ulrig’s furious demands.

  When Yulin’s hands were free he tore the gag from his mouth and spat loudly.

  “Blasted, cursed, filthy Wildermen,” he fumed. He righted his tunic and brushed the spit from his beard. Ennig laughed and swung his head to Renn, his dark eyes dropping to Paiva. She heard his sharp intake of breath as his eyes roved over her rudely. Renn stepped between them and sucked on his pipe, the embers making his eyes glow red. Ennig chuckled.

  “Crowbill said you was headed up here with a wench,” he said.

  “Ennig Strapback,” Renn replied coldly. “Careful where you trod round here.”

  “She’s yours, then, is she? Never did like to share, did you? Unless it was your troubles.”

  They stared at each other a long moment, Ennig with a leering smile on his face. Paiva could feel the tension in the air between them. There was something murderous in the way Ennig gazed into Renn’s eyes.

  “Everyone,” Ulrig said in a raised voice. “Go tend to your horses and then come inside and have something to eat and drink. I’ve called you all back on important business. I expect you’d all like to know what it is and I’d also like to know what the lot of you have been up to.”

  Ennig turned away then, jumping down the rocks and back to his horse. He slapped Yulin on the back as he passed and laughed.

&
nbsp; “Welcome to Far Reach, Yulin.”

  Chapter 13

  Yulin sat at the table with Ulrig, Renn, and Paiva. The other Wildermen began crowding into the cave, finding various spots to sit before the fire where they emitted rude noises and shoved into each other. Paiva likened the whole environment to a den of wild dogs. They lit their pipes and soon the air was thick with blue smoke. There were seven of them in all. Half of them had not been in the Wilderlands for very long and were still trying to find a place for themselves. There was an obvious pecking order, with Ennig demanding the most respect under Ulrig and Renn.

  Ulrig introduced his Wilder-whelps to her one by one. There was Mervig, who was so covered in hair and dirt the only feature that made him recognizably human were his beady eyes. There was a weasel-faced man with a patchy beard named Jerrik; another who was tall and bald named Gartri; then a duo with red beards who were father and son. They were Lorik and Lotri, though she learned the father was not branded. He had crossed the river to find his son and keep him safe in the Wilderlands. The only one who had earned a nickname was a young man they called Ginver Grapple, who was supposedly very good at climbing rocks when he wasn’t busy singing. He had a soft, youthful face covered in freckles with a sprouting, goatish beard and a mane of dirty blond curls. There was something distinctly effeminate about his mannerisms and he was the only one who, with his cornflower blue eyes, didn’t look at her with male curiosity. She wondered if he had not been thrown into the woods for loving another man.

  Yulin was haggard, with deep rings of weariness beneath his clever eyes. He was the very man who had laid the brand on each one of these men, and they stared at him with a hostility he blatantly ignored. Paiva found it strange to see him amongst this scraggly crowd, for she was so used to him being surrounded by finery and elegance. He retained a dignified air, and sat as if he was still in the great hall dining on the finest of meals Bessil could procure and conversing amongst the highest of society.