Grimenna Read online

  Viviel poured them warm cider, filled bowls of Kess’ soup and broke bread for them. He spoke to them like they were old friends, not outcasts who had spent the past years of their lives living in the wild.

  “Varloga.” Her father echoed the name, and she watched as his golden eyes seemed to dim as a shadow passed over his face. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes,” the bowman said. Viviel’s eyes sought his daughter’s shadowy form crouching on the stairs. His eyes were filled with worry, something that rarely reflected in them. It gave Paiva an uneasy sense of foreboding. She knew, sure as the sun would rise in the morning, that this night would haunt her the rest of her life.

  “Then I am doubly glad I have asked you to stay in for the night. What may I call you all?” Viviel asked.

  They looked uneasily amongst each other, then the bowman shrugged in resignation.

  “In the woods I am called Bear Jorn.” He motioned to the one with the bad arm. “That one’s Trapper Terg, and the other is Black Renn.”

  “I suppose those are all names you earned,” Viviel chuckled, though his eyes remained dim. “Tell me then, how you came to be in Birchloam for Mummers-eve. It makes me wonder now if it is the wolves that steal my sheep, or you lot.” He procured his pouch of tar weed and handed it to Jorn, who took it with a look of surprise and fumbled for his own pipe beneath his greasy furs.

  “It was Ulrig’s idea,” Jorn said. “We had a hard winter up at Far Reach camp. We’re the only ones left asides from old Ulrig, and he’s but a bag of bones himself. The Wardens never sent up any rations at all, and for most of the winter we were buried in snow and couldn’t leave the camp. When spring came there were still no rations. The geese came back late, the streams stayed frozen over, we ate roots and bark and strange tubers. So we made our way down to the lowlands—Renn had come the last year and done the same, stealing bread and wine from the altar in the woods.”

  “I know of Ulrig,” Viviel said, a curious look on his face. “He’s a pardoned man, he is. He comes down to Birchloam and trades furs and wild meat for grain and tools. He comes less and less. Haven’t seen him in Birchloam since last summer. I didn’t know he was still living amongst the Wildermen. I thought him to be but a stray.”

  “He is but a stray, that one. He’s the only reason we’ve been kept alive as long as we have. He can’t afford to make the journey in the best of times. If it’s not for fear of Folka, it’s the Warden who has many times taken it upon himself to take a tax of Ulrig’s goods. It doesn’t matter if you’re a free man or not, a brand or a double brand, you’re still a Wilderman.”

  “How is it you do not care for our trespassing?” Renn asked. “How is it you offer kindness to branded strangers?” He took the tarweed. Terg and Jorn had their pipes lit and were puffing contentedly. They seemed resigned now, the tension released from their haggard frames, perhaps with the help of the warm cider.

  “As I said,” Viviel smiled, the sunburnt creases in the corners of his eyes widening, “if it hadn’t been for you lot, I may as well have lost my daughter. To share a meal and give you a warm, dry place to sleep is but a small price to pay. Any man who faces Varloga deserves more than that.” Not one of them dared lift their eyes to Paiva, sitting still and listening raptly. Not while Viviel sat before them.

  “It is in our own interest to hunt spirits and their Folka,” Renn said.

  “The Forest stirs,” Jorn said, dismissing Renn’s comment. “The highlands are filled with nightmares. We are only too glad for your kindness. There are not many who would risk sharing their homes with outcasts.”

  “You’re not bad men. I know it.”

  Jorn opened his hand slowly and revealed the red scarring on the meat of his thumb.

  “You do not care to learn our pasts?”

  “I do not. I wish to hear no dreary talk of wounded pasts that steals the light from our souls. I do not want to know what you did to earn your sentence in the woods,” Viviel said. His eyes brightened again, his voice lifting as he made the effort to be positive. “I want to hear of the reasons you would want to return from it. I want to hear the tales of your old lives, of the good things you hope for when you are wondering why it is you hope. You sit before me as men, as equals, so tell me your tales so that in the morning when you depart I may call you friends.”

  Paiva watched a transformation on Jorn’s face. She watched the haggardness lift for only a moment as a tender sentiment washed over it. His dark eyes seemed to glisten, his shoulders sagged in surrender. Viviel rose and clapped a strong hand over his shoulder. Then he raised his eyes and searched for Kess.

  “Have you found your medicines?” he asked her. Paiva adored her father with all her heart in that moment. He was of a strong and rare character wherein he could feel sympathy for the most wretched of souls. His ruggedly carved face and work-worn body belied his capability of softer kindness.

  Her mother must have shared her sentiments in that moment, for she returned from the back room with the color returned to her face and a warmth in her eye. She carried a small wooden box filled with ointments, salves and clean strips of linen. She went up to Renn and asked him where his hurts were, but he assured her he was not bleeding and refused her attentions, diverting them to Terg. Viviel went and fetched more food while Jorn helped Terg shrug out of his ripped cloak. Kess inspected him, her face again becoming taught when her eyes fell on his back.

  “He got me,” Terg said. “But not bad enough to get rid of me yet.”

  “I can see every last rib in your back,” Kess said. “I don’t blame you for stealing sweetbreads from the altar.” The brunt of Varloga’s claws had been taken by thick leather plates both men wore under their stained shirts and furs. Renn’s shoulders were badly bruised and swelling, and had suffered only a shallow rake of claws. Terg’s situation was more severe; there were lacerations beneath his right shoulder that had become clotted through the pressure of his vest. Kess soaked them, and he made not a sound as she cleaned them and urged them to bleed again.

  “Tell me of your lives,” Viviel continued.

  “I was a farmer, from the lowlands outside the Keep,” Jorn said. “About this time of year is when I’d go out to the fields with my boys and till the good earth. We had a horse I named King, a great monster of a beast. He was foaled off my old mare and sired by a stud a couple of farms over. I had wanted a team for hitching the plow, but that foal turned into a giant and I had no need of a partner for him. Clumsy as an ox but strong as ten of them. He took to the field like a duck to a puddle. My eldest son would guide the plow, and my youngest would sit on King’s back. My daughter, by my soul, was the one carting stones out of the field and stacking new fences.

  “My wife was always the one to tell us when to start planting. Women have a knack for these things; she always knew when the last frost had passed. There was nothing like the feel of a good day’s work when you’re hot despite the chill of the spring wind coming down from the hills and your throat’s as dry as an old grain bag.” Jorn’s voice broke and he took a deep swallow of his cider. He swallowed it bitterly and continued. “We never were actually married. We just spoke promises to each other because I knew too well the uncertainty of life. When they branded me they had no right to touch her. When things started getting bad we put the farm in the eldest boys’ name, and they couldn’t take it from him because by law he was a bastard. Only me. Only I was sent away. But by all the shining stars, I will get back there one day.” Paiva heard the twinge of remorse in his voice. She pulled her shawl up closer, imaging the pain of losing her home.

  “I shoed horses,” Terg said as Kess bandaged his torn shoulder. “All day and sometimes all night. I loved the smell of iron in the forge, the spark of my hammer against my anvil. Every horse I shoed, I met a new person. That’s what I liked the best. I shoed the heavy horses from the farm fields, from peddlars’ cart horses, to noblemen’s and
Knights’ chargers. I always complained about the ones who tried to blame me for a lame horse. I thought of quitting it one time and smithing mail and armor. But it’s not the same as putting iron on a horse’s hooves and imagining where that horse might walk—whether it be up and down a field before a plow, or whether that horse might carry a lady in her carriage. I apprenticed for five years with Master Orif at the Keep. He said we smithies were spokes in the wheel that kept this land rolling. Without us the horses would be lame, the farmers would have no plows, and the guards would have no hunters.”

  “Our own horses are barefoot,” Renn said. “The whole world does not walk on iron shoes.”

  “We ride Berg Horses,” Jorn growled. “No one but Wildermen ride Berg horses. They’re the scrap of horse flesh. Instead of bothering to cull them they let them loose in the hills. Just like us.”

  “The Bergs don’t carry brands,” Renn said tersely.

  Viviel lifted his golden eyes to the young man. He had his head bent, sucking at the smoldering pit of his pipe.

  “Tell me then of your life,” Viviel said curiously. The young man lifted his brow and turned to his patron, revealing silver eyes that flashed in the firelight beneath his black brow. He seemed to be the most reserved, the most solemn of the three.

  “I was highborn. I was spoiled and overprivileged. It was an empty life—not something I would return to, not for all the freedom in the world.” Paiva took the chance to study him again as he lifted his head into the firelight. Beneath the batter that scarred him she could faintly see the remnants of good breeding. His nose must have once been perfectly sculpted, his cheekbones high and refined despite their gauntness. He must have been handsome once, or could be still, if he had been kept. Indeed, with his strange pale eyes, he was now more alarming than anything.

  “What is it you hope for then?” Viviel asked, studying him much the same as Paiva was.

  Renn stared back into the fire for a long moment. A crook of a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “A pardon, of course,” he said. “But I am content to have a warm fire, with real friends by my side, a pipe in my mouth and a Berg horse waiting for me in the barn. As long as I’m not bleeding, I’m quite sure I am content.”

  Viviel laughed and poured out more cider.

  “He’s special, that one.” Jorn chuckled and took a pull of his drink. “It’s true it doesn’t take much to entertain him. He sometimes carves figures out of sticks and plays with them well into the night.”

  “Talismans,” Renn corrected, “and they are better to play with then wild horses or knives.”

  Jorn laughed and turned to Viviel. “Renn and I were out in the woods once, on a chase, and we were waiting for the others in our band to catch up. I was sweating like a mad horse, scared to my wit’s end of the spirit beast we were after and Renn was sitting there all quiet-like, staring at a tree. I thought maybe he was touched in some way, fear or shock perhaps. I asked him what the matter was. He said he was pretty sure he saw my wife in that tree. I looked, and all there was was but a tree with a lump growing out the side of it. He’s never seen my wife, he only knows the stories I tell him so I thought he was mad. But he went up to that tree and knocked that lump off, and he spent the whole night by the fire whittling it away while I was too scared to go to sleep because I thought I had a madman on watch. Finally he handed the lump of wood over to me, and I tell you… It was no lump of a tree. It was a woman. Somehow that lump, with the bark peeled off and a few cuts made here and there … turned into my wife.”

  “Didn’t matter that one breast was half the size of the other,” Renn said sincerely, then darted a quick look to Kess and bit his lip. Viviel laughed at Renn’s insolent sense of humor, his golden eyes dancing in the firelight.

  “It’s not a talisman if you can’t stuff it in your pocket or wear it around your neck,” Terg protested. “The damned thing was too big to fit in a saddlebag, even. Jorn carried it under his arm the whole way back to Ulrig’s, like he thought it would come to life.”

  “When I get my pardon,” Jorn waved a finger at Terg, “that is the only thing I will bring back from the woods with me. My wooden lump of a woman, and I will give it to my wife and tell her it is the only thing that gave me courage in the dark of the woods. Everything else I will leave behind. Everything.”

  “If she’s still waiting,” Terg said sourly, taking another swig of cider as Kess finished bandaging his side.

  “She is,” Jorn blared. “There’s no reason to get a pardon if she isn’t.”

  The laughter died suddenly as the dog howled in alarm outside. Paiva bolted from her seat and came to stand nervously beside her mother. There came an excited yelp, and then the dog fell quiet. Everyone else fell silent, listening.

  Claws scraped across the door. Something jiggled the latch. The Wildermen and Viviel rose, facing the door and pushing Paiva and her mother behind them. Kess touched her forehead absently, as if the gesture could ward off whatever ill luck was lurking at their front door. Through thin curtains of the window by the door, a pale shape floated by. Paiva seized her mother’s arm in fear.

  “Do something Viviel,” she heard her mother whisper urgently. “Please.”

  Before Viviel could react, Renn crept forward towards the window. He pressed his back against the wall and peered out through a slit in the curtain.

  “Mr. Ibbie,” he whispered, his eyes flashing back to the fire. “It is no spirit. You have a throng of Mummers in your yard.”

  “What? There are no candles in the windows,” he said, panic worrying his voice. He joined Renn at the window and peered out. A white masked face appeared at the window and Renn leapt back into the shadow. The visitor raised their hands to the glass and tapped wooden claws against the glass. The sound of muffled laughter rang out as the figure moved away to the door and rapped loudly. Viviel saw more coming down the yard and he whirled around to face the Wildermen in a panic.

  “Hide, all of you,” was all he said. There was a clatter of boots as the men disappeared into the far corners of the house. Kess quickly threw the bloody linens into the fire.

  “Go upstairs,” she hissed to Paiva. “Hurry.”

  She bolted up into the loft just as her father opened the door and a cheery voice rang out.

  “Mr. Ibbie!” it cried in delight. “You look like you have seen a ghost!” There was a commotion as people pushed their way into the house. Paiva peeked down and saw five costumed people burst in on her startled parents. They were all dressed in long robes with masks, and to her horror she recognized both Miriel and Ramsi Lier, who was missing his fox mask. Paiva found this detail very alarming.

  “It is too late for Mummering,” Paiva heard her mother say. “I was just about to go to bed.”

  “No one else has any drinks left, in all the village, but look! I see you have cider there! Are we not allowed a drink until our identities can be guessed?”

  “Ramsi, Miriel, Clare, Benvin, Piter, and Ernvig,” her father listed smoothly. “And I don’t suppose any of you paid any attention as to where Paiva went off to tonight?”

  They teetered drunkenly as they looked about to each other.

  “No, actually, we thought she was safe at home.”

  “She is, but not thanks to you lot,” her father said heatedly. There was a chorus of drunken giggles and sniggers.

  “Come let her have a drink with us then,” Paiva heard Ramsi say. She felt her cheeks burn and angry tears whelm in her eyes. She turned away and thudded into a solid shape behind her. She nearly gave out a cry of alarm before she realized it was Renn, standing with his tall head stooped against the low ceiling.

  “Miserable friends you have,” he whispered.

  “Not friends at all,” she replied dismally. He leaned over her to look.

  “That’s the fellow you thought you were following up to the altar, Warden Lier’s son.” He
motioned to Ramsi.

  “Yes,” she whispered back.

  “Why on earth would you follow that fool into the woods?” he asked incredulously.

  “What do you mean?” she replied in surprise.

  “He’s a sot. Shake a bush at him and he’ll run off like a mad hare.”

  “I wouldn’t have followed him if I didn’t trust him,” she said defensively. “He’s very brave.”

  “He’s scared of getting his boots dirty.”

  She listened to her parents quarrel with the drunken revelers below. She swallowed dryly, unable to stop her mind from wandering into Renn’s past and pondering what it was he did to earn his banishment. Was he a thief? A liar? Or maybe worst of all, a murderer?

  She was thankful to see her parents had given away the last of the cider, though the Mummers continued speaking in airs of the merrymaking in the square that night. Her father’s responses were clipped and her mother was curt. The Mummers laughed obliviously amongst each other and didn’t care. She felt a longing to be a part of them, as she had longed for Ramsi to offer her even one dance before he had swooped away with Miriel. In her longing she had made a stupid mistake, and it was only because of this shadow of a man beside her she was still standing.

  “I suppose I should thank you,” Paiva said. “You did save me.”

  “As I said. It is in our own interest to hunt spirits,” he answered.

  “He can’t come back now, can he?” she asked. “He was stuck full of arrows.”

  “Alas, he is not yet headless. I doubt very much you will ever be safe in your own home again,” he replied.

  His words sent a chill through her. She looked to Ramsi again and felt her confidence in him drain. “Good thing young Lier is piss drunk,” Renn murmured. “If he knew there were Wildermen watching him in this house right now he’d throw your father in chains.”