Ki asked reluctantly, ‘what will happen here?’
‘You mean with the Harpies?’ Cora asked. ‘I do not think they will be harsh with us. They will demand greater tribute. They will make no reprisals, I think. They would not harm Rufus, or Lars, or I, for then who would remain to tend the lands that grow the cattle? Reprisals they reserve for those who leave, or those who speak openly against them. Such as Sven. Such as my brother.’
Ki reeled with the impact of Cora’s words. ‘Haftor knows that?’ she asked incredulously.
‘He was there,’ Cora replied with an effort. ‘Just a boy at the time. Turned his mind for a while – he didn’t speak for the longest time – but I brought him back from it. It has given him a strangeness. And when you came, with your tidings, well, there’s the knowledge in him somewhere, trying to get out. I hope it never does.’
‘So do I,’ breathed Ki. She leaned down, put her arms about Cora.
‘I shall miss the strength I took from you,’ Cora admitted softly. Gently, she pushed Ki away. ‘In the cupboard,’ she said awkwardly.
‘What?’
‘The money, for Sven’s lands. You must take it.’
Ki straightened, looked down on Cora bemusedly. Then she crossed to the cupboard and opened it. The colt-hide sack was heavy. It clinked. Ki turned back to Cora.
‘I accept your money for the lands, Cora. You have paid me for it honorably. In the past I have refused the love you offered me, Cora. Now I take it, too, with thanks. And you, in return, must accept mine.’ Ki raised the bag, kissed it ceremoniously. She dropped it on the foot of Cora’s bed. She smiled at the foolishness of the situation. Cora’s bird-bright eyes were wet. Ki nodded her head to her and left the room.
Her goodbyes to Lars and Refus were short and uncomfortable. There was too much to say. It could not be cut to fit into words. Eyes said much that tongues could not form. Rufus hugged her shyly, but Lars’s embrace was fierce and hard to break from. Ki scrambled onto the seat of her wagon, refusing to see how Lars wept. She slapped the reins hard on the grays’ backs. The night received Ki and closed behind her. When she looked back, not a light showed in the home that had been Sven’s.
The road was silent about her, no lights showing in the smaller cottages that she passed. But as her team came abreast of Marna’s, a small figure darted in front of it, holding aloft a flickering candle dim as a firefly. Ki pulled the team up short.
‘Haftor!’ called Kurt’s voice softly, and the door of the cottage opened. ‘She’s here!’ Kurt said, and then the candle was pinched out, and Kurt darted off into darkness.
Haftor stood limned a moment in the lamplight, framed in the door of Marna’s house. Ki sat silent on the wagon. She heard a light footfall behind Haftor and glimpsed Lydia, pale as a spirit as she moved listless to his side, carrying a bulky sack. Haftor took it from her, saying soft words that did not carry to Ki’s ears. He pushed her gently back into the cottage, closing the door behind her. He came swiftly, to pass up to Ki the bundle of provisions. She took them without thanks, opening her cuddy door and setting them within.
All words were inadequate. Ki felt she must leave so much unfinished. She climbed down slowly from the seat to stand before him. ‘I am sorry we make our ending like this,’ she faltered.
Haftor’s eyes were like dark, cold river rocks. He trapped her hands in his, holding them so tightly it hurt.
‘This is no ending, Ki. You can’t run away from it that easily. Cora will not be able to contain such a secret as she holds. You killed those Harpies. That’s a debt paid only with blood. Neither time nor distance will heal it. Harpies don’t give up on blood debts. Neither do the men who serve them. A life must be given.’
Haftor’s eyes had gone deep and mad in the semilight. Ki tried to step back from him, feeling menaced by his words and the way he growled them. Should he choose to try and kill her, Ki knew she could find no spirit to resist him. He had known, then. As Cora had.
He read the fear in her eyes, understood the way she shrank from him. He released her hands. ‘They don’t know yet. They cannot put the pieces together as I did. To kill a Harpy for vengeance is too foreign an idea to them. They see the pieces, but cannot comprehend the whole. But Nils will. By morning he will know, and there will be no stopping him. He will want your blood himself. If the Harpies do not find you, Nils, or another like him, will. So do not tarry.’
He turned to her wagon, surprised her by climbing up the wheel before her. He took up the reins, slapped them against the team. The team started at his unaccustomed hand and stepped out as swiftly as beasts their size could.
‘The roads will be watched, by men in the trees and Harpies in the air. So I will show you a way forgotten, branched over by forest growth and so foul and pitted that all think no wagon may pass there. It will take you long to travel that way. But no one will watch for you there.’
Haftor hurried the horses, bidding Ki sternly to be silent that he might listen. Ki opened her mouth in alarm when he suddenly turned the team off the road and into a morass. Their hooves sank and made sucking noises as they struggled. A shallow layer of moving water overlay the mud and reeds the team plowed through. The wagon jolted off the solid roadbed and into the mush. The wheels sank. Haftor slapped the reins hard down on the horses. The grays hunched and humped against their traces. Ki’s heart sank with her wagon wheels.
‘Pull, damn you!’ hissed Haftor in a carrying whisper. Their heads went down, their front legs bent, and the team went nearly to their knees. The wagon moved. In sporadic jerks and tugs, the wagon lurched through the mire and onto coarse gravel and then up over deep moss and scrub brush. It was uphill briefly over a slight rise, and then they were descending, and Ki looked down a dark avenue of trees. Tall grass and brush swept the bottom of the wagon. Tall trees had overgrown the unused road and arched over it, sheltering it from the night sky.
‘It’s going to be bad traveling,’ Haftor warned her as he pulled the team in. ‘There may be logs down across the road further on. You’ll just have to chop them and use the team to pull them aside. I know that a stream crosses it in one place. It shouldn’t give you too much of a problem.’
He hugged her fiercely and kissed the side of her face roughly. His silver wrist-piece caught for a moment in her hair. Before she could recover from her surprise, he untangled himself and leapt from the wagon. He gave Sigurd a slap on the rump before he stepped aside, and the spooked horse surged forward in his harness.
The road had been as bad as Haftor had said it would be. The provisions he had given her had run out before she reached a true road again. But she had left that evil trail at last, of that she was sure – she remembered emerging from the forest onto a wide, sunlit road – and she wondered at the darkness about her now, and the terrible jerking and swaying.
It was the swaying that was making her sick. She opened her eyes a little, only to see whiteness rushing past her face far below. She was cold and monstrously uncomfortable; she could not locate her arms or determine what had become of her hands. She had no memory of where she was or what she was doing. The white stuff below her rose suddenly, to strike her in the face with coldness. Snow! She reared back her head as far as she could and let out a strangled cry. Presently, the swaying stopped. With the cessation of the motion, she could separate her body from her discomfort. Her thighs, belly, and chest were pressed heavily to something warm, solid, and living. Her head hung down lower than the rest of her body. That accounted for the throbbing sensation in her face. That much was obvious. The circumstances of the
