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“Are you hurt?” Karas, his dark hair a wild, dust-stiffened mess, let go of my mantle-clad arm. “Or you, my lady Minnow?”
“I am well enough.” Arn’s teeth showed, a brief grimace. Her chest heaved, deep breaths wringing gleams from her ring-and-scale. “My thanks, Northerner. Sol?”
I was numb from head to toe; had I any injury, I suspected it wouldn’t show for some hours yet. “Soren,” I repeated. “He was not behind us. We should wait, or—”
“No waiting,” Efain said, grimly. With Eol gone, the burden of decision apparently rested with him. “Karas, take end-guard. We must move.”
“If there are fallen, we shall sing their names when we reach some safety.” Arn’s expression was as grim as I’d ever seen. She examined me, brushing at my mantle with one hand, tugging sharply at my right sleeve, peering into my eyes. “Well, my weirdling?”
I swallowed a suspicious weight in my throat. I had never in my life wished to be other than avolva, the eldest daughter of Dun Rithell, but at the moment I longed to be a shieldmaid instead. At least Arn was alwayscertain.
If I had been chosen by the Wingéd Ones, though, I would not have been taught by Idra or taken from my home. “You’ve a cut,” I managed. The woad-stripe upon her face was cracked and drying, and a dark thread ran through it—blood, from a shallow slice over her eyebrow. “Hold still.”
It was a moment’s worth to draw the pain out with shaking fingertips, to convince the flesh to reknit. I did not even have to imagine a starglow to eat the discomfort.
Though Efain shifted, clearly wishing to be gone, he said nothing. I took my fingers away and flicked them, dashing the tiny bit of pain and damage to the floor. Stone still groaned madly outside the door, a muffled thunder. The closeness, and the dark, clawed at my aching throat.
Arn’s eyes reopened, wondering as Bjorn’s when I performed this duty. “Hardly worth troubling over.” It was her way of thanking me, and a slight, pained smile bunched my cheeks.
“’Tis all I can do.” I could not keep the bitterness from my tone,but I set her mantle to rights as well with a few swift tugs, and shortly after our small group set off down the stairs.
I did not ask if the Northerners were wounded, since they all seemed hale enough.
The sunwise-turning stairs did not last nearly so long as I thought they might, and at their end was a passage with rough sides but a smooth, even floor, traces of sand gritting underneath the Northerners’ and Arn’s footwear. My own felted overboots were in reasonable repair, though they were made for snow-travel, not combat or walking over sharp broken stone. Filthy with dust and sand, they dragged at my feet, and deep cold fear mounted in me despite the light of the Elder lamp.
The corridor seemed untouched by the rivening overhead, but I still did not like the sensation of earthweight pressing upon us. Efain led, Arn paced slightly ahead of me, Gelad and Karas behind; a new silence unlike Nithraen’s hush wrapped us in black velvet.
My hands were damp inside green, fur-trimmed gloves. Anything could be hiding in the ink-pall beyond our small, faint sphere; the cessation of noise was not comforting. I did not even want to blink for fear of losing the light.
“You could have told us there was battle,” my shieldmaid said, when we had walked some distance.
“There was not time.” Efain did not turn, and though he did not whisper the vast silence nibbled at the edges of each word. “And my lord Eol would not wish to risk either of you near such a thing.”
I found I could speak. “Or he thought we might try to find some hidden egress from the city, did we know our captors distracted.” It was perhaps unwise to observe as much, especially with my voice broken from screaming prayers.
Efain’s shoulders stiffened, but it was Gelad who replied. “He thought you might seek to help, and be injured or worse. Aeredh agreed, and sent us to take you to safety. We would rather lose ourselves than you, my ladyalkuine.”
Of course, I was a means to an end for them—or so they thought. I could not tell whether it would be better or worse to inform them Faevril’s “toy” had almost burned me to emptiness, like a wicker cage upon a solstice fire.
It had occurred to me, as I woke that quiet, dreadful morn, that I was near useless to any of their possible designs. Which meant Arn and I could possibly go home—I could think of nothing else at that moment, and my eyes welled up not merely from the dust.
“Aeredh foresaw an attack, just not where. And Nithraen was supposed to hold.” Karas spoke softly from his place as rearguard. The Old Tongue halted between his lips, sorrow-laden. “Next the Enemy will take Dorael. If he can.”
They still thought us unable to understand their language; it was a slim advantage, and one I was glad my fruitless screaming amid the earlier noise had not broken. Arn cast an eloquent look over her shoulder. I held my peace. The rabbit-trembling still shook my bones, but at least I was not sweating with fear anymore.
Now I was chilled, though the tunnel was neither warm nor cold. I do not know how long we walked, as the passage sloped gently upward. Perhaps we had all been crushed by falling rock or slain byorukhar, and were now wandering in one of Hel’s lands while that great goddess decided what to do with us.
The more I tried not to think such things, the more plausible they seemed. Sometimes the invisible selves are knocked free by mischance, after all, and thoughvolva, I was just as mortal as any Secondborn. I was busy holding what little remained of my courage close-trapped and biting my lower lip to halt yet more useless prayers; I could not even perform a simple test to see if I was still in my body or… otherwise.
Would my companions be whisked into a vast ruddy-lit hall with warriors laughing and Wingéd shieldmaids, their service done, trading riddles as the mead flowed? Would I find myself upon a grey hillside with white flax-flowers, denied the reward of those who had died bravely in battle? Since I had been contemplating abandoning the weregild, would I drown in the cold lake of oathbreakers, numb and struggling to breathe for an eternity as my choked cries rent an uncaring, smoke-lensed sky?
Perhaps my cowardice would leave me, quite simply, alone. In the dark.
Forever.
The journey, however, came to a far more mundane end. Efain slowed, and the Elder lantern swung slightly on its thin, very fine chain. The rock face on either side smoothed, the hallway narrowing before reaching a blank terminus. “Gelad?”
“No pursuit,” the other Northerner said. “Yet.” He and Karas slipped past, hands to hilts. Arn motioned me slightly back; the wall of blank stone before us was sheer and polished almost to a gleam. Thin lines of moonlight ran against its surface, sparked by the Elder lantern’s glow. It looked a mere drawing of a door, and the fear clawed at my chest again.
