Soldiers had been here.
I barely breathed. If there was even a chance that they waited anywhere nearby, we would turn and leave as swiftly as we could. But I couldn’t afford to pass up the possibility of food if any was left in some abandoned larder. I was already weak with hunger. And it was clear the village was abandoned.
One of the houses was less damaged than the rest. Inside, I found turnips, a few potatoes, a half-melted round of cheese—worth its weight in gold to my ravenous eyes—and a metal flask. I gathered it all quickly and remounted Butter, riding for another hour before resting.
The next day, we found a thin stream covered in ice. I broke the surface and filled my flask. I ate the cheese, but the turnips and potatoes were too hard and would need cooking to be edible. There was little shelter on the next stretch of rocky land, so we kept on without resting until night fell.
I was a jumble of aches and bruises, barely upright on the horse’s back, by the time lights flickered on in the distance, appearing and disappearing between the trees like playful spirits.
The trees gave way to a clearing, where a dozen wagons were arranged in circles around campfires. I halted and slid off the horse’s back in the cover of the pine boughs, well out of the firelight.
People were sitting in clusters, turning spits made of tree branches. My mouth watered as the juices from a skinned hare dripped into the fire with a hiss. They divided the rich-smelling meat into portions, but to my frustration, they didn’t take out sleeping rolls or retire for the night in their wagons after eating. Instead, they gathered at the center of the clearing, jostling for the best seat on one of the fallen logs that had been pulled into a semicircle around a fire. A woman with chestnut hair, her face carved in strong, striking lines, came forward and invited a girl of about nine or ten years old to choose a tale.
I sat on the ground on a bed of pine needles, my back against a tree trunk. Butter stood a few yards behind me, content to rest.
The girl chose the origin story, how the Frostbloods and Firebloods came to be. With her hands in her lap, the old woman seemed to grow taller and statelier in the dancing orange light. All faces leaned toward her, their excitement palpable as they listened.
“In the early days,” said the storyteller in her low, melodious voice, “people had no frost or fire. They lived with the animals, wearing the skins of those they hunted, and were barely more than animals themselves. The gods of the four winds lived in the sky, each keeping to their own kingdoms, isolated but equal.
“Only Fors, the god of the north wind, was lonely. He wanted there to be someone like him, someone who reveled in blistering cold and biting ice.” Her hands moved like white birds among the flickering shadows. “So he swept his hand to the glacier at the top of the world and gathered the coldest pieces. Then he shrank himself into human form and watched the human tribes as they warred with one another, endlessly killing and being killed.”
“How were they killed, Magra?” asked a girl in a fascinated whisper.
“Kaitryn!” said her mother. “Don’t ask such morbid questions.”
Magra smiled and leaned close, as if she was familiar with the girl’s thirst for gory details. “Any way you can think of. By their own hands, by stones and swords and axes.”
“I bet it was terrible,” the girl said with delight.
The storyteller nodded. “Fors said to the woman who ruled the tribes of the North, ‘Here, take my ice and use it to freeze your enemies. Then no one will be able to defeat you.’ He put the shard of ice into her wrist, and the vein turned blue. The woman’s body became cold and her eyes turned pale. She raised her hand and smote the enemy tribesmen with deadly showers of frost and snow until everyone who was left ran from her in terror.”
The girl clapped her hands, and some boys inched forward on the ground, their eyes bright in the firelight. Even the adults were still and silent, their gazes rapt.
“But Sud,” said Magra with a stern look, “the goddess of the south wind, had loved a warrior of the defeated tribe, and it pierced her heart to watch him die. She saw how formidable the icy warrior woman had become and was afraid that she would kill all the other tribes.”