“Ah, Thyra, so careful and calculating, as always.” Jaspar chuckles. “Risk is part of life.”
“But foolishness doesn’t have to be. If your warriors are so greatly affected by the risk of snow and hunger, then perhaps you should take them and ride ahead. I’ll stay and get my people across.”
“Or she’ll turn around and run back to the north,” says a hulking dark-haired warrior next to Jaspar. Several others echo his suspicion.
Thyra draws a dagger. “Say that louder, Sten,” she invites. “Let’s discuss it, by all means.”
The warrior’s lip curls, but he remains silent, and Jaspar claps him on the back. “Nonsense, Sten. Until proven otherwise, I will choose to believe Thyra is as full of honor as she is of caution.”
Thyra’s eyes blaze with sudden hate and, to my surprise, a flicker of fear. “An insult wrapped in a compliment. How uncharacteristically clever of you.”
Jaspar chuckles drily as his hand moves to the hilt of his dagger, and the sight jolts me into action.
“We don’t have time to argue.” I stride over to one of our horses and yank a coil of rope from its back. “Let’s get to work.”
I catch Thyra’s eye as I loop the rope around my waist, and she smiles. The people behind me each use belts or shorter stretches of rope to attach themselves to the longer rope as Jaspar leads his warriors across unroped. The horses’ flanks twitch as they pick their way past clumps of grass and stretches of black ice, as if they sense the danger. I follow, leading a long line of our own warriors over the treacherous ground. I know about marshes—I’ve watched one swallow an ox whole. First it sank to its knees, then to its neck, and then it disappeared all of a sudden, its bellowing cut silent in a fountain of bubbles and froth. There are layers to these places, thick vegetation that grows a few feet below the surface and is firm enough to hold weight—until it doesn’t. If we go through the ice, there’s not much time before the rest gives way.
By the time our first wave is across, the sun sits fat and yellow on the treetops in the east, watching our slow progress. Jaspar and his warriors camp themselves on a hill just beyond the marsh, clearly impatient with how long it takes to secure ropes to each individual crossing the divide. Thyra ignores the eye rolls and muttered comments . . . along with the grumbled complaints that come from a few of our own people. She’s sweating from traveling back and forth across the marsh with our rope and keeps glaring at the rising sun as if she’d like to sink a blade into its cheerful golden face. But the ice holds, making our toil over the rope seem fussy and overcautious.
The crowd on the opposite side grows as the sky brightens, and the trailing caravan shrinks as those at the rear catch up and prepare to cross. I fight my growing anxiety that Thyra’s caution is playing as weakness and fear.
But then Gry and her family emerge from the woods and reach the edge of the marsh, and my heart speeds for an entirely different reason. She’s glaring at me as if I’m a snake and clutching her daughter’s hand hard enough to make the girl wince. I cross the distance between us, hefting the loop of rope around my shoulder with Thyra carrying the rest.
“Just be kind to her,” Thyra says softly as we reach the midpoint of the marsh. “She’s grieving, and she just needed a face to pin her anger on.”
She’s scarily accurate about who she’s chosen. “As long as she doesn’t go spouting stupid and baseless accusations again, I’ll be as kind as a lamb.”
Thyra snorts. “You, a lamb?”
“Baaaa—ah!” My bleating is cut off as my foot sinks through the ice. I yank it back up and spread my arms, looking at the dark ice all around. It shines wetly in the sun. “This isn’t good.”
“Come on, Chieftain!” Sten shouts from the other side. “We’ve been here half the day, and we have ground to cover!”
Thyra mutters something about putting him in the ground before saying, “Come on. We’re almost finished.”
“Are you sure you want to risk a crossing?” I wiggle my mud-coated boot.
Thyra pauses and looks over her shoulder at the crowd on the other side. “If I call a halt to this for the day with only fifty people left to cross, I’ll never hear the end of it. They’ll blame me for letting the sun get too high.”
She’s right. Which means we have to risk the most vulnerable of our group. Grimly, we rope up and begin a careful plod back across the ice, single file. With each step, I feel the tug of resistance, fifty bodies behind mine all attached to my rope.