I looked at her. “And what do you know of war?”
She shrugged. “My people have been at war with each other since Askr and Almr first grew out of the ground as trees,” she said, “and the gods uprooted them and made of them the first man and woman. Real war. Not your island cattle raids, but war. The kind of war where you can stand on a hillside and look down on a valley and not see the grass for all the men fighting.”
I tried to imagine just what that would look like.
“Then?” the Varini girl continued. “There is no thing called dishonor. No thing called honor. There is only winning. Only losing. And if you lose, you don’t leave a freshly made bed behind for your enemy to sleep in.”
“Your people sound particularly unforgiving.”
“Ja. Only we call it practical. Where I come from, when one tribe wants to move—to live somewhere else, somewhere better—they burn their houses before they leave.”
“What?” I frowned at her. “That’s not practical. It’s ridiculous. Why would they do that?”
“So they can’t change their minds.” She pointed straight out into the darkness ahead of her with her sword. “There is only forward. Only tomorrow. No yesterday, no going back. And nothing of value is left behind, so nothing is truly lost.”
I thought about the idea of feeding the past to the flames.
Wasn’t that what I had done? And had I left anything behind of value?
Father . . .
. . . who was willing to give me to a husband I didn’t want and couldn’t love.
Maelgwyn . . .
I blinked back the tears that suddenly rimmed my eyes and saw, in my mind, the flames of my own hearth. The fire that I’d fed with my torc and my dagger. I might as well have burned my house down. I’d certainly set fire to my yesterdays. And I’d left, intending never to return.
“What happens when you come upon another tribe that doesn’t feel like moving on?” I asked.
She grinned wolfishly. “Then . . . you fight.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
“Ja. I was born in a place that should have been called Hel, because that is what it was. The land was harsh, the winds bitter, the herds scarce, and the food scarcer. Why anyone would live there in the first place is, to me, a”—she struggled for the Latin word—“a mystery.” Her expression grew rueful. “Our thane must have grown more brains than his fathers before him, though, because he decided that we would go to other lands. Warmer, more plentiful, but already taken by another tribe. Still, we went. And then, when we got there . . . the Suevi had more swords and better food. So, stronger fighters.”
“What happened?”
“The Varini—my people—sold as many of us as they could to the Suevi, so there would be fewer mouths to feed, and then they moved on. To a place where the Suevi weren’t.”
Something about the way she told the bald truth of her tale made me look at her twice. Her face was impassive, but I thought I saw a shadow flit behind her gaze.
“Who sold you?” I asked.
“My mother.”
“What?”
“She got a good price,” she said flatly, then turned her head and spat. “May she rot in filth in Hel’s icy wasteland until the end of days.”
I was staring at her, openmouthed, I knew. And as I stared, I saw her mask slip just enough for me to recognize it. Pain. “I’m sorry.”
She laughed harshly. “I don’t need pity from the likes of you, little island fox. Pity is for the weak.”
Silence spun out into the darkness all around us. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t like her. At all. And I suppose I could have felt a kind of grim satisfaction about the hardships this rude, brutish, irritating girl had endured. But I didn’t. I couldn’t imagine how that had felt—to have your own kin treat you like a possession. A cow or a cloak or a sword to be sold or bartered away. But then again, wasn’t that what my own father had been willing to do to me? Give me away like some kind of prize to Aeddan? Maybe the Varini girl and I weren’t all that different.
“What’s your name?” I asked her finally.
“Why?”
“I don’t pity you,” I lied. “But I would like to mourn you if the time comes when I have to kill you. And I can’t do that if I don’t know your name.”
The blonde girl’s winter-cold eyes narrowed slightly. Then she uttered a sharp laugh and slapped me—hard—on the back. “I am Elka,” she said.
“That’s it?” I coughed, catching my breath after the blow. “Just Elka?”
“You don’t like my name?”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, it’s a good name.” I stood up taller and dipped my head in what I hoped she would interpret as a gesture of respect. “I am Fallon. I mean, I was Fallon ferch Virico, daughter of a king. Before all this. But I guess I’m just Fallon now.”