“I give you honor, Sacrifice Nezeru. Your eye is keen, although I had spoken of my teacher Xoka before. But the reason I had to unlearn the gestures taught me as a child slave should be obvious. As one of the queen’s huntsmen, I range the whole of these lands from the border of her domain down into Rimmsersgard—and occasionally, as this time, all the way into the northern reaches of Erkynland. I must deal with other mortals that I meet in my travels, and I often trade in their villages. What do you think I would receive instead of jerked meat and grain if they knew I was one of Queen Utuk’ku’s slave-catchers?”
“A noose, perhaps. And an iron cage for your bones.” Now she smiled, with the conscious desire to show him how pleasant it would be to see him thus. “I hear that the bodies of traitors are often hung along the borders of the mortal lands, to show what the rest of your kind think of those who take the Norn queen’s silver, as they say.”
“Exactly.”
They rode in silence for a while. Far ahead, Nezeru could see the humped silhouette of the giant, like a moving snowdrift. Behind him, Makho spoke with Saomeji, with Kemme following a little way behind. More and more in these last days the chieftain and the Singer seemed to be in deep conversation, often arguing, and Nezeru wished she knew why. She also wondered why Saomeji’s master Akhenabi had allowed her to remain with this hand when Makho had wanted her sent back to Nakkiga for punishment. Their mission was important, of course, but surely the Lord of Song could have picked any one of dozens to replace her from his own entourage of Singers and Sacrifice-trained guards. And Akhenabi, in the plundering of her thoughts, could not have failed to learn that she had lied about being with child. Why had that also been ignored? Certainly the arch-Singer had not informed Makho, who clearly still believed her lie.
“If I am right, as I think I am, that you are young for your kind,” Jarnulf said abruptly, as if he had been listening to her thoughts, “how have you come to join this grave undertaking—whatever it may be?”
“I was top of my file in the Order of Sacrifice.” She could hear the tightness in her own voice, and was unhappy with herself. Was it so obvious that she, too, had wondered at the same thing? “I killed six armed slaves with my bare hands. I crippled two rival Sacrifices in the Games. I can fight as well as any male and better than most.”
“Oh, I am certain,” he said. “But still, files pass through the Order of Sacrifice every few years, don’t they? There must have been dozens of other warriors who reached equally high rank in their own time, and who have been blooded since in actual battle.
“Because you have not been in real battle before our fight with the Erkynlanders, have you?”
She was surprised by how that stung her. “A bad guess, mortal. I have been in many fights, many struggles,” she said almost too quickly, thinking of the islanders she had slaughtered, but also of the one she had let escape.
“Ah.” Irritatingly, he acted as though she had agreed with him. “So who are your parents, Sacrifice? They must be powerful indeed to secure such an important posting for their daughter while she is still so young.”
“My youth means nothing.”
“Really? It certainly means something to me. Your people live to be a hundred times as old as mine—and yet I would wager that despite your high position and honors, I have lived longer than you have in this world, beneath these stars.” He spread his fingers toward the night sky. “I have seen twenty-eight summers. How many have you seen?”
“Meaningless.” She kept her face immobile, but now she wanted to kill him and silence his mockery. “You jab at me so you do not have to answer any questions of your own.”
The pale blue eyes surveyed her. “Then I apologize. I suppose, in a way, I am a guest, and should be better behaved. Question away, Sacrifice. Is there something about me that warrants your interest?”
“Interest? Perhaps.” Nezeru knew she had lost her calm. She silently repeated the Prayer of Loyal Servants until she could think with her customary clarity. “Your arrows are different than ours,” she said at last.
He raised his eyebrows in feigned surprise. “Well, that is certainly cause for concern.”
“Not in and of itself, no. But yours are fletched with hawk or eagle feathers. We Sacrifices use feathers from the black goose.”
“Do you want a contest, then, to see whose arrows fly most truly? I may not be Hikeda’ya, but nobody yet has complained of my skill with a bow.”
“I do not seek a contest—although it might be interesting to have such a thing one day, you and I.” Now she allowed herself to smile, just a little. It felt like power, like lifting her cloak to display a sharp blade. “But I followed you down the hill that night we escaped the mortal army and I saw many arrows with that fletching. They were all sticking into trees.”
For a moment he rode in silence. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you, Sacrifice.”
“Oh, I think you do, Freedman. For someone who professes to be a skilled archer, you seem to have hit very few mortal targets.”
He dismissed it with a shake of his head. “The hills were full of mortals that night. They were all around us before we broke for freedom. Surely I am not responsible for every arrow that was not feathered with black goose.”
“No. But few of our mortal enemies would have been shooting from behind us, so I still have trouble understanding how so many arrows in the line of our downhill charge would have missed their target—unless the trees were the target.”
The mortal’s face was a mask, as blank at that of any Hikeda’ya at his or her duty. “Do you have a point, Sacrifice?”
“Call me Nezeru, please. I think we have passed that stage of formality, don’t you? After all, we have fought together, killed mortals together, and now we ride together. And I will call you ‘Jarnulf’. Or is that not your true name?”
“As true as any.” He looked at her with what she gauged to be a little more respect than previously. “But you still have not answered my question. Who gave you your mortal blood?”
She considered for a moment. “My mother. She is of Rimmersgard, like you.”
“A slave also, like me and the rest of my family?”
“Not exactly.” And that was true—there really was no precedent for the relationship between Nezeru’s noble father and her outlander mother. “But I think she would recognize much of your life.”
“I hope not, Lady Nezeru. Because I would not wish my life on anyone.” Suddenly, surprisingly, he spurred his horse ahead and did not slow until he had reached a position halfway between Nezeru and leaders of the company.
Yes, she thought, not without pleasure. It will be a long, slow game with this one.
His earliest memories were of the cold, of huddling in the slave barracks with the other children. The winds that descended from the Nornfells and swirled around great Stormspike seemed always to be in motion, always searching for a way into the crude buildings, and their whistling song haunted his childhood. Even crushed in with other shivering children, thin bodies pressed together like mouslings in a nest of rags, Jarnulf was never warm.
He remembered the cold, and of course the hunger. The Hikeda’ya did not consider children fit for any but the lightest of labors until they had reached a certain size, usually at about ten years of age, so they did not concern themselves overmuch with feeding the slaves’ offspring. Those who showed themselves strong enough to survive would be worth keeping, but those that did not were a waste of good grain, so children were given just enough thin gruel to keep them alive. If some of the larger took food from the smaller, it only proved the stronger were more worthy of life and would bring their owners more value. The sickly were left to die. For centuries, that had been the way among the Hikeda’ya with their own children—why should the spawn of mortal slaves be treated any differently?
Jarnulf had known his mother Ragna for only a few years of his young life, and although he felt certain he still remembered her face, he could never be quite sure. What he did remember was her voice, one of the few gentle things of his childhood, lovely, soft, and sweet as birdsong. Her quiet words, as they huddled together at night trying not to wake the others, were his only memories of comfort. She told him stories of her family and of his people, and even taught him the rudiments of reading and writing in the old runes their ancestors had brought across the ocean to Osten Ard. But when he was only eight years old—his brother Jarngrimnur a year younger, and his sister Gret barely four years of age—another female slave died, and their mother was moved into the castle to replace her. Jarnulf and his brother and sister never saw her again.