It sliced cleanly into her stomach. The pain didn’t register at first, just an incredible pressure. Evenon, eyes wide, looked down at his hands. He released the ax and it fell to the ground, soaking the dirt floor with blood. Sibba’s mouth flooded with something warm and salty. She dropped to her knees, crimson blood leaking from her mouth and the wound in her stomach.
The pain came on all at once. She was back in the ocean, the waves washing over her, gasping for a breath that wouldn’t come. What had her father said about stomach wounds? That they were the worst. That they festered and rotted, killing the person slowly, from the inside out.
“Even in battle, show your enemy mercy.” Her father’s face appeared in front of her, his mouth set in a grim line, and she choked out a sob.
It was that noise that set Evenon back into action. He was backing away. She watched his feet, unable to raise her head, feeling like she weighed a thousand stone. “By the time they find you,” he said, “it will be too late. You’ll be dead and I’ll be halfway to Ydurgat. I’m sure Chief Isgerd will be glad to know that your father hasn’t given up on your brother yet. Pleased enough to give me passage across the Strait on one of her ships.” He wanted to sound fierce, but she heard the tremble in his voice.
Please. She wanted to ask him for mercy, but the words wouldn’t come. Her body had stopped responding. It collapsed heavily to the floor, her head bouncing off the hard-packed dirt, her eyes on the bloody ax in front of her.
The door shut loudly behind him, and Sibba heard the bolt sliding into place with a final, deafening clang.
? ? ?
Hours passed and the cold seeped beneath Sibba's clothes and took residence against her skin. She had thrown up, the sour mead stinging as it made its way back up, and she now lay in a puddle of the pungent vomit and warm blood. The horses were restless, stamping and snorting, trying to get away from the smell. This was how they would find her and how she would be remembered. Once, she tried to struggle to her feet, but the pain had shot through her body like a bolt of lightning and she had collapsed back to the floor. Who would find her body? A servant, more than likely, coming at dawn to tend the animals.
Sibba wondered what would greet her on the other side. Had she died with enough honor to go to her father’s Elanos? Would she see her mother again and feast with the warriors? Or did the festering stomach wound mean she would be sent to Malos and spend eternity in the shadows? That was even if the Fieldings had the right of it. Her mother’s Enos valued the glory of conquest, of converting others to his beliefs. If he were the one to ultimately decide her fate, surely all was lost.
Sunlight was not yet seeping through the gaps in the wall when she heard footsteps outside. The bolt slid back on the door and it creaked open. Sibba wanted to pull herself to her knees, to try to defend herself, or at least look less like a calf bound for slaughter, but she could do nothing but lie there and let her teeth chatter.
The shuffling of boots stopped.
“Who's there?” Sibba managed to choke out.
The answer was a gentle touch on her hands, the bite of a cold blade against her wrists. “Hold still,” came a girl's voice. She sliced deftly through the rope and Sibba's arms fell forward, wrapping around her middle. Rolling to her back, she groaned and coughed up a mouthful of blood, then squinted her eyes closed.
Cold, long-fingered hands pried Sibba’s arms away from her stomach and probed the wound there. Sibba coughed again. “How did you know?” she asked, but the sound was a whispered gargle around the blood in her throat.
“You called to me,” Tola said. “I would have come sooner but I couldn't get away until Jorunn fell asleep.”
Sibba grunted in objection, but then remembered the kiss, remembered her mead-induced hallucination, the name falling from her lips. She would have flushed if her blood hadn’t been soaking the ground. Somewhere in the back of the barn, a horse nickered.
There was silence, pressure on her stomach, then, “Gods, Sibba, I wouldn’t have delayed if I’d known.”
Too late, Sibba tried to say, but her face was cold, so cold, and her lips stiff and immobile.
“Hush,” Tola said. “I’m going to fix this, but then you’re going to have to get us out of here.” She put her hands on Sibba’s cheeks and used her thumbs to open her eyes. Tola was little more than a blob in the darkness, a shape hovering above her. “Do you hear me? I won’t be able to do any more, but you have to take me with you. Estrid is waiting for us in the woods to the south.” She squeezed Sibba’s head between her strong hands. “Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” Sibba said, hearing but not understanding. She couldn’t imagine being able to move, let alone help Tola get anywhere.
What happened next, Sibba couldn’t explain. Tola pulled away for a moment, rummaging in her purses, and when she came back, she smelled like eir leaf and rose petals. She knelt, digging her staff into the ground on one side, and put her other hand on Sibba’s stomach. Sibba watched as if in a dream, almost outside of herself. Her heart fluttered in her chest. She gasped, arching her back.
“No, Sibba,” Tola commanded, the tone willing Sibba to obey. “You will not die on me.”
But her breath was gone, and her chest felt achingly empty. She blinked once, bringing Tola into focus. Her eyebrows were knitted together and the kohl around her eyes was smeared down her cheeks. Her thin lips were twisted into a grimace. Sibba opened her mouth to say something—anything—but then shadows crept in around the edges of her vision, and she knew no more.
? ? ?
Something heavy lay across her legs and someone was picking at her hair. Light from an unknown source fell across her face, burning her eyelids. Sibba groaned and shifted, surprised to hear her voice, surprised to be alive at all. Her eyes opened; above her, the rafters of the barn crisscrossed, rising into darkness. There was a shuffling sound to her left and she turned to it, blinking in the light that seeped through a crack in the open barn door.
Aeris took a step back and turned her head to the side, her wide, golden eye circling wildly. The bird made a curious, quiet noise and then began preening her feathers as if to say, My work here is done.
Sibba pushed herself up on her elbows and looked at her lap. Tola was sprawled there, her red hair cutting lines across Sibba’s legs. The face that had been screwed up in worry was now relaxed and smooth. Both of them were covered in blood and grime, and the pleasant scent of roses and eir leaf had given way once more to the tang of blood and vomit. Sibba’s hand wandered to her side, where the ax had cut her, and there was only the feel of thin new skin, an indent that she traced with her fingers.