Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (10 page)

She knelt between the two dead men, wiping her blade and hands on the father’s cloak. His head lolled now. Half a hand was painted in red on his light brown beard. Her hand. Her fingers were wet, and there was blood everywhere. It ran down the father’s chest, seeping into his cloak. She pulled the son’s russet cloak over his face and shuddered at his broken eye. Otherwise, they both still appeared to be sleeping. The man who came after Becca, the chief, the son, and the father. Four men. She had killed four men. The sleeve of her tunic was red and wet with blood that was not her own. Her hand was stained red, red under her fingernails, red on the antler hilt of her knife. The tip of her right boot was splashed dark red, too.

This never happened with the shovel. She’d only bang her coaler’s shovel against any pushy guy’s head and then run into the forest to hide. She couldn’t stop staring at the spot on her boot until her eyes watered and hot tears fell.

She knelt in the corridor, covering her own mouth for fear of letting a sound escape, and shook. She felt no sense of victory, no sense of justice meted out and revenge taken.
For the Ridge
, half of her heart whispered.
For Rannoch!
But they were dead already. And there were no gods, so there could be no afterlife, so what did the dead know or care about what the living did?

Nora was racked by sobs and silent laughter in equal measure. She was a murderer. A murderess? If the baker’s wife had kept her mouth shut, she would never have left the Ridge! And now, who she was trying to save? The baker’s wife! Nora was alive. But she was going to die here. The muscles in her stomach contracted and hurt, but she couldn’t stop laughing. She wanted to go home. But there was no home anymore. She wanted to throw her knife away and lie down between the dead forever. Lie down and sleep and not feel anything anymore.

After a while, the spasms ebbed. Nora took a deep breath. She needed food. She was exhausted now, so tired. At first, her legs wouldn’t budge under her. They were numb and stiff and then started to prickle with heat. She had to move, regardless.

In the dark, she crawled down the corridor to the stairs and paused at the top, staring down into the common room. There were various tables and benches and chairs on a flagstone floor, all assembled around a huge stone fireplace. Above it in a place of honor were the sword and shield Becca’s father had carried as a soldier in the imperial army before he settled down here to marry Becca’s mother. The shield still showed the emblem of the emperor: three blue dragons, claws readied to strike. Once, the empire had been everywhere. Now it was looking out for itself.

Four of the benches had been moved closer around the fireplace, where the fire had burned down to glowing embers for the night. On them, four men slept. On one of the larger tables was a huge pile of everything that she guessed had seemed valuable in the men’s eyes: cups of tin and silver, platters from the kitchen etched with intricate designs, piles of coins, and a few jewels and gems from the women’s jewelry. It seemed a meager treasure hoard for the whole of the Ridge. Furs were heaped on another table. These, Nora knew, would bring in valuable coin when sold. The riches of the Ridge weren’t the gold and silver the people possessed, which was little. It was the furs, the steel, and the wool.

For a moment, standing at the top of the stairs, Nora considered turning away, walking back down the corridor, past Ubba’s body, and out through the window into the freedom of the night. She could take the second horse in the stable, be away, far, far away by dawn. She’d done her fair share. She could ride over the Plains toward the Temple of the Wind, maybe even catch up with Owen and the Hunted Company and just…and just…Her mind failed to imagine what would happen then. Maybe it was a sign. Or maybe she was just too tired.

Slowly she crept down the wooden stairs. When she reached the bottom, she was so close to one of the men on the benches that she had to step over his hand, which hung to the floor. She inched away to the kitchen door beyond the bar, not letting the sleeping men out of her sight. One of the men nearest to the inn’s entrance moved, shuffling onto his side. He pulled his cloak over him. Nora stood and watched, heart beating painfully in her throat. He slept on.

The kitchen was nearly as large as the common room and took up the entire far side of the building. The fireplace could easily fit three roast pigs. A huge metal stove dominated the room. On the wall hung copper pots and pans. Cupboards lined the free walls, filled with crockery and dishes of all sizes and designs, some plain, some with elaborate hand-painted patterns. There were glasses and mugs and pitchers and wooden cutting boards and wooden plates and spoons and forks and ladles and sieves. But no food. Nora groaned. This was a kitchen. There had to be
something
she could eat. Sausages or cured meat or cheese. Raw broccoli. She’d eat it. She’d eat anything. Her stomach growled, needy.

A cut loaf lay on the stovetop. It was going stale, but she didn’t care, ripping off large chunks of bread and gobbling them down like a duck. A piece wedged itself in her throat and she choked, bent over the cold stove, retching and hacking until she could breathe again. Death by suffocation. Just as stupid as what she was doing here. Tears ran down her hot cheeks and snot poured into her mouth. She put the bread back on the stovetop, breathing breadcrumbs and eyeballing the kitchen door, expecting the men to run in any minute with drawn swords and doom. But her luck held and nothing happened.

Nora was still spluttering but plodded over to unbolt the outside kitchen door. She took deep gulps of the cold autumn night that rolled in. Only then did she turn to her left where the larder was. And below the larder’s floor, under a trapdoor, was the root cellar, a cool, dark place where the innkeeper also kept the beer and wine. Nora knelt down and felt for the iron ring. She heaved the trapdoor open and peered down the steps, carved crudely out of the stone foundation the inn—and all of the Ridge—was built on.

“Please be there.” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat of the last crumbs. “It’s me, Noraya.”

She couldn’t see anything in the pitch black. But she heard the faint rustle of clothing and whispers. A voice wafted up from below in a hoarse croak Nora couldn’t identify.

“Nora?”

“Yes. Becca told me a few girls were still down here. Quick, the men are sleeping. We can leave together now. But you must hurry and be quiet.”

A shadow moved closer to the steps. Sallima looked up out of the dark. It would be so easy to close the trapdoor again. She’d deserve it, too. She was only a few years older than Nora, but she belonged to the company of the young wives. She had looked down on Nora. Now Nora stared down at her. Normally, Sallima had her small child on her arm at any given time. But her arms were empty now, and her hand fidgeted with a torn piece of her shift. Her long face was drawn and gaunt. Her hair, normally held up in a tight bun, hung lank and loose around her face. There was a dry red gash on her forehead. Nora felt the sting of pity. It rattled her a little. Another girl pushed forward into the half-light.

“You met Becca?” It was the inn’s chambermaid, Malla.

“Sent her off to the Vale to get help. We have to hide till tomorrow, late afternoon, maybe evening. I know a place in the woods.”

In an instant, Malla was up the stairs. Nora reached down to hoist her up. Her shift was torn and too thin for the cold autumn night. Her face was tired, but her eyes shone with hope.

“May the gods bless you, Nora.” She leaned in to kiss Nora on the cheek. Then she turned and waved her hand. “Come on.”

Sallima came up, dirty and disheveled, one young girl hanging on to each hand. When she saw their faces, Nora remembered the two Forester girls. The older, Kanna, had just turned thirteen; the younger, Laena, was six. They had wound wreaths of heather for Nora’s handfasting. She tried to smile reassuringly at them, but they kept their eyes on the floor. Laena hid her face against Sallima’s waist. Her blonde hair had been plaited into pigtails that were slowly unraveling from the bottom.

Sallima clutched the girls to her. She wasn’t much taller than Kanna. It took Nora by surprise. Had Sallima always been shorter than her? She’d acted taller. Of all the people who could have survived, it had to be the baker’s wife! Nora didn’t know what to say. She grasped her knife.

“Are you all right?” Nora asked.

“Let’s not talk. Just leave,” Sallima answered.

They moved back into the kitchen, Sallima and the girls first, then Malla. Nora closed the trapdoor and stared at the iron ring. The ongoing strain of the last few days had made her mind fast and light, able to react with speed. But now it seemed to do nothing but repeat Owen’s last sentence over and over again.
You shouldn’t have fucked our father. You shouldn’t have fucked our father.
It was a nightmare. This was not the time. But she couldn’t stop it. Of all people, even Owen had believed Sallima. Nora’s head reeled, but she stood and staggered behind the other girls. She’d lost Owen because of the baker’s wife. Nora stared at the back of Sallima’s head and her hands started to shake.

“Kanna, go get the bread on the stove for your sister,” Sallima whispered. “You can eat it on the way.”

The girl let go of the woman’s hand and reached out for the stale bread loaf. Suddenly the door slammed open and a man came striding in, carrying an oil lamp. He wore a leather jerkin and a cloak hung over his shoulder. He was one of the men who had slept on the benches in the common room. They all stood frozen for a moment. The man in the doorway, Kanna with her hand on the loaf, Sallima with Laena at her side, Malla and Nora behind them.

Then Kanna started to scream.

S
allima snatched Kanna away and
put her hand over the girl’s mouth. They started to move backward, but Nora impatiently shoved the young women forward between the stove and fireplace, toward the unbolted rear door.

Nora whipped out her knife as the man fumbled for his sword. She jumped forward and rammed her blade into his throat. He lifted his hand halfway to the wound and then stumbled toward Nora. She ducked out of his way, and he slammed into a cupboard of crockery before he fell to the floor. The endless shatter of pottery echoed throughout the room. The door banged closed and swung open once more. In the moment it swung fully open, Nora saw the heads of the other men in the common room turn toward the kitchen. Great. Just great.

She grabbed a meat cleaver in her left hand and turned to Sallima. The oil of the smashed lamp was already burning fiercely, and flames were licking at the dead man’s cloak.

“Go. Go now.”

Sallima didn’t even nod. As the crockery cracked in shards around Nora’s feet, the young woman swung Laena up onto her hip and all four of them ran out of the rear door into the night.

Nora had maybe seconds left. Seconds until the next man came into the kitchen. Seconds left in which to choose. She could run or she could die. She felt the weight of the meat cleaver in her left hand, the weight of her bloodied knife in her right. She could choose her fight: with her back to the rear door, waiting for the next man to come at her through the fire. Probable death. Or keep the men in the common room, giving Sallima and the other girls a few more minutes’ head start into the night. Very probable death. She should run, then. Run into the woods she knew and hide there. But that would mean spending the rest of the night and most of the next day with Sallima. Nora couldn’t bring herself to run after the woman who had taken her brother from her.

She stepped over the flames licking the dead man’s body and kicked the door to the common room open, walking into it head and knives held high.

There were four men in the room. She had counted on three. One of them must be the pipe smoker from outside. The other guard still hadn’t shown up. Nora dismissed him from her thoughts. The men had been woken by the dying man’s crash into the cupboard and were blinking owlishly into the lit room, half rising from their sleeping benches.

“What’s going on?” one of those men said, dragging a hand across his face.

“Who is that?” The other pointed at Nora.

“I am Noraya Smith of Owen’s Ridge. I just killed Ubba Bearkiller and his guards. If you let the girls go, I will spare your lives.”

There was a pause. Then the man with a hunting bow at his side started to laugh. The others joined in. Nora rolled her wrist, twirling the meat cleaver in her hand. Let them laugh. Laugh at the silly little girl. But her father had made the heavy cleaver. It had a sharp edge that could bite into bone. The thought was strangely comforting. The laughter died slowly as the men saw the blood that covered Nora’s sleeve and hands. Her own knife was in her right hand.

“Talgorn,” the man with the bow commanded. “Go upstairs, check on the chief.”

One of the men on the bench struggled to get his legs free of his cloak and shot a look at Nora as he ran up the stairs, two steps at a time. Nora stood in the common room with the three men, waiting in silence. Every minute gained was a minute more for Sallima and the girls to get away.