Land of Fury, page 17
“They fall at your feet,” Rom explains, and I appreciate him lightening the mood.
“I hope you wash them, then,” Reider calls, another chuckle in his voice. “I’ve seen your feet, Rom. I would rather be dead than be anywhere near them.” Again, everyone falls into laughter, and with a grumble, Rom chucks a stick of jerky in Reider’s direction, though it falls into the snow.
“Many of them are afraid to take a partner or have children,” Karra explains as the horsemen continue to goad each other. “For fear the queen would use their families against them.”
“But if she believes them to be loyal, she would have no reason to do such a thing.”
“Not if—”
“Karra.” Reider says her name with reproach as his horse trots up beside us.
Though Zander is clearly the leader, I can tell by the silence that falls over the procession that Reider is second-in-command. Even Karra leaves well enough alone.
“You should ask Zander your questions, princess,” Reider explains, and he offers me a soft smile of apology. I glance at Zander, assuming it’s his orders Reider is following.
Royalty or not, I don’t bother demanding answers because I know Reider won’t give them to me, and I’ll look more foolish than I already do to all of them. But I do narrow my eyes, aware Zander has more authority than I do, per usual.
I leave it alone for now and stare ahead at Zander, leading our procession through the snowy tundra. His furs shift with the wind, and his hair catches sometimes, whipping in blonde tendrils around him. But it’s the right side of his body my gaze lingers on. I knew they were there—the scars—but I hadn’t realized how bad they would still be. How they must plague him daily, both the pain and the reminder of what my mother did to his family, every time he tends to them.
I’m not sure if time passes in seconds or minutes as I watch the way Zander scours the landscape, taking in the forests and mountains in the distance, as if he’s worried someone might hide in wait.
“Keep your enemies close, do not widen the divide.” Zander had told me that the day of the parade, just before I confessed what the fletcher had told me.
Was Zander trying to tell me something at the time? Had he expected I would understand he was playing my mother all along? I still don’t understand his duplicity. To control her army and rise against her one day? To learn the inner workings of the castle and the kingdom?
He already has my mother’s army in hand, that much is obvious. So what is Zander waiting for?
There’s a distant rumble as the surrounding mountains begin to quake. My pulse quickens, my body stiffening in fear. I don’t understand what’s happening at first, but then I see the snow shift and the felling of trees as the mountain trembles. Everyone in our procession stops in awe, taking stock of the danger far ahead. Our gazes lock. The horses fidget. The mountain disappears in a white cloud of snow.
Eventually, the rumbling of angry mountains ceases, and the world goes quiet again. Karra and I look at each other with relief. I’ve never been in an avalanche, but they have ravaged nearly as many villages as my mother’s men, swallowing entire cities if the earth quakes strong enough.
The respite, however, is only fleeting. This time, when I feel the ground moving, Lightning pulls against me, tearing at his reins as if he knows what danger is coming.
The horses huff and neigh and whinny around us, and I nearly lose hold of my reins. Zander’s horse spins around up ahead, bolting toward us. “Stampede!” he shouts, and his wild eyes fix on me. “Stay with the princess!”
My eyes lock on the swirling white air, thickening behind him. At the moving bodies barely visible through the snow, and the oncoming herd of caribou that are far too many to count.
“Band together!” Reider calls. “Force the herd to go around us!”
All the horses gravitate toward each other, chests and sides and rear ends ramming into one another, save for Lightning. His muscular neck pulls against me as I try to force him toward the others, but he refuses to listen. Gunhild reaches for my reins, but Lightning bucks and tugs away, straying farther from the group. Then, he rears back.
The gray sky spins above me as I’m falling. The wind and my heartbeat are awhirl as I land on the thick snow with a heavy thud. My head pounds a little, and the ground trembles beneath me as the horde of beasts thunders closer.
“Thora!” My name booms somewhere above me as I sit up in time to see my horse running away. A body hurls into me, and I’m pulled up onto my feet, eyes squeezed shut as I register the panting, grunting bodies stampeding by. Around me and Zander, who has me wrapped in his arms. He holds me so tight, I almost can’t breathe. The air pulsates around us, and the herd parts as if we are nothing more than a tree in their path.
I grip Zander’s vest, clutching harder. The world rumbles for what feels like an eternity before the collective snorts of the herd fade, leaving a deafening silence in their wake.
“Zander!” Reider jumps off his horse and into the trampled snow toward us.
“Are you all right?” Zander palms the sides of my face, forcing me to look up at him. His frantic, steely blue gaze scans me up and down.
I nod dumbly. “I—I think so.”
He takes a step back, exhaling a deep breath.
“Lightning,” I say, peering in the direction he ran.
“Halfway back to the castle by now,” Reider says, helping me through the snow, back to the others. “Don’t worry, princess. He will be okay on his own.” Though I know Reider is trying to reassure me, I know he can’t possibly promise that, and I look longingly in Lightning’s direction again.
“We barely got Baldr when you jumped off,” Alik says, handing Zander back his horse’s reins. Everyone exhales, gathering ourselves as we peer toward the disappearing herd, but I can’t stop shaking.
I stare down at my gloved hands, watching them tremble.
“You are okay now,” Zander says calmly beside me. It’s only as he reaches for my face again that I realize I can’t catch my breath. “It’s okay,” he repeats, his gloved finger stroking my cheek. I nod, but I can’t seem to breathe. “Thora,” he says more firmly. “Breathe.” Despite its authority, his voice is soft, only I’m not sure if my heart is racing because of the stampede or because he is so close I can smell the campfire on him, and a hint of balsam.
Zander takes my fingers in his, staring at me as his thumbs stroke the backs of my hands. I’m not sure how many blinks and heartbeats pass before the white puffs of air filling the space between us slow, but eventually the sound of the others blares back to life, and my heartbeat steadies a little.
Finally, I nod. “Okay,” I tell him—tell myself. “I am okay. Thank you.” I lick my lips and swallow thickly.
Whatever softness I saw in Zander evaporates as soon as I’m all right, and his frown falls back into place. He looks at the rest of the group, all of them watching us. “The storm is close. We must keep moving.”
And just like that, everyone fans out, readying themselves for another stretch of riding.
“My horse,” I say, realizing I have none to ride. Zander sent the packhorse Karra and I had brought from the castle with his men, who went south.
Zander nods to Baldr and climbs into the saddle. Once he’s situated, he offers me his hand. “You will ride with me now,” he says in a tone that brooks no argument.
I hold tight as Zander pulls me up behind him. His body is warm and solid against my chest, and uncertain what else to do, I wrap my arms around his middle. If I’m not mistaken, Zander lets out a strained breath before he clicks his horse forward, and we join the rest of the group, following the trail of packed snow mutilated by hundreds of hoofprints.
Briefly, I glance back, saddened as I realize I might never see Lightning again, and with a sigh, I rest my cheek against Zander’s back, praying my horse will be all right without me.
26
THORA
There are no worn trading paths, very few mile markers, and absolutely no villages that we pass, which makes me wonder where, exactly, we are.
The sky continues to darken, and my mind is full of unease now that Lightning is gone, along with all of my things that were tied to his saddle. My bow and quiver, and most of my bartering trinkets and coins.
“Your horses were so calm,” I say after too much silence stretches between Zander and me.
“Baldr—all our horses—have seen much of this land. Like us, they do not spook as easily as you.”
While that may be a fact, I roll my eyes at Zander’s snideness. “That is interesting, huntsman. Because you looked a bit rattled today after that stampede.”
Of course, Zander doesn’t reply, and we ride in silence again. Baldr’s black body moves with purpose, each stride propelling us forward. “You named him Baldr,” I think aloud, remembering that day my mother brought him to the castle for Zander. “It means light, and yet, he is the blackest horse I’ve ever seen.”
“What do you know about our gods, princess?” There’s finally a trace of amusement in his voice again. “You pray to a Christian cross.”
I don’t tell Zander I pray to no god, and haven’t since I was fifteen and saw how corrupt Abbess Blanca’s churches were. And it has always seemed silly to believe in hundreds of individual gods, like he does, when none of them watch over or protect their people—gods who allow their lives to fall to such ruin.
Zander must take my silence as an offense. “I meant nothing by it,” he amends. “But Baldr is not only the god of light. Besides, it is not about color. Baldr is the god of courage and wisdom. And I find I am in need of both most of the time.”
“You lie,” I say with a chuckle. “Zander, Queen Sigrid’s huntsman, with his Truth Seekers sheathed at his back.” I glance down at the scythes attached to the front of his saddle and shake my head. How many men and women has he killed with them? How many of them were evil? How many of them deserved it? How many of them did not?
I clear my throat. “You are one of the most notorious men in the kingdom. You do not need courage—wisdom, perhaps,” I grumble playfully.
Zander is quiet, and this time, I worry he is offended. I force my fingers to stop fidgeting with the fur bunched around his waist, and clear my throat. “Thank you,” I murmur, realizing I haven’t had the wherewithal to say it yet. “For what you did during the stampede. That would have ended much differently had you not shielded me.” I wait for a moment. “Whatever you think of yourself, you did not lack courage then, huntsman.”
His shoulders stiffen—only slightly—and he shakes his head. “You call me that as a punishment,” he says, a strange disquiet in his voice.
“Punishment?”
“You know you do,” he counters, and for the first time since I’ve known Zander, he sounds exhausted. “I remember the very day you first spat that word from your lips.”
So do I, but I remain quiet. It was the day we all nearly died in Abbess Blanca’s church. The night he burned Winterwood to the ground. The last day the abbess ever dared to strike me.
I never realized that last bit until now. The look in Zander’s eyes was murderous when she’d raised her hand. The warning in his voice—how hard and protective it was—haunted me for months after. I couldn’t reconcile how he could be so angry with her, yet his actions have scarred me far worse than hers ever have.
And yes, I had called him the huntsman that night because I believed he didn’t deserve a name. He was my mother’s henchman. Nothing more to me than that.
“What should I have called you all these years?” I ask, unwilling to feel too badly for it. “Until yesterday, you only spoke to me when it was required. Or to command I do something at my mother’s request.”
“It is true,” Zander says, surprising me. I wait for him to continue, and stare at his ashy-blonde hair, plaited and hanging down his back. “I have kept my distance from you, for many reasons.” I’m not sure if it’s shame I hear in his voice, or something more guarded.
“Will you tell me?” I know Zander has many secrets. If I could glean even one of them, it would ease a smidgen of my distrust in him.
“I will tell you it has been for the best, even if I have questioned whether that was true more times than I can count.”
“But what does that mean, exactly? You speak in riddles, Zander.”
The silence stretches and I think he might shrug my question off, leaving me swallowed by more Zander-mysteries. Then, I feel his chest expand as he inhales a deep breath, and I hold mine, waiting.
“Do you remember the first day you came into my room? You were only—”
“Six.” My heart aches at the memory. “Yes,” I whisper. “I remember.” It was the day my mother struck me for the first time. It’s only now as I realize how important Zander was to her—who he was replacing in her eyes—that I understand my mother’s protective anger over him. Her concern, as well as her guilt. Both from having my brother killed when he was born, and because she’d been responsible for what happened to Zander’s body.
“You gave me an onyx worry stone.”
I smile, having forgotten. “Yes. It was a silly thing—the first I’d made when Gorm showed me how to break mountain glass. I haven’t thought about it in years.”
Baldr clomps a steady rhythm as Zander’s silence stretches.
“The day of the battle in Woodvale,” he finally says, “I almost died trying to kill Gorm and his men. I wasn’t sure if I was going to turn on him. Reider and I, Elof and Dane, we were angry and resentful, but turning on the very men who trained us—” Zander shakes his head. “I told myself I was not a killer. Yet there I was on a battlefield, burning down a village of innocent people. Just like Gorm and the others had done to mine.” Zander pauses, and my vision blurs as I imagine Zander at eighteen years old, having to decide between one evil and another.
“Gorm taught us to be fearless, and there was only one outcome I could live with, so I turned on him. I thought I would die—I was prepared to. I never wanted to be at the queen’s mercy, anyway. But I lived,” he says reverently. “And do you know what I found in my hand when I opened my eyes?”
I blink at his back. “What did you find?”
“Your worry stone.” His voice is gruff, and my heart cracks right down the middle again. I don’t know why his words affect me so much, but I wipe a silent tear from my cheek.
“You think it saved you?” I say with disbelief, but in truth, that Zander had found strength in anything I’d given him brings me inexplicable joy. Because without saying it, he’s acknowledged this strange draw between us, even if I’ve never fully comprehended it myself.
Zander was always the friend I couldn’t have. The one I shouldn’t think about. The man who didn’t look at me, even when all I wanted was for him to acknowledge I existed. A single glance, a smile—anything to show me I was more than a spare princess to him. It would always brighten my day, even if I had to remind myself I hated him every single time.
“Then,” I whisper, “we have saved each other now. Your battle and my stampede. Your debt is paid, huntsman.”
Zander cranes his neck to look back at me. “Princess, I—”
“Zander!” Fiske’s gray trots up. “Everwall Grove is just beyond those trees.” There’s a stern apprehension in his eyes that’s unnerving, and I glance at Karra, two horses behind me. She observes him as if she knows full well what that means.
“We do not stop,” Zander says, his conviction hardening each word. “Keep walking to Glamara Falls. We will water the horses there and head southwest.”
Fiske nods, whistling at the horsemen behind us. Breaking from their carefree chatter, they ride their steeds with pensive expressions, squared shoulders, and their blades glinting and strapped to their backs, prepared for whatever comes next. It’s as if they were born to be the most formidable seven the kingdom has ever known, and I worry how dangerous Everwall Grove is if the horsemen’s smiles are no more.
Zander brings Baldr to a halt and turns in his saddle. We’re nearly nose to nose as his eyes meet mine, blue and gleaming, his expression earnest. “Keep your head down and say nothing, princess.” He adjusts the hood of my cloak, tucking my red locks away so they can’t be seen. “We will find no love for the queen in the lands ahead.”
I tense, my mouth going dry. I want to ask him what that means exactly, as I imagine them pulling me from his saddle to string me up. Then I tell myself I am with Zander, and he will let nothing happen to me. If he’s shown me anything over the years, it is that.
With a final look at me, he straightens in his saddle. Reider, Alik, Rom, and Karra have stopped ahead, waiting for us. My arms tighten around Zander of their own accord, and he nudges Baldr forward. Soon, the horsemen fall into formation around us.
We continue through an ominous forest of evergreens, where the path is only slightly worn, and then a village comes into view. A few dozen cabins fan around the main road of muddied snow, smoke billowing from squat chimneys. Jagged foothills border both sides of the village, making this the only clear path through the mountain pass.
Villagers bustle through the quaint community—shoeing horses, churning goods in barrels, digging in what looks like raised winter gardens. But as they notice us, every single one of them stops what they’re doing to stare at our procession. It’s unnervingly quiet, and my apprehension thickens.
We don’t carry the queen’s banners, but ire darkens the villagers’ harsh features—ire and fear. They obviously know who Zander and his horsemen are.
A villager to my right lifts the saw he was using, gripping it tightly as if bracing himself for what’s coming. Another man leans menacingly against his pitchfork as a woman steps out from inside their home, gripping a sword. As another man exits a stable, bow and arrow in hand, I realize what a bloodbath this could turn into, and I long to feel the weight of my bow and quiver on my back again.
Still, everyone remains quiet. Watchful.
