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Twins, the wise woman said, her wrinkled lips smiling even as her eyes dimmed in sorrowful memory, are the Spirit’s gift in bad times.
They were named gracefully as young deer: Haldar and Haleth, rarely apart, running half-naked through the grass for their first summers, wrapped in wolfskin rugs for their first winters. When they grew older, they were dressed accordingly in soft embroidered hides, fitted with bone rings in their ears polished white as early sunlight. Such was their history.
So many of their ancestors had died from the fearsome pox, but theirs was land ahead and behind, the elders said, to which they could still run.
Sometimes, when the pale devils came too close, lying and stealing with no respect for the grass they beat under their feet, Haldar and Haleth’s people fought back. Haldar and Haleth, before ten winters had passed between them, ventured out with pouches full of stones, to rain a heavy hail on the pale ones from afar.
In peace, Haldad, their father and chief, trained them both to know the names of every creature, every warrior, every river. Every ray of the sun.
All the ancestors who were gone.
(Haleth was better at remembering these things.)
His father’s spear lies broken, and his father’s proud forehead is cloven in two. The blood is running, rich like the earth’s heart, and it runs down into his still-open eyes. Haldar remembered the moment in waking and sleeping, afterwards. Haldar remembered it then, even as it happened.
There had not been fighting for months. They were far from the pushing settlers, up in the cold northern lands.
These are not settlers, who seize Haldar’s hands. Who bind him like a child swaddled, who carry him away. They steal his hides and his hair, they seal iron round his ankle.
He speaks their tongue. This feels like the greatest betrayal of all.
“It’s nothing.” Gwindor growls, through his teeth. Haldar’s ears are burning fiercely with shame, the same shame he feels when one of the overseers sees he is not strong enough for something, and gives him a harsh cuff as punishment.
“Nothing?” Belle whispers, arms folded tightly over her flat chest. “How many nights—”
No one explains anything to Belle, who was woken by the sound of their returning. As the rest of the men climb into their burrows, Haldar lingers. He can see it all, the wrenching blows and the vile ending, the lash snaking over Gwindor’s back. Gwindor didn’t make a sound, as he was whipped, but that means nothing.
Does nothing, to bring down Haldar’s shame.
His father’s spear lies broken.
Twins—
But he is never going to see his sister again.
Blood runs down into his father’s still-open eyes.
“You,” Lem says. “Haldar, yes. Come here, boy.”
Belle is still fussing at Gwindor, and Gwindor is telling her to leave off, to sleep. He cares not for his back, he says stiffly. Only let him alone to press his damned shoulder against something hard.
How many nights… Haldar is shaken by the sudden truth of it, how they used to work into the dark hours, crafting ties for the railroad (Gwindor had explained the matter of trains to him), and how now, they drudge round the growing village by day and are used for the Master’s games when the sun goes down.
Haldar is shaken.
“Well?” Lem says.
It isn’t like Lem to be quiet, and it isn’t like Haldar to trust him. Lem has tweaked his ears and tripped him and stolen his rations.
But Lem hates the stranger, the redhaired devil, and that is enough for now.
Lem leads him round the corner of the barracks, to where the grass is beaten flat.
“What?” Haldar is almost a man. When he was a prince of his people, he was still a child. But it doesn’t change anything, to think of that. He can’t run in the fields and sleep with the softness of wolves any longer.
Lem scratches his beard. “I’ve a proposition for ye.”