Frost couldn’t get Oli out of her head. She’d asked him the Big Questions the last time she’d seen him, at the outskirts of Lashela’s basecamp nearly half a year ago. She couldn't have asked him in their letters. They were the Big Questions! They had to be asked in-person.
So, at Lashela, she’d asked him how he felt about children. She’d asked him about a marriage. She'd even asked if he was willing to convert. She thought she'd put her heart on the line for him.
Oliver had stared at her. He’d just stared at her. Then his assistant had called for him, and pulled him from his panic.
“No, Drakidautr,” he’d said calmly. Nothing else. Eleven questions. One answer. Maddening.
The morning they'd arrived in Oril, the alienist conferred to Frost, “Arzt Goddart? Helson… I hate to be the one, but he’s gone. Mortar. He didn’t even feel it. Took him right in the badge.”
Frost let out a breath and waited for the hot anguish. Instead, she felt unbearably cold.
“Shame really,” the alienist had gone on in disappointment. “He told me he was gettin’ on wi’some maiden too. Talked about ‘avin’ kids. Hope the jungfer takes it easy. Ya were friends with’im, ye? Mind breakin’ it easy on’is beau? Cam’t imagine it’ll be easy for yon poor maid, but wi’a rider friend like ya, she should fair well, ye?”
It would be my honor. I am sorry for her loss, she’d wanted to say out loud, just to believe she was someone else, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she’d left. No salute. No salutation. She didn’t know what to do with herself. Her idea of the future had been dashed in mortar fire. She wanted to do something stupid.
She tried to pick a fight with her right-wing and partner, but Thamlin Sharpier was as unflappable as ever, and even saw through her unease. Frost didn’t know if Tham actually cared about her lost love. Likely, Thamlin just wanted someone to watch him pull tail like it was going out of style, maybe try to stop him or give him a challenge.
Or, more likely, he was all too glad to involve and implicate Frost so that the Helian couldn’t supply ammunition against him in the event of another one of his misconduct tribunals.
“Give me your brute’s message,” Frost demanded as they crossed a dark, cobbled street. “You’ve taken us in a circle.”
“Patience, Princess,” Thamlin cooed. “Trust!”
“I trust you as far as your cock can reach, Th—”
“Shapier! Oi! Look’ere then!” The brute Frost had seen talking to Tham earlier that day waved and called from the sagging awning of a rough-looking public house. He was wearing local clothing like the two riders, but he had an iron harp pinned to his collar just like Frost had pinned her gold rider's harp to her jacket. The Helian liked the Berserker even less now that she couldn’t lord rank over him in a pinch. Tham hurried over to meet his proffered arm with a shake of his own, but Frost approached cautiously, assessing exits and structure flammability.
This place will go up like a match head, she concluded.
“UDF to Frost! Come in, Frost!” Thamlin called from the entrance, motioning for him. “Get chour head out your breeches an’ come say ‘ello to the boys ‘n’ girls!”
The public house was too crowded. It smelled like dressjuice and blackleaf and Frost wanted to be anywhere else, but there she was. She tried to fight the grimace that automatically came to her face as Wainwright, the harped brute, took her arm without a proper warning and shook her elbow like they were old Dornborn comrades. Frost wrenched her arm away as Thamlin hurriedly said, “Bones, Wain! She’s Helian, Mate. She doesn’t do that.”
“Tall as me!” Wain protested, but when Frost only stared at him, the berserker shrugged and asked over the crowd, “What does the Helian do then?”
“She doesn’t do that,” Frost reiterated hotly.
“She, uh—This is Frost Drakidautr. You know how the north is about names,” Thamlin explained to Wain, like they were sharing a joke between themselves. "If she's not acting like a total tosser like some Helians, she might even let you use her first name." Then he very deliberately knocked into Frost's shoulder as if to say, 'Play nice,' and went to order himself a drink at the overcrowded taptable, asking others what they were drinking and if the blackleaf on order was any good...
Wainwright laughed heartily and regarded the pale rider before him. “Well, welcome then, Rider Frost! Call me Wainwright.” He winked. “Friends on the oft call me Wain.”
"Call me Drakidautr or Rider, Wainwright," Frost told him blandly, thinking to herself, Thamlin Shapier earned my name after months in the sky. The only name you might earn is the brand of my boot, imprinted on the flat of your ass.
She didn’t like Wainwright one bit (which wasn’t out of the norm for most of the people she met, to be perfectly fair). But she took exception with how the brute smelled like gunpowder and vinegar; his local clothing worn undone and scandalizing to her northern sensibilities. On top of it all, for a veteran frontline killer, Wainwright seemed to be made of teeth and false cheer.
Insincere twat, Frost decided severely.
Tham came back over and handed Wainwright a draft, which the berserker finished it off in three gulps. Ale ran down his chin and rusty beard as he let out a satisfying belch. “So.” He handed the tankard to someone in the crowd as Tham did the same with his.
“So?” Frost prompted.
Wainwright shrugged. “Shagged any o’ the Radian bairns yet? The sweetest cunts are the dumbest, I’ve found.” He didn’t wait for Frost’s answer. He looked past her and asked, “You, Sharp? Didn't your family have a summer home here in Oril?”
Frost felt heat hitting the tops of her cheeks as she was snubbed. She should have known better than to risk the company of soldier-type Dornborn. Thamlin would survive this night without her. If Frost stayed more than a few more minutes, she would deck a berserker captain and end up getting herself killed for her trouble.
“Nah,” Sharp conceded, dropping into their hometown vernacular as the booze hit him. “I’ve a taste for older Northerners. Experience is everything, Wain, and vikings are without a doubt the most experienced of our lot," he insisted as he motioned at the taptable for another round. “Seats? Seats? Where’re the others?”
The three of them found spots at the end of a table occupied by half a dozen shanty-singing berserker’s, some of which were still wearing blood-splattered armor. The smell of gunpowder intensified as they gathered close. Wainwright fit right in with his class. His ruddy, cropped hair and unkempt stubble was found even among their female members. The two lady-brutes were still decked out in their metal-infused gambesons, and they eyed Frost more severely than even the men did. Probably, they were sizing her up against their own—or comparing her to the only Dornborn rider on the continent.
“Friends! Countrymen! Fuckers!” Thamlin exclaimed and the singing didn’t stop so much as bleed into cat calls and anthem-warbling. Thamlin disappeared under a barrage of arm clasps and back-smacks, his white teeth starkly pristine compared to the gapped grins shown off by some of his berserker associates. Frost pretended not to notice the lack of resemblance between her partner and the berserkers. Tham, despite only being an inch shorter than Frost, was fun-sized compared to their largest berserker.
Normally, the contrast would have endeared him to her, but with the way her right-wing operated at ease around them with all the self-consciousness of a stage dancer, Frost felt like even more of an outsider among them. It was more than religion that separated her from the rest of the United Fiefs’ ranks. She was alien among her own people, and that normally didn’t bother her so much as it did now.
She had never heard Tham talk about Dorn's deserts with any fondness, but it was clear he missed being around his own people. He certainly never acted so warmly in front of the Helians in their flight, even if he had been accused of being too casual.
“Take a seat, Ice Princess!” one of the berserkers called out.
“It’s Drakidautr,” Frost said tersely, but she took a seat across from Tham all the same. Thamlin was grinning at her, eating up his own shit.
“Chour babysitter, Sharpier?” one of the berserker ladies asked.
Thamlin looked dramatically offended and tried to change the subject. “Dearest Amethyst, how ya fair?”
“Better’n chour Helian friend,” the other lady said, drawing a round of laughter from the men. “Tensed like some’ne’s got a tongue up ‘er arsehole. You'd think by now she'd be used to it. Vassalkindr.” She enunciated the slur.
Her face blank, Frost opened her mouth to violently rebuke them, but Thamlin banged on the tab and snapped, “Be nice, Jackson. She didn’t come ‘ere for a fight.”
“Oh,” Jackson said over the lip of her stein. The men waited with bated breath. Then she looked at Frost as she said, “Didn’t realize she was chour vassalkindr, Sharp."
Frost stood up and some of the men put their hands on their belts. She noticed rather belatedly that most of them were armed in some way, either with billy clubs or knives. Frost said to Thamlin, “I’m going out for some air.”
“Watch out for trolls a’vikinging while chour gone!” a berserker called. They all chuckled.
"Dragon-fucker!" The chuckles turned into howls.
“Hel-hander? I hardly know her!” That elicited a collective roar.
Thamlin, for his part, only frowned into his ale. There was the barest hint of disappointment on his face, but otherwise, he let them carry on. He didn’t even offer her a look of sympathy, instead choosing the fence, his face washing with embarrassed colors.
She knew then he must feel her glare on his face. Those are your countrymen, Tham. I bet you're so proud to be Dornborn.
She pushed through the dense crowd of people and was unceremoniously thrown outside into the street, squeezed out like some slick shit. The sounds of merrymaking disappeared in short order as the door to the public house slammed shut behind her.
“Brutes,” she hissed under her breath as she shoved her hands into her pockets. She spit on the sleet-covered cobbles. “Ugly creatures, the lot of them.” There’s a reason life expectancy is so low for their types. I don’t know what Tham sees in them, she thought, her mood darkening ever more. “Don’t know why I even…” Something cold hit her nose. She looked up.
Fluffy snowflakes slowly cascaded onto the tiny, host town.
She was a Northerner from Helhandr. Hel, she was a hatcher from the glaciers that touched the sky. She, of all her kinsmen, was supposed to love the snow.
By tradition, Frost had been cast into the cold after she turned eight years old. Naked for an entire night, she’d had to fend for herself to avoid exposure; find a way to stay warm and survive. She found the working dragons in the stables and found their slow-blooded bodies produced more heat than she would ever be capable of. In the morning, they found her nestled close to the family hen. The dragon had growled at their attempts to get near her shaking form. She curled up around her and threatened them all with smoke, lava, and tongue lashes.
She still remembered being forced to dig through that summer's permafrost four months later. It still took a week. Then they made her drag the frozen corpse to the ditch by herself.
“A lesson,” her mother had explained. “You made us shoot her. You bury her. You mourn her. You will be the one to wean the new broodmother, come Fall’s crash. You alone. You are a hatcher.”
She remembered wiping tears from her face. “I’m not going to be a hatcher, Mor. Useless lessons.”
“Useless? You are made of nothing but my lessons, Girl.” Her mother had touched the wispy, blonde hairs at the nape of her neck and she’d flinched away from her. “What’s that make you?”
“A dragon rider,” she’d professed adamantly.
Frost shivered, remembering her mother’s lifeless laughter.
She spit again. Radia and her forsaken wets and islands… I thought I'd be free of the Freeze here. But it seems the only part of the world that can escape it is Dorn. Is there no paradise that somehow lies between?
Effectively cooled off, Frost looked up and down the way and debated about going back in before someone peeking out of the alleyway caught her eye. They were decked out in rags, their shape bent forward for a hump on their spine. Their eyes were hidden in shadow, their hands wrapped in their knotted clothes.
She glanced away from them, hoping they hadn’t noticed her attention. The last thing she needed was to be accosted by some sickly swamp tramp.
She turned to make her way back inside before she hesitated again. She glanced down the way, but where she looked, the ragged beggar was nowhere to be seen, having disappeared down some side street no doubt. Still, she didn’t feel at ease with the creature’s absence.
She believed in specters, mer, and daemons, like any other Helian, but she also believed in bad people. Her ability to differentiate between the two had yet to fail her...
She went back inside the public where the sounds and smells again assaulted her from all directions. She muscled her way through the vinegar-smelling crowd and found Tham at a different table, a maiden stretched across him as he fed her dates and nuts.
“Frost! My favorite person!” Thamlin greeted with a whooping cheer, mimicking dragon claws with one hand. His cheeks were burnished bronze, reddened with drink and company. “Take a load off, will ya? Hel knows ya need it! Meet my new friend… Er… Wha’chour name again, Luv?”
The girl, her lips pursed over one of his fingers, gave him a sidelong look before getting off him with naught but a kissing sound. She disappeared back into the crowd with a flick of her loosely tied hair and tailed dress, and became just another dancing, carousing body in the tightly packed mass of people.
Tham threw up his arms. “Oh, now ya gone an’ done it—”
“We need to get out of here,” Frost said.
“Why the…?” Tham began, but then a worried look took over his face. “Somethin’ happen? Or is it one o’ your feelin’s?”
Frost nodded. “Back to Peaksend, Rider.”
“Well, lemme give a shout at the boys, first, then I’ll meet ya—”
Thamlin’s words were engulfed by an explosion that sent everyone to the ground. A ceiling beam came down and, seeing the inevitable, Frost darted forward, shoving her right-wing out of the way. Thamlin shouted incoherently, becoming noise lost in the surprised curses and screams that met his own in answer.
Something rocked their world to the side. Wood groaned in protest. Bottles crashed and windows shattered inward, spraying occupants with deadly debris. The building tilted dangerously at an angle and people fell head-over-foot over one another. Something cracked Frost in the side of the head.
Darkness. Stars. Fire. Another explosion stole her hearing, save for the ringing of a bell, and a body smothered her. A foot crushed her left hand and something twisted inside her. Something warm and wet slid down the inside of her pant leg and a bland self-inspection told her it wasn’t piss, but blood. Something had stabbed her near her right kidney. She was oddly certain that it was a broken chair leg.
Then, very suddenly, she could perceive nothing…
ns3.147.2.112da2
