Thora was afraid, which was nothing new. The strange thing was the guilt. Fear was intimate to her; guilt, not so much.
This time they came together.
She had spent almost the whole journey in silence. Hrafn and Sigrid rode a little ahead, speaking now and then, and she followed beside them. There was also the new boy, Briorn. After helping save Hrafn and Sigrid, he had simply wedged himself into the group, as though he had always belonged there. Thora still did not know what to make of that.
The boy cursed too much, seemed to have a screw loose, and spoke almost always shouting, with a voice too shrill for a body so small. Normally she would have been talking too.
She liked that.
Most of all, she liked talking with Sigrid. She saw in her a kind of older sister, brave, bright, made of that rare sort of fiber that does not bend easily. But now she spoke little. Less even than Hrafn.
Two nights before, she had been terrified.
She still remembered the fallen one hurling itself at Hrafn-that frightening thing-and Sigrid rushing in anyway. She remembered Briorn too, small and yelling, but charging in all the same. And she remembered herself.
Running.
Of course she had run. Who wouldn't? She was quick, she was light, and she did what she always did whenever fear showed its teeth: she hid. She found the tightest space she could beneath a wagon and folded herself into it, as if making herself smaller could render her invisible to the world.
"It's not that bad," Hrafn said, adjusting his shoulders.
"You don't have a fucking arm, for fuck's sake!" Briorn shot back.
It was strange to watch them argue. Stranger still to realize that, somehow, they understood one another.
Hrafn seemed too calm for someone who had been mutilated so recently. Briorn, irritable as ever, seemed offended on his behalf. Earlier Hrafn had said he was almost glad to have lost the arm. Briorn had reacted as though that were blasphemy, and since then the two had been debating the absurdity all along the road.
Thora did not like the conversation. Not because of the argument itself, but because her eyes always ended up returning to Hrafn's right side, which simply ended there, without an arm.
"They certainly understand each other," Sigrid whispered, coming up beside her with amusement in her voice.
Sigrid's presence always seemed to make the air a little less heavy. There was something in her-perhaps lightness, or simply enough courage to share it with others.
"T-they certainly do," Thora replied.
She tried to joke, but her voice came out shaking. Her eyes went once more to Hrafn's right side. She wanted to go over to him. Wanted to apologize. Wanted to say she was sorry, that she should have stayed, that perhaps if she had fought too, he would still be whole.
But she could not.
She was afraid of his answer. Afraid of his look. Ashamed. And there was another thing, worse than that: the apology would be a lie. If she could go back to that night, she would do it all again. Run again. Hide again. Trembling, crying softly, praying that the thing would tear another person's flesh before it tore hers.
"Don't be like that. We're almost in Sahirid now," Sigrid said, squeezing her hand and giving it a little shake, as though she might dislodge the dark thoughts that way.
"Yes," Thora answered.
The idea of walls helped. Even so, the word came out weak. She did not share Sigrid's excitement. She was not brave like her. Nor outrageous like Briorn. Nor hard like Hrafn.
She was only someone who was afraid.
And even in that, she seemed worse than the others.
Hrafn was afraid too. Thora knew how to recognize it. She had spent too much time watching fear inside herself not to see it in others. She knew how it worked in the shoulders, how it taught the eyes never to stay still, how it made someone avoid turning his back for too long.
Hrafn did all of that.
But there was a difference between them. She bent. He hardened.
Thora lied when she was afraid. Lied to the man she liked because she feared being hurt. Lied to her mother, saying she had been accepted at the apothecary just before the selection, because she feared returning home empty-handed. Hrafn lied too, she suspected.
He only lied in another way. With his posture. With his silence. With that tired disdain he wore like armor.
"What do you think the training will be like?" Sigrid asked, more from a need to change the subject than from real curiosity.
Thora saw Hrafn's body react before his voice came. A tiny adjustment in the shoulders. A moment of stiffness. His eyes moving a little faster.
"Hm," he said. "I imagine it will be painful."
Thora did not like the answer. She was afraid of pain. Who wasn't?
"Ah, fuck it. We'll handle it," Briorn boasted. "We killed a damned fallen one, didn't we?"
"Yes, but-" Sigrid began.
"-the thing was just some ugly little beast," Briorn cut in, as always. "All twisted. Filthy. You saw how I took it down, didn't you? I'm fucking great."
What followed was a lamentable display. Briorn, smaller than all of them and broader in the shoulders than seemed fair, began throwing punches into the air, spinning his body and kicking imaginary enemies with an enthusiasm that would have made sense only if the whole world had been created to watch him. Sigrid laughed. Thora nearly laughed too.
Hrafn opened his mouth, perhaps to loose some short bit of cruelty, the kind that seemed to demand less effort from him than kindness.
But then they all stopped.
Not only the four of them. The whole caravan slowed.
Far in the distance, the walls of Sahirid finally rose.
Thora felt her body stiffen. Even from that distance, the city looked too ancient, too large, too severe. The walls did not rise only against enemies; they seemed to rise against the world itself.
Her horse struck one hoof against the ground, restless, and she had to tighten the reins.
The first thought that came to her was not relief.
It was fear.
What kind of thing existed beyond all familiar borders to force the Hird to build something like that? What sort of horror made stone and salt climb so high?
She kept looking at Sahirid the way one stares at a closed door, certain there is something on the other side, yet unsure whether one truly wishes to see it. There stood her future. Greater than she had ever dared imagine. Greater than any domestic fear, any small lie, any narrow life she had left behind.
Even so, she kept looking. She was on that path already. They all were.
And within that immense, ancient, imposing city, perhaps something waited for her.
Some answer.
Some change.
Perhaps a place deep enough to bury fear and leave it there, locked away between salt and stone, instead of carrying it inside her chest as though it were her name.