Small village south of Northgate
Summer 217
Bax
After a five day trek, Bax crested over the top of a hill and could make out a small village hidden amongst the forest on the horizon. Bringing his hands to his hips, he let’s out an exasperated sigh. “There ya are,” he breathed. “Hope I’m in time…”
The last thing he wanted to do was risk exposing himself and being recognized. But he had to deliver the herbs he’d collected to these people. He had initially learned about the plight of a small, nameless village south of Northgate suffering from an illness from some traveling tradesmen. Knowing of some medicinal herbs in the area of Jorung he was in at the time, Bax made it his responsibility to help the village.
He gripped his hood and pulled it tight around his head. Letting out another breath to steady his nerves, he reminds himself aloud, “Remember. Eyes down. No names. In and out.” With that he continues on toward the village.
Walking quickly through the village, Bax could understand why it didn’t have a name. It was incredibly small; there seemed to be less than fifty people total living here. The streets seemed empty of any life; fortunately Bax had come across a woodworker who appeared to be keeping herself busy. Asking where to find the sick, the woodworker informed Bax that most had recovered on their own. However there was one older woman who was still unwell, being kept in the cottage on the furthest end of the village, so as to avoid spreading the sickness again.
“Though I must admit we weren’t expecting a second healer,” she exclaimed. “One of the young ones had left for the city and brought back a healer not too long ago.”
Wasn’t expecting a healer to be here. I would’ve assumed that no one from Northgate would be willing to help a small village like this.
“Oh I just happened to hear about the illness and thought I would offer aid. I’ll head over and provide the herbs I have on hand. Thanks!” As he gently waved to the woman, Bax moved in the direction the woodworker had pointed and could see the cottage was a short walk away.
No one guarding the outside. The surrounding homes are too far away to provide decent ranged cover…maybe not a trap.
As he approached the cottage he gripped his spear tighter and pushed through the door. “Hello. I heard there was a healer here—-”
His words were cut short. As his eye adjusted to the interior light, he could make out a calming green glow over an old woman lying on the floor. And it was…coming out of the healer’s hands?
Bax stood in the doorway in disbelief for only a moment, before he quickly turned and slammed the door shut. He then threw his back against the door to prevent anyone else opening it. He stared forward and the green glow was now more prominent in the dark of the cottage. His gaze peered up to the young woman who had a look of shock on her face. A face he didn’t recognize.
Does she also…?
“Holy shit…”
Vanja
The slam of a door. Then, a man’s voice.
“Holy shit…”
Vanja started at the noise, and closed her fists. The River light vanished, snuffed out like a candle. In one, fluid movement, Vanja pulled herself from her knees into a fighter’s crouch, one hand braced on the floor, the other against her thigh. There was a man in the doorway. The door behind him was shut, and so she could barely make him out. The only light left in the cottage was from her own small oil lamp. Against the door, the man was a shadow in a darkened room.
She paused. Waited. For one breath. Then two. The man didn’t step forward into the room. He stayed, keeping his back braced against the door.
Vanja stood, then, pressing wet hands against her apron. The apron may have once been white, but was now a dun, tan color, with streaks of deep brown that had once been red. After three days in this village, and without access to a proper washbasin, the apron was more stained than Vanja would have liked. No matter - she could treat it with ammonia and lye once she got back to Northgate.
If she got back to Northgate.
Who was this man? Not a Swan, surely. A Swan would have said something, would have acted immediately. If this man had been a Swan, Vanja would be dead already.
He’d seen. Of course he had. What else would have caused such a strong reaction? Maybe it would be nothing, though. She could call it snowblindness, if he asked. Coming from the bright white of the outdoors into a dark room could do that. It had been a flash of light, as his eyes adjusted.
Or not. As she looked over at the man in the doorway, she realized one eye was covered. Not uncommon - keep an eye covered in the snow, and patch the other. Then, when you went inside, you could switch the patch. Keep one eye ready for the dark, one for the light. Common enough. Her own father had done that, sometimes, when bringing in winter cordwood.
Not snowblind then. Not with an eye covered like that. Although he hadn’t adjusted the cloth when he came in.
Still. Light did strange things. Perhaps she could convince him that it had just been the sunlight, reflecting off of Vanja’s oil lamp.
Fane, thought Vanja. It wasn’t a good excuse. She had gotten sloppy. She should have blocked the door herself. She was tired. It had been a long few days.
Three days ago, when the small boy had run to the physician in Northgate, he had been in tears. His mother, he had said, dead. His sisters sick. Half the town sick with something unknown. Something burning through the village, quick and deadly as a fire. The physician had said no. A sickness like that would infect him, too, and then it could spread through the city. He chastised the boy for even coming - had threatened to call a guard, when the boy had again burst into tears. But Vanja had volunteered to go. The physician had scoffed at this. If she went, she could not return. Not until she proved she was well. If she went now, to this village, she would lose this position. This hadn’t mattered to Vanja. There were other physicians. Other healers. Apothecaries. Plenty of people in a city as large as Northgate who could use someone with Vanja’s skills.
And so she had gone with the boy. It was more than a day’s walk, and halfway there, the boy had fallen ill, too. Suddenly burning to the touch, refusing even snow-cooled water. Vanja had put her hand on him, and had traced the rune for sleep. For good dreams. While he slept, she had healed him with the light of the River. The next morning, they had made it to the village.
She had treated the sick, the best she could, and it had worked. It was the right thing to do.
Even so, it was exhausting. She had run out of herbs a few houses ago, and since then it had all been River magic. It worked well, but it drained her. She ended each day ravenous and weary, but unable to sleep.
Now, Vanja pulled a clean white cloth from the waistband of the apron. These cloths were small enough to boil, so she knew it was clean. She took a moment to wipe her face. It was a healer’s habit. Something she did without thinking. Even now, in this uncertain moment, she took the time to tuck the cloth into the other side of her apron, the unclean side, where it joined several others, before looking back up at the man.
Now that Vanja’s eyes had adjusted, and her own panic faded, the adrenaline having seeped through her pores and into the cloth, she studied the man in the doorway, properly. He was young. Her age. Perhaps a few years older.
She took another breath, and now that the air in the room was still again, settled, she could smell him. He smelled, pleasantly, of the woods. Sweat, and earth. Fire smoke and pine. Something else, too, the sharp smell of yarrow, and mild meadowsweet. The young man had come a long way, through the forest, it seemed, and was worse for it. His clothes were torn, though repaired, and most of the damage wasn’t recent. The cloth around his face, the one obscuring his eye, was dirty, too. If it was an injury underneath, that would only breed infection, and rot. No. He hadn’t just been traveling, he lived in the wild, somehow. Standing here, his back braced against the closed door, he had the stance of a hunter.
No. She didn’t have to be afraid. Not yet. If the man in the doorway was going to attack her, he would have done it already. He would have leveled his spear at her. Threatened her. Called her a witch. She didn’t feel safe, but she wasn’t afraid.
At last, Vanja broke the silence.
“Are those for me?” she asked. She indicated the small parcel, carried carefully in the man’s arm, smelling of medicine. She laughed a little, and repeated herself in Dwarvish, just in case. She had found, over the past several weeks, that this close to the Jorungun border, it was best to be as clear as possible.
She held her hands out, palms up. Vanja wanted it to be obvious that there was no magic here - that what he had seen had not been true. She was just the healer. She was no one.
Bax
Bax remained unresponsive for a moment. He stood with his back to the door unblinking. Maybe what he saw was a trick of the light.
“Are those for me?” She asked with open hands.
She certainly looked the part of a healer. The sleeves of her arms were rolled up as to keep from getting dirty. An apron covered in old blood stains, hair braided back and a head wrap to keep loose hair from falling into her face.
But I know what I saw…wait did she speak Dwarven? Is she Jorungun?
He shakes his head as if waking himself from a stupor. “Y-yeah…I mean yes. Yes! These are herbs I collected from up north.” He grips the bag and holds it aloft.
“I’d uh, heard about a small town with an illness and thought I could help. But it looks like you kinda beat me here…” Hesitantly, Bax lays his spear against the doorframe, and moves to place the bag in the girl’s hands.
After moving closer he could see more of the young girl’s clothes under the apron. She wore leather and sheepskin and hide boots. She also looked exhausted, as if she had been pushed hard recently.
She must be from Jorung. I’ve only seen people from Thorsbarr and Skejagrr dress like that. Though she seems cleaner.
Despite himself, Bax feels the slight heat of embarrassment tinge his ears. He hadn’t had to think or worry about his personal hygiene in ages. He forces the conversation to continue to move past that train of thought.
“So is she the uh, last one? Is there anything I can help with?” he gingerly points to the unconscious woman across the room.
C’mon get her talking. Be like Ethan or Roux. There must be somethin you can say to make her slip up and say anything about her magic!
Vanja
Vanja took the bag of herbs from the man.
A boy, really, she noticed, now that he was closer. But hard-lived. She had thought Jorungun, maybe, but he spoke common with no accent.
“Thank you,” said Vanja, smiling warmly. She noted the young man was flushed, color spreading around his ears, under a smudge of earth. “She’s the last, and she’ll recover. Still,” she continued, “it’s a good thing. That you came to help. They sent a boy for the physician a few days past, but if I hadn’t decided to go against…” she trailed off, and shrugged. It was unimportant, now. “Big people,” she hesitated. It wasn’t the right word. “Important people don’t care about places like this. It’s good to see I’m not the only one who cares about these small villages. These regular people.” She smiled again, trying to set the young man at ease.
Vanja pulled the wrap from her head, and untied her apron, folding the pieces together, inside out. She looked over at the young man. At the unclean cloth around his own head. Over his eye.
“Do you need a healer, yourself?” Vanja asked. She gestured at her own eye, then studied the young man, trying to gauge his response. She doesn’t want to offend, but she’s unbothered by injury, and she speaks directly, without the artifice of social grace, without talking around what she knows might be a sensitive thing. That sort of polite restraint just wasted time.
While she waited for his response - sometimes it took time, for these things. For people to admit an injury - Vanja looked through the collection of herbs he had brought. In the small parcel, separated from one another, tied in bundles by strips of animal gut, is not just yarrow and meadowsweet, as she had smelled, but other, rarer herbs too. Mint, and chamomile, hard to find this far North. Good, calming herbs. And calendula. She smiles at this. Where had he found calendula? It was a rare thing. Dried and ground into a powder, it could clot blood, and prevent rot from taking hold in an open wound. And there, a bunch of Nusnow, the bundle as thick as Vanja’s wrist. She passed her hand over the small, round florets, white as the snow that gave them their name. If the blossoms were crushed, they would be cool to the touch. The young man has packed them carefully, though. They’re undamaged.
He must have some healing knowledge, too, Vanja thought. These herbs were not easy to find. And she had yet to see any Nusnow this season. He had said he had collected the herbs up north, and it made sense. This much Nusnow had to have come from over the border, in Jorung.
She nodded to the young man. “This is good,” she said, simply.
She began to busy herself making yarrow tea. Yarrow would be good for the sick woman, once she woke. It would purge her system of anything that might be left of the infection. Make her sweat out what remained. Give her body time to heal itself. Vanja knelt at the hearthstone and wrapped a few sprigs of yarrow in a clean cloth before she added it to the pot of boiling water already on the hearth. She stirred the water with a wooden ladle.
“Your eye,” she said, more clearly, directly, “is what I meant. If it’s a new injury, you need to change that cloth. If that bandage is in contact with it, it could breed infection. You could get bloodsick.” She looked over at him, again, still assessing, “I can clean it with alcohol if you like, and pack it with gauze, if there’s drainage.” She tilted her head, “And you should keep it uncovered, if you can. It’ll help keep things dry, and it’ll heal faster.”
At this, Vanja stood again, and took a few steps toward the young man, and then extended her hand, reaching for the eyepatch, her physician training taking over. “Here, let me take a look.”
Bax
She doesn’t seem to like the nobles much from the sounds of it…
As she walked away to inspect the herbs she mentioned inspecting his eye. Bax could only shake his head silently as he continued to watch the healer work. Waiting for another sign of magic of some kind.
“This is good,” she nods to him. The affirmation of his work sends a wave of relief through his body. It meant that all the time that Danica had spent trying to teach Bax about medicinal herbs during their travels hadn’t gone to waste.
Some of those herbs were just lucky guesses. Probably shouldn’t mention that—
Before he could realize what was happening, the healer’s hand was in his face reaching for the cloth over his eye, “Here, let me look.” His body reacted before he could think; as his own hand flung up to catch her’s, his other hand was reaching for a dagger on the side of his belt. Bax stopped himself before unsheathing the blade fully. Immediately he dropped the girl’s hand and quickly took two large steps back away from her.
“Sorry! I-I’m sorry! You surprised me…” Bax explained, holding both hands up in front of him. “My eye is…fine. It’s not a new injury. It’s been like this since I was younger. But thank you.”
A lil forward but she seems to mean well.
“So um…” he mumbled, as one arm unconsciously raises up behind his head and his other lowers to his side. “How uh, do you normally heal people? Do you always use herbs like those?” He could feel the heat of embarrassment once more as he tried to break the tension by forcing the conversation to continue.
Crap, how do Talith and Ethan talk to people so easily?!
Vanja
Vanja flexed her hand where the young man had grabbed it. He’d gone for a weapon, too, she was sure. A knife, maybe. Something at his belt.
That was foolish, Vanja thought, chastising herself. This wasn’t Linjør, where she knew every person, where she could dispense with social niceties. You don’t know this man from anyone. He could have killed you.
Yet, he hadn’t. She hadn’t been wrong in her initial assessment. He wasn’t a threat to her. And now he stood, steps away, with his hands up. Unarmed. “Sorry! I-I’m sorry! You surprised me…My eye is…fine. It’s not a new injury. It’s been like this since I was younger. But thank you.” He hesitated, and Vanja could see the color spreading from his ears once again. He brought a hand to the back of his head, “How uh, do you normally heal people? Do you always use herbs like those?”
Vanja turned away at this, allowing her hair to obscure her face, as she tried to stop herself from laughing. From relief, that despite her foolishness, she was still alive, that, if anything, the young man seemed embarrassed. From the awkwardness of the question he asked now, trying to set her at ease. From the sheer absurdity of it all.
It was too much, though, and she was exhausted. Vanja burst into laughter, covering her mouth with her hand.
“Yes,” she said, finally, taking a breath, “My mother trained me. She was the physician in our village. We—”
Suddenly, the old woman sputtered. Vanja looked away from the young man, the smile leaving her face as she fell to her knees, her attention back on her patient. The old woman’s body tensed, muscles contracting, breathing quick and shallow. Vanja lay a hand on the woman’s cheek, and the skin burned under her touch.
Fane! It hadn’t been enough, earlier. She had cut the flow of the magic when the man had opened the door, when he had burst into the room and she had had to snuff out the River light. Now the woman was burning with fever, but she wasn’t sweating. No. This was not good. Vanja lay a hand on the woman’s cheek, and watched as her eyes fluttered open, white, and rolled back into her head. She wasn’t awake, though, and it was no longer Vanja’s rune magic that was keeping her unconscious. Under Vanja’s hands, the woman started to seize.
The fever was too high. Vanja had been distracted. Exhausted. She hadn’t been attending properly, and now this woman was too far gone for yarrow tea or nusnow.
Vanja glanced over her shoulder at the young man, still there, standing a few paces back. This man who she didn’t know, but who had travelled for days to bring herbs to the sick in this small, forgotten village. Who had seen her own magic, already, she was sure, yet said nothing. Ready to defend himself, blisterkere, as her brothers. Of the woods, as her father had been.
“Are you of Jorung?” she asked, “Or Isendel? Because I —,” she stops, and speaks quickly now, urgent. “Tell me you aren’t with the soldiers, the ones with swans on their flags.”
Bax
She burst into a small fit of laughter at his question. He wasn’t trying to be funny. Was that a good sign?
Just as she was beginning to recover from her laughter and continue talking with him, the sick woman behind her began to seize. The healer ran over and started to look the woman over. She wasn’t doing well.
Bax ran over and knelt across from the healer, beside the patient. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to help, but he was ready to try.
As she leans over the woman, watching her convulse, the healer speaks up, “Are you of Jorung? Or Isendel? Because I— ” She pauses before looking into Bax’s eyes with urgency. “Tell me you aren’t with the soldiers, the ones with the swans on their flags.”
Are the Swans after her too? For how long? And how did they find her?
Bax peered down at the convulsing woman for only a moment. If the healer has any magic to save this woman, it has to be used now.
Fuck it. Being delicate with words has never been my strong point anyways.
“I’m no Swan soldier,” he started, looking back up to meet the healer’s gaze. “They’d much rather see me dead then as a member of their ranks. Look, if you have any kind of magic to help her, now is the time to use it.”
Bax holds up one hand, and a faint snow-white aura creeps across it. “My own magic can only help with physical damage I think. This seems deeper. Just tell me what you need and I’ll do it.” Lowering his hand down, he holds his breath in anticipation praying that he was right about her.
Vanja
The young man knelt across from her, then, and looked up at Vanja. His one dark eye met hers, “I’m no Swan soldier,” he said, “They’d much rather see me dead then as a member of their ranks. Look, if you have any kind of magic to help her, now is the time to use it.”
He held up his hand then, and Vanja could see a thin, white mist spreading over the skin. “My own magic can only help with physical damage, I think. This seems deeper. Just tell me what you need and I’ll do it.”
Thank the gods, thought Vanja. Even as the young man was speaking, the white cloud of his magic flowed over his skin like mist over a lake, moving like morning fog, low in the forest. It was a sign. Fate. Something had sent him to her, knowing she would need his help.
Vanja took ahold of the man’s hand, and pressed her finger into the palm, pushing through the fog. She traced a series of runes, pressing firmly into his hand. A downstroke, two peaks, one trailing into the center of the young man’s palm. “This is berkn. It’s for healing.” She looked up at him, and he nodded, understanding, “And this,” she traced another, an upstroke, then down at an angle, mirroring it and repeating it, “Mannïg, for support. I need you to make these shapes on her stomach. On her skin. Trace them there. And whatever you have, whatever magic, direct it through the rune. The rune will help shape it, will make it do what you want it to do. It doesn’t have to be precise.”
The young man flexed his fingers and now the white fog was shimmering over both hands. Vanja glanced up at his face. He wasn’t blushing now. His face was set, hardened. Focused on the job that needed to be done.
Vanja checked the woman’s throat, and pressed her fingers under the woman’s jaw, feeling for the rushing thrum of blood beneath the skin. It was there, rapid and faint, like the heartbeat of a bird in a trap. Fine. Vanja placed one hand against the woman’s forehead, against the dry heat of her skin. The other hand, she placed at the woman’s chest, on her breastbone, directly over her heart. Vanja could feel an echo of the pulse she felt at the woman’s throat.
The woman seemed to respond to Vanja’s touch, and her body flexed away, convulsing again.
“Keep her still,” Vanja ordered the man. He did what she asked, holding a forearm over the woman’s torso, still tracing the runes with his hand. Vanja saw the pearlescence of his magic spreading over the woman’s body, before soaking into her skin. Vanja had never seen anything like that. She hadn’t known there was any magic in the world but her own.
Time enough for that later, Vanja thought.
Instead, Vanja focused on the heat bleeding off of the woman beneath her hands, and then, on her own breathing, the warm air passing through her lips into the chilled air of the room. Proof that there was life here, in this moment of death. She could feel the prayers coming to her lips, the words her mother taught her, that she’d memorized before she had any idea of their meaning. A simple, basic thing. A prayer to pull someone back before their life left them, before they crossed the River, to tell them it wasn’t yet time. A prayer to spare the dying.
From Vanja’s hands, the light of the river flowed. It poured into the woman, filling her and overflowing. Within seconds, the light spilled out of the woman’s mouth, and her ears, and from between Vanja’s fingers, curling out like a ribbon unspooling. Vanja allowed it to expand, feeling the magic grow more powerful. She was exhausted, but filled with sudden, vibrant energy now. She could feel the Riverlight, pulled from the air, and something else, too, something steady and strong, buoying her up. It was mannïg, support, from the young man, his own magic flowing into the sick woman and, as the energy mixed and overflowed, into Vanja.
Vanja felt the woman’s pulse grow steady and strong, and then, finally, a wash of sweat as the fever broke. With a flick of her hand, Vanja pulled, taking the Riverlight out of the woman, and with it, the sickness. In between one moment and the next, the woman was well, and Vanja knew it instantly.
Vanja fell back onto her heels, breaking contact with the woman’s skin, the River magic still flowing from her hands, streaming into the still air of the room. Vanja watched as it spread through the cottage, growing to the ceiling, fading into streaks as it neared the floor, filling the room with shifting, folding light. Now like fabric, now like flowing water, green, then gold. Pink and red, and green again.
Vanja nodded to the young man. He had seen her fall back, and had started a little, but hadn’t broken contact with the sick woman. “She’s okay, now,” said Vanja, trying to catch her breath, “You can leave her.”
The young man leaned back, too, on his knees still, as Vanja was. She looked at him and smiled.
“It’s strange,” Vanja said, between breaths, “I was told there wasn’t any magic in Isendel. But it’s untrue.” She laughed a little, relieved and exhausted, and pulled herself, unsteady, to her feet. “Thank you. For helping me. You’re a good man.” The River is no longer flowing from Vanja’s hands but its light still fills the room. There is still a slight, green cast on Vanja’s hand as she extends it to the young man, introducing herself in the Jorungun style, “I’m Skau Vanja.”
Bax
Well that was cool…
Bax sat on his knees, dumbstruck at what he had witnessed. The entire room was lit up by colors immediately reminiscent of the river in the night sky he had first discovered several months ago in Jorung. Was this her magic? Her connection to the stars?
She stood over him holding out a still glowing hand, the light slowly fading. “I’m Skau Vanja.” From this angle the young healer cut a confident figure. She was tired and looked ready to collapse, yet there she stood. Her eyes determined and curious.
He clasped his hand into her’s and gladly accepted the assistance to stand up. “My name is Bax Demir. Good to meet ya Vanja!” A giant smile split across his face as he giggled slightly. He was still shocked to have met another person with abilities like him and his friends!
That wide smile began to fade as he looked to see the last bit of green energy evaporate from Vanja’s hand. Now that he knew about her, he couldn’t just let her be on her own. If she’s worried about the Swans, that would put her in the same boat as the rest of them.
“Vanja…” he started, but where does he begin? There’s so much to explain and right now wasn’t the time or place to try.
Bax hardened his face, looked Vanja directly in the eyes and continued, “I need you to listen carefully. There is so much that has to be discussed and we don’t have time to go over anything.
“If the Swans are after you, then your life is in constant danger. I know because I’ve been running from them for years. I can offer my help, but if you accept it, you have to abandon your life in Northgate. Abandon your family if you have any. If you choose not to accept my help, then I’ll wish you luck and we’ll never see each other again.”
Striding towards the door, Bax collects his spear and turns back to Vanja. “If you accept my help though, you’ll stay in the village tonight. You’re exhausted and you can’t travel in your current state. Get all your things together and be ready to leave before sunrise, before anyone wakes up. You will meet me one hour down the road towards the city and we’ll move on from there.
“I’m leaving now because I can’t risk being around people this near Northgate and it’s better that people don’t see us together. Stay in whatever housing they’re offering you, but keep away from people. It’s best they forget your face but know that you’ve left.”
He slides his hood back over his head and pulls the door open, pausing with one foot out. “I hope to see you tomorrow Vanja.” Shutting the door behind him, Bax quickly walks through the village, careful to walk in sight of the woodworker but far enough away to avoid eye contact. He continues down the main road for a short time, and once he knows he is out of sight of the village he veers off into the forest to disappear
Vanja
Vanja watched the young man - Bax Demir, he had called himself - leave the cottage, stepping out into the gray light of early evening. It would be fully dark soon, and Vanja had a decision to make.
In that instant after Vanja had cut the River light from her hands, with the echo of the aurora still hanging like a curtain in the room, something in Bax had shifted. The blushing young man - the boy who had stood awkwardly with his bag of herbs, smelling of the woods, uncomfortable in this close, indoor place - was gone. In that instant, when he’d released their handclasp, and said her name, his boyish grin had fallen from his face. What was left was the hard face of a survivor.
Vanja let out a breath of air. She wanted to sit. To sleep. She was exhausted. These past few days had pushed her limits, but even before that, it had been so much. She was always on edge. Always aware. Most nights she couldn’t sleep, for the constant thrum of fear. Waking up in her rented room, checking the door locks, the protective runes she’d scratched on the doorpost. She was so tired of being afraid. Terrified of the soldiers she saw walking through the streets of Northgate, though she kept the hood of Olev’s cloak pulled up, protectively. Walking past posters of her own face, tacked to signposts alongside the faces of a dozen other young people. Knowing that the Swans were hunting her.
The Swans would kill her, if they found her, Bax had said. But Vanja had already known.
Abandon her family, he had said. She had already done that, too.
Leave Northgate behind. Fine. It was no loss. Yes, she had been doing good work with the physician, but Vanja knew it would only have been a matter of time before she, and her magic, would have been discovered. She had been frustrated by it - always waiting for those few moments when the physician might leave the room. Coming back at night, covering her hands with her apron, hiding the River’s glow, determined to finish the job. Yes. She would have been found out eventually. It was only luck that it had been Bax at the door, and not a Swan. And luck again, that some kind of magic flowed through him too. That he too, was fleeing the Swans. That he’d done so for years.
Vanja checked on the old woman, sleeping soundly now, without the assistance of magic. Then Vanja sat, legs crossed, in front of the hearth. She had left her cloak and day-pack there, to dry, when she had first come to the cottage. She rifled through her pack now, and pulled out a small leather pouch.
Her mother had been the runecaster. Sigruid could read an entire life in the stones. Vanja didn’t have the same touch, but she believed in the power of the runes. Of her mother’s words. Of the flow of fate down the River aurora. Vanja put her hand in the pouch, fingers brushing over the smooth stones.
She would do three.
Vanja spoke quietly, but aloud, as her mother had always done. Words were more powerful when given voice. She pulled the runes, one after the other, and laid them on the hearthstone. “Wyn for kinship, for friendship. Yr for protection.” Vanja smiled at the final rune. Two crossed lines. “Går.”
That’s interesting, thought Vanja. Går could have a few meanings. Sometimes it meant generosity, or a gift.
Sometimes, it meant spear.
Good, thought Vanja. She was tired of being alone.
That evening, Vanja made a show of checking on her previous patients. To tell them she was leaving in the morning, early. There was no inn in this village, small and forgotten as it was, and so Vanja returned to the old woman’s home, setting her bedroll in front of the hearth. She wanted to be warm. She checked her day-pack. There was nowhere to get more supplies, but it was good to know what she had. A bit of food. Extra clothing. A canteen of vodka, for sanitation and anesthetic. Her apron, and a neatly folded stack of boiled cloths. She added the parcel of herbs to the bag, packing it alongside her nearly empty medicine kit. Oiled her boots. Honed her blades. She refilled her waterskin. Slept a little.
In the morning, still dark enough to see the River, Vanja readied herself for travel. Thick quilted padding, for protection and insulation; then a layer of wool, tightly knit to keep out the wind. Leather armor, crafted to fit her oldest brother. The straps replaced. Refitted for Vanja now. She strapped her axes to her pack and to the loops at her hips and pulled Olev’s cloak close around her.
It was a little more than an hour’s walk toward Northgate before Vanja noticed the subtle sound of compacting snow. Then the now familiar smell of pine and woodsmoke. Sweat and earth and tanned leather.
Bax emerged from the woods, moments later, and stepped onto the road. He scanned the road for a moment, looking back toward the village. He nodded to Vanja, then, a smile spreading across his face, checking to see that she was ready.
Vanja laughed a little at this, charmed by his caution. “Alright, Demir Bax,” she said, “Lead the way.”
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