Page 2 of Salt in the Wound

For one crystalline, suspended moment, Indrie stares up at this man and his axe and the ceiling beyond and thinks:This is how it ends. On my back. On the floor. From a foreign invader I never saw coming.

He doesn't close his eyes. He should, he should close his eyes and let it be quick, but he can't stop looking at the man's face. At the dark eyes beneath heavy brows, at the broad jaw and the flared nostrils and the way his lips are parted from exertion.

The axe doesn't rise.

Instead, the man's brow furrows. He looks down at Indrie in surprise, like he’s as shocked to find Indrie in his path as Indrie was to be there and says something in a language Indrie has never heard. The words are thick and lilting, full of vowels that roll into each other, warm and unhurried. Indrie doesn't understand a single one of them.

But he understands the furrowed brow. The slight downward tilt of the man's head. The way his free hand extends, palm open.

Are you all right?

Which is, to Indrie's knowledge, a profoundly strange thing for a foreign invading barbarian to ask the man he's just flattened.

He stares. The hand stays extended. The man says something else, shorter, a questioning lilt at the end, and his brow furrows deeper, concern creasing the lines around his mouth. Despite being in the middle of pillaging Armond’s castle, he seems in no hurry to get back to it until he’s assured Indrie is unharmed.

"Yes," Indrie hears himself say. His voice comes out thin and breathless and approximately an octave higher than normal. "I'm... yes. I’m fine."

The man seems to get his intent. He leans down and grabs Indrie by both shoulders, hands so large they nearly span the width of him, and lifts him back onto his feet without visible effort. Indrie sways when his boots find the floor and the man's hands stay a moment, steadying him, before releasing him with a short nod.

Then he's gone. Past Indrie, around the corner, heading deeper into the castle with long, ground-eating strides and his impossible axe held easy at his side.

More come behind him. A rush of bodies filling the corridor, men and women both, all wearing the same salt-stained furs and leathers, all carrying weapons Indrie can only half-identify in the flickering torchlight. They are wind-bitten and wild-eyed, the salt still crusting their clothes, moving with the confidence of veterans. None of them spare Indrie a glance. He flinches back against the wall, makes himself flat, makes himself small, the way he's learned to do. But they pour past him without breaking stride, following the red-haired man toward the sounds of fighting and shouting.

Indrie stands with his spine pressed to the cold stone of the wall and his heart trying to break through his ribs. He waits until the last of the footsteps fades. Then he turns and runs down the hall.

The servants' quarters are underground, tucked into the foundation of the castle's east wing where the stone sweats withmoisture and the air carries the permanent chill of earth. The room is large, housing thirty or more bodies on stacked bunks and threadbare pallets, but today it feels impossibly small, crammed full of terror.

Every servant in the castle seems to have found their way here. They're pressed into corners, wedged beneath bunks, huddled together on narrow mattresses with blankets pulled over their heads. The sound of them is what strikes Indrie first. Not screaming, not wailing, but the awful, compressed quiet of people trying desperately not to be heard. Whispered prayers. Bitten-back sobs. The wet, fast breathing of barely contained panic.

No one is attacking them. The room is undisturbed, no overturned furniture, no blood, no sign that anyone bearing weapons has set foot here. The fear in the room is anticipatory, a held breath before a blow.

Indrie moves through the cramped space, stepping over bodies that flinch away from his boots, scanning faces until he finds the one he's looking for.

Senli is in the far corner, pressed against the wall with her knees drawn to her chest. She's gripping the arm of Mara, one of the laundry women, so tightly her brown knuckles have gone ashen. Her dark eyes are wide and glassy with unshed tears, and when she sees Indrie picking his way toward her, her whole body sags.

"Indrie!" She reaches for him immediately, grabbing his wrist and yanking him down beside her with more strength than her small frame suggests possible. "Where have youbeen? I’ve been worried sick—"

"I'm all right." He settles beside her, covers her hand with his own. "Senli, what's happening? Who are these people?"

"Northmen." Her voice drops to barely a whisper. "They came from the sea. The watchmen on the docks, they're dead. Allof them. The ships landed before dawn and they breached the lower walls before anyone could raise a proper alarm."

Indrie absorbs this. Northmen. He's heard the word before, the way one hears about distant storms or far-off plagues, something terrible that happens to other people, in other places. The kingdom of Kalkoa sits at the southern edge of the continent, far from the cold seas where the Northmen are said to originate. They shouldn't be here. This far south, this far from anything worth taking.

"They're savages," whispers a voice from nearby. Indrie glances over. One of the grooms, a reedy young man named Tomás, pressed flat beneath the nearest bunk with only his face visible. His eyes are too wide, showing white all around. "Everyone knows what they do. They rape and pillage whole kingdoms. They burn everything. They take slaves and..."

"Tomás," Senli says sharply. "Enough."

But the damage is done. A fresh wave of whispered panic ripples through the room, bodies pressing tighter together, someone near the door letting out a thin, frightened moan.

Indrie hears the fear. He feels it, undeniable, physical, pressing against his skin. But he also remembers the man in the corridor. The red-haired giant with his absurd axe and his furrowed brow. The hand held out, palm open. The careful lift back to his feet.

Are you all right?

"Senli." Indrie squeezes her hand. "Has anyone come down here? Has anyone threatened the servants?"

She blinks at him. "No. No one's come. We just... we heard the fighting and everyone came down here. Bram told us to hide. He said..."

"So, no one has been hurt. Here, I mean. None of us."