Page 1 of Fate’s Bane

T HE C OLLAR

The first time I saw Hadhnri Clan Aradoc, Second-Born Pedhri Clan Aradoc, it was dark and I did not know her.

I was lost, in a stranger’s roundhouse, in an enemy clan’s territory, far from home—far from my father, my brother, my mother-brothers and father-sisters all, who had sung me the songs of warm hearth and battle glory since I was a babe.

How could I know who she would become to me when I barely knew myself?

I was led along with the other slaves that clan Aradoc had taken, stumbling through the wetlands in my boots, which I was allowed to keep, but no coat, which had been stripped from me. I didn’t complain. I was too frightened to complain, though later I told myself I had been too brave.

The Aradoc warriors led us to the clan roundhouse down a path lit by their torches.

Our steps creaked over wooden planks drawn across the sucking mud and peat.

The blood flies buzzed and bit at my ears, and across the night, the frogs croaked and splashed into the water, the crickets clapped their legs together, and all around me was the drone of the fens in lententide, underlaid by the trill of pipes.

The songs by which I knew my clan were gone, replaced by the music of the Aradoc fens.

A shivering bundle of men, women, children, we huddled in the roundhouse.

The sulfur scarce covered the blood-and-sweat odor of our unwashed bodies.

Others, unlike me, held themselves high-chinned and sharp-eyed, despite their exhaustion.

They knew themselves, name and clan. But I did not know myself and because I did not know myself, I had no pride to hold me up.

I knew myself only as chafed and starving, filth-crusted and fear-stinking.

Arranged on their benches and furs, Clan Aradoc leered at us. The long-legged hounds at their feet stopped their bone-worrying to snarl low in their throats, teeth gleaming, hackles ruffled.

In my shivering, I didn’t hear what pronouncement Pedhri Clan Aradoc, the new chief among chieftains, made over our fates.

It wasn’t until the slaves around me drew back that I attended his words.

He ordered me alone to stand before him, and I obeyed.

He took my chin in his callus-grip hand and looked into my eyes, my teeth, my ears.

He checked my scalp, snarling my hair. His eyes were a glowing hazel, his brown beard sparking red in the light of his clan’s hearth.

Something passed between him and one of his men, because I was then taken away to be scrubbed with a scouring rock, my head shorn like a lamb, and my clothes replaced with comfortable, dry wool.

I was too numb to notice its quality, and how it differed from the clean roughspun the other slaves were given.

In the roundhouse again, they fed us thick broth, rich with the marrow of salted mutton. I gulped it down and spent the rest of the night in the slave corner with my knees curled up tight to my chin, protecting my gurgling belly.

For most of the night, no one else spoke to me—not until Hadhnri did. She came to me as a shadow, backlit by the flicker and flash of the hearth. She came to me and, with wide, round eyes, traced me from the top of my shorn skull to my wool-socked feet.

“You.” She pointed at me and crooked a finger, so I unfurled myself and stood, looking up at her from below my lashes.

She was my age, perhaps a year younger or a year older.

We were of a height, though she was already wider than me at the shoulders.

I could not tell yet how cruel the edge of her smile would be.

I couldn’t make out the sweet brown of her skin, dusted with freckles, nor the yellow-green-brown of her eyes.

Nor did she yet have the crooked cast of a broken nose, or the scar that would split her lip, a gift I would give her.

What she did have, though, was a straight-backed pride and a solemn demeanor.

Her eyes stopped this time at my neck. She reached out with her fingers, and I flinched when she brushed the leather collar locked at my throat.

Unlike the collars of the other slaves, it was studded with copper.

It splashed fire across the dark roundhouse whenever I moved. Gone, all chances of sneaking.

I flinched, though her touch was gentle as a feather-kiss.

“You are Agnir Clan Fein, First-Born Garadin Clan Fein.”

From anyone else, it should have been a question, but from Hadhnri it was a statement. She named me and I came back to myself, enough to straighten my shoulders, for I was my father’s child. She took it as an answer.

“You are not a slave,” she said, “and will not sleep with the slaves. You are my father’s ward, and he will keep you as such. Come with me.”

I followed Hadhnri into my new life.