Thora was afraid, which was nothing new. What was strange was the guilt, fear was intimate to her; guilt, not so much.
This time they came together and she had spent almost the whole journey in silence. Hrafn and Sigrid rode a little ahead, talking now and then, and she followed beside them. There was also the new boy, Briorn. After helping save Hrafn and Sigrid, he had simply worked himself into the group, as though he had always belonged there. Thora still did not know what to think of that.
The boy swore too much, seemed to have a screw loose, and nearly always spoke shouting, with a voice too shrill for so small a body. Normally, she would have been talking as well. She liked that, above 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 earlier, she had been terrified, she still remembered the fallen throwing itself at Hrafn, the frightening thing, and Sigrid advancing all the same. She remembered Briorn too, small and yelling, but advancing. And she remembered herself.
Running.
Of course she ran, who would not? She was quick, she was light, and she did what she always did when fear showed its teeth, so she hid. She found the tightest space she could beneath a carriage and folded her body into it, as though making herself smaller could make her invisible to the world.
"It is not that bad," Hrafn said, adjusting his shoulders.
"You do not have a damned arm, for fuck's sake!" Briorn shot back. It was strange seeing them argue, stranger still to realize that somehow they understood each other. Hrafn seemed far too calm for someone mutilated so recently, Briorn, irritable as he was, seemed offended on his behalf.
Hrafn had said earlier that he was almost happy to have lost the arm. Briorn had reacted as if that were blasphemy, and since then the two of them had been debating the absurdity of it all along the road. Thora did not like that conversation. Not because of the argument itself, but because her eyes always returned to Hrafn's shoulder, which ended right there, without an arm.
"They certainly understand each other," Sigrid whispered, appearing at her side with amusement in her voice. Sigrid's presence always seemed to make the air a little less heavy. There was something about her, perhaps some lightness, maybe only enough courage to share it with others.
"T-they certainly do," Thora answered. She tried to make it light, but her voice came out trembling, her eyes went again to Hrafn's right side. She wanted to go 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 feared the answer, feared his look. And there was something worse, the apology would be a lie. Because If she could go back to that night, she would do it all again. Would run again, hide again, shaking, crying under her breath, praying the thing would tear some other person's flesh before hers.
"Do not be like this. We are almost in Sahirid," Sigrid said, squeezing her hand and giving it a little shake, as though she might shake the bad thoughts loose from it.
"Yes," Thora answered. The idea of walls helped even so, the word came out weak. She did not share Sigrid's excitement, and was not brave like her, nor brazen like Briorn, or 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 moved the shoulders, how it taught the eyes never to stay still, making 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 by the apothecary just before the selection, because she feared returning home empty-handed. Hrafn lied too, she suspected. He only lied differently, with posture and with silence.
"What do you think the training will be like?" Sigrid asked, more from a need to change the subject than from any real curiosity.
Thora saw Hrafn's body react before his voice came. A minimal adjustment in the shoulders, one instant of stiffness. The eyes running a little faster. "Hm," he said. "I imagine it will be painful."
Thora did not like that answer. She was afraid of pain, who was not?
"Ah, fuck it. We can take it," Briorn boasted. "We killed a damned fallen, didn't we?"
"Yes, but—" Sigrid began.
"—the thing was some ugly little beast," Briorn cut in, as always. "All crooked, disgusting. Did you see the way I finished it? I'm fucking amazing."
What followed was a lamentable display. Briorn, smaller than all of them and broader in the shoulders than seemed reasonable, began throwing punches into the air, twisting his body and kicking imagined enemies with an enthusiasm that would have made sense only if the whole world had been made to watch him.
Sigrid laughed, Thora almost laughed too, Hrafn opened his mouth, perhaps to deliver some brief cruelty, the sort that seemed to cost him less effort than kindness, but then they all stopped. Not only the four of them, the whole caravan slowed. In the distance, at last, the walls of Sahirid rose.
Thora felt her body stiffen. The walls did not rise only against enemies, it seemed to rise against the world itself.
Her horse struck one hoof against the ground, uneasy, 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 the known frontiers to force the Hird to build something like that? What kind of horror made stone and salt rise so high?
She kept looking at Sahirid as someone looks at a closed door, certain there is something on the other side, but not knowing whether she truly wishes to see it. Her future was there. Greater than she had ever dared imagine, greater than any domestic fear, any small lie.
She kept looking inside that immense, ancient, imposing city, perhaps something was waiting for her there.
Some answer, some change.
Perhaps some place deep enough to bury fear and leave it there, locked between salt and stone, instead of going on carrying it inside her chest as though it were her name.