Helga Wulf Slayer's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

They walked north for two days before Sylvara stopped at the edge of a shallow lake. A broken stone pillar leaned in the water, half-swallowed by moss and reeds. Sylvara pointed at Helga's belt. "The dagger stays here." Helga's hand closed over the hilt. "No." "Vorak's guards search every guest," Sylvara said. "They will find it. If they find elven silver on you, we die at the door." Helga stared at the pillar. The dagger had come to her in the forest and lit up in her hand. It was the only thing between her body and the men who took her father. "Then I go in with nothing." "You go in with the ring," Sylvara said. "And with me." Helga did not answer. She walked past Sylvara and followed a trampled path through the reeds until she found what the smoke had promised: a small hut set back from the water, its roof hung with skulls and feathers. An ork woman sat cross-legged in the doorway, heavy with child, hands folded on her belly. She did not rise. She watched Helga the way a person watches weather. "I need to hide a blade," Helga said. The ork woman looked at the dagger, then at Helga's ears. She spoke a few words Helga did not know, then pointed inside. On a low wooden table lay a carved hunting bow, its grip painted with old symbols. Beneath the table sat a clay jar packed with ash. The woman tapped the jar, then tapped her own chest. Helga understood. A hiding place. A witness. A price. Helga knelt and wrapped the dagger in a strip of hide. The silver dimmed as her fingers left the blade. She pushed it into the ash and sealed the jar. She pulled her father's ring from her hand, held it a moment, then slid it back on. The ring she needed. The blade she could leave. She set two silver coins on the table beside the bow and stood. Outside, Sylvara waited at the treeline. Her eyes went to Helga's empty belt and stayed there a beat too long. "Good," she said. "Now we look like what we claim to be." Helga did not like the way the word good sounded in her mouth. But the plan was moving, and the sword was north, and she had already chosen this road. They walked out of the reeds toward the smoke of Vorak's camp. Helga's hip felt light. Her hand kept reaching for a hilt that was no longer there and closing on nothing. She made herself stop reaching. She had traded her steel for a ring and a stranger's word, and she would learn in the next hour whether that trade would kill her.