Ingrid's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Ingrid had walked six miles through the bog to reach the tavern, and she smelled the trouble before she saw it. Two horses stood tied outside, saddles stamped with the lord's iron mark. She stopped in the reeds beside the door. A woman her own age crouched nearby, gathering rushes into a bundle, hands raw from the water. The woman did not look up. That was answer enough. Ingrid had come to buy a guide north to Haalas, where her sister Helga waited in the mountains. She had no papers and no coin. She had a knife and the last of her mother's copper ring wrapped in cloth. She had planned this for a year. Two others had tried the swamp before her. One came back missing three fingers. The other never came back at all, and no one asked where he went. The ridge keeper two miles east would take her through for a price she knew the shape of. She had come to the tavern first because she wanted any other road. Ingrid pushed the door and stepped inside. The barkeep stood behind the counter with a ledger open. Three men in mail sat at the long table. A boy of maybe fourteen knelt on the floor between them, wrists bound with wet rope. The barkeep read a name from the ledger. One of the soldiers counted coins onto the wood. Ingrid understood at once. The barkeep was selling serfs who had run, or serfs he claimed had run. His guide trade was a lure. The barkeep looked up. His eyes moved over her face and settled on her hands, checking for calluses, checking for the mark of the land. She kept her hands loose at her sides. She said she had come the wrong way, looking for the fishmonger. She apologized. She stepped back toward the door. One of the soldiers stood. "Wait," the barkeep said. He asked whose land she worked. He asked for her name. Ingrid ran. She shoved the door and cut left along the boards, then dropped off the planks into the muck. Her feet sank to the ankles. She pushed through a stand of reeds and into the tangled weed beyond, the kind that hid a woman if she stayed low. Behind her a soldier shouted. She heard the wet slap of boots on the dock, then a curse as one of them missed the step. She crawled under the roots of a leaning tree and lay flat. A snake slid off a mossy log two feet from her hand and vanished into the water. She did not move. The boots passed. The boots came back. After a long time, the boots went inside. She waited until dusk in the mud. Her name was in the tavern now. The barkeep had seen her face. By morning the lord's men would ride the low road looking for a woman traveling alone. That left one road east. Ingrid crawled out of the weed and started walking toward the ridge.