Chapter 103. Elsbeth Had Finally Thought About It, and the Answer Was Better

Chapter 103: 103. Elsbeth Had Finally Thought About It, and the Answer Was Better

I didn’t answer.

Something tight and aching rose up in my chest.

I thought about all the wrong things I could say. And I thought... about the right ones, too, and discovered that I didn’t have any of those.

So I did the only thing I knew. I reached across the gap between our horses, and I held out my hand, with the palm turned up.

Elsbeth looked at it.

I don’t know how long she stared at it, and I could see the mare flicked her ears. A stray gust of wind lifted a swirl of snow off the road and turned it into a little white spiral.

She pulled off her right glove.

It was a long, slow-motion, deliberate walk, as if she was making up her mind with every inch. Then she laid her bare hand in mine, and her fingers wrapped around my palm.

Her hand was cold... It shook, very slightly.

I held it and didn’t squeeze and didn’t say a word after that other than letting her process it slowly.

We rode that way until sunset, with the horses walking close together and our hands clasped over the gap, while the light faded from gold to red to violet.

When the camp finally came into view, a scattering of tents and fires in a hollow beside a frozen stream, Elsbeth took a long breath.

"Tonight," she said, "I will speak..."

"Okay."

"Do not stop me."

"I wouldn’t."

She nodded, once. She didn’t let go of my hand until we reached the fires.

...

I’ve heard a lot of speeches in my life, most of them bad. I’ve heard politicians, teachers, and a drunk best man who cried through a toast for forty minutes.

I’ve given a few, to be fair, though most of those involved apologizing to a woman’s father.

I have never heard anything like what Elsbeth Evershade said that night.

There was a huge bonfire at the center of the camp, built up from dead pine and driftwood, throwing its light high into the dark.

Hundreds of people had gathered around it.

Soldiers of Elarune sat on logs and spread their hands to the heat.

Nightclaw riders stood in loose clusters in the shadows.

The survivors of Hearthfang huddled together under their blankets, and Corra sat a little apart with her knees drawn up. Even the camp cooks had come out and were standing quietly with ladles in their hands.

Elsbeth walked into the firelight alone.

She’d changed into a clean gray coat. She’d braided her hair, tight and neat, and fastened it at the nape of her neck.

She wore her sword at her hip. She stood before the flames, perfectly straight, with her hands folded behind her back, and she waited until every murmur had died.

"I am Elsbeth Evershade, of the third watch," she said.

Her voice was calm, clear, and perfectly level. It carried across the whole circle without effort.

"Many of you know that the Warmother of the Northern Wolf Clan fell on the walls of Hearthfang..."

"You know that she was taken by the crystals and that she is now a beast... I wish to speak of her... and so I will be brief."

Nobody moved.

"The woman who raised me died on that wall," Elsbeth said. "What walks in her body is not my mother anymore."

I felt something clench in my chest.

"I will tell you who she was." She drew a breath. "She woke before dawn, every morning, to light the hearth."

"She never missed a day... She did not hold us when we cried."

"She did not tell us that she loved us... She was a hard woman and a proud one, and she thought that softness was a thing for people who could afford it."

A faint, wry smile touched her mouth.

"But there was always soup... Every night, at the end of the long table, there was a bowl, kept warm by the fire."

"Whenever I came home from a patrol, however late, there was soup... It was never mentioned."

"It was never explained as well... I did not understand until I was grown that it was the way she said what she could not."

Somebody sniffed.

A few of the Hearth Guard, near the front, had bowed their heads.

"When I was a child, I had a fever... A really bad one."

"For three days I could not stand... She sat beside my bed, and she did not sleep."

"She sang the old song, the one that the wolves sing when the stove is low... She sang it badly."

"In fact... She was a poor singer." Elsbeth’s voice thickened, just slightly, and steadied. "But I have never heard anything more beautiful."

A long, hushed silence filled the circle. And the fire crackled.

A log slid and sent a small spray of sparks into the night.

"Her last words to me," Elsbeth said, "were, Do not let them take the hearth."

She raised her eyes to the dark sky.

"I have relit it... It burns now."

"A steward keeps it, and it will burn until I return." She lowered her gaze. "That is the whole of what she asked of me, and I have done it."

She was silent for a moment. I saw her hand tighten on her sword.

"I make this promise," she said. "I make it before all of you, and before the moons..."

"If it comes to it... if the beast that wears her face stands before me and cannot be turned, then the blade that ends her will be mine."

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Elsbeth lifted her chin.

"No one else will take it from me," she said. "Not out of hatred... Not out of vengeance... but out of respect!"

"She was the finest warrior I ever knew, and she would not wish to be put down by a stranger!"

She bowed her head.

Nobody applauded. And nobody cried out.

It wasn’t that kind of speech.

The whole circle was silent, a vast, hushed ring of firelit faces, and I saw Magnara lower her head and press her fist against her heart.

Velora stood a little apart with her shoulders squared and a bright track of tears running unashamed down her cheek.

Sylvara had folded her hands against her mouth.

Even the young Nightclaw riders, who had spent the whole day trying not to laugh, stood motionless, with their eyes shining.

Corra buried her face in her hands.

Elsbeth stepped back from the fire... She didn’t weep.

She’d said what she’d come to say, and she folded her hands behind her back and stood there in the circle of light for a long moment, as straight and still as a candle.

Then she turned and walked, quietly, into the dark.

...

I found the camp quiet around midnight.

The fires had burned down to heaps of red coals. The tents were dark, and the sky was clear and very cold, with a thousand stars.

Two moons hung over the black pines, the old one thin and silvery, and the new one low and white.

I sat on a log at the edge of the firelight with my cloak around my shoulders, staring at the embers, and thinking about nothing.

Someone sat down beside me.

I hadn’t heard her come. She didn’t ask to sit or say anything.

She just lowered herself onto the log, close enough that our shoulders touched, and then, without any warning, she leaned against me.

Not a little, but... All the way.

She let her whole weight settle against my side, with her head dropping onto my shoulder, and I felt her let out a long, shuddering breath, as if she’d been holding it since the walls of Hearthfang.

I didn’t move... I was afraid that if I did, she would stop.

For a while, we sat there in silence.

Hearing the coals ticked... and a faint wind stirred in the pines.

"I have thought about it," Elsbeth said into my shoulder.

I blinked. "About what...?"

"In the cold forest... Our first night." Her voice was small, muffled, and a little dry. "You said I should be grateful enough not to kill you."

"I told you that I would... think about it."

I remembered. I’d been lying in a hollow in the rocks, half frozen, with her hand clamped around my collar.

"I have... thought about it, Leon Levarion," she said. "I find that I am..."

"...fond of you."