Bruises and Barley

Thjora

Can a woman haul six hundred pounds of kiln-dried winter barley before her captor decides to open the dungeon grates?

I intend to find out.

The lock on the brewhouse door clicks from the outside, locking Skirn in the upper kitchens and leaving me alone with twenty empty copper kettles. Vargun wants three hundred gallons of metabolic stabilizer by midnight tomorrow. He thinks stripping my apprentice will break my pace, force me to beg for help, and hand him the recipe out of sheer panic.

He forgets who taught him that pain is just an unpaid invoice.

I unhook the heavy iron ring from my leather belt. Four keys. The long one with the square teeth belongs to the dry stores beneath the grain elevator.

I lift the brass tallow lamp off the hook by the distribution hatch. The flame gutters against the sour draft pulling through the floorboards. To my left, the high-pressure steam manifold groans, pressurized water trickling into the mash pre-heater. The copper pipes are hot. The vats are scrubbed. The only missing element is the grain.

I cross the brewhouse floor, my boots crunching on stray hulls.

The descent to the deep cellar is cut directly into the granite bedrock. Twenty-two steps, narrow and slick with damp lime. Down here, thirty feet below the main courtyard, the fortress smells of stagnant river water, damp stone, and fermented malt dust.

At the bottom of the stairs, the heavy oak door of the dry stores blocks the corridor.

I shove the square-toothed iron key into the plate. The tumblers resist, crusted with grease and saltpeter, before snapping back with a dull thunk.

I kick the heavy timber open.

Blackness swallows the corridor.

The air inside the vault is three degrees colder than the brewhouse. It smells of dried chicory, roasted rye, and the sharp, nutty sweetness of winter black barley. The ceiling vaults hang low, braced by massive balks of rough-hewn pine. In the center of the room sit two dozen hundred-pound burlap sacks, stacked three high on cedar pallets to keep the bilge water from rotting the bottoms.

I set the lamp on the nearest pallet.

My fingers work the hemp twine binding the top sack. The knot gives way. I plunge my bare hand into the grain, letting the dark, polished kernels spill between my knuckles.

The grain is dry. Crisp. No mold, no weevils.

I crush three kernels between my thumb and forefinger. They split with a sharp snap, releasing an aroma like charred toast and bitter almond.

Bruised barley.

The sharp, resinous smell hits the back of my throat, and my pulse jerks violently.

Ten years vanish in a single breath.

·  ·  ·

The courtyard stones were slick with gray sleet and horse dung.

I was ten years old, shivering in an oversized wool tunic that dragged in the mud, my wrists tied behind an iron ring embedded in the granite whipping post.

Hrokkr stood on the timber platform above me. He held a three-tailed bullhide whip in his right hand, the leather weighted with lead pellets at the tips. His gray beard was crusted with grease from his midday mutton, his eyes cold and flat as slate.

"A thief in my brewhouse," Hrokkr roared, his voice bouncing between the fortress walls. "A stray from the gutter who thinks she can hide yeast cakes in her boots."

The soldiers circled the post, laughing into their collars.

I refused to bow my head. My jaw ached from clenching my teeth. My ribs still burned where the gate sergeant had booted me across the gravel.

"Strip her back," Hrokkr commanded.

The guard stepped forward, reaching for the collar of my tunic.

A shadow broke through the ring of soldiers.

Eighteen-year-old Vargun shoved the guard aside so hard the man stumbled into the mud.

Vargun was lean then, all raw muscle, broad shoulders, and unhealed scars. His dark hair hung in matted strings around a face that looked carved from basalt. His tunic was torn at the collar, exposing the jagged brand of the bastard heir burned into his collarbone.

"Move, boy," Hrokkr barked from the platform.

Vargun did not move. He stepped directly between my tied wrists and the whipping post, turning his back to his father.

"She is my brewer," Vargun said. His voice was already deep, gravelly, and stripped of fear. "You want blood for the yeast? Take it from my skin."

Hrokkr's jaw hardened. A cruel, vicious grin spread across the old man's mouth.

"You want to bleed for a rat, bastard?" Hrokkr snarled. "Then take her count. Twenty lashes."

Vargun gripped the iron ring above my head. His massive hands locked around the rusted metal, his forearms corded with tension. His chest pressed against my trembling shoulders, pinning me against the post.

The whip cracked.

The leather tore through Vargun's tunic with the sound of splitting canvas.

He did not scream. He did not grunt. His breath came out in a short, hot hiss against my ear, smelling of pine smoke and dried meat.

Two. Three. Four.

The lead pellets struck bone. Blood splattered across the granite post, warm droplets spraying across my cheek. His muscles locked rock-solid against my back, absorbing every ounce of force meant to crush my spine.

"Count them," Vargun whispered down at me, his teeth grinding together so hard I heard the enamel scrape. "Count them, Thjora."

Five. Six. Seven.

I stared at his bare collarbone, at the pulse jumping violently in the hollow of his neck.

"Seven," I whispered back, my voice cracking against the cold sleet.

"Louder," he ordered.

"Eight. Nine. Ten."

By the twentieth stroke, his tunic hung in bloody ribbons. His knuckles were white against the iron ring, his skin pale as tallow. When Hrokkr finally lowered the whip and spat into the mud, Vargun did not collapse.

He waited for the guards to cut my bonds.

When my hands fell free, he reached down with bloody fingers, gripped my chin, and forced my eyes up to his.

"You owe me twenty quarts of Maltar, stray," he murmured, his dark eyes burning with fever and malice. "Do not let my blood go cheap."

·  ·  ·

Later that night, the fortress slept under a blanket of freezing fog.

I climbed the narrow wooden ladder into the malt loft, carrying a clay bowl filled with crushed chicory root, cold spring water, and vinegar.

Vargun was sitting on a pile of empty grain sacks in the darkest corner of the loft. He was stripped to the waist. His back was a map of crimson furrows, dark blood caked over bruised, swollen flesh. He held a rusted iron dagger in his left hand, turning the blade slowly over his knuckles.

I knelt in the chaff beside him.

"You should be in the barracks," he said without looking up.

"You will get gangrene," I replied, dipping a clean piece of linen into the vinegar. "Then who will protect my yeast?"

"Nobody."

I pressed the vinegar-soaked linen against the first laceration along his shoulder blade.

Vargun's entire torso went rigid. His dagger halted in midair. A sharp intake of air whistled through his teeth, but his hands did not shake.

"Hold still," I muttered.

"I am still."

I cleaned the cuts one by one, wiping away the dirt and dried blood before pressing the mashed chicory poultice into the open flesh. My small hands were coated in his blood, sticky and warm in the freezing loft.

He did not thank me. He did not pull away.

He sat there in the dark, breathing the rich, roasted scent of malt, letting a ten-year-old girl sew his torn skin with needle and gut-string.

When I finished the last stitch near his spine, he turned his head, his dark gaze locking onto mine.

"I did not take the whip for your sake, Thjora," he said softly, his voice rough as grinding stones. "You brew the draught that keeps this compound alive. Anyone who touches you is stealing from my inheritance."

"I am not your inheritance," I told him, wiping my bloody fingers on my apron.

His mouth twisted into a cold, predatory line.

"Everything in this fortress belongs to me," Vargun answered. "The walls. The iron. The vats. And the hands that turn the mash."

·  ·  ·