The Sisterhood: Peddyr

In the mountains of Endir, a young man seeks a way to provide for his sisters.

Peddyr stood outside his family’s cabin on the very outskirts of Falgarshen, shrouded by the forest that surrounded the town.

Guarding over them and dominating half the sky above, snow never left the peaks of Falgar, even in the height of tosamne, when the sky was clear and the sun blazed down. 

Tosamne had ended long ago and Leafwane had arrived, turning the leaves of the lower forest into a sea of golden sunsets and blazing embers as the wind shifted through the branches. Every day Peddyr watched the snow descend a little further towards their valley.

Peddyr [i]thunked[i] his axe through the last round of wood. It split in two and his axe sunk into the old stump he used as a chopping block. His muscles burned with the work but it gave him a sense of pride. He had more than enough firewood to burn, he might even be able to sell some. He scratched at the fuzz that clung to his jawline. He’d been proud of its first arrival, but his sisters had teased him that they could see nothing as they peered close with squinting eyes and stifled giggles. He smiled at the memory. Peddyr left his axe and stood with his face to the sun, letting the cool breeze dry his sweat-soaked tunic. It was a good start to the day, hopefully that brought good news too.

Tessa could stack the firewood beneath the shed for him. He needed to head into town.

Endur would be here soon, their first one without their father. But it was not the man Peddyr missed, he hardly knew his father, rather it was the hacksilver his father provided.

Peddyr’s chest tightened. How could he think such things? His father had died, alone on some battlefield far from home. It was shameful of him, to think ill of the dead. But he also couldn’t deny it was true. When his father did come home, it was only in the cold of endur, when the snows were deep and the seas were too treacherous and campaigns too costly to supply. Even then he spent his days in town at the tavern, or with other mercenaries of the Sisterhood in their fortress in the south.

But the hacksilver the Sisterhood gave in allowance to Peddyr and his sisters every new moon … they could survive without their father, they couldn’t survive without food or warm clothes. Peddyr’s chest grew tight at the thought of his sisters growing frail and thin while the winds howled down off the slopes of Falgar, his mouth went dry thinking of them shivering in the cold of their small cabin on the long, dark nights of endur.

The allowance from the Sisterhood was all they had separating them from destitution, and now they did not have it.

Peddyrs heart clamped tight, hammering his ribs and shame burned his cheeks. He would not watch his sisters starve, not while there was strength his arms and breath his lungs.

But facts were facts. His father had died at the worst time of year, just as harvest was ending and the frost arrived to kill the garden. He and his sisters had already grieved as best they could for a stranger, though Maggie was too young to understand what it meant.

Peddyr headed inside.

Their cabin was small, too small, but they made do. There was a fireplace built from river stones and cemented with clay and two chairs that faced it. The kitchen was just a single countertop in the far corner and the dining room consisted of a table and six stools surrounding it. Peddyr’s room was just a blanket he laid out by the fire at night while his sisters climbed up into the loft. It was warmer up there, and they had each other to cuddle up to.

Bella was kneading dough. She was tall for fifteen, just like Peddyr was tall for seventeen. They got their height from their grandfather, their amber eyes as well. Like hawk eyes, their mother used to tell them. Their red hair came from their father though, and their temperaments from their mother. When Peddyr and Bella were little, before Bella had grown her hair out, no one in town could tell them apart.

Peddyr was no carpenter and no stone mason. It was their grandfather, who had built the cabin and everything in it and took them in after their mother passed and their father signed on with the Sisterhood.

Maggie, only five, sat on the countertop watching, little legs swinging back and forth and red hair a frizzy, drifting cloud of fire atop her head.

‘We’re out of flour,’ Bella said, without looking up. ‘We’re out of potatoes too, and garlic,’ Bella added. ‘The onion is next.’ She was always focussed on what needed to be done these days, because there was always too much of it.

‘Already? It’s not even Gloomtide yet,’ Peddyr said, keeping his tone light-hearted for Maggie.

It hadn’t been a good year but still, Peddyr had hoped what they had would last longer than Leafwane. Frost had killed their garden over a month ago, they would get no more from it. Nor could they afford to purchase all their food over endur.

Bella hid her worry from Tess and Maggie, but Peddyr knew his sister, his best friend, too well to be deceived. She was worried. So was he. Bella’s gaze drifted to the corner of the cabin, by the fireplace, to the crate that was new.

Peddyr knew what she was thinking without asking. He always did.

The crate had come the same day they learned of their father’s death. Peddyr knelt beside it and slid his fingers under the lid. Removing it, he set it to the side.

‘What are you doing, Brother?’ Maggie asked, dropping off the countertop.

That was what she always called him: Brother. Unless she was mad at him, then she called him Peddyr.

‘Nothing Moo Moo, just taking father’s armour into town,’ Peddyr said.

Peddyr pulled out the cuirass made from boiled leather and steel. He took the gauntlets and the greaves and the helmet.

Maggie peered into the crate. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, reaching down.

Peddyr took her hand, gently, and removed it.

‘That’s a hatchet, and it’s very sharp,’ Peddyr said. ‘You remember what we told you about this crate?’

‘No touching.’ Maggie folded her arms and pushed out her lower lip as far as it would go.

‘Careful,’ Peddyr warned. ‘If it gets much lower, someone might step on your lip by accident.’ He hid his smile.

‘That’s impossible!’ Maggie informed him.

Peddyr just shrugged and put the lid back on. ‘If you say so.’

Maggie froze. Her gaze widened, then narrowed in suspicioun. She pushed her lip out again and strained her eyes to look down at it, to see if it was low enough to step on. 

Peddyr shared a glance will Bella, both of them hiding their laughter. Peddyr ruffled Maggie’s hair and picked up the pieces of armour.

‘I’ll take this to Daire, he’ll give me a fair price for it,’ Peddyr said. ‘I won’t be back until nightfall.’

Every week Peddyr went into town and worked odd jobs. He unloaded or loaded barges on the docks, chopped firewood, swept the floors of the carpenter’s shop or the sheep shearer’s. Between his grandfather, his father and himself, odd jobs had been enough. But now it was just Peddyr. Odd jobs were no longer enough.

Today was the day someone took him on full time. 

It had to be.

‘Take this,’ Bella said. 

She picked up a bundle of cloth on the table. It was their father’s cloak. Warm and thick with a fur lined hood; the Sisterhood patch had been removed from the front and back. The cloak was steel silver and rough-spun on the outside, clearly a Sisterhood cloak. They couldn’t afford to buy a new jacket.

‘I’ll wear your jacket now,’ Bella said. ‘Tess has outgrown hers anyways, so she can have mine this endur.’

There was Bella, by most accounts still a child, thinking ahead again. His jacket was thick and shed the water well. It would keep her warm. It should have been him giving it to her, thinking ahead like that, keeping her safe. ‘Thank you,’ Peddyr said, setting the cloak over his shoulders. 

‘It suits you,’ Bella said.

Peddyr’s stomach coiled tight.

***

The log homes of Falgarshen were spread along the valley and the shores of a wide river. The pathways were lined with stone and well-worn by the tread of wheel, hoof and boot. The docks on the shore contained canoes and a couple smaller row boats for fishing, no trade barges up from the ocean, which meant no work there today.

The tannery was along the widest pathway, wedged between the roper and the butcher. Simple wooden racks leaned against the walls inside the tannery, hides dangling from them. Cooper barrels cut in half and filled with both foul and sweet-smelling liquids were against the back wall. 

Peddyr stepped through the open front of the tannery, into its shade. Daire was leaning over a table, shaping a small rabbit hide into a drawstring pouch. He was a thick man, grown thicker with age. 

‘I have no work for you today, Peddyr,’ Daire said, without looking up.

Peddyr laid out his father’s armour on another table. 

‘What’s this?’ Daire set down his punch and mallet and shuffled over. He lifted the cuirass and ran his fingers over the buckles. ‘Lot of wear.’

‘What’s it worth?’ Peddyr asked. His stomach was clamped, like he stood at the edge of a cliff looking down. He needed enough to get his sisters through endur.

Daire looked at him for the first time, his gaze lingering over the Sisterhood cloak. ‘Sixteen ingots.’

It was a lot. More than Peddyr earned in a whole month of work. But it wasn’t enough. 

They still had their father’s hatchet, and his sword. He had hoped to keep the hatchet, and that selling the sword might get them through endur but if all this was only worth sixteen … It wouldn’t be enough.

Peddyr needed reliable work.

But an apprenticeship with Daire wasn’t the answer, it wouldn’t earn him a wage until he was released as a journeyman, a few years away.

Peddyr nodded to Daire, to accept his offer. Daire lumbered into the back a moment and returned with sixteen ingots, rectangular silver bars.

Peddyr held them in his hand a moment. They were heavy but it was a good weight, and it settled his stomach.

But it wouldn’t last. And it wasn’t enough.

‘I need work, Daire, more than odd jobs. Have you heard anything?’

Daire scratched his head, looking out to the village. ‘Sisterhood is always hiring.’

Fear broke a sweat on his brow. The Sisterhood. Never. It was a ten year contract when you joined. The pay was good but they made his father a killer, a gambler and a drunk. Worst of all, they took his father away from his family for years on end. 

‘I couldn’t do that to my sisters,’ Peddyr said.

Daire tsked and tapped his fingers on the table. ‘There’s the merchant. Might be he could take you on a bit more.’

‘I’ll go ask,’ Peddyr said, slipping the ingots into his pocket. ‘Thanks Daire.’

***

The merchant’s guild kept warehouses by the dock and would pay him to load or unload their ships.

Peddyr followed the pathway past the other shops and found Lhosten on the docks. Lhosten was the master merchant, all the way from Midar. He wore a green robe, had a rounded belly and discs of gold hung from his ears, pulling his lobes towards his shoulders. Gold and silver bracelets rattled from his wrists, his boots were ermine and free from dust and mud.

‘Peddyr, my boy.’ Lhosten smiled, his gold tooth flashing in the sunlight. He swung an arm out to show the empty docks. ‘No work today, maybe not until dewgrass. The endur storms are starting early on the Dovish Ocean, so I’ve heard.’

‘I was wondering if, perhaps, there was more work than just when the barges arrive?’

‘Ah.’ Lhosten’s smile disappeared. He cleared his throat. ‘How are you with numbers, my boy? Can you read?’

No one in Falgarshen that Peddyr knew could read. He shook his head.

Lhosten blew out a lungful of air. Peddyr had never seen him look so uncomfortable before. With one hand, he played with the bracelets of the other until, finally, ‘I’m sorry, Peddyr. A warehouse can only be swept so many times. To work for a merchant’s guild, you are either the merchant or the muscle.’

‘You’ve seen me unload the barge. I’m stronger than I look,’ Peddyr said.

‘And you can wield a sword with skill? Hit a moving target with a crossbow? You understand the ocean currents and can read the wind in the clouds? Tie knots and set sails? There is more to life on a merchant ship than just lifting crates and rowing.’

‘I can learn.’

‘I’ve no doubt, dear boy, but there are so many others in want of work who already know.’ 

Peddyr dropped his head. Everywhere wanted you to be skilled but no one wanted to train you.

Lhosten sighed and placed a hand on Peddyr’s shoulder. ‘I don’t want you to give up hope. When the next barge comes in, I’ll ask, but as I said, with the endur storms …’

His sisters would be dead by dewgrass.

‘I understand. Thanks, Lhosten.’ All emotion had bled from Peddyr’s voice. 

The Sisterhood. Was that all the hope he had left? He didn’t want to kill anyone. He didn’t want to know how to wield a sword. He didn’t want to die in a faraway land and leave his sisters destitute. 

Peddyr wrung his hands and shuffled back through the village. His mind sifted through everyone he knew. The baker had a daughter and a son already employed. The blacksmith had his niece apprenticed. Family always came first in Falgarshen. Peddyr couldn’t blame them.

There was one option. Not ideal but certainly better than duelling death with the Sisterhood.

Elise would be at the sawmill on the river. It would cost him one of his precious ingots to see her, and a second to return, but it might save him from the Sisterhood. The men who worked for Elise, fallers and porters and camp cooks and river walkers, lived out in the mountains year-round. They cut the trees, hacked off the branches, hauled them to the river and floated them all the way down to Falgarshen, where they were milled and packed onto barges and sold across Endir. They say two hundred worked for Elise, perhaps she had room for one more.

Peddyr left Falgarshen walking along the rocky shores of the lake, stones grinding beneath his boots. A chill wind was coming off the lake, stinging his face as the sun began its descent into the west. It wouldn’t be long before it dipped behind the high peak of Falgar and cast their valley into shadow. All around them, the sky would be filled with the pink and golden light of dusk, yet their valley would be in darkness. Falgarshen, meant [i]in Falgar’s shadow[i] in the old tongue, or so his grandfather had told him when he was younger.

Peddyr paused at the banks of a creek, where it met the lake. Here he would cut up into the trees and continue to the river ferry.

Out on the lake, heading northwards, was a barge sitting low on the water. It was a fat, flat thing with a canvas roof and square stacks of pale lumber. The sail was down, and the oars were out. A single man sat at the back of the boat, leaning against the handle of the rudder and smoking a pipe.

Maybe Peddyr could be an oarsman? Camping along the lakes and rivers would be all right. You didn’t get to choose the company you kept or the man you sat next to for the weeks you were away but you did what you must when starvation was the only alternative.

Perhaps he would become a faller or a river walker. Neither job allowed for mistakes. River walkers drowned, fallers were crushed. He would be careful, he wouldn’t make mistakes.

It didn’t matter what he wanted or didn’t want, he would take whatever Elise had.

The lumber barge continued to grow smaller as it headed northwards, towards a bend in the lake and Peddyr turned, continuing along the trail.

He paused at an odd sound. Something was in distress, a wild and feral whine. Peddyr found a game trail and pushed through the trees. A fox, manic, had its leg caught in a snare. The twine had bit tight and there was blood on the fox’s leg.

Poor thing.

Peddyr used his cloak, throwing it over the animal and pinning it to the ground as gently as he could. He snipped the twine off the fox’s leg and let it go. It paused at the edge of a patch of thick bushes to cast one, quick glance back at him before limping from view.

Bella may have seen a seen an easy way to make some coin, by bringing its hide to Daire, and his grandfather most certainly would have, but Peddyr didn’t have that in him. Fox’s had always been his favourite, the tiny, clever underdogs of the forest.

Peddyr returned to the main trail. 

The river ferry connected the main road from Falgarshen to the mountain roads that branched northwards, deeper into Endir. It also stood between Peddyr and Elise’s mill on the next river over.

The ferry was on the far side when Peddyr arrived. The ferryman gave him a wave from where he rested on the bank. He leapt aboard and pulled the rope to bring the ferry across.

‘Mornin,’ the ferryman said as he reached the dock.

‘Morning,’ Peddyr replied. He stepped onto the ferry and gave the man an ingot. Peddyr’s pocket was lighter now and the fact he would be giving up a second one on his return set his heart pattering fast as a hummingbird’s wings. 

The ferryman held the ingot in his flat palm and pondered over the weight of the silver for just a moment. ‘Right, off we go then.’ The ingot disappeared into his cloak somewhere and Peddyr grabbed onto a post as the ferry lurched away from the dock.

The river was low and slow moving this time of year, come dewgrass when the mountain snows melted away it would be swift and high, swelling against the banks with snow melt.

Peddyr diverged from the main road a few miles on when the smell of freshly cut wood filled the air. As he neared, the sound of saw-blades through wood grew. It reminded him of his grandfather.

The sawmill was built over a river. A great paddlewheel spun endlessly with the current, turning giant wooden cogs that moved a saw blade as tall as a house.

The mill itself employed a dozen men, at least. Peddyr knew the jobs, roughly, from listening to his grandfather over the years. There was the sawyer, the scaler, the decker and the bucker. Several were just labourers, doing what the other four instructed. If Peddyr could get in as a labourer here, he’d be able to go home to his sisters every night and maybe, eventually, become a sawyer or scaler or decker or bucker himself.

Only a few of the men noticed Peddyr, as he headed for the small cottage wedged in a clearing further downriver. Peddyr waved at them, they waved back. Falgarshen was one of the larger settlements of Endir but even then, it wasn’t so large he didn’t know most folks by face if not by name.

The cottage was a single-story, timber frame building with a cedar-plank roof. Elise had built it herself twenty years ago with some help from Peddyr’s grandfather. There weren’t many timber frame buildings in Falgarshen, most new houses were still built in the traditional style of log cabins. Timber frame required expertise and precision, log cabins required common sense and raw strength.

Peddyr knocked on the door.

‘If you’ve snapped another of my blades, Muldowney, I’m taking it out of your pay.’ Elise wrenched the door open and startled. 

She had wild brown hair that had peppered to mostly grey and deep wrinkles across her tanned face. Two fingers from her left hand were missing, she wore a stained tunic and pants and an axe hung from her leather belt.

‘Peddyr, is it?’ she asked. ‘I heard about your grandfather, my condolences.’ His grandfather had died almost twelve months ago, but then Elise hardly made it to town. ‘You need some lumber then? Your grandfather and I had a deal, I’m happy to honour it.’

Peddyr’s mouth went dry. He hated asking strangers for help, and it felt like help, when he came to them unskilled and desperate.

‘I was hoping for a�"’ 

His voice caught in his throat and he cleared it.

‘For a job.’

‘You know your way around an axe I take it? Why wouldn’t you, being Taren’s grandson. How about a saw? Heard your grandfather never did train you in his woodworking though, damn shame, he was the best I ever met, hard working too. Some people, too focused on the present to think about the future, though. Something else then. Not afraid of heights are you? Gotta climb a hundred feet sometimes, to get the tops off. You know how to make a fir tree, thirty-nine feet around on a steep hillside with a wicked lean, fall exactly where you want it to? Cause you don’t and you crack it on a rock or another tree or worse, get it stuck so that it kills some poor b*****d some other day, you cost me more money than you’re worth. But by the skies, you’re a skinny thing, though. Got good balance? Think you could walk the logs as they float down the river? Your grandfather’d never forgive me if you got yourself drowned.’

‘I was hoping something here, at the mill?’ he asked when she paused for breath.

‘At the mill? Can’t do that I’m afraid. Everyone wants the mill jobs. Repetitive. Back breaking. But close to home and decent pay too. You do your time with me, anywhere in Endir will take you on after. You want to work at the mill you gotta prove yourself out in the bush first. Could use you as a choker, maybe. But you gotta learn how the logs move, how they come loose and how they get stuck when the plow horses pull. You know horses kid?’

Peddyr shook his head.

‘We’re heading into endur, our busiest time of year. Come back in dewgrass kid, things slow down enough, I’ll have time to put you on something and train you up. Now if you don’t mind, I got to check on Muldowney, make sure he don’t think he knows better than what I told him.’ 

She stepped past him but Peddyr couldn’t let her go.

‘My sisters and I will die of starvation by then,’ Peddyr said, grabbing onto her sleeve.

Elise froze and took a long glance at his hand on her. 

Peddyr let go. ‘I-I’m sorry. Please. I’ll do anything. I’ve gone through the whole town.’ Don’t make me join the Sisterhood. Don’t send me to my death. Or worse, make me a killer.

Her gaze slid up to meet his, wrinkles deepening as she frowned. ‘Your grandfather was an oak in a forest of maple, so for him I can do the favour of taking you on. But I won’t let my business suffer unnecessarily either. Come back in dewgrass and I’ll give you a skill. Mud and ice, I’m even willing to pay you to learn, you won’t find that offer anywhere in Endir. So don’t go being ungrateful, and don’t go making me rescind.’

Peddyr clenched his jaw and nodded, brows furrowed. Head bowed, he turned and headed back to town. His throat was tight, his chest, his muscles clenched. His thoughts whirled like a snowstorm.

Who else? Where else? What else? There had to be something, anything.

But there was nothing.

The woods were cooler now, the valley already darkened in Falgar’s shadow. Peddyr kicked a rock off the trail, clamping down on the rage that was like a fire in his chest.

Dewgrass.

Rich folk saw dewgrass as a time of celebration, the hardships of endur were over. Poorer folk knew the truth. Dewgrass was death. The food you worked so hard to grow and preserve for endur was run out and the garden you planted soon as the night frost was gone wouldn’t be ready to harvest for weeks. If a family was going to die of starvation, it was in dewgrass.

Peddyr would not let his sisters starve.

In Falgarshen he bought a sack of cornmeal, cheaper than flour, with his hacksilver. He bought a skein of yarn as well, so Bella could make them new mitts, which she wouldn’t confess they needed but they did. He got a pound of salt, a bag of apples and another sack of barley. Unable to carry it all, he laid it out in his cloak and tied it together like a pack that he could sling over his shoulder.

He would talk with Bella about today and she would know what to do.

The evening was cold but the hike back to the cabin was enough to see him arrived soaked in sweat.

Maggie smashed into him as he opened the door, wrapping her arms around his legs and squealing.

Peddyr chuckled. ‘Hello Moo Moo.’

‘What do you have for me?’ she asked. Her red hair was darkening as she got older, just as his own had, and Bella’s and Tessa’s. It had gone from fiery ginger when she was born, to a shimmering copper now that she was five. Soon it would darken to auburn.

‘What makes you think I brought anything for you? Only good children get treats,’ Peddyr said. The words shamed him. He should have brought more. He should have brought consistency and the promise of a safe future with him by their side. Instead he brought only apples.

Tessa was sitting by the fireplace, setting the kindling in place to get the fire started. She had twigs and leaves scattered in her short hair, and her bare feet were black with dirt. Her clothes were covered in dog fur from the wild mutt she ran with, the one that Peddyr wouldn’t let inside, or anywhere near Maggie.

‘I’ve been good,’ Maggie said, earnestly.

‘He knows you have, he’s just teasing,’ Tessa said.

‘Tessa, be nice,’ Bella scolded from the kitchen. ‘You fell for it as easily as she did once.’

‘Sorry,’ Tessa muttered, snapping more kindling in half and laying it in a pile.

Peddyr smiled. ‘I brought treats for everyone actually.’ He set his cloak down on the table and opened it up. He pulled out two apples and cut them in half, giving one to each of them.

Lifting the hatch on the cellar, Peddyr set the rest of everything inside and they sat down to a dinner of bread and pottage.

After dinner Tessa and Maggie climbed into the loft and Peddyr followed to tuck Maggie in. He added a few logs to the fire and then he and Bella wrapped themselves in their blankets and sat outside on the porch.

‘Any luck today?’ Bella asked.

‘Elise said dewgrass, she’d take me on.’

‘Do you trust her word? She’s all business. Grandfather liked her, but he knew that her mill always came first. What if she decides she doesn’t need you?’ Bella asked.

‘She said, for grandfather, she would. What else can we do?’

Bella said. ‘I can sew, and knit.’

‘You’ve already tried everyone too. We have enough hacksilver for only the first month or so of endur. And only if we’re careful.’

‘What if we used it to buy a cart and a mule? Plenty of people in town might be willing to buy firewood. We just need a way to transport it to them.’

It was a good idea, but perhaps overestimating the town’s need.

‘In the later months, maybe,’ Peddyr said. ‘If they didn’t cut enough for themselves, or endur is colder than normal. I don’t know that we got enough from father’s armour for that though.’

Peddyr pulled out the left over hacksilver from his pocket and set it down between them. It was enough for a cart, but not a mule. ‘There’s enough for a down payment,’ he said. ‘I could get a loan for the mule.’

‘We’d have to feed it too,’ Peddyr pointed out. ‘And we already owe enough to others. You think Eve or Callum would appreciate hearing we bought a cart?’

Peddyr looked out to the stars above them. What could he do? He was tired of living off favours and his grandfather’s memory. 

Maggie was already so small. Her little body wouldn’t make it through if things got tough. And Tessa, she was springing up like a sapling in full sun, but she was just as skinny, just as malnourished, as all of them. Even the nights Peddyr went without dinner wouldn’t be enough, and how long could he keep that up for?

‘We have father’s sword,’ Bella said. ‘We should sell it too, now. Buy what we need for all of endur. If we wait, the cost of everything will only go up as supplies dwindle for everyone.’

It still wasn’t enough. 

Hope wasn’t enough. 

Selling the sword, the hatchet, firewood, odd jobs, it was all delaying the inevitable.

Peddyr pushed off the steps, leaving his blanket behind. The night air was cold, but it settled his stomach.

[i]The Sisterhood is always hiring[i]

It would mean work now, today. His sisters would be able to pick up a monthly stipend. Their father had set what he knew was the minimum his children could live off of. The rest he kept to drink and gamble with. Though Peddyr wouldn’t make as much as his father had until he proved himself and gained a rank or two, he would give it all to his sisters and it would be enough, combined with selling the armour and the sword, to get them through endur and dewgrass. By next harvest he would earn more, he could throw everything he had into his training, take every job they gave him and when his minimum term was up, then he could take Elise up on her offer and return to Falgarshen. 

Ten years. 

His mouth went dry.

But this was something he could do, not something he had to wait and hope for while his sisters starved.

What if he died? Every moment of every day would be spent terrified that he would never see his sisters again. Death was a different kind of abandonment. Could he do that to them? 

There was no leaving the Sisterhood once he joined them, not until he’d paid them back with ten years of his life, if he made it that long.

It was a slow death for all of them or a quick death for him somewhere down the path. When he looked at it that way, it was an easy choice.

‘I’m going to join the Sisterhood.’

***

The horn sounded every dawn and the whole Fortress woke and the halls filled like the buzzing of bees. Peddyr swung off his cot and put on his woollen socks. The other recruits grumbled and coughed and dressed. The room held a dozen of them, their cots lining each wall and a single trunk at the foot of the bed.

Peddyr put on the battered leather armour assigned to him. It had been a loose fit three months ago when he arrived. It wasn’t anymore. Drilling from sunrise to sunset had packed him with muscle and he’d found he was pretty decent with a sword.

Peddyr put on his father’s cloak, the Sisterhood patches sewn back on, and followed the others out the door to the mess hall.

They lined the benches of the tables, over a thousand of them and it wasn’t even the full strength of the Sisterhood. Out beyond Endir there were whole companies wintering in the halls of the lords who hired them, or taking up every town inn, waiting for orders to march or for the Sisterhood fleet to get them.

Breakfast was always the same. Soggy oats, a wedge of bread and on every Sunneth, bacon. 

‘Peddyr Niallson,’ a woman’s voice called.

A messenger stood at the front of the hall with a sack full of letters. Peddyr took his porridge and bread with him, else he return to find it missing, a common prank among his fellows.

‘You Peddyr?’ the messenger asked. She wore thick woollen clothes and a hatchet at her waist but no armour. 

Peddyr nodded.

The messengers of the Sisterhood travelled light and fast, were expert horseman and rarely saw combat. Though that didn’t mean their life was easy. It was one of little sleep and cold nights on the ground when moving through enemy territory. It was a different kind of danger, and one you faced alone. There were no Sisters to stand by your side if you were caught or attacked. Not a life Peddyr wanted, though they’d offered it to him given his size when he first arrived.

‘Here.’ She handed him a scroll.

Peddyr wedged the bread in his mouth, so he had a free hand to take it. Rather than return to the table where his fellows would torment and tease him about the letter, he headed up to the walls.

He sat on the merlon, legs dangling over the wall. The sun was just detaching itself from the horizon, blazing the sky with orange flame. The snow on the ground sat in patches, still clinging to existence as the days warmed. The ships in the harbour bobbed on the waves. He had only a few minutes before breakfast ended and drilling began. 

The scroll was from Bella. There were no words, they couldn’t read or write, but there were drawings in charcoal from all three of his sisters. Bella had drawn the constellation of the bear, the first constellation their mother taught them, the one that would always lead them home. Tessa had drawn her wild mutt and Peddyr didn’t doubt that without him there Bella had caved and it now slept beside Tessa every night. And Maggie, little Moo Moo, had drawn the four of them, smiling and holding hands.

Peddyr let his tears fall. Ten years. In ten years his contract would be over and he would be back to them.

His childhood had been him and Bella, running through the woods, climbing trees, swimming in the frigid rivers. Then came Tessa, the lone wolf. She tolerated her siblings until she was old enough to wild alone.

Maggie’s arrival had been such pure joy, and yet another event marked by their father’s absence.

Peddyr was a mercenary but he would never, never become his father. He would return home every endur and stay, cut firewood and teach Maggie and Tessa and fix whatever needed fixing. He wouldn’t disappear on them.

Something black appeared on the horizon from the east. Peddyr squinted, drying his tears. 

A ship. 

After another few moments, more ships joined it. Part of the Sisterhood fleet returning home? That meant only one thing. The seas had calmed. Dewgrass had arrived.

Another horn sounded, but it was not the one to signal the start of drilling. It was too low.

Sisters began entering the outer courtyard, all thousand of them. Peddyr shoved the letter into a pocket.

In the courtyard, he wove through the crowd to find his bunkmates.

‘What’s going on?’ he whispered.

‘Iriella,’ Sarah replied, nodding up to a balcony.

Peddyr had seen Iriella but never met her. She seemed too young to be the commander of the largest mercenary force in the known world. She stood in shining plate armour with a silver-steel cape edged in black fur. Her sable hair was loose and blowing in the cold wind coming off the ocean.

Several captains stood beside Iriella, scarred and battle-hardened. Peddyr was glad he would fight beside them and not against them. 

Iriella raised both hands and the hum of conversation ceased.

‘Endur is over,’ Iriella called to them. ‘It is time we head out once more, to raise our flag over the battlefield.’

The crowd remained silent, tense. They all wanted to know where they were going, what lord were they going to fight for?

‘This season we are going where no Sister has gone before. All of us, every single one will gather. We will sail far, far to the south. Past the swamps of Riparia and the burning mountains of Asgar; beyond the Ebony Islands and deep into the jungles of Jan-Ul. We do not know the terrain, we do not know the people, but I have absolute faith in us. Trust your training, and trust your Sisters.’

She left then, with a whip of her cape and her captains following in her wake.

Peddyr didn’t know what to think. The whole courtyard buzzed. 

There was excitement. Jan-Ul. A place of legend and rumour. The air was said to be heavy with water. A land of danger where even the smallest animal was capable of killing a full-grown man.

Others voiced concern. Who would they be fighting against? What kind of jungle lord was rich enough to hire the entire Sisterhood? And why did they feel such a large force would be needed. Such a thing had never been done before. Nobles hired companies. One or two at a time.

‘Better go pack our stuff,’ Sarah said. ‘They’ll ship us out before dusk falls.’

This was it. He was leaving Endir for the first time.

Peddyr followed Sarah back to their dorm. Everything he owned fit into a single sack with room to spare. He had his wooden canteen, the one his grandfather had carved. He had a spare pair of socks, a needle and thread, a knife and the blanket off his bed.

‘Recruits!’ someone hollered. A captain stood in the door. ‘Ye think yer own s**t’s the only thing that needs packing? Let’s move, we got a whole boat to load.’ The captain was a grizzled old man with deep, pink scarring across his face. His shaggy hair was peppered grey and his accent was from the far north.

‘I’m Ean, yer captain. It’s my job to see as many of ye survive yer first battle as is reasonable and that ye pull yer own weight. Now get moving!’

Peddyr swung his sack over his shoulder and followed Ean out the door.

They loaded the ship with crates of food and barrels of water, wine and rum; quarrels of arrows and stacks of bows; spears, hatchets, axes; poles and canvas for tents.

When it was all done the sun was setting, but that didn’t stop the Sisterhood. Against a sky of diamonds, the Sisterhood fleet launched.

Peddyr stood at the bow, far from the hustle of the sailing crew getting the ship underway. He stared in the direction of home, lost in the darkness, and imagined it shrinking away. The ship creaked and rocked. On either side, torches appeared to float above the waves in the inky blackness, bracketed to the masts of the nearby ships to signal their positions in the dark.

They were sailing south to unknown lands against an unknown enemy. 

His mouth went dry. He’d tried to push aside the danger of joining the Sisterhood and now it was glaring him in the face like a rabid wolf. His father had survived twenty years in their ranks, Peddyr was only asking for ten. And he’d thrown himself into his training. His sword was sharp and his arm was strong. But would it be enough?

‘Yer Niall’s son ain’t ye?’ Ean asked, approaching. He scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘Got that same auburn hair and burning gaze.’

Peddyr nodded.

'And yer scared outta yer wits.'

'I have people who depend on me,' Peddyr whispered.

'Whatever brought yer here, it can’t be undone. No point looking back. I’ve watched ye in the yard. Yer a natural with that sword. Ye’ll be fine. Just … fight for them.’ 

‘Thank you,’ Peddyr said. He put his hand on his sword hilt. The weight of it was already familiar on his hip. Ten years wasn’t so long, was it?

At least he’d have Ean at his side.

It was a cloudless sky and the temperature dropped, sending Peddyr seeking the warmth of the hold.

His bunkmates and several others were crowded around benches, playing dice and passing dark bottles around. In the corner, a group sang, their faces flushed. 

So this was his father’s life, the life he preferred to his own family.

Though Peddyr couldn’t help but smile as Sarah pulled him down onto the bench and shoved a bottle of rum in his hand, he’d rather be home with his sisters.