Winter Witch Read Online Free Page B

darkness surrendered to a silver sky crowned with a wisp of rosy sunrise.
    In the silence that followed, villagers stood blinking, unable able to comprehend that the terrible night was finally over, that they had survived.
    Ellasif ran to the armory, her throat tight with dread. The baby’s cries brought a smile of relief to her face. She unlatched the door and swept up the red-faced infant.
    “I’ll milk the white nanny as soon as I can catch her,” she promised the babe. “You can drink as much as you like.”
    She kept crooning to the baby as she joined the knot of children gathered near the fire pit. The sight of her sister—her ward now, her child—soothed some of the anguish of the loss of her parents. Some of the other children were already being led away to new homes by villagers all too accustomed to the orphaning of their neighbors’ children, but there were more orphans than families to take them. To Ellasif’s surprise, Red Ochme walked along the line of children, inspecting them as a war leader might eye recruits. She paused before Olenka, tall and flame-haired like her warrior mother.
    Of course, Ellasif thought. Olenka is the very image of a shield maiden, everything I am not.
    But Red Ochme moved on. She strode directly to Ellasif and looked her up and down. Ellasif’s face flushed. She was afraid she had shamed herself before the village’s greatest hero when she mutilated the corpse of the defeated winter wolf commander. Still, Ochme’s gaze lingered on Ellasif’s dry eyes and bloody hands, which clutched her swaddled sister.
    “If you work hard, I will take you into my home. I will train you. You will become strong.”
    Ellasif could only stare. The dream taking shape before her was too large for any words she knew. Red Ochme saw the answer in Ellasif’s eyes and sealed the deal with a curt nod. Then she added, “First you must find a home for that child.”
    “No.” The word burst from Ellasif’s throat unbidden. “You must take both of us, Liv and me together.”
    And just like that, her sister had a name.
    The warrior frowned and shook her head. “Anngard has a babe at breast. She can feed another.”
    “Liv drinks goat’s milk,” Ellsaif said firmly. “She will not be the first warrior of White Rook to be raised on it.”
    “And who will tend those goats and raise this baby?” Ochme demanded. “A warrior’s training is nothing easy, and you will have many chores.”
    Ellasif lifted her chin stubbornly. “I will do it all.”
    A long moment of silence passed as the two warriors, the old and the young, took each other’s measure. Red Ochme shrugged. “We’ll see.”
    Emotions too powerful to name tore at Ellasif’s heart as she followed Red Ochme to the cottage they would share. She would become a warrior, trained by the village war leader. She would claim her mother’s maidensword, and someday she would temper a sword of her own in the blood of her enemies. As a sword maiden of the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, she would be respected and feared. She could claim the place that was written in her nature, as much a part of her as a nestling bird’s yearning for the sky. But how could she be glad of this—of anything—when her parents lay dead in the ruin of their home?
    And what of the uncanny storm and the attack that followed? All the stories Ellasif had heard about Baba Yaga’s hut suggested that its purposes might be unknowable, but not capricious. It had come to White Rook for a reason. It seemed to be looking for a baby.
    She knew then with certainty that it had been looking for Liv, now her daughter as much as her sister. Liv, the child who’d laughed to welcome the tiren’kii.
    Try as she might, Ellasif could find no other explanation. The tiren’kii had drawn the winterfolk’s attention. They would come again, for everyone knew that once a tiren’kii possessed a child it did not leave as long as the child lived. For the safety of everyone in White Rook,