Among the many whispered myths that echoed in Skelene, it was said that twins share a fixed measure of both luck and love. For some, it meant a balanced partition between the two. For others, it destined one beloved, one fate-favored. For an auspicious—and inauspicious—few, one twin hoarded both love and luck. Rarest still, it was this morning that a young shepherdess prayed for neither. As it was her twin brother, Dax, who needed fortune, and she had no use for love.
Deya Bjornsdottir, first-born and second-loved, watched the sky with careworn eyes from the cool embrace of spring grass. In those misted mornings where the earth was still, save for wind song and the soft bleating of sheep, she nearly convinced herself that the world was safe.
Even so, the uncomfortable practicality of her hardened heart could not be ignored, and she waited for dark smoke to stain the horizon. It would come before the sound of drums could reach the mountainside. All the women tending their flocks, scattered across the rough terrain, watched the distant sky with her. Such was the problem with war: it made itself so comfortable among daily routine, that it became as expected as each new sunrise.
"They will not come," she whispered to a dirty ram that wandered close. The creature only turned its mournful eye towards her and bleated before returning to graze. Her flock's shaggy winter coats were thinning with the breathy promise of spring and, as certain as snowmelt, the return of warmer mornings and sunlit evenings would bring the chieftain's men to their village.
And when they came, Dax Bjornsson would die.
Though born of mighty men—Bjorn son of Harald, son of Igen, son of Olf—Dax was no warrior. A sharp tongue when he willed it, to be sure, but her twin was as flighty as sparrow song, as wistful as summer sky. Outside of battle, it served him well. Whether for the dimple in his smile, or the sincerity of his laughter, it was impossible to not love Dax. Not even their legendary father, Bjorn Haraldsson, could manage it. Although he sorrowed for having a son unversed in the ways of warfare, disappointment alone could not prevent him from returning to battle in his son's stead. From dying in his place, so fierce was that love.
Deya frowned. The pang of jealousy and guilt felt foreign after years of callused grief. As first-born, even if only by moments, she should have been a mighty son, a warrior to carry her father's legacy. Instead, she was another mouth to feed, a daughter from a family too poor to muster a proper dowry, always compared to a beloved son who tempted smiles on the darkest of days. She did not blame her father, or her mother, for loving her less than Dax. She loved him more than life itself. And now the world in which the same war had claimed their father's life, and their mother's through it, might also steal him from her.
For he would die. She knew it like she knew the sunrise. His dreams, as lovely as they were, had not kept them fed or warm through the bite of winter. They would not save him from the lament of battle horns.
Dax was a dreamer, and dreamers had no place in war.
"Dearest sister, they cannot slay one as charming as me," he had promised her with his usual winsome smile. "One glimpse of my face and, surely, they will drop their blades."
Over their bleak dinner of half-forgotten pickled carrots and endives that Dax had charmed from their neighbors, she had smiled back. It was impossible not to catch his grin. "Drop their blades from surprise, I'm sure," she'd teased, "at the sight of something so hideous."
Dax had pulled her into a tight embrace and smothered her in affectionate, sloppy kisses. "Do not forget, sweet Deya," he'd countered in wry return, "that we have the same face." Alone in a draft-bitten house, too large for just two, their howling laughter burned brighter than the embers in their meager hearth.
