In a delirious sort of frenzy, I picked plum after soggy plum from the grass, and flung them one after the other, drawing closer to the cart with each step. Bruised pomes struck his shoulders, his hips, his legs, leaving cloying streaks of juices and thin flesh across his cloak.

The thief shielded his head with his arms. When he turned, readying to bolt back into the trees, one final plum collided with his brow. A low hiss slid through his teeth.

I yanked on the hilt of my knife, ripping it from the side of the cart, and prepared to slash against the bastard. By the time I whirled around, he’d rushed into the trees.

For a breath, the thief paused by a moss-soaked aspen, watching me. I could not see his eyes beneath his full cowl, but his gaze sliced through my chest like a burning torch held too close until he retreated into the thick of the Fernwood.

With a narrowed glare at Pukki—who did nothing but gnaw on his cud of wildflowers—I made quick work of inspecting the baskets. The steward of House Jakobson was not a man who feared using the rod for mistakes.

There’d been wardens at the young house who thought similarly, but Gammal had always looked out for me, and I was spared a great many lashings by her warnings. Each jarl in differing townships was like a king of their own village. They could decide how their servants were treated, and Jarl Jakobson often turned his gaze from the use of pain, thinking it made stronger folk.

With a few tugs on the twine to secure the baskets, I draped the leather harness over one shoulder and started to bring the cart to the aggravating creature myself until a wheel collided with something in the weeds.

“Damn this day to the hells.” The curse slipped over my tongue as I knelt to clear away the foliage around the wheel.

A smooth, round stone with a weathered notch cracked through the center trapped the cart. I gingerly traced the sigil of a burning ax carved into the rock. An old totem where someone prayed to the Wanderer King.

I feared my curse of craft, but had always reveled in the saga of the first king.

Once a wandering Skald, he stumbled upon a lost maiden. For giving her shelter and his last strip of roasted herring, she revealed herself to be one of the beloved daughters of the god of wisdom.

As gratitude, the wanderer was given the maiden to wed and offered one medium to hold a piece of the gods’ magic that he could use to build up his new kingdom.

The Wanderer King first chose bone, for bones were in no short supply, and soon held the grandest army with bone blades that could not break and armor that fitted like a dozen shields.