Soderberg
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Chapter 2
🕑 Added 2025-01-07 09:44:21 +0000 UTCThe door slammed open, startling Vidar awake with a gasp. Cold air rushed in to fill the tiny room in an instant, waking all those who dwelled within. To his surprise, there were twelve boys all in all, sleeping all over the floor of the tiny, unfurnished room. They huddled together in piles under threadbare blankets. Only Vidar sat half-upright against the wall by himself. He’d been dreaming of his old bed, with its thick covers and the heat rune glimmering on the wall. No matter the weather and temperature outside, his room was always perfect. Except it was his room no longer.
He grunted and rubbed at his eyes, half blinded by the light coming from outside. It wasn’t fully light out, not yet, but the difference from the pitch-black darkness of the room was enough to hurt his eyes momentarily.
When they grew used to the change, he pointed and screamed. “You!”
“Shuuuut uuup,” someone complained from one of the piles.
“Just a few more minutes,” a second boy groaned.
The tall, broad young man who’d opened the door gave Vidar a uninterested glance, then shouted into the room. “Whoever isn’t up and ready in five minutes goes without food! Embla’s orders!”
Just the mention of food was almost enough to make Vidar jump into line with the others hurrying outside. Almost.
“You stole my coat! Where is it?”
The lad, a rough-looking teenager with a scar on his left cheek, and a cut on his right that had yet to heal, lowered the hood of his warm-looking, if worn, coat. “Who’re you?”
Vidar gaped. “You don’t remember? You stole all my money and my damn coat two days ago!”
“Oh?” A decidedly unfriendly smile crept across the assailant’s face. “Now I remember. How’s the lip?”
It was still a little swollen. Worse now after taking that beating from the guardsmen.
“Give me back my coat! I don’t care about the silver, just the coat!”
The others stopped to stare, a whole bunch of boys of varying ages. The youngest couldn’t have been more than seven years old. This man, the ruffian, was the oldest one of the bunch.
“It’s a nice coat and the nights are cold. What’ll you give me for it?”
“You’re not even using it!”
Ida and Siv emerged from a door farther down the street, followed by some other girls. None of them were as young as the youngest boy, but Vidar doubted any had seen more than the fourteen years claimed by Ida.
Emboldened by their appearance, Vidar pressed his luck with a bluff, putting one hand in his pocket and taking a threatening stance. “I have a knife.”
The thug drew a long, slightly crooked knife with no handguard from his coat. “So do I.”
Vidar swallowed hard as his gaze fixed on one of the many spots of rust on the dirty blade. He definitely did not want that thing anywhere near him. “Then we’re at a stalemate, aren’t we?”
“You think?” the thug asked, taking a step forward.
“That’s enough, Torbjorn,” Ida said, stepping in between them with Siv at her heel. “You know what Embla thinks of stealing and robbing.”
A wave of relief washed over Vidar, but he did his utmost not to show it as he stepped back. Torbjorn grunted and flicked his wrist, and suddenly the knife was nowhere to be seen.
“Why don’t you just return the coat and keep the coin?” Ida asked. “That way, no one risks taking a blade to the ribs before breakfast.” She stepped up in front of Vidar, and Siv gave him an encouraging nod.
Torbjorn glared over Ida’s shoulder at Vidar, but then finally relented. “Fine.”
He walked around the corner and returned within a minute, holding the coat. Vidar’s teeth were chattering from the intense cold, and he greedily snatched it from the ruffian’s outstretched hand. With it wrapped around him, and with the small sliver of a brighter sky visible between the roofs of the buildings around the narrow alley, things were starting to look up again.
“You’re welcome,” Torbjorn barked, but Vidar refused to thank the man for returning something he’d stolen after giving Vidar his life’s first beatdown.
Ida eyed the coat, a glimmer of jealousy shining in her gaze. “That is a nice coat.”
It really was. Tailored to fit Vidar’s small build and carefully crafted to make sure no heat escaped. Even with the dirt stains covering the gray and brown fabric, and the new blotch of dried blood on one of the sleeves, it was leagues beyond what the others were wrapping around their thin, huddled frames.
“Thank you. It was a present,” Vidar said, his stomach rumbling. “You mentioned something about breakfast?”
Ida awarded him a crooked smile and nodded for him to follow the rest of the group as they trudged together as one out onto the wider thoroughfare, going straight through Andersburg.
Even with the coat on, the cold was almost too much to bear. Icy wind whipped through his hair and the sleet easily bested his boots’ ability to stave off the wet. If not for the shape of the other younger boys and girls, he’d complain. Now, he swallowed those complaints in favor of focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.
By the time they’d made it to their destination, his toes were starting to go numb. People of all shapes, sizes, and colors rushed back and forth in the early morning. What they were in such a hurry to get to, he didn’t have a clue. Some surely held on to simple occupations, but most inhabitants in this part of town lived off of the generosity of the Crown, the clergy, or from stealing and begging, he was sure. In this cold, very few would sit on some corner with a sign, pretending to be blind or sick for people to throw them scraps.
The one exception Vidar knew of was Lytir. No matter how cold, he’d lounge on the street somewhere near Vidar’s father’s house, reading a book or ridiculing passersby. How that man kept himself alive was anyone’s guess. Once, when Vidar was much younger, he’d asked the vagrant how he got food when he never begged for it like the others. Lytir just laughed and told Vidar he didn’t get hungry or cold, then started in on some story about bears sleeping in caves.
Vidar walked into someone’s back and snapped back to the moment at hand.
“We’re here,” Ida said as one of the other girls opened a door to what looked like an abandoned barn. The inside was one large, single room. The floor was straw-covered hard mud, but a few benches stood haphazardly near the walls where open flame torches burned merrily, giving some semblance of light. Food waited for them in the middle of the room, a large cauldron with a fire going under it, on a slightly raised platform of stone.
“Don’t you people have any light or warmth runes?” Vidar asked, shuffling into the room behind a pair of young boys with red hair, a rare color in most of Sveland. In this town, Halmstadt, you could occasionally see colors other than brown or black, since they were near the border to Dennerland in the southwest, where many looked like their heads were on fire with that red hair of theirs, and Noriland, where lighter shades were common.
“Runes? Look around you, newcomer,” one of the redheaded boys squeaked. “Does it look like we’re swimming in gold?”
“They’re… expensive?” Vidar asked. He hadn’t really thought about it. Light and warmth runes were common enough in the houses he visited when delivering books and maps for his father, and they certainly weren’t lacking in his father’s house.
The hoodlums just shook their heads at him in disbelief. That confirmed it, runes were expensive. At least to those living under these sorts of conditions. Vidar thought about buying a warmth rune to stick under his coat the very first night he spent away from home, but soon realized it would be like using the thick paper and luxurious ink for a children’s tale. They always ended up torn to pieces by small hands, no matter the material. One warmth rune would not last him long before running out of essence, much less the entire winter, even if he bought one from a master rune scribe, and even he knew those would be prohibitively expensive.
“If you’re so rich, why don’t you buy us some of those runes, then?” a girl asked, her voice shrill and loud as she spoke over the sound of people filling their bowls with the contents of the cauldron, a thick gruel.
“What are runes?” a boy asked, peering over the rim of a cup.
Vidar didn’t pay them any mind. He was busy trying to reach for some food himself. After finally snatching up the ladle to dump some of the gray mess that bubbled merrily in the cauldron, and a cup of cold water, Vidar looked around for a free spot on a bench near one of the torches. None were free. He’d been too slow.
Torbjorn’s deep voice sounded over the hubbub. He sat by the torch farthest from the door. “The new boy has not worked. He should not eat.”
“He’ll work today,” Ida said, her mouth full of bread.
“Work?” Vidar asked.
“You don’t eat and sleep for free anymore, newcomer,” someone in the throng said.
“You don’t have anyone to wipe your ass for you anymore,” another added.
A boy near the entrance coughed in his hand to hide another jeer. “Rich boy!”
Talking back after that stupid comment while wearing a coat obviously more luxurious than anything they would be able to afford did not seem like it would be in Vidar’s best interest, so he kept his mouth shut and ate. Despite the meager offerings, it tasted like a feast, and the water soothed his parched throat like the finest of wines.
Without warning, they began shuffling out into the cold again and Vidar hurriedly shoveled the last bit of gruel into his mouth and emptied his cup. Ida walked up front with her ever-present, silent sister at her side. He hurried up to them, buttoning his coat to keep his body heat from escaping. Heavy snow drifted down from the sky. What a terrible time to be without proper warmth.
“What kind of work do you, we, do? How much does it pay?”
Her tousled hair quickly collected flakes of snow. A few fell to her shoulders as she whipped her head back and forth, like a dog trying to dry off after swimming. “We all do different jobs depending on what we’re suited to.”
Siv gave Ida a quick shove and pouted.
“You’re right, Siv. Not all jobs we get are suited to us, but we take what we can get. Embla decides, and if you don’t like it, you don’t eat and you don’t sleep that day.”
“Harsh,” Vidar said.
Ida shrugged. “It is what it is.”
Torbjorn was walking nearby, and he grunted. “We don’t get paid.”
Vidar looked back at him, then to Ida. “Is that true?”
“The work we do only covers the cost of our food and the rooms we sleep in.”
“That can’t be right,” Vidar muttered. “What jobs do you two do?”
“Usually, Embla sends us to a seamstress shop where we help make a bunch of pants and trousers. That’s why our fingers look like this.”
She pulled her glove off and shoved the tips of her fingers in Vidar’s face. They were covered with healed, and not so healed, pinpricks. “It’s not so bad, though. Sometimes she gives us clothes that someone made a mistake on. She even gave us these!” Ida pulled up her pant legs and lifted her foot to show a thick-looking sock.
Siv mimicked her sister, showing a similar wool sock over a skinny, incredibly pale leg.
“Clothes are nice and all, but how do you buy things if you don’t make any money?”
Ida’s face reddened. “Like Torbjorn.”
“You rob people?”
Torbjorn laughed mirthlessly.
“My sister and I aren’t intimidating enough for that, and we’re too big now to pick pockets effectively, so we found someone who agreed to teach us how to pick locks and jimmy open windows.”
“So you’re burglars?” Vidar frowned.
“This one really has no clue, eh?” Torbjorn asked, pushing Vidar aside to take the front of the line before turning onto a new, smaller street.
Ida followed and turned back to shrug her narrow shoulders. “Only when we have to. It’s survival, you know?”
They stopped by a door to a two-story house that wasn’t quite as run-down as the ones surrounding it. The windows on the bottom floor glowed yellow from the light within. By then, the sun was almost up, but the light still gave the place an inviting air, like Vidar and the others were expected. Torbjorn banged on a surprisingly sturdy front door. The dull thuds spoke of a thickness to the wood that’d been severely lacking in the shack the others called home, and in the barn where they ate.
Heavy footsteps approached the door on the inside. Ida pulled on Vidar’s arm and leaned in to whisper into his ear. “Those who don’t follow the law are thrown out by Embla. Don’t tell her anything.”
“She doesn’t know?”
“I think she knows that most of us here have”—she cleared her throat—“interesting activities other than work, but as long as we’re not caught, she doesn’t care. If someone catches you, you’re on your own.”
“I’m not planning on breaking the law,” Vidar said as the door opened on smooth, silent hinges, before following the others inside.
Ida spoke from behind, her voice partially drowned out by the chatter of the young boys and girls excitedly trying to enter the house all at once. “You think any of us planned for this?”
