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prodded Gerda sharply in the ribs, and heard her squeal with surprise.
    â€œTalk to me.”
    â€œWhat should I talk about?”
    â€œTell me how you came to be riding in a coach with a coat of arms, out here in the middle of no place. There has to be a story in that.”
    â€œThere is,” Gerda said. “A long one.”
    Someone howled a curse at the far end of the hall. A bench fell over, and then a table. Bottles smashed.
    â€œThen why not tell it,” said Ritva. “We’ve got all night.”

C HAPTER T HIRTEEN
    A t last Gerda came to the end of her tale. Ritva yawned and lay back, staring up into the rafters.
    â€œAll these people who gave you food and shelter, loaned you their coaches — what did you have to give them in return?”
    Half-asleep, Gerda puzzled over the question. “Give them? Why, nothing. They helped me out of the goodness of their hearts.”
    â€œDon’t be so stupid,” said Ritva. “They were strangers, not kinfolk. Why would they help you, unless they wanted something from you?”
    â€œIn my country,” said Gerda, “people do not steal from innocent travellers. They do not ambush them on the road and cut their throats. They do not kidnap them and hold them for ransom. Until I had the misfortune to meet you, I was treated with nothing but kindness and Christian charity. But I suppose, having a bandit for a father, you wouldn’t know about that.”
    â€œHe wasn’t always a bandit,” Ritva said. She spoke without rancour. “Not when he married my mother. He was a soldier then, in somebody or other’s private army. The way he says it, he was drinking one night with soldiers from the garrison at Boden, and they were telling tales about the birkarls of old.”
    Gerda had read in history books about the birkarls — ruthless armed bands, licensed by the southern kingdoms, who robbed the reindeer herders in the guise of taxes.
    â€œWell, my father thought this was a fine idea. But instead of robbing the reindeer folk of skins and the like, he thought he’d turn the tables by robbing southerners of their gold.” She added, as an afterthought, “Mostly, though, he does it as an excuse to kill people.”
    â€œHe killed the coachman, didn’t he? And the coachman’s boy.”
    â€œThe coachman is dead,” Ritva said. “As for the boy, I heard the men complaining that he ran into the woods. Probably the wolves got him.”
    Gerda rolled over, turning her back on Ritva so that the robber-girl would not feel the thudding of her heart. What if the wolves had not got the coachman’s boy? What if he had made his way to Boden? What if the princess’s nephew had called out his troops and even now was scouring the woods in search of her? She fell asleep at last, dreaming that she was home, in her own bed, between clean white sheets.
    But as the nights lengthened, and the brief northern summer vanished in autumn wind and rain, and no one came, that small hope vanished.

    Winter closed in. The wind howled through the pines; snow clogged the forest paths. The men of the camp settled down beside the roaring hearth for a winter-long night of drinking. Gerda’s terror dulled into a numb despair, and finally into resignation. No one would come to rescue her now. She was trapped forever in this vast, filthy, Godforsaken place, where the wind shrieked like a wounded animal through broken walls, and wicked drunken brutes of men staggered and spat and cursed and fought, and she was at the mercy, always, of this harsh-tongued, ill-bred, spiteful girl who was her sole protector.
    Now that day and night were the same, Gerda slept as long and as often as she could. It was her only means of escape. But even that respite was broken by feverish dreams. She dreamed of the gnawed bones of the coachman’s boy, lying beside a forest path under rotting leaves and snow. She dreamed of her