Beautiful Wreck

by Larissa Brown

  He looked for a long moment, searched my face and I could tell he found nothing. What was there to find? Perhaps hard determination, sheer will, blue-black ink. No honey for him, no more melting inside and wishing for his heart, no pining desire.

  His hand was heavy on my cheek.

  He leaned in close and put his forehead to my shoulder, like he always did, and his beard brushed my skin. I drew in a deep breath of steel and leather, and his scent was a sharp memory. It stirred something the way a breeze might, lifting some delicate emotion in my gut and then letting it fall again.

  He spoke softly in my ear, his breath waking up the skin of my throat. “Never, Woman. I will find you.”

  Heirik stood straight, and said out loud so everyone would hear, “Do not worry for me, then, Wife.”

  With cold hands, I gave him Slitasongr, loaning it back to him just moments after he’d placed it in my keeping. And he went to Vakr. I watched Heirik’s back move, his head hanging just the smallest amount, just enough to cut my heart out. The way his hair fell, I could see the leather knot at the back of his neck, and a memory came to me, of the first time I walked close behind him. We paced the house, and he’d turned to me at the end and said he was all grown up.

  He wouldn’t turn around this time. He’d faced his greatest fear already, asking me to be his wife, and he’d gotten my stone heart in return. He would ride off in a cloud now, gone to the dust of the valley and the mist of the highlands, to find Ageirr. And he might not come back.

  He looked small and alone in all the universe. It was as though I looked at my own back, bent over the ocean’s edge, against the overwhelming darkness and backdrop of a million reflected stars. I was too small, too alone, and I had felt that way for too long. Ástkkván, wife of the heart, just for this minute and maybe never more.

  I couldn’t let that be.

  “Wait!” I called, and then was running. I ran after him in a desperate mess of skirts, tears streaking my cheeks. He turned to me, and his face lit. He picked me up in his arms and twirled me in the air and we both laughed, too loud. He lowered me, and I slid down into his arms, where I fit. His hand came to the back of my head, holding me against him, pressing me into a hard kiss. When he let me go, I just stared in awe at him, and he at me.

  I remembered the ring I had in my sleeve, and I reached for my knife. I ripped the stitches fast, along my cuff. I had the right now, to cover him with this ring, and perhaps only this chance to give it.

  It glinted—silver that had never been touched by sun and sky. I slid it onto his finger, both of us watching our hands move together.

  “Now,” I said. I folded his fingers in to his own palm, closed my hands around his. When I spoke, it was as a wife to her husband. “Please, Love. Kill him.”

  He drew away to see me, and he so slightly raised an eyebrow. Heirik brought his other hand to cover ours, and I felt an eagerness grow in him, a voice in his hands, eyes slowly lighting. I’d woken his courage and commanded him to do the one thing he needed to do, to go out and get justice. But more than justice, he wanted revenge. He yearned to kill Ageirr. Wanted it with a great thirst. I could see it. Sultr. Fyst. Hunger. Desire.

  I smiled.

  He pressed one more kiss to my forehead, and he was off to climb onto Vakr, leaving dust. His uncle and his brother rode at his side. Nothing would ever stop him now, and I was comforted knowing that.

  As for Hildur … “She’s mine,” I called to Magnus, who had her tightly bound. On his honor, he would never harm a woman. But by all the gods, I could.

  “There will be a ship in the North, leaving for a new Western land.” Greenland, inhospitable and mean.

  I told Hildur it was her choice. “Be on that boat, or die by my hand.”

  No more than an hour later, Betta came home, along with everyone else from the Thing.

  I saw her sitting tall on her horse, and a calm happiness stole over me. It had been months since I’d talked with her in the dark, on the way to the gathering, and now here she was, just the same. My lovely friend, I thought. I am home. I watched her get down off the animal and leave it at the stable, and when she turned to make her way to the house, I called her.

  “Betta.” My voice was level and sure. She turned to me, those water-green eyes open wide, and I could only say her name again and reach for her and she came tripping and stumbling into me and wrapped her thin, strong arms around me. Her kiss was warm near my ear, her voice dusky and familiar. “Ginn,” she said. “What has happened to you?”

  “Take these,” I said without answering her question. I held out my iron ring of keys, taken from Hildur. “Make sure this house is locked down tight. Feed everyone and put the children in the pantry. And send someone for your Da.”

  Her huge eyes searched my inky face for anything at all, anything that could explain one tenth of what was happening. Then she took the keys, took my hand in hers, and held me and the iron together. A key bit into my palm, making my eyes water.

  “Good,” she said. I loved her for her faith in me.

  No man to carry me over the threshold, I lifted the hems of my death-colored dress and stepped over the line.

  Married now, with vows of sweet revenge, I sat on the edge of Heirik’s bed. I brushed my fingers over white fur and felt my eyes water and go soft. Our bed. I’d made it.

  I trembled, and then shook hard, with the shock of adrenalin. Courage and anger and resolve had coursed through me, leaving this empty and quaking body. My plan went no further than this. I laid back and stared into the wood rafters.

  Vivid images came, of the fight that raged somewhere, right now, at my bidding. I’d done all I could, readied us, children safe, Bjarn at hand. Exhausted, I let Betta take care of things. And I waited.

  Dreamless, I dropped like a stone. For hours, or perhaps only minutes, I slept without any visions or sounds, and when I woke it was with a brutal start. Up in an instant, I woke to shouts outside.

  I flung my door open, and saw Heirik.

  He was in the mudroom. Somehow he had made it home from the highlands, down off of Vakr and over the threshold. He’d made it here, inside our beloved house.

  Sweat and dirt and blood were smeared into his face and clothes. Other men’s blood? I could see that his own flowed, a lot of it, where he held his arm close to his chest, everything slick. Blood saturated his left side from shoulder to foot. Currents of it, too much, down his thighs and onto the floor, ax slipping, landing at his feet.

  It wasn’t possible, that he’d lost so much and was still here.

  He saw me, and he sank to his knees in a red pool. He stared with open love and completion, satisfaction. One hand reached for me so slightly, then dropped. He smiled, the way he always did for me. “Litla,” he said.

  And then he closed his eyes and let go of this world.

  I watched his face turn peaceful with closure, a life accomplished, a love fulfilled if just for one moment. Radiant like when he called on his gods. He looked blindly upward, where the sky would be.

  I couldn’t breathe, and I was glad I couldn’t. I wanted to go with him.

  “Stay,” I asked instead. He went down.

  On my knees in seconds, I used my whole body to block his fall. He hung so heavy, but I wouldn’t let him go, wouldn’t let him fall in this dirt. I would uphold him in death, carry him until the Valkyries came. A fierce bitterness came up in my throat, that if he wasn’t chosen for Valhalla, I would rage and burn the universe to dust.

  He was warm, and I felt his pulse under my hand, under the skin of his neck.

  “Come,” I barked, my voice thick and commanding. “Help him. He’s not dead.”

  Hár came forward and picked him up like a sleepy little boy, and put him to bed.

  I opened the door to the outside and shouted commands. For Bjarn to come. For Ranka to take the whole family away. “To the bath or farther,” I told her, and her little braids swung out behind her as she focused on her task. I held Betta and Svan
a behind.

  I took the few strides to Heirik’s room—our room. He would still be alive when I got there. He would be. He was.

  I quickly shoved furs behind Heirik, where Bjarn had propped him up in bed, against the wall. Chilled with sweat, his skin picked up the traces of blue in his hair. I climbed over him to sit on the bed on his uninjured side, and I touched his face, put my hand again to his throat, his pulse. There was so much blood. How could there be so much?

  Bjarn was suddenly by the bedside, businesslike. “We need to get his shirts off. And we need someone to help.”

  “Svana,” I commanded, loud enough for her to hear. With her name, a blast of bitterness came from my lips. If that bit-meyla could try to take him from me, she could sure as hell tend his ugly body, too. Let her get close. Intimate as blood.

  I steeled myself to remove his shirts. Heirik would be wearing two, of course, and it would be twice as delicate an operation to undress him. I gently lifted the hems. Everything was soaked through, and it was hard to tell where he was hurt. His arm, surely. It hung limp at his side.

  I watched his face, assessing. He looked blissful, as though he’d come home drunk rather than wounded. His mind was somewhere, listening to something, not in his body, and he didn’t even wince as we pushed and pulled and got both long shirts over his head.

  Bjarn peeled the sleeves from Heirik’s left arm, inside out, as though he were removing a layer of skin. As he pulled the cloth away, Heirik stirred, and liquid began to seep and bubble from a huge gash along his arm.

  Bjarn had slid a thick wool blanket under him, to catch the fresh blood. He handed the shirts to Svana, who knelt on the floor watching in mute terror. She took them without noticing what she held. She was staring at my ink, my healed hand, and quiet tears paused delicately on the swells of her cheeks before coursing down to her throat. I knew they weren’t tears for Heirik, just for herself.

  Bjarn tossed a pair of shears at her knees. He told her to cut the few clean parts into squares and strips.

  I’d never looked into a fresh wound before. In fact, I’d turned my eyes and ears away from the wounds on the beach the day Ageirr had captured me. I’d turned from the glistening blood of Hár’s finger, only willing to look later when I changed his bandages, at a safe distance of several days’ healing. I had to look now. This wound was mine to bear and to live through with Heirik.

  I expected it to open before me in splendorous gore. But it was not glorious, just wrong and deep. They’d cut across his upper arm, at an angle. But it wasn’t a ragged knife cut. It had the clean edges of a great talon slash, from something very heavy and sharp. It went deep enough to see the white of bone. Inside his arm, it was red like the meat of any other animal.

  That was my objective assessment. But darkness closed around my field of vision. It wasn’t just any arm split and bleeding. It was my husband’s, who hovered between this bed and the glory of the afterlife. Tears ran freely down my face. They flowed onto Heirik and me, and spots spread like ink, dark against my night-sky sleeves.

  I grabbed a linen strip from Svana and wrapped it around Heirik’s arm above the wound. I tied it as tight as I could. Very tight, enough to save his life. I put all my fear into tying that tourniquet, and he did wince, then, and it reassured me. I could see now that the blood had mostly clotted and dried during his long ride. The linen strip might help. It might, possibly, be enough to save him for the moment. I pressed my fingers to the knot in the cloth, wishing it to be powerful.

  Then I simply touched his face, trailed my fingers along the black of his beard where it covered his jawline. He turned toward the touch and opened his eyes. Gods, he opened them, and they were as intense as the first time I’d seen them. I got lost in them now, again, as every time.

  “Lofn came to me, Ginn.”

  “Shhh, Heirik. We can talk later.”

  Bjarn cut in forcefully. “This was an ax, Chief?”

  “Já,” he whispered. “Cut my arm.” Já, I thought, it did. “The down stroke bit me.” He sucked in sharply as Bjarn inspected the gash.

  Betta’s Da spoke quietly to me, as if Heirik weren’t there. “A very lucky miss, Lady. An ax will remove an arm, a leg even, with a single blow.” I had a vivid memory of Heirik swinging his own ax through the sunshine and bringing it down to cut the hand clean off Eiðr.

  “I know,” I whispered, my fingers hesitant on Heirik’s pale face. He couldn’t look at me for very long. His eyelids kept closing, lashes fluttering erratically. It wasn’t like sometimes when he broke my gaze out of emotion or shyness. This was uncontrolled. He was morbidly unfocused.

  “Chief,” Bjarn tried to rouse him. “I’m going to clean and seal your wounds.”

  I turned to him in shock. “There is more than one?”

  “Já,” he said as though I were dim. “He is not dying from a cut to his arm.” He showed me a ragged hole in Heirik’s side that was darker red, ugly and slick. A gaping hole in his body as big as my hand. I turned from it with a hiss, forcefully denied it. It looked mortal.

  Bjarn didn’t seem to necessarily think so. He probed the edges with his fingers, and Heirik became even paler. He rose up from out of his stupor.

  “This one was a spear, Chief?”

  “Já,” he admitted. “I suppose so.”

  “A bad fight,” said Bjarn, conversationally. I wondered if he’d ever seen Heirik in the heat of battle. It would have taken a truly soul-crushing fight to leave my husband like this. Every man who had faced him must be dead.

  And Brosa? Had he made it home?

  “They stuck him and then wrenched,” Bjarn said, instructively. “That is why it’s so big a rip, see?” I fought not to vomit. I didn’t flinch. I looked and learned.

  “Hold him well,” Bjarn said, and he picked up big iron tweezers, a palm’s-length long. “While I look.”

  I pressed against Heirik’s shoulders, pinning him to the wall. His scent was lovely spice, and I buried my nose in his hair and whispered, “Undra min.” I called him what he had called me, my most unexpected love. I could smell just him, through the soggy heaviness and iron of blood.

  I turned my head toward Bjarn and Svana. Even as I rested the weight of my forehead on Heirik’s shoulder, I watched both of them. Bjarn bent his head to work, and dug into Heirik’s wound.

  Heirik trembled but made no sound, no struggle. He took even breaths, breathing into my hair, my ear. “Wife,” he murmured, and I was pleased he knew I was here, knew exactly who I was. What I was to him.

  Bjarn drew the tool out and dropped a small shard of something that thunked on the floor. I pulled away to assess Heirik’s face again, and it was white like a snowbank, with a sheen of sweat. Bjarn dug again, just to be sure, to be thorough.

  “I won’t need to look for pieces in the arm,” he told me. “An ax bite won’t leave shards.”

  He was ready to clean Heirik’s wounds. He turned a plain and sorry gaze on me, like a warning. This would be bad.

  I took Heirik’s hand. “Don’t let go of me,” I told him, and I felt a slight pressure returned by his fingers, saw a small thread of a smile on his lips. That was good.

  Bjarn looked at me sidelong. “Have you never sealed a wound, Lady?”

  I shook my head no. “I can’t …” I almost said can’t remember, but then caught myself. I was done with those lies. “Nei,” I said. This was the sort of thing done in shiny hospitals, by better trained people than me.

  He sized me up. “You’re too small,” he said. “I can get Hár.”

  “Nei,” Heirik said with cold clarity. He was the chief for a single lucid second, brooking no complaints. It would be me. “Ginn will do.”

  Bjarn took Heirik’s hand from mine and placed it on my thigh. “Hold her here, Chief.” He looked at me with grave doubt. “You will want your wrist for weaving.”

  Heirik idly stroked the soft inside of my thigh, though he didn’t know what he did. Even through my thick dress, the heat of his
thumb sent a rush of useless, misplaced arousal.

  “Remember the cave?” I murmured into Heirik’s ear, taking his attention off what Bjarn was going to do. “I did this.” I moved his hand an inch up my leg. He smiled a bit, ready then, and held his other hand out to Bjarn. Bjarn placed a stick in it, an inch or more thick, and I wondered what it was for. Heirik put it between his teeth.

  Oh. Já, he had done this before. I’d forgotten about the big scar on his leg, and the many smaller ones scattered on his arms and hands, just like his uncle. I’d never asked him, in all this time, where they’d come from. He turned to the wall.

  Bjarn was quick and ruthless. He cleaned the wound on Heirik’s side first, with steaming water, and let it run out into a big bowl. Heirik made no sound, and he didn’t fight against the pressure I put on his shoulders. He clamped his teeth tight and squeezed my thigh just a little, a gentler grip than I’d expected, almost loving.

  Then Bjarn bathed him with soap and everything changed. The lye burned like hellfire and Heirik groaned from behind the stick in his mouth, sudden and raw, arching his back. His hand closed hard on my thigh. I froze and stared.

  “Still him, Woman,” Bjarn chastised me, and I applied myself again, trying to calm two-hundred-fifty pounds of bloody Viking.

  Heirik spit the stick out with a growl and batted Bjarn away.

  My husband wanted to say something to me. He looked up and mouthed the words without sound. “I am sorry.” Dread stole into me, quick and foul. He thought he was dying now. Right now.

  “Nei.” I was forceful. “You look here Heirik. In my eyes.”

  He seemed to swim through thick liquid in order to see me, but he obeyed my order. And then he smiled. A most rueful smile lit the corner of his mouth.

  “Lofn came.” With his uninjured arm, he grabbed me. I looked at his hand and hardly knew what it was. I remembered Hár’s story about Lofn, the goddess in the glowing house that charmed Hundr Blacktooth. “A song in my mind,” he muttered. He was having trouble stringing thoughts together.