by Sandi Layne
At her title, she jerked upright. “I’m here! What? Who needs me?”
“Be easy,” Cowan said, chuckling. “It’s only me. We’re not home yet. You must have been dreaming.”
She blinked and pushed hair out of her face with one hand. With the other, she balanced herself on the wooden rim of the boat. “Dreaming, yes. I was that.” She shivered with the cold. “Are we there, then?”
No mists had remained, but ahead he could see only more sky and water. “Not yet, but I’m hoping that with this wind, we’ll be there before nightfall.”
He untied the sail and pulled it up the mast. With a popping sound, it billowed and the small boat seemed to skip in anticipation of a quick voyage south. Cowan inhaled deeply of the salty air, a smile coming to his face. Freedom. Homecoming. The feelings swelled in his heart and he began to sing one of the Blessed Patrick’s songs.
“So where is it you’re sailing us to, Cowan?” Charis interrupted with an impatient look on her face. “The wind’s a fine one, and I am glad you can sail, but where is it that we’re going?”
Annoyed to have been interrupted and incredulous that the woman would have left without having a sure idea of her first destination, Cowan just stared at her. “You didn’t know where you were going when you set off with the boat on the ice?”
She sniffed. “I just knew I had to go south, to the last place we’d landed last summer. Don’t go giving me that look, son of Branieucc. At least I was leaving those barbarians and going home. Not going off with another Northman to meet his family. How could you even think it? What did you think you were doing?”
He braced himself against the slender mast, angry with her all at once. “I was staying alive, woman. I was doing my best to blend in, because that’s how a man can work in the world. I’ve been to the Saxon and Frankish kingdoms, to Cordova and almost to the Holy Land. I’ve spoken with travelers from all over. I could have left the Northmen before the snows fell, but no. Escape was always just beyond me. I felt that my God had a reason for that. Did you think that I wanted to be one of them forever? Are you daft? I wanted to stay alive and to help you, if I could, in any way that was open to me. If being a free man would help you, I wanted it.” His anger had fallen from him during his diatribe, and he just stared at her, breathing heavily enough that the chill wind in the air cut into his lungs.
The healer said nothing for several heartbeats. “I never asked it of you, Cowan. I think your God is too demanding, then, to keep you away from your people.”
He checked the sail before sinking to the bottom of their fishing boat. “My God is demanding, aye,” he acknowledged. “But, Charis,” he went on, reaching his hand across the short space that separated him from the pale-eyed woman, “he loves you enough that even his own life is not too much to ask of him.”
She lowered her eyes, and Cowan decided to say nothing more.
The wind blew truly all the day, creating a fine arc in the sail and propelling them across the water. Cowan rejoiced in the relative relaxation he experienced compared to the rowing of the day before. A north wind was often harsh, but not to his mind, not today. It blew his hair about, and Charis’s as well. She eventually resorted to plaiting it into one long braid that hung straight down her back, past her belt with its assorted herbs.
That reminded him. “You haven’t asked me,” he stated, knowing somehow that she would comprehend.
She had been scanning the skyline ahead of them, able to discern the hazy mass of land that Cowan knew to be the Kingdom of the Danes. Barely moving as the sun crossed the sky, she had watched, all but leaning out of the boat in her eagerness to get out of the ocean. But now she turned to him, her face a mask of stone.
“No, I haven’t.” Bracing herself, she finally asked, “Is he dead? The barbarian that killed my men and my people?” Her voice spoke of confidence, but her eyes—Cowan studied them carefully. A shadow dwelt within them, a shadow he did not entirely understand.
“No. He was still breathing when I left him. I would have stayed to help, but I felt I needed to find you before the Northmen found him.”
“He lives?” Despair mingled with relief in those spare words.
“Aye,” Cowan said. “At least, he lived when I left him.” He studied her a moment. “So did you succeed or fail, Charis?” he asked.
The healer shifted her focus to the wake the boat left behind them. “I don’t know. Who else?”
Cowan didn’t know if he should be appalled at her surface calm or not. “Bran. He is dead.” Cowan couldn’t be sorry that the monk was dead, much though he thought he should be. “Gerda Grindesdottir lives, as do Els and Bjørn. And Agnarr.”
He watched as the healer drew in a long breath, her delicate nostrils flaring. What was she seeing in those too-pale eyes? The sail snapped as the wind changed direction and he corrected the course of their journey. The water made a smooth sound of passage against the sides of the little boat. But Charis, stiff-backed, made no sound at all.
Confused, Cowan resorted to silent prayer as he guided the ship to the approaching land.
“She has character,” Agnarr granted of his healer. “And honor,” he added as he rested his head against the wall next to his bed. He even managed a smile at his brother’s weak-voiced curses from the other side of the longhouse. “No, she does. She waited for her revenge, like a good Ostman. She used her weapons well, and was effective in her vengeance.”
It had been a full week since Eir had attacked. For an attack it was, Agnarr had decided. She had struck out at those who had captured and kept her. Not immediately, no—she had waited until the best time. How could he be angry at such spirit and wisdom? He could not.
“She made our mother ill,” his brother reminded him, also lifting himself to a sitting position. Both men were so weak that they could do little more on their feet than leave the house to relieve themselves. “And our guest.” Even he did not mention Magda and her slave. Not that the storyteller was worth much to anyone. Magda’s only worth had been to her father, who was still suffering greatly from the effects of whatever it was that Eir had put in her tea.
Agnarr nodded slowly, unwilling to trigger another bout of nausea. “But Mother is up now. She will be fine. So will we all.”
Bjørn grunted. “Ja. Excepting for those who will not.”
Agnarr sighed a little. But even though two deaths had resulted, no blame went to the trell who had caused them. Tuirgeis had not sent out a party to bring back Geirmundr Kingson, the newly adopted brother. Tuirgeis had not set a price on Eir’s head. And Tuirgeis’s tacit noncondemnation was enough to keep revenge from preying on anyone’s mind—
Save Els’s. It had been his daughter who had died.
“It is because of the raven! I called the raven to me. Odin’s own!” the old man had cried, beating his breast and weeping over the body of his daughter. His own weakened state was not aided by this, but he had not seemed to care.
Els was an old man, and one who was under Thor’s Curse, spoken so by the ancient Priestess of Thor, who had said that Magda’s death was merely a confirmation that Els was in disfavor. So Agnarr could not bring himself to feel much regret over her loss.
Eir’s loss was far more important to him.
“I must get my strength back,” he told no one in particular. Bjørn shrugged. Els moaned, and Gerda, who was stirring a mild soup over the fire, only looked at her elder son. “Tuirgeis said, before he left for his own village, that he would be sailing again this summer.”
Bjørn made a weak gesture. “The riches would be welcome,” he remarked. “But do not bring us another medicine woman!”
Even Gerda laughed at that. She had recovered sooner than any of them. “Unless he’s male,” she commented to her sons. “I’m glad Eir’s gone. She was uncanny.”
That, Agnarr thought, was true enough. His healer was a woman of strange powers and influence. Is she still mine? She ran away. Ah, but I can find her. She will be going back to her villa
ge, I know, she and the berserker. They’ll go to the green land of her people. I could farm in that land. I could send for my brother and mother and we could have easier winters, longer summers, and rich, green earth.
“Yes, I must regain my strength to train with the warriors. Tuirgeis will want strong men to accompany him.”
The door to the longhouse was open, welcoming the sun and wind of the afternoon. Birds were calling, and there would be green grass growing where snow had covered the ground not long before. He could not think of green, growing things without thinking of Eir. She consumed him. He had slain her husbands; she had done her best to kill him. They were even.
I will find her, he vowed only to himself. And I will keep her.
“He said that the city of Bremen is right up the inlet,” Cowan informed Charis. They were in the land of the Frisians, a Saxon land. Charis could make no sense out of the throat-clogging speech of these people, but Cowan seemed to have spoken their tongue all his life. He had been able to find someone with whom to speak everywhere they went.
“There is a bishopric at Bremen,” Cowan went on. “We can get supplies there.”
Charis shook her head without even giving the man time to draw a breath. “I’ll not spend a night in a house of monks!”
Cowan rolled his eyes at her, but she cared little if he were exasperated or not. He knew how she felt on the matter. “I can find us food. I can mend our clothes. I will not go to the monks,” she reminded him.
He sighed again, long and hard, for a moment sounding much as Achan had used to sound when she had been young. Her heart wrenched inside her chest. But she would not stay with the monks, sigh though he might. “All right, lass,” he said after a moment. He turned to the man they found when they had come ashore on this land, and spoke some more.
Charis moved from him and let him converse freely. She saw green. Faint touches of it, here near the sea. The sea itself was becoming more familiar to her, and less frightening. It was their road, their pathway, their landmark. Here, on the coast of the Saxons, there were rocks. Dark, great stones of a forbidding nature. She knew that they were just part of a great land. A huge land. One that went on, Cowan had said, beyond the knowledge of men.
But her heart called her to just one land. A smaller one, but large enough for her rath, her people, and the children she had left behind.
The children. Aislinn’s face was always before Charis. She had been so young, perhaps ten summers, but the oldest of those who were not fighting. Had she kept the younger ones safe in the tunnels? Had she remembered to stay out of sight until the Northmen had gone from the shores? All winter, Charis had been able to stave off the pounding need to return to see if she had saved anyone. All winter, she had waited and prepared. But now, even a day’s delay seemed too long, so she had learned to row and learned to work the small boat so they could travel while Cowan took needed rest.
“I have to get home,” she whispered to the rocks and waves of the Frisian land.
The moon had completed one full cycle since she had left the village of Balestrand.
It was dark and close as they approached the shore. High clouds were backlit from the moon, making the spring evening seem almost like early morning. Ships caught the light as well. Ships with furled sails, drunken men on watch, and candles lit against the night. Beyond the ships was a town, larger than any Charis had ever seen in her life. It made her own rath shrink in her mind’s eye. A babe next to a full-grown warrior.
Charis watched as Cowan angled their small skiff through the boats waiting in harbor. “Where are we?” she whispered to him, for they had not yet braved a much-occupied shore. It had been difficult enough when there were few to greet them on rocky landings.
“This is Flanders, Charis,” Cowan said through gritted teeth. “A major port of trade. We’ll need to get a new boat and supplies before we go braving the ocean again.”
Odors swept over the land. Smells that Charis didn’t recognize, for they were the product of a wealthy trading center. “What is that?” she wondered aloud. “That sharp smell?”
Cowan was distracted and left off his rowing for a moment. “Oh! A tannery. And I smell,” he went on, glancing at her, “a lot of people.”
“Ohhh,” she said, wrinkling her nose. Body wastes. It was not like the same smells in a smaller village; this was an entirely different odor. Corrupted, like a wound that would not heal.
In her distaste, she shifted her body. At the same moment, a larger boat called that they were leaving their harborage, and they skimmed by, leaving a wake large enough to push the small fishing boat up and over.
Charis gasped, falling shoulder-first into cold salt water.
“Help!” she squeaked, just before her head went under.
Dark, surrounded by dark. Wet. I’ve fallen in the ocean! Charis couldn’t make her limbs move. She felt herself sink like a rock that little boys toss into the water to make ripples. Down, down, swathed in much-patched cloth. The bards would write a poem. A woman of Éire who couldn’t swim . . .
Though she had been fearful of the ocean all her life, Charis was not afraid of it now, as she was sure to die there. It was as if the water was now her home and she would be there always; why fight it?
But there was a pressure. A need for air. To breathe. Her lungs told her arms and legs to move, but they could not comply. Her mouth, though, could and did, and Charis did not fight it. She opened her mouth, knowing that the sea would be her death, and her lungs started to pull in anything that might have air—
“Ouch!” she coughed out instead, as a sharp tug stopped the struggle for a heartbeat as water entered her body. My hair! Someone is pulling me up!
As if her limbs had been freed from some magic binding, Charis was able to move quickly, following her own hair. Lungs burning, she followed herself up and up until there was no more hair to follow and she doubled over coughing, clinging to something. Wooden? Human? She had no sense of it; her body’s only concern was air.
Gasping, choking, she eventually cleared herself of the seawater and was able to smell the person holding her. She pushed away and looked immediately for Cowan. Where was he? “Cowan?”
A thump on the ground next to her got her attention. It was the red-bearded son of Branieucc, also still catching his breath. “Here, lass.”
The man who had supported her laughed and spoke in syllables that Charis didn’t understand. She stared at his face, trying to get a sense of his words in his nearly toothless smile. The moonlit crags and creases of his expression moved and shifted as he spoke, but Charis just shook her head.
“Thank you,” she said, in her own tongue.
The man nodded, pointing to Cowan, who laughed breathlessly. “Oh, fine, yes. You thank him when I’m the one as pulled you up and out of the harbor.”
“Oh, and I’m to thank you,” she said, creeping next to him to examine him, “for pulling the hair from my scalp?”
“Of course,” he said, with a lolling nod as he tried to lift himself to his elbows. “And I’ll thank you for falling out of the boat before it crashed.”
She parted his hair, wet and pale in the moonlight, and checked his head for bumps and bleeding. On his words, though, she froze and rocked back on her heels to study his face. “Our boat’s crashed?” she whispered, panic fluttering in her middle.
He sighed the long and liquid sigh of a man from Éire. “Aye, Charis, it did. God be thanked that we’re at a trading port and can seek passage to Canterbury, across the water in the land of the Anglo-Saxons.”
Charis followed his outstretched hand as he pointed west, over the water. “Is it far?” Her jaw tightened.
“Much closer, don’t worry. What you do need to worry about,” he cautioned, “is that empty pouch you’ve got around your waist.”
Concerns about another ocean crossing vanished as Charis reached for her herbs. “They’re gone!” The loss of her medicines left Charis feeling naked and alone, on a shore far from home, w
ithout any ties to her people.
Cowan sat up and pulled her next to him. “Well, don’t worry overmuch, Charis.”
Her stomach roiled. “Don’t worry?” she cried. “Don’t worry?” She felt sick. Naked. Alone. “They’re my life, Cowan! They’re your life!”
“Na, na, lass, they’re your tools. And tools can be replaced. So we’ll gain passage on a ship and cross the water. Trust me, Healer.”
Feeling empty, she searched his face in the flat light of the moon while the man from the shore rose to his feet and nattered something to Cowan.
He replied in the new language and she nodded. Yes, he had brought her this far. She would trust him.
Chapter 28
“You, there!”
Cowan turned toward the accusatory shout as he and Charis stepped around and over mooring lines in Flanders harbor. “Who’s that?” he asked the toothless man who had rescued him.
“He is a leader of the town guard, Monsieur Alfonse,” the man, Geralt, informed Cowan. “He patrols the harbor at night to keep the captains from stealing from one another.”
Cowan sighed and caught Charis’s wet arm in his grasp. “Just a moment, lass. We might have trouble.”
As the sounds of waves brushing the sides of boats continued behind, Monsieur Alfonse strode heavily toward Cowan, clumsy boots making a slight flapping noise on the hard-packed ground. “You, yes, Northman.”
“What did he say?” Charis demanded quietly, for once not struggling with him. “Why have we stopped?”
“Best have that one be still,” Geralt advised in a rasp.
Cowan passed that along, adding, “It appears this other man thinks I’m a Northman, since we are both dressed like Agnarr’s people. Be quiet and let me see if I can get us out of trouble!”
Trust me, he’d told her. Cowan snorted to himself as he waited for the harbor’s guard to join them. Sure, and am I not a man worth trusting?