“Is it the custom …” Thialfi said to Hadding, who looked up from his meal, a feather hanging from his mustache. “Among the Shylfings,” Thialfi continued, “is it the custom to not offer meat to the lady first?” Cooa-stom, he pronounced it, holding on to the first syllable for an improbably long time.
Hadding stared, his mouth too full to speak.
Across the fire the other Geats stood watching.
A movement behind Hadding made Hild look to see Mord coming forward. He kicked Hadding’s foot, not hard, and said, “Didn’t you serve Lady Hild before you ate?” Then he turned to Hild. “My lady, accept my apologies for this hungry warrior.”
“Of course,” Hild said, not meeting Mord’s eye. He was playing along to pacify the Geats, she realized, and he expected her to do the same. There would be no fight. The tension that had gripped her body fled, leaving a deadly weariness in its place.
“Ah, I see your slave has a meal prepared for you,” Mord said as Unwen stepped up to hand Hild a bowl of dried goat meat and a piece of bread, hard-baked to last on the journey. Hild took it, her tongue still hungry for fresh fowl, her body almost too tired to chew the cold, dry meal. Dutifully, knowing she needed to keep up her strength if she and Unwen were to escape, she ate, then let the empty bowl slip from her fingers onto the ground. Her head slumped forward to rest on her hands. The cold seeped around her, chilling every part of her body that was turned away from the fire. Her eyes closed and her mother’s face swam before her, followed by a procession of people she loved: Siri and Sigyn, her nephews and nieces, Beyla, Arinbjörn, her father, dead these many years. She dozed.
A cry sounded in the trees, high-pitched and terrible. She jerked upright. Swords rang out as men unsheathed them and stood, their weapons raised.
Where was Unwen? Wildly, Hild twisted until she found the slave crouched motionless by the blankets, her eyes wide with fear.
“What was it?” Brynjolf asked, his dagger held high.
Mord held up his hand to quiet him and stood listening, firelight glinting off his eyes as he looked into the night.
The fire snapped. In the dark woods, stream water chuckled over stones.
“Just a bird,” Mord said, and sheathed his sword with finality. He clapped Brynjolf on the shoulder. “You can’t jump at every night noise you hear.”
Brynjolf laughed, but he didn’t sheathe his dagger.
“That was no bird,” Thialfi said.
Mord gave him a dubious look. “Bird, animal, something in the woods, that’s all.”
“Something in the woods, yes,” Thialfi said, his voice low and serious.
“What are you suggesting?”
Hild wondered if Thialfi could hear the anger in Mord’s voice. He didn’t like having his decisions questioned; that was obvious.
“Only that we ask the Hammerer for protection,” Thialfi said.
The Hammerer? Hild wondered briefly before realizing it must be a Geatish name for Thor. She had heard they held the Thunder-God in high esteem, higher even than Odin, the All-Father, but she hadn’t really believed it until now. She wondered what their temples looked like, and whether they even had one for Freyja.
Hild watched as one of the two younger Geats began looking through the logs stacked up as firewood, rejecting one piece after another until he found the one he wanted. He pulled out his belt knife and carved something into the wood—a rune, she supposed, maybe thorn for Thor. Another of the Geats held out an amulet. From where Hild stood, it looked dark enough to have been blackened by fire.
The three men each placed their hands on the wood and spoke in a low chant, too low for her to make out the words even if she could understand their accents, before they threw the log onto the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. This was how the seaweed-eaters supplicated a god? The practice seemed strange and primitive, something country folk might do, but hardly fitting behavior for a king’s hall thanes. She shook her head and thought longingly of the temples at home.
• • •
Never had Hild slept in the open before. She couldn’t recall a time when she hadn’t been able to crawl into the safety and comfort of her warm cabinet bed, except after Midsummer festivals when she’d slept amid a tumble of cousins in a hay barn. She told herself the trees made a protective roof, but she wouldn’t have believed it even if she could have seen their branches in the darkness. The blanket shielding her body from the ground did nothing to keep out the cold or the stones that poked into her hip bones, her arms, her head. She turned and turned again, but no position was comfortable. Had Unwen chosen the rockiest place in the whole campsite on purpose? Hild pulled the blanket all the way over her head to block out the cold air, but doing so left her feet exposed. She sat up to rearrange the blanket. As she did, a movement made her turn. Brynjolf stood near the fire, staring at her.
She caught her breath. Now that everybody else was asleep, would he speak to her?
Then he turned away, but not before she caught the pained expression on his face. Deflated, she pulled the blanket over her feet and sank back down again, closing her eyes so Brynjolf didn’t have to avoid them.
There would be guards every night, she knew, and they wouldn’t be watching just the woods; they’d be watching her, too. Her uncle must have expected that she would try to escape. How would she and Unwen ever get away? Once they made it to the river, she had no idea how far they would have to journey to get to Unwen’s people. Would they be able to survive on foot, carrying their supplies? Or should they take Fire-eyes with them?
Whatever she did, if she was to have any hope of the men’s relaxing their guard on her, she would have to convince them that she had accepted her fate.
She rolled onto her side. The cold and the thoughts that circled round and round inside her head kept sleep far away.
Near her, Unwen moaned from her own rude bed. The long day on the pony must have left the slave’s body aching, and a night on the cold ground was hardly a remedy for a woman old enough to be Hild’s mother.
Her mother. A wave of grief tightened Hild’s chest and she shut her eyes tight. She would never be able to sleep.
Yet she did, for there is no waking without sleeping, and she woke to the sound of a bird that didn’t realize it was too late in the year to greet the dawn with song. Hild blinked in the gray light and pulled the blanket up to her nose. She could feel every bruise where rocks and roots had bitten into her during the night. Nearby, the fire popped, and she could smell someone cooking meat. Footsteps sounded somewhere close, and she heard the clink of a mail shirt. Was she the only one who hadn’t arisen yet?
She sat up and was grateful to see two blanket-covered bodies under the trees. One of them let out a loud snore.
On the other side of her, a figure crouched beside the fire. It was the smaller of the younger Geatish warriors. He was the one roasting the meat. The scent of it perfumed the cold morning air.
Unwen knelt beside her and Hild watched the slave as she placed her hand on the blanket between their two bedrolls, then caught Hild’s eyes with her own in a way unfitting for a slave.
Hild bridled, then relented as she understood Unwen’s silent message. Arinbjörn’s blade was still hidden under a blanket. They needed to be careful.
“My lady,” a man said in that drawn-out Geatish accent. Hild looked up, her heart in her throat, to see the Geat standing beside her. He hadn’t seen Unwen’s hand, had he? Did he know about the sword?
“This is for you,” he said, then set a bowl before her, bowed, and backed away. It was filled with the meat he had been roasting.
Calming her heartbeat, Hild picked up the bowl and called, “My thanks,” to the retreating Geat. Then she took a bite. After the previous night’s cold supper, the meal warmed her. She closed her eyes as she crunched the delicate bones, then licked every last bit of grease from her fingers.
As Hild ate, Unwen knelt behind her, combing her hair and tidying her clothes, before she began packing up their
bedding. Hild kept the sword in view, hovering close to it even though she needed to relieve herself.
Unwen seemed to understand. “Help me carry this to the horses first, my lady,” she said quietly before speaking to Mord, who had walked over to the men sleeping nearby. “My lady needs privacy. We’re going into the woods.”
“Twenty paces, no more,” Mord growled, barely looking at them, before he yelled, “Hadding! Stop your snoring and get up. Brynjolf!” He kicked lightly at one of the figures, and Brynjolf shot to his feet, ready to fight.
Mord laughed and nudged Hadding with his foot. Brynjolf smiled sheepishly, wiping sleep from his eyes, while Hadding pulled his blanket away from his head and blinked suspiciously at the daylight. An indentation ringed his bare forehead where his helmet fit him. Hild had rarely seen him without it, and in the morning light, the skin around his eyes looked pale despite the dirt on his face.
She and Unwen picked up their gear and carried it carefully to the horses. Leaving it there, they walked into the woods, and Unwen held up her cloak to shield Hild from the men’s view as she squatted. When she stood again, Hild looked at the slave. “Shall I?” she said, reaching for the cloak and feeling awkward. The king’s sister-daughter doing such a task for a slave seemed wrong to both of them.
“No, my lady. Go back to the horses and I’ll be right along.”
Hild gave Unwen another look, but the slave shook her head, so she made her way back to Fire-eyes, who stood patiently beside the pile in which the sword was hidden.
Between the two of them, they saddled the horse, and then, when the slave gave her the signal that nobody was looking, Hild slipped the blade back into place. Afterward, hands still shaking, Hild helped Unwen ready the pony. How long they would be able to keep up this ruse, she didn’t know.
By the time they were finished, the men had doused the fire and cleared the campsite. None of them seemed to think it was odd for Hild to have saddled not only her own horse but her slave’s pony. She doubted they had ever had a lady along on their travels before.
As they rode out of the camp and back onto the blazed trail, Hild tried to take particular note of directions. The sun remained hidden behind a gray sky, itself hidden by the trees, but she marked where the light was brighter. Once they got to the river, she told herself, they would be fine because all they had to do was follow it. But first they had to get away from the men. How?
She was lost in consideration of the problem when Thialfi fell back to ride beside her. “It’s a fine horse, my lady,” he said, giving Fire-eyes an appraising glance. Fiine hooarse.
Hild stiffened and kept herself from looking at the place where the blade was hidden. Was it showing? Could the Geat see it? She had to distract him.
“Fire-eyes was a gift from my cousin, the atheling,” she said, reaching forward to stroke the horse’s neck, hoping Thialfi’s eyes would follow her hand away from the blade.
He gave her a puzzled look and she realized with surprise that he hadn’t understood her. She had thought the Geats were the ones with the strange accents, but her speech must sound just as odd to them. “My cousin, the crown prince,” she said, enunciating carefully. “He gave me the horse.”
“Ahh.” Thialfi regarded Fire-eyes again, and she searched for another topic to divert his attention.
“Tell me about your king,” she said. It was natural for her to want to know about the person she was supposed to be marrying, wasn’t it? “What sort of man is he?”
“Our king?” Thialfi nodded and looked thoughtful, as if he was sorting through details, deciding what to tell her.
She tried to appear interested.
“Scarcely have we finished mourning at our old king’s funeral pyre, yet already the bard celebrates our new king’s deeds in song. I am honored to have served them both.”
Hild’s comprehension lagged a step behind the words themselves. Bard must be the word the seaweed-eaters used for skald, she decided. When she untangled saarved them booath, her eyes dropped to his sword arm, which rested uselessly in Thialfi’s lap. The man really seemed to believe he served the king—two kings—despite his injury.
“Would that our bard were here to sing you the tale of the dragon fight,” Thialfi said.
“Dragon fight?” She’d forgotten all about it in her sorrow at leaving her family, but now the memory came rushing back. In the hall, her uncle had said that old King Beowulf, who’d ruled the Geats for as long as Hild could remember, had been slain by a dragon. And hadn’t he said that the new king had killed it?
A dragon! She wondered if the Geatish kingdom had been cursed. How else could such an evil fate have come to its people? She gazed at Thialfi, waiting.
“I have no skill in chanting,” he said, “but I know the story well.” When he looked at her, Hild saw the seriousness in his expression.
“After all,” he added, “I was there.”
She moved Fire-eyes a little closer to Thialfi’s horse and settled into her saddle, ready to listen.
FIFTEEN
“A DRAGON, MY LADY …” THIALFI PAUSED AND LOOKED into the distance. Hild could see how rough and pitted his skin was, and his dark beard barely hid the gauntness of his cheeks. But his eyes, when he turned back to her, were clear and green.
“You hear about the creatures in stories,” he said, “how big they are, how powerful, how they torch villages with their fiery breath.”
She nodded, thinking of Ari Frothi’s tales.
“What you hear in the stories is nothing. Compared with how it really is? Nothing.” He looked away again, and his expression changed as if he was remembering some long-ago sadness.
Hild bent down to avoid a low-hanging branch. The way was becoming rockier, making the clopping of the horses’ hooves louder.
“I was asleep when the dragon attacked,” Thialfi said. “We all were—it was the wolfing hour.”
“Weren’t there guards?” someone asked, and Hild turned to see Brynjolf edging his horse nearer. He’d always loved Ari Frothi’s stories, begging him for just one more even after a long lay had left the old skald’s voice ragged. She fought the urge to smile at him. Then she saw that he had left Unwen to ride last in the company. This was the second time Brynjolf had neglected his duties. His lack of attention might be exactly what she and Unwen needed to help them escape.
“Yes, there were guards,” Thialfi said, “but it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d all been asleep.”
“I would have shot it.” Brynjolf patted the bow he carried over his shoulder.
Thialfi regarded him for a long moment. Hild glanced back at Unwen, whose shoulders had risen to her ears. She held the pony’s reins in a death grip. Hild tapped her own shoulder and rubbed her fingers together to remind the slave to relax, but she might as well have been talking to a tree for all the good it did. She turned back to Thialfi.
“It came out of the night with thunder and fire,” Thialfi said, “the thunder of a thousand storms. Before I even knew what was happening, the hall was in flames and the cursed creature was gone.”
“You didn’t see it?” Hild tried to keep the disappointment from her voice.
“Not that time,” Thialfi said. “I felt it, though.”
“Did the ground rumble?”
“Did it?” Thialfi rubbed his beard, his eyelids lowered, in the manner of a man searching his memory. He looked up again and shook his head. “Maybe it did. I don’t recall.”
“But you said you felt it,” Hild reminded him.
“Yes, my lady, and I pray to the Hammerer that you never have to endure such terror.” He reached for something he wore on a leather thong around his neck—an amulet that had been tucked under his shirt. Immediately Hild thought of the fire-blackened ornament she’d seen the previous night. Had it been burned by dragon fire? The pendant Thialfi held was unburned metal, a small hammer symbol. The one she’d seen must have belonged to one of the other Geats.
“I’d heard the stories, just li
ke everybody else,” Thialfi said, “about how simply being near a dragon is so terrifying it can freeze your marrow.”
Marrow took her a moment to interpret, but the longer she listened to him, the easier he was to understand.
He caught Hild’s eye again. “I suppose I believed it, but it takes more than belief to understand what terror truly is.”
Brynjolf snorted with derision and Thialfi started to address him, then seemed to think better of it. “Like I said, my lady, I hope it never happens to you.”
The smaller of the two Geats riding directly in front of them turned to Thialfi. “Did our father”—he gestured toward the other rider—“feel it? That terror?”
They were brothers, then, Hild thought. She should have guessed from the similarities in their features.
“I can’t say what your father felt, Wulf. But he sought out the dragon and he looked his death straight in the eye.”
Wulf inclined his head to Thialfi. “So the king told us,” he said, and turned to the front again.
The dragon killed their father? The story suddenly took on a reality it hadn’t possessed before. And if Wulf and his brother were still seeking details about their father’s death … “How long ago?” Hild asked in a low voice.
Thialfi thought for a moment. “The moon was beginning to wane,” he said. “A month, maybe.”
A month? The ashy cloud of sulfurous smoke that had darkened the skies over the lake loomed in her memory. Ari Frothi had said it was dragon smoke. Could it have been from the very same creature?
Thialfi leaned toward Hild, so close that she had to keep herself from flinching backward. “They were out on patrol,” he said softly. “They didn’t know about their father until they returned.”
Hild looked from Thialfi to the young warriors. She closed her eyes briefly, remembering her own father’s death and how she’d sensed it days before the news came.
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