Mord laughed, too, and as he did, Hild heard the laughter of the other men, who had been hiding behind the rocks, awaiting her reaction.
Monsters they were ready for, but telling a lady she smelled bad? That was beyond their experience.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE BATH FELT BETTER THAN ANY HILD HAD EVER HAD in her life. In the pony’s saddlebag she found a clean linen shift and her best gown, the one made of wool dyed a deep red, its neckline embroidered with gold thread. It was no easy task pinning the brooches that held it together on either side of her chest, something she’d never done by herself, but she could hardly ask one of the men for help. When she finally got the brooches fastened, she sat in front of the fire, combing her wet hair with her fingers to dry it and luxuriating in the feel of clean wool socks.
Once she was dressed, the men who weren’t on guard duty returned to the campsite. She pretended not to notice the way their eyes widened when they saw her, but their expressions told her she must have looked even worse than she had realized.
Gizzur approached her and bowed more formally than seemed necessary before he held out a small leather bag.
Hild looked at him, puzzled.
“We found it, my lady, when we were searching for you. Back on the other side of the river.” He laid it in her outstretched hand.
“Thank you, Gizzur,” she said, and was surprised by the way her words made his thin face brighten.
She looked at the bag, a pouch of plain leather. When she opened it, her breath caught in her throat. Her mother’s brooch. The whalebone comb Unwen had used to comb Hild’s hair since she’d been a child. It was Unwen’s bag, the one she’d carried at her belt.
It didn’t mean anything, Hild told herself. Unwen could have dropped it. The leather cord that had tied it closed was still intact; the bag could have come loose and fallen without Unwen ever knowing. She still could have gotten away.
“Gizzur?” she said, and the warrior looked up. “Was there any other sign of her?”
“Not that I saw, my lady.”
Hild turned her attention back to the bag, running her fingers over the leather. That was good, wasn’t it? If the monster had killed Unwen, they would have seen something, wouldn’t they? She picked up the comb, staring at its smooth surface as if it could tell her the slave’s fate, but it revealed no secrets.
“Pardon me, my lady,” someone said, and she raised her head to see the taller Geatish brother, the shy one, standing in front of her with a dripping ball of cloth in his hands. It took her a moment to realize it was her linen shift, the filthy one she’d been wearing.
“You washed it?” she asked, not meaning to sound quite so surprised. It wasn’t a task a warrior should concern himself with—didn’t these Geats know anything? She rose and tried to take the sodden garment from him, but he held it back.
“Don’t, my lady, you’ll get yourself all wet. Just tell me where to put it to dry it.”
She looked at him, his lean, tanned face, the dark circles under his blue eyes. Like the rest of the men, he must not have slept much since the first monster attack. “I don’t even know your name,” she said.
“It’s Wake, my lady.”
“Wake. Thank you.”
He shrugged. “It’s what I’d want someone to do for my sister.”
“You have a lucky sister, then,” Hild said, smiling despite her disapproval. “You could spread it on those rocks over there, in the sun.” She followed him and supervised while he stretched the shift out in a sunny spot where it would get air. Before she could thank him a second time, he slipped away in the direction of the tarn.
Hild went back to her place by the fire. On the ground beside the stone she’d been sitting on, a blade gleamed in the sunlight. Her sword! How could she have forgotten it?
She looked around to see who had put it there, but Gizzur was sitting alone by the fire, a needle in his hand, his nose wrinkled as if in distaste. She looked more closely. He was mending the tear in her gown where she’d snagged it on the stag’s antlers. Unlike her shift, the gown hadn’t been washed.
“Gizzur,” she said, and he looked up. “That must smell awful.”
He regarded the cloth in his hands, then nodded. “But don’t worry, my lady. Wake said he’d wash it as soon as I’m finished.” He returned to his work, but not before he blushed at her smile of gratitude.
The sound of footsteps came from the path, and Hild turned as first Mord and then Thialfi climbed into view. Seeing her, they approached. She stiffened. The sword lay naked on the ground beside her—she couldn’t deny its existence.
“My lady,” Mord said, and she looked at him, trying to decide what to say about it. But before she could speak, he said, “Will you tell us about the creature?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it. “The creature?” She swallowed her surprise. “Of course.”
The three of them sat down in front of the fire, Hild’s eyes straying to the sword and then back to Mord, but it might as well have been invisible—he neither looked at it nor mentioned it.
“What do you want to know?”
Thialfi leaned forward. “Everything, from the moment we failed you.”
“Failed me?” It was the first time Hild had considered the events from the warriors’ perspective. Of course they would blame themselves. She shook her head. “You didn’t fail me—none of you did.” She looked from Thialfi to Mord and beyond them to Gizzur and then Wake, who had just walked back into the campsite, her cloak dripping in his hands. “However it might seem to you, you did everything you could have.”
Thialfi grumbled something she couldn’t hear and Mord looked away.
“I mean it. You waited for me, and you got me safely away—to here.” She gestured around the campsite. “I thank you for it, all of you.”
Not one of them met her eye, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to convince them. Not yet, anyway. “Listen, then, and I’ll tell you what happened.”
As she began the story of being taken to the monster’s lair, Gizzur moved to a closer rock, followed by Wake, who had been spreading her cloak beside her shift to dry. She raised her voice to include them in her audience. At first, only Mord and Thialfi asked her questions, but then Gizzur began to, as well.
She couldn’t tell them where the cave was, but she described it as well as she could—the alder trunks growing out of dark water and, on the other side of the pool, the oak tree’s sinuous roots hiding the cave mouth. She told them about the fire in the cave and the dying monster, the sword buried in its chest. She paused, looking from Mord to Thialfi, expecting one of them to ask where the sword had come from, but neither of them did. Had it been less of a secret than she’d supposed?
Thialfi leaned forward to stir the fire, but his face gave nothing away.
Hild settled more comfortably on the stone and continued her story. When she explained the way she had made the poultice of roots and substituted Aunt Var’s lay for a healing charm, Mord said, “Just as well that you didn’t heal the monster, my lady,” drawing a chuckle from the others. They nodded appreciatively when she told them how she got the monster’s mother to leave the cave by convincing it its son needed food, and again when she explained how she pulled the sword from the monster’s chest to help free herself from the rocks. She thought she heard one of them—Wake?—draw in his breath when she told about the creature returning just as she was about to escape.
“How badly did you wound it?” Thialfi asked.
Before Hild could answer, Mord said, “Would you have stayed around to find out?”
They pressed her for details about her flight from the cave to the river, and she told them as much as she could remember, but she knew it wasn’t enough to help the Shylfings know where the cave was, or how to avoid it on the return trip.
At the end of her recital, the men fell silent. Then Thialfi spoke. “In years gone by, King Beowulf defeated a monster like the one you fought.”
“I’ve hear
d that tale,” Mord said. “It was the Danes, wasn’t it, that the creature attacked?”
Thialfi nodded. “Grendel, they called it. Our king killed the monster and its mother, too.” He looked at Hild. “Do you know the story, my lady?”
She didn’t. Her uncle’s skalds usually sang about the exploits of her own people and those of their allies, not the deeds of hostile tribes.
“It’s said that the king had the strength of thirty in his hand’s grip. But you, my lady …” Thialfi paused, shaking his head. “You have strength of a different kind.”
The other men nodded. They rose, talking among themselves, and returned to their duties, Gizzur heading down the hill to relieve Hadding, Wake taking the path for the tarn, her newly mended gown in his hands.
Hild felt drained from reliving the memories. She stared into the flames, seeing the fire in the monster’s lair, the wounded creature lying on one side of it while she’d huddled on the other. She didn’t realize Thialfi was still standing near her until he spoke.
“You’ll need a sheath for that.”
She looked up, her face frozen.
“We have Brynjolf’s sword belt. She could use that,” Mord said, walking back.
Hild sat in front of them, feeling like a child caught stealing apples.
“It wouldn’t be the right shape, but we could make it fit,” Thialfi said, stooping to pick up the blade. “Wulf’s good at that sort of thing.”
The two of them looked at the sword, Thialfi testing its heft in his single working hand. He held it to his eye and sighted down the blade. “It’s a fine weapon,” he said before he laid it on the ground beside her again. The two warriors walked away, their conversation back on the monster and whether it would cross the river.
Hild watched them, wondering whether they’d been charmed into forgetting she’d had the blade before she’d gotten to the monster’s lair.
Then Thialfi glanced back and their eyes met. He remembered. He knew she’d tried to escape, too. And from his expression, she thought he might understand the options she’d been given—and the choice she had made.
He turned to face her and bowed—not a polite nod to a noblewoman, but the full bow of a warrior to his queen.
TWENTY-SIX
THEY PREPARED TO RIDE OUT THE NEXT MORNING, HILD dressed in damp but clean clothes, her red dress packed away again. Her sword slapped against her leg—it would take some time before she was accustomed to wearing it. Thialfi had been right about Wulf. The young warrior was good at leatherworking, and she had watched, impressed, as he’d adapted the belt and sheath to her and her sword. It comforted her to have a memento of Brynjolf with her.
As she readied herself for the day’s ride, she tied Unwen’s leather bag to the belt, her fingers stiff with the cold morning air. Then she struggled with her hair. When Unwen arranged her hair, the knot in the back was always perfect. How had she done it? And how many other things had the slave done for her that she’d never noticed? The men helped, bringing her food and water, but nobody rolled up her blankets for her or helped her pin on her gown. And who was there to hold up a cloak for privacy when she needed to relieve herself?
When she was finally ready, frustrated at how long it had taken her and aware that Hadding was patiently waiting to escort her, she made her way down the path to the grassy place where the horses had been hobbled. This time Fire-eyes didn’t shy away from her, but Wulf had to help her into the saddle now that the sword was in her way. As she labored to arrange herself on her horse’s back, she wondered how the men wore their weapons with such ease.
The sun was climbing above the distant hills when they rode into the cold, clear morning. Glancing back, Hild could see how defensible their camp had been, with its boulders for guards to hide behind, and the campsite at the very top of the hill, hidden from view. Her eye fell on the pony, its saddle empty. She swallowed a lump in her throat.
It wasn’t just that she had to do everything herself. It was Unwen, too—her wry expression, the way she muttered to herself as she went about her work and bossed the other slaves around. The way she took care of Hild. “Lady of the Vanir,” Hild whispered. “Watch over her.”
With sudden clarity, her own future spread before her like a landscape viewed from a height. She hardly needed a vision to tell her that whatever had happened to Unwen, whether she still lived or not, their paths had been inviolably sundered. Escaping to the slave’s people was no longer a possibility.
Yet if she had followed Unwen, what would her fate have been? What place might she have had among Unwen’s tribe? Surely Unwen would have vouched for her—assuming that she had a voice among her people. Then she remembered the look on Unwen’s face when they parted. She might have ended up an outcast among Unwen’s tribe. She might even have been enslaved herself.
She shook the thoughts away. None of that mattered anymore. The company had crossed into the land of the Geats, and whether she wanted to or not, Hild would marry their king.
As if a cloud had covered the sun, she felt the day darken. She bowed her head, letting Fire-eyes follow the men.
They rode down the hillside toward the valley, the warriors’ helmets giving them a menacing look, their weapons poised against sudden attack. Every stone could hide an unknown threat. No one joked or even spoke. They kept close together, the men in formation around Hild.
She was the one who broke the silence, her words surprising her. “The creature. It’s not here.” As she spoke, she realized how certain she was. Just as she’d known it was racing through the woods to attack the men back on the other side of the river, she could tell that the monster was no danger to them now.
Thialfi, riding next to her, looked at her and she nodded to reassure him. The other men exchanged glances and the mood shifted. They still rode without speaking, keeping a close guard around her, but Hild felt as if their mail shirts had been given permission to jingle.
She eased into the ride through the stone-filled valley, her fingers barely touching Fire-eyes’s reins. He needed no direction. What a handsome gift he had been. Her young cousin’s generosity humbled her. Could she have given Fleetfoot away, even to Beyla, who loved the horse so dearly? She didn’t think so. Perhaps Arinbjörn had been more cognizant of what she’d done for him than she’d thought when she’d been sunk in her misery.
She recalled the day it happened, and the way she’d known the Bronding had been about to kill her cousin. The compulsion that had overtaken her had been so strong that she had half believed it when Bragi said she was possessed. But now she knew her uncle’s skald had been wrong. She hadn’t been possessed; instead, she’d been so overwhelmed that she’d lost all sense of herself.
Brynjolf’s sheath slipped, digging into her leg, and she reached to adjust it. Fire-eyes tossed his head to ask what she was doing and she put a palm against his neck, warming her fingers. They were keeping a quick pace, and cold air buffeted her cheeks.
Again the sword worked itself into an awkward position and she moved it back, the touch of the weapon making her think about the first time she’d used it, when the monster attacked the men. A compulsion had filled her then, too, just like when she’d saved her cousin. Yet it had been different. How? She gripped the hilt, letting the sensation in her fingers remind her of that night. When she’d left Unwen, she hadn’t lost herself in the compulsion. She’d known who she was and what she was doing, even if she hadn’t understood why. Of that, she still wasn’t sure.
She glanced at the men who surrounded her, their helmets hiding their faces. Then Hadding looked her way and beamed, his eyes bright behind his helmet’s mask, his teeth bared in a grin below it. She smiled back.
She might not know why she’d run to help the men, but she recognized that the vision she’d had by the river, of the creature coming for them, had been different yet again. She’d been given knowledge, but whether to act on it had been left up to her. Was that what it meant to be far-minded? Was that the load her grandmother ha
d borne when she’d envisioned her youngest son crowned king?
The company turned south, and Hild could see a forest thick with firs in the distance. Thialfi pulled ahead of Mord, taking the lead—after all, this was Geatish territory, and it was his prerogative to guide them along paths familiar to him. But as Hild watched, Mord maneuvered around him, signaling Gizzur to accompany him. Thialfi reined back, but she saw the anger in his eyes when he looked at Wulf and Wake, who brought up the rear.
Yesterday’s easy camaraderie between Shylfing and Geat was gone. Hild remembered Arinbjörn’s warning. Her uncle’s men weren’t just watching for monsters and other threats. They were judging the best route to bring an army to conquer the Geats once they had been pacified by marriage—to her.
She would have to live with the Geats to the end of her days. Her only consolation was that her end would come quickly. When the Shylfing army attacked, she would be killed. Her uncle would see to that. He didn’t like what he couldn’t control, and over her far-mindedness, he had much less power than she did. He would wait for early spring, she thought, when the snows had lifted enough to allow an army through and the Geats were weak from hunger. And then he would attack.
She doubted she would live to see another harvest.
They passed the first trees on the edge of the forest, quickly leaving behind light and warmth. Hild pulled her cloak closer around her, wishing she’d worn her red dress instead of her damp clothes. They hadn’t seemed bad when she’d put them on, and she’d felt sure they would quickly finish drying, but now she couldn’t get warm.
The path widened and she looked up as they emerged into a bright glade. “We will stop here,” Thialfi said, veering to the side and dismounting. Wulf and Wake did the same, but Mord signaled to his men that they should stay on their horses.
“We can stop later,” he said.
“No,” Thialfi said, and there was iron in his voice. He gave Mord a look that caused Hild to think he was made of much stronger stuff than she’d realized. “This is a sacred place. You should dismount.” Without waiting for a response, he whipped off his helmet and strode to a massive oak at the edge of the glade, Wulf and Wake right behind him.
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