by Arreana
The daze wore off slowly. The sun was up and her arms were numb when she finally sawed herself free. The bark left scrapes across her knuckles, and her wrists were rubbed raw. Her tender, tender hands… They were already burnt, and now they were stripped raw by the oak’s toothy skin.
Her shoulders popped as she wrenched herself to her feet, but she was too cold to feel the ache. Crows squawked down at her as she stumbled past the headless corpse of the alicorn beast. She went west, and as she departed the black birds descended to feast.
Afternoon? Early evening? She couldn’t feel her nose. Her hair was soaked. Her slippers filled with snow as she trudged through the valley.
She was out of tears, out of self-pity. She was ruined, and where a more honorable maid might have given herself over to the elements, she kept walking. She was running away, away from the clearing, away from the blood. Where the pure beast was slaughtered and the pure maiden ruined.
She followed the lake shore, weaving in between the willowy cattails bent beneath the snow. She made for the beaver dam at the far edge of the valley, and from there she continued west. She followed the small creek that trickled out of the lake and into the forest below.
Her head swayed side-to-side. Her feet ached. From the cold? From the sores? She couldn’t tell and didn’t care. Night would come, and there was more to fear in these woods than the chill.
Draugr and unicorns and princes to name a few.
She could only think to make it to safety in time.
The sky was changing—reds and oranges and yellows streaking through the brilliant blue—when a wisp of smoke drew her blurry gaze.
She blinked, pursed her chapped lips, and turned her frozen toes in the direction of the smoke.
Would they know her in her blood-soaked dress?
She thrust her fingers within the folds of her jacket. They were so cold, like blocks of ice sliding across her chest.
The sun was vanishing when she arrived at the village’s small clearing. Twilight illuminated the thatched roofs and wooden cottages. They were a settlement of fishermen and lumberman, not famers, not anyone she knew.
She hid in the bushes where they could not see her as they went about their evening chores. Were these the villagers they had seen before? Would they be keeping watch for her?
They might grab her if she approached. They might take her to her father, and he would see firsthand the state she had been left in. He would abandon her, or he would challenge Prince Eric and die in her stead. Hakon would throw back his shoulders and roar, “I told you so.” He would rejoice at having not married her, for what a foolish wife she would have been!
Night descended and a nipping frost came in its wake. The men retreated to the simple long house at the center of the village. The women ushered the children into the squat cottages. The pigs and goats were herded to their lopsided stable and feed was scattered for the geese.
The village was soon quiet. Light peeked out from between the wooden beams, and men laughed together, but no one was around to watch when Disa emerged at last from the bushes.
Her muscles ached and it was a miracle she could stand at all. Only her fear of being spotted propelled her forward still. She sprinted for the stable and muscled her way in between the pigs and goats already settling in for the evening.
They grunted and bleated at the disturbance but were as tired as she. They didn’t mind when she took over the corner.
The straw was scratchy and musty, but the animals were warm and soothing. The stable was almost hot, even muggy. Her soaked dress steamed, and she peeled off her sopping slippers to dig her toes into the straw. They were red, almost purple. Frostbite? She couldn’t say.
She buried herself in the straw and tried not to think of her purple toes and fingers and nose. She tried to ignore her stinging wrists and the burning of her frozen skin as it soaked in the heat.
A lady sleeping in hay. She endured the shame only because the shame of returning to her father would be still more painful.
“What are you besides pretty, Lady Saldis?”
The humiliation was a physical pain in her chest, a fist curled around her heart. She hiccuped on a sob but the tears wouldn’t come. There were no more left. She closed her eyes against the misery of it all; sleep was the only protection she had left.
Her eyes could have hardly been closed minutes when a hand clapped over her mouth and jerked her back to consciousness.
She bent backwards to escape the presence looming above her. A pony, several ponies, and a man hunched over her. The moonlight streaming in through the open stable door limned his shaggy beard in silver.
“Shh there, jarl’s daughter.”
Disa recognized the deep voice and opened her mouth to scream. Rorik’s massive hand clapped over her face, muffling the cry in her throat.
Rorik. Massive Rorik who carried a massive axe and fought giants. If the half-giant had found her, how far off was Prince Eric?
She wheeled backwards and kicked up a cloud of straw, but Rorik kept his hold. He reached out with his other hand and pinned her to the stable floor by her shoulder.
The goats and pigs woke. They grumbled and squealed at the horses.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
She could not speak. His hand was clamped so firmly over her mouth she couldn’t even move her lips. Her eyes widened, and her legs thrashed. She felt like a fish on a hook.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
She wanted to bite him, but his thumb held her jaw firmly. Could she outrun him if she got herself free, or were the others waiting just outside? She could see three horses pawing through the straw. One of them was hers. The other was Sigtrygg’s. Why had they left her behind if they were only going to capture here again?
“Eric isn’t with me.”
Her gaze snapped back to Rorik. His back to the moon, Disa could only see his eyes as they shimmered in the dark. His scars and his crooked nose were cloaked in shadow.
“I’m going to let go now. You can scream if you want. It’s not going to help any.”
He released her.
She did not scream. Her throat was parched, her lips cracked. Her mouth would not open.
“Did you need water?”
He had a waterskin. It was only half full, but it was huge, Rorik-sized.
She peeled back her lips to lick them, but it was like licking sand. This had to be a trap, but she still reached out to take the immense leather sack.
She put the spout in her mouth, squeezed the leather, and nearly choked as the glacial water raced down the back of her throat. So cold, so satisfying, like beating a dusty tapestry.
“You’ve been tied up. Are they deep?” Rorik motioned to the lacerations encircling her wrists.
Disa spared them a glance. They burned and stung and ached, and she didn’t like him looking at them.
“Wh—why are you he—here?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Looking for you. And you got a lot farther than I thought, I should tell ya. You walk all this way?”
“Where’s… where’s…”
“Eric?” The big man shrugged, a full-bodied gesture. “The mountains, I imagine, but he wouldn’t have gone far without those.” He nodded back over his shoulder at the horses.
Disa’s horse was tiny beside Rorik’s oversized garron, just as she was insignificant beneath his looming figure.
“You took… his horse?”
“All them horses. That’s what he gets for stealing my axe.”
“Your axe…” The axe cleaving head from body. Blood everywhere. Alicorn clutched in the prince’s red-soaked hand.
“Aye, my axe. Took me near a month to get the grip broken in, too.”
“And you took his horse.”
“It’s not much good, really. I’ll turn it to jerky before winter comes on, I imagine.”
He took back his water skin and shifted from his knees to his rear. Even sitting, he towered over her.
“Why—why are you h
ere?”
“Came looking for you, didn’t I already say? And I’d rather ask you than that bleach-brained lout.”
The stable that had seemed cozy before now seemed too small. Their knees nearly touched, and when he shifted she could see the beads of sweat shining on his forehead. Darkness hid his hideous visage.
“You’re… not going to take me back?”
“Back where? Eric or your father?”
She opened and closed her mouth before she could respond, “Either.”
“Waste of time to take you someplace you don’t want to go, if you ask me.”
“You’re not going to…” She pursed her lips and swallowed. She remembered the shore-side women her mother had warned her about.
“Going to what?” He waited for a response, and she felt his gaze boring into her face. He found his answer in her expression. “Ah.”
She had thought him a simpleton before, but now she couldn’t be sure. With his stare boring into her, she concluded that he had less frightening when she had thought him stupid.
“You think I might be intending to hurt ya?”
She hung her head and bit her bottom lip.
“I have no interest in hurting you, jarl’s daughter. I have a mama, she raised me good and proper.”
“Then leave me alone.”
“Ah, so you want me to go then? Fine. I’ll leave you for the villagers. But what do you think they’ll do with you? Adopt you? Feed you? Food’s scarce enough without another woman to feed.” A menacing edge crept into his gravelly voice.
Disa buried her head in her hands.
“Did he find the einhjorn?”
She could still smell its breath, hot and stinking of cud.
“Did Eric kill it?”
He leaned forward, his hugeness casting Disa in shadow.
“Yes.”
“And he took its horn?”
“He… he sawed it off.”
Rorik spat into the hay. “I’ll throw dog shit on his pyre, I will.”
Relief rushed through Disa, perverse but warming. “Do you… do you intend to kill him?”
Rorik grumbled more insults before answering, “Can’t be helped. Our paths will cross before long, and Eric won’t be tricking me again. That I swear.”
He pushed himself to his feet, but he had to stoop so as not to bang his head against the rafters.
“Where are you going?”
“Inside. I need a drink.”
Disa scrambled up behind him. “Don’t go!”
He turned back around, his head twisting at an uncomfortable angle. “What? You want my help now?”
“Where… where am I supposed to go?”
He ground his teeth as he considered her.
“Where do you want to go?”
“With you.”
He looked back at the horses. They still needed to be brushed and stabled. “I pity you, jarl’s daughter, so fine, come along. I’ll make sure you get fed and sheltered, and in the morning we can see that you’re sent—”
“No! I can’t go home!” She cried, and now tears were falling upon her cheeks.
“Don’t do that,” Rorik snapped. “I hate that.”
She bit her bottom lip but the tears kept coming. “I can’t go home. I’m ruined.”
“Ruined? Says who? You?”
“My father will think the prince has taken… has taken…”
“And what of it? You think most so-called maids are really virgins? Go home, tell your dad the truth, and be done with it. You’re pretty enough. Jarl Sigurd will find you another husband.”
But she couldn’t return home to her father’s disappointment or her mother’s insults or her brother’s lustful embraces. Home would be her prison. Her father would never forgive her, and her mother would never let her forget it.
“You… you’re working against the prince now?”
“Eh?” One of Rorik’s hairy eyebrows cocked. “I work for myself, and it just so happens that my goals clash with the prince’s.”
“Is that a yes?”
“The short of it, I suppose.”
“So what if I come with—”
“Not a chance, girly.”
“I can help. I’ll prepare the horses and set up camp—”
“Have you experience doing either of those things?”
She wiped the tears furiously from her cheeks. “I can collect firewood and make fires.”
“Can you now?” he replied, clearly doubting her.
“I can,” she said firmly.
“Now wait a bit, jarl’s daughter. Why would you want to be coming with me in the first place?”
“I can’t go home.”
“So you follow the strange man into the forest, instead? What if I were lying to you, girly? What if I was secretly working for the prince, eh?”
“Ar—are you?”
“What’s the point in asking? I’d lie if I was.”
Disa chewed her lip in silence. She felt foolish, naive.
“Maybe you need to be a bit less trusting in general,” Rorik said. “It’s not good for you.”
“I want to hurt him.”
The half-giant paused, and for once he had nothing to say in reply.
“The prince hurt me. I—I want to do the same to him.”
Rorik grabbed the rafter overhead and rocked himself back-and-forth as he thought. “The love-stricken princess wants revenge?”
“I’m not a love-stricken princess.”
“Look at yourself, huddled in a goat shed in your ruined gown. Could you even lift a broadsword if you tried?”
“Well… no.”
“You’re just a girl playing at adventure. Go home.”
“So my father can fight the prince instead? I don’t want someone else fighting for me. Someone else is always fighting for me.”
“That’s all well and good, but you don’t need me to get your vengeance. Track him down yourself. If you want, I could find you a knife. Can you lift a knife?”
Patronizing, condescending, but his words unnerved her. If the prince stood before her now, could she be so strong? Could she really harm him?
“I’m not… not ready.”
“Of course you’re not ready. Look at you.”
“But you could help me, and I could—”
“Help you? You think swordplay is so simple you can learn it in a matter of days? Do you have any idea what I’m going up against? Draugr? Jotun? Drakes? It’s not just Eric trying to stop me.”
She stomped down another twinge of doubt. “I’ll cook all your meals.”
Rorik hesitated, and his dark eyes found her in the moon-lit corner. “Cook, you say?”
She stifled her sigh of relief. “Yes. Yes, I can cook. I can cook whatever you’d like.”
“And why would a jarl’s daughter know how to cook?”
“I know how to cook,” Disa insisted. “I’m a good cook.”
“Fish?”
“Stew, smoked, broiled, fried.”
He considered her once more. She could see her value rising in his narrowed eyes.
“You really want to come with me, despite the danger?”
“Despite the danger.” She cradled her mutilated wrists and teetered on her weary calves.
Rorik noticed. “Come on then, we’ll get you fed and dry.” He ducked down beneath the rafters and moved towards the exit.
She didn’t move to follow him. “But can I come with you?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“But you won’t send me home?”
“It’s not my right to tell you where to go.”
“Then you can’t tell me not to come with you, either.”
He stepped out beneath the starry night with a snort. The scars shone white down the side of his face and his thick beard stuck out at all angles. He was a truly grotesques man. Terrifying, really.
“Aye, I suppose that’s true,” he admitted as he led the rest of the horses into the old stable. She recog
nized the other garrons: Olav’s and Frode’s and Trogil’s.
Disa dug her wet slippers from the straw, forced her blistering feet inside, and trudged out into the freezing night.
She faced Rorik for the first time. He had always been enormous, but with him towering over her, his size seemed almost unnatural.
Half-jotun. Was it really possible?
His sharp gaze landed once again upon her swollen wrists. “We’ll see to your injuries and go from there. Sound good?”
She tried to sound determined, but her voice cracked on the declaration, “I’m coming.”
About The Einhjorn