Salt and Bone
My second dawn at sea is bloody red and I am sure I won't live to see a third. The reasons are twofold. One is the infected wound that festers on my thigh. My blood has become black with augue and a blinding pain has spread from the flesh into the bone. By that alone I am not long for this world, but I feel the second on the wind. A storm approaches.
By mid-day dark clouds gather on the horizon and the Norse men's chatter becomes reserved and sharp. I do not know what they say but the one called Finnr, whose hair is red like a copper coin and speaks in my tongue, informs me with a sharp toothed grin that today we may all kiss the bottom of the sea.
He could be right. The wind stretches the cloth sails taunt and the narrow boat rocks violently as the ocean churns beneath it. The other captives and I are lashed together with our backs to the pole that suspends the sail. When the rain begins the norsemen stretch an oiled canvas over their heads or duck below the deck; we captives are given no such consideration. The ocean swells and rises, crashing over the sides of the boats and pounding us until we cannot see for the salt in our eyes nor breathe for the water in our noses and throats.
The salt water washes over the tear in my thigh and the screams tear themselves from my throat are carried away by merciless gales of wind. Burns and blows are as familiar to me as hunger and exhaustion, but the pain of the ocean striking my wound is new and so terrible that I find myself begging for an end. Any end. Even death.
But it's all for naught. None can hear me over the roar of the wind, not even the Gods, and I scream until the world goes dark and quiet.
By some incredible magic, I am the only one of the captives to survive until the next morning. The norse men are in good spirits, despite the deaths, because all of the bounty they reaped from my land has survived. They are rich men yet, providing they make it back home. Finnr and another named Henning, who smells of sour ale, untie the corpses and I.
I slump forward, feeling much like a corpse myself, and brace myself against my good leg.
"The gods have spared you another day, man of Norðreyjar. Do you thank them, or do you curse them?," ask Finnr with a grin.
"I am called Petar," I croak. Since it is by their sword that I will die they should know my name. "And as for the Gods..."
I gather what saliva I can and spit at the floor.
Henning rolls his eyes and rasps something sharp at Finnr but he is too busy laughing at my audacity to hear him.
"Alright, Petar of Norðreyjar, who curses the Gods that spare his life. What say you move your comrades to their graves with me?"
I am not sure if this is an order but, as I am dying anyway, there is nothing I can lose by refusing.
"Move them yourself," I grumble. I lean my head back against the pole I had been lashed to and allow the sun to beat down on my face. My leg throbs viciously. My eyes must deceive me; for today it looks better than yesterday. If so, then the Gods have played a cruel trick for, if I survive this injury, it will be as nothing better than a lame slave.
Finnr laughs at me again. Why he is so amused by my anger I cannot hope to know. He and Henning toss the bodies over the side of the boat with an indifference that only serves to enrage me. Soon it will be my body they toss into the blackened deep. Afterward, when Finnr offers me his flask of ale, I look to the sea behind us dotted with the dead bodies of the last of my people. I turn my head to refuse his offer. These Norsemen are as savage as beasts and I will not share a cup with any one of them. Even to save my life.
But I need not have bothered. I will not be blessed with death today. We have not even been at sea for a full three days when we arrive at the Norseman's homeland- a place Finnr calls Hordafylke. They grow excited and rambunctious and I know why. Being separated from your home, even for a moment, is to know heart break.
My throat tightens as we dock. This place looks like Jarlshof. The trees are similar, as is the air- salty and cool. Even the soil is the same. But this place is not Jarlshof and these people are not like me. I will spend my life among them as a stranger in a strange place and I will never see my home again. For even if they were to remove the leather collar from around my neck; there is no home I could return to.
It is nothing but ashes now. Everyone I once knew- dead.
Nothing is left for me there. The only one way forward is here, as a slave to the people who took everything I loved and burned it to the ground.
The Norse men gather their ill-gotten bounty, including me, and haul it all onto the dock. I cannot walk, even supported by another man. I am too weak with dehydration and sun sickness, so they let me collapse onto my side on the rough wood with a round of good humored chuckles.
Let them laugh. I hope to die where I lay.
But they will not let me. There is a final humiliation to face before anyone will allow me the rest I so desperately need. Finnr tells about it as I am dragged on a canvas stretcher through the wooden structures of their town. It is a presentation of the bounty they have taken from my land, to which their ruler has first rights to. I am part of that bounty. Nothing more than a stolen good.
I refuse to feel humiliated. I refuse to feel fear. What I allow is the anger. It will give me the strength I need to remain defiant. I may be a slave here, but they will find trouble if they expect me to be servile. But my heart is in too much pain to stay focused on my anger and to hide it, I shut my eyes to the unfamiliarity all around me. There will be plenty of time to learn it if I live.
I am thrown to the floor when we arrive at the great hall- a large smoky room that smells of burning sage, sour ale, and pungent bodies. I cough weakly at the heaviness of the air. From my vantage point, I can see hounds gathered by the fire. They fight over a bone, yelping and snapping as they tear it from each other's mouths. The sounds seem the same as the tongue the Norse men speak in. Musical, sharp.
Footsteps gather all around me. Loud voices boom. The room is filling with people who delight in the bounty stolen from my home. They have not seen all the deaths that earned them these goods, but I'm sure they know.
My heart breaks apart like dry clay.
Then, thunder. Boots against the floor and cries of cheer in a swell of sound that rattles the very beams of the hall. I raise my head from the ground and feel my breath arrested by what is in front of me.
The ruler of these people is seated on a pelt covered throne. And it is no man.
She rises slowly to her booted feet, and I am shocked to see that she is dressed in the same manner the men are- a tunic, leggings and a leather breastplate. Her hair is even styled as theirs is, a single braided lock extending far down her back, lashed with leather and tied at the end with with a silver pendant. The sides of her head are shaved to the skin, which is painted with intricate red designs of birds and arrows.
Olive skinned and pale eyed, she looks nothing like the rest of her bone-white brethren. She is small, even for a woman, though there is nothing of her that is delicate. Her arms and hands are scarred and rough, though from what, I cannot imagine.
There is something unnameable to her. A force of presence, a wildness of spirit, that I can sense as surely as if I had seen it with my own eyes. It is not beauty, though that she has. It is not the men's style of dress she has adopted, though admittedly it befuddles and intrigues me. She must have been blessed by the Gods with the power of bewitchment and I am sure without knowing how that she is as fierce as she is captivating.
Nonetheless, her attire and demeanor say nothing of royalty. She stands wide-legged and haughty in front of her throne, arms crossed at her chest and eyes glinting in the low light. Then, her voice. Like clover honey. Like sweet mead. Even in the viking tongue.
She addresses the room, speaking words I cannot understand... yet, oh how I desire to! But when they cheer for what she says, my heart grows cold again. Whatever they cheer for cannot be good for me. I close my eyes. This meeting will probably not last much longer. I breath the cloying smoke. Beneath that, I can smell curing meat and fish and I realize that in my fevered state I have forgotten the hunger pains in my stomach. But they are here now and my mouth waters at the scent of food so near.
"Norðreyjar, can you stand?"
It is Finnr speaking close to my cheek. I cannot. He lifts me to my feet, where I tremble with fever. Standing causes my head to become light. I must look like death himself, I think, when she approaches me with cold, appraising wound in my thigh still gapes, and even in this dim light it is grotesque. As her eyes skate over it, she pales and I wish that I had had it covered. I do not understand this. Why should I hide it from her? Surely this queen has seen battle, or why would she dress as a warrior?
Then I realize that it is not that I am not ashamed of my wound. It is that it has somehow caused her shame and for that, I feel responsible. Only, why should I? It is on her orders that I have become slave to these savage Norsemen: who steal men, rape women and burn villages to the ground.
Her hand reaches out to curiously tilt my face. Does she see her own cruelty reflected back in my eyes?
Out of the shadows emerges a second woman- white skinned as if she has never seen the sun, eyes and lips darkened with some kind of black pigment. She is as insubstantial as the first is forceful, but when she mutters something under her breath to the leader of the Norsemen, I understand her position is also one of great influence. The queen pauses her exploration of me to listen, a look of concentration on her face. She looks into my eyes, her own cool and grey like winter's fog. Her gaze pierces me. Heat bubbles to life inside of me independent of my fever.
Her brow smooths, and then she says something that causes the room to still.
"For her part of the bounty, she chooses you," Finnr whispers to me.
I lay by the hearth staring up into smoke-blackened rafters lined with drying herbs. The pale woman with darkened eyes anoints me with ash and oil as cloying billows of smoke from burning sage and pine spin lazily over my head. I watch as tendrils separate and twist into nothingness. Finnr sits by my side, but his eyes never leave the pale woman's form. Her name, as I learn from Finnr, is Anne. Her thin fingers trace a shape on my forehead, right between my eyes, and then she bids him to sit me up.
It is my third day here, and I have been left alone in this room for much of each day. Anne visits once a day to administer some ritual or another, but today is the first day she has brought Finnr with her. I am surprised to find that I missed him. Maybe I just miss someone talking to me in a tongue I can understand. Or maybe it is because, no matter what has happened to me, Finnr has been nothing but kind throughout. Whatever the case, I find myself calmed by his presence.
I push myself up, swallowing heavily as the leather collar around my neck digs into my flesh and bruises my adam's apple. I detest it so much in this moment that I have to clench my jaw and hiss to keep myself from lashing out at Finnr, whose arm is around my shoulder as he helps me up. In the past few days I have come close to being healed, but the infection has left me weak and in pain. I will never walk without a limp again.
When I am upright, Finnr stands and collects a rawhide bag from a small, low table across the room, delivering it to Anne without a word. She hadn't asked him to get it. He had just known.
It is as he seats himself again that the flap of leather covering the door lifts. A tumble of dark, curled hair is what I see first. Small, booted feet. Then, those eyes.
It's the Queen.
My pulse flutters. This is the first I have seen of her since that night in the hall, and I have decided since then that she is the most dangerous enemy I have ever faced. She draws nearer to us and seats herself next to Anne, directly across from me. Anne nods at her and withdraws a fragment of white bone from the pouch in her hands.
Her fingers are painted black at the tips with the same kind of dye that colors her eyes. The play of her darkened fingers against the white of the bone stands the hair on my arms on end.
I am confused. There has been much done for me. Too much for any slave, let alone one that has been recently acquired. There is something else going on here that I am not privy to. The Queen does not seem the kind to waste resources on someone she does not consider valuable.
I shiver. What use has she thought of for me?
She withdraws a bottle from the belt slung around her waist and dribbles a liquid into the flames that makes the fire pulsate and climb in height. Reflected in her eyes is a hypnotic dance of light, and with her hair hanging loose over her shoulder, I can see only one side of the red drawings on the shaved sections of her head. The point of an arrow swoops across her scalp and ends just before the high swoop of her cheek bones. I am fascinated by that sun-freckled plane and pursue its curve unthinkingly.
A loud snap issues from the flames as they spit the bone back out. I am the only one in the room who jumps.
"The cracks in the bone will tell your fate," mutters Finnr.
"How?" I whisper, but Finnr ignores me. Anne opens the pouch and rolls out a handful of colorful stones. They fall in an array around the bone, and she bends close to examine them. Finnr's breath catches in his throat and he looks at the Queen.
I follow his gaze over Anne's head to the Queen. She is watching me, a single eyebrow cocked. Do I amuse her?
My eyes dart back down, too furious to meet her gaze any longer.
Anne lifts the bone and holds it pinched between two fingers in front of her face. Her eyes bulge as she examines it, not blinking once. They trace the lines on its blackened surface, and I am struck by a desire to see it for myself.
What do I expect to see there? Would I know what I am looking at?
Anne says nothing when her eyes climb from the bone to lock with the Queen's.
I chance another look at her. She is no longer amused. The inside corner of her lip has been captured by her front teeth, and she tugs on it on gently. Ever muscle of her body is tense and her posture is rigid and still. A few words slip impatiently from her mouth. A beat of silence I don't understand passes between all gathered around the fire before Anne nods swiftly, just once, and begins to gather the objects on the floor back into her pouch.
Finnr laughs deeply and, as he stands, claps the Queen on the shoulder. Her face is now stoic and pale. Anne hands her the bag, clasping the Queen's hands between her painted ones gently, as she too stands. The gesture is loving, soft, and speaks again to a relationship between the two women that I cannot fathom. Finnr waits for Anne to join him by the door before he bows to the Queen, his eyes sparkling meaningfully. With a wink at me, he lifts the flap of leather that seals the room, and he and Anne are gone.
The Queen contemplates the pouch in her hands, turning it over and testing its weight. I want to know its contents with my own hands. I want to know the stones that, like constellations in the sky, have connected the points of my future. I want to see the blackened scrap of bone whose cracks have drawn my fate. The Queen looks at me, and then my language is on her tongue.
"Finnr says to me you spit at the Gods. They smile on you twice. One, on the boat. Two, today."
Her clumsy tongue, her bold words spoken so haltingly, her sweet, stuttering voice... They all endear her. My sense leaves me. My mouth is dry, and my jaw too weak to respond. I swallow roughly to shake the feeling.
"The Gods can give, but they can also take… and sometimes, what they take, nothing they give back can correct."
Her face is a mask I cannot read.
"Sometimes. Yes."
I don't know how much of what I have said she has understood, but I don't dare ask.
"You can walk?"
I don't know if I can. It has been days since I have been able to stand on my own.
"Yes. I can walk."
She stands and waits for me to join her. I stare up at her, gathering my strength, then rise shakily. A frown tightens her lips, but she offers no hand to assist me. It's better that way. I do not wish to touch her. Gooseflesh rises on my skin for the second time, and I am grateful that my tunic conceals it.
When I am on my feet, she moves quickly toward the door. I try to follow, but my head spins and pain laces my leg. I hiss before I can stop myself, and then breathe deeply through the pain. I couldn't bare her pity for me to be written so plainly on her face again.
So I bite my tongue, and she leads me out the door.
We walk wordlessly down the muddied streets of the village, the Queen slightly ahead, I doing my best to mask my limp, and the autumn night air cool on our heated skin. She waves or shares a small word with every person we encounter, from the shyest child to the vilest drunkard, and leaves each beaming. I wonder at this.
There is nothing like charm in her demeanor. She is not polite as a Queen should be, nor gracious, nor particularly kind. Her approach to each person is businesslike and curt, and yet there is that unnameable force at work within her again. I feel them react to her brusque manner fondly, even lovingly, and find myself searching for whatever it is within her that they see.
And then I remember.
The same mouth that had so beguiled me earlier also gave the command that destroyed my home. Murdered my family in their sleep. Turned friends to ashes.
I taste those ashes on my tongue now as she pauses to allow me to catch up to her. I hadn't realized that I stopped walking, and now I am past being able to take a single step in any direction. There is a weight on my chest so heavy that I fear my breath is trapped there and I will cease altogether.
Her brow twitches. She takes a step toward me.
Then backs away.
Her chin rises, and though I am easily taller, she stares down at me over the curve of her cheeks.
"We go back now."
I give in. I let the hatred, brewing so violently just underneath my sorrow, take me. I feel the rush of blood to my head, the heat in my hands. I wish to feel the skin of her neck beneath my fingers. I wish to squeeze until the flesh gives and shake until her head rattles and the light leaves her eyes.
How dare she make a spectacle of me. How dare she march through town like I am nothing more than a spoil of war. How dare she take my home. My humanity.
My humanity.
The only way she could truly take it from me would be to turn me into something I am not. I will not allow her to make me into a murderer, no matter how much hate I have for her. But that does not mean I cannot be cruel. I don't fear a flogging. I don't fear death. I don't fear anything but the monstrosity awakening within me. If this is to be my life, I will live it as I am.
After all, there is nothing left that the Gods can take from me.
"I will go nowhere with you."
She is confused, head drawing back and cheeks darkening. Her mouth twitches.
"Um... The hall we came... We go. Um. Finnr gives me no more words."
I repeat myself, louder. She is wary of me, withdrawing and going still. Her stance. Her watchful eyes. I can see easily now that she is a warrior.
"You come."
"Do what you want. I am not moving."
She withdraws a rope from her pouch, holding it loosely between her hands and scowling.
I arch an eyebrow at her in challenge.
"Going to bind me, dear heart?"
I make her use it. Because she does not want to. Because it embarrasses and enrages her that I stand passively accepting it.
And because this way, I make her the monster in my place.
In the coming days, I am granted a woolen blanket and sheepskin, and moved to the kitchens where I sleep next to the other slaves. They give me a wide berth. I am grateful for it. My duties in the kitchen are cleaning and chopping vegetables, which I do mindlessly. After my first full day standing, I am in so much pain that I toss and groan all night, keeping the others awake. They find me a chair and make me take breaks, glaring at me everytime I wince. They mumble amongst themselves, I'm sure about me, and make no effort to hide it. It is clear that I am an intruder here.
I spend my days sullen in my chair, blunt knife in hand, cutting, peeling and washing vegetables.
It is good work. Honest work. And it fills the time where I would have heard my brothers' voices, or remembered my father's smile.
For simple slaves, we are treated well. There is plenty to eat, and we are kept warm. The female servants ran the kitchen in Jarlshof's halls, and slept around the hearth. Men were taken to the fields. I think it is the same here, except for me. The reason I am not taken out to work in the fields is obvious, and for the first time I am grateful for my injury. I am certain the men here would take even less of a liking to me.
After the first full cycle of the moon, I begin to dream in the Viking tongue- at first, a jumble of words. And then, I understand them. Onion is first. Then kitchen knife, followed closely by bucket. I worry these new words will replace the old. I worry I will forget how my first tongue felt, and the shapes and sounds my mouth made. When darkness sets in and the rest of the slaves are asleep, I stay awake, reliving old conversations, my mouth moving soundlessly in the dark. Some nights, I can almost hear my brother's voices speaking back.
Those nights are the hardest.
By my second moon, there are trickles of understanding that I'm not sure how to explain. I know the Norse word for said and a few names, and then suddenly I am understanding conversations about people. I learn the word for ship, and then I know that the raid season has come to a close for the coming winter.
I start to understand some of the words I hear in the hall.
The boars are too small to hunt for now. We must make arrangements to lead a party further North until-
This, a grisled, paunchy man grunts this between mouthfuls of food.
She waits for nothing. Marriage is a duty, not a choice-
A harsh whisper at the end of the hall, from a speaker I cannot identify.
Katarine has us stocked for the winter, but there's no plans to build more boats. Not yet, at least. There's still much to do in terms of-
Finnr. He motions me over, and asks in my tongue about my leg. His eyes meet mine kindly, his hand claps my shoulder in friendly greeting.
"My stride will never again be as sharp as the blade that cut it short," I respond coldly in the Norse tongue.
A shocked silence falls over the table and all who could hear my words still.
"Those words are much fancier than 'onion', Petar of Norðreyjar."
And the moment is broken. The table explodes in gales of laughter, and I get the feeling that maybe I have not been as ignored in the kitchen as I had hoped. But I do not miss what Finnr has said. He is reminding me that once I had a home.
You are from somewhere. Do not lose yourself here.
He is right. I am lost. There is a swirl of dark mist swimming in my head, obscuring all of my thoughts. I do not know what comes next. What to do. How to mourn what I have lost. Which direction is forward?
But tonight, I am in luck. Finnr regales the table, and the Queen, with the story of my survival of the storm. The way he tells it, I am brave. Stoic in the face of certain death. And afterwards, I spit on the names of the Gods, as if daring them to try again. I have moved so far from the place I had been then, but I had been so much more sure of who I was.
Finnr is reminding me.
After that, he joins me in the kitchen when he is not working himself. He is a shipbuilder, I learn, and the voyage to my country was the first he had ever made. He keeps me company and converses with me in my own language. His mother was from Jarlshof, and, like me, a slave. Finnr's father was poor, but loved his mother to complete distraction. I learn that he started saving to buy Finnr's freedom the moment he was born.
Finnr was poor too for a long while. But when he learned he was better in the water than on land, he eventually gained an apprenticeship with the village shipbuilder, who passed away just before the raids started.
Since then, he has gained standing in the court with Katarine on the throne.
This is how I learn her name. Katarine.
In my own language it sounds like pure.
I can't help but watch her. At dinner. During the crowded meetings in the great hall. Walking the village after dinner…
She never misses a night. As soon as the sky blushes a smokey indigo, she rises without a word from her table and wanders out into the early evening. I watch her small frame, disguised under layers of leather armor and loose clothing, move from the warm glow of the hall and disappear into the dark shadows lying just outside the door. Alone.
Always alone.
Her name is Sildre. She sneaks into the kitchen every morning for a bit of smoked fish or meat to give to the mass of matted gray fur that passes for her cat. I do not know who she is, nor whom her parents are. She is just Sildre, a wisp of a child who sometimes smiles at me. She is quiet, but her kindness is not sometime I take for granted in this place.
Today she shuffles in around mid morning, skulking at the back of the room and picking at some wild carrots. The head of the kitchen has shooed her away for being under foot in the past, so I know she is just biding her time before she can sidle up to one of us and ask for some scraps. I push myself up from my chair and root around the arid dry-cellar for her. There's plenty of luttefisk left, and only a bit of rakfisk. I bring her both.
She smiles shyly and thanks me, but then pauses and bites her lip.
"You're the Nordeyar they talk about," she says. "The one the völva said would come. You are, aren't you?"
Völva. I do not know this word, but I can guess that she means Anne, Katarine's seer. Had the Gods shown her my coming? What had they told her? I am glad that I fetched the fish morsels for Sildre because she has suddenly become the most valuable person in the room. Whoever she is, she has information I desperately want.
What is it that Katarine has planned for me? What is it that Anne had seen?
"I am not knowing about this," I stumble out with a quizzical look on my face. "I think no. I am servant here. What is it that the völva says?"
Sildre's face falls, and she clutches the food tightly in her hands.
"Thank you for the fish!," she squeaks and slips out of the kitchen, disappearing down the hall without another word. I groan and rub my face with my hands.
"Nordeyar," Halldóra, the wide-hipped woman in charge of the kitchen grunts from behind me. "Stop tarrying. There are still onions to peel."
I turn around with a frown, limping back to my chair and picking up my knife again.
There always seems to be onions that need my peeling.
I spin the blade between my fingers, contemplating my next move. Catching the wiry-haired end of the onion with my thumb, I slice it off in one smooth stroke. I have gotten quite good at this. My father would shake his head if he could see me. I have not been accustomed to a blade this small before now.
The smile wilts on my face. The burn scars from my former life still lace my arms, but they seem not to belong to me anymore. They're only the ghosts of someone else who once occupied my body.
"Boy!"
My head snaps up. Hennig stands in the doorway, as sour and rumpled as ever. Did my eyes deceive me, or is he much paler than his usual fish-belly white? I straighten up. Hennig jerks his head at the door, and when I don't move immediately he waves his arm.
"Come on, come on. Move."
I stand and follow him out the door, through the hall and out into the street.
"From your size, I assume you how to fight," he grunts.
My heart sinks. I do know how to fight, but I have never seen battle. Not that I've not had occasion to; the raid that lay ruin to Jarlshof was not the first. But my experience with battle, much like my experience with kitchen knives, is from a much different angle than most. And I don't much care for it.
We turn the corner of a wooden house and squeeze down a narrow pathway, which opens to a muddied, fenced arena.
In the center is Katarine, eyes dark and body humming with tension as she moves through a series of simple thrusts with her sword.
The ground is crisp beneath my feet, then becomes soft and slippery. My breath rises in clouds in front of my face and I rub my hands together to get the blood flowing. Though autumn has only just arrived, the temperatures have plummeted. Katarine has paid it no mind. Today she is dressed simply in a flowing tunic and her leather armor, her boots laced high and tight up her calves. Her hair falls down her back, loosely knotted with a leather thong and her scalp bare of designs.
She frowns as I approach and stops mid-thrust.
"What is he doing here?" she snaps.
I color embarrassingly, caught off guard by the potency of her anger and the violent fluttering of my stomach. Is she aware of the effect she has?
"The boy is yours. Use him," Hennig spits.
She grinds her teeth.
"What use is he?" she says, "He is crippled. He can't-"
Hennig throws his hands in the air.
"He's the last of your choices, Your Grace," he huffs. "You refused all others, even though there were ample volunteers."
She snaps her mouth shut at his words, then whirls around and fumbles with a leather satchel flung over the back fence.
"Get in there," Hennig says to me. "Here. Fight her."
He thrusts the hilt of a sheathed sword at me from a collection of them on the ground by the fence. The one he has offered me is too small. I wonder if I would be allowed to choose another, but as a I grasp the proffered weapon, I realize it doesn't matter. I'm probably not supposed to try to win.
The sword is not only small, but also too light. The metals in it have been poorly mixed, I realize, as I examine the blade. I hold it out in front of me and swing it experimentally. It slices the air, but its lack of weight slows its arc. As I thought, it is a poorly constructed weapon. I climb into the fenced yard as Katarine drinks deeply from a water pouch. Her face is reddened in the cold, and tendrils of her hair cling to the moisture that has gathered on her skin.
She has been here for some time already.
She throws the pouch down as she swallows, then reaches for her sword and marches back toward the center of the yard. Her hips swivel. The tunic she wears catches its movements. My heart thunders.
"On your guard," she snaps as she lunges. Unprepared for her attack, I leap away, dodging a thrust that is more angry than focused. My bad leg falters in the mud, and she hesitates for just a moment before darting forward again, this time without taking aim. I cannot tell if she is a bad swordsmen or if it is just that her weapon is ill suited for her.
"Wait," I say, throwing my blade up to catch her blow. The metals crack against one another, and I watch their collision rattle up her arms. By the way she grits her teeth, I can tell that it hurt. Undeterred, she pushes against me, startlingly strong. I step back, adjusting my center of balance, then heave forward. Instead of sending her backwards, she uses my force against me by spinning away and attacking from the side, forcing me to defend once again.
She's not a talented swordsman, but by the Gods she is fast.
"Stop," I grunt, as her blade strikes mine. This time, I throw her back and rush forward to catch her wrist before she falls over her heels and backward into the mud.
"Unhand me," she grits out.
"I'm not going to let you fall," I say, and pull her upright.
She is wary of me, and a spike of shame erupts in my chest.
With a yelp, she yanks her hand from mine, her eyes wide as she blanches in pain.
"I'm sorry," I say quickly. "Did I hurt you?"
The sword in her hand lands with a splat in the mud and she sucks in a quick breath.
"What happened?" says Hennig as he approaches us. "Did you hurt her?"
"I don't know- maybe, I-"
He pushes me out of the way and goes to yank up Katarine's arm, but she evades him, cradling the limb to her chest.
"Don't!" she cries, then bites her lip. I know this injury well, even sustained it myself a few times. The pain is in her shoulder. She's hurt it because her sword is not only too heavy, but her style of fighting relies heavily on brute strength, something she does not have.
"This is why I told you to stop," I say. "The pain is in your shoulder, right? Your sword is too heavy."
I turn to Hennig.
"She needs a weapon suited for her. Do you not have blacksmiths?"
Hennig's eyes slide to Katarine's.
"The sword is fine," she says. "There's nothing wrong with it."
I sniff.
"Maybe so. But you cannot use it, and your injury is proof. You need something lighter. Something smaller."
"What are you, a blacksmith?," she snaps.
I let her question hang. This I am not sure I want her to know. It is obvious that their metal working here is inferior to Jarlshof's, and I am not keen for them to discover why I know so much about swords.
"Yes," I blurt out. "I am. I was."
It seems I cannot help but make a fool of myself, especially in front of Katarine.
"Anything else we should know about you, boy?"
Hennig's eyes narrow.
"You need a sling," I say softly to Katarine instead of answering him. I know the pain she is in. It's fiery and constant, and there's nothing for it but rest. She will be miserable for days to come.
She scowls at me.
I tug my overshirt off and knot the sleeves together, forming a loose sling.
"May I?"
She snatches it from me, eyes still guarded. She fumbles with it for a moment before realizing she won't be able to wrap it around herself. Her cheeks color. I want to hold them between my hands.
"It'll be easier if I do it," I say. Over her shoulder I catch the expression on Hennig's face: watchful, calculating. I move toward her gently, slide the sling around her shoulder and hold it still for her as she lifts her arm backwards into the loop of fabric.
Her boots must be fascinating today because she doesn't lift her eyes from them once.
Hennig turns around and moves stiffly toward the gate.
"Call it a day," he says, gathering the swords as he goes. "We'll start again in three days time."
Katarine nods and goes to gather her things.
"You," says Hennig, pointing to me. He crooks his gnarled finger. "Come with me. I'm not finished with you yet."
I am slightly disappointed when he leads me away from Katarine and back toward the narrow path that led us here. I peek over my shoulder at her and am rewarded by the panicked jerk of her eyes towards the ground.
"You've been holding back on us, boy," Hennig says. "But not anymore."
Thanks to Hennig, I have peeled my last onion.
He sets me up with the blacksmith, a man who even the kindest soul would think lazy. Like Hennig, he smells heavily of sour ale, but his eyes are droopy and red where Hennig's are bright and swift, and I know within moments of entering his forge that I will be doing most of the work. He claps a hearty hand on my shoulder in a way I'm sure he imagines is friendly, but he's so rancid that I immediately wish he was a less sociable drunk.
As I expected, I am put to work immediately, and the blacksmith disappears into the back of the forge. I admit that I don't mind- the heat from the fires lick at my skin, and after a frigid day in the kitchen and mud, I relish the opportunity to soak up its warmth. Sweat beads along my forehead and the back of my neck, and I tug off the remnants of my overclothes until I am bare chested in blazing forge. Sparks have never bothered me much anyway- I've grown accustomed to their sting.
The skin under my collar grows irritated, and yet again a rush of anger sweeps through me. But it's muted now, just a shadow of the inferno it used to be. This change gives me pause. Have I forgotten everything that has brought me here? No. A hollow pain still beats in my chest, but it's accompanied by something new. Resignation.
I turn over some of the blacksmith's molds and am not surprised to discover that they are eroded to worthlessness. I snort while I consider what to do with them. I'm not keen to actually make good weapons for the nordic men. They're dangerous enough with the ones they already have.
A shadow falls over me as I examine one of the smelting irons, and I slam it down on the anvil with a jarring clang.
Katarine is shifting from foot to foot in the entrance to the forge, her lip caught between her teeth in what is quickly becoming my favorite expression of hers.
"Your grace," I say. "How are you feeling?"
She shrugs her good shoulder and clears her throat softly.
"Hennig has put you to work I see."
"Unless you have better use for me…?"
I wish the ground would swallow me. Why am I teasing her like this?
"No. I don't know. Here's fine. I don't really-"
She cuts herself off. Her cheeks burn darker still. She opens her mouth and then snaps it shut as her brow draws together.
"You can fight," she says at last, her voice halting. Her fingers trail along her injured arm and grasp the elbow.
"Yes."
"Who taught you?"
The moment the words leave her mouth, I sense her withdrawing from me. She freezes, shocked at the words she has spoken, and then her jaw grinds together and her face hardens.
"I'm a blacksmith," I say with a smile. "Knowing how to wield a sword is in my blood."
She nods, sidling her way towards the door.
"Wait!" I say desperately. "I can teach you."
She pauses.
"Whoever taught you how to use a sword taught you wrong. The way you use it- like a bludgeon- you're going to keep getting hurt."
She scowls.
"Hear me out. I'm not saying you can't fight- but with the correct technique, and the right weapon you'll-"
"My father taught me to fight," she says. "My sword once was his own. I will not use another."
Without another word, she turns and disappears into the night.
"Who was tha-?" grunts the blacksmith as he emerges from the back of the shop. "She want to buy something?"
"No," I say. I stare at the faulty molds on the table. One of them is cracked and poorly soldered together. If it is used as a mold, the molten metal will split it and spill everywhere. I think of the wrinkle that formed between my father's eyes when his own molds failed.
I toss the cracked mold into the slag pile to be melted down. It hits the dirt with a dull thud, but I stare at it for a long time.
While I enjoy being back in front of the smithing fires, I am so tired at the end of the day I can hardly keep my eyes open. I keep promising myself that I will venture back to the hall to try to see Katarine, but I can never quite seem to make it work. More often than not I collapse in a heap on my mound of hay and promise myself to try again tomorrow, even as I know that it won't happen.
I dream of her some nights.
I dream of sage satchels smoking in my hands as I walk through the great hall in Jarlshof. I see boats rocking in the water on a rocky beach, the constellation of stones in which Anne saw my fate. I dream of the cracked bone in her blackened fingers. She opens her mouth to tell me what it all means, but no sound comes out.
I do nothing but stoke fires and dream for a fortnight. My muscles grow sore, then stiff, then become visibly more from the work. My mind grows weary from the dreams. My heart aches for home.
It has been a week since I have seen Katarine when I have a dream that sears itself into my very soul. She stands on the beach staring into grey waters, just before dawn. At her back stands a line of men, solemn and armed for battle. Katarine's sword hangs loose in her hand, and I feel her terror as if it were my own.
This is not her battle. She will fight it anyway.
The sun appears as a red flare behind her, climbing as she raises her sword in front of her face and slips into a battle stance. Half of her face is obscured in the shadow, as black as night, and the other is illuminated as if her very skin is firelight. Her eyes roll in her skull to meet mine as wings erupt from her back and arch over her head, flames flaring into the darkness. I cannot breathe.
I wake covered in sweat, the sweet musk of hay in my nose and lungs as I gasp for air. I scramble to sit up, reaching shakily for the water skin I keep next to where I lay. My hand brushes the rough wood of the floor and knocks something smooth and cold across the room. Startled, I wrench my hand back and pause.
There is nothing in my loft but my hay and my flask, and the extra blanket and sheep's skin I had been granted. None of this accounts for the object next to my bed.
But I am much too tired to think on it further.
I collapse backward, my heart still racing. As I close my eyes, I smell sage on the air...
In the morning, I find it.
A stone as blue as evening sky that sparkles, as if with stars, in the light.
And then I really am breathless, because I recognize this stone. It is one of the many others that Anne dropped with blackened fingers into the soft pouch she had given to Katarine.
The hall smells of piss today.
The air has finally become crisp in anticipation for winter, but there remains a lingering heat during the day. Despite this, fires are kept stoked, albeit low, until nightfall, when they are fed logs and coaxed into blazes. Smoke and damp hang heavy in the cavernous space, and the combination leaves me lightheaded and irritated. I don't want to be here.
I skulk near the door, hoping to catch a breath of outside air and leaning against the wall to keep the weight off my bad leg. I don't know what is this gathering is about, but I have learned that nothing I like happens here. Sweat beads and soaks through the back of my tunic, and I reach to scratch my shoulder. As I do, I glance surreptitiously to the throne.
The Queen is staring into the rafters overhead, lost in her own thoughts. The delicate muscles of her jaw work, and I note with some unease that she is in full armor today. Her head has been repainted. It is like she has been dressed for war.
As if feeling my eyes on her, she glances in my direction. There is a somberness in her gaze that confuses me. This is her meeting, if she doesn't want to be here she, out of everyone, has more power to walk out. I snort a little and turn back toward the door. More people file into the room- some I recognize from the boat. Hennig is one. Finnr too. They find places next to me in the doorway, talking amongst themselves as more people file in.
"What is happening?" I say.
Finnr glares at Hennig. Clearly, whatever they were talking about has left a bad taste in Finnr's mouth.
"Katarine will settle arguments," says Finnr, sidling next to me with a last heated look at Hennig.
"There is a property dispute. A marriage that will be dissolved…," he trails off. "And there will be a few men who will stand trial."
"For what?"
Finnr does not answer.
I soon learn why. The trials last but a few minutes each, and the Queen takes suggestions and comments from her people, before making her decisions. But as each one concludes, I sense her anxiety. The reason for it is revealed when the final trial starts. The men are accused of treason. The penalty is death.
They stand accused of disobeying commands in the very raids that tore me from my home.
Finnr watches impassively, but I can sense his worry for me. It happens quickly. The Queen details her directive to invade Jarlshof. To bring back gold and whatever goods can be safely moved in the ships. Including slaves. The words numb me. I cannot stand to hear them. I feel that hatred again, rising inside of me in a chaotic rush. Finnr's hand on my shoulder steadies me, but only just. I remember what I had decided the last time I felt this way- that I would not sink to the level of the Norsemen and their Queen.
That I would not allow them to make me a monster.
I grind my teeth and allow Finnr to hold me back.
The dark crush of bodies in the room conceal the identities of the men who stand trial, and as the Queen continues to speak, I come to understand that what has happened to my home was a mistake. That what went on was beyond what Katarine could have ever imagined. How could she not have know what would happen? All of her missteps lay themselves before me, and I piece together the clues that have eluded my understanding of her underneath the weight of my sorrow. Now I can see her for what she is. Young. Inexperienced. Untrained in politics.
And yet she had been tasked to lead, and so that is what she had done. I think of the dwindling stock of food in the kitchen. Not much could be grown in soil this rocky, and they did not farm grain as we did. Winter is coming on swift wings. The food would run out. Unless something was done, people would starve. They needed gold.
But she had miscalculated, sent men more concerned with rape and fire to my home than simple pillaging. She had made a fool's error.
As if there was any doubt that they would be, they are judged guilty. The crowd from the hall gathers just outside the village on a rocky plain, and the men themselves walk tall into the center where they await their sentence.
I am shocked when Katarine herself walks into the center as well, armed and solemn.
"Their punishment is to fight their Queen," Finnr whispers. "They have sworn their undying honor and loyalty to her. They do not fight for their lives, and they will not dare win. Valhalla would turn them away."
This is no fight- it is nothing but an elaborate execution.
She faces them one at a time. The first puts on a good show of a fight, and though he is stronger and larger than she, her speed eventually outmatches him. She is lucky the man is so large and so old that he cannot catch her. It would only take a single blow for him to fell her. It doesn't last long before he is sent to his knees, grievously wounded. He drops his head, exposing the back of his neck.
Katarine, body heaving as she catches her breath, raises her sword above her head.
I think of her shoulder. Surely the pain is still fresh. That injury takes at least 2 moons to heal. It hasn't been nearly that amount of time. She will face three men today- warriors all- and have to defeat, then kill them, all in a bid to restore their place in the afterlife. It is madness. Katarine can barely wield that chunk of metal she calls a sword, let alone fight with it.
Her sword swings down. I cannot be the only one who sees the grimace of pain on her face. Surely others see the pained wobble of arm, the white of her knuckles... Nonetheless, her sword strikes true. Blood sprays her face. Her lip twitches and she pales. A heavy thump announces that death has claimed the first traitor. Her eyes stay trained on the ground, locked on the rocky soil beneath her boots.
Her breathing is short and quick. A wave of horror washes over me.
I need to stop this. I am shoving my way through the crowd, desperate, her name on my lips- Once again, Finnr catches me.
He shakes his head.
"This is her duty," Finnr says.
Her eyes lift. She wipes her sword against her leg. The second man takes his place in the ring. He bows to her, jaw set. I see the shame in his eyes. The resignation in his stance.
And then I understand why she is Queen. She will do what needs to be done. She will be what these people need her to be. If they starve, she will do what it takes to feed them. If they love her, she will let them. If they betray her, she will deal them the punishment that will cleanse them of their sins, and bear the weight of their deaths on her own back.
"Not long ago, she was a slave here too. A raiding party had gone far, far north, and found her village. She and her sister were the only survivors."
The ring of steel on steel. The rustle of boot streaking through loose, rocky soil.
"One morning, another slave girl went missing. Katarine was working in the fields, high up, and spotted her. She was on her back in the middle of the ocean, mad with fever, staring straight into the sun. It was Anne, and Katarine saved her. Anne, gifted with Sight by the Gods, told Katarine to challenge King Tryggvason to a duel. She did, and Tryggvason, arrogant and amused, accepted."
The second traitor falls to his knees in the dirt.
"Lo there, I do see my father-," he mumbles. The crowd around me stills and his words hang in the air.
"She faced him in this very arena- and won. By law, that makes her Queen, even if she is Skridfinn, not Norsk."
Katarine raises her sword.
"Lo there, I do see my mother-"
"She is our Queen now," he says, "only she can do this."
"Lo there, I do see the line of my people, back to the beginning-"
I can hear her ragged breathing, feel her exhaustion in the rattle of her lungs.
And Finnr's voice, by my ear.
"It is for the sister that survives with her. This is the only home they have left. She must do it."
Her sword raises over her head, as it must do one time more before her day is done.
This is when I know. It is the Gods who hide monsters beneath their skin. Not men.
TBC