Chapter Six

- Wounds Of War.

Pale sunshine washed over the cobbled streets, the morning fog having finally lifted. Kattegat brimmed with life, the soft rolling of waves drowned out by voices, crates clattering as men stacked them, the clanging of the blacksmith hammering nearby. I thought about the stillness of the lake up in the mountains, but my head felt too crowded to even imagine the calmness.

I'd woken not long after dawn, too restless to sleep in, and wandered towards the shoreline. I took in every detail of the houses, shops and people as I passed, reigniting memories as I went. Those three winters away felt like longer, but also like nothing at all. The trading capital had churned on without me, and nothing really had seemed to of changed.

When the salty, cool breeze tickled my face, I stayed on the beach for a while, savouring it whilst the city behind me slowly woke. But when the docks started to pool with fishermen and traders beginning their mornings work, I decided to head back and look for Bjorn. It was juvenile of me, or so it felt, to go seeking him out already. Yet I felt misplaced and without any other purpose - with the healers not leaving the Seer's side I was suddenly redundant. We had agreed to ride to Hedeby in a few days time, but Bjorn was all I really had in Kattegat. I had half-brothers and a step-mother of course but the only bond we had ever shared was Ragnar, and he had left us all.

I was thinking about where my father could be when a burly-looking man strode past me, barely glancing in my direction when the crate he carried whacked into my shoulder and sent me stumbling backwards. I only fell back a few steps before I was halted, my back thudding against bone and flesh.

"Have you got eels for legs!?"

The voice behind startled me and I spun around, hands raised in defence.

The blonde brother of King Harald, Halfdan, stared at me, his scowl loosening when he saw my face. His eyebrows raised in surprise.

"It's you," he stated simply, his eyes flickering over me.

Like my brother, he wore the signs of battle, in the shadows under his eyes and the bruises that decorated his jawline. It seemed many had suffered along with my father in his defeat in Francia. In the daylight, the tattoos on his face stood out starkly, spiralling across his forehead and down over his cheekbones. The black ink contrasted with the sun-bleached hair that hung over one side of his face.

I fidgeted, realising I had been staring. The flow of people didn't slow, and a few shot us dirty looks when they had to divert their path to move around us.

My mouth formed a few unspoken syllables as I struggled to decide on my words. "You're in Kattegat."

He ignored the obviousness of my comment and nodded. "Not for much longer, we're preparing to sail home. With lighter pockets than we expected-"

His words broke into a hiss and a hand went to his shoulder, and I realised then for the first time that he was carrying an injury. On his tunic, a spot of dark red seeped through the wool, growing to the size of a silver coin.

"Your wound has opened," I pointed out as we both looked at the blood.

His eyes shot back up to meet mine then, his hand pressed against his shoulder beside the stain that continued to spread. "You probably ripped the stitches open when you came barrelling into me."

His tone was light, despite the searing pain that must of been burning in his shoulder and I felt riddled with guilt.

"I can clean and sew it back up. I've got some supplies back-" Home didn't seem a fitting word, not for the hut I stayed in with the Seer by the outskirts of the city. Home was my parents farm, but that was a long time lost now. "Back with my things."

He considered it for a moment, but the pain in his shoulder made his decision. He nodded. "Lead the way."

I picked a path through the crowds, Halfdan behind me, weaving between shoulders and ducking around corners until the mass of people filtered out into a quieter side street. The hut was just ahead of us now and he slid out into step beside me.

"Last time I saw you, you were causing injuries not fixing them. A woman of many talents."

I could see the corner of his mouth turned upwards in my peripheral vision.

"You remember that."

He laughed and something familiar rang in his tone. It was smoother, but almost the same laugh I had heard from Harald that night months ago. I remembered thinking they hardly even seemed like brothers, but now side by side with Halfdan, I was reconsidering.

"How could I forget, he spoke about you as often as I needed to piss the whole way to Francia," he said.

I stopped before the door and fumbled with the latch, suddenly feeling flustered. Harald had spoke about me? I spun back round to face him.

"Wait here," I told him and then slipped through the door, not waiting for him to answer.

The Seer was in a side room, the healers at his bedside with their backs to the doorway. They didn't even flinch as I hurried past behind them - they had barely even looked at me since I had arrived back in Kattegat. I caught a glimpse of the Seers pale face between their shoulders, staring to the sky in a silent sleep, a wad of dampened leaves pressed to his forehead.

I collected what I needed, trying to ignore the swirling in my stomach from Halfdan's comment. I made sure to close chests and drawers carefully and quietly to avoid attracting any attention - there were questions I wanted to avoid being faced with. Plus I didn't trust Aslauag's healers to turn a blind eye. Halfdan was the brother of the man who openly spoke about conquering all the thrones of Norway after all, including hers. I could tell her the truth, that I was simply tending to his wound, but something inside me urged that it was something I should keep to myself.

Halfdan was leaning back against the wall of the hut when I returned through the doorway, holding the basket I had filled with supplies. His head lolled to the side against the wooden planks as he watched me pass, pushing himself off the wall to follow me when I beckoned him with a tilt of my head.

Offset from the hut in a small clearing was a bench fashioned out of the fallen log of a colossal oak tree and the charred remains of a cooking pit. I glanced around, checking we were alone. It seemed quiet on the outskirts and a brush obscured us from the paths view.

I sat on the bench, placing the basket at my feet as Halfdan stepped over it, lowering himself to sit opposite, a leg straddling each side. I fished around in the basket for the jar of ointment and when I sat up again with it in my lap, his tunic was already coming over his head. I looked away quickly from his lean torso, staring at the jar as I pulled the cork out with a pop.

"This will sting," I said, dabbing the ointment onto a cloth, "but it will help to stop it getting infected."

I held the cloth up but my hand stilled. Wet blood glistened in the small but deep wound on his shoulder, crusts of dry blood on the skin around it, a smear dried down towards his armpit. The end of a thread hung out of his skin where a stitch had once been woven.

He sucked in a breath when I pressed the cloth gently against it, and I could see the muscle in his jaw working, a vein in his neck protruding.

"What happened?" I asked, partly to distract him from the burn of the ointment on his torn skin and partly because I was curious.

"I got shot." His voice was clipped, straining against the pain. "With a crossbow."

I flinched at the thought, struggling to even imagine what it must of felt like to have an arrow driven through your flesh.

"Harald thinks Ragnar has been cursed by the gods." He jerked his chin towards his wound. "Maybe I have been too."

I swallowed down a lump in my throat, the words hurting more than they should of. I idolised my father. He was almost a god to me as a little girl, the bravest, most passionate and most intelligent man I knew. It stung that he had fallen so low, and to hear people had noticed it. He deserved more.

"If you were cursed," I said, trying to shake away the thought, "then the arrow would of killed you."

"Fair point," he conceded as I wiped the last of the ointment onto his skin and then dropped the cloth back in the basket. "Or maybe one day I'll wish it did, and my curse is yet to come."

The lightness in his voice had come back then, away from the sting of the ointment, and I could tell he didn't truly believe that.

"The gods watch you, rather than curse you. They have plans for you Halfdan, ones that will take you across open water and over new lands. Your old bonds will burn and new ones will rise from their ashes."

A thick silence hung between us and the mild wind brought a chill along it's current, the hem of my skirt swaying. The words had come so easily and had flowed like they came naturally. It was only when the last syllable had rolled off my tongue that I realised what I had said, a sickly feeling in my stomach setting in. Where had that come from? Each word felt as true as the sky was blue, but I couldn't place why.

Halfan leaned forward on the bench, eyes narrowed. "Who are you exactly?"

I felt hot and panicked and like I wanted to just make an escape through the trees then and there. But it would only make things worse. I ducked down to find the needle and thread in the basket, letting my hair hang over my flushed face.

"Someone who's really sorry for how this next bit is going to feel."

I held the needle up between us, trying my best to ignore the hammering of my heart inside my ribcage. I was evading his question, but I just wanted to finish tending to his wound without the situation taking a turn. I wanted to just be nobody for a little while longer.

He leant back, his eyes going between the needle and I for a long moment before he seemed to swallow the words at the tip of his tongue. Relenting, he angled his shoulder towards me and I pressed my palm beside the wound, steadying my other hand as I pierced the needle through his skin. He grimaced as I wove the thread like the embroidery of a tunic, but he didn't move, or push the subject of my identity any further.