I awoke to Bodil’s face inches from mine. “How do you feel, Freya? Are you ready to fight?”
“No.” I rolled over, burying my face in my cloak. Clouded memory of vomiting into the dirt came back to me, and I winced, realizing that Bodil and her maidens must have had to drag my drunk self into the tent. “Is it already dawn?”
“Dawn came and went hours ago,” Bodil replied.
“What?” I sat upright, peering through the open flaps of the tent, which revealed dark gray sky, rain misting down into the mud. “Why did no one wake me?”
“Because Bjorn has been sitting in front of your tent since he carried you in here last night,” she said. “He threatened to cut the throat of anyone who disturbed you, saying you needed sleep, or you’d be no good to anyone.” She fished in my cloak pocket and extracted the pot of salve. “I’m supposed to remind you to put this on your hand.”
I grimaced as I took the pot from her, and found myself tucking it back into my pocket rather than putting it on. “We are to begin training now, then?”
Bodil laughed. “Unless you need another few hours to sleep off your hangover.”
It was already shameful enough that I’d drunk so much mead, then embarrassed myself puking into the dirt and passing out. As though sensing my thoughts, the jarl said, “No one noticed, so enraptured were they in Steinunn’s tale.”
“But not you?” I drank deeply from a skin of water I found sitting next to my pallet. “I thought you knew Steinunn. Liked her.”
Bodil shook her head. “I only met her a year ago. I’ve never cared much for skald magic, particularly when I know it’s being deployed as propaganda, which was why she traveled to Brekkur on Snorri’s behalf. I stuffed my ears with wool when she began singing.” Straightening, she added, “I’ll wait for you outside.”
Again, I was struck that while Bodil might have an interest in a united Skaland and in seeing what the gods had in store for us, she was only tolerating Snorri and had little desire to see him as king. Which made me wonder what her endgame could be. Made me wonder if Bodil, like all the other jarls, saw herself as the one who would control my fate, but was clever enough to come at it by a circular approach.
I belted my father’s sword and a long-bladed seax to my waist, then donned my cloak and left the tent.
Mist immediately coated my face, and I shivered and stomped my feet as I walked, needing my blood to flow so that it might vanquish both the chill and my headache. Most of Snorri’s warriors seemed hard at work fortifying our camp’s perimeter with stakes, others forging and fletching weapons, and judging from the absence of women and children, others were out hunting and foraging. Everyone set to a task but me, who’d slept away the morning. So it was shame that drove away the chill, my cheeks burning hot as I followed Bodil through the opening in the stakes and down to the beach.
“Freya!”
My spine stiffened at Bjorn’s voice, and I turned to find him walking toward us with an armload of sticks for stakes. Before he could start in with his teasing, I snapped, “I don’t need to be coddled. I will rise when everyone else rises, and I will pull my own weight. I don’t need you interfering.”
Irritation flared in his eyes. “Maybe you should’ve considered that before drinking yourself sick.”
He wasn’t wrong. “That’s my problem, not yours.” Crossing my arms, I glared at him. “If I want your opinion or your assistance, I’ll ask.” I twisted on my heels and strode down to the ash-streaked beach.
Bodil gave me an approving nod. “Men need to be taught their place.” Then a lopsided smile formed on her face. “But the boy did clean vomit off your face after you fell nose-first into it.”
My cheeks flamed, and I kicked at a rock because I knew Bjorn didn’t deserve harsh words from me. “My head hurts.”
Which wasn’t a lie, but it also wasn’t the reason for my anger. By treating me the way he did, Bjorn was tempting fate in the worst sort of way. Already, Bodil suspected there was something between us, so how long until Ylva did as well?
No matter what sort of trickery Ylva had used to give herself an alibi in Fjalltindr, I knew she’d been conspiring with Harald to get rid of Bjorn. She wouldn’t need to resort to such desperate measures if she could prove I’d broken my vow. While my husband might not kill his son for the betrayal, he’d most certainly disinherit him in favor of Leif, which was what the bitch wanted.
And Bjorn knew that. Knew that Ylva was looking for ways to get rid of him. Yet instead of treating me like his father’s wife, he treated me as…as his own.
My breath caught as the thought registered, visions of every moment that had passed between us flickering through my mind’s eye. A flush of warmth filled me, but it was swiftly chased away by icy fear. It was as Bodil had said: Bjorn was a notorious risk-taker. So of course he didn’t fear the repercussions of being caught.
But I did.
Feared for him. Feared what Snorri would do to my family. Feared the guilt I’d have to bear as a result.
It was better that I’d said what I said, because maybe it would cause him to keep his distance. Would drive him into the arms of another, so that suspicions would fade. Yet even as that thought filled my head, my eyes pricked with tears and my chest tightened so that it hurt to breathe.
Why was I acting this way? Why was I constantly having to remind myself of logic and consequences to the point I wanted to scream at myself?
Why did I keep asking the same questions despite knowing the answers to all of them?
We’d reached the beach, Bodil’s maidens rising from where they crouched in the rain. Each of them held a shield, and I stared at the circles of painted wood. This is your fate, Freya, I told myself. This is what the seer foresaw for you. What the gods want from you. Nothing else matters.
We drilled for hours, Bodil calmly instructing me in how to fight in a shield wall and how to fight against larger opponents in single combat, her maidens gleefully battering me with weapons wrapped with wool. I learned a great deal, but not once did I feel impassioned the way I had when I’d trained with Bjorn. Which was likely for the best, given I rarely made good decisions when my temper was high. Yet I couldn’t help but sigh with relief when Bodil called for an end to our practice, her maidens wandering off in search of food and drink.
“That was good fun,” Bodil said, sitting on a log with her weapons discarded at her feet.
“For you, maybe.” I groaned, muscles protesting as I eased down to the ground. “Every inch of me will be purple tomorrow.” Crossing my legs, I examined my hand, which throbbed mercilessly, my scarred palm raw from fighting with a stick all day.
“You’re supposed to use the salve.” Bodil leaned closer, taking my hand. “The one Bjorn made for you.”
Scuffing my shoe in the sand, I remembered all the moments today that I’d felt his eyes on me. I’d refused to meet his gaze, only waited, tense and breathless, until he’d abandoned the beach again. “I don’t know why he cares so much.”
Bodil was silent for a long moment, but I could feel her scrutiny, weighing and measuring the question before she finally said, “It’s because he feels guilty that it was his axe that burned you.”
An obvious excuse for his behavior. One that I should’ve thought of. “Wasn’t his fault.”
Bodil snorted. “Not having willed something to have occurred doesn’t render a person blameless, woman. You know that as well as anyone.”
Given that guilt was a near-constant companion these days, I probably knew it better than most.
“The real question we need to discuss,” Bodil continued, “is why you don’t tend to your scars.”
My spine stiffened. “What are you talking about? Of course I do.”
“I’ve not seen you voluntarily do it once.” The jarl pried my hand free from where I’d shoved it in my pocket, examining the burn scars, her own hands marked with the countless nicks and cuts that came from being a warrior. “The salve takes away the pain and makes your hand limber, but you choose over and over not to use it, despite Bjorn’s reminders.”
Was that true? I wracked my brain, searching for an instance where I’d done it myself without Bjorn’s prodding, but came up empty. “I…I’m forgetful.”
“I think not.” Bodil straightened my fingers, digging her thumbs into the aching tendons. “And while Bjorn has a reputation for having talented hands, I don’t think you’re the sort to suffer for the sake of gaining attention. I think”—she hesitated—“that you believe you deserve the pain.”
It suddenly hurt to breathe, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Why, Freya?”
Twin tears squeezed out from under my eyelids, running down my cheeks as the answer lurking deep inside me rose to the surface. “My husband Vragi was a piece of shit,” I finally whispered. “He ruined my life and would have done his best to ruin Ingrid and Geir’s, but…” I tried to swallow but it stuck, making me cough. “I murdered him, Bodil, and he didn’t deserve that. Didn’t deserve an axe in the back of the skull just for being a bastard.”
“I disagree,” she replied. “Vragi’s reputation was known even in Brekkur. I’d bet all the silver in my pocket that cheers went up throughout your village when they heard the news.”
I gave a tight shake of my head. “He might have been an arse about it, but no one ever starved. He made sure of that.” And in Skaland, that mattered. Our world was harsh and cruel, winters taking countless lives as the unprepared or unlucky starved. But not in our village, for we always had fish.
Or had.
Now, thanks to my violence, how many would be lost when winter came?
Though that wasn’t the reason I neglected my scars. Wasn’t the reason I embraced the pain. “I feel guilty for the harm I’ve caused my village,” I choked out. “But I don’t feel bad about killing Vragi. I don’t feel anything.”
“Because he deserved it, Freya. That’s why.”
I clenched my eyes shut again, scrubbing away the tears. “It’s not. With the other people I’ve killed, it was me or them, so it makes sense that I felt little remorse over their deaths. But Vragi wasn’t threatening my life, or even Ingrid’s life, only promising misery, and I killed him in cold blood rather than trying to find another solution. If I were anyone other than who I am, Snorri would have punished me as a murderer, but instead I walk free. I should feel terrible guilt, but I don’t. So I need to make myself feel hurt another way, to punish myself, because I’m afraid if I don’t, I’ll do it again.”
Bodil exhaled a slow breath, then wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close like a mother would a child. “You don’t deserve to hurt. Hlin’s blood runs in your veins, so it’s your nature to want to protect those you care about. Vragi was a man who destroyed the lives of everyone he touched, and no amount of fish makes up for that. He didn’t need to go after this Ingrid you speak of. He could’ve taken Snorri’s gold and walked away, but he chose to attack you and yours. It’s his own bloody fault that he picked a fight with the wrong woman.”
There was logic to what Bodil said, yet I remembered the surge of emotion that had filled me when Vragi uttered his intention. Protectiveness, yes. Fear, yes. But above all else, rage. And that was not something I could cast at Hlin’s feet.
Bodil reached into my pocket to extract the salve. “Put it on.”
I rolled the jar between my hands. “I will. But I’d like a few minutes alone to sit, if that’s all right.”
She hesitated, eyes considering. But she must have heard the truth in my words, for she rose, casting a warning over her shoulder as she departed. “Do not wander, Freya. There are many who seek your death.”
Sighing, I opened the jar and smeared some of the salve on my scars, feeling almost instant relief from the stiffness. When I’d finished, I leaned back in the wet sand, turning my face up to the misting sky and closing my eyes. If only there was a way to clear my head. A way to silence the problems warring for my attention. A way to not constantly be thinking.
What I needed was not respite from the world but respite from myself. Except short of someone knocking me over the head, there was little chance of that.
“Breathe in,” I murmured, attempting one of Bodil’s exercises for settling the mind that she’d taught me earlier in the day. “Breathe out.”
My heart steadied as I breathed, pushing away every thought that came for me as I hunted stillness.
Breathe.
My mind quieted but the silence was short-lived, for a crackle soon filled my ears.
Along with the stench of charred meat.
Jerking upright, I panned my surroundings and my eyes instantly latched on the source.
Walking down the waterline, embers and ash falling in its wake, was the specter.
