“Aye, I was coming back,” Agnar said, “but someone beat me to it.” He smiled. “We cannot choose our kin, but us…” He waved a hand at the warriors around him, going about the task of setting camp and tending to the wounded and horses. “These are my kin, closer than blood. My sword-brothers, my shield-sisters. I would give my life for them, and I think they would give their lives for me.”
“We would,” Elvar said. “I would.”
Agnar grinned at that and nodded his head.
They sat in silence a while as Elvar continued to check all of Grend’s bandages and wounds.
“You have never spoken of your kin,” Elvar eventually said.
Agnar stared into nowhere, the silence stretching so that Elvar thought he was not going to answer her. Then he sighed.
“There is nothing to tell. My mother died of the wasting disease when I was ten winters old. My father sold me as a thrall when I was eleven, because the crops had blighted, and he needed food for the winter.” A twist of his mouth, part grimace, part smile. “Or he tried to sell me. I put a wood-axe between the eyes of the slaver trying to buy me and ran.” He laughed, though there was little humour in it. “I ran a long time, until I forged a new family around me; one that I can trust.”
He squeezed her hand, then stood up.
“Are we moving out, soon?”
“No. We will rest, lick our wounds, sleep.” He looked up at the sky, bright with sunlight, a few thin clouds translucent as silk. “No point waiting for dark in this perpetual day. We will march when we are rested, stop when we are tired.” He looked down at Grend.
“He will wake soon,” he said, and walked away.
Elvar sat beside Grend and ate the pickled herring and cabbage that Agnar had brought her. There was still heat in the ground, not as hot as the camp beside the Isbrún Bridge, but they had made half a day’s march from the molten river of the vaesen pit and were now camped alongside a stream, on the edge of woodland and hills. Alder grew close as well as birch and elm.
The Dark-of-Moon Hills, Elvar thought as she stared at them. I have heard of them sung about by skálds in my father’s mead hall. Never did I think I would be looking at them, one sleep away from walking among them. Despite the fatigue in her bones and her distress over Grend, she felt that familiar flicker of excitement. To walk in the land of the gods…
There was a groan and Grend stirred. Elvar jumped and kneeled over him, stroking his scratched face. His eyelids fluttered open, stared at her, unfocused. Then he saw her.
“Following you into the Battle-Plain,” he breathed, “may not have been the wisest of decisions.”
“Wise? Of course it wasn’t wise,” Elvar said, her jaw aching from her sudden smile, tears spilling down her cheeks, dropping on to Grend’s face. She stroked his forehead. “I feared…” she whispered.
“Feared what?” Grend mumbled.
“A life without you in it,” Elvar said.
A smile softened Grend’s hard-cragged face. He reached out a hand and cupped Elvar’s cheek, strikingly gentle for this man of violence.
“Ha, it will take more than a few winged rats to rid yourself of me,” he said as his hand fell away.
“Good,” Elvar laughed.
“Thirsty,” Grend muttered.
Elvar unstoppered her water bottle and held his head up to pour a few sips into his mouth.
“I’ll be up in a moment,” Grend whispered, then closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Elvar leaned against him, smiling and eating her supper.
She heard footsteps as a warrior strode towards her. It was Sólín, two horns of ale in her hands. The grey-haired woman sat beside Elvar and offered her one of the horns.
“I owe you a blood-debt,” Sólín lisped, spit spraying from her mouth.
“Are you well?” Elvar asked as she put her bowl of skyr down and took the horn.
“Thothe little vaethen bathterds took thum of my teeth,” Sólín lisped, opening her mouth to show red, bloody gums, three of her front teeth torn out.
“A nasty business,” Elvar said.
“I am alive,” Sólín said with a shrug. “Bether to looth a few teeth than my life. And for that I have you to thank.”
“We are shield-sisters,” Elvar said. “There is nothing to thank. You would have done the same for me.”
“I would, I hope,” Sólín said, “though you do not know until you are in the battle-fray. That ith the time of telling, when a warrioth heart and boneth are truly known.” She looked at Elvar, a swirl of tattoos across one cheek and brow, and offered her arm in the warrior grip. “I thaw your warrior heart, your battle-thtrength, and am proud to call you thithter.”