Please, tell me that Ozur’s men tracked the raiders down. Tell me that she’s all right. That she was rescued.
“None,” Ulfrun said sorrowfully. “The first sign of trouble we saw when the fog cleared was the smoke, and by then—oh, by then, it was too late. I’m so sorry, lamb.”
Oddny’s chest felt tight. She spent a few moments getting her bearings after Ulfrun left. Every step was agony, but Oddny managed to make her way out of the bunk room, parting the curtain to reveal—
Solveig, propped up in bed, color in her cheeks, unsteady hands attempting to mend a dress in her lap. And as much as Oddny resented the woman who’d caused her best friend so much pain, it was a relief to see her alive. To know that Yrsa’s last act as a healer had succeeded.
“Oh,” said Oddny. “Solveig. You look—”
“Better, thanks to your mother. At least for now. It comes and goes,” Solveig said. Her expression softened as she took in the young woman in the doorway. “I’m sorry for your loss, Oddny Ketilsdottir. It was unjust and undeserved. I’m certain my husband will make arrangements for you. Go to him when you can.”
“Does Ozur mean to let me stay here?”
“He does. You’ve no kinsmen to look after you, so I trust he’ll allow you to work toward a dowry and help you find a husband.” Solveig gestured to a haversack sitting on a chest nearby. “And that’s for you.”
Oddny picked up the bag and recognized the weight and shape of the object inside without opening it: her mother’s statue of Eir, the gods’ physician. She knew every carved groove that made up the goddess’s likeness, every drop of blood that had ever blessed the statue during sacrifices and festivals. Eir had always been Yrsa’s patron, and Oddny’s own as well.
“The skalds say the gods don’t favor the weak,” Oddny had said to her mother once when she was twelve winters old, the third or fourth time her blood had come. It was before she’d begun to learn the healing arts and sworn herself to Eir, before Yrsa had come up with the perfect recipe for Oddny’s moon tea. The pain had rendered Oddny prone on her bedroll. She’d never felt so betrayed; her own body had turned on her and would do so every moon until she was her mother’s age. She’d felt utterly hopeless. “Will any of them favor me?”
Yrsa had sat down beside her and said with conviction, “Of course they will.”
“I suppose enduring this will make me stronger, then,” Oddny had said bitterly.
“If it comforts you to think so,” Yrsa had replied. “But it’s all right to feel weak, Oddny. Sometimes our bodies give us more pain than we can bear. But any gods worth worshipping know that not every person can give the same effort.” She’d nodded to where Ketil’s statue of Thor was lofted upon the lintel—later, it would be buried with him in his mound—and then to her own statue of Eir on the trestle table where she mixed her tinctures. “Do you think they resent that we sacrifice one sheep where Ozur could afford to sacrifice five bulls if he so chose? They know how little we have to give—that we give at all is what matters to them. Do you understand? When your patron calls you, they’ll judge your strengths and weaknesses against yourself, not against others.”
Presently, Oddny clutched the bag to her chest, and she did not move to wipe the tears running down her face.
“Our men found it in the ruins before they built the mound. They tried to give it to you as you waited on the ship but said you couldn’t seem to see or hear them,” Solveig said quietly. “You may keep the bag as well. But first, open it, child. You should see for yourself the miracle it holds.”
Oddny pulled out the statue and was unable to stifle a gasp: There was not a single scorch mark on it. Eir was as whole as she’d been the morning of the attack, her round, carved face warm and reassuring. Swallowing a sob, Oddny stuffed it back inside the bag, closed the flap, and looked back to Solveig. “Thank you.”
Solveig nodded. Oddny ducked out of the anteroom and into the main hall, then out into the open air toward the cookhouse—it still boggled her mind that Ozur had a separate hall just for cooking—where she hoped to be allowed to brew her tea.
The mistress of the cookhouse was a prickly woman named Vigdis, who grudgingly let her take from the garden and permitted her to use a small cauldron and the cook fire to heat some water. When Oddny mentioned being Yrsa’s daughter, a look of recognition passed over the older woman’s face.
“Can you make anything to cure my joints of their aching?” she asked eagerly. “I’ve lived with this for a long time, so I never thought it was worth bothering your mother over—there was always something bigger going on to bring her here. But since you’re here now . . .”
Oddny shook her head as she tilted the hot water into her cup and let the ingredients steep. “I’m sorry. Illnesses and injuries can be healed, but I can’t cure ongoing conditions of the body.”
Otherwise, she added silently, I would cure whatever curses my womb. Gods, sometimes she wished she could just rip the damned thing out.
“But I can make you something for the pain,” Oddny went on. “Make it a little more bearable. That’s what I do for myself. I know all my mother’s recipes.” She’d always been skilled at memorization. At times she’d recited the recipes back to Yrsa in the exact tone of voice her mother had used while explaining them the first time, even if it had been many winters prior.
“If you could, I’d like that very much.” Vigdis suddenly seemed a little less bitter about having her around, but Oddny studiously avoided the eyes of the thrall women who also worked in the cookhouse. Ozur treated them well enough—their hair was kept long, their clothing worn but patched—but enslavement was enslavement. Is this to be Signy’s fate? Or worse?
Oddny had not grown up with thralls. But in the north, and in much of the known world beyond it, the labor of the unfree was the backbone of society. It made her feel guilty that their predicament was something she’d seldom thought about before Signy’s kidnapping.
“It puts a bad taste in my mouth,” she’d overheard her mother telling her father one day when he’d suggested bringing home a thrall to help her with the laundry, Yrsa’s most onerous chore. “Any person can become enslaved at any time—if they’re captured, if they can’t pay a debt. One bad day, and that could be us instead. No. It feels like tempting fate.”
Oddny wondered, not for the first time, if Yrsa had possessed some foresight she’d never spoken of.
Finally Oddny’s tea was done, and she drank it down. It would be some time before she felt its effects, but at least she knew they would come.
Suddenly there were shouts outside as a horn blew once. Vigdis and Oddny gave each other a weighty look that said: Raiders? Again?
“I’ll go see what’s going on,” said Oddny. Before she turned to leave she saw Vigdis reach for a large kitchen knife.
When Oddny went outside, she saw a group of people coming up the slope from the docks. With relief, she realized they were familiar faces: Ozur’s men. But between the two in front was a smaller man with an arm slung over each of their shoulders, head hanging, hair covering his face. He half walked with them, either hurt or semiconscious, dripping wet as if he’d just been pulled from the sea.