“When you’re ready,” Arinbjorn called, for the sake of formality. “To first blood.”
Eirik let Halldor take the first few swings, which he deflected almost lazily. No sooner had Halldor paused to look for an opening than Eirik hooked the beard of one axe over the rim of Halldor’s shield, sending it flying from his hand. Before Halldor could react, Eirik swung low and fast with the other axe, snagged Halldor’s ankle with its beard, and yanked the other man’s foot out from under him. Halldor dropped his seax as he fell hard onto his side.
Before Oddny could so much as blink, Eirik had an axe to Halldor’s throat.
“Two moves,” Gunnhild said, hands clenched on the edge of the fence. “He took him down in two moves, that son of a bitch.”
“Not so much,” Oddny said, stunned. “Look.”
Halldor was staring up at his opponent, one corner of his mouth tilted up in a half smile. In the heartbeat between his falling and Eirik’s leveling the axe at his neck, he’d managed to draw the utility knife from his belt, and the tip of the blade hovered a hairsbreadth from Eirik’s groin.
“First blood, wasn’t it?” Halldor said.
“It’s a draw,” Arinbjorn said hurriedly. “Match to no one. It’s over. Eirik, did you hear me? Halldor?”
Eirik withdrew his axe and Halldor put his knife away. When the king dropped his weapons and offered a hand, Halldor regarded him for a moment too long before taking it, and once he was on his feet, the two men sized each other up.
“Keep it up and you’re in,” Eirik said after a beat. Turning to go, he barked to the armory boys, “Clean up my axes,” before slipping through the gap in the fence and disappearing into the crowd.
“Shame,” Gunnhild grumped. “I wanted to see him bleed.”
“So that’s it?” Oddny asked Thorolf. “Halldor is in the hird?”
“He’s on his way. First one of the day that Eirik has accepted, too,” Arinbjorn confirmed, but his usual look of cheer had shifted into something calculating. “A man that good—we have to keep him close or risk seeing him on the other side of the battlefield.”
“A draw. Unbelievable,” Oddny heard Svein moan from farther down the fence, echoing the sentiment that seemed to be bleeding through the crowd. She wasn’t sure why this was cause for concern until Thorolf said, “Eirik is going to be in a very bad mood after this.”
“Who is that man?” Arinbjorn muttered as he watched Halldor leave the ring. “I like him. It’s the”—he paused and counted on his fingers—“fourth time I’ve had someone break my nose, but I like him.”
“Were the first three times Eirik’s doing?” Gunnhild asked wryly.
Arinbjorn affected a look of mock surprise. “How did you guess?”
“I have brothers.”
“Fair enough.”
As he exited the field, Halldor turned for just a moment, caught Oddny’s eye, and nodded. Oddny nodded in return as several of the men clapped him on the back and congratulated him, same as Arinbjorn had. Oddny couldn’t help but smile at that. Made an impression, indeed.
Arinbjorn turned to Thorolf. “Is my nose straight? It doesn’t feel straight.”
“It’s not.” Oddny sighed. “Come here. I’ll fix you up.”
* * *
—
ODDNY SPENT THE REST of the day scouring the kitchen’s garden for healing supplies and scavenging more from the hillside. She made a poultice to hasten the healing of Arinbjorn’s nose and delivered it to him just as he was heading into the armory, and he accepted it with gratitude. When he went inside, he left the door slightly ajar behind him—so as she turned to walk away, Oddny caught a snatch of conversation and paused to listen out of curiosity.
“—anyway, I still think it’s a terrible idea,” Arinbjorn said. “You don’t even know if this bindrune will work—”
Eirik’s voice cut in. “She seemed confident enough when she told me of it, and you saw the way she healed her hand. Thorbjorg will only devise worse ways to attack once the bindrunes are in place and she realizes her madness has no effect on us. And when that happens, we’ll need Gunnhild.”
“Still—she’ll never agree, and when she turns you down, she’ll brag about it.”
“I could arrange it with her father. Then she’ll have no choice.”
“That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had. She might actually kill you if you did that. She’s already made you look like a fool more than once, and I don’t dislike her for that, especially considering I do the same on a regular basis. But—”
“But she’s not my brother. You undermine me for fun. She does it out of malice.”
“Exactly. And do you really want to give her more fodder?”
“Well, what if I had fodder, too?”
Arinbjorn’s tone turned thoughtful. “That’s a fair point—we don’t really know anything about this woman. I don’t think it would be a terrible idea to talk to the others around here first. Get their opinions on things. Subtly. You do know the meaning of the word, don’t you?”
“Thorolf won’t be happy about it.” Eirik actually sounded sad. “If she says yes.”
“And while we both care about Thorolf, what’s more important? His feelings or the safety and well-being of the lot of us?”
Oddny fled when she heard Eirik’s heavy footsteps heading toward the door.
She had her suspicions about the conversation, but she put them from her mind and went to help Vigdis with the evening’s meal. Gunnhild had gone off to the other side of the island to meditate in solitude and, Oddny supposed, to work on that task for Eirik, which she guessed had something to do with the bindrune the men had mentioned. Unwilling to brave the noisy feast hall without her friend, Oddny decided to eat supper in the cookhouse, where she heard from one of the serving girls that Halldor was eating with the king’s inner circle. Good. The sooner they accept him, the sooner he’ll pay me back.
Once they’d cleaned up from supper, Gunnhild arrived at the cookhouse for the ritual, and it was nothing like the last one Oddny had witnessed: She, Vigdis, and Ulfrun formed a triangle around Gunnhild in the cramped room and sang, as Gunnhild—after drinking her poison tea—sat atop a stool, the old seeress’s iron staff tucked under her arm, and mimed spinning.
Like when she was a child, Oddny saw the thread that formed and dropped into the ground. But this time it sprang back up immediately and disappeared as Gunnhild jerked out of her trance and fell sideways off the stool, swearing up a storm.
She wouldn’t let anybody help her up. The hand that clutched her staff was white. “Thank you for your assistance,” she said to the three of them once she was on her feet. “That will be all.” Then she swept from the cookhouse, shoulders hunched and shaking.
Ulfrun and Vigdis exchanged a helpless look, and Oddny said, “I’ll talk to her,” and grabbed a lantern.
“What happened?” she asked, trailing at Gunnhild’s heels as they crossed the yard. It was dark, but the feast inside the hall was still going strong. “Gunna, say something. What did you do?”