Thorolf shook his head until Eirik added, “Please,” the single word loaded with emotion, and Gunnhild saw Thorolf’s resolve crumble as he took the weapon.
Gunnhild turned away. She couldn’t watch anymore, couldn’t bear to hear them say their goodbyes. Guilt burrowed itself deep in her chest, squirming, telling her to run.
But she held her ground and covered her ears until she was sure they must be gone—and then she raised her head to see Thorolf standing over her, alone. She scrambled to her feet and looked into his sad brown eyes. Every breath she drew made her chest feel tighter.
He was a good man. Kind, and sweet, and brave. He’d done nothing wrong except to care for her too much. In time, she thought she might have even come to love him. What kind of person was she to forsake him for another? For someone who was his complete opposite, at that?
“Things are bad between you and Eirik, and everyone knows it.” These were the first words Thorolf had said to her since the boathouse. “You can still abandon your oath to him and come with me to Iceland. You could leave this all behind if you wanted to.”
Gunnhild shook her head. “Signy needs me. Nothing has changed. There was never a choice at all, Thorolf. I need to stay and see this through.”
He set his jaw. “Is that truly what it is?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, miffed by his tone. “You were the one who told me I should work with Eirik in the first place—”
“But not like this. You didn’t have to marry him to work together. He didn’t appeal to your ambition—he appealed to your selfishness. Your desire to be someone. To prove your mother wrong. But to me, you’ve been someone all along. You never had anything to prove. Do you not see that?”
His words rendered her speechless, for they stung as though he’d rubbed salt in an open wound. Yes, things were bad with Eirik—and if she proceeded down this path, surely she would rescue Signy and avenge Heid if it was the last thing she did, but at what personal cost? If she were to go through with marrying Eirik, would she ever know the tender embrace of another person again?
No words came, and that was just as well. They’d already said all they could say to each other.
She waited until he was gone before she slumped back down against the tree and sobbed quietly until she could no longer breathe. A short time later she watched his ship depart.
That night she dreamed for the second time that she was drowning, and she awoke with a renewed determination to succeed. It didn’t matter where she worked on the spell; she just had to work. So after breakfast she headed back into the woods, went a little ways off the path, and though the sounds of human activity nearby told her she wasn’t completely alone, she blocked them out as best she could and tried to focus.
She was certain that her bindrune tattoo had worked and her mind was protected from Thorbjorg. Which meant that these dreams were not being sent by someone else to scare her: Her terror was entirely her own. She needed to come up with something to protect her body as well, a spell that would keep her from all harm. Thanks to that damned seal—that godsforsaken third witch and those teeth around Gunnhild’s ankle—the fear of death had taken root in her and buried itself in her bones, and she wanted it gone.
I am not weak. I am not afraid.
Maybe, once she felt she was safe again, the dreams would stop.
But the spell proved more complicated than she’d anticipated. There was too much potential damage to ward against, too many things that could injure or kill a person, all of which Gunnhild needed to account for. As a result, she soon became frustrated, and switched to the other task she’d set for herself that day: a curse.
Curses had always come as naturally to her as breathing. She gathered a pile of deer rib bones from the forest, and upon each she carved her intent in runes. Then she waited until the dead of night to bury them at the threshold of each of the thrall women’s huts.
As she placed her last curse and made to fill in the hole, the tattered cloth that served as the hut’s door parted, and one of the pale, wan thrall women appeared. Understandably disturbed at the sight of her, the woman gasped and made a strange gesture, moving the tips of her fingers from her forehead to the center of her chest and to each shoulder, saying something in a foreign tongue. Gunnhild tried to explain and saw no recognition in the woman’s eyes, but then a second woman—perhaps one who understood Norse—dragged the first back inside and let Gunnhild finish her work.
The next morning she heard talk of a man who’d broken into horrible pustules the moment he attempted to enter one of the huts, and she smiled to herself. Ulla, seeing the dark bags under her eyes and the dirt under her nails, smiled as well.
Gunnhild told Oddny about the curses that afternoon when Oddny took a break from the weaving workshop to mend one of her socks. The two of them sat on a bench near the armory. It was an unseasonably warm day, but there were rain clouds on the horizon.
“I didn’t know you could do things like that—oh!” Oddny jerked at the sound of a yell and stabbed herself with her needle. She cut a glare to the two men sparring on the practice field. “Could you keep it down?”
“Could you go sit somewhere else?” Eirik countered, and leapt back into action.
“Terrible retort,” Gunnhild said under her breath.
“Absolutely horrendous,” Oddny agreed.
Eirik and Halldor were practicing with, of all things, sticks, and they’d been at it since Gunnhild had trudged back to the textile workshop just as the sun came up. Both were so fast that her eyes could barely follow them. After the conversation she’d witnessed two days before, she was surprised to see that Eirik seemed to be having—fun?
Fun? That simply wouldn’t do.
“What happened, Eirik? Did you lose your axes?” Gunnhild taunted from the bench.
“If you must know, I’m teaching Halldor how to improve his footwork,” Eirik said from the other side of the fence. “You don’t need blades for that.” He stopped to catch his breath and gestured at Halldor with his stick, which Gunnhild realized was actually a short spear shaft without its metal tip. Halldor’s was a spear shaft as well. Potentially injurious, but better than a blade, Gunnhild thought.
“My footwork has gotten me through nine summers of raiding, thank you very much,” Halldor returned, leaning on his own stick, panting. “I need little improvement.”
“Oh?” Eirik smirked. “Why are you up and training every day before the rooster crows if you’re already the perfect fighter?”
“I could ask you the same question, considering we’ve been the only two out here before breakfast.”
“I’ll give you that—you are making the rest of my men look bad. Except, as I said, for your footwork.”
“Well, now I know to look down when you’re swinging an axe at me.” Halldor smirked as well. “I never said I was the perfect fighter. But you’re the only one I have yet to beat.”
Eirik looked to the women, smugly. “He’s a big talker yet, but still a liability on the field.”
Halldor scoffed and took a swing at him with his stick, which Eirik blocked. Before long the two men turned into a blur, moving toward the other side of the yard amid the clack-clack-clack of their weapons’ clashing.