But if she couldn’t conduct a successful ritual, then everything she and her friends had been through would be for nothing.
She could not fail.
* * *
—
BY THE EVENING PRIOR to the Winternights festivities, the dock was full of ships lashed to one another. Gunnhild suspected that Olaf and Halfdan weren’t the only guests whom King Harald had unexpectedly invited to Alreksstadir for the festival.
For the next few nights after meeting Eirik’s father, Gunnhild had sequestered herself in the textile workshop with Oddny and the other women, and worked on her protection spell in the corner. In doing so she managed to avoid both King Harald and Eirik. It had seemed wise to give them both a chance to calm down.
But at this point she could only assume that Eirik had worked things out with his father. The fact that she hadn’t been summoned to King Harald and admonished for the way she’d spoken to him made her wonder if perhaps her words had swayed him in his decision to let Eirik go through with marrying her. No one had come to tell her that she was being removed, that the wedding was off, that she wouldn’t be performing the disablot. In fact, Queen Gyda herself came by the day before the festival to speak to her about how everything would go, seeming peeved all the while.
“I trust you have a gown you use for sacrifices and such. One that could stand to get bloody,” Queen Gyda finished. “But until the disablot, you must look like and behave as women of your status should, even for people who don’t yet know your face. They’ll recognize you after tomorrow night and remember if you looked slovenly. So you must dress well. Anything less will be frowned upon.”
By whom? Gunnhild wanted to ask, but she decided not to press her luck. She made a show of compliance, thanking the queen for her advice and her generosity, and spat on the ground as soon as the woman closed the door behind her.
On the morning of the first feast day Gunnhild awoke to Saeunn cooking porridge in a small cauldron over the hearth fire, the smell making her regret that she wouldn’t be eating until after the sacrifice that night. After breakfast, the women went off in groups to socialize until only Gunnhild and Oddny remained, Gunnhild sitting cross-legged on the platform to nervously braid and rebraid her hair, Oddny sitting steadfastly beside her, her own mousy hair already in its thin, orderly braid.
When she was satisfied, Gunnhild stood. “Is it time?”
“It’s time,” Oddny said.
Gunnhild nodded and shrugged off her dress—the last of Solveig’s too-small ones she’d brought from Halogaland—and passed it to Oddny, as promised, who folded it and stuck it in her own chest with the rest of Gunnhild’s mother’s old clothing. Oddny passed over the last dress she’d sewn: a muted blue woolen underdress dyed from woad, as well as the duck-silk apron-dress. Gunnhild secured the straps with her brooches and the beads Oddny had put together. She’d decided to go without a belt, for she felt it would distract from the rest of her outfit.
“How do I look?” she asked, turning to face Oddny, who had changed into one of the old dresses she’d already hemmed: dyed from nettles, it was a brownish green that matched her eyes.
“Like a queen.” Oddny buckled her thin leather belt over her dress, her pouch and knife dangling from it as always. “Shall we?”
Benches and stools had been taken from the longhouse, and guests congregated in packs outside, drinking and catching up and trading gossip, for there were few opportunities to do so outside of sacred festivals and regional assemblies. It was a pleasantly cool day, and Gunnhild and Oddny walked arm in arm through the crowd.
The festival’s games were well underway. People had formed a circle around two men locked in a wrestling match, and they were hooting and cheering the combatants on. Runfrid appeared to be winning the archery competition, and raised a hand in greeting as Oddny and Gunnhild passed, then went back to arguing with a woman who seemed to be demanding a rematch. Finally, Oddny and Gunnhild passed two groups of people playing a ball-and-stick game in the practice yard.
Once Gunnhild had scanned the players and determined that Eirik was not among them, she and Oddny drifted toward the field. The first group was made up of adults—mostly young men, but a few young women Gunnhild hadn’t seen before—and the second group were all children, with just as many girls as boys. They seemed to be playing rougher than the adults were.
“I don’t quite remember the rules,” Gunnhild said as they stopped to watch for a while, “but the girls are winning, I think. Do you remember how Vestein and his friends used to beat us when we were kids?”
“Yes. Mostly because I wasn’t interested, and you capitulate when you’re not immediately the best at something.”
“That’s not—” Gunnhild paused at the brief memory of Heid whacking her over the hands with a stick every time she complained about wanting, for the exact reason Oddny mentioned, to give up on whatever exercise she was learning. “All right. Fine. That’s true.”
“That’s why Signy would always be the last one standing,” Oddny said.
They both sobered at that, but then a roar went up from the other side of the armory. They went around the building and found the source of the noise: Eirik’s hirdsmen, cleaner and more well-dressed than she’d ever seen them, gathered near the copse of oak trees where Gunnhild had last seen Thorolf. Against the thickest trunk leaned a wooden board, on which circles of charcoal had been drawn to serve as targets.
“Hah! I win again!” Arinbjorn shouted at Svein as he retrieved his throwing axe from the center of one board. “I think it’s time for you to give up, my friend.”
“Best four out of seven,” Svein said. He, too, held a throwing axe in his hand.
“If you want to lose again, that’s fine by me. It’ll give you something to remember me by this winter, eh?” Arinbjorn made a kissing face as he walked to the other side of the line someone had drawn in the dirt, and Svein laughed and shoved him.
Eirik lounged on a bench, leaning against the outer wall of the armory and drinking directly out of a pitcher of ale, with two finely dressed young women—daughters of some rich visitor, Gunnhild guessed—practically trying to climb into his lap. He wore a tunic in the same pale blue as her underdress, and a madder red cloak was pinned at his shoulder with an obnoxiously large and intricate brooch. She hated to admit it, but he cleaned up as well as the rest of his hird.
“Should we let the women take a turn?” Svein asked, turning to the two sitting with Eirik. Then, as soon as he’d spoken, he noticed that Gunnhild and Oddny had approached, and he extended his axe to them, handle out. “How about you two?”
Oddny began, “I don’t think we—”
“We’d love to give it a try.” Gunnhild saw Eirik’s attention turn to her, but he did not push the women away from him. She ignored him and took the axe from Svein. After a few moments of trying to reckon the distance, she threw it toward the tree.
It didn’t even make it halfway to the target before embedding itself in the ground with a sad whump.
The people around her laughed, the women sitting with Eirik snickering behind their hands, until Gunnhild whirled around to face them all with a death glare and they went suddenly quiet. She heard someone whisper, “Pustules.”