With one stiff movement, Halldor flipped his cloak with the blade of his seax and gestured to the arm ring at his bicep, and Gudrod’s face fell.
“How could you?” he whispered. Then his eyebrows shot up. “Unless—”
“How could he what?” Eirik asked, offended. “Why shouldn’t he be part of my hird? If you even knew him, you’d know that he’s one of the best—”
Tryggvi stopped laughing and straightened. “If we knew him?” he mocked. “Uncle, do you know this person you’ve allowed into your company? Because I would know my own cousin’s face any—”
Faster than Oddny would have expected, Gudrod twisted free of the men holding him and swung a meaty fist, hitting Tryggvi hard in the face. He dropped like a stone, knocked out cold, and the men grabbed Gudrod again.
But the damage had already been done.
31
COUSIN. COUSIN. COUSIN . . .
The word reverberated in Oddny’s skull until it was all she could hear.
No one made a sound, not even Tryggvi’s men. Halldor turned to face Eirik, who was staring at him as if seeing him for the first time.
“Halldor,” Eirik said. “Explain.”
“You knew Hallgrim wasn’t my true father’s name,” Halldor said with a tremor in his voice, as though he was fighting to keep calm. “Hallgrim was as good as a father to me. He taught me smithing. I’ve told you this.”
Oddny had known this, too. But she’d never asked about his birth parents, the ones he’d said were long dead. She hadn’t wanted to make him dredge up the pain of the past. It seemed Eirik had been of a similar mind.
“I believe you,” said Eirik, but he took a threatening step toward the other man, his pale eyes wide in the lanternlight, as if seeing something he hadn’t before, “but it raises the question of who your real father is.”
“Please, if you would only listen—”
Eirik’s patience had run out. His voice rose into a roar. “His name, Halldor.”
Halldor looked him dead in the eye. Took a deep breath.
And said, “Bjorn Haraldsson.”
Eirik recoiled at the sound of his dead brother’s name.
Oddny’s feet were frozen to the spot where she stood, her hands covering her mouth. There were horrified whispers from the hirdsmen around her. Gunnhild looked ready to vomit, and this time not from her illness; she held a rawhide lantern in one hand, her husband’s axes under the other arm, and looked to Oddny, a question in her eyes: Did you know?
Oddny shook her head. She couldn’t breathe. She wanted to grab Halldor and drag him far, far away from here, but she couldn’t move.
Eirik was shaking his head as well. “No.”
Halldor’s voice rose. “Yes. I am the eldest son of King Bjorn the Merchant, whom you killed ten winters ago at Saeheim.”
“But Bjorn only had one—” Eirik gestured at Gudrod, but then closed his eyes and cringed as he remembered. “Ah. But he didn’t, did he? He just didn’t know you were his son.” And then, to himself, “How could I not have seen it?”
“No one ever noticed me,” said Halldor. “And I preferred it that way. I didn’t wish to be seen back then. Not as I was, not as the person they tried to make me into. How could you have known? You and I had never met before. King Harald couldn’t have cared less about me—he didn’t recognize me this winter, didn’t even look at me. The only one who would’ve known me was Olaf, and I did a fair job of avoiding him at Winternights. Had Tryggvi and Gudrod come along as well, I would’ve had a harder time of it.”
He was talking fast, as though a dam had burst. Oddny could see his hands shaking.
“I don’t understand,” Eirik said. Oddny had never heard him sound so weak, so hurt. She was shocked to realize that she felt sorry for him.
“I was there. At Saeheim. I watched my father die—I watched you kill him,” Halldor said through clenched teeth. “And as your men sacked his hall, I ran.”
Eirik raked a hand down his face and groaned softly, disbelieving.
“I made it south to the market at Kaupang, and that’s where I joined up with Kolfinna’s crew,” Halldor went on. “They taught me how to fight. I raided with them for nine summers, each kill bringing me closer to being able to finally seek you out and challenge you.”
“Until Oddny’s farm,” Eirik said.
“Yes. Until they threw me overboard. But that turned out to be fate’s way of putting you in my path.”
“And when you heard that my hird was passing through, you saw an opportunity to get closer to me.”
“Under the guise of paying back Oddny faster, yes,” said Halldor. “I would’ve killed you during our first fight if I could have. But if I’d ignored Arinbjorn’s call and stabbed you then, you would have taken off my head without ever knowing who I was or why I was doing what I was doing—and you might not have even died. I realized then that I wasn’t good enough to beat you. I had to get better.”
By then the color had drained from Eirik’s face. He said ruefully, “So instead, you let me train you all winter on how best to defeat me.”
“At first, that was the idea. I’d hated you so much for so long. But I swear to you, things changed. I was going to let this go.” Halldor gave Oddny a pleading look. “It’s the truth. No one knew who my father was. No one was going to know, so no one would have held me to it except my own conscience. But I was willing to set that aside. I wanted to stay with the hird. I was—I was happy.”
His voice cracked on the last word, and Oddny felt her heart break into a million pieces. She’d been happy, too. Despite herself, by the time winter ended, part of her had started to dream of what their life together would look like once Signy was safe. The three sworn sisters reunited, traveling the country with their husbands, welcomed for feasts at every hall, spending the winters together, weaving a future full of laughter and love.
That future was gone now.
How could he have kept this from me?
“Don’t do this,” said Eirik. “Walk away.”
“I can’t. Not anymore.” Halldor tore his eyes from Oddny and turned back to the king, raised his chin. “Now that the truth is out, a debt is owed. And everyone here knows that I’m bound by honor to collect it or die trying, or be called a coward.”
No. Oddny opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. No. You just said you’d set it aside. You could run. You could live—
“No!” Gudrod tore away from his captors in one swift motion. “Halldor, no. I’ll fight him instead. Let me be the one to die. Father wouldn’t have wanted—”
“I am the elder son,” said Halldor. “If you recognize me as such, you’ll stay out of my way.”
This can’t be happening, Oddny thought.
Gudrod shrank back, cowed. Tryggvi’s men didn’t move to grab him again, and Halldor turned once more to Eirik.
“For what it’s worth,” Halldor said thickly, tears in his eyes, “this would be so much easier if I still hated you.”
Eirik’s voice was ragged. “Do not make me kill another kinsman.”