For a moment Oddny thought Gunnhild was going to apologize, but she knew her friend better than that. The queen’s expression warped into something ugly. “I wasn’t aware that your friendship had a price.”
Something in Oddny snapped.
“When two people know each other as well as you girls do,” Yrsa whispered in the back of her mind, “you know the exact things to say that will cause each other the most pain.”
“You know what else Thorbjorg told me?” Oddny said before she could stop herself. “That you were their real target, and when they couldn’t find you, they came after Signy and me instead—your sworn sisters. All of this—everything that’s happened—is because of you, Gunnhild.”
It was a truth that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to accept until now, a truth that would cut Gunnhild to the bone, and Oddny knew it. But she didn’t care. Not anymore.
“You say you married Eirik to save Signy, but it was really so you could be a queen. So you could throw it in your mother’s face before she died, so you could feel powerful, so you could feel important for the first time in your life. All this talk about saving Signy was only to hide your own selfishness. Signy and I ruined our lives the night we took that stupid oath with you. I wish we’d never done it.”
The burning feeling in her palm stopped.
By the look on Gunnhild’s face, the way she stared down in horror at her right hand, Oddny knew that she had felt it, too. Their bond was broken.
“I’ll find Signy on my own. I don’t need you. I never did,” Oddny said, looking down at her own palm, curling her fingers slowly into a fist around what was now just an ordinary scar. She looked up without raising her head. “Go home, Gunnhild.”
Gunnhild looked like the wind had been knocked out of her. Mouth twitching as if she was trying to hold back a sob, she turned and fled into the darkness.
* * *
—
ONCE GUNNHILD WAS GONE, Oddny flew to Halldor’s side, dropped to her knees, and slung her healing bag down on the grass beside her.
“Halldor,” she said, turning his head to face her. “Halldor, look at me.”
His eyelids fluttered and he moaned softly.
Oddny sat back on her feet. She didn’t know where to begin. His breathing was shallow, there was blood everywhere, and a scream tried to claw its way out of her throat as panic enveloped her. Her vision swam. She’d mixed herbs into teas, treated the occasional cut or broken bone, but this—this was too much.
When she was finally able to focus, she saw Gudrod kneeling on the other side of his injured brother. His face, so much like Halldor’s but broader, heavier—how could she not have noticed the resemblance on sight?—was stained with dried tears. “You both need to leave. It’s not safe for you here any longer.”
“We can’t move him,” Oddny said. Her voice sounded distant to her own ears. “Not until I see to his wounds.”
“What do you need for that?”
“Light. I have everything else here in my bag.”
“Good.” Gudrod put his lantern down next to Halldor’s head. “I’ll leave this here. And you need to leave the country the moment you’ve finished. Once my uncle finds out what happened, he’ll send men here to collect you.”
Red crept into the edges of Oddny’s vision. “He’ll do exactly what Tryggvi said he would, won’t he?”
“Yes. And that would be worse for my brother than exile.”
“I know,” Oddny said quietly, her clarity returning. She needed to get to work. She grabbed a wad of bandages from her bag, pressed them against Halldor’s thigh wound, which was bleeding heaviest, and leaned all her weight against it.
Gudrod stood. When Oddny saw the determination in his eyes, she wondered if his passivity in front of Tryggvi’s men had been just a show. Perhaps he’d wanted them to underestimate him; perhaps they’d been doing so his entire life.
“With luck they haven’t found my horse. They caught me on foot after I’d dismounted,” Gudrod said. “I can beat them back to Saeheim. I’ll get you both on a ship bound for Denmark before the sun comes up.”
“Birka. We need to go to Birka.”
Gudrod faltered for a moment and then nodded. “Birka it is. Just—take care of him.”
“You’re a good man, Gudrod Bjarnarson,” Oddny said to his retreating back. “I hope you never let them take that away from you.”
Gudrod paused for a brief moment before vanishing into the darkness.
“Oddny,” came Halldor’s sudden groan. “Oddny, I’m sorry . . .”
Oddny turned to face him, releasing her hold on the bandages, leaning over and putting a hand to the side of his face. “Hush. Save your strength.”
Halldor disregarded her request. “I wanted to tell you—”
“Hush.” She rummaged in her bag for a needle and sinew, but Halldor reached up with his uninjured arm and brushed his bloody fingertips along her jaw, and she turned to him again.
“—but once I’d put it aside—once I’d decided not to challenge him—once I realized things could be different—I couldn’t tell you,” he rasped. “I couldn’t have you think—that I didn’t want to avenge my father—that I was dishonorable—I couldn’t have you think that of me again. I couldn’t—I’m sorry—”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Oddny said as she threaded the needle. Then she tore his bloodied pants open to expose his thigh wound. “This is going to hurt. Are you ready?”
Halldor dropped his hand and murmured in the affirmative, and she began stitching the wound closed. He barely reacted; but for the fact that he blinked occasionally and his chest was rising and falling, she might have thought him dead.
When she was done, she tied off the stitches, extracted a clay poultice jar from its wool-padded box in her sack, and smeared its contents over her work before bandaging it over his pants. Then she moved to the cut on his bicep, which wasn’t bad enough to need stitches, so she smeared the poultice over it and bound it as well.
When it was time for her to address his chest wound—the worst of the three slashing hits he’d taken—she grimaced. “I’ll have to rip open your tunic. I don’t want to irritate the wounds by making you move to lift it over your head. Is that all right?”
Halldor still didn’t look at her, but the corners of his eyes tightened in a wince. “Yes.”
She found she could not rip the wool of his overtunic as easily as she could the linen layer underneath, so she cut a line from his shoulder to his belly, tearing through both layers of fabric from shoulder to navel.
“Oh no,” Oddny whispered, for the clever garment he’d created to flatten his small chest was as ripped and bloodied as the rest of his clothing. It was made of wool layers and looked like the top half of a sleeveless tunic, stopping just below the ribs, with toggles that could be tightened on one side. She could see the bone of his sternum beneath the torn, bloody edges of the slash through its middle.
“I have to cut through this, too,” she said. “I promise I’ll repair it for you as soon as I possibly can. Is that all right?”