Halldor gave a very slight, pained nod.
Once she’d sewn up the gash and applied her poultice to it, it was time to take a look at his knee. “This next part will be the worst. I can give you something for the pain.”
“No. Just do what you must.”
Oddny scooted down the length of his body and unwound the leg wrap from his calf before gingerly pushing up his pant leg. His knee was swollen to three times its usual size, with a massive purple-red bruise on the side where Eirik’s blow had struck true.
The sight of it made Oddny feel queasy, and no sooner had she begun to feel out the damage to his knee than Halldor made a strangled noise and passed out. That was just as well, Oddny figured as she continued her examination, her stomach lurching as she felt cartilage and bone sliding beneath the skin. Then she took out three sticks from her bag: two long ones to serve as a brace, and a small one to carve.
Once she’d set the two long sticks on either side of his knee and wrapped them in a strip of linen bandage, she took up the small one and her utility knife, and carved and sang the runes more confidently than she ever had. When she was done she took up Halldor’s leg wrap and bound his knee with it atop her linen dressings, carefully placing the rune stick within the folds.
Her work finished, Oddny curled up beside him and waited for his brother to return.
32
EACH STEP FELT HEAVIER than the last as Gunnhild left the burial mounds. Part of her wished to turn around, to beg Oddny’s forgiveness.
But Oddny didn’t want her anymore. And in saying so, she’d confirmed Gunnhild’s worst fear: that she was a curse. That her sworn sisters would be better off without her. She’d thought as much herself in her darkest moments, but to hear it from Oddny hurt more than she could put into words. So she kept walking until she reached the camp—where none of the hirdsmen acknowledged her presence, averting their eyes as she passed. Her stomach twisted.
Nearby, Svein emerged from the tent he’d been sharing with Oddny and Halldor with their bags thrown over his shoulders. He didn’t get very far, for Eirik threw his sword belt down on his chest and stepped in front of the skald, blocking his way.
The empty look on her husband’s face was enough to make Gunnhild’s heart drop. This was not the man she loved anymore: This was the dead-eyed animal that everyone thought he was, the one he’d had to become again during the duel, the cold, calculating, brutal creature that would rather repress all emotion than face his own pain.
Tonight the man had been cut too deeply, and now the beast was back.
“What do you think you’re doing, Svein?” Eirik asked.
“Bringing them their things,” said the skald. “I’ll only be a moment.”
“If you leave now, don’t bother returning.”
“What? You don’t mean that.”
Eirik’s expression didn’t change.
Svein turned and went back into the tent. But instead of returning the bags to where he’d found them, he emerged moments later carrying his own ship box under one arm, the bag containing his lyre strung across his shoulders with Oddny’s and Halldor’s. Then he strode up to Eirik, pulled off his arm ring, shoved it at the king’s chest, and kept walking.
Once he was gone, Eirik threw the ring down, turned on his heel, and stalked into the woods.
“Do not follow me,” he said to no one in particular, and the rest of the hird looked away.
Gunnhild drew in a breath and ducked into her own tent, grabbed her bag of silver, and went after Svein. He must’ve heard the jingling of the coins and bracelets she carried, for he turned before she could call out to him.
“Take this, too,” she said, thrusting the bag at him. “For Oddny. And Signy.”
The skald regarded her for a long moment, as if waiting for the catch, and Gunnhild realized why at once: He mistrusted her. She remembered how Svein had stuck by Thorolf after she’d broken his heart, the looks he’d given Eirik when he thought no one was looking, like he wasn’t sure what to make of him anymore. No wonder he thought little of her, too, as the catalyst for his friends’ estrangement from each other.
“Please,” she said, and Svein took the bag from her wordlessly, slung it over his shoulder with the rest, and carried on.
Gunnhild raised her lantern and went to find her husband. She found him pacing in a clearing, running his hands through his hair, kicking up the underbrush with each step.
“Eirik,” she said as she approached him.
He didn’t look at her. “Don’t speak to me right now, Gunnhild. Please. Go away.”
“Let me explain—”
“I said, do not speak to me right now, Gunnhild.”
Her voice rose in volume and pitch. “I was only doing what I thought was—”
Eirik rounded on her so sharply that she took a step back. In the light of her lantern, his bloodshot eyes were wild, his movements jerky as he lurched toward her.
“Best?” he snarled. The cut on his face had stopped bleeding, but he had not wiped the blood away. “Is that what you were going to say? What you thought was best?”
“I—”
“You. Do. Not. Always. Know. Best.” He was shouting now, jabbing his finger at her with each word, before throwing his hands up. “But fine. You win. You want to have this conversation right now? Let’s have it.”
Gunnhild retreated a few more steps. Before, the angriest she’d ever seen him was on their wedding night, when she’d been drunk and mean and he’d thrown that jug at the wall to startle her into shutting up.
This was something else.
But she’d already lost Oddny. She couldn’t lose him, too. She’d tamed the beast once, and she could do it again. She had only to stand her ground.
She raised her chin. “Good. Let’s.”
“How many times have I asked you not to fight my battles for me?” When she made to speak, he raised a hand to silence her, and her mouth snapped shut. “This was a duel between two people. Two. Me, and him. This was my fight. And you dared to interfere, knowing what people would say when they found out?”
“They weren’t supposed to find out,” Gunnhild fired back.
“And what did you think was going to happen when I was cut and didn’t bleed?”
“I wasn’t thinking—”
“Yes, that much is abundantly clear. You don’t understand. You’re not listening to me. If dying for Halldor’s vengeance was the fate the Norns had spun for me, I would have gladly met it.”
“I saved your life!”
“By ruining my reputation and sullying my honor—the most important things a man has, especially if that man is a king. I would rather have died.”
“Your reputation and honor were sullied before we even met. That was no fault of mine.”
The words landed like a blow, and Gunnhild immediately wished she could take them back. He looked at her now as though she were a stranger. Someone he couldn’t trust. And how could he? He’d let her see him in his darkest moments, had let himself be vulnerable with her—and now, knowing exactly how profoundly his past haunted him, here she was, throwing it in his face purely to win an argument.
This night had pushed him to the brink. And she was only pushing him further.