Oddny hesitated, then closed her hand into a fist. There was no sensation from her scar. And that was something she now knew she must fix.
“There’ll be no need for that,” she said before she could change her mind. “We’re going back.”
* * *
—
THE SHIP ALF AND Eyvind had been given was a knarr, small and fast, the sailors efficient and experienced. With the addition of Halldor and Svein—who refused to stay behind despite the danger—there were enough hands to take shifts instead of stopping to camp, so they were able to make haste. Oddny brewed a large batch of her tea and stored it in a jug; she sipped a little every day to soothe her worsening pain and hoped her blood would hold off until this was all over.
Halldor seemed nervous until they cleared the strait between Norway and Denmark and headed up the coast toward Hordaland. He told Oddny later in private, “I suppose if Olaf is telling people I’m dead, at least he’s also telling them I was my father’s son. Though of course he’s only doing it because he wouldn’t be able to start a war in my name otherwise.”
Signy spent most of the trip obsessively sharpening their father’s sword, which she wore at her hip in a sheath dangling from a borrowed belt. She told Oddny that Kolfinna had sold the sword to the same man who’d bought her, and she’d managed to convince Alf and Eyvind to buy it back along with her freedom.
She looked rather ridiculous, Oddny thought, wearing such a weapon over one of the hand-me-downs that Gunnhild had stolen from Solveig’s chest, hemmed to Oddny’s height and much too short for her sister. When Oddny asked why she’d bothered to bring the sword along even though she couldn’t use it, Signy said, “It makes me feel better.”
Oddny had little doubt of that. She wished she’d thought to make Signy a sleeping draught before they left, but she didn’t have the right supplies. Her sister had awoken screaming in the night more than once and it was beginning to unsettle the sailors.
“Signy,” Oddny whispered to her on the third night, stroking her sister’s sweat-soaked hair. “Talk to me. Please.”
“I can’t.” Signy hugged herself, shivering. “I can’t. I can’t . . .”
Oddny rubbed her back. “Tell me when you’re ready, or not at all. It’s your choice.”
Something in her words made Signy bristle. “What’s there to tell? I was enslaved for nearly a year. I was beaten. I was violated. Why would I want to talk about it?” When Oddny started to cry, Signy only looked disgusted. “Stop that. Don’t make this about you. You’re not the one it happened to.”
Oddny left the tent and relayed the conversation to Halldor, feeling helpless and frustrated.
“Just leave her be,” he told her. “She knows you’re here for her.”
“But this is all my fault. I shouldn’t have run that day. I should have tried to save her—”
“Don’t let your mind start down that path. Yes, you could’ve tried, but then the rest of the crew would’ve come and grabbed you as I tried to fight Gunnhild off. There’s no use dwelling on what could’ve been—trust me. Signy is here now. Wait for her to tell you what she needs.”
When she didn’t respond except to sniffle, he hugged her, and she buried her face in his shoulder and cried until she had no more tears left.
* * *
—
WHEN THEY FINALLY ARRIVED at the fjord where Alreksstadir lay, they found its mouth shrouded in fog, much to the dismay of the sailors.
“It should be right there,” Svein said.
Halldor sat down heavily on a thwart and stretched his bad leg, then turned his head. “Do you hear that? It sounds like—voices?”
Svein paused to listen. “There must be ships in the fog, and I’m willing to bet that they aren’t Olaf’s.”
The wind had died abruptly, so they took to the oars and approached with caution. The deeper they went, the more the fog thickened. The disembodied voices echoed around them, making it hard to tell which direction they were coming from—and suddenly the shape of a longship materialized before them. The people aboard, whose faces Oddny could not make out, began to shout in warning.
“Port side, oars in the water!” the knarr’s captain bellowed. The sailors obeyed in an instant and the ship slowed and turned so that when the two vessels’ sides hit each other, the impact was only a small bump.
A voice from the other ship said, incredulous, “Halldor? Svein?”
And a second, a woman’s voice: “Oddny!”
“Arinbjorn! Runfrid!” Oddny cried.
Runfrid leapt over the side of the warship and into the knarr before sailors had finished lashing the two ships together. She nearly tackled Halldor in a hug, then did the same to Oddny before turning to Signy in surprise. “Is this your sister? You found her?”
“Gunnhild did,” said Oddny.
Signy stared at Runfrid—her tunic and pants, the seax at her belt, her woman’s short cape clasped at one shoulder in the masculine style—as though she were the briefest glimpse of sunlight after a long winter.
“I’m—Signy,” she managed. “Signy Ketilsdottir.”
Runfrid smiled wide. “Runfrid Asgeirsdottir. Oddny has told us a lot about you.”
Arinbjorn followed her onto the knarr moments later, Thorolf Skallagrimsson just behind him. Both men embraced Svein, one after the other. Then Arinbjorn, without a moment’s hesitation, turned to do the same to Halldor, who stared at Oddny in shock over Arinbjorn’s shoulder.
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” Arinbjorn asked him with more cheer than the question merited. “Or was it outlawed? Gods, the things I’ve been hearing.”
“I suppose it depends on who you ask,” said Halldor warily, as though suspecting that Arinbjorn was jesting and meant to punch him in the face on Eirik’s behalf the moment he pulled away, but no blow came.
“Are we too late?” Oddny cut in, fearing the answer. Now that they were close, she could make out the ghostly shapes of many other ships stranded in the fog, but there was no telling how many.
“We don’t know,” Runfrid said. “What we do know is that there’s a battle on the other side of this, and Eirik is outnumbered. We mustered ships from Fjordane, the rest of Hordaland, and some of the other districts, but we’re stuck.”
Arinbjorn shook his head. “We spotted Olaf’s fleet and made for them. But then the wind died and they sailed right past us and this fog appeared out of nowhere. We have to wait for it to clear—”
“It won’t,” Oddny said. “This is the witches’ doing—Signy and I saw it the day our farm was raided, and Halldor, Svein, and I saw it again on the way to Vestfold.”
“Can’t Gunnhild do something about it?” Runfrid asked.
“She’s probably trying as we speak. Or she’s tried and failed. We must get to her.”
“But how?” Arinbjorn asked, more agitated than Oddny had ever seen him. “We can’t move through this. We can’t even see. We could smash into the cliffs. We could run aground.”
Thorolf laid a bearlike paw on his shoulder. “We’ll figure something out.”