I didn’t take much comfort in that. “How long will it take us to reach the mountain?”
“Tomorrow we’ll reach the village at the base of the mountain, where we’ll leave the horses,” he said. “Then another half day’s climb.”
A night out in the open. I swallowed hard. “I think we should ride faster.”
* * *
—
By the time dusk fell, the horses were laboring hard and my body ached from bouncing up and down for hours on Bjorn’s lap. Judging from his groans as he slowly dismounted his horse, falling on his back in the dirt and shouting at the sky that he’d lost the ability to sire children, he’d not fared much better.
Yet it was the first time since we’d left Halsar that anyone laughed, so I welcomed the release of tension even if it was at my expense. The warriors jostled and elbowed one another as they tended the mounts, the thralls Snorri had brought moving to prepare dinner while their mistress perched on a rock, clearly above doing anything at all.
I hesitated, not certain where I belonged, then moved to join the thralls. For while I didn’t know how to prepare the defense of a camp, I did know how to make a fire and dress game.
Carefully stacking a pile of kindling, I stuffed moss under the sticks. My scarred hand was painfully stiff, likely from my training with Bjorn, and I struggled to grip my knife to strike the flint.
“There’s an easier way.” Bjorn crouched next to me, axe appearing in his hand. The crimson fire flickered and danced as he shoved it into my carefully assembled stack of wood, knocking everything askew before disappearing into the darkness.
I eyed the weapon, this the first opportunity I’d had to really scrutinize the axe up close. It gave off tremendous heat, though the sweat that beaded on my brow was more from nerves than the temperature, as I remembered how it had felt when it seared my palm. How in the heartbeat I’d held it, the crimson fire had enveloped my hand as though it intended to consume me. As though Tyr himself wanted to punish me for wielding a weapon never meant for my hands.
Yet my curiosity was greater than my fear, and I bent closer, squinting against the glow. Beneath the flickers of fire, the axe itself appeared to be made from translucent glass with patterns etched along the blade and haft.
Realizing the thralls were watching, I pushed kindling on top of the axe. The wood swiftly ignited, the oranges and golds and blues of natural flame mixing with the blood-red god-fire as I added larger pieces.
“Will you describe to me the specter’s appearance?” Steinunn knelt next to me, her cloak slipping dangerously close to Bjorn’s axe. I reached to move the fabric even as I said, “Hooded. Embers and smoke poured from it as though it were aflame beneath its cloak.”
“How did seeing it make you feel? What were your thoughts?”
My jaw tightened, the invasiveness of her queries again rubbing me the wrong way. As though sensing my irritation, the skald swiftly said, “It is how my magic works, Freya. I chronicle the stories of our people as ballads, but for them to possess heart and emotion, they must be told from the perspective of those they are about, not my own observations. I seek only to do justice to your growing fame.”
“It feels strange to share with someone I barely know.”
A rare flicker of emotion appeared in the skald’s eyes, then she looked away. “I’m not used to speaking about myself. Most desire for me to sing of their exploits, so conversation is about them, not me.”
My irritation fled in favor of sympathy, and for the first time since we’d met, I truly focused on the skald as I considered the cost of her gift. What it would feel like if everyone you spoke to cared only about telling you their stories on the chance of expanding their fame in a ballad, and nothing about the woman who wrote the songs. Steinunn was used as a tool, just as I was. “I would like to know more about you.”
Steinunn stiffened, then wiped her palms on her skirt. “There is little to tell. I was born in a small fishing village on the coast. When I turned fourteen, our jarl took me into service, though it was short-lived, for another jarl soon learned of my gift and paid him in gold to bring me into his service. So it was for many years, jarls buying my service from one another.”
Like a thrall. “You had no choice where you went?”
Steinunn lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “For the most part, I was well compensated and cared for, and in recent years, my…liberty has grown.” Her jaw clenched as she said the last, but then she gave me a smile, the moment of discomfort gone as swiftly as it had appeared.