Peaceweaver (9 page)

S
HE AWOKE TO SHOUTS AND LAUGHTER
. “F
OR
O
DIN
!” someone cried outside, welcoming the god to the harvest festival. The gods must be honored for the season’s bounty and supplicated for good harvests to come, Hild knew, but it was inconceivable that anyone could be happy when the world had collapsed.

She shut her ears to the noise until an argument just beyond the door caught her attention. A man—a guard, she assumed—said, “No one, not even you.”

“On whose authority?” a girl said. It was Beyla—a very angry Beyla. Hild rose to her elbows, listening. Depending on the guard, Beyla might be able to get what she wanted.

“The king’s authority.” Hild didn’t recognize the voice.

“Did the king mention me, specifically? Because I’m practically family.”

“No one means no one, and that includes you,” a second guard said. “Now get away from here before I have to make you.”

“Hild!” Beyla yelled, but whatever she said next was muffled. She must have taken the guard up on his challenge. The noise of their struggle grew fainter as the guard took Beyla away, probably with his hand over her mouth to keep her from shouting again. If that was the case, he might end up with tooth marks on his fingers.

Hild lay back on the pillow, trying to smile at the image of Beyla biting a mail-clad warrior, but she was too weary to feel anything. After a time, she pushed the bed’s doors open a crack. A fire flickered on the hearth, and in the shadows, someone moved. Unwen. Hild’s mother was leading the prayers at Freyja’s temple, which was where Beyla should have been. So should Hild. Just as she had served the hearth companions in the hall, it was her place to pour the mead into the bowl for the goddess. She wondered who would do it in her stead.

On the east wall, hints of morning sun stole through the boards. Why hadn’t Unwen opened the door to let in light? Then she remembered: the door was shut to keep her in. She watched the slave, who stooped in front of the fire, stirring the pot that hung from the tripod. As she did, Hild caught a whiff of something cooking. Fish. Unwen
was making her special cod and barley stew, Hild’s favorite. She opened the bed’s doors all the way and swung her feet from under the covers.

Unwen was at her side instantly. “Here, let me help you, my lady.”

Hild took her arm, grateful for the slave’s strength, and raised herself shakily from the bed. She didn’t mean to let Unwen lead her to the chamber pot or put her shoes on for her, but she felt so unsteady she didn’t think she could do it by herself.

Unwen settled her on the stool in front of the fire, then ladled stew into a wooden bowl and placed it in Hild’s hands.

For a moment, Hild sat in silence, allowing the heat from the bowl to seep into her palms and the pungent steam to curl into her face. Finally, she ate, savoring the texture of the barley grains in her mouth, the taste of the cod and—She looked up at Unwen, her eyes wide. “Pepper? Did you put pepper in it?”

The slave gave her a sly look.

“Where did you find it?” Pepper was rare, precious, and usually reserved for the king.

“I have my ways,” Unwen said, and Hild recalled that her uncle’s cooks would be preparing something special for today’s festival. Something with a pinch less pepper than planned, no doubt.

“It’s good. Thank you, Unwen.”

The slave dipped her head in acknowledgment. She watched until Hild had scraped the bowl clean before she said, “More, my lady?”

Hild felt full, but the expectant look on Unwen’s face made her hold out her bowl and say, “Just a little.”

Unwen’s “little” turned out to be a lot more than Hild could eat, and she stirred her spoon through the stew, watching the lumps of cod appear and disappear beneath the barley broth.

Unwen lowered herself to the floor beside her. Hild frowned. No slave should be so familiar with her owner, not even one who had made Hild’s favorite stew. She started to say something, but Unwen spoke first.

“Where I’m from …,” she said in a low voice, then stopped and picked up the poker to stir the fire.

Hild waited, watching. She had never heard Unwen mention her home or her life before she’d been made a slave.

“Where I’m from,” Unwen said again, her voice so quiet Hild had to strain to hear her, “when the gods choose to send their spirit into a person …” Again she stopped.

Hild felt herself going rigid. She didn’t want to discuss the subject with anybody, least of all a slave.

“The one the gods choose is honored above all others,” Unwen said, stumbling over her words to get them out quickly. She stood and moved to Hild’s bed, then pulled up the sheets and folded the blankets.

Hild tried to relax her jaw, but Unwen’s words had brought the previous day’s events back to her with such immediacy that she felt like she’d been slapped. After a few moments, the soft sounds of the fire and the creak of the floorboards under the slave’s feet as she went about her work calmed Hild, allowing her to think about what Unwen had said. The gods sent their spirits into a person? That wasn’t what Bragi had said when he’d warned about malign forces. The chief skald was no fool. He had the knowledge and the experience to recognize the signs of a possession by something evil.

Then Ari Frothi’s lined face rose before Hild. What had he said? That the gods may possess a person.

Hild stared into the fire. “Unwen?” Like the slave, she kept her voice low enough that the guards outside the door wouldn’t hear her.

Unwen crossed the room and crouched before her again. This time Hild recognized that the slave’s intention wasn’t familiarity; it was secrecy. The closer their heads were to each other, the more privately they could talk.

“What is it like when someone is possessed by a god?”

Unwen shook her head, keeping her gaze on the fire. “I only knew one person who was possessed. They say it’s different for everybody, that it depends on the god.”

“And the person you knew? How did he act? What happened to him?”

“Her,” Unwen said. “She— It was like what happened
with you. She did something but she didn’t know why. Didn’t even know she’d done it till it were done.” She swallowed as if her throat were sore, and closed her eyes tightly.

“Unwen?” Hild said gently.

The slave gave her head a little shake, but she kept her eyes screwed shut.

“Who was she, the one you knew?”

Unwen kept her face turned away from Hild’s. She swallowed again, and then, as if the words were scraping against her throat, she wrenched them out. “My daughter.”

She rose and went back to the bed, refolding the blanket, tucking the sheets more securely under the pillow, picking up the feathers that had made their escape. Hild watched her stop and lean on the mattress for a moment. Then Unwen closed the bed’s doors, brushed her apron, and said briskly, “You’ll be wanting your loom over by the fire, where you can see it, my lady. I’ll move it for you.”

“No, Unwen,” Hild said, looking at her as if she were seeing her for the first time. “I’ll do it.”

The sound of footsteps made them both turn toward the door as it opened, sending sun flashing into the room. Hild’s mother stepped in and the door closed behind her, taking the light with it.

As Hild got to her feet, her mother took her by her elbows and peered into her face, her brow furrowed with worry.

“I’m all right,” Hild said. Before the words were even
out, she realized how pale and worn her mother looked. Had she slept at all last night? Had people treated her poorly on Hild’s account? “Who poured the mead for the goddess? Tell me it wasn’t Skadi. Was it?” she asked in a feeble attempt to lighten her mother’s mood.

The expression on her mother’s face told her she’d hit closer to the mark than she had intended. “I know you were counting on it, Hild, and I’m sorry. I talked to your uncle, but Bragi—” She gave her head a little shake of anger.

“It’s all right. Here, let me help you.” Hild unpinned the brooch that held her mother’s cloak together at her shoulder—the blue cloisonné jewel with runes carved in gold running around the edges and spelling out the words
Valgard had me made for Saxa
. Hild’s father had given it to her mother when they’d first been pledged to each other, and her mother wore it only on special occasions—like when she led the ceremonies in Freyja’s temple. Hild handed the cloak to Unwen, then scooted the stool over and guided her mother down onto it, watching her.

Her mother sighed and turned her face from Hild’s. Hild waited, giving her time to smooth out the bad news.

“They found the dagger.” She reached for the poker and stirred the glowing embers. Finally, she spoke again, her voice pained. “There was no poison on it.”

A noise in the corner of the room made both Hild and her mother look toward Unwen. The slave was shaking her head in disgust.

“Unwen?” Hild said.

“They’re not fools, those Brondings. They would have wiped that dagger clean the first chance they had.”

The recognition that she was right kept them from commenting on the slave’s presumption. Unwen busied herself again, eyes averted, as Hild turned back to her mother.

“Your uncle may have realized that—especially when the Brondings accepted the wergild in payment,” her mother said.

“They took the wergild? That’s good, isn’t it?”

Her mother nodded, but the way she hesitated made Hild realize there was something else. She hoped the fire’s warmth would give her mother the strength to tell the whole truth instead of trying to shield her from it.

Her mother set the poker back on the hearth, giving it far more attention than it needed. “They left this morning. The Brondings.”

“Before the harvest festival?” Hild said. It was an insult to the king, but not an unforgivable one.

Her mother nodded, her fingers still resting on the poker.

The oddness of her mother’s posture told Hild she still wasn’t through. Her insides tightened.

Finally, her mother looked her in the eye. “As part of the payment, your uncle gave them Fleetfoot.”

Hild felt the breath go out of her. “Fleetfoot?” she whispered. “He gave them my horse?”

“I’m so sorry, youngling,” her mother said, and Hild saw in her eyes how helpless she felt.

Hild strode to the door, her hand stopping when it reached the latch, the touch reminding her why it was closed. She stared unseeing at the doorframe, at the cuts in the wood where she and Arinbjörn had measured their height every winter, a rune scratched beside each cut to identify it. She reached out her fingers and ran them over the wood, digging her fingernail into the last mark they’d made for her, in the year the king had given her her horse.

Leaning into the wall, she touched her head to the wood the way she and Fleetfoot always greeted each other, one warm forehead against the other.

Did Beyla know? Was that why she had been trying to talk her way past the guards? She loved the horse almost as much as Hild did. Hild had to talk to her—
now
. But the way was barred. She could go nowhere.

She tightened her grip on the doorframe. When a splinter bit into her palm, she welcomed the pain.

NINE

H
ILD HEARD THE CLICK OF THE LATCH AS HER MOTHER
let herself out of the house. She lay back on her pillow. Somewhere a dog barked, but she couldn’t hear voices. It must be very early morning.

Hild knew how frustrated and powerless her mother felt about Fleetfoot. About everything that had happened. All day yesterday, when she wasn’t busy with festival duties, she had hovered, trying to do things for Hild, but there was nothing to be done. No matter how many times Hild forgot and walked to the door, she could never go through it, or even open it, unless Bragi and the king changed their minds.

She closed her eyes and pictured her horse, trying to let thoughts of him keep her from remembering what she’d done. It didn’t work.

How could she, who had wanted Bragi and her uncle
to stop sending so many men off to war, who had argued against killings and deaths, how could she, of all people, have killed a man? Try as she might to keep it away, the scene in the field replayed itself on her eyelids. In her fingers, she could feel the weight of the Bronding’s body pulling on her sword as he fell. She rubbed at her palm, but the sensation haunted her.

Unwen thought there was honor in being possessed, but she was wrong. And even though Hild’s grandmother had been far-minded, Hild wanted nothing to do with it. If it ever happened again, she wouldn’t give in to it.

Mice rustled in the leaves on the other side of the wall. She rolled over. Today would be as endless as yesterday. Her mother would try to cheer her, but what cheer could there be? She pulled the blanket over her head.

Again the mice scrabbled beside the wall. “Hild,” a voice whispered.

“Beyla?” She sat up so fast she hit her head on the bed’s ceiling. “Beyla, is that you?”

“Hild,” Beyla whispered again.

Hild knocked on the wall, two shorts, one long, the signal she always used for her sister.

Beyla knocked back, repeating the pattern.

Her heart thumping, Hild moved as close to the wall as she could. She had so much to say to her friend, so much to ask her, but now no words came. It was enough to envision Beyla crouching beside the back wall of the house.