SEVEN
Sigrid woke with a groan. She felt like there wasn’t any part of her without its own particular ache. She rolled out of her cupboard and almost kept going right to the ground. Straightening painfully, she fumbled into her trews and slipped her shoes on before staggering to the commode. She had washed yesterday after the battle, but doing so again, even in the ice-cold water from the rain barrel, made her feel better. She spent some time stretching and limbering up, and by the time she was dressed and entered the great hall, she felt almost human.
The hall, however, looked like a battlefield in truth, minus the gore and severed body parts. There were people scattered haphazardly, sleeping or passed out, on nearly every horizontal surface. The Shield-Brethren were already awake, though even they looked a bit frayed around the edges. Halldor acknowledged her entrance with a halfhearted wave of the spoon he was using to eat his breakfast porridge. Thralls moved about the room clearing things away and occasionally rearranging the sleepers to make them more comfortable—or simply to clear their paths so they could accomplish their work.
A thrall brought her a bowl of porridge with dried fruit and honey. Feeling a need to be away from people, she took the bowl into the kitchen yard and plunked down on a bench to eat. She was a sensible girl and not naive in the least. She knew that she was reacting to the battle, the killing and deaths of her comrades. In time she would find a new sense of herself and adjust, but for now, just for this moment, she wished to be alone.
Her privacy lasted little more than the time it took to eat her porridge. ?ke walked into the yard with his own bowl and winced as he lowered himself next to her on the bench.
“Some say that the mercy of the gods is to allow us to forget what battle is like, but I think it’s that we forget what it is like after which is the true mercy.” He paused only long enough to shovel some porridge into his mouth. “How is your head and heart this morning, Sigrid?”
“Sore,” she mumbled, wishing he would shut up and go away. She could feel him looking at her.
“We should practice,” he said after a moment of examining her.
“Practice?” She raised her head and stared at him. “Why? Have you not had enough fighting?”
He shrugged. “I said nothing about fighting,” he replied. “Practice,” he repeated. “It is the best thing for you—head and heart. It will keep you from stiffening up, from being bound by the memory of the battle.” He tapped his spoon against the rim of his bowl. “There are so few of us left,” he said. “The Holmgard are not Sworn Men. Just because we have fought and won does not mean we can sit on our asses and grow fat. We have much to teach—”
“Shut up,” Sigrid said. She shoveled the last bite of her breakfast into her mouth and then slammed the bowl down on the bench between them.
?ke smiled at her. “Get your gear,” he said. “I’ll be in the yard.”
Her armor-cote had been so blood soaked that the thralls had despaired of ever getting it clean, but after enough soaking and scrubbing it at least no longer smelled of sweat and gore. It did cling damply to her, hindering her movements and, more tellingly, irritating her.
?ke had already started drilling the Holmgard when she returned to the yard. Many had not participated in the battle and so were fresh enough, but they had participated in the toasts last night and more than one looked to be in foul temper and out of sorts.
Sigrid felt awkward and uncomfortable, and the weapons felt foreign in her hands, but she fell in with the others and managed to keep up with the drills. When ?ke broke them into pairs for sparring, she found herself facing him. He started slowly, but she just could not seem to get into the rhythm of it. He kept slamming his shield into the knuckles of her sword hand, and he knocked her down more than once. After he hit her on the side of the head with the flat of his lang ax, he signaled a stop.
She ripped off her spangenhelm and threw it down, glaring at him. “I’m done,” she snapped.
He said nothing, staring blandly at her through the slits of his helm. She dropped her shield as well, growing more frustrated as he said nothing. “What did you expect?” she snapped, more angry at herself than him by that point.
He shrugged. For a moment, he appeared to be about to say something, and then he shrugged again and turned away.
She threw her langsaex down as well, completely frustrated by him and the whole drill.
With a bellow of rage ?ke spun, his ax flashing toward her head.
“It’s my own damn fault,” ?ke gritted through clenched teeth. “I shouldn’t have surprised her like that…”
“Shut up and bite this,” Grimhildr told him as she shoved a leather strap between his teeth. She grabbed him around his torso, holding him steady, while nodding to Halldor, who was gripping ?ke’s right arm in both hands.
“I’m going to count to three,” Grimhildr said. “Are you—”
“Three,” Halldor said, pulling and twisting the Sworn Man’s arm.
?ke bellowed as his shoulder slipped back into place with an audible crunch. The Sworn Man spit out the strap and glared at Halldor. “She was supposed to count,” he snarled.
“Is your arm better?” Halldor asked.
?ke blinked and gingerly moved his arm. His face twisted with pain, but his range of motion was good.
Grimhildr patted ?ke on the shoulder—causing ?ke to wince—as she stood up. “Thank him,” she said to ?ke. She seemed almost pleased that Halldor had—literally—taken matters into his own hands.
“Thank you,” ?ke ground out as he let his arm flop in his lap.
Halldor produced a small clay bottle from a pouch on his belt. Peeling away the wax seal with his thumbnail, he poured some of the contents in a small, shallow soapstone bowl. “This is Uis G?,” he said as he handed the bowl to ?ke. “The druids swear that an open wound washed with it will not become infected.”
?ke looked at him suspiciously as he held the bowl gingerly. “I don’t have an open wound.”
“It has other uses,” Grimhildr said dryly. “Don’t sit there and sip it like a virginal maid. Drink it down all at once.”
?ke glared at her next, and his nose wrinkled as he sniffed the liquid in the bowl. With a final glance at Halldor, he raised the bowl to his lips and drank the contents in one gulp. A moment later he was gasping as he tried to catch his breath, tears streaming from his eyes. “Blood of our Fathers,” he gasped, “it burns all the way down. Is this to help with the pain?”
“After a fashion. A couple of those and you’ll still hurt,” Halldor said as he poured another measure into the bowl. “You just won’t care.”
?ke took a deep breath to steel himself and drank it. “It’s a little better the second time,” he wheezed.
Halldor took the bowl and refilled it again, extending it to Grimhildr. “Once the seal is broken, it doesn’t last if it isn’t used,” he said in reply to her questioning look.
She took the bowl and drank her measure quickly. Her grin was wide and fierce, her teeth clenched together as the Uis G? burned its way into her belly. “Ah,” she sighed. “It has been a long time since I’ve partaken of the Waters.” Halldor poured a little more into the bowl, and as Grimhildr raised it to her lips, he brought the bottle up to his mouth and upended it, taking the last measure for himself.
It did indeed burn all the way down. He choked lightly, feeling as if he had just inhaled burning ash, and he pressed a knuckle against the edge of his right eye as tears started to form.
“So, ?ke,” Grimhildr said once they had all recovered, “why don’t you tell us what possessed you to think that it was a good idea to surprise a warrior who had just felled a dozen men in battle as casually as she might step on so many bugs?”
?ke moved his tongue around his mouth, as if he were trying to clear any remaining drop of the Uis G?. “You know how some of the young ones get after their first battle. She was showing all the signs. I just wanted to get some sort of reaction from her. Some sense that she wasn’t trying to bury all that she knew.”
“You’re an idiot,” Grimhildr said. “How can she forget what she doesn’t really know she knows?” She looked at Halldor. “Truth is: she was an easy student. It was never difficult to teach her how to fight. She came to it all as if she was just remembering how to hold a langsaex. How to move. How to fight. I’ve been a warrior my life long, and never have I seen the likes of what I saw yesterday.”
“I have,” Halldor said.
“Aye,” Grimhildr replied. “I thought you might.”
?ke looked between them, a blank expression on his face, not understanding what they were talking about. There was a glimmer of something in his eyes. Halldor wasn’t entirely certain, but it made him uneasy.
“Are you going to tell her father, or shall I?” Grimhildr asked. She gestured at ?ke. “She can’t keep breaking the Jarl’s men every time she is surprised or out of sorts.”