“He is stocked full with companions. Perhaps if this Thorbrand does not survive the next battle . . .” Heming gave Ragnvald a speculative look. “My father did want you to help me.”
“Not with murder,” said Ragnvald firmly. He had not spent much time with Thorbrand, but thought he liked him, this small blustery man. The path to turn Heming into Harald’s companion would lie with Thorbrand, not over him. “Why don’t you volunteer to help build the ramp onto the wall instead?” he offered. “Harald will admire you for that.”
“It will be dangerous,” said Heming doubtfully.
Ragnvald sighed. “I will do it too,” said Ragnvald. There, now Heming’s competitiveness might help him.
*
After he had spent two nights building the ramp, Ragnvald’s hand could hardly hold the haft of a shovel. When his digging shift was done, and the other men crawled off to sleep, Ragnvald walked a little way into the forest. He sat down with his back against a tree, cradling his hand, trying to hold off despair at what must come next.
Dawn came on gray and rainy. He should wait for full daylight to tend the wound, when he would be able to see it best, but he feared to examine it too closely, and that someone else might watch him. He unwrapped the wound. Just a small double arc of teeth marks, yet it was red and hotter than it had been the day before. Running his finger over the flesh sent a thrill of pain up his arm and into his elbow.
Now that it had gone this far, he must cut open the wound to drain out the poison. Best to burn the wound with a hot poker, but Ragnvald did not think he could do that for himself, and he did not want anyone else to learn of his injury. A healer, seeing what Ragnvald saw now, the sickly shine of it, would probably want to cut his hand off.
Better he die than live without a sword hand. Oddi would help him to die gripping a sword if it came to that, so he could go as a warrior to the lands beyond death. Ragnvald found he could just bear to think of these things if he thought of them as happening to someone else. His hand too—he would cut the poison out of a friend’s hand, so now he could do it for himself.
He drew his dagger and tested the edge by rasping his thumb against it. It had been sharp enough to cut the meat at dinner, and what was he but meat?
He wiped the blade on his shirt. It would be better if he could wash it clean with sand, but they were far from a sand beach. He must not delay. He looked around to see if he was likely to be disturbed while he did this thing.
All slept at this hour; no one would stop him. He found a flat rock that he could use to steady himself, and pressed the back of his hand against it. The rock was cool—even the back of his hand was hot now from the infection. Cut it and let the blood and fluids run free, he told himself.
He pressed his blade to the edges of the wound, opening them where they had tried—and failed—to come together. The pain was like a punch in his stomach, far worse than Olaf’s sword in his thigh, or Solvi’s dagger to his cheek. Blackness gathered on the edges of his vision. He waited for it to fade, and swallowed down the bile in his throat. He must do this. He pressed harder now.
His hand bled freely, red blood that looked black in the gray dawn, mingling with the cloudy fluid of infection. He let it bleed for a dozen breaths. It did bring some relief, some lessening of the pressure, more than just the relief of no longer pressing a knife into his own flesh. He took another deep breath and cut the other half of the wound. That one was easier. The pain came in regular waves, and after each one crested, the trough felt almost pleasant. His hand now seemed as though it belonged to someone else in truth. A burning sensation suffused it, as though he had plunged it into ice water.
His stomach heaved. He looked away from the blood, from his mangled hand, at the quiet camp, the gray humps of leather tents, then back at the wound. Blood and pus, white, not clear. That was not good. Still, it did not smell putrefied yet, only like blood always smelled, of metal and ocean.
It seemed impossible that he could have done this without anyone noticing, for he had groaned with pain as he did it. He took up a small skin of ale with his left hand and splattered it over the wound, hardly feeling it. Then he took a clean strip of cloth that he had stolen for this purpose and wrapped it around his hand, binding tight, and biting off the knot with his teeth. He stood. The tents of Harald’s men wavered in his vision, as though he were looking at it through the mist. He emptied the ale skin into his throat.
By midafternoon, Ragnvald knew that his surgery had not worked. It seemed that he floated above the camp, watching Harald move between tents, shining like a torch, warming where he passed, turning all heads. This sensation came from fever, Ragnvald knew, a fever that detached him from his body and his cares. It touched him lightly for now, though he could feel its black shadow on the horizon.
Near afternoon, one of the scouts came running into the camp, breathless with exertion. He had to lie on the ground for a few minutes before he could speak well enough to be understood. Ragnvald had spent most of the day sitting near the leaders’ tents, at the foot of a tree, listening with half an ear to the conversation, while his fever ebbed and flowed. He knew he would feel better if he lay down in his tent, but feared that if he did, he might never stand up again.
“Gudbrand’s army assembles in the foothills to the south,” said the scout, finally. He gave counts of men and tents he had seen, drawing the shape of the land in the ash of the dead campfire.
“We should go to meet him there,” said Guthorm.
“They are well positioned at the top of a hill,” said Ragnvald, half to himself. “But if we draw them out, we may be crushed between them and Eirik’s fort.”
“We have more than twice their numbers,” said Guthorm. Ragnvald had not realized his voice had carried to Guthorm, but he supposed Guthorm might be alert for anyone arguing with his plan. “We can attack from below, and brace each other if necessary.”
Ragnvald frowned. His fever had robbed him of any self-control, it seemed. Harald looked at him inquisitively, and that was enough invitation for Ragnvald to stand, uncertainly, and join him at the fire. Strangely, the warmth from the flames made him feel colder, and he had to clamp his jaw to keep from shivering.
“What would you do, Ragnvald?” Harald asked.
“If you attack uphill, form a curve in the line, here. A dip.” He moved forward and sketched a line in the dirt with his left hand, keeping his right pinned to his thigh to keep it from being jarred into worse pain. The line bowed inward at the center of the slope. “They will think they are pushing you back. Then, let the middle of the line fail, and their men rush downhill, through the line. You must turn quickly after that, to meet them as they try to fight back up. But then you will have the advantage.”