For the better part of an hour while Merewyn sleeps, he shows her how to thrust and how to cut, how to move her feet so that she doesn’t overreach and leave herself off balance and open to attack. He shows her different ways opponents might attack and how to anticipate them. The places she should aim for. How she can twist the blade in a wound to inflict more pain and kill a man all the more quickly.
He challenges her to come at him. Like before, she’s worried about hurting him; he’s already injured, moving stiffly. The last thing she wants to do is add a knife wound to his woes, but it’s soon clear there’s no danger of that. For all that she lunges and charges, he dances easily out of the way of her knife, again and again, circling around her, until they’re both laughing and she’s out of breath.
She sits back down next to the fire. Her cheeks are hot, and her heart is pounding, but with delight rather than fear. She feels exhausted and yet at the same time stronger and more alive than at any time she can remember in days. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like to smile.
Beorn tosses some more sticks on to the flames, then reaches inside a pouch at his belt and produces two lumps of cheese, each half the size of his fist.
‘Here,’ he says, offering them to her, closing her hands around them. ‘I didn’t want us to eat what little food we had all at once, so I was keeping these until we really needed them. Well, soon it’ll be that time. And you need to keep your strength up. You and your lady both.’
‘Don’t you want any?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Are you sure?’
He nods. ‘There’s something else I want you to have.’
He holds out the scabbard that contains his seax. She stares first at it and then at him. He doesn’t mean it, surely?
‘Take it,’ he says.
‘But it’s yours.’
‘I don’t want it any more.’
Still uncertain, she places the cheese down beside her, then lifts the sheathed weapon from his outstretched hands. It’s lighter than she might have expected, even though it’s longer than her forearm. Plain leather, scuffed and worn. Unadorned by jewels or gold fittings. The cross guard and handle are just as simple: no inlay or twisted threads of silver.
It’s exactly his kind of blade, she thinks. Not showy. Made for a task and nothing more.
She takes hold of the corded grip and pulls gently. The blade slides out easily, without a noise. He must keep the lining well oiled. Now that she sees it up close she can make out the swirling patterns in the steel, like eddies in a stream when it’s in spate.
‘I had it made as a hunting knife,’ he says, ‘although I never did get a chance to use it for that.’
Holding the hilt carefully in both hands, she turns it over, admiring the way the edge catches the light. The balance is different with a longer blade, compared with the knife she’s been practising with. Along one face, she notices, are inscribed some letters that she can’t read.
She points to them. ‘What does that say?’
‘It says, “Cynehelm had me made.” Since Cynehelm is no more, there’s no point me holding on to it any longer.’
‘Don’t you need it?’
He rises, grimacing a little as he does so, and makes towards the door. ‘I have my bow. My axe. They’ve always been enough.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ve made a decision. It can’t be far to Hagustaldesham. Half a day on foot through the snow. Maybe a bit more. If I go now, I can probably get there before dark.’
‘You’re leaving?’
‘I’m going to get help.’
‘But what about us?’
‘Your lady won’t be going anywhere quickly. Someone needs to stay with her and take care of her.’
‘You can’t just leave.’
‘Either I go now, before it gets any later, and try to reach there by nightfall, or we wait as the snow comes down, and we freeze or we starve, whichever comes first.’
Tova shakes her head. ‘You can’t.’
‘Would you rather go yourself?’ He rests a hand on her shoulder. ‘There’s no other way. If there was, if I could think of one, I wouldn’t be doing this. But there isn’t, so I have to.’
‘No. We need you.’
‘I’ll bring help, and we’ll make it through this. All of us. You’ll see. But you have to trust me.’
Trust me, he says. This man whom she still hardly knows. Their lives in his hands. Again. Without him they’d never have made it this far. Without him they’d be dead several times over.
He clasps her hands in his. His palms are rough and marked with a hundred cuts and scabs.
‘Whatever you do,’ he says, ‘whatever happens, you have to keep the fire burning.’
She nods. ‘Of course.’
He taps his chest, where his heart is. ‘I mean the fire in here. Don’t let it go out. Ever. If you do, that means they’ve won. What you said earlier, you were right. Whatever happens, you mustn’t give up, you have to keep on going. For you and your lady. For the priest. For me.’
She has never heard him talk like this before, and it unnerves her. Her skin crawls. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You aren’t like the rest of us. You don’t have to carry the burdens we do. You’re a good person.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Why not?’