Page 115 of Heart of Winter
Finally, Erik said, “At dawn, then.”
Ragnar nodded, expression going grim. His gaze flicked toward the table. “May I see him?”
“No. You may not.”
Another nod, shorter this time, and then Bjorn turned him around and marched him from the room.
Erik watched him go, jaw clenched tight, muscle jumping in his cheek from the effort. He let out a slow breath – and his gaze cut finally toward Oliver, who still gripped his forearm. A fractional softening of his face, an acknowledgement, and then he eased out of Oliver’s hold and turned back to the table. They all did.
Olaf had stacked clean linen bandaging over the wound, and now held bleached strips of the same. “I’ve cleaned it and dressed it. I need to wrap it, now, if you’ll help me lift him.”
Erik and Leif moved to either side of the table to do so, working in wordless harmony.
As Olaf began winding the linen strips around Rune’s abdomen and under his back, Oliver moved to stand beside Revna.
Her face was puffy from crying, still more tears trickling down her cheeks, the pretty blue eyes so like her brother’s nearly swollen shut at this point. She cradled Rune’s head in both palms, and Oliver wondered if she was remembering him as a baby, when his fragile little skull had been small enough to fit cupped in one hand.
Unsure if he would be welcome to do so or not, Oliver put an arm around her shoulders. To his surprise, she leaned into him immediately; dropped her head heavily down onto his shoulder. She had to be exhausted, terror and impending grief compounding the natural fatigue of the night’s festivities.
“He’ll be all right,” Oliver whispered. “You lot are all too stubborn to let something as mundane as a knife get the best of you.”
She breathed out a congested chuckle. “Bless you, lamb.”
When Oliver lifted his head, Erik was studying them, his expression quietly devastated. Oliver had never wanted to go to him so badly. But he stroked Revna’s shoulder, and let her shudder against him while Olaf tied off the bandages.
25
It was funny the way everything could change in the span of a night.
As the first blush of dawn stained the horizon shell-pink, Oliver chafed his gloved hands together against the cold and watched his breath steam before his face. It would be a glorious sunrise, once it began, the sky cloudless and smooth as a black pottery bowl overhead. He stood dressed in last night’s feast clothes, the same ensemble that Erik had unlaced and shoved down and stripped off of him. His hair was a rumpled mess – he’d caught only a passing glimpse in the mirror on his way out – but the braids had survived, beads clicking together faintly as he shivered.
Revna stood beside him, close enough that their shoulders kept brushing; she’d dried her eyes, washed her face, and looked now like carven stone, drawn and cold.
On her other side, Leif stood tall and stoic, a new hardness to his face.
On the other side of the yard, the select few lords who’d been roused for the purpose of bearing witness breathed into their hands or stomped their feet, most of them worse for the night’s drink: Lord Askr, Lord Ingvar, and, to Oliver’s surprise, young Lord Náli, the Corpse Lord.
Fitting, he supposed, if only in name.
A block had been set up in the center of the training yard, old, and heavy, and patinaed with old stains.
Erik stood cloaked in black fur, his hair in wild disarray and lifting in the breeze. One bare, ringed hand rested on the head of a massive, wicked axe, the end of the handle planted in the snow. It was no woodsman’s axe, but the sort of thing Northmen carried into war. The glacial fury on his face brooked no dissent.
A rattle of chains sounded, and the prisoner was led forward.
Bjorn held Ormr by one arm, and Ragnar held the other, marching him up to the block. Ormr didn’t make it difficult, though; with his hands bound in manacles before him, he walked with head erect, gaze defiant. He almost looked –proud, of what he’d done, Oliver thought with a wave of revulsion.
Beside him, Revna sucked in a breath.
When they reached the block, Bjorn shoved him roughly down to his knees, pushed his chest forward onto it, and held him in place with a boot between his shoulder blades.
Birger, his gray hair sleep-rumpled, and his beard not much better, stepped forward, face grave. “Do you understand the crime of which you are accused?”
Ormr craned his neck just far enough tosmirkup at the advisor.
“That’s what I thought,” Birger said, grimly. “You face, then, the punishment of a man accused of attempting to murder a crown prince and heir of Aeretoll. Justice will be meted out by King Erik Frodeson. May the Val-Father take you – if he’ll even have you.” The last was muttered with disgust, and then Birger stepped back.
And Erik stepped forward.
