Page 13 of A Curse Carved in Bone
“You’re not.”
Logically, I knew he was right. My thighs stung from the slice across them and blood dripped down my legs. Yet the pain felt distant. “Why did you try to stop me?”
He dropped to his knees next to me. In a voice so low that only I could hear, he said, “Freya, you just won a battle with a few words.”
A tremor ran through me, because this was but a taste of the future that stretched out before me. Bodies everywhere and their souls bound to my godly mother’s domain.
I clambered to my feet and strode down the beach, walking until there were no more bodies. Until there was no more blood and each breath brought nothing to my nose but the scent of the sea. Then I fell to my knees and pressed my forehead to the clean wet sand.
Weep for what you have done,I screamed at myself.Weep for what you are!
But no tears would come.
Thiswas precisely what I’d hoped to protect Freya from. Violence that drove her to dark places. The best parts of her forced to use the worst parts of her to do what needed to be done. And though she’d surely saved the lives of all those children, as I watched her sit on the sand farther down the beach, I knew that no part of her felt good aboutit.
I felt compelled to go to her. To say something, anything, that would ease the burden pressing her down and down. To fall into the careless banter between us that had always felt so easy. A war of retorts that meant nothing and everything. Except the skill seemed lost to me. My tongue frozen with the certainty that everything I said drove Freya farther away from me, because our words were no longer moves in a game but blows on the battlefield, cutting and cruel.
“Does Volund need to see to her?” Harald asked, watching as Tora and Guthrum swam out to the drifting drakkar to secure it with a rope.
“She won’t accept help.” All too well, I knew how Freya lived with pain as a form of self-punishment for her perceived transgressions.Vragi had been a piece of weasel shit, abusive to her and all around him. An insult to the god who’d fathered him. He’d deserved death, and yet Freya had always acted as though the burns she’d inflicted upon herself to kill him were a fair punishment. Pain that would sit with her the rest of her life so that she might never forget what she’d done. There was little doubt in my mind that the bleeding wounds on her thighs would serve the same purpose. She’d heal, but the scars would ever remind her of this moment. Though I thought the Islunder raiders deserved their fate, my heart told me that Freya felt no such certainty.
“She fought well,” Harald said. “Saved innocent lives.”
Even from this distance, the horror they’d witnessed was visible on the faces of the children. Innocent no longer, if they ever had been. Nordeland was a hard place, and those who did not have it in their hearts to rage against land, weather, and violence were not long for the mortal realm. “Of course Freya fought well,” I answered. “What is of more surprise is that you also fought well, Father. I had half wondered if you were still capable of swinging a sword in your advanced age, but you acquitted yourself like a man still in his prime.”
He cast me a sidelong look. “Have I mentioned that your wit has been missed?”
“No, it strikes me that you haven’t. An oversight, I’m sure.”
A soft snort exited his lips, then he handed me the end of the rope now bound to the drakkar. “As my strength is spent, I’ll leave it to the young bucks such as yourself to pull them in. Beach it farther down where there is less…” Harald trailed off, looking at the beach soaked in blood and littered with the dead. “Less horror.”
I debated which direction to go before walking down the sand until I stood in Freya’s line of sight. Then I began to pull. Survivors from the village lent their strength and we drew the large vessel onto the beach. Weeping women waded into the water to lift out their sons and daughters, but many children stood unclaimed, teary eyes searching for mothers and fathers who would never sweep them into their arms again. A fact I well knew, for I’d stepped over many bodies of villagers as I’dfought the Islunders. Men and women who’d fought to the last to give their children a chance to escape.
Which was not how it should be. Skade and I rarely saw eye to eye but there was no denying that Nordeland had been left nearly undefended while Harald supported my ambition. An ambition I’d torn to shreds. Which meant the lives lost today had been sacrificed for nothing.
Freya was not alone in feeling sick with guilt, but unlike her, I deserved much of the blame here.
I fastened the end of the rope to a heavy piece of driftwood and then stooped in the waves to wash away the worst of the blood on my skin. Heaving myself into the drakkar, I sat down with the remaining children and then called to the sky, “Kaja!”
The bird was circling above, but at my call, she descended to land on my outstretched arm. Kaja and I had never properly met, but Guthrum knew me well, which meant so did she. Her talons dug into the leather of my bracer as she ruffled her feathers, yellow eyes watching me with a predator’s focus. Yet it was the eyes of the children around me that commanded my attention. Flickers of interest filtered through the haze of shock that held them in its grasp. I stroked the back of Kaja’s head, and she leaned into the pressure.
“Do you wish to touch her?” I asked them. “She is very vain and appreciates the attention.”
Kaja cocked her head and gave me a reproachful glare that suggested she understood my words. Yet she preened beneath the small hands that reached out to tentatively touch her feathers. A small distraction to pull their minds from what they had seen, and though it changed nothing, it would create a different memory to fill the moment when no one had come for them. In my periphery, Harald spoke to the survivors. Those who had a connection to these children were dispatched to claim them until I finally sat alone with the bird.
Bending my head to Kaja’s ear, I murmured instructions. She took flight and I climbed out of the drakkar to join Harald, who stood in thecompany of Tora and Skade. The latter was bare to the waist but for the leafy branches Volund had woven around her torso and arm. It seemed Eir had deigned to heal, at least in part, whatever injuries Skade had suffered for she moved with relative ease.
“Some of the Islunders will have escaped,” Harald said. “Most will not have seen Freya’s battle on the beach, but all saw Bjorn. If given the chance, they will spread the word that he is returned to Nordeland and it will reach Snorri and confirm his suspicions.” His eyes fell on Skade. “You will hunt them down and ensure they are silenced.”
“Guthrum and Kaja can deal with a few scampering rats,” Skade protested, her eyes flicking to me and then away again. “As your right hand, I should be with you, my king.”
A role I had served until I’d returned to Skaland, and though I had little interest in reclaiming it, I did find it curious that Harald had filled my place with Skade. She had value to him, there was no denying that, but though no one was more loyal to Harald than she was, it had always struck me that he was put off by her sycophancy.
A thought confirmed in the flatness of his eyes as he said, “You are my huntress and none will escape your arrow.”
Typically such flattery would make Skade preen but she instead frowned. “The shield maiden has been on Nordeland’s shores less than a day and already death follows. Saga had the right of it that she should be put down lest all of Nordeland suffer.”
“This raid was not Freya’s doing.” I fought the urge to call my axe as Skade’s bow appeared in her hand. “The Islunders were here for wealth and thralls, not Freya.”
