Éire’s Captive Moon (31 page)

“Oh,” she said, much more softly. “Of course.”

Like a soft breeze on a cool day, she was gone, barely moving the air as she swept by.

Agnarr shook his head, trying to clear it in readiness for the ceremony. The ring. It was in his locked chest. His sword, there. That he would need, too. And the ceremonial hammer, for after the feast. He had all he would need.

He took a last look around the house. His mother had food lined up all along the table she’d set up near the rear of the house. The fires were banked for easy burning when the people returned here after the ceremony. All was in readiness.

“Agnarr! We’ve come for you!”

Bjørn’s voice reminded him of the next part of his day: the wedding procession. “Well then,” Agnarr said to his sword, eyeing it before sliding it into its scabbard, “it’s time.”

With an oddly heavy heart, he left his home for the last time as an unmarried man. His male relations and friends were waiting, with snow-bright smiles and torches, in preparation for an early dusk. They stamped their feet in the cold, their laughter misting in front of bearded faces and icing into jeweled drops on fur-lined cloaks and hoods.

“Come! She waits!”

Agnarr summoned a smile to his face and came to join them. “Yes, she waits!”

They made a good-humored group as they trekked to the village square, where the rest of the village waited. As they walked though, a huge, dark, snow cloud pushed in from the inner lands, and already Agnarr could see lightning arcing in the underbelly of the storm. What was happening? Concern tightened the skin on his forehead. Did the Thunderer have a message to pass on? What was wrong?

“We’d best be hurrying,” he said, picking up his slow, reluctant pace.

“
Ja
!” his companions agreed, and so they did.

Just as they reached the bridal party, to see Magda in her long red overdress, her dark hair loose and curling heavily over her shoulders, his attention was distracted once again by the sky.

The storm. In just a few moments, it had crested right over them . . . just as if Thor himself was pushing it along with his mighty arms. Agnarr tucked his hammer into his belt and gripped Thor’s talisman. Was his god angry about something? Had his village committed some crime? Or had he himself done or said something to anger the god?

“Let’s hurry,” Els shouted over a sudden wind. “Let’s get this part done and get indoors!”

Agnarr joined Magda next to the well, her ring ready in his palm, warming the gold with his own body’s heat. He removed
Mjøllnir
from its sheath, thought reverently of his own father, Halvard, and smiled down at Magda. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yes!” she half shouted, smiling broadly.

He nodded, took her hand in his and was about to speak when he was interrupted for the last time that day.

Lightning struck from the sky with a furious crack, setting the house of Els on fire. All the villagers screamed in fear and dropped to their knees, heedless of the patches of snow on the muddy earth.

Agnarr felt fear tighten his gut, though he did not fall like the rest. He knew who it was, and he screamed his god’s name in supplication and the wish to be spared.

“Thor!”

Chapter 23

Flames rose like a warning beacon against the darkening winter sky.

Magda sobbed in fear on the ground beside Agnarr. “Agnarr! What is it? What has Thor done?”

Thor’s ancient priestess—marked by lightning from the god himself—pushed to Agnarr’s side. She was older than Gerda, bent almost double. The god’s bolt had stricken her so her left side was unable to move, though she had some ability to stand still if need be. Her name was Aesa, and she had to drag herself everywhere with the aid of a rune-covered walking stick.

“It is a sign,” Aesa said. Her speech was unimpaired, sounding young inside her crabbed body. A sure sign, all knew, that Thor wanted her to speak in his name. “A sign against the house of Els!”

Everyone hushed. Then Magda cried out, “We need to put the fire out! Now! Before it burns my home!”

Aesa coughed and shook her head. “Lightning and thunder never happen in the middle of winter. Never. Blizzards come, but never the power of the Thunderer’s bolts from the sky.” Her head arced back and forth, to command even greater attention from all the village. “The gods have spoken.”

Els prostrated himself in the mud, the orange glow of the fire lighting his shaking back. “The gods have decided against me!”

Even his own daughter did not deny the obvious indicator. Magda backed away, almost tripping over a small pile of mud that had been pushed up as men had fallen down.

Agnarr caught her without thinking and helped her regain her balance. He spoke to the elder, who still groveled in the mud, making incoherent sounds of grief and despair. “You cannot be sure of this,” he began to say. But then he stopped.

The sign. Was it against the house of Els or was it a more personal warning from Agnarr’s sworn god, Thor? Could it have meaning for him personally? To warn against the marriage? But wouldn’t that dishonor Magda’s family?

He set the young woman aside to help her father rise to his feet. “You will stay with me,” he informed the older man.

“They’re cursed,” Aesa whispered behind him. Mutterings and dire predictions went around the villagers like rats. The priestess touched Agnarr lightly with her knuckles. “Thor must not want this marriage,” she told him, her head angled to meet his eye.

“I cannot leave them in the cold,” he told the old woman. “It would dishonor my house.” Agnarr raised his arms and gathered everyone’s attention. “I will take them into my house,” he declared.

“But the gods do not want this marriage,” Aesa repeated, loudly enough for all to hear.

Magda caught her breath audibly. “Agnarr . . .?”

He brought her to his side in a show of support. “I will take them into my house,” he said again. “We can build them a new home in the spring. Until then, they are under my protection.”

With the help of Tuirgeis and Bjørn, Agnarr sent everyone to their own homes. He stayed to watch the fire, wondering why Thor would call out Els and his family in this way. What had they done? A horrible crime? Or was he just seeing to it that he, Agnarr, did not marry this winter?

Once they were alone in the village square, as the last of Els’s house collapsed to a coal-red pile, Tuirgeis clasped his shoulder.

“So what of your marriage to Elsdottir?”

“You heard our priestess. There will be no marriage,” Agnarr decided aloud.

The sky cleared with a sudden harsh wind, far overhead. It was becoming dark. The men left the square, each in his own thoughts and to his own home.

“Your
trell
can’t stay here, Agnarr! There’s no room for my
trell
if yours is here,” Magda said, her tone both tense and wheedling, Charis thought.

Charis paid the girl no heed, but continued to bundle up her few clothes and check to make sure she had her herbs and surgical tools. Knife, thread, and linens to pack and bind wounds. She also cleared out as many of her herbs as she could, hoping to be of use for quite a while in the home of Lord Tuirgeis’s cousin.

“She won’t be here tonight, at any rate, Magda. She is needed elsewhere,” Agnarr’s voice rumbled. “I’ll see to it that she arrives safely. Mother, help Magda and her father find bedding.”

Bran smirked at Charis from behind hands closed in his religious display. The healer felt her stomach turn in revolt just thinking about the rest of the winter spent in his company.

Charis did not wish to be walked across the village square. She did not wish to treat Cowan either. She did not wish for any company whatsoever. All she wanted was to be alone. Solitude, however, was nonexistent during the winter in
Nordweg
. Everyone huddled together like children afraid of the night. Charis would have preferred to wander on her own, but tales of people lost in the wild white concerned her enough that she remained indoors unless accompanied when the snow fell. So when Agnarr, bundled in a heavy fur and hefting an axe, took her arm to leave the
langhús
, she went without complaint.

The wind was now silent. No voices marred the blanket-thick quiet in the village. Overhead, the sky was an iron gray. Equally gray clouds and early dark combined to make it seem as if the limitless sky were somehow pressing down upon the world. It was oppressive; it also made Charis long for home, where such heavy skies were able to oddly outline green trees and make them seem eerily of the fabled Otherworld.

In such weather as this, she could believe Achan would appear at the edge of her vision and chide her for dawdling, or encourage her in her struggles.

“I will come for you when Kingson informs me that he no longer needs your healing power,” Agnarr informed her, sounding flat and preoccupied.

“It’s not a power,” Charis informed her temporary husband without looking at him. “It is herbs. And they will soon be gone. Your spring here will be long coming.”

“That’s true enough.” Agnarr sighed then, a deep sound that made Charis look at him at last. He slid her a glance. “I will ask Magda to give up her storyteller. I can do that much.”

Charis nodded slowly in understanding; Agnarr could do no more than what he had said. She waited until their eyes met. “Thank you.”
 

His eyes warmed briefly before he reminded her of their plans for the night.

She was being compelled to go serve a black-hearted traitor to his own people. Her irritation with Cowan, recently renamed Geirmundr, had festered and taken hold until it was a deep-rooted, bitter herb in her soul. By the time they reached the home of Lord Tuirgeis’s cousin, where Cowan was wintering, Charis’s nostrils flared in antipathy.

“Tuirgeis! I’ve brought the healer!” Agnarr called through the heavy wooden door. Light fanned out around the edges of the door as it was pulled open the width of a handspan. Agnarr brought her forward with one hand on her back, the other pulling her hood off from her head.

The
vikingr
lord smiled his approval. “Come in, come in, Agnarr. I have warm mead.”

While holding her loosely next to him, Agnarr waved Tuirgeis’s offer away with his axe. “No, but thank you. I must return to my own guests,” he added, a wry edge to his voice.

Lord Tuirgeis barely glanced at Charis as she slid past him into the
langhús
. She saw Cowan, reclining and drinking what was probably that warm mead mentioned by his host. He was laughing lightly with the lady of the house, and that set Charis’s back to stiffening. She didn’t hear if Agnarr bid her a good evening or not. Likely not; he was in a hurry to return home.

When the door closed behind her, Cowan finally glanced in her direction. His beard had been trimmed and he was wearing a clean overshirt. His wounded leg was propped up on the bench, on top of a pile of furs. The fire crackled comfortably—it was neither too hot for comfort nor too cold for conversation.

Cowan’s laughter died on his lips as he studied her. She let him see her resentment. After all, she was only a slave, but she was his equal for all that. She was the Healer of Ragor still. A
kvinn medisin
to these barbarians, but she had value. He did not speak to her, though Lord Tuirgeis paced around her to join the men, woman and two children on the far side of the fire. As in Agnarr’s
langhús
, this one had walls on the bed at the far end of the long, narrow dwelling. Here there were no herbal scents, but there were dried vegetables hanging from the beams in the ceiling, many cloaks draped over the cross-supports near the bed benches, and wooden cups and plates stacked on an otherwise empty bench nearest to the door. The two fires in the
langhús
lit the home adequately, she thought. Enough that she would not need a new lamp lit to perform surgery on her patient.

Her
patient
.

She refused to approach him unless he called to her. Stubborn resentment kept her waiting for a command from this new freeman of Balestrand. This new man with the new name would have to do as all the other men of
Nordweg
had to do. He’d have to order her. Command her. Could he do it?

The tension between them grew as if it were a thick rope. Charis did not care if the weight of Lord Tuirgeis’s gaze was upon her. She ignored him. Her attention was all for Cowan.