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‘Has he been awake at all?’ she asked Vidar.
‘Merewyn’s Saxon witch made a potion of laced mead. Eirik gave it to him before they set his leg and he’s been drinking it since. We thought it was best for the pain. It makes him sleep. He’s been awake a few times, but he’s not very lucid.’
‘Don’t give him any more of it. He needs nourishment now more than he needs oblivion.’
‘But, Kadlin, he’s in pain.’
‘No more, Vidar. He’s wasting away.’
Vidar sighed and nodded from his seat on the bench beside her, exhausted. ‘All right. He’s in your care now.’
She frowned at his resigned expression. ‘Why has he been sent to me? Wouldn’t it have been better to let him rest and recover at Eirik’s home?’
‘Perhaps, but Eirik believed that he had no will to survive his injury. I agree. He would have died had he stayed and he still may.’
She crossed her arms and held them tight to her belly, trying unsuccessfully to hold back the pain. Seeing Gunnar again had caused the old wounds to fester and it was taking all she had to keep them from reopening. ‘Why does he think that?’
‘Gunnar has changed.’ Vidar glanced to the alcove where his brother slept, seeming to weigh his words. ‘He fights with recklessness, without thought for his own well-being. Like a madman. It’s true that he was reckless before, but now he’s even more so. It’s clear to anyone who knows him that he fights with a longing for death.’ He paused as if trying to determine how much to reveal. ‘I once saw him walk into a camp of Saxons, alone, and draw his sword. He fought them all with a smile on his face. The men who fight beneath him have tripled in size, because he’s amassed a fortune, or so the stories claim. But he doesn’t use that fortune for anything except to purchase his boat from Father. He hasn’t bought himself a manor so that he can become a jarl. Most men fight bravely to die with valour and glory—Gunnar fights so that he won’t have to live.’
She imagined the danger that Vidar described and couldn’t control the anger and fear that made her hands shake. Had he even once thought of her and considered making a future together? If he’d settled himself in a manor, even across the sea, he could have come for her. Her father would have put up some resistance, but he wouldn’t stop her if Gunnar could prove that he could provide for her. But Gunnar hadn’t done that because he didn’t want her. He’d said as much before and it was even clearer now. ‘Why send him to me? What does Eirik suppose that I can do?’
Vidar shrugged. ‘You are the only one with some connection to him, the only one who can bring him back, according to Eirik.’
‘That makes no sense. If that were true, he would have come back long ago.’ There was a time she might have agreed with Vidar, but Gunnar had proved her wrong.
Vidar shrugged again.
‘Go. Eat your fill and then take your rest. You must be beyond exhaustion.’ She waved him to the pot on the fire.
* * *
‘Where is my mead?’ Gunnar grumbled and felt for the ever-present barrel, but the bedding beside him was empty. ‘Vidar!’ His voice, hoarse from disuse, carried through the hovel where he had been dumped, but no one answered. Opening his eyes to the meagre light that filtered in, he could barely make out the shadowed opening of the alcove where he lay. Uncertain of the distance, he pushed himself up on a shaky elbow and reached out. The opening floated before him, out of reach, but if it were feet or mere inches away he could not fathom.
A sweat breaking out on his brow, he lay back down and closed his eyes to wait for the sudden nausea to subside. Images swam across his mind. If they were from the past days, weeks, or hours, he didn’t know. The faces of Magnus and Eirik came to him and it seemed they were saying something important, but he had no memory of their words. He remembered opening his eyes to Vidar replenishing his mead on several occasions, but the world might as well have been black behind him, because he had not seen past the boy’s face. He did remember Kadlin, another dream in a long line that featured her. Clearly, she was not a goddess because he was not at Freyja’s table. If this was Sessrumnir then the goddess needed lessons on hospitality. A fallen man should not be without his mead.
‘Gunnar? Are you awake?’
He opened his eyes to see that his tiny world had righted itself and stopped floating. Vidar stood framed in the narrow arch of the opening. Nay, he finally admitted, he was not a fallen man. He was sure that a fallen man wouldn’t feel this much pain. His entire body ached from the roots of his hair to the bottom of his feet. His leg throbbed, with the pain seeming to centre around his left knee and shin. ‘Where is the mead? It’s not here.’
Vidar’s face was grim as he set the humble, wooden bowl that he held, with its single candle, on the stool beside Gunnar’s bed. The flame wavered, causing a drop of fat to sizzle where it fell in the bottom of the bowl. Vidar glanced down the passageway, running a hand over the back of his neck before looking back at Gunnar. ‘There’s no more mead. I can bring you ale or fresh water. I’ve just brought it back myself from the stream.’
‘No more mead?’ As long as he could remember there was mead. Every jarl kept a steady supply and it was a practice Eirik had adopted. Even his uncle Einar, who spent months at a time in the countryside waging battle, managed to keep a supply of mead to give out after battles. The men expected it after victory. Of course ale was often given out, as well, but generally to the lesser warriors, the younger ones who had yet to prove themselves.
Gunnar tried to sit up again and noted how his forearms trembled with the effort. How long had he been unconscious? Had he been injured? Aye, his leg throbbed with pain. He searched his memory for what had happened, but his last clear thought was forming the battle plan with Magnus and his men. But it seemed so long ago. Everything else was a fuzzy, disjointed mass of memories that he couldn’t piece together. He looked around the alcove and realised he couldn’t place it. It didn’t seem to belong in Eirik’s home.
There had been a boat. He was sure that he had travelled in a boat.
Then he realised something strange in what his brother had said. ‘Why are you fetching water?’ While Gunnar still thought of his brother as a boy, the truth was he was old enough now to fight in battle and work on a ship. Fetching water was a task relegated to little boys and servants.
Again, Vidar looked away rather than meet his gaze. Alarmed, Gunnar clenched his teeth to control the nearly overwhelming urge to bash an answer out of the boy. ‘What has happened, Vidar? Where have you taken me?’
‘You were injured. Eirik thought it best that you recover here.’
Gunnar looked down at himself to ascertain the truth of his brother’s words. His entire body felt as though he had been pelted with stones, but his head ached the most. Nay, his leg ached the most. He raised a hand to prod a tenderness on his scalp. Pain lanced through him so sharply that he hissed and closed his eyes to the light dancing in his skull. Slowly opening them, he looked down his body to find other injuries. There were scrapes on his hands, but they seemed older—mostly healed, in fact. The pain had gathered itself together and settled in his left leg, blazing through the appendage like fire. He threw off the blanket with disdain and stared.
The leg was at least twice as big as his right one, but if that was its true size or not he couldn’t tell, because it was wrapped in a linen binding. Only when he grabbed the binding to pull it off did he realise that wooden splints had been put in to keep it stable. ‘By the gods, what happened to me?’
‘Your horse was killed in battle. When it fell, your leg was caught beneath. Do you not remember any of it?’
Gunnar searched his mind for some memory of that, but he shook his head. There was nothing coherent after discussing the plan for battle. ‘How long ago?’
‘Weeks, Brother.’
The pity in his brother’s voice made rage crawl up his throat, but he bit back the bitter words that would have spewed out. It couldn’t be that bad. If it had been weeks, then it could have healed by now, regardless of the pain. ‘Move, I’m getting up.’ He waved his hand to push Vidar aside.
‘Nay, you shouldn’t get up yet.’ Vidar moved to keep him down, but Gunnar swung his right leg over the edge of the bed and grabbed a hold of his brother’s tunic to pull himself up.
‘I’ve a need to take a piss and I won’t do it here like an invalid.’ But the words were barely out of his mouth when his weight moving forward pulled his injured leg off the bed and his foot crashed to the floor. Pain like he’d never felt sliced up his leg and reverberated throughout the limb. His breath caught. A strong wave of nausea rolled over him as darts of light flashed before his eyes. Just as he felt himself falling to the floor, he saw a vision of Kadlin. She stood behind Vidar, eyes wide and arms out as if to help him, but that’s all he saw before he fell unconscious.
Chapter Five
When Gunnar next awoke it was to the warm, soothing strokes of a washcloth moving slowly across his chest. A woman hummed and the soft sound would have lulled him back to sleep if his head hadn’t begun to ache. But he didn’t want to acknowledge the pain, so he kept his eyes closed to enjoy the music a moment longer. It was pleasant, something a woman might sing to her child as she bathed him. He wondered if his own mother had ever sung to him like that as she held him close. He only had vague recollections of the woman: long red hair, dark eyes. She had been a shadow behind his father and Eirik’s mother, lurking, or perhaps banished, to stand behind the dais at meals, to serve rather than be served. Then one day she had disappeared altogether. He could remember the child he had been, wandering from one chamber to the next, from one outbuilding to the other, looking for her.
Nay, she had probably never sung to him. He didn’t know why the ridiculous question had even come into his head. To ponder those memories only made his head ache more, so he opened his eyes instead of facing them. But he wasn’t prepared for the dream in front of him.
Kadlin.
It took a moment for his eyes to focus in the flickering light of the single candle, but he knew it was her. Even with her gorgeous hair subdued in braids and pinned to her scalp, he knew it was her. He’d seen her beloved face in dreams enough to know that he had woken from one dream only to be thrust into the next. Or perhaps he was awake now, as the pain in his head would suggest, but he had finally gone mad and was seeing her when he knew that her presence was impossible. It didn’t matter. He’d gone beyond caring if he was mad, especially if it meant that she would be with him.
‘I dream of you often, you know.’ The timbre of his voice was rough from disuse. He didn’t even recognise it; more proof of his unconscious state.
Her blue eyes shot to his, widened in surprise, and just as quickly returned to their study of his hand as she drew the cloth between his fingers. ‘That sounds like a sentimental endeavour. Surely too sentimental for a warrior such as you.’
He smiled and waited for her to finish, enjoying the feel of her gentle-but-sure strokes. Though he was becoming aware of the way his entire body thrummed with pain, focusing on that small pleasure helped him to push the discomfort to the back of his mind and he didn’t want to say or do anything to make her stop. Eventually she finished and went to place his hand gently back at his side, but, instead of letting her go, he turned his hand and captured hers. It was warm and small in his own. He caressed his thumb across her knuckles and then laced his fingers with hers. It had never been like this before. In all of his dreams, he’d never been able to recreate the heat and spark of excitement that warmed his belly from her touch. He glanced at her long, graceful fingers to make sure that he actually held them. ‘A warrior such as me? I fear you’re mistaken. Warriors are required to swing their swords in battle and recite poetry over the fire at night.’
She gave a soft laugh as if she were humouring him. He didn’t care. He loved her laugh, even if it was given to placate him. She smiled as she said, ‘You’ve never recited a poem in your life, Gunnar.’
‘Nay, I suppose I haven’t.’ He loved the pink of her lips, the vivid blue of her eyes, the stubborn tilt of her chin. All of his other dreams had never got her completely right. There was a challenge in her eyes now that he’d left out before. It wasn’t a mistake he’d repeat. She was captivating, truly the most becoming woman he’d ever seen. ‘But it’s a testament to my sorry ways. I should have said a poem for you every night of my existence. Perhaps that’s why you haunt my dreams, a recompense for my wrongs.’
A shadow passed over her eyes, stealing the joy that had sparked there and he was sorry to see it go. When she would have pulled her hand free, he held tight and reached for her other one with his free hand. She pulled that one back, though, so his dropped limply to his side. ‘You’re angry. I’ll accept your anger if it means you can stay with me and not dissipate as you have before.’
‘You’re not dreaming and I’m no phantom to disappear.’
He smiled. ‘You’ve said that before. It’s a trick that rouses me to waking, but I’ve not fallen for it in a long time.’
‘Believe as you wish, but I need my hand to finish bathing you.’ Her eyes softened again as she tugged gently on her hand.
He reluctantly let her go, but only because she promised more of that wonderfully soothing caress, and he watched her closely as she fulfilled her promise. But when she had finished his left arm and hand and moved to draw back the blanket, he moved quickly to grip it tight and hold it in place. The abrupt movement caused a sharp pain to lance through his head and left leg. It was so bad that he disgraced himself by gasping aloud.
‘Please, you must keep yourself still.’ She rose over him and pressed his shoulders to the bed at his back.
‘I’ll not let you bathe me there like a child,’ he panted, when he caught his breath.
‘All right, I won’t, but you must be calm before you injure yourself further.’
She wasn’t a dream! As waves of pain crashed through his body, he realised with unyielding clarity that he was awake and not dreaming at all. He remembered Vidar explaining his injury to him and he had a vague recollection of getting to his feet and falling just as he saw her. None of this was a dream. He had been gravely injured and then Vidar had accompanied him on a journey to...to where? He didn’t even know where he was.
‘Has Vidar brought me home?’ But that didn’t seem right. This wasn’t his chamber and he knew the chambers and alcoves of Kadlin’s home enough to know that he wasn’t there. Another thought—an excruciatingly horrible one—pounded through his head: that he had been delivered to Kadlin at her husband’s home.
She had turned her head, as if searching for someone to help, but looked back at him after his question. ‘Aye, Eirik believed that your recovery would best take place here.’ One hand stayed on his chest, but the other stroked his face to calm him. ‘We are at Eirik’s farm. Do you not remember it?’
He blinked and tried to look past her, but had trouble pulling his gaze from her face. It seemed so unbelievable that she was with him, after all of their time apart, that he had trouble believing she wouldn’t disappear on him if he looked away. Besides, she held him mesmerised, the stroke of her fingers on his cheek like a balm. Then he realised that there was nothing between the flesh of her hand and the skin of his face. He raised a hand to his chin, expecting to feel his beard there, but there was nothing. ‘You shaved me, woman?’
‘Aye, you were quite disgusting when you came here. I cut your hair, too. You can thank Vidar that it’s not shaved, as well. He refused to let me.’
‘Then it’s true? The battle? My horse?’
She nodded. ‘So I’m told. You arrived here the day before yesterday, but already your colour is better. We’ve tried to get some broth in you, but without much luck. I think if you can begin to eat, you could make a swift recovery.’
She was being evasive. He could plainly see the false way her eyes lit up with the hollow optimism. Before she could think to stop him, he tore the blanket back from his legs, uncaring that he was nude beneath it. He could only see the binding wrapped around his left leg. When he rolled his foot to the side, a shard of pain sliced through it.
‘How bad is it?’ he asked with the perfunctory tones of a commander, as if he were talking about the injury of one of his men. There was a part of him that couldn’t accept that the injury was his and he couldn’t even begin to contemplate what it meant for his future.
When she hesitated, his gaze jumped back to hers. ‘Tell me, Kadlin.’
‘Harald says that it is broken.’ She moved slowly and held her hand above an area of his shin. As if anticipating her touch and the pain it would bring, it began to throb. But she held her hand aloft. ‘Here. Though only a fracture, not a clean break. It is the knee that sustained the most damage. Magnus told Eirik that the limb was a bit twisted under the horse and pulled it out of place. I don’t know if there was a break. It was wrapped so tight and seemed to be so painful when we tried to unbind it that we can’t examine it. Also, you have a few broken ribs.’
He watched her soft, full lips form each word, but even that wasn’t enough to keep the despair at bay. He’d never walk again. No one had to tell him that. One look at the swollen appendage and he could plainly see it for himself. The useless limb was damaged beyond repair. They should have just cut it from his body so he wouldn’t have to look at it. He flopped back down, grimacing from the shard of lightning that lanced through his torso, and closed his eyes as he tried to imagine what a useless leg would mean. He’d never command a ship again; he’d never be able to stand with the rocking of the vessel. That would hardly matter, though, none of his men would follow a lame master. None of them. He’d be seen as unfit to lead. He would be unfit to lead.
The worst of it was that Kadlin would see him like this. He was lamed and deformed and she would witness it all. There would be no peace in believing that she would never know of his weakness. There was no hope that she would only hear of his good and heroic deeds and imagine him as the warrior that she had known. His weakness, once seen, couldn’t be unseen by her eyes. It was why they were lit with a false light; she was trying to hide her disgust. He couldn’t blame her for it.
‘There is no recovery for me. I’ll be broken like Harald. Unfit to wield a sword.’ Unfit to call myself a man. Now Kadlin—the one person who had always refused to see the bad in him—would be forced to see how useless and unworthy of her he really was. Perhaps being sent to her was his one last punishment. He’d get to watch any tenderness she felt towards him slowly leave her eyes to be replaced with pity. He refused to submit to that.
‘Leave me.’
She rose to her full height, but hesitated to go. ‘I’ll bring you some food. You need it to recover.’
He shook his head and then grimaced from the pain. ‘Send it with Vidar, if he’s still here.’
* * *
‘Mama!’ Her son toddled into the house, a smooth river rock held out in his small, chubby hand. ‘Treasure!’
Kadlin scooped him up and exclaimed over the treasure he had found. ‘It’s beautiful. We can add it to the collection.’ She set him down so he could go put it in the basket holding the other rocks he had found and deemed suitable for his collection. She smiled as he gave the alcove a quick glance and a wide berth as he went past it. She’d added a heavy blanket as a curtain as soon as Gunnar had been settled inside, so the child had only heard the strange noises coming from it. It was no wonder he was frightened.
‘Thank you, Ingrid.’ She turned and smiled at Harald’s daughter who had followed her son inside. ‘Could I get you something to eat?’
‘No, thank you, ma’am. I need to be getting home.’ With a nod, the girl left.
‘Come, Avalt, let me feed you.’
The boy was too busy admiring his collection to pay her any attention, until Vidar emerged from the alcove. He stopped playing and looked up, waiting until Vidar met his gaze before running to his mother. She laughed softly and scooped him up, cuddling him close as he intently watched Vidar’s approach. He’d been excited to have a man in the house and had generally welcomed Vidar with the enthusiasm of a young child fascinated with someone new. But the fact that he had emerged from the mysterious alcove had set the toddler on edge.
‘Can we not give him more of the laced mead?’ Vidar scowled as he set the empty bowl on the hearth. ‘He’s as irritable as a bear.’
Kadlin stifled a sigh of relief that Gunnar had drunk it all. She’d been worried that he would deny himself nourishment or that his stomach would rebel against the contents, since he’d apparently had nothing in weeks except for the mead concoction.
When she didn’t answer immediately, Vidar brushed past her with an accusatory look. ‘The Saxon witch sent plenty, enough to last for many more weeks. His leg pains him and his head is unbearable.’
‘Nay, he’s had enough. His head wound has healed. I believe it pains him now only because his body has grown to crave the mead. Once he’s gone without it a few days, that will improve. Besides, did you see him?’ Though his shoulders were still broad, Gunnar had lost the heft that came from fighting and his ribs shone through his skin. Even his face showed how gaunt he was; his cheeks had hollowed a bit and dark circles surrounded his eyes. ‘He’s wasting away. He won’t eat unless we wean him from the mead and he needs the nourishment more than he needs the relief from the pain.’ Though the groans from his pain still echoed in her ears and they tore at her. As much as she had tried to harden her heart against him in the years since his abandonment, she couldn’t bear the image of him in pain.
‘It’s cruel. He needs relief from his pain. Nourishment or not, he’ll never walk again. He’ll never carry a sword or stand a ship. Let him have his solace from the pain. What does the rest of it matter?’ It appeared that he had more to say, but he stopped when she rounded on him.
‘What does it matter? That is your brother lying in there. Are you saying that his life isn’t worth anything without that leg to support him? Are you saying that we should leave him to his mindless solace instead of trying to heal him?’
‘You heard Harald just as I did. Gunnar will not use that leg again. You know him as well as I do, or even better, I’d wager.’ He indicated the baby in her arms with his dark, flaming hair so like his father’s.
Kadlin stifled a gasp of surprise. She’d known that her son resembled his father, but she hadn’t realised exactly how much until she had seen Gunnar again. Apparently, the resemblance was visible to those who had a reason to suspect.
Vidar had the presence of mind to seem chastised and lowered his tone. ‘You know that he wouldn’t want to live with that leg.’
She couldn’t deny the truth of those words. The despair Gunnar had felt upon seeing the injury was imprinted on her mind for ever. He would think it was a weakness, an unbearable flaw that wasn’t to be overcome. ‘That choice isn’t his to make. Eirik sent him to my care, so I will see that he recovers. I hope to make him see that his life can still be good.’
Vidar grunted and walked to the front door, but stopped to turn to her. ‘You haven’t a chance, but I wish you luck. I’m going to see if Ingrid needs an escort home.’ He grinned and walked out.
‘Vidar!’ She waited until he’d popped his head back in before lowering her voice. ‘Please don’t tell anyone your suspicions.’ It was widely assumed that her son’s father was her late husband. No one except her parents knew that it was Gunnar.