Vidar rose from his seat on a bench to escort Harald home, but the older man waved him back to his seat. ‘I’ve crossed that field many times without you, boy.’ He smiled and made his way out the door, stopping outside to talk with the men who had accompanied Vidar in the wagon. Their voices rumbled through the wooden door, speaking of the battle across the sea with an excitement that baffled her.
‘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