Beautiful Wreck (70 page)

My voice shook when I answered, but I made my eyes brave and clear. I looked right at Asmund, and I used Heirik’s awful name.

“Let me go now,” I glanced at the man’s wrist, where he held me. “Or Rakknason will make a god of you, too.”

He hesitated, drew back inside himself for a second, and he seemed to be considering meeting the chief. My words hadn’t been a threat, but more a warning. If he didn’t let go of me soon, he would be as good as Eiðr with one precise swipe of Heirik’s blade.

But instead of stepping away, Asmund made a decision. I could see him set his resolve. He grimaced and tightened his grip. His brother grasped my other elbow. Panic began to pulse in my veins. Both of them bored into me with their eyes, telling me I’d go with them, no matter how much I exclaimed or struggled.

I appealed to the crowd. “I don’t know these men!” I yanked and pleaded, “Leave me alone.”

I threw my weight into pulling free, fell back against Betta who caught me in her capable arms and hugged me tight. Asmund reached for my face again, and then he froze.

From behind and above him, a shining blade slid up against his cheek, the sharp edge just an inch from his throat.

“She does not know you.”

Heirik’s voice was calm. I looked up, and he was dark and terrifying atop Vakr’s back. His short sword rested simply against Asmund’s face, the steel pricking up the hair of the man’s dark beard. Every bristle was defined by the sunset, and gold and purple lit up the blade that nestled there. Asmund swallowed, wanted to speak but his voice failed. He sputtered as though his throat were already cut. He slowly removed his hands from me, and without looking at his brother croaked out an order. “Let go, Mord.” Mord let go of me, too, and I lurched free.

Heirik removed his blade, and Asmund turned to look up at him. Framed in bloody sunset light, Heirik looked like a wronged god. His black hair was lit with the orange flame of late sun, his wolfish eyes committed and cold. He didn’t speak. His eyes let go of Asmund, done with him for the moment, and found me. I saw terror under his vicious exterior. His fear for me, that no one else could see.

He gestured with a silent, curt nod for me to get up in front of him on Vakr. Impossible. I’d never be able to climb up on Vakr in front of a crowd. All black hair and steaming breath, he seemed a hundred hands tall, Heirik a giant on his back, and I could already feel myself falling, tumbling from Heirik’s grasp. Then Ginn from Hvítmörk would die. I’d be lost here, Ginnlaug, Asmund’s wife.

Heirik reached for me. He put his hand out.

For a moment, his big palm, his fingers and bracers seemed unreal, and I stared dumbly. But I took his hand, and it was solid. I stepped into the stirrup and pushed off, and with ease and grace he settled me on the saddle before him. He turned Vakr to leave.

I looked back to see mayhem erupting behind us, but to me it was a roaring silence. Men running, escaping, chasing, horses upset, a chicken fluttering at their knees. Magnus had arrived on his shining horse, Faxi. Hár had come. He held Betta against his chest. I couldn’t hear any of it. I put it all behind me and looked forward to wherever we might go.

We walked at a deliberate, solemn pace, and our silence cast a cold pall over the crowd. They deferred to me and Heirik, cleared a path, and then closed again, wordless, behind us.

We were away soon, out of the market, and Vakr continued to walk out past the booths and tents of the camp city, past dozens of glimmering fires and upturned faces, past a thousand big rocks, to the water. A small river ran through the plain, branching and joining other currents and waterways that cut into the dusty land in the distance. The water gleamed a deep turquoise.

We stood at its bank and watched it go by.

A cloud rolled in, white like a fox and filling half the sky. It made the sun’s last light slant and shift, throwing up mysterious sparkles from underwater rocks. The bank curved, rich with moss. Big stones reached into the water, every inch covered with the green of lichens, moss, grass. Where the grass was submerged, it had died and turned gold. The river combed it like a water spirit’s long hair.

Heirik and I were beyond anyone, alone. In the presence of the river, his arm slipped around my waist, and I was still. It became hard to take any more than the shallowest sips of air. Everything was heightened. Every color, the sound of the current. Heirik’s chin and nose touched my hair. The sky turned dark blue. His heart beat against my back.

After a long time, we returned to the booth, me atop Vakr and Heirik walking alongside, his hand resting on his horse’s mane. The sky was gray now, but the moon made it easy enough to see our path.

I did what I’d wanted to do when we walked this way long ago. I reached down and brushed Heirik’s hair with my fingers, drawing it off his cheek and back behind his ear.

“This was a mistake, bringing you here,” he said, but it wasn’t cold. He didn’t mean to shrug me off, he was just speaking his thoughts. “Magnus will take you. In the morning, you will ride.” He turned his eyes to me. “Go home.”

When we reached the booth, Brosa sat at the entrance tapping on his thigh with a knife. I’d never seen him anxious before. When he saw us, he surged up and came to my side, took me by the waist as I got down from Vakr. His eyes shone with relief, but also something sharp and bottomless that took me a moment to recognize. So foreign to him. Anger. He crushed me to his chest, but I hardly felt it.

I sat in my bed, blankets drawn up around me, the curtain open just enough so I could see people around the fire and hear their happy voices.

I saw Betta far across the booth, sitting on Hár’s bed. Her father hadn’t come on this trip, and so the old man stretched out beside her, his head propped on his elbow so he could watch her with such adoration. She took down her braids before him.

I felt everything unraveling. Everything I accidentally found here, everything I’d built and hoped for and wanted.

Hár touched a brown strand and smiled.

The strange men—Asmund and Mord—sat tied up in the back of the booth, grumbling and every once in a while shouting curses. At times Magnus would go back there and kick them and tell them to shut up. At the fire, not far from where I sat, Heirik talked with Brosa. They discussed what to do with them. I let their words wash over me, Heirik’s dark voice flowing and mixing with Brosa’s softer tenor.

I turned my little whalebone knife in my fingers, let it balance in my hand, flipped it the way I’d seen men do a hundred or more times. I thought I should name it, even though it was tiny and meant for cutting fish or thread.

“Brother, you know I will do anything for you,” Brosa said. My knife stopped turning. His words jumped out against the soft background of nighttime murmurs. “I will give up anything you ask. But as I do this for you …”

There was a pause, a gesture I couldn’t see, then Brosa continued. “She becomes mine now.”

There was more. They talked about other things. But I heard nothing else over the roaring ocean in my mind.

Heirik had planned this. He’d made Brosa ask to marry me. It was his idea.

This was a mistake
, he’d said.
Go home.

Heirik meant for me to ride in the morning with Magnus, back to the house. But I started to think of another home, where no bright Faxi could carry me, where Magnus could never go.

I huddled in my blanket and made a plan, simple and dumb. I would wait until the darkest point of the short night, then say I needed to go to the stream to relieve myself, so that anyone might hear me.

I would only need to ask a stranger to confirm the direction, but I already knew the way to the sea. Even though the ground had moved and shifted over time, I could see the outlines of the place I’d visited in the far-off future. I knew the direction I’d have to look, past this lake to the ocean, and I would ride that way and keep going through rocks and rivers and trees until I reached the sand, then continue farther, all the way to the dashing waves.

In the back of the booth, where Betta and I had our bed, I sat against the wall and shook, even though I drew the wool close around me. I trembled with adrenalin, for what was to come, and with fear and sadness, teeth chattering. I sat in darkness and could see through a space in the curtain, everyone glowing rosily, seated on benches and around the little tables and upturned logs, drinking so much ale.

Egil and another man arrived, and there were shouts of welcome and an outpouring of drink. Heirik and Brosa returned from wherever they’d gone, and they sat and visited. Heirik was in a foul mood, but I watched him hide it, until finally he became lost in business and conversation. They spoke of ships, and the new man’s arrival from far-off parts of Europe. They talked about trading something, a word I didn’t recognize, and of loyalty and other men who were fools. I half-listened, absorbing the sounds of grave and important talk. Words that held other men’s lives in the balance.

Svana went to them with a skin of ale and quietly filled their cups. She brushed Heirik’s arm with her pale white hand, and he was startled, but he didn’t pull away. She smiled at Heirik, and it broke my heart, so sweet and wide-eyed, so pretty. The men were taken with her.

“You haven’t introduced your wife,” the stranger said, following her curves with his eyes.

Svana was coy, enjoying the man’s mistake. Her eyes flashed my way, and I thought she might be trying to find me in the dark, to make sure I was listening.

“You will remember Svana,” the chief said to Egil. “She is a daughter of my house.” And to the new man, he said. “I have no wife.”

As Svana walked away, the men watched her figure, and the rich trader cocked his head to one side. “Maybe it is time you take one,” he suggested to the chief. “She is old enough, já?” He rubbed his chin, where ale had leaked into his thick red beard.