Chapter Forty-Two: Elvar

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

ELVAR

Elvar undid knots in the walrus-rope that she had used to strap Grend to the back of an empty cart, her fingers numb and swollen. She swore and cursed as she struggled with a knot, eventually tugging it free.

“When you’re ready, girl,” Sighvat grunted and together they slipped Grend from the cart’s back, Elvar taking the weight of Grend’s ankles and Sighvat gripping the unconscious warrior under the shoulders. Together they placed him upon a woollen cloak that Elvar had laid on the ground, and Elvar checked his wounds.

After they had crossed the Isbrún Bridge they had stopped to tend to injuries and take a tally of the wounded and their losses. One wagon and two ponies had been lost, loaded with bundled spears and an assortment of barrels of ale and of horsemeat and whey. Three of the Battle-Grim had fallen on the hillock to the tennúr swarm.

Almost everyone was injured, from a few scratches to gaping wounds torn by the vaesen’s claws. All had needed to clean their wounds with boiled water and vinegar; some were stitched, and poultices of yarrow and honey were applied, draped in moss and wrapped in linen bandages. Agnar had ordered a fire to be lit as some wounds had needed to be cauterised.

“My thanks, Sighvat,” Elvar said as she kneeled beside Grend. The big man stood and looked at Grend, then patted her shoulder, almost sending her sprawling, and walked away.

Fresh blood had seeped into the bandage around Grend’s head. He was scratched and gouged across his legs and face, but the worst injury was the blow to the back of his head that a tennúr had dealt him with a lump of black rock. Uspa had come to Elvar’s aid when they had stopped after crossing the bridge. Elvar had been trying to clean the wound and examine how bad it was. Tears had been blurring her eyes. The Seiðr-witch cut away Grend’s blood-matted hair with a sharp knife, then helped Elvar wash the area clean. All the while Elvar had felt as if a fist of fear was clenched in her belly, twisting her innards and making her movements too quick and jolting. The feeling intensified as Uspa probed Grend’s skull with her fingertips.

“His skull is not broken,” Uspa had pronounced, after what felt like a lifetime.

Elvar had sagged with relief.

Uspa helped her to finish cleaning the wound, then to apply a poultice of herbs and moss and bind it with a bandage.

“When he wakes up, he will need to drink some peppermint and valerian,” Uspa had said as she’d left to tend the wounds of other injured Battle-Grim.

Grend had remained unconscious through the whole process, and so when Agnar had shouted for all to make ready and move out, Grend had been strapped within an empty cart.

Then they had moved out, Uspa leading them into an untouched world. Elvar was not sure how long they’d been marching through this land, the perpetual daylight playing tricks in her thought-cage, but she guessed it was about half a day.

“How is he?” a voice said behind her and Elvar looked up to see Agnar. His face and the side of his shaved head was raked with claw marks. They were not too deep and were clotting now. He kneeled down beside her, offering a plate of pickled herring and fried cabbage, and a pot of skyr.

“He hasn’t woken,” Elvar said as she untied the linen bandage from around Grend’s head and checked the wound. The poultice was still in place.

Agnar leaned forward, close to Grend, and sniffed.

“Doesn’t smell bad,” he said, “which is always a good sign.” He patted Elvar’s arm. “He’ll wake when his body is ready.”

Elvar sniffed and blinked away a tear that threatened to spill out of her eye.

“We are the Battle-Grim,” Agnar said quietly. “Our life is blood and battle. None of us are likely to die old and grey in our beds.” His words were gentle, and Elvar knew the truth of them, but she struggled to keep a sob from forcing its way out of her throat.

“I know that,” she murmured, speaking slowly to keep her voice steady. “I have travelled and fought with the Battle-Grim for years now, and seen death’s wings hover over us a thousand times. I know that the raven-wings do not care who they take, do not distinguish between rich or poor, kind or cruel. But always Grend has been at my side or guarding my back. He has never been injured once, not even a scratch, so to see him like this, so fragile…”

“Aye,” Agnar nodded. “Death is our constant companion, a whisper in our ear, but when you see a friend fall…” He shook his head. “Nothing prepares us for it, even though we’ve waded through a river of the dead.”

He looked at her. “That is why we fight so hard for each other. We do not abandon the living. We do not abandon those we have sworn oaths to.”

“You were coming back for me,” Elvar said, “when Grend fell and I stood over him, I thought that our death was upon us.”

“Aye, I was coming back,” Agnar said, “but someone beat me to it.” He smiled. “We cannot choose our kin, but us…” He waved a hand at the warriors around him, going about the task of setting camp and tending to the wounded and horses. “These are my kin, closer than blood. My sword-brothers, my shield-sisters. I would give my life for them, and I think they would give their lives for me.”

“We would,” Elvar said. “I would.”

Agnar grinned at that and nodded his head.

They sat in silence a while as Elvar continued to check all of Grend’s bandages and wounds.

“You have never spoken of your kin,” Elvar eventually said.

Agnar stared into nowhere, the silence stretching so that Elvar thought he was not going to answer her. Then he sighed.

“There is nothing to tell. My mother died of the wasting disease when I was ten winters old. My father sold me as a thrall when I was eleven, because the crops had blighted, and he needed food for the winter.” A twist of his mouth, part grimace, part smile. “Or he tried to sell me. I put a wood-axe between the eyes of the slaver trying to buy me and ran.” He laughed, though there was little humour in it. “I ran a long time, until I forged a new family around me; one that I can trust.”

He squeezed her hand, then stood up.

“Are we moving out, soon?”

“No. We will rest, lick our wounds, sleep.” He looked up at the sky, bright with sunlight, a few thin clouds translucent as silk. “No point waiting for dark in this perpetual day. We will march when we are rested, stop when we are tired.” He looked down at Grend.

“He will wake soon,” he said, and walked away.

Elvar sat beside Grend and ate the pickled herring and cabbage that Agnar had brought her. There was still heat in the ground, not as hot as the camp beside the Isbrún Bridge, but they had made half a day’s march from the molten river of the vaesen pit and were now camped alongside a stream, on the edge of woodland and hills. Alder grew close as well as birch and elm.

The Dark-of-Moon Hills, Elvar thought as she stared at them. I have heard of them sung about by skálds in my father’s mead hall. Never did I think I would be looking at them, one sleep away from walking among them. Despite the fatigue in her bones and her distress over Grend, she felt that familiar flicker of excitement. To walk in the land of the gods…

There was a groan and Grend stirred. Elvar jumped and kneeled over him, stroking his scratched face. His eyelids fluttered open, stared at her, unfocused. Then he saw her.

“Following you into the Battle-Plain,” he breathed, “may not have been the wisest of decisions.”

“Wise? Of course it wasn’t wise,” Elvar said, her jaw aching from her sudden smile, tears spilling down her cheeks, dropping on to Grend’s face. She stroked his forehead. “I feared…” she whispered.

“Feared what?” Grend mumbled.

“A life without you in it,” Elvar said.

A smile softened Grend’s hard-cragged face. He reached out a hand and cupped Elvar’s cheek, strikingly gentle for this man of violence.

“Ha, it will take more than a few winged rats to rid yourself of me,” he said as his hand fell away.

“Good,” Elvar laughed.

“Thirsty,” Grend muttered.

Elvar unstoppered her water bottle and held his head up to pour a few sips into his mouth.

“I’ll be up in a moment,” Grend whispered, then closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Elvar leaned against him, smiling and eating her supper.

She heard footsteps as a warrior strode towards her. It was Sólín, two horns of ale in her hands. The grey-haired woman sat beside Elvar and offered her one of the horns.

“I owe you a blood-debt,” Sólín lisped, spit spraying from her mouth.

“Are you well?” Elvar asked as she put her bowl of skyr down and took the horn.

“Thothe little vaethen bathterds took thum of my teeth,” Sólín lisped, opening her mouth to show red, bloody gums, three of her front teeth torn out.

“A nasty business,” Elvar said.

“I am alive,” Sólín said with a shrug. “Bether to looth a few teeth than my life. And for that I have you to thank.”

“We are shield-sisters,” Elvar said. “There is nothing to thank. You would have done the same for me.”

“I would, I hope,” Sólín said, “though you do not know until you are in the battle-fray. That ith the time of telling, when a warrioth heart and boneth are truly known.” She looked at Elvar, a swirl of tattoos across one cheek and brow, and offered her arm in the warrior grip. “I thaw your warrior heart, your battle-thtrength, and am proud to call you thithter.”

Elvar took Sólín’s arm with a grin.

They sat and drank their ale together.

Laughter drew Elvar’s eye, and she saw Biórr with Uspa, Kráka and the Hundur-thrall. He walked away from them, to the iron food pot hanging over the hearth fire.

“Would you watch Grend for me?” Elvar said as she drained her mead horn. “I have some thanks of my own that needs saying.”

“Aye,” Sólín said.

Elvar stood and walked through the camp, and saw that Biórr had left the food pot and was walking away. She followed him, weaving through the camp, past a dug-out pit fire and warriors sitting and talking. Sighvat was humming to himself. She raised a hand to their calls and shook her head at their invitations to sit and drink with them, and she walked on to the far edge of camp that ran along the stream’s edge. Here the wagons were drawn tightly together, and the surviving ponies had been unharnessed and picketed.

Biórr was handing bowls of food to Uspa, Kráka and the Hundur-thrall, all four of them laughing at some unheard jest. He sat down and began to eat with them. They looked up at Elvar as she stood over them.

“I wanted to thank you,” Elvar said, the words abruptly evaporating, her mouth dry.

“Well, go on, then,” Biórr said with a smile.

“My thanks,” Elvar said. “You saved my life, and Grend’s. We would be food for tennúr now, if you had not come back for us.”

“Heya, you would,” Uspa agreed.

“The tennúr would be making a fine feast of your young, white teeth by now,” Kráka said, and they all laughed and cackled.

She stood there a few moments, the laughter fading, and a silence settled.

“You are welcome, Elvar Fire-Fist,” Biórr said.

“Why did you do it?” Elvar asked him. “Break ranks from the shield wall? Risk your life for me?”

He smiled at her. “You have to ask?” he said.

Elvar reached down and gripped his hand, pulled him upright and dragged him close, kissed him, soft and long, tasting sour skyr on his breath. When they parted, Biórr was blinking at her, his cheeks flushed, and she could feel her heart thumping in her chest. She turned, still holding his wrist, and led him along the streambank, away from the camp. Kráka’s cackling laughter drifted after them. An old willow squatted ahead of them, branches a curtain that floated on the stream and loamy ground. Elvar pushed a way through the branches, into a hidden space around the trunk where the ground was moss-covered and soft, then turned and looked at Biórr. He stood there, gazing back at her. She brushed a strand of dark hair from his face where it had fallen from his braid, traced the line of his freckled cheek, then her hand slipped behind his neck and she dragged him to her and kissed him again. Harder than before. Slowly she pulled him to the ground.