After the third ignored command, she had thrown her hands in the air in disgust. He seemed content to follow her, and she could not ignore the stares that his presence drew as she walked through the village. The people would recognize him as the rebel who had attacked Skaro. Torunn lifted her chin and walked faster. She didn’t need to explain herself to anyone.
Near the beach, a large platform had been built. Her brothers were seated on fine chairs to have the best view of the proceedings. Priests chanted over bowls of blood from the sacrifices and applied their blessings and markings on the people who came to pay their respects.
Cooking fires burned nearby and people danced, laughed, and drank while they watched the dead Jarl’s ship being loaded with crates and barrels laden with treasure. Torunn looked at it with narrowed eyes. Her father had been collecting treasure and goods from raiding for most of his life. If it had all been loaded properly, the boat should have been lower in the water.
“Sister!” Asgaut’s shout drew her attention and she forced herself to smile as she approached the platform.
Her brother reached down to help her climb the stairs, but she pushed his hand away. She didn’t need his help. Or anything he might have offered her.
Bersi followed her up the stairs, and Asgaut fixed him with a surprised glare. “You cannot bring him up here,” he snarled.
“I can and I will,” Torunn snapped. She beckoned to the rebel, and he obeyed instantly. She chose the chair to Hallvard’s right and seated herself carefully. Bersi stood behind her, and some of the anxiety that gripped her chest relaxed just a little. She had chosen her seat carefully… If Hallvard had a mind to attack her, it would be more difficult for him to do so with her on his right. At least, she hoped that was the case.
“You are just in time, Sister,” Hallvard said. Her brother wore a broad smile on his face but the expression left her cold. His eyes were hard and calculating, and their pale tone, the same color as their father’s eyes, was more unsettling in the half light before sunset.
There was nothing she could say, so she inclined her head and looked back to her father’s ship.
“I see you have made good use of your new slave,” Hallvard laughed. “He follows you more closely than any dog.”
“And his teeth are just as sharp,” Torunn said without looking at him.
Asgaut stood at the edge of the platform and watched the procession of goods as it wound along the shore toward the ship. Once all of their father’s possessions were loaded on board, his body would be brought by the priests and placed upon the pyre that had been built in the center of the ship’s deck. She could see bales of straw and other flammable goods piled high beside the fur-covered logs they would lay her father upon before the ship was towed out into the bay.
“Will you light the pyre?” she asked suddenly.
“You really expect the Jarl to perform such a task?” Asgaut snorted.
Torunn turned to her brothers in surprise. “I do. Father lit the pyre of Jarl Bjorn at his funeral…”
Hallvard leaned back in his chair and drank deeply from his cup of mead. “You’re forgetting that he killed Jarl Bjorn,” he said.
“No. I remember the story. Father was very proud of that fact. Our uncle deserved his death, the people had clamored for it. He had no choice.”
Hallvard shook her head and held out his cup to be refilled. “I do not remember it that way.”
“Perhaps Father told you a different story,” Torunn said stiffly.
“He told us nothing,” Asgaut said from the front of the platform. “Or did you not know?”
Torunn took the cup of mead that was offered to her and took a nervous gulp. She had always thought that her father favored his sons over her. He told her stories, but she always thought that he reserved the best ones for Hallvard and Asgaut.
“You may walk with his corpse if you like,” Hallvard said. His tone was calm, and Toruun had the distinct feeling that she was expected to feel grateful that he was allowing her to do such a thing.
What would he do if she accepted… if she declined?
Did she care?
She nodded. “I would like to say goodbye.”
“As you wish.” He leaned forward in his chair to look down the beach. “Go now, they will not wait for you.”
Torunn’s hand tightened on her cup and she drained it quickly. It was refilled before she could blink and she drank the mead down without pausing. If she was going to be drunk, she had no time to waste.
* * *
The wind was sharper on the rocks of the breakwater and Torunn wrapped her arms around herself. Her cloak was thick, but the chill she felt was deeper than the wind could penetrate.
“Are you—”
“Do not speak,” she interrupted him.
Bersi nodded briefly and stood silently beside her as the body of the former Jarl of Skaro, wrapped in the canvas taken from his own ship, was carried past on a litter that had been draped with winter boughs and sweet-smelling herbs. The old priest held up a hand to halt the procession and then beckoned for her to step closer.
Torunn took a breath and stepped down the rocks to where the procession stood. It was the smell that hit her first. A cloying, sweet smell that she could not quite place. But then she remembered. It was the smell of death. No matter how hard her training had been, nothing had prepared her for the reality of battle, or the horrors of its aftermath.
The healers and priests had attempted to hide it with their herbs and pungent smoke, but she could still smell it. She had a feeling that it would follow her for the rest of her life.
She blinked hard. It was impossible to imagine that her father was really dead. But he was. And it was very real. Her throat was tight as she nodded to the priest and stepped down onto the path. The men who carried the litter stood still as stones and did not look at her. She could pretend that they were not there. It was only her, and her father.
Torunn reached out and touched her father’s canvas wrapped forehead with her fingertips. Her hand shook, and she resisted the urge to clench it into a fist to hide the emotions that threatened to overtake her. “Ride well to Valhalla,” she whispered. “Mother will be waiting for you. She will be angry to have waited so long.”
There was more that she wanted to say. She wanted to say something about her brothers—about Hallvard taking the mantle of Jarl. But though she could pretend that the men and women standing around her were made of stone, they were stones with ears… and she could not take the chance that their loyalties were the same as hers.
She pulled an ivory ring from her finger and laid it upon her father’s chest. She knew that she should have brought a better gift, but the only other thing that would have been appropriate she was not yet willing to part with. She pulled her hand back and gripped the handle of the knife at her belt. Her father would forgive her for keeping it.
The old priest nodded and Torunn stepped back up onto the stones as the litter began to move once more. She stumbled on the rocks, but Bersi caught her with a firm hand and let her find her balance.
Her eyes caught his, but she said nothing. He did not need her thanks.
She stood on the rocks with her cloak pulled tightly around her as the celebrations on the shore grew louder.
“Will you go back to your brothers?” Bersi asked.