She straightened slightly and took a sip of her mead.
“What do you want?”
He pointed to her cup. “I did not think to see you drinking tonight.”
She made a face at him and refilled her cup. “What do you want, Iri?”
“I could not sleep…”
Torunn sighed. “Nor I. Laxa— It will not leave my mind.”
Iri sat down across from her and accepted the cup of mead that she passed to him. “I have already said, Laxa should not be of any concern. It has been several months since their last complaint... They will forget. Laxa is always quick to grumble if their harvest is not bountiful, or if the market days they share with us are not profitable enough for their liking.”
Torunn nodded, but his words were not soothing. “I have not been to Laxa since… I cannot recall when. Two springs past?”
Iri looked down into his cup and took a long drink but he did not answer.
“I believe I shall go to Laxa,” she said casually. “Perhaps this Bersi Athulfsson can be reasoned with.”
Iri wiped his mouth and stared at her in disbelief. “You cannot go to Laxa! This… upstart is not a member of the council, you would be speaking to someone with no influence, no position—it is nothing.”
Torunn glared at him.
“You have nothing to offer this man that would solve any complaint he might have. What promises could you make to a man with no ties to Laxa or to Skaro?”
“I do not know,” she replied. “Do you know anything of this man? If we do not know him, we cannot hope to appease him easily. I cannot ignore this. My father would not ignore it!”
Iri rubbed a hand through his dark hair and took another drink. “Yes, he would. Your father is not a fool, and he does not waste his time, or his influence, on the grumbling of a farmer.” He sighed heavily. “If you will not be convinced, give me time to send a messenger to Laxa. The council is overdue to present themselves to the Jarl. Let them come to Skaro and speak to you. Perhaps this can be solved quickly, though I do not see the point.”
Torunn drained her cup and stood up from the fire. “See to it. In the morning, I expect to see a rider leaving for Laxa.”
Iri scrambled to his feet and gulped at his mead. “As you say.”
“Get out.”
* * *
Iri’s words had not settled her, and when the door slammed shut behind him, she paced the floor of the lodge. She did not know much about Laxa, or their council. Would these men even talk to her? What did she have to offer?
“Nothing. I have nothing,” she said bitterly.
She might have had the weight of her father’s title behind her, but if they made demands, how many of them would she be able to meet? And what would her father do when he returned and she had to explain what had been done? If Iri was right then her father would be displeased with her, and that would only give her brothers more reason to doubt her.
Torunn groaned and leaned her forehead against a wooden post.
Even pretending to be Jarl was exhausting. She enjoyed the challenge of the leadership she had been granted, but she would have traded it away in an instant to have a sword in her hand and charge toward glory and plunder beside the warriors who had gone with her father across the sea.
Torunn pushed away from the post and looked up at the hole in the lodge roof that allowed the smoke from the fire to escape. Stars twinkled in the velvet black sky and she had a sudden urge to climb up to the roof to see them properly.
She and her brothers used to climb up into the rafters and lie on the lodge roof to look up at the stars and make up stories about the gods and what they did in Asgard. She was not usually nostalgic for her childhood, but when it did hit her, it hit hard. She had never felt more separate from her family than she did at that moment.
A wooden ladder her father had built brought her up into the empty loft where her brothers usually slept and hauled herself up into the rafters. It was warm in the higher places in the lodge, but the smoke stung her eyes. She blinked quickly to clear them, and clambered through the hole in the roof and out into the night.
The air was cold and she sucked in a sharp breath as the wind chafed at her cheeks. She rolled onto the roof and lay on her back to look up at the stars that filled the dark sky.
When she had been a child, the night sky had fascinated her and she had stared long and hard at the bright sparks above her, trying desperately to see through the darkness to Asgard. Her brothers had always teased and mocked her for it, and eventually she had stopped trying to see the halls of the gods.
She braced her hands behind her head and sighed heavily. The silence of the village was comforting. The sharp cry of an owl echoed through the woods behind the lodge, and another answered.
Torunn froze.
The owls should have moved on to their winter territory by now. It had been weeks since she had heard them.
She rolled over onto her stomach and peered over the edge of the roof. The village stretched out toward the black stillness of the water. The moon was waning and the light it cast over the houses and livestock pens was weak, but it was enough to throw shadows and help her to identify the houses.
The owl called again, but this time it sounded closer. And more human.
At the edge of the trees, shadows moved, and Torunn’s breath caught in her throat.
The shadows took shape as they drew closer and pressed against the side of the houses at the edge of the village.
Men.
Men with swords and axes.
But who would dare such a thing?
The owl called again, and a torch flared to life at the opposite side of the village, catching Torunn’s attention. Her heart beat wildly in her chest. A mixture of anger and disbelief tightened her throat as she saw more men run into the village.
An attack in the dead of night.
“Laxa,” she muttered. “Cowards.”
So much for diplomacy.
2
With a grunt, Torunn rolled back toward the opening in the roof and climbed down into the lodge. She pulled a sword and shield out from under her brother’s bed and jumped down to the main floor.
She would not allow these men to attack her home. Her father had trusted her to lead their people while he was away, and that meant defending it with her life.
The creak of the front door would give her away, so Torunn clambered out one of the windows, and dropped to the ground as silently as she could. Her brother’s shield, left behind when he went raiding because it was too small for him, fit snugly against her back, but she kept the sword unsheathed.
An attack like this wasn’t an act of bravery—it was foolish and ill-advised. Whoever this Bersi Athulfsson was, she would have to tell him to keep better counsel. If he survived.
Torunn moved through the village quietly, waking those she could find and staying close to the sides of the houses and buildings to stay out of sight. The men from Laxa were loud and clumsy, which made them easy to follow.
“Idiots,” she muttered as one of them lurched past her. She was about to move again to follow him at a distance, but the man stopped suddenly and leaned against the side of one of the houses. Torunn watched in muted rage as he fumbled with the front of his tunic and then began pissing on the wooden wall.
With a muffled cry, Torunn lunged for the man and struck him hard on the back of the head with the hilt of her sword. The man crumpled silently to the ground and lay in the puddle of his own making. Torunn sneered down at him and kicked him squarely in the gut.