Sweat beaded across Svea's brow as she leaned against the wooden fence, exhausted from the long labor of her fields. The farmer, while small, bound her to Valkvann. And though her body ached she found a near-blissful calm in watching how the village was slowly returning to life. To others it might have seemed the same as ever, but Svea could see the difference - she had tended its hearth and fences too long not to notice. Change crept in line the dawn, quiet but undeniable. Inevitable. A merchant had even passed through, the first time she had seen since the fog that had surrounded Valkvann for most of her life had lifted, no longer barring the way.
She set aside her tools and went inside to wash.
The stranger she had saved with Leif still lay in her spare bed. He had moments where he would awaken, though they were brief, simple, clouded flickers whenever he stirred. He would lift his head, try to form words, only to collapse back into unconsciousness again. Svea used those moments to force broth past his lips, keeping him tethered to life, whatever that now looked like to him.
"Hello?" The voice was raw, scraped thin, a croak that cracked the silence of her home.
Svea turned, quick but not reckless enough to reveal the knife hidden in her hand. She fetched water, then sat near him. "You're awake," she said, steadying her tone. Too much warmth might startle him. She passed him the mug, then sat back at a small table within arm's reach, watching. While she had been pleading with the goddess Freyja daily to keep the man alive, she wasn't sure how to handle it now that her prayers had been answered.
There he lay - one of the first men to ever enter Valkvann - and he was finally conscious.
For him, she had finished ruining what little relationship she and Agathe had.
He drank, his throat working with visible pain. When the water was gone, he lowered the mug, then closed his eyes as if savoring the relief it had brought. "I. . . remember you," he rasped. "Thank you. The Valkyrie."
Growing up in Valkvann, Svea's greatest wish had been to be recognized as a Valkyrie like the older women had.
It felt hollow now.
Her mouth twitched into a bitter smile. "That, I am not," she corrected. "I am Svea. What is your name? You are not from here. . . your tongue betrays you." She noted the difference in his speech. While he had picked up the language well enough, notes from somewhere else lived in his every word.
"Dragmall," he replied, his gaze flicking to the empty mug as she filled it for him once more.
Her eyes lingered on him now. In the dim, he had been a shadow dragged from the fire. In daylight, she saw more. His hair, dark brown locks, should have been tangled with soot and ash as evidence of the burning, but she had combed it, washed it, even brushed his growing beard when tending him. His chest and shoulders, half-bared under the blanket, spoke of a farmer's strength, not a warrior's scars. In the firelight, his eyes had seemed black. It could have been the fear, or even how he had given in to what he thought was his fate. Now, as the sun reached across the room, she thought they gleamed more like precious silver, or river stones darkened by the rain.
His hand tightened in the blanket. He nodded, the movement stiff from pain. "Yes. The fire." the words came halting, as if he still wrestled with her dialect.
"Tell me."
"They wore. . ." Dragmall's hand lifted shakily to his face, covering it as though in memory. He hoped she could understand him. He was sure he knew the word. Between the pain in his head and the distance from his true home, he wasn't sure he'd be understood.
"Masks?" Svea supplied.
He nodded again, repeating it carefully. "Yes. Masks. From trees. They came with. . . sticks of fire."
"Torches."
"Yes, torches," he said, committing the word to memory. He swallowed, lips working as though forcing himself to continue. "I do not know what they wanted. They came only to burn. My home, my people -" His voice broke. It was time to ask the question they had both hoped he would avoid. "Is anyone else -"
"No." Svea cut him off before hope could bloom. What could it possibly help? A second more of hope was only an eternity longer of pain when the truth came out. "Only you survived." She set his mug aside, rising. "Rest. We will speak again when your strength returns."
She stepped into the yard, moving among her crops with a practiced eye. In the barn, her gaze fell on the sheep. She craved lamb, yet tonight it would be sacrificed. Heimdall, the watchman of the gods, was bound to sheep. She would honor him with the life of one, and in return call his gaze upon her house for this first night the stranger was truly awake.
-------------------------------------------------------
The onions stung her eyes as she cut them.Garlic and wild celery followed, dropped into the iron pot where potatoes rolled at the bottom. She poured mead and water, stirring slowly, letting the broth thicken as the fire licked at the pot's blackened belly. Later, cubes of meat fell in, bleeding their flavor into the stew. She leaned back, listening to the crackle, to the hum of the heat.
The floorboards creaked. Svea stiffened, her hand closing on the knife hidden at her side. She hadn't put it away since Dragmall had woken up.
"The food." His voice was still rough but certainly steadier now. "The food smells. . . very good."
He shuffled into the room and lowered himself into a chair, silver eyes fixed on the pot. His speech caught her attention: the way his R's rolled too long, the way he clipped the endings from his words. Svea had noticed it before. Once, in fevered sleep, he had muttered "båtar". Boats. She remembered it as a word from her childhood, before Valkvann. Here, they said "skip."
"You're not from here," she said bluntly, curiosity gnawing at her. "Nor from the village where I found you. Your speech betrays you."
Last time, he had avoided telling her more. She needed to press again.
He shook his head. "No. I left my home. I had a dream. . . if I left, I would find new crops to bring back." He gestured with his hands, imitating waves. "But the water. . . is strong." he hesitated, then gave her the name, the place he had carried in his chest: "The fjord of Nine Ravens."
Svea froze, her breath catching. A name she had not heard in years. A name she had buried. "The Nine Ravens," she whispered. "That was near my home. When did you leave?"
"Years ago. I cannot find my way back."
"Neither can I." She stared down at her boots, ashamed of the heat around her eyes. "I have wondered about my father. . . you said you sailed here. How can you not sail back?"
"The ocean is strong," he repeated, firm, though his tongue still wrestled with the words. She heard the layers of his accent now - as if he had learned their tongue through the mouth of another foreigner. She might have sounded the same, in another life. The Overseer had been well spoken, her infliction on words easy to follow.
Disappointment coiled in her gut. The only tether she had found to her homeland unraveled as quickly as it had appeared. The Nine Ravens. . . spoken aloud it ached in her chest, yet it felt less like a home and more like a spirit. She had tried to bury it long ago, tried to forget she had ever been free before Geir took her as thrall. Forgetting had made survival easier. Remembering now was like tasting blood from a bitten cheek: the past seeping back into the present.
Svea busied herself at the pot. "I don't know if either of us will ever return." Steam flushed her face. She stirred, then asked, "Tell me, Dragmall. Have you ever killed a man?"
He shook his head, the gesture stirring a stray lock across his window's peak. "I have not. I am farmer. I enjoy my life."
Svea studied him. Even amid fire, he had not raised his hand to kill. Would he ever?
"My neighbors had children," he added, voice low. "If I had seen them in danger. . . I would have killed, to save them." His tongue tripped, but the meaning was clear.
Svea's shoulders eased. "That's good," she murmured, ladling broth into bowls. "Because killing comes for all of us, whether we choose it or not." She placed the bowl before him. "Tell me, then. Would you learn to fight, for the sake of this village?"
Dragmall held the bowl in his strong, sun-darkened hands. The question soured the flavor of the soup before he even tasted it. His silver eyes, storm-dark, seemed to withdraw, like steel slid back into a sheath. He sipped, swallowed, and finally said, "You must also be a farmer, first."
Svea tilted her head. "Why?"
"Only a farmer respects ingredients this way," Dragmall said, a half-grin tugging at his lips. His canines flashed in the firelight. Svea blinked, and against her own judgment, admitted to herself that she found him handsome. Dangerously so. His build was large, his grin wolfish, yet beneath it lay a sincerity that unsettled her more than any attack.
She bent her head, smiling faintly as she blew on her soup, tucking hair behind her ear. "This land is poor for farming now, though I hope that changes. You should know that, before you decide to stay."
"I'd like to stay," Dragmall said quickly, as though fearing she might deny him the chance. "I can make anything grow, anywhere. I'd like to stay. . . if you stay."
Svea's spoon froze. "What?"
"I'd like to stay if you stay," he repeated, shameless now. "I'd like to know you more. Better. I'd like to know you better."
Once again, she busied herself with her food, hiding the heat tinting her cheeks.
He teased softly, "Then you agree."
She ignored him, but he pressed on. "Better. I like your food better than my own. Also -" He looked at her, sure of his next words. "You saved my life. I owe my life to you."
Her flush deepened. "I have no interest in slaves or servants," she retorted sharply, waving a hand.
His smile only softened. "Then not servitude. My loyalty. I pledge this to you."
Svea did not meet his eyes, but the pink on her cheeks betrayed her.