The journey back to the Stórbrodir settlement was a tense, shadowed affair. Bjorn led Astrid along forgotten game trails and through icy streams to mask their scent, his every sense screaming at the danger. Bringing a Svartfjell, and this Svartfjell in particular, into the heart of his clan was an act of treason that could see them both executed on sight. But the memory of Eirik’s fever-wracked body, burning away to nothing on his pallet, was a more potent force than fear.
They slipped into the settlement under the cover of a moonless night, the air sharp with woodsmoke and the distant, mournful sound of the sea. Bjorn guided her not to the main hall, but to a small, secluded storehouse on its outskirts, one used for drying fish and storing spare nets. It was cold and smelled of salt and tar, but it was private.
“Wait here,” Bjorn whispered, his face grim in the faint starlight filtering through the cracks in the walls. “I will bring him to you. If anyone finds you…”
“They will see the enemy,” Astrid finished for him, her voice calm. She had already accepted the risk. She was already an exile; death was just a more permanent form of banishment.
Bjorn nodded, a look of profound gratitude and shared dread passing between them before he vanished back into the night.
Astrid prepared her space. She cleared a patch of earth floor, started a tiny, carefully shielded fire in a small clay pot, and laid out her herbs, her pot of water, and the clean linen. Her hands were steady, but her heart thundered against her ribs. She was about to see him. The ghost that haunted her was about to become flesh, broken and dying.
It felt like an eternity before the storehouse door creaked open and Bjorn slipped inside, followed by two other large, shadowy figures carrying a stretcher between them. They were Thorvald and another of Eirik’s most loyal huscarls, their faces set in masks of grim determination. They laid their burden gently on the floor beside Astrid’s small fire.
Eirik.
He was a pale echo of the warrior who had stood in the Wolf’s Den. His skin was waxen and sheened with sweat, his cheeks hollow. His breath hitched in his chest, a shallow, rattling sound. The furs he was wrapped in were soaked through, and the stench of infection—a sweet, rotten smell—hung heavy around him. The bandage on his leg was a foul, stained thing.
Astrid’s breath caught. The professional healer in her saw the severity, the proximity of death. The woman in her felt a pain so sharp it was physical. She knelt beside him, her fingers going to his brow. It was burning.
“Leave us,” she said to the men, her voice brooking no argument. “Stand guard. Let no one enter.”
Bjorn herded the other two out, pulling the door shut, leaving Astrid alone with the man she loved and the specter of his death.
She worked quickly, her movements a blend of practiced skill and desperate urgency. She cut away the soiled bandages, revealing the wound. It was angry and red, pus oozing from the deep gash where Gunnar’s axe had bitten. The flesh around it was hot and swollen, the red streaks of poison crawling up his thigh. It was worse than she had feared.
She cleaned it first with boiled water, then with a strong distillate of juniper berries, the sharp, clean scent cutting through the rot. Eirik groaned, his body arching in pain even in his unconscious state. She whispered to him, low and soothing, not words of love, but of reassurance. “Be still. Be strong. Fight.”
She prepared a new poultice, different from the one she had used before. This was not for healing bruised muscle, but for drawing out poison. She crushed garlic and wild onion, mixed them with the drawing power of yarrow and the cleansing strength of bog myrtle, binding it all with honey. She packed it deep into the wound, the pungent, sharp smell filling the small space.
Then, she unrolled the tapestry. The bloodstains were still visible, dark ghosts on the woven fjord. She did not look at them. Instead, she began to speak. She told him the story of the tapestry, of the waves and the mountains, of her mother’s hands, of the peace it was meant to represent. She spoke of the croft, of the sound of the loom, of the scent of drying herbs. She painted a picture with her words of the world they had almost had, a world without feuds or bloodshed.
She was giving his fevered mind an anchor, something to fight for beyond the pain and the darkness. She was reminding the Eirik buried deep inside the delirious shell of who he was, of what they had shared.
For hours, she tended him. She changed the poultice, forcing liquids past his cracked lips, and talked. She talked until her voice was hoarse. She told him of her exile, of the high, lonely passes, of the silence that was now her only companion. She confessed her fear, her anger, her unyielding love, pouring it all out into the cold, dark storehouse, a confession for his unconscious ears alone.
As the night began to wane, a change came over him. The frantic, shallow breathing evened out, becoming deeper, more regular. The terrible heat of his skin began to recede under her touch. The tension in his body eased, and he sank into a true, healing sleep, not a fevered stupor.
Exhausted, Astrid slumped against a sack of netting, her energy spent. She watched the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest, a fragile hope blooming in her own. She had pulled him back from the brink. Again.
Just before dawn, his eyes fluttered open. They were clear, the ice-blue dimmed with weakness, but lucid. They found her in the gloom, kneeling beside him. For a long moment, he simply stared, as if unsure she was real.
“Astrid?” His voice was a dry rasp.
She leaned forward, offering him a sip of water from a skin. “I am here.”
He drank, his eyes never leaving her face. “The hall… Gunnar…”
“It is over,” she whispered. “You are safe.”
He closed his eyes, a single tear tracing a path through the grime on his temple. “I killed him. For you… and for me. But it changes nothing, does it?”
Astrid looked at the bloodstained tapestry beside him, then back at his tormented face. She had cured his body, but the sickness of their situation remained, a bitter medicine they both had to swallow.
“No,” she said softly, her heart breaking all over again. “It changes nothing.”
The truth was the bitterest medicine of all. She had saved his life, but she could not save them. With the first light of dawn seeping under the door, their stolen moment of peace was over. The world of clans and feuds was waiting to reclaim them.