Freyas Saga Ch. 29

"You don't know, then," Bern said. "Right."

"What don't I know," she said, frowning.

"Well, he's dead," Bern said.

Her eyes widened, and the look of cocky amusement went right out of her.

"...What?"

"In the war with the Casmans," Bern said. "He was wounded, and he died."

She looked lost, for a moment, and Freya Aelfrethe threw her a look which he couldn't figure out, and then reached out and put a hand on the girl's shoulder and squeezed.

What? Bern thought.

"...He's dead?" Five said.

"Yes," Bern said, and after a moment, he remembered his manners. "Sorry to, um, be the one to tell you this news. But your master has died in the service of the baron."

"It's all right," she said, "it's not as though..."

She broke off, and looked away, and put a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes for a moment. Bern looked at Freya, and was perplexed by the look of sorrow in her face.

Snorri's Five reached up and touched Freya's hand on her shoulder and squeezed it.

What are you two doing, Bern thought. Snorri's Five shook her head abruptly, and swallowed, and looked back at Bern.

"Thank you for telling me," she said, with a crack in her voice. "So."

"Where've you been," Bern burst out, turning to Freya. "We thought you were dead, lady. Ulf Jansson came back a year ago and said the worm ate you. And then the Casmans started taking more of our people, and more, and some of us thought you might come back, but there was no word. And we fought them, and they took more, and they took my girl, and now she's married to some fucking yellow-haired Casman cunt and she's had his child, and she's dying, and she don't know me, and now we have to make peace with them, and where were you? What happened to you? Why weren't you here? If you'd come back, none of this would've happened. We'd've fucking gone after them and we'd've stopped them and she'd still be mine. Where were you?"

He stopped, feeling like he'd made a fool of himself. He stared at Snorri's Five, and at Freya, and Freya said nothing, but looked back at him, and then looked past him, over his shoulder, at the watchtower.

***

Hargest was in his study, dictating the final version of his address to the scribe, when Carl Gunnarsson came in.

"My lord," he said, "forgive me."

"What is it, captain of the watch," said Hargest, reading over what the scribe had written.

Carl Gunnarsson took a deep breath.

***

Bern Huguis stared at Freya Aelfrethe. The wind blew across the thick grass. Rain pattered onto them. There was a long silence, and then Freya looked at Five and looked back at Bern, quizzical.

"Wait a moment," Five said, "they took your girl, and now she's dying?"

Bern stared at her.

No, no.

No.

It was all a lie.

She was not Snorri's Five.

Snorri's Five had been a bleating, whiny fat boy who hid when things got tasty. A good cook, a hard worker, but not this. Not this bright-eyed, strapping brawler with five deaths written into her skin.

There was no way, Bern thought. He was finding it hard to keep a grip on things. First Freya, and now this?

Maybe I'm wrong. But, fucking hell. I've already signalled the watch that it's Freya. And now I'm wrong.

I am in such shit now. This is what happens. I have to...

Calm down. Let them know you're onto them.

"Who the fuck are you," Bern said to Five. "You were a bloke. And now you're not. What fucking wizard shit is this."

He put his hand on his sword to reassure himself.

"Bern," Five said, "it's all right, mate. It's me. You know me."

That's what cunts say when they want to fool you, Bern thought. He stared at her.

I was never your mate. You didn't have any mates.

"People don't just go from man to woman," Bern said. "What the fuck."

"Bern," she said, and paused.

Got you, he thought. You're lying. You're a fake. A southern con-woman.

"Who are you, really," he said. He drew his sword, and held up his other hand, trying to show the tower they should wait. That it wasn't certain. He hoped they'd understand.

She looked around.

He felt so lost. He couldn't help it. Everything was up in the air, now. There was nothing you could hold to. If people could just go from man to woman. Or not. Because they couldn't. Because she was just lying. And it was some fucking wizard trickery, sending strange women up here to fuck with them.

She was staring at him, her eyes narrowed.

"You liked the shank of mutton," she said. "Not the sweet bit, off the thigh. You liked the dark meat from the shin. Even if it was dried up. You always asked for that bit. And you never minded if the beer wasn't cold. You said it tasted better. And you never ate your greens. Ever."

Clever, he thought. Very clever. Not fucking clever enough, though.

"You don't fool me," he said. "Everybody prefers the shank. And everybody pretends that it don't matter if the beer's not cold. And nobody likes greens, come on. You fucking lying cunt."

He advanced on her, holding out his sword. She didn't move. Neither did the other one.

"Tell me who you fucking are, bitch," he said.

She stood there, looking at him steadily. That was another way she wasn't Five. Five would have pissed himself by now.

"It's all right," she said quietly.

"Tell me who you fucking are," he said, "or I get the lads down here, and we'll fucking have you all. Even if you get me first. I don't give a shit. I'm not letting no lying southern con artists into Hargest. You don't fool me."

He waited. She didn't say anything, but just looked at the ground, and then looked back at him.

"All right," she said.

"Get down on your fucking knees," he said, and raised the sword to swing it at her.

The other one started to move, but without looking at her the girl just raised her hand, as if to say It's all right, I've got this, and keeping her eyes on Bern she slowly got on her knees, and looked up at him, holding her hands in the air, palms out

"Your dad died," she said slowly. "I dunno, six, seven years ago. And you'd had a fight with him, or something. And you hadn't talked to him, because you're an idiot."

She paused.

"And you got rat-arsed, and you fell asleep on the watch, and they gave you a week in the hole for it. And I was supposed to bring you just bread and water, but every time I brought them, you were just...well, you were sad about it. And you were that fucking ashamed, you didn't want me to know. And I didn't know where to look, 'cause I thought you should be more of a man about the whole thing."

She stopped again, and he glanced at the faces of the others, who were watching him, waiting to see what he would do. He looked last at the woman with the snake on her face, who had her hand on her sword, ready to draw. Was she close enough that she'd get him on the draw?

Yes, he thought, probably.

"But I thought it was unfair," the girl went on, in her clear, steady voice, "'cause, not your fault your dad died. So one night, I brought you a bit of fish and some fresh bread and a jug of beer, and you didn't say nothing. But next morning, I came early to get 'em, before anyone noticed, and you said thanks."

He stood there, the blood singing in his ears, the sword a dead weight in his hands. He stared at her.

She stared back, and smiled faintly.

"It's not no fucking wizardry, Bern," she said. "It was just a mistake. I'm...made funny. It's not a fucking trick. Honest, you've no idea the shit's happened this last year. But she is Freya. And I am Five. And we're here to set things right."

Bern felt the pressure in his chest, the urge to strike someone. It was loosening. It was easing. Oh, hellfire, he was losing it. He put a hand to his mouth to try to hide it.

"Where've you been," he said, and he was appalled to hear how it came out as a whimper.

"Don't matter," Five said. "We're back now."

He lost it.

The next thing he knew, she was fucking hugging him. He gathered himself together as quick as he could. She let go, almost as soon as she'd grabbed him, and he looked at her close up. He rubbed his nose.

"So, we're all right," she said.

"Yeah," he said.

"Good," she said. "You going to take us to the baron, then?"

***

Emma Maytriggsdottir was standing on a bit of high ground, peering in the direction of where Bern Huguis had gone.

She saw them. They were walking back. Then, from the main entrance, out came the baron himself with a face like the sky before a storm, staring in the direction of the walkers.

He stood, rooted to the spot, one of his sons next to him. Then he walked quickly to the ladder of the watchtower and started to climb up.

***

Ulf Jansson had been in the kitchen, viewing the preparations with satisfaction. He strolled into the wide passage to the main hall, and almost collided with Carl Gunnarsson.

"Jansson!"

"Gunnarsson."

"You must come at once."

"What," said Ulf, alarmed, thinking maybe the Casmans had done something stupidly unpredictable.

"Thirteen walkers have been seen approaching the manor."

"So? Visitors come for the signing."

"I think one of them is Freya Aelfrethe," Gunnarsson said.

Ulf stared at him.

"Come," the guard captain said. "Hargest is viewing them now. A watchman has been sent to find out who they are. But I looked at them through the glass, Jansson. If one of them is not Freya, you may put bows in my hair and call me a damned milkmaid."

Gunnarsson was a slender man and normally calm and reflective, but he was grinning all over his face.

Ulf struggled to think. His mind, normally lucid, was filled with a thick black fog.

"You realise what his means?" Gunnarsson said. "If it is her?"

"Of course," Ulf said. Deny everything, he thought, finally. It is not her. Cannot be her. Some imposter. If Nocens has any sense, he will play along. An imposter.

"It means you were mistaken, man," Gunnarsson said. "It means our Freya can fight her way out of the belly of a worm. She is greater than we ever thought."

Oh, Ulf thought. Yes, that works too.

"God be praised," he said, his guts boiling. "It is a miracle."

"God had nothing to do with it," Gunnarsson exclaimed, clapping him on the arm. "It is all her. All her. Come! I have to greet her."

"I will follow," Ulf said. "I, uh..."

"You would pick this time to go to the privy? Odin's balls, man, you have no sense of ceremony. I will see you outside."

Gunnarsson turned and ran. Ulf stumbled in the opposite direction, through the kitchen and outside to the privy, clenching his anus shut. When he was at last safe inside, he shut the door, yanked down his breeches and sat over the hole and felt the contents of his gut squirting out of him at high pressure.

God, he thought. Oh god. Oh god.

He felt sick, too, but he took deep breaths to calm himself and it worked.

She is back. Can she be? Yes, she could be. It could be her. Oh god.

It has been over a year. In which I have striven to...

None of that matters now. If she has come back and she has not entirely lost her memory, she will want to accuse me. So, my only hope is to convince everyone that she is not herself. The idea that I was mistaken...that will not stand up. Tug at that and everything falls down.

He sat for a long time, and calmed himself.

***

Hargest stared through the glass at the fourteen people walking back to the manor, the guard Bern Huguis in the lead, the squarish girl beside him looking wary, and on the other side, the tall, green-haired woman with some kind of marking on her face.

It only took a moment of squinting through the scuffed, hazy glass. He handed the glass back to the watchman on duty.

"Thank you," he said.

"Is it her, lord," the man asked. "Is it the lady?"

Hargest couldn't help but smile.

"It may be. Let us hope, soldier. It may be."

"I wish you and your family all the luck," the man said, bowing. And with good reason. Luck like this came from the old gods, and no other.

Hargest went to the hatch in the floor and descended the ladder.

A crowd was gathering, and as he came down, he saw it part as his wife made her way through the crowd, staring up at him, her face pale and tense.

"Hargest," she cried, "is it true?"

He got to the bottom of the ladder and turned to face everyone.

"Let us see," he said. "I do not wish to raise false hopes. I will go and greet them. We shall hold off celebrating until we are sure."

There was a ripple of excitement in the crowd. Fritha came forward and took his arm.

They moved to the edge of the manor field, the crowd swelling behind them as people came running to see.

The walkers came out of the shade of the trees and came towards them. As they got nearer, the watchman caught sight of Hargest and broke free from the walkers and ran towards the manor.

The walkers slowed as Bern Huguis approached Hargest. When he was at last before the baron and baroness, he went down on one knee. The walkers stopped, a hundred yards away.

"Tell us, soldier," Hargest said, "has our daughter returned?"

"I think it is so, sir," he said.

"Stand by," Hargest said, and looked up at the walkers.

They didn't move. The thirteen of them stood in the field, watching, waiting.

Hargest lifted his hand and beckoned to them.

The green-haired woman took two steps forward, and stopped again.

Hargest waited for her to keep coming, and when she didn't, he frowned. He looked at Fritha, who looked back at him, perplexed, and then indicated with her head: you go to her.

That was all wrong. That went entirely against protocol. But since Freya had always been in favour only of such protocols as she liked, and ignored all the others, Hargest gloomily decided that there was nothing for it.

He started to cross the field towards her.

As he neared her, he took in her appearance. She was dressed in anonymous walking clothes, her sword hanging off her belt, inside her coat. Her shirt was closed at the neck and her arms were covered, so that he could see nothing of her sigils. Her head was bare, her hair cut very short and dyed a dull forest green. She was standing square-on to him, relaxed, looking directly at him, not smiling.

Her face was traversed from right eyebrow to the left jaw by a livid, glowing, reddish-gold tattoo of a snake, outlined and marked in black. It was barbaric; no northern woman would have done such a thing.

Yet he knew, all too well, with all a father's love--he knew her. He knew her eyes and her dark skin, and her wide mouth.

You are, he thought, you must be. And yet you are not.

He smiled. She stared back at him.

"Are you come back to us," he said.

She did not move.

"I did not dream," he said, "that I would ever see you again. I thought you dead."

She was silent. He felt as if his heart would burst.

"I cannot think what I have done to have you returned to me. I swear to you, Freya, it is...a blessing, beyond anything, to see you stand before me."

She was silent, for a long moment, then her gaze moved to the stocky girl standing a few feet away.

"My lord," the girl said, in a high, squeaky, cracked voice, then she cleared her throat and shook her head, rolling her eyes, and resumed.

"My lord," she said in a lower, more normal voice, "I am to tell you that I rescued your daughter Freya Aelfrethe from the people of Casman, and I tended her wounds, and I have served her through her recovery, and I now bring her back here to Hargest."

He looked at her, curious.

"Who are you?"

She stared at him for a moment, and blinked.

"I am...one of our people," she said. "I was the fifth squire of Sir Snorri Midlafsson."

"But this cannot be," Hargest said. "We do not have female squires. And in any case, Sir Snorri's fifth squire is dead."

The girl raised a hand to her brow and rubbed it.

"I realise it's a bit much to believe, lord," she said, "but, that's what's happened."

Hargest looked back at Freya, who was as silent and impassive as ever. It was beginning to irk him. He turned around, and beckoned to the watchman, Huguis, who was standing yards behind him. The man ran forward, but when he reached them, Hargest couldn't think of what to ask him.

He turned back to Freya.

"Freya," he said, "we must speak."

Freya looked back at him, and slowly raised her left arm and pointed to the girl.

"...What?" Hargest said.

"My lord," said the girl softly, "your daughter has given me leave to speak for her. She is still wounded from what happened to her at Casman, and she trusts me to know her mind."

"Who are you again," Hargest snapped.

"I am who I said I am," she said. "I was Snorri Midlafsson's fifth squire."

"What is your name?"

"Sir Snorri," said the girl, "blest be his memory, he never thought to give me one. But folk call me Five."

"That is not a name."

"I know that, lord. But it does for me."

Hargest stared at Freya.

"Speak to me," he said. "Let me hear your voice. I want to believe it. Do not leave me in doubt. Please, speak to me."

Freya stared at him, and did nothing.

He turned to the girl.

"What...wound is this, that she cannot speak to her own father? How do you know her mind? Snorri's fifth squire was a contemptible potboy, who soiled himself at the sight of blood. Do you tell me that you are him? How can that be? And why would I trust such a hapless churl to speak for my daughter?"

The girl looked at him with an extraordinary expression on her face. A look of such nameless, sourceless sorrow that he could not place it. It made him uncomfortable.

One of the men standing behind her suddenly said "Look, what happened is this."

The girl whipped around and glared at the man, and Hargest was startled to see that the man actually flinched, as if he for some reason found her intimidating. She waited to see if he was going to talk more, but he didn't.

"Schuldt," she said softly, "no. Are we clear?"

The man Schuldt nodded sheepishly, and Hargest saw the man next to him hit him on the arm with exasperation. The girl turned back to him.

What is this? Who are these people?

"My lord," said the girl, "you are right. I was that potboy. I was..."

She shrugged.

"I was not one of Hargest's finest, I own that. But, the way it fell out, I was left alone with your daughter when she needed aid, and I...well, I did my best. And I still do. And for that, she has honoured me by commanding me to speak for her. And if you think I do not have the right, you have only to ask her."

Hargest eyed her, and eyed Freya.

It could be some wizardry. It could all be lies. He dearly wanted to take Freya in his arms and hold her, because he knew that then he would know the truth. But she stood apart, staring at him, hostile and tense. Yet that, too, was like her.

Because, if the girl's tale was true, if Freya really had been left while still alive, and this strange girl really somehow was Snorri's squire, then there was something foul at the heart of the house, which had to be unearthed and brought to light and dealt with.

Damn. Damn. This had seemed a miracle. And now it was hedged about with suspicion and guilt and violence.

He looked away, and thought for a moment. Then he looked up at them both.

"I want to think that you are Freya," he said. "That this is not some lie. But...but, if you were not her, if you were some imposter...would you not go to more effort to convince me that you are?"

At this, Freya turned to Five and raised her arm in his direction and dropped it, in an exasperated gesture he had seen her make many times. It meant, See what my damn parents are like.

Five looked at her, and then looked at him, and he returned her gaze.

"I do not know how this can be," he said, "I do not know how you can be who you are. But if it is true that you rescued my daughter and brought her back to health, then, in truth, Snorri's Five, you would have the gratitude of Hargest."