Freyas Saga Ch. 30

"Well," said a third man, "tell the truth, I think, uh..."

There was a silence.

Carl stared at the floor.

"I'll tell you something else," Five said. "In all the time I ever saw Siegfa, I never once saw him look at any woman except his sister. And even then, it wasn't anything."

"She was odd, though, Carfryn," Carl said.

"Maybe," Five said, "but mad enough to just turn around and kill a man? Do you really think so?"

"So you're saying what," Carl said.

"I'm saying Ulf Jansson had a very good reason for wanting Siegfa shut up," Five said, "and since Siegfa told Carfryn everything, Ulf'd want her out the way too."

"And the girl?"

"Dunno. Maybe she walked in on something. But never mind," she said. "That's another thing. That's not for now. What matters is, the only bloke who called Ulf on his lying was shut up. And what's done is done."

She turned, and walked to one side of the dais, and then walked back.

"What's done is done," she said again, "and we've all got to live with it. And so happens that I have lived with it. For a year, now. And, as you see, I am not...who I was.

"However."

There was an edge of threat in her voice. The men had been avoiding looking at her, but they glanced up.

"Freya has taken me up and down the country for the past year," Five said, "and she and I have done some things together, which folk down there will tell you about. If you get a chance. Not my place. But I saw her fight before, and I've seen her fight since. And I'm here to tell you, that...that any man who thinks less of her, for what's happened her..."

She smiled incredulously, as if finding it hard to say what she meant.

"If you think, for one moment, that's lost the will to win, or the strength to make a blow. If you think, somehow, she's not herself anymore..."

Five hesitated, for a long moment, then she looked at them all.

"Let me put it this way," she said. "If you have ever feared her..."

She paused.

"Don't stop now," she said.

This got a low rumble, which Carfryn realised was a nervous laugh.

"I'm dead serious, gents," Five said. "When she woke up, she knocked out two of me teeth and broke me nose, she were that angry. And she's still angry. So if you were at Casman, and you claim to love her, and you have ever respected her, you'll stay true to that, and maybe she won't cut your balls off."

They laughed louder at this.

"What have you two been doing," said Carl Orneby.

"You'll find out, soon enough," Five said.

"So, you've been following her around cooking her meals while she...does whatever she does?"

"Mmm, no," Five said. "To begin with, yeah."

"You still piss your britches when things get hot?"

Five smiled.

"No. Last time I pissed my britches was in a bar in Memika, and it was 'cause some bloke mugged me while I was in mid-piss."

There was an explosion of laughter.

"Yeah," Five said, "he thought it was funny, too. But I got me money back."

"How," said Carl Orneby.

Five turned to him, and for the first time she smiled broadly.

"You want to find out, Carl," she said.

"What'd you do," he said, "hit him with a soup pot?"

"No," she said, "but, I'll show you if you want."

There were some cheers at this.

"You serious," he said, smiling. He was a head taller than her, and broader, and older.

"Yeah," she said.

The room fell silent.

"Watch it, all right," he said. "You talked well, I'll give you that, but don't make me do that."

"I'm not making you do anything, Carl," he said. "It's your choice."

He stepped towards her and she didn't move. Everyone was watching them. There was a tightness in the room. Carfryn had to remind herself to breathe.

"Let's not," said another man.

"I think Carl's right to be curious," Five said. "I mean. Somebody spends a year walking around with Freya Aelfrethe. You'd think a person would pick up a thing or two. I'd be very curious to find out what."

Carl eyed her, and then Carfryn noted how Five was standing.

She hadn't moved for some time, and she looked to someone who'd never been in a fight as though she were wide open, but in fact, to Carfryn's eyes, as trained at the hands of as experienced a brawler as Owyn Durberry, she was very well placed indeed, her weight on her back foot, her sword arm ready, her other arm placed to block anything he threw at her.

And if I can see it, Carfryn thought, Carl can see it.

Carl smiled.

"Well," he said, "next time somebody acts the prick, you should show us. I'd like to see that."

"Happy to," Five said, smiling back at him. He stepped back and nodded at her, and she nodded back at him.

Carfryn stopped holding her breath.

"So," Five said, looking at Carl, "thank you, gents, for your time and your attention. I promise you that, come the day of the treaty signing, Freya will be fit, and she will speak then, and everyone will hear her."

The men started to drift off. One or two of them threw the occasional nod at Five.

Carfryn turned and hurried out of the hall.

***

Five watched the men go, and when only a few were left, she turned and looked at Owyn, Dovid and Schuldt.

"Well," she said, "that could have gone worse."

***

Carfryn let herself into Freya's room and nodded a greeting at Freya, who was working with her sword.

"Is Five coming," Freya said. Carfryn nodded and started to gather up unwashed clothes into a basket.

"Did it go well," Freya said. Carfryn looked up and nodded again. She went on working in silence as Freya went on exercising. When she had all the clothes gathered, she knelt by the dead fireplace and scraped the ash together, to take down to the garden. Then she laid kindling in the fireplace and put a few small logs on top, for when they wanted to light it.

Freya put the sword down, absently rubbed her side, and lifted her shirt. Her scar was healing nicely. Carfryn lifted the basket onto her hip and headed for the door. Freya intercepted her and took a shirt from the top of the basket, and wiped her face and neck with it. Then they heard footsteps coming, and Freya quickly got into the bed.

The door opened and Five, Schuldt, Berman and Durberry came in, and they slipped it shut behind them. Five came over and sat on the edge of the bed. Freya sat up.

"It's done," Five said, and she rubbed the back of her neck and let the tension go out of her.

"How many?"

"Fifty, maybe. One or two wanted to front up, but it went all right, I think."

Freya looked at Schuldt, who paused and then nodded thoughtfully.

"It was well said," he said to Five, who smiled nervously.

"Good," Freya said to Five, and smiled. "I wish I could have seen it."

"There'll be other times," Five said.

"Well," Owyn said after a pause, "back to the House of Happiness." He nodded to them all and turned to go.

"Owyn," Carfryn said. He paused at the door as she picked up her basket, and they left together.

***

"I want to go with you," she said as they went down the corridor.

"To where? The tent? What you want to go there for?"

"To see for myself."

***

Carfryn set down the basket of unwashed clothes outside the tent, and followed Owyn in.

She had expected it to be quieter. But the women were moaning, cursing; one or two were crying from pain.

Carfryn looked at them, her skin crawling. They were so thin, but they all had bloated stomachs, as if pregnant. She had never been very good at being around sick people, except for Siegfa, and the women's skull-like faces and angular arms and legs made her want to run out of the tent. Owyn picked up a crock, went outside to the rainwater tub, and filled it. Then he came in again, filled a jug from the crock, and went from bed to bed, offering the women a drink. Most of them accepted it. Some spat it up straight away, and he wiped their chins and gave them some more. A few merely rolled away from him and lay on their sides, shivering. He leaned over them and asked them quietly if they wanted anything. They ignored him.

I know you are trying, swordsman, she thought. I can see it. If I were a better person, would I say the words? Would it be easier?

Are you even doing this to impress me? You didn't ask if you could show this to me. I made you take me here.

I do not know. Truly, I do not. And I am wounded, to be sure, and I am still... Sometimes I cannot think clearly. But...

One of the women was lying on her side, wheezing, staring at her. Carfryn returned her stare. The woman opened her mouth, as if to speak. Carfryn looked up at Owyn, who was on the other side of the tent. She stepped uncertainly towards the crock of water but the woman made a noise, and when Carfryn looked at her, the woman was shaking her head no.

Then the woman reached out with a frail hand, and beckoned to her.

Unnerved, Carfryn went over to her and knelt by her. She took the woman's hand; it was bony and ice cold.

"Do you speak our tongue," the woman whispered. Carfryn nodded.

"Our leader says that they will find a cure," the woman said.

Carfryn said nothing.

"Why does it take so long," the woman said.

Carfryn let her shoulders rise slightly, and fall.

"Do you understand?"

Carfryn nodded.

The woman's watery eyes slid past her.

"I do not understand why they take so long," she whispered. Then she looked back at Carfryn again.

"Unless," she added, "someone is lying."

Carfryn put her other hand around the woman's hand, to warm her.

"Do you know? Is someone lying?"

Carfryn paused for a moment, then nodded yes. The woman made a faint gasp at the back of her throat, as if this was the final blow that she had long hoped wouldn't come. She rolled slightly so that she was staring at the ceiling of the tent.

"What is your name," Carfryn whispered.

"They call me Cloris," the woman answered, "but my name is Beate Vendring."

"Is there something I can do for you, Beate Vendring?"

"It depends," Beate Vendring said, and the ghost of a smirk crossed briefly over her face. "Do you have anything to eat?"

"No," Carfryn said. She noticed that the woman's skin hung loosely on her arms and neck; she had once been plump.

"No matter," Beate said. "I would only throw it up."

"We will soon be able to help with the pain," Carfryn said.

"Only the pain," Beate said. "Not the dying?"

"What do you want," she said. "I do not think you can be saved."

"It's not the dying," Beate whispered, and pain made her wince and her fingers clutched Carfryn's. "It's the taking so damn long about it. If those fools cannot save us, then their lying cannot either."

Carfryn stared at her.

Then she had the thought, and it was a terrible one, and she made herself not think of it, but it wouldn't go away.

She looked at it.

She hadn't much time. She wasn't supposed to be talking to a dying woman. She had clothes to wash and hang up, and she had to get extra food for Freya without anyone noticing, and she had made an appointment for herself at the house of a certain knight with a mangled hand, which she intended to keep.

This was a healthy woman once, she thought. If this is what she is like now, she was strong and had wit and appetite. And now we are letting her linger on while the old man makes promises he must know we cannot keep.

Why? To make himself feel better? To make his people go on thinking he knows what he is doing?

"Beate," she whispered, "is that really what you want?"

Beate was fighting to suppress a groan of pain, which finally came out through clenched teeth. She blinked, and looked at Carfryn.

"An end," she gasped. "A quick one."

Carfryn nodded.

"I understand," she said, and kissed Beate's hand through the veil over her mouth.

Then she got up quickly and went out.

It was cold outside, and the wind was whipping across the courtyard. She thought about it, the planning of it, the doing of it. What would be needed.

After a long time, Owyn came out.

"Now you've seen 'em," he said emotionlessly.

"This is your saint act, is it," she said.

"Don't be a cunt," he said. "I wanted to be busy. Better than nothing."

"The old man expects them to find a cure," she said.

"I know," he said. "He's always in here. 'Have faith, my daughters. Deliverance is near.' I don't think one of them still believes him, now. Gerdow says they've got nothing. And the old man's getting tetchy."

"What do you think's wrong with them?"

"Looks to me like the canker," he said. "Dunno how they should all have it. The only thing they all have in common, besids being roundabouters, is he gave them all to his...worm, thing. But how that'd give him the canker, beats me."

The thought of the Pantocrator made Carfryn's stomach churn. She forced it out of her mind.

"When the lad's made his poppy potion, that'll calm them down a bit, I reckon," Owyn said. "But it's only putting off what's coming."

"Owyn," she said softly, "there is something we can do. But you won't like it."

"What," he said, "for them? If you've got an idea, tell me. I can go on wiping their arses till the sun goes down, but it's not making it any easier on them."

"I don't even know if it's possible. It might be. But it will be hard, and there will be no glory in it. But it might be the only thing we can do."

"Tell me," he said.

She looked at the tent, thinking, for a moment.

"Not yet," she said. "I do not know if...not yet. Maybe I'm wrong."

"Don't leave me bloody hanging," he said.

She shot him a glance, and he got the message without her needing to say it: Don't tell me what to do, swordsman. You don't have the goodwill for that.

"Fine," he said. "Sorry. I guess it's nothing good, then."

"No," she said. "It's nothing good."

She covered her face with her scarf and went back inside the manor house.

***

The following evening, Norbert went with Schuldt and Owyn and Five to the hospital tent, where they met with Hans Gerdow. He looked sceptically at Norbert's row of small flasks, but Norbert explained how he'd made the potion and Gerdow listened, and gave his permission to let them try the stuff out on one of the women.

He chose one who had the least difficulty keeping anything down. Katje Edelman was a very young slip of a thing, painfully thin, with lank blonde hair and a red face. She was hollow-eyed from exhaustion; the pain had kept her awake for three days.

She sipped the clear amber liquid and made a weak smile of thanks, then lay back on her cot and breathed painfully. Norbert turned over a sand-timer and made a mark on a piece of paper. After two turns of the timer, Katje Edelman sighed and began to breathe more easily, and after another turn, she was actually asleep.

"Curious," Gerdow said, which Owyn had learned to recognise as the surgeon's equivalent of slapping himself in the face with astonishment. Norbert and Owyn went around the beds administering the potion to all the women in turn, and soon it was quiet in the tent save for the women's breathing; there were no more moans, no more curses, no more retching. They slept.

"It stops pain, this concoction of yours," Gerdow said. "I knew that the juice of the pappafer had the power to dull pain, but I didn't think it could be made as strong as this."

"It's a question of concentrating it," Norbert said, "and putting something in to stop people from being sick."

"Is that a problem with pappafer," Gerdow said. "I've never taken it myself."

"It is," Norbert said, remembering some hectic and messy self-medication at the academy.

"Well, not a bad job," Gerdow said. "Don't suppose you can cure them as well?"

"No," Norbert said heavily. "I know of no cure."

"Didn't think so," Gerdow said.

Come on, Owyn thought, the kid's just sent a dozen women into a painless sleep and all you can do is complain? But Gerdow was the type who looked at a half-full glass of beer and commented that they didn't make beer like they used to.

"And that'll last how long," Five said, "till sun-up?"

"It should," Norbert said.

Five hadn't tasted Norbert's potions and was wary of doing so. She couldn't help noticing that those who had tasted his no-pain draught, had seemed to enjoy it. Very much. Five was suspicious of a medicine that went down so pleasantly. Most of the medicine she'd ever been given had made her vomit, but since most of the times she'd been ill it had been from eating bad food, throwing it up again had been no more than common sense. But Norbert undoubtedly had some odd ideas.

"We should let them sleep," Gerdow said, and they all left the tent. Outside, crossing the grass towards them was a tall, broad-shouldered, blonde-haired young man, a Casman. He saw them emerge and quickened his pace.

"Has it happened," he said to Gerdow as he reached them, "have you found a cure? Why are they so silent?"

"They sleep," Gerdow said. "No, we have no cure yet, but the youth here has a potion that takes away their pain, so they can rest."

The man looked down at Norbert.

"Ah," he said. "Good. The pain, you see...it was distracting them."

Owyn stared at him.

"They were forgetting the word," he said. "They spoke foolishly, and it angered my father."

"This is Per Nocensson," Gerdow said.

Right, Five thought. The eldest son. He stared at them, blankly, apparently uninterested in their identities. Then he seemed to remember himself and asked nobody in particular, "Freya Aelfrethe. She is well?"

"As well as can be expected," Five said. "She's recovering."

"Good," he said. "What happened to her at Casman-"

"Let's not talk about that now," Five said.

"It was a great shame," he said.

"We'll leave it for now," Five said.

"She would have been a most treasured bride to our people," he said, with all sincerity. "It is a shame that she is barren."

Five controlled herself with an effort.

"I thought your father taught that you no longer seek to take others," Schuldt said. Per shrugged.

"What's past is past," he said, "but that was our way, and there is no denying it." He turned and looked at Five intently.

"You," he said, "you are the..."

"Yeah," said Five.

"The one who..."

"Yeah," said Five.

"But, you were a man," Per cried. "How can this be?"

Five thought, You've got a thirty-foot tame worm can bend women's minds so they think it a handsome prince, and you reckon I'm out of the ordinary.

Per stood back from Five and looked at her with wonder.

"No matter," he said more quietly. "No matter. I have learned not to question the miracle of the universe."

What, Five thought.

"You know," Per said, "we saw you. We all saw you lying on the plain, when your people left. We thought you were dead. We thought Freya dead, too. And so we went to our beds, and, I will not lie to you, we could not believe that they would leave you like that. I said to my hut-wife, we were lying in my bed, I said, what the hell? What honour have these people? They leave a boy, and their most famous woman, lying on the plain? But the next morning, we woke up and found you gone."

He fell silent. Five waited for him to speak, and when he didn't, she felt resentful.

"I had to get her out of there," Five said.

"And you did," he said, "and we saw the tracks. We saw where you had dragged her. Some people wanted to hunt you, but my father said you were long gone, and he said, and I remember, 'Let them go. Let them take their own.'"

Per's eyes gleamed as he looked at her, and he shook his head.

"How far did you take her," he said. "If you can guess. I just want to know."

"About ten miles," Five said.