Heart of Winter by Lauren Gilley

24

“You’re lying.”

“I am not!” Rune fumbled for the flask in the center of the table and only managed to spill a little as he refilled his cup. He ignored his brother’s censorious gaze, and took a healthy slug of this latest round of mistress. Fuck Leif for not being able to unwind at all. It was yuletide! When else were they supposed to cut loose? Mother was gone, besides, retired to the upper parlor, with the other ladies, and would soon head for bed. And Uncle was gone, too – though definitely not sleeping, Rune thought, sniggering to himself.

“What’s so funny?” Haldin Askrson demanded, slurring a little. He’d been the one to produce the flask of strong spirits, and they’d split most of it between them, at this point. “I’m calling you a liar and you’re laughing!”

“I’m not laughing at you.” When Rune glanced up, the image of the young, redheaded lordling across from him blurred and threatened to double before he blinked his vision back to mostly normal. “And I’m not a liar.” He just caught himself before he could admit what he’d found so hilarious. “I really can hit – hit a target at – forty yards.”

Haldin made a face and shook his head dismissively. “Fuck you and your lying.”

Rune stood – only swaying a little as he got up from the bench. “You want to see? I’ll show you right now.”

“Rune,” Leif said.

“Lay off,” Rune bit back, and turned away from the table. The whole hall swayed, and he heard several sharp barks of laughter. Laughing at him? Laughing in general? The wine and mistress had been flowing for…who knew how long. He knew that he was overheated, and faintly sick, but determined to demonstrate his prowess.

“Rune, don’t,” Leif tried again.

Rune ignored him.

In truth, he wasn’t sure why he was so annoyed with his brother tonight. They rarely quarreled – not even as boys. He knew that was mostly down to Leif’s unending patience and goodness of spirit, but he wasn’t feeling charitable enough tonight to grant him that. He had gladly attacked Ormr in Leif’s defense – fuck anyone who messed with his brother – but now, the threat past, he kept thinking about the way Tessa’s face had fallen as she watched Estrid flirt with Leif across the room. Estrid was a snake who didn’t deserve anyone’s attention, in Rune’s unforgiving estimation, but for Leif to offer his freely, when he had Tessa already – beautiful, kind, sweetly-smiling Tessa…

Had he been sober, Rune would have acknowledged that he was wildly jealous.

But, being this deep in his cups, he led a shoving, shouting group of young lords out of the hall, to the armory, and then out into the frigid night, only stumbling a time or two.

Fresh snow was falling, slow, gentle fat flakes that would feather hair and eyelashes. A new layer of powder lay across the training yard, all the old footprints and slides covered over: a smooth stretch of virgin white within the low, snow-heaped stone walls.

“We need targets,” Baldi proclaimed, and went jogging clumsily down to set them up.

Rune set his arrows up with their tips buried in the ground and set about stringing his bow. It left him frowning and took three times as long as normal, his fingers slow and thick-feeling.

“Rune.” Leif materialized beside him, as if from thin air, snow dusting his golden braids and fur mantle, breath steaming in the chill. The light from the torches along the wall illuminated a deep furrow between his brows. “You’re drunk.”

Rune finally got the string secured, and glared at his brother – or at least in the direction of his shoulder. It was hard to focus on his eyes. “No ssshit. Doesn’t matter. I can outshoot anyone – drunk – drunk or not.”

Leif sighed – the long-suffering, responsible big brother.

“Go find Estrid or something,” Rune spat. “I’m sure she – wants to hear what you think about – about bloody everything.”

Leif’s frown deepened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Archers!” Baldi shouted, and was echoed by others.

“If you’ll exxcuuuuse me.” Rune shoved at his brother. “I have to prove myself, now.”

Rune pivoted, and saw the targets set up against the far wall. They were tiny at this distance – and crooked, though that wouldn’t matter. Beside him, Haldin was testing his own bow, arrows ready and waiting at his feet.

“I’m going inside,” Leif muttered.

Good, Rune thought, and ignored him.

“Gentlemen!” Baldi cried. “Are we ready?”

“Yes,” Rune said, echoed a moment later by Haldin, who sounded unsure, now. Like his father, Haldin was good with a battle axe, but the finer points of more precise warfare eluded him.

Rune grinned to himself, because he was going to win this competition, and it was so rare that he won at anything with Leif around.

“Nock!” Baldi cried.

Cold and clumsy though his fingers were, Rune’s muscles knew the feel of the fletching, knew just how to grip the arrow and string together. He let out a deep breath, forcibly relaxed himself, and his vision seemed to clear a little.

“Draw!”

His recurve bow took an immense amount of strength to draw, and he prided himself on the way his arms and shoulders carried the burden, one long, smooth movement that stretched the string tight.

Beside him, Haldin swore, softly.

“Loose!”

In the split second after he released, Rune worried that so much drink might have really ruined his chances. But then his arrow struck true, in the center of the bull’s eye, and Haldin’s sailed over the wall and into the night.

“Ha ha!” he exclaimed, punching a fist into the air. “I win!”

“Best three out of four!” Haldin barked.

All four of Rune’s hit the target, clustered together.

One of Haldin’s managed to land in the far outer ring. He turned and threw down his bow after the last shot, face flushed as scarlet as his hair.

Rune laughed along with the rest of the spectators. “That’ll teach you to brag.”

Haldin shot him a nasty glare. “So you’re good at one thing, Torstanson. One thing that doesn’t even matter.”

Rune felt the smile drop off his face. “Fuck you,” he said, eloquently.

Haldin stormed off back into the palace, leaving Rune feeling hollow and no longer victorious. And more than a little unsteady on his feet, his face too hot, suddenly. Sweat prickled beneath his clothes, and his stomach churned.

Baldi clapped him on the shoulder. “Ignore him. Come on. Let’s go get a pint to celebrate.”

The idea repulsed him. Rune shook his head, which proved a bad idea. He swallowed a wave of nausea and said, “You go on. I want to stay here a minute.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Baldi and the others trooped back inside, talking and laughing and shoving and stumbling. It was a relief when the door closed and they were gone. Rune tipped his head back and looked up at the stars, at his own breath steaming overhead. He closed his eyes when the stars began to spin, and just…stood. Letting his hot, dizzy spell past. Feeling the snowflakes alight on his face.

He owed Leif an apology, he realized, with an inward wince. He’d been an ass tonight, and it wasn’t Leif’s way to be rude to people at parties – even if that person was Estrid.

With a sigh, he straightened, waited for his vision to settle, and headed for the door.

He was nearly there when a shadow detached from the wall and slid in front of him.

Ormr.

“If you wanted to try your hand with a bow, you missed your chance. I would have beaten you anyway.” Rune moved to step around him.

And was caught by a hand against his chest.

Had he been sober, Rune could have easily ducked away, or forcibly chopped Ormr’s hand aside.

But still reeling from too much wine and liquor, he stumbled back. “What – what in the Val-Father’s name do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, regaining his balance. “Get out of my way, shithead.” He shoved at the wolf-shirt.

But missed. Overbalanced, stumbled forward – and Ormr struck him in the throat.

Rune choked. He bent forward, retching, clawing at his own neck, fighting to take a breath, to keep from vomiting. His eyes filled with tears and his chest heaved, and black spots crowded his vision.

Hands gripped his shoulder, and pushed him upright and back, until he was flat against a section of wall. He tried to bat them away, but his movements were weak and ineffectual, and he was choking, choking, running out of air, bile pushing up his throat.

Through a sheen of tears, he saw Ormr’s ugly snarl. “You are nothing,” he hissed in Rune’s face. “Your family is nothing. You’ll all die choking on your own blood.”

Rune finally managed to drag in a breath. “What–”

And a sharp, white-hot bolt of pain in his abdomen robbed him of air again.

~*~

Oliver woke slowly, already wincing against the bright light in his face. He lay against something warm and solid, a heavy weight draped across his waist, and when he stretched, experimentally, he was sore in a way he hadn’t been in a while. Fresh, vivid memories tumbled through his sleepy mind, and he realized it was Erik he lay against, with a pleasant shiver, half-smiling, trying to crack his eyes open against the assaulting light.

Then an urgent voice said, “Erik,” and he startled completely awake, filled with immediate dread.

A few blinks revealed that the light came from a lantern – held over them in Bjorn’s hand. Bjorn, still fully-dressed, wore a distressed expression that left Oliver wanting to pull the blankets up over his head and hide. It was one thing to know someone was sleeping with the king, quite another to find them tangled and naked in the aftermath.

But Erik sat up with a groan, pushed his rumpled hair back, and rubbed the grit from his eyes with the heel of one hand. The other hand slipped through the blankets, found Oliver’s hand, and covered it.

Oliver stilled.

In a sleep-rough croak, Erik asked, “What is it?”

Bjorn said, “It’s Rune.”

~*~

It was the wee hours. The clouds had finally cleared, and the moon hung low in an indigo sky, its light the faintest brush across the snowy fields as they passed the windows in their flight down to Olaf’s surgery.

Oliver pulled the belt of his dressing gown tighter, and didn’t even feel the cold flags beneath his bare feet. Erik was likewise clothed ahead of him, walking with long, ground-eating strides that Oliver struggled to keep up with. Bjorn led the way, the lantern held before him now that the cressets on the wall had burned down so low. Magnus and Lars, faces drawn with worry and exhaustion, followed, still armored and uniformed.

Two more guards flanked the door to the surgery, in their helms, spears on their shoulders, but with dressing gowns pulled hastily on over night shirts.

“Everyone else is either on wall patrol,” Bjorn explained as he opened the door and stood aside to let Erik, and Oliver, enter first. “And I sent three to rouse Ragnar, wherever he’s gone off to.”

Erik only nodded and swept inside.

Oliver hurried to follow, pulse pounding in his throat.

Dozens of candles blazed through the lab, though they held none of the festive charm as those in the great hall earlier. Their light flickered over glass vials and bottles and beakers, illuminating liquids in all sorts of sinister colors. Oliver forced his gaze away from the specimens floating suspended in jars, made all the more horrifying by candlelight, amidst the buzz of panic.

A panic that had a smell: blood and fear sweat. The room’s only occupants were past the lab, in the surgery. Leif and Revna – Leif still in his feast clothes, Revna bundled in layers of dressing gowns and coats, her feet in fur slippers – stood at the head of the table, bracketing Rune’s pale, slack face. Revna stroked unsteady fingertips through his dark hair, while Olaf bustled about the table, instruments gleaming in his hands.

“Light,” the physician muttered. “I need more light.”

Without breaking stride, Erik gripped the stand of a large iron candelabra and carried it with him, candle flames streaming out behind. He set it down when he reached the operating table, and then gripped the wooden edge with both hands. “What happened?” he demanded.

Tears slid unchecked down Revna’s cheeks. She opened her mouth to respond, let out a shuddering breath instead, and wiped her face with quick, jerky movements. She looked equal parts furious and devastated, face nearly as drawn and pale as Rune’s.

“He was stabbed,” Leif said, his voice like iron. “He didn’t come in with the others, and he was drunk, so I went out to find him, and I saw the tail end of it.”

When Oliver drew up beside Erik, Leif lifted his head and met his uncle’s gaze, his own wrathful. “It was Ormr.”

Erik’s hands flexed and tightened on the table edge. His chest lifted as he inhaled sharply.

“Ormr? Who sparred with him?” Oliver asked. “Why?”

“Because the Úlfheðnar are fucking animals, that’s why,” Revna spat, her voice cracked and wavering.

“Rune shamed him.” Erik’s voice held a promise of violence. “In front of all of Aeretoll, and he wanted revenge. How bad is it, Olaf?”

“Bad,” the physician said, right away, shifting around the table. He’d pushed up Rune’s tunic and shirt and revealed a stretch of lean, muscled abdomen. The wound was just beneath his ribs, no longer bleeding, though a stack of bloodied bandages on the floor proved that it had bled a great deal.

As they all watched, Olaf pried apart the edges of the wound and peered down at the layers of exposed muscle and viscera beneath.

A sudden surge of cold nausea forced Oliver to turn his head. He closed his eyes and took a shallow breath through his mouth, fighting not to be sick. Had his father been like this, at the end? His Uncle William, and John? Had they lain on a muddy battlefield, full of holes, unconscious, while the last of their lives bled out of ugly, gaping wounds?

“Will he live?” Erik asked, and Revna let out a quiet choking sound.

Olaf said, “I shall do my best. The bleeding’s stopped, and from here” – slippery, squishing sounds issued from the table, and Oliver had to swallow a few times to keep from gagging – “it doesn’t look as if anything vital’s been punctured. There could be a slow, internal bleed, though.” He sighed. “We won’t know. I’ll clean him up best I can, and then it’s a matter of his own body fighting the ensuing infection.”

“He’s strong,” Revna said, voice watery. “He’ll make it.”

Head still turned toward the window, away from whatever Olaf was doing poking around in Rune’s cut-open stomach, Oliver saw a flash of movement at the door just before Bjorn said, “No, you can’t – get out of here.”

He turned. Ragnar strode into the surgery, still dressed, lean, close-shaven face taut with a closed-off, guarded sort of anger. “Erik,” he began.

Erik whirled away from the table. His dressing gown brushed Oliver’s arm as he stalked forward to meet his cousin – with a hand that he wrapped around the other’s throat.

Revna gasped.

Leif moved around the head of the table in a few startled, lurching steps. “Uncle.”

For his part, Ragnar went totally still: hands limp at his sides, chin lifted high, exposing himself, face going blank above the hand that gripped his neck. “Erik,” he said in a soothing tone. “They just came to tell me. How is he?”

“One of your men put a knife in his belly,” Erik growled, “how do you think he is?”

“Erik, I promise you–”

“I don’t want your promises.” The rings on his fingers flashed as his hand tightened; Ragnar’s mouth fell open, his next breath cut off. All of Erik’s teeth were bared, and there was nothing of the reindeer stag in him, now – no stalwart beast of burden. He was all wolf, rabid with fury. “You brought a murderer into my home and sicced him on my nephew, you cowardly, underhanded rat. You–”

Oliver stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. “Erik.”

Leif appeared on his other side; he met Oliver’s gaze with a stricken one of his own. “Uncle. At least hear what he has to say.”

“If you don’t mind,” Olaf said from behind them. “I don’t have time for another body on a table at the moment.”

Bjorn stepped up behind Ragnar and gripped the back of his tunic. “Let go, Erik, it’s all right. He won’t get away from me.”

Oliver could feel the flex and leap of the tendons in Erik’s arm; felt the fine tremors that gripped him, the effort it took to turn loose. But turn loose he did, albeit roughly, breathing harshly through flared nostrils, lips still pulled back in a snarl. “Explain,” he ground out.

Ragnar took a few gasping breaths and massaged at his throat. He looked decidedly less composed than when he’d first entered. “Do you think this happened on my orders? Erik. Cousin. You and I, we have our pissing contests, and I don’t usually agree with the way you do things here. But do you really think I would order one of my men to do this? To attack my own flesh and blood cousin? And a prince, no less? That’s an act of war.”

“Yes,” Erik said. “It is.”

Ragnar’s brows shot up. “Only if you allow it to be. Ormr acted on his own. This was the doing of a lone, stupid man, with a personal vendetta.”

Erik’s head tilted to a dangerous angle. “Are you asking me for clemency?”

“No. I’m asking you to mete out punishment, and be done with it. Don’t let this drive a wedge between our peoples.”

“The punishment for attempting to murder a crown prince is death.”

Ragnar took a deep breath. “I know that.”

The cousins regarded one another for a long time.

Oliver traded another glance with Leif, who looked only worried and confused, and could offer no insight.

Finally, Erik said, “At dawn, then.”

Ragnar nodded, expression going grim. His gaze flicked toward the table. “May I see him?”

“No. You may not.”

Another nod, shorter this time, and then Bjorn turned him around and marched him from the room.

Erik watched him go, jaw clenched tight, muscle jumping in his cheek from the effort. He let out a slow breath – and his gaze cut finally toward Oliver, who still gripped his forearm. A fractional softening of his face, an acknowledgement, and then he eased out of Oliver’s hold and turned back to the table. They all did.

Olaf had stacked clean linen bandaging over the wound, and now held bleached strips of the same. “I’ve cleaned it and dressed it. I need to wrap it, now, if you’ll help me lift him.”

Erik and Leif moved to either side of the table to do so, working in wordless harmony.

As Olaf began winding the linen strips around Rune’s abdomen and under his back, Oliver moved to stand beside Revna.

Her face was puffy from crying, still more tears trickling down her cheeks, the pretty blue eyes so like her brother’s nearly swollen shut at this point. She cradled Rune’s head in both palms, and Oliver wondered if she was remembering him as a baby, when his fragile little skull had been small enough to fit cupped in one hand.

Unsure if he would be welcome to do so or not, Oliver put an arm around her shoulders. To his surprise, she leaned into him immediately; dropped her head heavily down onto his shoulder. She had to be exhausted, terror and impending grief compounding the natural fatigue of the night’s festivities.

“He’ll be all right,” Oliver whispered. “You lot are all too stubborn to let something as mundane as a knife get the best of you.”

She breathed out a congested chuckle. “Bless you, lamb.”

When Oliver lifted his head, Erik was studying them, his expression quietly devastated. Oliver had never wanted to go to him so badly. But he stroked Revna’s shoulder, and let her shudder against him while Olaf tied off the bandages.