The Second Blind Son by Amy Harmon

22

MILES

Twenty-two miles beyond the border of Berne and a day’s travel to the mount, Hod began to shout for the king’s company to halt. The rain had drizzled from before sunup, and the dry, late-summer earth drank greedily, gorging itself, but by midafternoon, the road to the mount had turned to mud.

“Halt,” he shouted. “King’s guard, halt.”

“What is it, man?” the driver hollered back. “If I stop, we’ll be stuck.”

“Pull up,” Hod insisted, but the driver and the mounted guard around him paid him no heed.

“There are men concentrated in the trees half a mile ahead,” he yelled, but the driver cracked his whip, still spurring the horses forward. “I don’t like it.”

He’d not traveled from Berne to the temple mount, and the way was unfamiliar, but the distant, clustered heartbeats he could hear—two dozen to the left, another dozen on the right—seemed to float above the ground, indicating bodies in the trees. The men hiding in the trees did not converse, and he couldn’t divine their motives, but it was obvious that they were awaiting the caravan.

“What are you shouting about, Northman? We are one hundred strong and we ride under the king’s banner. ’Tis naught but a few scared clanless taking shelter beneath the boughs,” the guard nearest him grumbled back.

The caravan trundled along, the slog—and the messenger—making them foolish and resistant to his warning.

“Banruud!” he shouted, but the king, near the front of the convoy, did not rein his mount or give any indication he’d heard the warning, and the men around Hod protested his disrespect.

“The king doesn’t take orders from a blind Northman,” another man reprimanded him.

“Who does he think he is?” This comment came from a guard in front of the carriage. They were hearing him, but they didn’t draw up.

“He rides like a lady all day but can’t abide the wet,” someone else mumbled. They’d laughed at his refusal to use a horse and mocked him when they thought he couldn’t hear.

The driver kept on, ignoring his pleas, and the guard on either side demanded that he cease his yammering.

They weren’t going to listen or even alert the riders in front of them, and he wasn’t going to run alongside them, waving his arms. He’d do more good right where he was.

He could hear the women inside the carriage. They were awake and listening.

“Princess Alba,” he directed. “Liis of Leok, get down on the floor and brace yourselves.”

Their immediate movement indicated they had not disregarded his instructions, praise Odin. He scrambled up onto the carriage roof, grateful it was sturdy and well constructed, with cleats for an archer to balance between. He shrugged off his bow and centered his shield beneath his quiver.

The driver cursed and swung his whip, thinking Hod had come to take his reins. Hod could only turn his head against the snap, unable to guard against it, balanced as he was.

“Mind the road, man,” he ordered, and he nocked an arrow and drew back on his bow. Then he waited for the hiss that confirmed his instincts. He would not be the first to shoot.

“The Northman’s taking the carriage,” someone yelled, and for a second he feared they would turn their weapons on him.

“Ambush!” someone yelled a moment before his voice caught in a gurgling sigh. His horse shrieked beneath him, and a volley of arrows rained into the king’s caravan.

“In the trees!” the captain of the guard boomed. “They’re in the trees.”

The carriage driver started to pull up, but it was too late for that.

“Go, go, go,” Hod roared. “And don’t slow.”

An arrow nicked his sleeve and he returned fire, his legs screaming as the carriage rocked, and the horses bolted. One, two, three thundering hearts. One . . . two . . . three shots. One, two, three falling bodies.

Banruud was trying to give orders, hollering from the back of his rearing horse. An arrow whistled toward him as another sank into the chest of the man to his left. Hod swiveled and aimed again, releasing three more arrows in quick succession in the direction of the wailing, incoming volleys. The man who’d almost killed the king careened from his perch and another landed in the undergrowth, the crash and snap signaling his fall.

Hod found three more beating hearts and silenced them, one by one, and thought for a moment the skirmish had been quelled; the attackers in the trees were falling or fleeing, but the dead and dying littered the way, and the carriage was not built for the battlefield. Ghisla screamed his name and Alba begged Odin for protection as the front axle snapped and a wheel split in two. The carriage flipped, tossing Hod and the driver into the air and sending the women inside on a perilous ride.

Hod landed on his back in the mud, his bow still clasped in his hands, but his shield sent him spinning across the mire like a child sledding across the snow and tossed him into a hedge. He lay stunned for five seconds, his breath knocked from his chest, his senses scrambled.

“Hod!” Ghisla screamed his name again, and he rolled, coming to his knees to meet the ongoing threat. Horses reared and men ran, and all was chaos and cacophony around him. He couldn’t distinguish foe from friend, not when the men he fought beside were as unfamiliar as those who sought to kill him. The trees had emptied.

Someone ran at him, swinging a blade, and he brought up his bow and released an arrow, point blank, into his assailant’s chest. The man fell on top of him, his breath rattling through his lips, as an arrow meant for Hod hissed through the air and buried itself in his back.

“My thanks, kind sir,” Hod whispered, patting the dead man’s cheek. He heaved him to the side and reached for his staff, but it had come loose in his fall. He gritted his teeth, raised his bow, and held his position as he listened to the mayhem around him, trying to distinguish who needed killing. It was like sifting through sand looking for a seed, and he raged against his limitations.

Banruud had dismounted. His heart pounded, the only recognizable rhythm in the thunderous haze. Hod couldn’t hear Ghisla or Alba. His terror ballooned and he bit it back, forcing them from his thoughts. He was no good to them if he was dead.

Someone rushed the king from behind, lungs rasping, heart wailing, and Hod released his arrow, glad to have an obvious target. He listened as it found its mark; the man’s heart slowed . . . then dropped . . . and his howl of attack became a whoosh of air that bid goodbye to the ground.

Banruud swore and said Hod’s name, acknowledging the rescue. The ruckus swelled to a fever pitch, dancing feet and clashing blades, the movements too intermingled for Hod to enter the fray, and then someone yelled, the sound triumphant, and a chorus of cheers rose in answer.

The battle was won.

Thank Odin.

Hod rose to his feet, unsteady, and went to find Ghisla.

Had Hod not warned them, it would have been much worse. The carriage was broken, the wheels split and the door caved in, but Ghisla and Alba were unharmed. They’d knocked heads as the carriage rolled, and Alba’s eyes were already blackening, but they crawled out of the window and climbed down the wreckage when the cry of victory went up.

The driver limped toward them, his whip still clutched in his hand, his left arm tucked against his side, and Ghisla searched the wreckage for Hod, dread and terror warring within her. She’d screamed his name when the carriage rolled, unable to help herself, but she dare not call for him now.

One horse had a broken leg, one a broken neck. Two still stood in their harnesses, waiting to be rescued, and they nibbled at the grass at their feet as if nothing were amiss, but the worst of the battle scene was behind them.

Three dead men were still draped in the trees, arrows protruding from their chests, but most of the slain lay beneath them, piled and pinioned by other dead, including some of the king’s guard. She found his staff first. It protruded from the ground like a spear, the sharpened end buried deep, and she ran to it, pulling it free before she saw him, moving toward her from the edge of the wood, covered in mud and navigating the dead with searching steps.

Then she and Alba were spotted and swarmed, the soldiers of the king rushing to inquire after their welfare, and Hod was lost to her view.

“The Northman tried to warn us. But we didn’t listen,” the driver confessed to the captain of the guard. “I thought he just wanted a break to stretch his legs and take a pisser, and the mud was too deep to slow.”

“Were they Northmen?” someone asked, suspicious. “Maybe he was in on it.”

“The Northmen sailed from Berne two days ago,” Ghisla shot back. “And we left before them. How would they get ahead of us, with no horses, and hide in the trees? I also recall the blind man pleading with you to halt.”

The guard had enough conscience to look ashamed, and Ghisla bit down on her cheek so she wouldn’t say more. The king was pushing through his men, giving orders and demanding answers, and the speculation began.

“They’re clanless,” someone else suggested. “They wore no colors.”

“They’re Bernians,” Hod said, working his way through the gathering crowd. The king turned and his men shuffled, parting for him. Ghisla stepped into the space they made, using the staff she held to clear the way. When she reached him, she took his hand and placed it on the stick.

He grimaced slightly, almost like her touch pained him, and she immediately stepped away, afraid she would bring him unwelcome attention with her care. His face was battered and one of his empty eyes was swollen shut, but he did not move like he was greatly injured, and the blood he wore did not appear to be his own.

“How do you know they were Bernians?” the captain challenged.

Hod pointed his staff toward a captured, wounded man propped against a tree. He was gray and grim, and he wouldn’t live long. “He told me they were Bernian.”

“And you believed him?” the captain retorted.

“He sounds Bernian, smells Bernian, and I’m guessing he looks Bernian too,” Hod responded, his voice dry. “There are a few of the clanless mixed in, I’d suppose, but the Bernians knew we would be coming this way and thought they could kill a few soldiers, take the wagons, and ransom or sell two valuable women.”

“Aidan of Adyar said Bernians have been attacking settlements on his border,” Alba interjected. “He claimed they’ve been doing the same in Dolphys too. They won’t fight the Northmen but are all too happy to harass their neighboring clans.” The men around her shifted in discomfort, but ceased their arguing.

“String them all up,” Banruud said. “Wounded and dead.”

There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide from the macabre display, and she and Alba made their way among the wounded of the guard, trying to avert their eyes from one horror as they tended to another. As instructed, the king’s men dragged the Bernians, both dead and alive, to the trees they’d hidden in and strung them up, one by one, a lesson to the next band of rovers and raiders who might seek to do the same.

Two wounded Bernians, seeing their unavoidable fate, jumped up and rushed the king, who stood with his back to the gruesome work of his men, Hod at his side.

Ghisla wasn’t sure if it was instinct or duty, but Hod swung his stick at their feet, taking the first man’s legs out from under him. The second man was wilier, and he dodged Hod’s staff as he lunged for the king. Hod pivoted and brought the stick down hard across the man’s shoulders and the backs of his arms. His head bounced off the ground, and he wasn’t conscious when his clansman rose up again and launched his blade at Banruud. Hod paddled the knife from the air and, with both hands, skewered the man through the back with the sharpened tip of his staff, ending the scuffle.

Hod pulled his staff free with a grimace, and the king’s guard cried out, staggered by the exhibition . . . and then they clapped.

Alba shielded her eyes and Ghisla turned away, sickened by the unending death, but she heard the king commend Hod, wonder and wariness underlining his praise.

“That is three times today, blind man, that you have saved my life. It seems the North King has done me a great service. I would not have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes.”

“Indeed, Majesty. Indeed,” the captain of the guard cried, his own amazement evident.

But Hod said nothing at all.

With the carriage destroyed and some of the horses scattered or deceased, the wounded rode and Hod and many others walked, including Ghisla and the princess, who shunned the suggestion that they ride with the king or one of his men. They’d seen too much killing and staunched too much blood, and they walked huddled together, averse to everyone else. Hod had felt Ghisla’s revulsion and her surprise when he killed the two Bernians. He was aggrieved by it . . . and unsettled.

Shock was settling in for everyone, and they didn’t get far before the king called a halt and they set up camp, circling the few wagons and erecting tents in a clearing near a creek. Hod was sent to guard the women as they washed, his blindness a convenience for the other men.

He would wash later, when the camp was sleeping, but he longed to be clean now. The driver’s whip had left a long slice from his right ear to his nose, and the brambles of the hedge had marked his brow. His left eye was swollen shut, not that he needed it. He vaguely remembered his staff connecting with his cheekbone as he was tossed from the carriage roof. He was fortunate he hadn’t impaled himself.

He listened to the women and the trees around them, standing watch in the only way he could, logging the creatures and sorting the sounds. Fires had been started, the scent of smoke and stew wafting up into the air. Both warmth and food would do the women good. They had submerged themselves completely, dresses and all, scrubbing at the bloodstains on their skirts and sleeves before soaping everything else. They said very little as they washed, their splashing, their chattering teeth, and the squelch of their clothes their only communication.

They emerged from the river, the water sluicing from their limbs, and wrung out their skirts before wrapping themselves in blankets and trudging back to the tents. He followed them silently, a shadow with a staff, and when they ducked into the enclosure prepared for them, he made a shelter for himself, grateful for the provisions he’d been allotted. He’d retrieved his possessions from the carriage, and the women’s trunks had been transferred into a wagon. They had dry clothes, and furs to sleep on.

But Hod didn’t rest. He washed and ate and crawled into his tent. His face throbbed and his muscles ached, and he could hear Ghisla’s troubled heart as she drifted off and woke again, restlessly dreaming, hardly sleeping. When she said his name, knowing full well he would hear, he rose and went to her.

The sentry outside their tent had fallen asleep an hour after he arrived, and Hod shook him awake. It would be hours before the next watch came.

“I’m awake. I’ll take this shift,” he reassured the man, who stumbled off toward his tent, mumbling a grateful good night.

When he entered her tent, Ghisla was awake, and when he crouched down beside her, she sat up, silently greeting him. Her heart quickened, but it did not race, and her scent prickled his skin. She was warm and close, and he felt her eyes on his face.

“Alba sleeps deeply,” she murmured, “but you must listen and leave if she begins to stir.”

He nodded, his throat aching, his hands on his thighs. This was not what he wanted, this hushed conversation after all these years, but he would take it.

“You are hurt,” she whispered.

“I am fine.”

She raised her hands slowly, communicating her intentions, but when she rested her palms against his cheeks, he had to grit his teeth. It was not pain that made him harsh when she touched him. It was impatience. He had wanted to be near her for so long that he didn’t trust himself to be still. To be sane. To maintain the separation.

“Do not pull away. Please. I can help you.” She misinterpreted his discomfort.

“I will not pull away,” he ground out. It was the last thing he wanted to do.

She began to sing, the words so soft she barely said them, and his eyes began to stream.

Cry, cry, dear one, cry,

Let the pain out through your eyes.

Tears will wash it all away,

Cry until the bruises fade.

He groaned in relief, embarrassed by his tears, but she continued, her hands cool, her song tender, and he thought she might be crying too. He raised his hands and found her face, mirroring her position.

She was crying too, but she kept singing, softly coaxing his pain away.

Her face was small between his palms, the line of her jaw, the point of her chin, the tips of her brows, the lobes of her ears, all within his grasp. His thumbs rested at the corners of her mouth, feeling her words until her song ended. She did not move her hands. He did not move his.

“My rune is gone, Hod,” she whispered.

He nodded, a sob in his throat.

“Banruud burned his amulet into my hand.”

He nodded again.

“I tried to re-create the rune, but I could not. I sang and I sang . . . but you weren’t there.”

May the gods smite him now. He could not bear it.

“You thought I didn’t want you,” she moaned, and he knew she’d plucked the thoughts from his head as she’d leached the pain from his face.

He pulled away from her and dropped his hands, forcing her to drop hers.

He felt too much. He felt too much.

He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t smell. He couldn’t sense anything but her.

He rose and staggered from her tent, pulling air into his lungs and order to his thoughts as he walked deeper into the trees until he found a little clearing. For several long minutes he stood with his back to a big oak until his senses returned.

The camp was quiet, the night peaceful, the creatures stirring. He sensed no danger, no listening ears, no lurking strangers, but Ghisla had followed him.

“Hody,” Ghisla mourned, so softly. So sweetly. “Please don’t leave.”

He moved back toward her, wanting his staff, needing his shield, and knowing neither would help him now. He stopped several feet away, close enough to speak softly, far enough to not lose his mind.

“I thought you had . . . given up hope. That you had . . . given up . . . on me,” he whispered, trying not to scald her with the truth. “Arwin told me you would be queen of Saylok. He said you wore the king’s mark. Now I know what he meant. But I spent the last six years believing you were Banruud’s queen.”

“They call me Banruud’s harlot. His guards. They know I sing . . . but they are convinced, after all these years, that I do more.”

He did not want to hear it. It turned his belly into a gaping wound, and his rage into a mindless swarm. He could not afford to be senseless. He wanted to back away from her again, not in repudiation, but in self-preservation. He stepped forward instead, knowing that if he distanced himself now, she would think she’d repulsed him.

“I do not do more. I sing. I try not to be alone with him or to get too close to him. But there are times when I am . . . and . . . I do. I have navigated both as best I can.”

He dare not touch her, not in comfort or in support. He didn’t know if she would welcome it. She was rigid in front of him, her voice low, her breaths shallow. He let her speak, let her tell him what she wanted to say, and he kept his hands to his sides.

“The first time he kissed me, I told Master Ivo that it happened, and I swore I would never go near him again. Ivo agreed, but a week later, the king had a terrible headache and he kept sending for me. I held out strong until I found out he was giving ten lashes to every sentry who came back without me. Master Ivo scolded and stomped his feet, but the next week it became twenty lashes, then thirty, and one guard, not much more than a boy, died.

“I stopped threatening to quit singing and told him that if he forced himself on me, I would kill myself. You cannot coerce the dead. He must have believed me, for he has spared me that. But he is also afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Hod asked, his voice barely above a whisper. He was trying to simply listen, to not react, to not lose his mind. Banruud would die. If it was the last thing he did, Banruud would die.

“He is afraid of lying with me and making me with child,” Ghisla said, so tremulously her words didn’t leave her lips. “Queen Alannah had one dead son after another until it killed her. If Banruud takes another queen and the same thing happens again . . .”

“It begins to look as though he is the problem,” Hod finished for her.

“Yes. And calls into question Alba’s parentage. He fears, more than anything else, losing the power her birth gave him. He took her from Ghost. I’ve seen it time and time again in his thoughts. He stole a daughter and rejected a son. Two sons, though he didn’t know about you . . . No one knew about you.”

He wasn’t sure how or how long she’d known . . . but Ghisla knew most things. She carried Saylok’s secrets on her small shoulders.

“Did you know, Hod?” she asked softly.

“It is what my mother told Arwin. It is what Arwin told me the day he died.”

She swallowed her sympathy. He heard it in her throat and in the tightness of her jaw, but she forged ahead, setting Arwin aside.

“And you feel nothing for him?” Ghisla asked.

“For my father?”

He heard her curt nod.

“I feel curiosity. And I feel disgust. For him . . . and for myself. I do not like the similarities between us. I do not like that we both love the same woman.”

He heard Ghisla’s heart leap and wondered if it was horror or hope . . . or both.

“He does not love me,” she said.

“I think he does. In his way.”

“And you do not love me.” She sounded so sure, so adamant, and he wondered how she could know so much and not know that.

“You are the only thing on this earth that I love.”

Her hands fluttered to her lips and then slid to her throat. But she did not profess her love in return.

“I don’t know where your allegiance lies,” she said, and the words were a quiet sob that she tried desperately to suppress.

“I have none. I have no allegiance to Saylok. I have no allegiance to Banruud, or the temple, or a clan.”

“You could have let Banruud die today,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “It was instinct more than . . . anything. And his death . . . today . . . was not part of the plan.”

“What plan? Do you have any allegiance to the North King?” she cried.

“No. I care naught for the North King or his ambitions. I care only that it all . . . ends.”

“Then why? Why have you done this?”

“Done what, Ghisla?” He had not done any of the things he had dreamed of, and suddenly his weariness was so deep he could barely stand. An angry horde of screeching giants could descend upon the clearing and he wouldn’t hear them coming.

“You have aligned yourself with him. Gudrun is not a good man. Banruud is . . . not a good man.” It was too tepid a criticism, but Hod agreed.

“No. They are not good men.”

“Are you still a good man, Hod?” she whispered, almost begging him to reassure her. But he couldn’t.

“I have tried to be, but I don’t always know what is right. Sometimes . . . there is only survival.”

“And there is truth. The truth is right. The truth is good. That is what Master Ivo told me once, and that is what you must give me now.”

“The only truth I know is you, Ghisla. I have spent these last years trying to get back to you.”

She wanted to believe him. He could hear it in her sob and smell it on her skin. But she was afraid too. She was afraid of him. She was afraid for the future. And she was afraid that, in the end, there was nothing anyone could do to save them.

“Rest now, Ghisla of Tonlis,” he said. “Go back to your tent. There is nothing that must be decided tonight. And I can’t think when you are near.”

“I blind you,” she said sadly, the echoes of Arwin and a long-ago clearing all around them.

“Yes. And yet . . . you are the only one who makes me see.”

She turned away then, but she paused after a few steps.

“You will not leave?” she asked.

“I will not leave. I’ve come too far to turn back now.”