Eirik looked down. Something was troubling him, but Gunnar had no idea why that would be true. Heâd gone off to battle numerous times without this concern from his brother. Deep down, he realised that it must be linked to the strange memory of pain, but he couldnât hold on to the thought long enough to formulate a question. Finally, Eirik met his gaze again and said, âI want you to live, Brother. Remember that when you awaken.â
Gunnar intended to ask what he meant, but then Eirik pressed a small wooden barrel of mead to his side and draped Gunnarâs arm around it. It was the kind they would strap to their horses when out on a short campaign. He pulled out the cork and pressed it to Gunnarâs lips. Gunnar obliged him and took a long draught, but something didnât feel right.
âDrink more if you feel pain.â Eirik put the cork back in and rested the barrel against Gunnarâs side.
âWhere are we going?â
âI do this for your interest, Gunnar.â
The ship rocked and he recognised that it meant they were leaving the dock and heading towards the sea. But there was a disturbing hole in his memory and his time with Eirik was fading. The blackness was settling around his vision and threatening to overpower him again. He grabbed Eirikâs cloak and pulled him back. âWhere are you sending me?â
âLive, Brother.â Then he pulled away from Gunnarâs grasp with ridiculous ease and seemed to disappear.
Gunnar tried to sit up, but his head swam and began to ache, so he laid back and allowed the comforting blackness to claim him.
* * *
Gunnar floated the entire trip, his body lightened by the strange sense of weightlessness that followed him. There were times when he realised something was odd, that his limbs werenât responding as they should, that his thoughts were muddled, but he couldnât find the strength to care. The allure of sleep was too much to resist. Its relentless pull on him was the only thing that grounded him. That split second before it overcame him was the only moment when he felt as if his body was connected to the world around him; it weighted him down and pressed his back solidly to the wooden platform that had become his world.
Most of the time his dreams were nightmares, clawing at his mind with their vicious memories of the past. As always happened when his mind turned dark, it took him back to that night heâd spent with Kadlin. He remembered how heâd spent hours gazing down at her beautiful face, peaceful in sleep. Heâd wanted to remember it for ever, because heâd known the horrible words that would have to be said before he left her. Heâd known that he had to push her away, even as it had turned his stomach to mar something so precious.
Then the nightmare shifted to that sunny day as an adolescent when he had finally acknowledged that he was as worthless as his father liked to claim. It was the day he had tried unsuccessfully to strike from his memory; the day that he and Eirik had been attacked. A small group of criminals had found them fishing and had overpowered them, tying them up and taunting them with promises of their dark intentions. Gunnar had managed to escape his bonds and had run until he found a washerwoman who sent her son to get their father, so Gunnar had returned. Except heâd been too young and powerless to do anything except hide and listen to Eirikâs screams as the men tortured and violated him. Heâd made himself listen, absorbing every scream as if it had been his own, each one a confirmation of how contemptible he really was. Confirmation that had only been reinforced once his father had arrived and saved Eirik only to sneer at his bastard for not intervening.
At times Eirikâs screams would become the hounds of Helheim hunting him down. At other times, the bays of the hounds would become his father reminding him of his many failures. Or the screams of his father on those nights when heâd imbibe too much mead and seek Gunnar out to rail at his son for making Finna, his mother, leave them. Heâd awoken many times with a blackened eye from those encounters. Theyâd begun to happen so often that heâd run to Kadlinâs home when he knew his father was in one of those moods. So, naturally, when his nightmares conjured up those memories, he would escape the nightmare and find himself in her arms. Only this time they werenât children.
The dreams were so vivid that he was sure that he was finally with her. He twined his hand in her flaxen hair and felt the silk sliding through his fingers; he felt the softness of her mouth beneath his thumb as he rimmed her lips and pressed inside the moist heat just as he had claimed her body; he sang songs to her that he had never even heard before. It was what he had hoped would happen if he died. If not for his occasional awakenings and nightmares, he would have thought the battle had killed him. Though he couldnât actually remember the battle, just riding towards it. Heâd never admit it, though. What warrior would admit to forgetting an entire battle?
Finally, a new voice woke him enough to make him realise that he wasnât floating any more. The world had stopped and a real beast bayed in the distance.
âFreyja!â a womanâs voice called out. The word crashed through his brain and he struggled to understand it. âFreyja!â
When he was finally able to make his eyes open, a mongrelâs giant snout appeared in his line of vision, just before a large, wet tongue stroked his face. He grimaced at the sensation, but then sobered when he saw that Kadlin loomed over him, her hair loose and flowing around her shoulders, the sky a fair blue behind her. She looked angry, vengeful. Not his sweet Kadlin. Then it dawned on him what he should have known all along. He had died in battle. Instead of spending eternity in Valhalla, Freyja had claimed him instead. Eirik had sent him off on his journey to Folkvangr. He laughed with bitterness. It seemed appropriate that the goddess would look just like Kadlin.
Death hadnât provided a relief to his torment after all.
Gunnar looked as close to death as sheâd ever seen anyone look with a beating heart.
âGet him inside.â Kadlin forced the words past a throat that threatened to close and stood back out of the way so that Vidar and the two men heâd brought with him could unload Gunnar from the wagon. If not for the distinctive red of his hair and the fact that Vidar accompanied him, she wasnât entirely sure that she would have known who had been delivered to her door. Gunnarâs cheeks were hollowed and his frame shrunken from that of her memories. His skin had taken on a grey, unnatural pallor that twisted her heart. This was not the powerful warrior she had known.
The men hoisted him and walked past her to the sod house. His strange laugh lingered behind him, making her shiver from the unnaturalness of it. She was no stranger to the smells of men newly arrived from sea, but she covered her nose and mouth as she followed them inside and directed them to place their burden on a large bench in an alcove off of the main room. One of the men pressed a small barrel to Gunnarâs mouth so that he drank, spilling a good bit of it down his neck.
Kadlin stared down at the man she had loved, afraid to touch him, afraid that it would wake her from this bizarre dream where nothing seemed real. One minute she had been hanging the freshly washed linens and the next Vidar was calling to her. Heâd ridden ahead of the cart and sheâd heard Gunnarâs name, but had been so overwhelmed she hadnât understood the rush of
Vidarâs words. Even now, with him lying before her, she could barely believe he was there.
His head fell back to the bench and lolled to the side. Whatever animation heâd had, the drink had taken it from him, leaving him unnaturally still. She might have thought he was dead if she hadnât just met his eyes with her own. His flesh was so drawn and pale that she didnât know how he had survived the journey across the sea. Perhaps he hadnât. Perhaps heâd only come here to die.
âWhatâs happened to him, Vidar?â As the