his sticky fingers would irritate Hod more than anything else. Hod grimaced and stood, making his way to the place where a small spring trickled between the rocks.
After he’d been sent from the temple, he’d begun to grow his hair. The hair had bothered him until it grew long enough to slick it down. He kept the sides of his head shaved smooth—he couldn’t stand the whisper around his ears or the way it altered sound—but the hair on top remained; if he could not be a keeper, he did not want to look like one.
“You look like a skunk,” Arwin had complained, but Hod had just tugged on his teacher’s braided beard and patted his bald head, reminding him that he had no room to criticize.
He splashed water over his face, up his arms, and down his tight center braid, removing the residue of the berries and filling up his flask so he could clean Arwin’s hands as well.
When he returned to the rock, Arwin had risen and was ready to leave. Hod helped him wash and hoisted him up on his back. It wasn’t until they were almost to the cave that Arwin spoke again, his voice sleepy, his beard tickling Hod’s cheek.
“Baldr is the Temple Boy, Hod. Bayr. Bayr is Baldr.”
Hod had never shared the things Ghisla had told him with Arwin. In the beginning it was because his knowledge would have had to be explained. Now it was simply . . . useless. The temple was closed to him, Ghisla lost to him, and Arwin would not remember tomorrow what Hod said today.
“Bayr is not the son of Odin, Master. He is the son of a lying, murderous king. And I would never harm him.”
Arwin grew lax against his back, and Hod doubted he heard.
He had intended to hunt, but when he settled in a thicket, waiting for the wind to shift so he could approach his prey undetected, he’d fallen asleep. He awoke with a start sometime later, and immediately knew something was amiss. He cast his senses wide, sifting, searching. He’d been so tired and slept so deeply that he had no sense of how much time had passed. Though the wind pressed cold fingers into his sides and pinched at his cheeks, he didn’t think night had fallen; the sounds were different in the darkness—the creatures that woke and those that slept were not the same—and the temperature had not yet dropped. The air wasn’t balmy, but it wasn’t cold.
He couldn’t hear Arwin. But that did not alarm him. He was a ways from the cave and the rock walls muffled the sound from inside, especially deeper within.
The crashing of the surf was a sound that became almost invisible after living in the cave all these years. Like the sound of his own breath or his ongoing, never-ending stream of consciousness that never quieted, even when he was asleep.
The waves still broke and billowed over the rocks and sand, but there was another sound . . . like water against a hull. There were boats in the bay. Longships, like those of the Northmen. He listened again and, once satisfied that his immediate surroundings were clear, rose, secured his bow, and made his way out of the thicket and down the mountain path toward the cave.
Every few feet he stopped, listened, and began again.
He could hear the men now, though water, wind, and distance made it impossible to tell how many. More than a dozen—maybe two—and their heartbeats hugged the shore, indicating they’d disembarked. They must have caught a perfect tide, and those were rare. The inlet near the cave was not conducive to visits by travelers. The sea beyond the mouth usually carried vessels east toward Adyar or west to the tip of Leok. The area in between was a churning eddy above a sandbar that made natural access difficult and kept the bay beyond it mostly unexplored. In the time he’d lived in these cliffs, the sea had only washed up a single traveler: Ghisla.
But there were boats and men in the bay now, that much was clear, and Hod would need to investigate.
He hurried into the cavern, dropping his bow and unsheathing his blade without pausing. He carved a rune of cover in the dirt near the entrance and dripped his blood at its center. He did not want a cave full of curious Northmen.
“Arwin?”
Hod could not hear him moving about, but he felt him and knew he was near.