struggled to keep his tone politely disinterested.
“She’s pretty, I suppose. Her eyes are quite blue, but her cheekbones are too sharp and her hair too severe. The daughters all wear their hair in braided crowns, but it does not suit her. She’s a little on the small side. Too thin, if you ask me. She wears the purple robe of the keepers and a dress in Leok green. Some say the king favors her. But I don’t know why.”
“Ghisla,” he breathed.
“No, no. Liis. Liis of Leok,” the old woman corrected, like he wasn’t just blind but deaf too.
“You said the king favors her?”
“Yes. It is said she has a beautiful voice. Mayhaps she will sing . . . and I will form a more favorable opinion.”
“But she is not . . . his queen?” he asked.
The old woman cackled. “She mayhaps thinks she is. She acts as though she is our better. But no. She is not the queen. Banruud has not taken another queen. Not since poor Alannah, Odin keep her.”
Hod followed Ghisla’s movements, tracking her thrumming heart through the press of people on every side. The old woman kept prattling on, describing things he cared nothing about. He wanted only to know about her.
He had not allowed himself to nurse hope these last years. He’d done nothing but survive. But now he was here. And she was here.
“The daughters have gone into the keep,” the old woman announced. “The king and Chief Benjie are approaching the Northmen. The North King is a fearsome man. He blackens his eyes like the keepers and wears bones in his hair and rings in his ears. I hardly dare look at him. Be glad you are spared that, blind man.”
Had he not been so distracted he might have smiled.
“Some think there will be an announcement soon. A betrothal. Perhaps that is why Liis of Leok is here. Then mayhaps . . . the Northmen will go,” the woman added, wistful.
“Thank you for helping me,” he said, bowing slightly. He began moving away. There were plans to be made.
“I’ve not seen you before in the village,” the woman said, moving with him. She wasn’t ready to stop talking now that she had someone to listen to her. “Did you come from the inlands?”
“No. I came with the Northmen.” He opened his eyes and smiled, showing her his teeth and his empty gaze.
She gasped, and he heard her shuffle back. She would not follow him now.
“Liis of Leok is not cold,” he said as he turned away.
The old woman huffed as if to say, “How would you know?”
“And her voice will make you weep.”
He found Gudrun, the North King, sprawled on a pile of skins in the company of a handful of his men. They’d taken possession of a chateau overlooking the port of Garbo and the North Sea not far from the chieftain’s keep. Benjie had promised the ousted landowner it would be returned to him when the Northmen left. Hod doubted the man would want it. The Northmen were filthy, and they had no regard for the possessions of others. They’d taken it, and it was theirs now.
They’d burned the furniture that got in the way; they required space to sleep and there weren’t enough bedchambers for so many. The iron tub off the kitchen had not seen a single use, except for a place to piss when the hour was late and the pisser was lazy. The great hall of the keep reeked of sweat and waste and animal fat, and Hod steeled himself against the barrage on his senses as he stepped inside. The Northmen did not live this way in their own lands; they had wives to scold them there. But none of them seemed to mind the mayhem or the stench, and they stretched themselves in front of the fire, discussing the day’s events.
When they were not on the boats, Hod did not sleep among the other men. He’d learned he was safer—and a good deal cleaner—when he pitched his own tent and kept his distance from the others. In the beginning, he’d not had that luxury. The North King had kept him under constant watch, but slowly that had changed. Hod had earned his solitude and the king’s trust, and he was mostly left alone. He was greeted when he walked into the room, and Gudrun told him to sit.
“I would rather stand, Sire.”
The men laughed. It was an ongoing joke they never tired of. Hod did