“His name is not Blind Hod,” Ghisla said, her voice low. She hated when people called him that, as if his sightlessness was part of his name. “He is Hod. And I do not . . . know him.” Once she had. Once she’d known him better than she knew herself.
“But you did,” Alba guessed, nodding, warming to her conclusion. She crowed and clapped, thrilled at the surprising discovery.
“Alba,” Ghisla protested softly. “Please. Please. Let us not speak of this.” Hod would be able to hear, but that was not what scared her most. Any familiarity between them would be noticed and punished. Alba knew this. It was why she’d immediately warned Hod to not linger.
“He does not act like the other Northmen. He is quiet and . . . very clean. He reminds me a little of Bayr too. He is humble, though he has every reason to be proud. He does not boast or brag like most men do.” She paused and then made her pronouncement. “I like him very much.”
“You would, Alba. You have a soft spot for the strange.” Ghisla winced at her own words. Hod would think them critical when they were not. She too had a soft spot for the strange, and Hod’s peculiarities had always been precious to her.
“No.” Alba shook her head. “Not for the strange. For the good. He is good.”
He once was. Once, he was very good. But Ghisla didn’t know anymore. They’d been parted too long, and he was too removed. Too different.
“I thought you seemed nervous around him. That is not like you. You are so self-contained,” Alba said, prying, curious.
“I will not speak of this,” Ghisla insisted again.
“All right, Liis,” Alba sighed. “We will not speak of it. Your secret is safe with me.”
Her sisters did not know about her past with Hod. She’d never confessed to having feelings for him, never spoken of him at all. But Ivo knew. Dagmar knew. And if Dagmar knew, Ghost knew.
It would be seen as an omen when they discovered he’d returned to the mount.
She would be warned to stay away from him and watched even more closely than before.
It made her angry. Hod had done nothing but supplicate the keepers for a place among them. He was blind, but he was fully capable and supremely well-trained in the art of the runes as well as for the defense of the temple. He’d been raised up for a purpose, and his purpose had been denied him. He’d been branded a risk, a threat, a portent, and he’d been rejected.
They could not reject him now.
He would not need or seek their acceptance. For whatever incomprehensible reason, he was now a servant of the North King, an emissary between lands, and Master Ivo would have no influence over him whatsoever.
For the first time since she’d seen Hod’s face in Chief Benjie’s great hall, Ghisla smiled.
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.