of Leok,” she insisted, her voice rising. “And I am a girl.”
Lothgar barked in laughter and his brother cursed in disbelief.
“The girl is small, but her tongue is sharp. She seems to have a firm grasp on the situation, young as she is,” Lothgar said to him. “You look like a daughter of Leok,” the chief conceded. “Your hair is fair and your eyes are blue.”
“She looks like your daughters, Lord. Like our mother too,” Lykan mused. Chief Lothgar studied her, his hand stroking the length of his beard.
“But she wasn’t born in Leok,” he said. “She is young, and we would have heard. Her parents would have brought her to me for the blessing.”
“Mayhaps her parents were travelers between lands,” Lykan suggested. “Mayhaps she belongs to the rovers.”
“I belong to no one,” Ghisla said. The two men gaped at her once more. It was as though they could hardly believe their eyes.
After a moment, Lothgar spoke again. “And . . . why . . . do you want to go to the temple?”
“Because I belong to no one,” she repeated. “In the temple I’ll eat.”
Lothgar nodded slowly and his brother spoke again.
“We have no one else to send, Lothgar.”
“No.” Lothgar shook his head. “We don’t. Not without raiding the homes of our people.”
“You would have slain any man who tried to separate you from your daughters,” his brother murmured.
Lothgar’s eyes darkened, but he nodded his head. “That I would.”
“Yet here is this child. A girl child. We don’t know where she came from . . . but I find I don’t much care,” Lykan admitted.
Lothgar sat back in his chair with an air of relief. “Praise Odin,” he whispered. “Nor do I.” He tugged on his beard and studied her a moment more, but she held his gaze. It had gone just as Arwin said it would. They had no one else.
“You will have to have a name, daughter of Leok,” Lothgar murmured. “What shall we call you?”
She had no idea what a daughter of Leok would be called, and she held her tongue.
Lykan spoke up again. “We should call her Liis. For our mother. Surely she sent her to us,” he said.
“Liis of Leok,” Lothgar grunted. “It is fitting.”
“Come here, girl,” Lykan demanded. She did as she was told, halting directly in front of the chieftain’s chair.
Lothgar removed a blade from his boot and nicked the side of his thumb.
“The gods have spoken, and I will not refuse a gift so obvious.” He smeared his blood across her forehead and rested his big palm over her head.
“Liis of Leok it is.”
Chief Lothgar turned her over to his wife, a handsome woman about the age Ghisla’s mother had been. The wife took one look at Ghisla and called for “Lagatha and Lisbet,” two old women who came quickly, skirts swishing. They drew up short, tripping over one another in their surprise.
“Oh, Lady Lothgar! It is true, then? We were certain Ludlow was telling stories,” they babbled, almost as one.
“We will draw a bath and find the child something to wear,” Lothgar’s wife instructed, and the women bobbed and nodded, accompanying Ghisla and the lady up a flight of stairs to a bedchamber with a small iron tub. A winch lowered a platform near the bath to the floor below. Buckets of hot water from the laundry were set on the platform and it was sent up again, and the old women had the tub filled in no time.
“Get in, child,” Lady Lothgar instructed.
Ghisla tried to do so without removing her clothes, and the women clucked and scolded, descending on her like thieves, and Hod’s tunic and hose were whisked away. She scampered to the tub and threw herself into the water, embarrassed by her nakedness. Her shoulders, ribs, and hips jutted out sharply, and her knees were the widest part of her spindly legs. She’d changed into Hod’s tunic and hose in a rush. She had not looked at herself without clothes since . . . since . . . She could not remember when. It was before death had come to Tonlis.
“She’s no meat on her bones!” Lagatha—or maybe she was Lisbet—exclaimed.
“Yes . . . and these clothes will not do,” Lady Lothgar fretted. “Nothing I have will fit—there’s not a gown in the village that will fit—but surely we can do better than these. We can’t send her to the temple dressed as a boy.”
The rune Hod had carved into her hand smarted as she sank into