and find him, despite Dagmar’s threat.
The warriors from Adyar had won the melee—the young chieftain’s first victory—and the citizens of Adyar were the last to leave and the most inebriated. A group of seven—six men and a woman—talked loudly all the way down the hill and past the spot where he waited, tucked from view.
“It’s about time he won. He’s been chieftain since he was seventeen.”
“Seventeen cheers for Aidan of Adyar!”
“I had seventeen drinks for Adyar,” a farmer belched, and the stench caught the wind, making Hod wince in his spot beneath a tree. He guessed the man had also partaken in pickled pig and lamb chops at the feast.
“Feels like seventeen blows to my head,” another grumbled. “You should have tied me down and lashed me for drinking those last five pints.”
“I thought we’d see a lashing,” the woman mourned. “It’s not a tournament without a good lashing.”
“Or a public hanging. Last year we saw a dozen.”
“The king and the Highest Keeper almost came to blows.”
“And the daughter of the temple was burned at the hearth.”
“Yes. That’s true. I suppose it was a fine year after all.”
He’d listened for Ghisla too, but he’d lost her heartbeat in the clearing, and he’d not drawn close enough to find it again. Too much distance and too many stone walls separated them now. But the villagers’ talk of the daughter of the temple had him rising to his feet.
He’d heard comments all day that he had no context for, but not like this.
He walked toward the group, careful not to approach too quickly or startle them as he stepped out from the trees.
“Pardon me,” he said, keeping his distance. “I could not help but overhear. What happened to the daughter of the temple?”
Their hearts skipped and settled, and one man swayed and stumbled to the left.
“Hey . . . it’s Blind Hod!” the belching man chortled, and the others paused, processed, and then burst into raucous laughter.
“Son of Odin,” the middle fellow mocked, wheezing.
“Son of the king!” the woman added, and their guffaws grew.
He didn’t understand their mirth, but he doubted they knew his name. They were talking about Hod, the blind god, and they found themselves hilarious.
“What happened to the daughter of the temple,” he insisted, his voice louder, his hands tightening on his staff.
“The king did not like her running away,” the belching man said.
“Go on now, Blind Hod. Your father is calling.”
More laughter.
One of the men tossed a coin at his feet like he was a beggar, and the group began to move away, dismissing him.
“What did he do?” he shouted, and they halted, huffing in offense at his perceived belligerence.
“Shut up! For Odin’s sake. Yer makin’ my noggin pound,” moaned the man who’d complained about seventeen blows to his head.
The belching man took a swing at him that he heard and smelled a mile away. The man who’d tossed the coin tried to pick it up again, while another made a grab for the purse that hung from Hod’s belt. Hod jabbed his staff into the thief’s belly, swung it around to the side of his neck, and leveled the five other men in similar fashion. They helped, by tripping over themselves and each other in their attempts to run away.
It was not a fair fight . . . not at all. They were drunk and he was not. But he’d not started it. The woman was the meanest of them all, and he hadn’t wanted to strike her. He swung his stick beneath her feet and buckled her elbow with the end of his staff every time she tried to rise. On the third attempt, she bounced her forehead off the ground, and he left them all in a groaning pile and headed for the mount.
He heard Ghisla’s heartbeat halfway to the top, and as he neared the gates, he found Arwin too.
Arwin’s gait was altered, and his breathing labored, and he wept when Hod called his name. Hod slung the old man across his back and carried him to the bottom.
“I thought you dead. I thought you dead,” Arwin wailed, but when Hod tried to get answers as to what had occurred, Arwin stopped talking altogether.
They slept at the spot where he’d waited at the fork, but by the next morning, Arwin was weak with fever, and Hod bought a cart and a horse from a farmer in order to get his master home.
“It is healing quickly,” Ghost marveled a week later when she changed the