Thora’s son carried her through the busy marketplace. She clung onto him and stared around. There were all sorts of people here, even affluent. Thora spotted a wealthy woman in a dark red dress and matching coat walk into the market from out by the stables. Bulky guards flanked her on each side, crosses clearly visible on their neck-rings. Wealthy Christians like her were the reason things continued to get worse. They were the reason Thora couldn’t walk around with a proud Thor’s hammer around her neck. Anyone who dared to do that would undoubtedly be burned at the pyre.
‘Are you getting cold?’ asked Thora’s son. She had begun to shake from the cold, although she hardly noticed. ‘You want to go back down to the ship?’ She hugged him all the tighter, for although her son spoke the local tongue, he had always pronounced the word ship like she did, like a true Jute.
‘That might be good,’ she agreed. They had already been to the smith and Thora was not as interested in what else the market had to offer. ‘For you too. You must be tired from carrying your old mother around.’
‘I’m fine, Ma,’ he assured her, as he always did, and always had. ‘It’s good training for this summer.’ He shifted her higher up on his back and flexed his muscles as if to demonstrate.
His daughter giggled at his joke and tried to hang onto his lower arm as he squeezed it.
‘That’s what I’m supposed to tell you,’ Thora said and clapped Halfdan on the arm so he would stop pressing against her legs.
Her legs had not been the same since Magadoborg. All the spears and arrows they had taken and the fall from top of the barricade. She had been told stories of it, but she had been too far gone in her berserker rage to remember much, other than blood and yelling. All Thora truly remembered was waking up in pain, and the months of pregnancy that had followed. How she had unsuccessfully tried to get on her feet again, and how she had stopped trying.
‘Shall we take you down to the ship?’ Halfdan asked again as he uncurled little Ida’s claws from around his arm and set her on the ground.
‘Ja.’ They still had things to buy, but the pain had returned in Thora’s back where a southern arrowhead no one had been able to remove remained lodged. The pain of it had begun to spread from being carried so long, and the cold was creeping in, too. Besides, she wanted Halfdan and Ida to have some time alone as father and daughter.
Leaving the market, they headed to the harbour, laughing about the people and things they had seen.
They passed the Christian cross on the harbour where the tall carved figures of the gods had stood before Olaf had declared himself king. Now there were only crosses—everywhere. Everything Thora had fought to prevent. She spat at the cross as they passed.
‘Someday you’ll get in trouble for that,’ her son warned her.
‘Who’s going to kick an old cripple like me?’ she retorted. ‘Give me a spear, point me their way, and I’ll colour their crosses red.’ She glanced down at Ida, who had sharpened her ears to hear what her father and grandmother were talking about. Thora stopped herself from voicing what else she would do to anyone who complained, not that Ida hadn’t heard worse.
‘I don’t think you have enough wrinkles to be considered old,’ her son said.
‘Ah, watch out, Halfdan, I don’t think Ida agrees with that,’ Thora replied. ‘Do you, Ida?’
‘What is conseared?’ asked little Ida, exactly as she had been taught to do.
‘Considered,’ her father corrected. ‘To think carefully about something. So, consider this: does your grandmother look old?’
Ida looked up at Thora and thought carefully about that. ‘Ja,’ she decided and all three of them laughed, Ida most of all. She was the prettiest girl in all the nine worlds when she laughed, and even when she didn’t. She understood so much for her age. ‘But not like the other grandmothers,’ Ida kindly added as they walked down the pier towards their ship.
None of the crew had arrived yet. Thorgald was usually early, but they had agreed to meet at midday and it was still morning. At least Thora would be on the ship as she waited for the crew to gather. She loved just sitting there and watching her ship, and the sea, too.
‘Wait here,’ Halfdan told Ida in front of the ship. He let go of Thora’s right leg, which fell to his side, and Thora clung firmer onto him as he carefully stepped from the pier onto the ship with her on his back. He carried her all the way to the back of the ship, lifting his legs high so as not to trip on any of the rowing benches. Thora kissed him on the cheek in thanks as he set her onto the helmsman bench.
‘Do you need to pee before we go?’ he asked in a lowered voice, crouching in front of her, as he packed her legs into a wool blanket. He knew that she hated it when he asked, but still he did.
Thora shook her head.
‘Are you sure? I won’t be back for a while.’
Thora waved him off and busied herself scooting further back on the helmsman bench, dragging her legs and feet into place and strapping herself in, so she could sit upright.
Finally, Halfdan nodded and walked down the ship and onto the pier again where little Ida waited.
Thora watched them leave. Halfdan was as kind as his father had been. He tickled his daughter and lifted her up to sit on his shoulders mid-giggle. The sight made Thora smile fondly. Sigismund too would have made a good father, if he had lived long enough to see his son be born.
Sometimes she liked to imagine what could have been if Ran and Aegir had not claimed him after that bloodied winter in Magadoborg. Sometimes, when she was out sailing, she wished for them to claim her too. Most of the time she was just happy that the gods had at least spared Halfdan. It had been good that Sigismund had agreed to let them sail on separate ships back then. Thanks to that decision, Halfdan had been able to grow up in Midgard and live a life.
The wealthy woman from the marketplace walked past Halfdan and Ida, in her red wool dress with silk strips. The large guards were no longer at her flank.
The rich woman eyed the large cross as she passed. Thora prepared herself for what was to come. Her son was right; finally, Thora would pay for the many times she had spat at that Christian cross by the harbour side.
The woman walked down the pier, and with her long, elegant legs, stepped right onto Thora’s ship.
‘I did not invite you aboard,’ Thora said in a strict voice that left no room for compromise, but the woman did not listen, and Thora was in no position to grab her silk clothes and carry the woman off the ship by force.
‘Do you know who I am?’ asked the woman as she came closer, balancing on top of the rowing benches.
‘Nej,’ answered Thora, but there was something strangely familiar about the woman. While most Christian women liked to keep their hair shorter, rarely ever braided, this woman’s long brown hair was braided in an old style that few still knew. Back in Ash-hill, Vigmer’s wife Siv had used to wear her hair that way. It had highlighted her elegance, as it highlighted this woman’s beauty.
The woman stared at Thora’s legs, unsurprised and unflinching, as few people were at Thora’s old injuries. ‘You are Thora of Ash-hill, aren’t you?’
‘Not anymore,’ said Thora instead of asking the woman how she knew. ‘But this is still my ship, and you’re not welcome.’
The pain in Thora’s lower back was getting worse and she just wanted to be left alone until her son and their crew came back from the market.
‘It might be your ship, but the harbour is mine,’ said the woman with a smile. She was not just any rich Christian then, she was the king’s wife.
Thora gulped down the worry at what would happen to her for treating the wife of King Olaf as she had and frowned again. ‘Then you can stand on the pier for as long as you want. This is my ship.’
‘You won’t even allow an old friend to come aboard?’ asked the woman.
‘I don’t have any old friends here,’ said Thora, but then she took another look at the woman, and there was so much that was familiar about her. Maybe they had raided together, in a past long gone, although the woman seemed much too young for that. Brown hair and eyes like hers were rare to see so far north, though, and her hair was not just in a similar style to the one Siv had always worn back in Ash-hill, it was the exact same. The strong shape of her jaw, too, felt familiar. Few women had jaws like that, like Gunna, whom Thora had sailed with on her first few raids.
‘You’re Gunna’s daughter, aren’t you?’
‘Tyra,’ said the woman and nodded.
Thora opened her arms wide, and Tyra willingly leaned into the hug. ‘Little Tyra,’ Thora muttered as she stroked Tyra’s hair. Once, so long ago, she had raided with Tyra’s elder sisters, and she had thought that someday she might raid with Tyra too, and show her the ways, but then the southerners had attacked and their lives had never been the same. ‘We thought you died in Ash-hill.’
‘And I thought you died in Magadoborg,’ Tyra said, pulling back from their hug.
Thora smiled. She had thought herself dead, considering all the wounds she had taken before she had collapsed. The berserker mushrooms had done their deed. She had charged without any thought of consequence, roaring for blood. In the oddest of moments, she still remembered what it was like to be invincible.
‘How did you know it was me?’ Thora asked. She never would have recognised Tyra, if she had not come to her as she had. It had been so long ago, and Tyra had been so young.
‘We crossed paths two nights ago. I heard that little girl say your name. I was hoping you would still be here, and I heard you speak. Your accent is the same.’
‘Our last day in town,’ Thora said. ‘We sail out at midday.’
‘Perfect,’ said Tyra and twisted away. Clearly, she had not come to reminiscence about old days. Something was amiss, and not just the fact that she was wearing silk-decorated clothes, owned the pier, and had guards following her.
‘How are you here…?’ Thora asked warily. Perhaps this was some new scheme designed by King Olaf to catch more of the Alfather’s loyal followers to burn on his pyres. Yet the woman in front of Thora was most definitely Tyra Gunnasdóttir. There was no doubt. She looked so much like her parents and her sisters.
‘It’s a long story, but I’m here, married, because Siv trusted me to make a change for the better.’
‘Siv is alive?’ asked Thora. Neither of their bodies had been found in the remains of Ash-hill, but many others also hadn’t been found, and many pieces of corpses had no known owner. Both of them had been presumed dead.
‘Siv isn’t around anymore.’ Tyra took a deep sigh and looked at the pier. ‘I can’t be gone too long,’ she said as if to steer them towards a different sort of talk. ‘Or the guards will suspect I didn’t go to the wool trader as I told them I would. They can’t find us together.’
‘Then tell me why you’ve come,’ Thora said. No more formalities were needed. They were both from Ash-hill, they were as good as kin, and Thora had never let a kinsman down.
‘My husband is getting suspicious. He knows I work for the Alfather. He is trying to force me into a confession so he can burn me like the rest of our kinsmen, and I can’t let him.’
It felt like a trap, but at the same time, Thora knew that she could not afford to think of it as such. No matter what clothes Tyra wore and no matter who she was married to now and what faith she truly kept in her heart, she was as good as a kinsman.
‘I can’t keep anything un-Christian with me anymore.’ She reached for a dagger in her belt.
Thora was ready to defend herself, but the dagger was already dripping with blood. Tyra’s silk skirts were darkened from it. ‘You’re bleeding.’
‘The nine worlds are bleeding,’ answered Tyra, and then she smiled. ‘Finally, I have found a fresh cloth to bind the wound.’
‘I hope you don’t mean me, because I’m hardly fresh,’ Thora said to make them both laugh. ‘Although I do know my binding knots.’ All she gained from Tyra was a brief smile.
Tyra held the dagger out in both hands as if it were an offering before the gods. ‘I need to get this to Svend Haraldson,’ she said. ‘Tell him it’s from his sister, and he will know what to do.’
‘His sister?’ asked Thora as she took the blade into her own hands. The blood wasn’t from a wound the dagger had inflicted—it seemed to come from inside the metal. Blood oozed from it and dripped along the length of the short blade.
‘After the battle, Siv married Harald of Jelling,’ Tyra explained. ‘They adopted me.’
Thora gaped up at Tyra. That explained the elegant dresses, and her braided hair and just about everything else. So, this was Tyra Haraldsdóttir she heard such gossip about. Little Tyra from Ash-hill. How far she had come.
‘You must come visit us sometime,’ said Thora, trusting that their shared past would have prompted Tyra not to lie. ‘For Winter Nights.’ No Christian celebrated Winter Nights anymore.
‘I heard you once sacrificed southerners in Magadoborg for Winter Nights,’ Tyra said. It truly was her. ‘It would be an honour to feast with you again, someday.’
They both smiled at the knowledge, and the promise, and their secret exchange. Tyra rose from the bench and with a final smile to Thora returned to the pier. Thora watched her walk away, but not once did Tyra glance back.
She was no longer the girl Thora remembered from Ash-hill. Tyra had become a woman, and although she carried no weapons anymore, not even a dagger, she was clearly a warrior.