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“I need to get out of here,” Lothar said, sitting on the stool with his knees higher than his waist while Dara examined his wound.
“Where?” Dara gently pushed and pulled at the gash with her fingers, testing the stitches for seepage.
“I’ve been inside long enough that I feel like a youngling.” He placed his hand gently over her fingers and pulled them away from his chest. “I need an ax.”
Dara gasped and pulled her fingers away. “What do you need that for?” She had already given him a knife and some rope; if he meant to kill her, he already had weapons.
“I’ve noticed the pen for your sheep could use some repair.”
“I have an ax,” she confessed and walked to the door. “I’ll get it.” Dara walked outside to her gardening tools and picked out the dull rusted blade with the split handle. Grinning to herself that he’d never be able to use it, she carried it back inside.
Lothar laughed. “That’s no ax.” He slapped his knee and then stood. He walked over and took the tool from of her hands. “It’s smaller than the one I had when I reached five summers.”
“Well, if you don’t want it...”
“I can repair it,” Lothar said, surveying it and nodding. “First, I will need a handle.” He turned, strode over to the stool, lifted it and smashed it against the floor.
* * *
DARA PULLED THE LAST of the weeds from her winter garden while she watched for Lothar. As she tilled the soil, Dara thought about how he’d helped with repairs around her home; spending the last two weeks chopping young alder trees, lashing them together and rebuilding the shelter for the sheep, and fixing a small ring so her pony could move around freely. He placed new reed thatch over the gaping holes in the roof of the pitched hut. Using thin branches, he created a new shelter for her beehives, while he crafted two taller stools out of thicker branches.
Late afternoons, Lothar returned from the forest. He’d be carrying a rabbit, tied on the rope, already skinned and gutted. She was impressed with his success at catching those pesky creatures that had haunted her garden for so long. Now with fewer rabbits, she might actually be able to grow a decent crop.
Nightly, after their meal, she examined his wound. Her face flushed every time Lothar removed his tunic, revealing an expansive chest that tapered to a firm stomach. Her hands trembled slightly last night when the underlying muscle of his shoulders flexed as she removed the stitches. She watched the muscle relax when she rubbed a little salve upon the area. She wondered if he contracted the muscle on purpose. She caught a glimpse of a smile, but he had turned his head quickly away.
Dara shook her head from her musings. After pulling another stubborn weed, Dara wiped perspiration from her forehead, and glanced up. Lothar swaggered down the hill, returning with the hatchet in one hand and dragging three long tree trunks, lashed together, behind him. Dara stepped from the garden towards him, spotting a rip on the upper arm of his tunic, a dark stain underneath the torn linen.
“You’re hurt,” she gasped.
Lothar dropped the trees near the garden. “It’s nothing but a scratch,” he replied. “Do not worry, Valkyrie.”
Dara shook her head, watched him put down the hatchet, take off the shirt, and walk to the sheep’s fresh water barrel. Quickly he dunked his head in the water, came back up and grinned at her. His eyebrows wiggled up and down while droplets fell from the scraggly facial hair he refused to shave off. Then she noticed his eyes turn serious as he looked past her, drying his head with his shirt while he came closer.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” a voice taunted behind her. “Hey, Serle, looks like the witch has a new cock to bed her.”
Dara whirled around. Two men came down the path. She recognized them as the men she’d overheard Vaughn talking with that night. She turned from the two interlopers as shame and humiliation fought their way to her face. Her eyes filled. She closed her eyes tight, willing tears not to spill.
* * *
LOTHAR STEPPED IN FRONT of Dara. “It’s never a good day to call any woman a witch,” his deep voice threatened while he casually walked towards the men. “Or a man a cock, even when you think he can’t hear you.” Lothar glared down his nose at the stout man who was less than a head shorter than he. The second man, whose face was covered with pockmarks, swallowed as he stared up at Lothar.
“The witch killed our friend Vaughn, after he pricked her good,” Serle slurred, making rutting motions with his groin. “Isn’t that right, Park?”
Lothar rolled his eyes at the first man. “I can’t blame your friend for dying, if he gesticulated like that.” He smirked when the man ceased his demonstration, straightened his tunic, and went silent.
“He drowned in the river,” the pock-marked man stated.
“Of course your friend knew how to swim, before going into the water,” Lothar countered again, crossing his arms in front of his bare chest. He watched the two shrug their shoulders and grumble to one another.
“We are here to remind the witch that her taxes to King Malachy are due next week,” Park finally announced.
“And to get a look at her goods. Are you now prickin’ the witch?” Serle laughed. His beefy tongue hung out while he elbowed his thin friend.
“Get off my land!” Dara yelled as she charged past Lothar, who grabbed her by the waist and held her away. Lothar turned his head when she screamed in Gaeilge, while she struggled against his hold. He watched the pock-marked one flinch a bit, but the stout one just pointed and laughed.
Lothar gritted his teeth when she dug her nails into his arm, trying to free herself, but he held her firmly against his side. He clenched his hands into fists. He ached to feel the impact of his fist on Serle’s jaw.
“I can always let her loose,” Lothar warned, and flicked his head sideways.
The two men snorted, turned and walked back up the path.
He released Dara when the men were a safe distance away. Dara stormed inside the hut, and slammed the door. The sound echoed through the area causing the sheep to scatter in the corral.
Lothar ambled to the hut, and carefully opened the door. His eyes followed Dara’s movements as she paced the floor. He couldn’t understand what she grumbled; his ears still rung from her fuming, and her words were too fast for him to interpret. Hearing her furious tone and watching her pick up objects and then slam them down again, he quickly decided it was time for him to be somewhere else. He shook his head and closed the door.
After taking a few steps away, he heard the hut door squeak open.
“Where are you going?” she called out between sniffs.
Lothar stopped and turned. “It is true then.”
She strode up to face him. “What truth do you seek that has not been already told to you?” she demanded.
“That you ...” he began softly.
“What ... not a virgin?” Dara blurted. “Is that what you want to know? The answer they so crudely demonstrated, is no. I’m not. Are you?” She glared at him for daring to even ask.
“That is not what I was saying,” he calmly replied. He crossed his arms in front of him.
“That I’m a witch? I already told you some people believe that I am, but I’m not.” She sniffed her voice calmer. “I am the Priestess of the Sisters of the Stone Circle.” Taking a deep breath, she proudly lifted her head. “I have healed people from time to time. No evil magic.”
He stood in silence. The fingers of his right hand tapped his left bicep.
“Then what?” she finally asked calmly.
“You have nothing to pay your taxes.” He uncrossed his arms and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I have seen what little amount of honey you have to trade, and know that you cannot afford to pay what those two will want.”
She thought for a moment. “I have some mead left over.”
Lothar dropped his hands and stepped back. “They would take it and demand more.”
“Come with me, I will show you.” She smirked, then turned and walked away.
Lothar followed as she strolled back inside the hut, and waited while she lit a beeswax candle. She moved the pallet, revealing a hidden sub-terrain opening.
He raised his eyebrows. A passage had been dug leading to a room underneath the hut. He wondered what she had been up to.
Their shadows, in the candlelight, danced along the walls while they descended the short earthen staircase. The dug-out room opened up to reveal a large number of mead bottles lining the walls of the cavern. Other bottles contained herbs, some in liquid form, a few with herbs ground into powder. Leaves and flowers were laid out to dry between squares of linen.
“You may have enough mead for your taxes.” He nodded toward the honey liquor.
“To be honest, that is not why I brought you here.”
Lothar watched her extract a small wooden chest off one of the shelves, and open it. She withdrew a leather pouch, handing it to him. “Open it,” she said softly, closing the chest.
Unfastening the tied strings of the pouch, Lothar shook out the contents to reveal his small bag of stones, along with his two wrist cuffs.
“I thought you would like them back before you return home,” she uttered feebly.
Lothar stared at the items in his hands. “I thought I had lost these during the storm.”
“I was holding on to them, if you ... you ...” her voice trailed off.
“If I died you would have used them to pay the taxes,” Lothar ascertained. He waited. Her hands fidgeted. Finally, she nodded.
“So now you are going to use the mead for paying taxes.”
“I had planned to use it before you came, so yes, I will.”
“Thank you for returning these, Valkyrie.” He slid the cuffs on.
Satisfied with the cuffs’ position on his wrists, Lothar turned them over, the gold shining in the glow of the half-melted candle. Dara stared at the cuffs. Lothar leaned towards her, pointing out the design. “The wolf crest depicts Fenris, a wolf so large that even Odin and Thor fear him,” Lothar explained.
“The cuffs are quite unique,” Dara admitted. “I have not seen anyone wearing such a display in the area.”
Lothar detected a subtle warning; he removed them from his wrists, reopened the large pouch, dropped them inside, tightened the drawstring and tied the pouch to his belt.
“Where are you from, Lothar?”
Surprised at her question, he searched her eyes for a sign of deceit. “Tell me the reason why you ask.”
“I’d like to get to know a little more about you. I have shared some of my secrets with you. Trust me enough to share a few secrets about yourself.”
He stood before her, undecided on how to answer.
“So is my word, so is my bond,” she stated.
The words reminded him he had asked her to trust him once. Smiling at her quickness, he countered, “I will answer three questions for today. The answer to your first question earlier: no; to the second question: yes, I am; and to your third question: I am from a village on an inlet bay of the North.”
“Wait, what were the first two questions?”
“That is a fourth question, but I will answer it anyway.” He noticed her bewildered stare. “You had assumed I was asking if you were a virgin.”
“And you said that wasn’t what you were asking me.”
“But the answer to the question you asked, I say no. I was not asking if you were a virgin.”
She walked across the room. “Then that leaves the second answer. Yes, you are. Yes you are what?”
“That makes five questions,” he teased. “I’ll let you figure that one out on your own.” He tossed the small bag of stones in the air and caught it. “I’ll be back with dinner.”
Smiling, he quickly climbed the steps two at a time, gathered up the rope and knife, and went to catch dinner. He left her there with something to think about, to discover what he had admitted to her.
He’d observed her face change into a dark rage when Park and Serle left. He wanted her to think about something else, to free her mind of taxes and the hurt he saw in her eyes when she reminded him about his returning home.
As Lothar strode by the sheep corral, he mulled over his hard work on the repairs, and how the muscles in his shoulder were gaining their former strength.
He’d taken time to train daily, just out of sight of the hut, practicing swordplay by using one of the shorter trees he’d cut. He’d estimated the weight and length was appropriate to what his own sword had been. He visualized the intended target while he swung and jabbed, and his body stepped, turned and twisted in the motion of battle.
Tomorrow, he would use the images of Park and Serle to battle against.
