I WORRIED WHILE I tended the fire, running twice more to the copse for wood. First the pox, then this battle—I wished Willem didn’t keep frightening me. I imagined him on the ground, bleeding, while the battle raged around him. Again and again, I banished the image, only to have it reappear.
A few wounded came in, and Master Hakon said even more might arrive when the day’s fighting ended.
Ivar lost his leg below the knee and wouldn’t fight again. No one died except the wounded woman, who had been hit in the chest by a horse’s hooves. I wished I knew something about her: if she had children, if she’d fought many battles, if anyone had avenged her injury when she was struck.
Soldier—steadfast, stalwart—
By death defeated.
At dusk, Father, leading half a dozen wounded, approached the physicians’ tent. I ran to him, and he said Willem was fine.
Exuberantly, I juggled twigs before tossing them in the flames.
“Ivar,” Father said, “young Willem gored the soldier who slashed you.”
“Did the villain die?” Ivar said.
“Yes.”
I felt jealous again. Willem had killed a Kyngoll.
As evening darkened to night, Master Hakon, his apprentices, and I lifted the wounded into an oxcart and made them as warm and comfortable as we could for the journey back to camp. Master Hakon drove the cart, while the apprentices and I rode alongside on horseback. An apprentice held a torch to light our way. When we neared the cypress woods, another flame flickered at us, which turned out to be Willem waiting on his horse and holding his own torch, whose flame stretched and wavered in the wind.
“Perry!” His voice sounded strained.
Master Hakon gave me permission to go to him. “But if you tarry returning to camp, your father will dine on my liver.”
We walked our horses behind the cart until Willem reached out to touch my arm. Ignoring Master Hakon’s warning, I reined in my mare and let the cart gain ground ahead of us. “Congratulations!” I couldn’t help adding, “You remembered the power in your back leg, and you kept your shield up.” Admit I helped you.
“I don’t know what I did.”
We entered the copse.
“What?” I shouted. I couldn’t hear him over the wind.
“I don’t know what I did.”
I wanted him to be happier than he sounded. “I wish I could have seen you kill the Kyngoll.”
His horse’s hoof unloosed a stone, which skittered off to the side.
“Ivar will live,” I added.
“I’m glad.” He didn’t sound glad.
“What’s wrong?”
“It was just a lucky thrust that pierced his neck.”
“Whose neck?”
“The soldier I killed. I was furious when Ivar went down. Everybody was shouting. I think I was, too.”
The battle spell.
“I struck, and I’ve never felt so strong.”
Willem turned to me in the saddle. I saw a tightness around his mouth that hadn’t been there before. “There was only a little spot where the soldier had no armor. I got it by accident. He spouted a fountain of blood and I stopped being angry. I said him, but it could have been a woman. Doesn’t matter which it was.”
The apprentice’s torch disappeared in the trees ahead.
“Did you look in the soldier’s eyes?”
“All I saw was blood, and then the line closed in front of me. I didn’t use my spear again. I just moved with the line. I don’t think I even kept my shield up.”
How lucky he hadn’t been gored, too!
I didn’t know what to say. Why was he telling me?
“As soon as I killed him, I seemed to wake up from a dream. I felt like I was the only person in a pack of barking dogs, and a moment before I’d been a dog, too.”
In his place, I’d have stayed a dog. Willem was the true Bamarre and I the true Lakti, no matter who our parents were.
I wanted to comfort him. “Father told me not to look in the eyes of our foes because it takes the joy away and you still have to fight them. Seeing the blood was like looking in—”
“I almost fainted. If I had, I would have been trampled. Then I almost threw up.”
“Vomiting in your helmet would be horrible!”
“I don’t want to fight again. Do you think I’m a coward?”
I didn’t know.
“Am I?”
I searched for words that wouldn’t wound him. “It took courage to tell me.” That was true. “Maybe other people are like you, but they pretend not to be because they’re cowards.” But I thought he might really not be brave, not in battle anyway.
A few more trees ahead and we’d be through the copse.
“What will your father say when I refuse to go back?”
Was this why he told me?
“Will he even let me not fight?”
“I’d go in your place.” I regretted the words instantly. I didn’t mean I was better than he was.
He spurred his horse. In an instant he was out of the trees.
“Willem!” I had to apologize. To explain.
I kicked my mount, too. As she gathered herself to sprint, a rope snare dropped over my head. I fell out of the saddle and landed hard. The mare rode on. Willem must have heard something, or my riderless horse may have passed him. The coward turned his horse to come back to me and was captured, too.