Page 53 of Viking Beast
Only as the arrow pierced his shoulder did Eldberg see me. The axe dropped from his grip, and his face turned full to mine. It showed first disbelief, then agonized sorrow, as if a searing light had been extinguished.
I had betrayed him.
He staggered, crumpled, and pitched forward.
22
Elswyth
December 3rd, 960AD
Iloved them both.
I didn’t know how this could be, but it was true.
Eldberg refused at first to look at me, though he allowed me to clean and bind the wound. I’d made my choice clear, in taking arms against him. The injury I’d inflicted might forever pain him.
“You loved your wife. You must understand.” I sat beside the bed we’d shared.
Whatever Eldberg imagined he felt for me, it was not love. A desire to possess or to see in me what he’d lost. But I would never be Bretta, and he was not Eirik. He wished me to love him, as he had come to yearn for me, but this would never be.
Eirik was the husband I’d chosen.
“There is much you do not know.” He regarded me warily, as if it was too painful, or too dangerous to keep my gaze.
“The gash behind your ear—”
I touched it, gingerly. It had scabbed over but remained tender.
“You have a mole—” He paused. “There are two more, within your hair. Three altogether.”
“What of it? Many have such marks on their skin.”
“Not like this.”
Eldberg told me then of his conviction, that I was of Beornwold’s line, that the babe I carried was Beornwold’s grandchild, that Bretta had been my half-sister. I’d told him long ago of how I was conceived—by rape of my mother during a Viking raid. It had been more than twenty years ago, before Eldberg joined Beornwold’s service.
“So many times I saw her in you. Wishful thinking, I believed, but there was more to it than that. Sigrid saw it, too, though she didn’t want to accept.”
I’d always known that I belonged elsewhere. After all that had happened, all that I’d endured, to find that Skálavík was that place! That my father had been here all along. And a sister…
It changed nothing between Eldberg and I, but it provided a stronger reason for Svolvaen and Skálavík to put aside their blood feud. The clans were already joined, through Ingrid of Skálavík, Eirik’s grandmother. Now, the child I carried would join the two again.
“You’ll speak with Eirik. You’ll agree to a truce.” I told Eldberg of what Sweyn had boasted—that he was responsible for the fire, that his ambition was stronger than loyalty to his own.
Gunnolf, half-mad as he’d been, had not planned the attack.
Thoryn gave testament, having heard every foul confession from Sweyn’s lips, and Eldberg nodded in acceptance, as if having always known the truth of it. He’d retaliated against Svolvaen when no blame lay among its people.
“For my sake, for whatever love you bear me, you’ll set aside the past?”
He nodded wearily. “Not just for your sake, but for Bretta’s. ’Tis fitting that you wielded revenge on he who took her life. I shall never forget, nor forgive, but ’tis a door I must close or I shall lose my reason—and my will to remain in this world.”
I brought his hand to my cheek.
There was good in him; that I believed with all my heart.
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