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I answer, “Svend, stop drinking before it gets worse.”

“Aodhan,” my friend’s voice is solemn over the line. I don’t feel concerned. Svend likes to hold a grim façade before he allows the jokes to fly.

“Svend,” I answer in the same tone when he doesn’t continue. If he’s in his cups, this could take a while.

“I bear news for you,” he continues the charade. Yet, he’s speaking in Norse. I haven’t spoken that language for hundreds of years. Just how drunk is he?

“Sigrid is pregnant again?” I guess aloud. His wife won’t be pleased. She told him four was her limit. This would be number six.

He coughs into his fist and mumbles, “Nay. I am not yet in the mood to be gelded.”

The faint chatter of a bar, more than likely filled to the brim with berserkers, fades, and Svend’s voice becomes clearer. I hear a heavy door open and close, then the quiet hush of his breathing.

Whatever this is, he has to work up the courage for it. I feel a frown forming as my mind wanders to less pleasant possibilities.

“I have heard a rumor that I have not yet verified,” he continues in Norse. If he’s sober, grim, and consciously speaking in a language most don’t know, then there is trouble brewing. I glance at the spear with a sneer.

“Go on,” I urge my friend, switching from English to Norse myself.

Svend gives a gusty sigh before he says, “I wanted to be the one to tell you because I know your history.”

“Which portion?” I try to make my tone glib, but humor abandoned me quite a few years ago, and it falls flat.

“There is a girl here who is claiming to be a mender,” he blurts the words out in a rush as if he’s spitting out poison.

My heart begins to drum erratically as rage swells inside. My teeth grit as I wrestle with myself to regain control. With the mindless anger comes pain and a sense of breathlessness that causes me to inhale deeply.

Svend gives me time, knowing how those words would affect me. When I finally feel somewhat placid, I allow myself to ask questions.

“Why call me?” The words are wrenched from me, baring my pain to him.

“Because if it is real, I thought you might like to know,” he sounds as if he regrets it already.

He’s right, and I know it, even though I hate it with every fiber of my being. Everything I’ve done in the last few years has been in the name of a mender.

“How valid is the claim?”

“I am not sure yet. I called to ask what signs I would need to look out for.”

“Why would you need to look for signs? Just leave it be,” I force out and try to take calming breaths. My irrational mind has already begun claiming this nameless, faceless female, and I despise it.

I have known Svend his entire life. He would never cause harm to a female unless she were a danger to his clan. Even knowing this, I want him nowhere near her.

“I can’t,” he replies angrily, his rage stirring. “You have been a friend to my family before my great-grandfather was born, probably long before that. If this is a farce, I want to cut it down before you get involved.”

“And if it isn’t?” I ask, my body tense, lip curling with pent-up emotion I won’t allow to come through.

“Then you should meet with her,” all the anger has left his voice, replaced with hope.

“Why?” I snap, denial running hot in my veins.

“You know why,” Svend says, and I can hear him patting himself on the back now. Why did I ever tell this male about my history again? Oh yes, ale. How could I forget?

“It is a waste of time,” my anger fades, leaving me to wallow in pain and regret.

“You don’t know that,” he insists. “You said yourself that she was too young to really know –“

“Enough!” I bark out. My body once again is on the cusp ofriastrad,and I have no outlet here. Bringing up those desolate times never fails to bring me to the edge.