Page 74

Maude sat in the open entrance of the temple while her friends slept through the night, keeping watch over them from the foreign presence that continued to circle the structure like a predator stalking its prey.

Only when Liv woke from her fitful sleep to relieve Maude of her watch duty did she finally begin to relax a bit from the dragging weight in her feet since stepping into Ljosa.

Finding a spot up against the solid stone once used as an altar, Maude put her back on the cold surface and tried to sleep.

A small fire crackled in the center of the sleeping party, the snaps of the wood burning resembling the sound of a cracking whip.

After a few hours of dozing in and out of her vivid dreams involving draugr and watery graves crushing her bones beneath its weight, Maude finally gave up on the hope of having any decent sleep.

Instead, she observed her friends beyond the crackling fire.

With every crack, Eydis would flinch slightly.

With every flinch, Hakon’s hold on her would tighten.

Herrick lay on his back with his hands lightly resting on his stomach.

Sleep held him in its clutches, his deep, even breaths signifying that.

Maude knew, however, that at the slightest provocation, he would become alert as if he had never been slumbering.

About to test this theory, Maude lifted her hands to swirl the wind around Herrick to pick him up and toss him across the room, but a strangled sound stopped her .

Next to Herrick, Gunnar had been sleeping soundly until his body went stiff, his back bowing off the roll he had been sleeping on.

Alarmed, Maude sat up and got to her feet.

From where she stood, she could see his rigid body shaking slightly, his arms turning inward on him.

Head thrown back the way it was, Maude could see Gunnar bite down on his tongue, causing blood to flow freely.

Now awake, Herrick shot up and turned to his closest friend in terror.

Maude rushed toward them, reaching Gunnar as Herrick was about to place cloth into his mouth to clean the blood.

“Stop,” she said as she reached them. “Turn him on his side and grab his pack to put under his head.”

Herrick and Maude turned Gunnar on his side as the convulsions continued. Hakon and Eydis were awake now, staring at him in terror and confusion. Liv, sprinting to their side, moved Gunnar’s weapons away from him.

“Maude,” Herrick said, the sound of helplessness in his words causing her to look at him.

“It’s okay, it will pass,” Maude said, her voice reassuring despite her uneasiness.

Herrick looked into her eyes and must have understood her sincerity because he only nodded and looked back at his friend.

A few moments that felt like hours passed before Gunnar finally relaxed, his body going limp beneath Maude’s hands. Keeping him on his side, Maude moved to sit in front of him and wipe away some of the blood beginning to dry in the corners of Gunnar’s mouth.

No one spoke. Maude continued wiping his face off with a cloth that Herrick had soaked in cool water, washing away the sweat and blood from his episode. Slowly, Gunnar pried his eyes open, blinking away the haziness as he took in his friends sitting around him, worry etched into their faces .

“What happened?” Gunnar asked, his voice sounding small to Maude for the first time since she'd known him.

Her friends looked to her to answer, the fear in Herrick’s eyes never really dissolving.

“You had an epileptic episode,” Maude said softly, helping Gunnar to sit up. “I think you may have bit your tongue. We turned you on your side so you wouldn’t choke.”

Surprise crossed Gunnar’s face. Maude, weary of his reaction, asked, “You’ve never had an episode like this before?”

She knew his answer before he shook his head.

Unable to find words of comfort, she had Gunnar tilt his head down so she could inspect the wound on his head.

The skin appeared normal, finally healing well with the galder in his blood.

No inflammation around the slice or oozing.

Maude thought it was unlikely the slice to his head would cause this.

“Have you seen episodes like this before?” Liv asked, glancing at Gunnar.

“There was a soldier in my father’s armies who had similar episodes,” Maude explained, washing Gunnar’s blood off her hands in a bowl Hakon had filled with water. “He’d suffered through them for most of his life. You may have the same affliction.”

“You’ll rest here today with Eydis while we scout for the best route to the Knotted Caverns,” Herrick ordered his friend, tone warranting no argument.

Gunnar began to speak, but Eydis interrupted him, “Maybe you can go over some staff maneuvers with me so I’m not a complete liability in the Caverns.”

Gratitude flashed in Herrick’s eyes at Eydis’s offer.

Gunnar looked as if he would disagree but ultimately nodded and told Eydis he would help her.

Laying back down, exhaustion weighing in his movements, Gunnar closed his eyes and tried to rest some more.

Hakon and Eydis moved back to where they had been sleeping, speaking softly to each other while Liv returned to her watch.

Crisis over for the moment, Maude tried to go to the spot she had taken up for herself against the altar, but Herrick stopped her.

“We should get moving,” Herrick said, strapping his battle axe to his back and sword to his hip.

Maude snapped her mouth shut, her teeth clicking with the force, and turned to Herrick. His usual annoying cheerfulness was absent, only morbid silence in its place.

“Herrick,” Maude began, but he cut her off.

“We need to go before the sun gets too high and the day gets too hot. We also need to hunt for more supplies; the last of the dried meat ran out last night.”

“Liv and I can hunt; you need to go find the entrance to the Knotted Caverns,” Hakon offered, his weapons already strapped into place.

Maude opened her mouth to argue when Liv, snapping out of her recently withdrawn state, shouted from the entrance with a thumb up in the air, “Sounds good to me!”

Herrick nodded, avoiding her eyes, as he walked out into the new day. Maude reluctantly followed, picking up her bow and stringing it as she walked. She handed the bow to Liv when they passed her.

“Good hunting,” Maude muttered, and reluctantly followed Herrick.

Liv chuckled. “You too.”

They walked through the city, weaving between the empty buildings, for an hour before they reached the rocky shore of the city.

The Knotted Caverns were clear from where they stood in the light of the new day; the striations in the black rock gave the illusion that the rocks were folding in on themselves.

The opening could not be seen, but Maude suspected that it would be an easy entrance to locate. How they would get there would be the real challenge.

The waters surrounding them, though glittering and beautifully turquoise in the sun, were dangerous and choppy.

Waves crashed onto the rocky shore, rattling the ground beneath Maude’s feet.

Unless they had a vessel, they would not be able to make it to the shore.

Swimming was not a reality; the tides would pull them under before the brothers could stop it.

If they had a boat, however, Maude suspected they could make it to the Caverns in no time.

She went to suggest her idea when Herrick finally broke his sullen silence, “We’ll need a longboat to make it there. If we try to swim, we’ll perish.”

Maude rolled her eyes at his dramatic words but nodded in agreement.

“There is no lumber around this godsforsaken city, so you’ll need to grow some trees,” Maude suggested, sitting on a rock and leaning back on her hands as she crossed her ankles in front of her.

She tilted her head to the morning sun, eyes closed and enjoying the warmth. If Herrick wasn’t going to speak to her, Maude would do the only thing she excelled at— pissing him off until he broke out of his moody silence.

Maude heard Herrick sigh and then move a few feet over to the side where a patch of soil still sat.

The soft whoosh of rapid movement came from her left, so she glanced out the side of her eye to find Herrick raising both of his palms in one movement before trees sprouted from the soil.

Removing his axe from his back, Herrick began to chop into the trees.

Once he had fallen both trees he grew, he worked on cutting the trunk into usable sizes for the longboat.

The knowledge of how to craft a longboat seemed to be taught in both kingdoms at an early age.

For funerals as well as for travel, these longboats were pivotal to their societies, so children were often taught to craft them.

As she watched Herrick assemble the beginnings of the longboat that would carry them to the Knotted Caverns, Maude concluded that they had grown up with the same education.

It was this education that told her this longboat would not be finished in time for the full moon if she continued to be a stubborn fool. With the two of them working on building a single longboat, it could be finished by the next morning.

Maude heaved a sigh, her plan to annoy Herrick into submission crumbling like the dry dirt she sat on and stood to help the insufferable River General. If Herrick reacted to her change of activity, she did not notice.

Working to bend the tough wood into place, Herrick held pressure while Maude ran a small flame under the boards to give them some flexibility.

The day wore on, and they worked in silence through it all until they could no longer use the light of the day to keep working.

Half of the longboat was constructed, and they could finish it tomorrow in time to use it for the full moon in two days.

“We should’ve brought the last longboat with us,” Maude complained, picking loose splinters out of her hands. “Or at least sailed the other one into the ocean and looped back this way.”