Read By the Mountain Bound for Free Online Page A

and I stepped inside, dirt and leaves staining the hems of my trousers, pine needles tangled inmy hair. I braced for attention and whispers: I had expected to return to a quiet hall.
    No one noticed me.
    My brothers and sisters were clustered in the southeast corner. Worried murmurs reached me as I walked beside the rekindled fire trench. I drew even with them, crossed before the Lady’s empty chair and came up beside Yrenbend.
    “What has transpired?” I stood on tiptoe to reach his ear until he hunched to accommodate me.
    “Strifbjorn has rescued a drowned mortal girl on the beach,” he said. “We’re annoying him.” He raised a wry eyebrow and smiled at me from the corners of silver eyes laced with a cast of green. His queue was a dark golden-red. I wanted to reach out and yank it.
    “Will she live?”
    He turned away from the crowd and laid a companionable hand on my shoulder. “She is breathing on her own. Come. There’s still mead to be had.” He led me back down the hall and served us both from the cask near the Cynge’s chair—in round-bottomed bowls that could be sipped and set aside, not the horns that must be drained at a draft. “She has not awakened.”
    We sat together at the end of the trestle table, and he watched me drink. I pulled a knife from the sheath on my thigh to cut some scraps of the cold roast that still lingered on the table, and gave him my best attempt at a smile.
    He reached out and touched a lock of my unbound hair, pulling a swag of pine needles from it. He smelled of leather oil and salt sea-spray. A silver flute hung in a case at his belt: a flute I had made for him. “You look unwell, sister.”
    I sighed and glanced around the hall, leaning across the table closer to Yrenbend once I saw that no one was near us. There was no privacy, in a mead-hall. “I’m troubled, Yrenbend.” I poked at the venison again, cutting a hatchwork of lines in the side of the roast with the point of my knife.
    “Strifbjorn?”
    Something as dark and ravenous as the Suneater raved in my breast. Hope. And a terrible thing hope can be. “What else? I had myself all but convinced that there was no chance. I’m not the bravest or the best of us, by any means . . . and plain as a sparrow, I know that, too. But I went walking tonight, after Sigrdrifa teased me. . . .” Yrenbend would know the details. Word passed quickly from the women’s end of the hall to the men’s. Yrenbend’s wife would have told him what Sigrdrifa said, regarding Strifbjorn and whatever feelings I might have for him. And the likelihood of those feelings being returned.
    I realized that my voice had trailed off only when Yrenbend prodded me. “And . . . ?” He sipped his mead, both eyebrows rising in an expression that never managed to make him look surprised.
    I stuck my knife into the mutilated roast, tip grating on the bone. “I heard something I shouldn’t have. The Wolf and Strifbjorn, speaking in the shadow of a tree.”
    He retrieved my knife and carved a bit of meat, which he pleated meticulously before tucking it into his mouth. He watched my face while he chewed.
    “Mingan—the Wolf—was counseling Strifbjorn to marry. And quickly.” I took the knife away from Yrenbend, attacking the roast so that I would not have to meet his eyes. “And me.”
    Not the whole truth. But not a lie, either. And whatever else I’d overheard . . . was not mine for the sharing.
    “Really.” Yrenbend did not sound astonished, but then he never did. “Naught else?”
    I risked a glance. He seemed thoughtful. “I walked away. It seemed indecent to eavesdrop.” Not a lie, not a lie, not a lie. But as close as I had ever come.
    “Your honor does you credit.” He finished his mead. “Let me see what I can learn.” Standing, he dropped his hand on my shoulder again and turned away, back toward the dispersing knot of our brethren at the far end of the hall.
     
    T he next morning, I left walking southward, to make