There was a heresy repeated here and there, in low voices, among those blessed by megin: to be touched by the miracle was also to be cursed by it. Grim had never dismissed it entirely.
Megin gave much, some things were equal for all. Strength where there had been none, breath when the body begged for the ground, clarity in moments that ought to have been nothing but panic. Other things came twisted, gifts that seemed blessing until the hour came to bear them. His was one of those, they called it the empath's grace. It sounded better than it was, in practice, Grim felt what was sometimes not his.
It almost never came whole. It came in fragments, a strange taste in the mouth, a tightness in the chest, weariness that had not been born in him.
Proximity was enough, touch, or, worse still, giving too much of himself to the other. The white-blessed avoided that when they could, they healed without spilling themselves into it, eased without opening too much space.
Each knew the price of linking himself too deeply to someone else, that morning, Grim was paying it.
The boy seated before him, tall, sun-burned. It hurt inside him in a bad way, the left shoulder burned in absent flesh, his chest carried a deep, dry irritation, as if each breath wanted to remind the body what had been taken from it. There was also a dark cynicism, a rage lying in wait, and buried beneath all of that, wrong flashes of joy.
It was not a clean joy, It was something stranger. Grim felt strange even when he was alone, near that boy, he felt worse.
"Name?" the other asked. His voice came out calm, too good for a man so recently torn back from death.
"Grim," he answered. The pain in the shoulder came back stronger the next instant, Grim drew a deep breath once and tried to keep his face neutral.
"And you're Hrafn, right?" he asked. "Are you really well enough to walk?" He knew he was not.
Hrafn was seated on the sparse grass beside a tent, the stump of the shoulder wrapped in the best work they had managed in haste. He had the color of someone who should be lying down, dry mouth, whole body working harder than it should just to remain upright. Even so, he seemed irritated by his own weakness, not mastered by it.
"Ah, I am," Hrafn answered. "It doesn't hurt that much now."
A lie.
Grim felt it before recognizing it as one, the pain came into him and did not. There was something almost obscene in sharing another man's suffering without deserving it entirely, like tasting someone else's blood on the tongue.
Giving his megin to others was always a risk, for Grim, more than for the other white-blessed. When he healed, he did not give only strength, sometimes he opened a door. And with some people, the door took time to close, with Hrafn, it was still open.
"Nanna used to say you had to move if you didn't want to die," Hrafn said.
Longing came and regret came right behind it, dense and quick, like someone trying to close a hand around water.
Grim had never known Nanna, but for an instant he felt the idea of her, warmth, smoke, some old peace. Then the feeling was shoved into some dark corner of Hrafn's mind, as if he himself would not allow it to remain in sight for long.
The boy then bent a little farther down, passing the fingers of his good hand over the cold grass. The emotion that came from that made Grim frown, it was joy, too great for so small a gesture.
Hrafn had been swinging from one state to another since he woke. Grim had stayed near him almost the whole time, had seen the silence first, a wrong silence, when the body still had not seemed to understand what was missing. Then had come the pain, finally recognized, so strong the boy had nearly folded in half. Finally a short laugh, almost a smile without sanity, and now this, joy at feeling the grass beneath his fingers.
It was strange, and Grim did not merely see it, that alone might have worried anyone. For him, it was nearly unbearable.
"She seems to have been a wise woman," Grim said, choosing his words with care. "In many cases it is true, but you still ought to rest."
He tried to keep his voice low, he did not want to disturb him more than necessary. Hrafn already seemed disturbed enough on the inside without help from anyone.
"She was," Hrafn answered, ignoring the rest. The longing returned, smaller this time.
Hrafn ran his good hand through his hair, as though smoothing it were enough to put things in order.
"Why do we have to go to Sahirid?" he asked. Rage came, alive and sharp. "Why don't they train us in Brinegard?"
Grim understood the question. He understood even better the anger that came with it. To lose an arm only to be dragged down the road to the proper Hird city might sound like mockery. In a few days, perhaps it would sound that way even to him, but understanding did not bring an answer.
"There are reasons for it, brother," Grim said. "I am sure the Hird has its purpose."
Hrafn stared at him in silence for an instant.
Then he took his hand to his hair again and combed it back, in a gesture that looked more like an effort to contain his own mood than vanity.
"And what reasons would those be, brother?"
The sarcasm came lightly in the voice. In the mind, it came worse.
Cold mockery, a short practical hatred, and for a moment Grim imagined Hrafn spitting on him, getting up all at once and beating him with the good arm until it went badly.
"There is no reason for me to know, brother," Grim answered, as gently as he could. "But the Hird remains, so the reason must be good enough."
The response that reached Grim through the link was not made of words. It was made of weary contempt, not enough to turn violent. Only enough to make it clear that, at that point, Hrafn put him in the same sack as the rest.
"I understand," was what he said.
Grim found himself thinking, not for the first time that morning, that perhaps Hrafn would not break, perhaps he was already broken.
"Voroir," someone called. "The hersir wishes to see you."
Grim lifted his eyes.
The man who had come to fetch them was an old voroir with a tired face, one of the many who had barely survived the night. He did not look much at Hrafn, did not look much at Grim either. The summons was simple, but there was weight in it.
Leif. Grim did not like the idea.
It had been him who treated the hersir when he came back from the fight. He had used more of himself than he should have to keep Leif standing, aligning what he could, closing what could be closed, pushing the rest of the pain to later. Among the white-blessed there, he was the best. He always had been, that was why he was also the most demanded.
Healing Leif would already have been bad on an ordinary day, bound to Hrafn as he still was now, it tasted like punishment.
The hersir was too much mass for any mind, too much pain, so much will. His very nearness already weighed on ordinary people, for Grim, who sometimes felt others as if he wore them from the inside, standing between Leif and Hrafn at the same time seemed an effective enough way to lose his senses before midday, and still, he stood up.
His knee protested, his whole body protested, in truth. The white-blessed were almost never granted the luxury of being among the first to fall. They served before, during, and after.
Hrafn also began to rise, this time the pain came into Grim before the dry sound of his breathing did. The boy faltered for the briefest instant, refusing to fall in the same way certain men refused to pray, out of pride, anger, or habit. Grim held out a hand by reflex.
Hrafn saw the gesture, and did not accept it. He got up on his own, pale, a little crooked, but whole enough for stubbornness.
"Excellent," Grim said, before he could stop himself. "So you really are well enough to walk."
Hrafn let out a brief sound through his nose. "You see?" A lie again. But now it came accompanied by something that seemed, at least from far off, like dark amusement.
Grim nodded and the three of them began to walk through the camp.
The Star's light had already taken hold in the sky, making everything clearer than the night had allowed and, for that very reason, worse. Voroirs moving among the bodies, some commoners still wept in silence, others were already dried out. The smell of blood, ash, and entrails still hung low.
Hrafn saw everything, Grim felt what came from him as he saw. Anger again, unsettled grief. An almost unhealthy attention to detail, and behind it, something new, still small; he wanted to understand something, but feared understanding it. Grim knew that mixture, megin always demanded its due.
Ahead, Leif waited, standing, the hersir had the look of a cracked wall that still refused to fall. The arm hung in a sling, one eye was no use now, the face was marked by dried blood and exhaustion. Even so, there was in him a presence that made men straighten their spines merely by coming near.
Grim felt Leif before reaching him.
Pain, hunger, pride, duty. A kind of harsh gratitude for still breathing. All of it mixed inside a body that seemed to insist on existing through stubbornness and faith. Beside that, Hrafn was a bad fire in dry brush, Grim nearly stopped, but kept going, there was nothing else to do.