Hrafn reached the hersir's tent feeling his whole body throb, Leif, they had told him.
A kind man, he thought. Kind enough to send for him all broken just for a conversation. Though, to be fair, the hersir himself also looked as though he had been hastily assembled from whatever had been left.
Grim was beside him, quiet for the first time since Hrafn had met him. The white-blessed talked too much under normal conditions, always with the face of someone who understood more than the rest and less than he imagined. Too much expression in the face, almost caricature. He would have made a good actor, a fine bard even.
Now he was silent, in Leif's presence, Grim looked like someone who had been holding his entrails in for a week. Tense, half-shaking.
Hrafn could even understand him, he himself could feel the weight of the hersir too, though differently. Leif had a presence of his own, he needed to do nothing to fill the whole tent with it.
"You two may leave," Leif said, after watching Grim for a moment. He was already seated again, back in the improvised chair behind the low table. Half his red hair had disappeared from the side of the face where he now lacked a useful eye.
"Y-yes, elevated hersir," Grim answered, far too glad to hide it.
Good for him.
Hrafn had not liked Grim's face much from the beginning, he never liked the devout much, in general. But the white-blessed at least had some sense of humor, and that counted in his favor.
The other voroir only nodded and went out after Grim, too old or too tired to waste words on it.
Leif was a mess, the armor, or what remained of it, had been patched with crooked pieces and metal seams hastily redone, probably by some red-blessed smith. It did not make him less intimidating. If anything, it made him more so.
The hersir's one good eye, brown and calm, rested on Hrafn as though it had already opened him and read the inside."Ask," Leif said at last. He knew Hrafn had questions, it would have been strange if he had not.
"Why did you call for me?" Hrafn asked, he saw no reason to make the hersir's life easier. He did not know what the man wanted and had no intention of giving him anything beyond the minimum.
"How did you do it?" Leif asked back, brief and direct and Hrafn already knew what it meant.
He wanted to know how he had survived. After all, it had been the hersir himself who pulled him away from death after the blow.
"Do what?" Hrafn lied, shifting in the chair with a small discomfort, more caution than pain. He had no desire at all to tell the man that he had already touched something that, from what he understood, he should not even be touching yet. He was hoping Leif was only trying, guessing in the dark.
He was not. The question killed the air in the tent, Leif did not repeat it, did not insist. He only kept looking, that was worse. The silence lasted long enough to become offensive, and Hrafn yielded before the whole conversation could rot away.
"Things got slower," he said. "Then I could defend myself better."
"Good," Leif answered. A short pause followed. "But you are not yellow."
Blessings of mind, perception, precision, focus, that sort of thing. They usually came to the yellow-blessed, almost always. Not that others could not reach something similar, they could, but there was a difference between using your own arm and sewing onto yourself the stiff arm of another creature, hoping it obeyed.
"I do not know either," he lied again. There was more to fear in men than in much of what ran loose outside. And if he was already being dragged down that path, he would give the minimum.
"That is enough," said Leif. Then he pointed with his chin to the kettle and cups on the table. "Coffee?"
"Yes. I'll take it." Shame had never been a strong feeling in him, and coffee was far too good a luxury to refuse.
Leif served them both. They drank in silence for a time, the smell was strong and clean, there was sugar too.
Rich bastard.
Hrafn took another swallow and concluded that he was beginning to like the hersir a little more. Not enough to trust him, only enough to listen better. "You are a voroir now," Leif said, setting the cup on the table.
Hrafn kept quiet.
"It seems you started at the wrong point," the hersir continued, indicating him lightly. "But it may be good."
After that, he pulled the glove from his good hand with his teeth and took his callused fingers to the wound on his face. His own color was still red, but Hrafn saw the flesh improve a little beneath the touch.
Hrfan understood more through the gesture than through any explanation. "I understand," he said. Silence fell again.
And Hrafn actually liked it. Liked it enough to take another swallow in peace and begin to think the hersir almost agreeable company.
"You will have duties now."
Shit.
"But you will still have time. As is due to every fylkirn."
The relief came so quickly it almost hurt. One of the first fears that had occurred to him upon waking had been being thrown from one place to another in battle from that very day onward. Voroirs were few, one for every hundred chosen, if that. They lived longer than average, people said, but they died more as well.
Fresh blood was always lacking for the Hird. "But your time will be different."
Ah, shit.
Hrafn liked the hersir a little less again. The coffee no longer seemed quite so generous.
The green-blessed were rare, of little use in battle, less even than the white-blessed in certain circumstances. Before this, perhaps they might have put him to tending herbs, helping with cultivation, giving megin to the fields, that sort of thing. More food was always welcome to the Hird. He might have ended up living as a quiet crippled nobleman, and that did not sound bad to him. What truly sounded bad was dying young and in some ridiculous fashion, but he was beginning to think it unlikely fate would offer him that kind of kindness.
"I understand," he replied, without liking the words. There was not much to be done, he was a nobleman now, yes. but also a glorified slave.
"Good," said Leif.
And then he said nothing more for some time, as though he had only wanted to see him with his own eyes before deciding anything.
At least he had the decency to let him finish the coffee. "Why take us to Sahirid?" Hrafn asked, taking advantage of the silence before the man chose to throw him out. The question had been bothering him since the night before, since earlier, perhaps. It seemed stupidity.
Why not train voroirs in every city instead of dragging people down the salt roads to the middle of the kingdom? "Because that is how it is," Leif answered, short and harsh. "Normally, no one should die."
This time there was something in the hersir's voice beyond the habitual dryness. Something closer to shame than Hrafn would have imagined hearing there.
The roads existed, therefore they were used. The Hird's cities traded among themselves, large caravans crossed the kingdom all the time, and they crossed protected. It worked, most of the time.
"You are dismissed," Leif said, before Hrafn could press farther.
He set the cup down and saluted the hersir as he should. Then he went out feeling like shit.
Not exactly because of the conversation. It was not pleasant to understand that his life, from then on, would probably be made of struggle, pain, and usefulness, but he had already suspected that, expected it. What brought him down now was the body. It hurt badly, hurt all the time.
He kept walking, passing by his own tent without stopping at once. That day they would leave later, they would not make use of all the Star's light, because the previous night had demanded too much from everyone. They needed time, enough not to fall apart on the road.
"Hrafn!" He heard the voice before recognizing who it was. "Come here, Hrafn! Look what this rogue has!" It was Grim.
The white-blessed was waving at him near the far end of the caravan, beside a few commoners. Somehow, in the time Hrafn had spent sitting and drinking coffee with the hersir, Grim had managed to get himself drunk, or near enough to it.
Impressive efficiency.
"Here, drink, Hrafn," Grim said, raising a strong-smelling bottle. "Drink. Drink eases pain, eases burdens."
This...
"Come on, do not be weak. You lost the arm, not the mouth." Grim cackled at his own joke as if it were the finest thing said since the making of the world.
"You have to make use of what you still have. Come, let's drink."
Hrafn stared at him for an instant, brow furrowed, the bottle swaying inches from his face.
Well. What harm is there in it?
"Give it to me."