The air in Harwick was cold and bracing, and Aeshaeidr’s throat and lungs burned as she gasped for breath. As she pulled her fur cloak tighter across her shoulders, and tried to recall the once-familiar paths of Harwick back to where she had pitched her tent outside of the town’s walls, the pounding of footsteps on the muddy ground behind her caused her heart to skip a beat.
“Aeshaeidr,” growled a low male voice; a hand clasped her shoulder and wheeled her around in the street, but the man who dared to grab her so brazenly was met with the wicked gleam of her blade against his neck as her chest heaved for breath. Yet her eyes widened as she took in the sight of the man before her, and her hand trembled.
“You,” she exhaled.
“Put your weapon down,” he said firmly, and he reached up to guide her hand away from his neck. As she did so, reluctantly, Aeshaeidr had the chance to take in fully who had stopped her. He was dressed to leave, yellow heraldry embroidered with a red horn signifying from whence he had ridden, and to where he was soon to return. He was not much older than her; his skin kissed by the sun, and bearing freckles that littered his face, and with the same pale hair as her, with the same green eyes, though his had dulled in weariness. “I told you to leave after the festivities for the races were over.”
Aeshaeidr tucked her seax back into its gilded sheath on her hip; now stood in front of her brother, she felt again as though she were unworthy to wield such a weapon. “The choice of when me and my fellows leave is not mine to make, Asridr. And are you not also here after the festivities have waned? Should you not be back home with Father? I hear that Forlaw is aching for food.”
She realized that may have been the wrong thing to say, only too late when anger marred her brother’s fair features. She took a wary step back, unprepared for the wrath that he was to unleash upon her, even if, as ever, his voice stayed calm and measured within a chilly whisper.
“I stay here to try and barter with the Thane of Harwick for food!” He hissed. “But worry you not for my fate in Forlaw, for I assure you that many are happy my face no longer graces their presence! Father writhes in his shortcomings, bemoaning his failure of a son, unwed at twenty-and-five, and his thief and murderer of a daughter!” Asridr exhaled, and his heavy shoulders slumped as he noticed the wince that crossed Aeshaeidr’s face. “I only wish you had not interfered,” he said, his words no less laden with disdain.
“I could not let them speak so ill about you!” Aeshaeidr insisted, and her brows furrowed into a crease above the bridge of her nose in protest. “The folk of Forlaw meant to slander your name! I could not stand idly by and let them spread lies about my dear brother!”
In her mind flashed a memory of Forlaw, of a winter past, with its snow-touched ground and the busyness of streets in the early morning; she remembered a man with a smile too wide for his face; she remembered pouring rain that turned to ice beneath her feet, of the flash of steel that appeared to her as another falling droplet before the water turned to red. A sword too heavy for her hands that clattered as it fell.
Asridr laughed, though it was low and bitter. “The folk of Forlaw! The few, you mean, who thought that a marriage between myself and Cynewise was ill-fated! Well, dear sister, I am certain that you will be pleased to know that there will be no marriage between our families, and you have served to prove the rumour-mongers right.”
Aeshaeir withdrew her hands into herself, and she pulled away from her brother like his ire was palpable. A long silence sat between them, during which neither sibling raised their gaze to meet the other’s. “I should go,” she said at last. “I do not wish to continue to open old wounds in the street like this. It is late, and there are those who try to rest.”
“If you leave,” Asridr murmured, only then deciding to raise his head to look at her. “Do you and yours a favor and do not return. Not to Harwick, and certainly not to Forlaw. In fact, leave the Wold behind you completely if you must. It is what you are best at.”
She flinched again. “I left because I had to, Asridr; you know how cross Father would have been--”
“Of course I know how cross!” He snapped, and for once his tone raised above that of a collected murmur. “Do you think I give these warnings purely out of spite! I may be angry with you, Aeshaeidr, but I would rather be angry with you while you yet live than cursing the grave of my sister!” He stepped closer, closing the distance between them so he could return to a softer tone of voice. “You and yours, the Oathsworn, they are known now to be in Harwick. You know this.”
Her thoughts briefly drifted back to the altercation in the tavern; how quickly the young boy had tried to strike at Wrecca, and how the boy had found Wrecca’s blow to be quicker. How she and Alweard had worked in tandem to stop the older assailant, though it was the other warrior’s strike that saw him slain. Slowly, she nodded.
Asridr continued to speak. “It will not be long before news of such things reaches Forlaw--and I am not the only one who still recognizes your face and your deeds. You know you will not be welcome should you ever return.”
“I know,” she said, “but the Oath-Lord has offered his aid on behalf of Forlaw to see that food be brought in safely… and I cannot leave those whom I ride alongside merely because I am afraid. Nor can I leave knowing that there are those I still love suffering from hunger. It is still my home, Asridr, and if I am called upon to return, then I must.”
Asridr sighed; it was brief, and his eyes were heavier than before, and then it was gone. He drew in another breath, and straightened himself up. “So be it, dear sister. But neither mother nor I can spare you, for the matter of your misdeeds are out of our hands now. Even if we could, who would listen? Who would listen to a willful woman, mother of a willful woman, or her son, accused and now more so thought to be unmanly? If you are ever to lie, Aeshaeidr, I beg that you lie about the fact that you ever had a home at all.”
With that, he drew his own cloak, dark-pelted and mud-hemmed, tightly over his own shoulders before he stalked past her, and through the dark gate of Harwick, where a horse of blue roan and yellow tack awaited to take him home in the cold of night. Aeshaeidr, however, stood still in the road, her cloak clutched to her chest, and she wondered if she would be wiser to ride off as well.
