Hulda was not sure she had an answer to that. “I am as I was made,” she said.
“So you will blame me, will you? For overindulging you, perhaps. You will blame your brother for giving you training?”
“I blame no one.” She lifted her hands. “Should there be blame for the woman I am?”
“Your brother always meant well by you. He loved you very much.”
A mist of tears came to Hulda’s eyes. “And I him.”
Faðir turned his face away from her. “See your móðir before you go.”
“I will.” Because she was woman enough.
Her móðir received her more calmly than Faðir had, but the grief in her eyes reached deeper and touched Hulda’s heart. When she wept at their parting, Hulda almost—almost—agreed not to go.
“You can move back home,” Móðir beseeched her. “Here with me.”
“And live under Faðir’s thumb?”
“He wants you home.”
“Móðir, I wish I could. I cannot.”
Something drove her, a force she’d only begun to comprehend.
One that would not relent.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Quarrie clawed thetumbled hair out of his face and tried to blink the grit from his eyes. The night just past had been a long one, the battle fierce. A battle fought not with sword and shield, but with will and determination.
Da’s rages—and his fever—grew steadily more intense. Quarrie did not know how much more mere flesh could stand.
He left the chamber where his father had at last fallen into a restless sleep and stepped out into the larger room of his parents’ quarters. Ma stood at the window staring out, her shoulders drooping.
His comrade-in-arms during the battle just past, she had been. And it had cost her.
He crossed to the window and stood beside her, gazing out. Dawn bled across the sky from the east, lighting the sea from ink black to misty gray. Any sails there? Quarrie had to admit that for once he scarcely cared.
“He is dying,” Ma said, the words stark even though she whispered them.
Da had been dying a long while. Neither of them had wanted to admit it. A strong man, Airlee MacMurtray. Yet now that strength began to wane.
“One o’ these nights,” she went on, “we will lose him.”
“Aye.” Quarrie had feared it would be last night. Before the healer had come.
“It is the pain that drives him mad.”
The healer had once more suggested they amputate the leg, which he insisted rotted from within.
“It will never heal,” he’d told them in an urgent whisper, “if it has not by now. Best to take it off and try to stem the poison.”
Quarrie had shuddered. Such an act would end Da’s every hope of ever fighting again.
As would death.
It made him think of Hulda Elvarsdottir. Da might have slain her beloved brother, but by God, he had paid the price.
