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‘Blodvin is crying her eyes out, convinced we are all doomed as you are bound to lose.’ Auda pressed her hands to her eyes. ‘No one can sleep when Blodvin weeps.’
‘What would she have me do? Back down? Give our land away? Lose my reputation?’ Sayrid gritted her teeth. ‘She should have more faith. We have everything to gain. Finally I will have the ships and men to make our fortune. Hrolf is overly proud. He will make the first mistake.’
‘Regin told her that. He wanted to wager, but Blodvin clawed at his face and told him not to be more a fool than usual.’
‘Hopefully they are not regretting their match after all the trouble it has caused.’ She shed her cloak and grabbed her favourite sword, the one that had belonged to her father, and a light shield.
‘Did you have to accept? Don’t we have enough gold? Enough honour? We get by, Sayrid.’
‘There is a world out there, waiting to be explored. Hrolf’s defeat will mean I can realize my dreams.’ Sayrid tried to stretch a sudden kink out of her back, the one that always came before she battled. Didn’t Auda understand what would have happened if she had refused? How much they would have lost? ‘And why should I give him anything?’
‘You could have tried to reach an agreement.’ Auda grabbed her arm. ‘Found out what he really wanted. We have gold.’
Sayrid tried to banish the memory of how they had nearly kissed. It was fantasy and folly on her part. In the second challenge, he’d never mentioned marriage.
‘If I hadn’t accepted the challenge, I would have lost my reputation and any hope of retaining such valuable and strategic lands until Regin proves himself.’ Sayrid shook her sister’s hand off. ‘I’m not going to lose everything I have sweated to build.’
‘But…do you really think you can defeat a warrior with his reputation?’
‘My own sister thinks I’ll lose.’
Auda pulled her shawl tighter about her body. ‘Someone has to be practical and both you and Regin are the dreamers in the family.’
‘I make my dreams happen.’
Auda shook her head. ‘You’re fighting for your pride. You can’t stand the thought of not being the Shield Maiden and being an ordinary woman again.’
‘You talk a lot of nonsense, Auda. What shall I bring you from the East? Enough silk to make seven gowns?’
‘I think you ought to have an alternative plan…just in case…’
Sayrid adjusted Auda’s shawl. In moments like these, she found it hard to believe how quickly her half-sister had grown up. Auda was old enough for the truth. ‘I’m going to win, Auda. I have to. If I’d refused, Kettil would never have trusted me with a ship again. And he would have stripped the lands from me. From us. Unlike men, I have to win and keep on winning. Luckily I find it easy to do.’
* * *
‘Look after these for me, Bragi,’ Hrolf said, handing his friend his arm rings as he finished his preparations for the bout with Sayrid. ‘I don’t want to get them damaged in the fight.’
Bragi accepted the rings, sliding them on his forearm. ‘Can you accept a woman as an overlord for a year? I don’t know if I could. You are worse than me when it comes to having only one use for a woman. Even with Anya, who bore your child, you barely had any time for her.’
‘Where else but in my my bed should a woman I desire be?’ Hrolf laughed. He followed his uncle’s path and kept the two parts of his life separate. He had seen from his father what happened when a man hid behind a woman’s skirts.
Sayrid was the key to gaining control of the headland, but he would also prove once and for all time that he was the best warrior to hold it.
He was going to win. Sayrid might enjoy a certain reputation, but it had not been forged in battle. She had not fought for everything as he had.
‘That does not answer my question.’
‘I hold your pledge. You follow me, not the other way around.’ Hrolf gave Bragi a hard look. His second-in-command was doubting his ability? Kettil might think Sayrid Avildottar could fight, but had she ever come up against real opposition? ‘Do you wish to become an oath breaker because of something which might not happen? You are worse than an old woman.’
‘But do you think you will win?’
Hrolf did a few squats to loosen his legs up. ‘My sword arm forged my reputation. Every man or woman has a weakness. The question is how to exploit it.’ He thought about how Sayrid had trembled when she stood next to him. She felt the attraction as well. She would end up in his bed. By Freya’s cats, she probably hated the front of toughness she had to put up. She needed a real warrior in her life. ‘And I know her weakness. She will concede with me barely breaking a sweat.’
