Runes and Red Sails (Queenmaker Book 1)(24)
Aelfhild could feel the tightening in her throat as she watched the coins pass across the table. She hated the jolly, reassuring look in the man’s eyes. She hated the way his grubby fingers slid the coins into his purse. She hated feeling so trapped. Her fists clenched beneath the table. Part of her mind knew that there was nothing for to do but wait and see how things turned out, but another part raged against passivity, screaming not to trust the men.
They will laugh and walk away and steal our money.
They will find Osric’s men and betray us.
She was sure that her seething must have shown, try as she might to keep her face serene, but nobody seemed to be paying her any mind.
“When do we depart?” asked Bercthun, “And what is the cargo?”
“Tomorrow morning, just after dawn. There is a warehouse at the west edge of town by the mills, we load from there. We carry barrels of barley up north, malt for beer and bread and whatnot. Thrym are not smart enough to grow it themselves, so they need us!” He grinned at Sigfus, who had not lifted his eyes from his now-empty beer mug for the entire conversation. The mention of the Thrym seemed to have sparked his interest, and he turned toward his partner. Watching him move was like seeing a mountain rearrange itself boulder by boulder.
Leofstan waved him away, saying something dismissive in the northern tongue. Sigfus shrugged, and the bench beneath him jiggled with the rise and fall of his titanic shoulders.
Turning to his new customers, Leofstan confided in a dramatic whisper, “Big bastard speaks not a word of Earnfolding. Let us just say, if I had hired him for his brains, I would not have to pay him at all.” He broke into fits of giggling.
They took their leave of the two, leaving Leofstan to carry on chuckling to himself. As the three turned to go, Leofstan called out, all traces of mirth gone from his voice, “Dawn tomorrow, west docks. If you are not there, we leave with your coins.”
Aelfhild’s fingernails bit into her palms.
Ceolwen fussed with her cloak as they walked back to the inn, pulling it close against the night’s cold. Her face was laid bare for Aelfhild to read, given the long years they had spent together, and Aelfhild saw there the same anger and the same fears that troubled her own mind.
And Bercthun’s earnest face concealed nothing. His jaw was rigid, his stare fixed straight ahead.
The night’s revelries were winding down, and the taverns had grown dark. A few stragglers remained out and about, heading to their beds or looking for a place to get one last drink. It was gloomy and still, clouds pressing in overhead lit from behind by the light of the moons; torches flickered in iron stands along the main street.
Aelfhild jumped as Ceolwen spat into the mud. Such an unrefined gesture from her mistress marked trouble.
“He is a foul little man.”
She did not need to name the target of her ire. Leofstan was on all their minds.
“He is,” Aelfhild agreed.
Bercthun grunted.
Aelfhild decided not to press him. He had his own reasons for silence. The Eorl had laid a heavy burden on him in Ceolwen’s life. This could not have been how the young warrior pictured his path to glory, of that she was sure.
The door of their inn was still unlatched, and they found a fire burning low in the hearth. Behind a curtain at the far end of the hall they made beds in piles of straw, wrapping themselves in their cloaks.
Settling in, Aelfhild lay and listened to the noises of the house—the snoring of other travelers, the shuffling feet of the innkeeper as she barred and locked the door, the gentle rustle of bedding as someone or other shifted in their sleep.
Bercthun broke the silence with a whisper. “I know it is hard, but we have no choice but to trust them. When we reach Fornhofn…we can figure our next move from there.”
“It irks us all not to have a better way. You are right, though, we have little choice.” Ceolwen replied. “None of this is your fault, Bercthun,” she added, “You have done more than we ever could have asked. Thank you.” Her words were soothing. There was a balm in that voice, the tone of a mother coaxing a smile from her crestfallen son.
She sounds like a queen, Aelfhild thought to herself. It was a challenge to reconcile her memories of a mischievous and often petulant child with this calm, confident voice in the darkness. She had heard it said before that hardship showed the true nature of a person, but had not really understood the meaning of the words until now. Perhaps there was something to it, after all.
Rolling on to her side, she settled down into the straw. She could hear Bercthun and Ceolwen breathing, neither one yet asleep. Unbidden, a proverb popped into her mind, a fragment of some long-forgotten song. It seemed fitting, so she shared it with her companions: “A foolish man lies awake at night, worrying of many things. He rises care-worn in the morning, and his troubles are just as they were.”
“Thank you for that, Aela,” replied Ceolwen with a sigh that hinted strongly at tested patience. Straw rustled as the she wriggled into her bedding.
Aelfhild grinned to herself in the darkness, and closed her eyes to find what sleep she could.
12
Pitch-stained warehouse walls hemmed in a maze of footpaths and muddy lanes by the western docks. Dusk still clung to the buildings, and Aelfhild’s imagination filled every shadowed doorway or alley with dead-eyed rogues and poisoned swords.