A Glibertarians Exclusive:  Season of Ice VIII

At the homestead

Hengist slept throughout that day, the night, and through the next day.  Mabinne sat by his side, dabbing his head with a wet cloth, cleaning him up when required.  On the evening of the second day, he awoke.

Mabinne was dozing in the chair next to the bed when he spoke.  “Well, my sweet,” he said in a low, pained tone, “I must apologize for putting you to all this trouble.  I simply forgot to dodge; you see.”

“You are a lot of trouble,” she smiled at him.  “How do you feel?”

“Well, I’ve felt better,” Hengist admitted.  “My head feels as though that mammoth was inside it, banging to get out.  My chest hurts as though he was standing on it.  I presume Engvar and Jordvir brought me home?”

“They did,” Mabinne said.  “Traveled through a day and a night to get you here.”

“Good men, they are.  Did they tell you what happened?  I remember ducking around to the downhill side of the bull to stick him, then a flash of his head moving, and then…  nothing.”  He rubbed his head.  “Must be that hit on the head I took.”

“He hit you with his tusk,” Mabinne told him.  “Threw you some ways down the hill.  You landed on a rock, or so Engvar and Jordvir said.”  She proceeded to relate the narrative the two brothers had given her.

“I rather think I’m lucky to be alive,” Hengist said when that was done.

“You’re more than lucky, you reckless, unthinking Northman,” Mabinne replied.  “Suppose you had been killed?”

“Then, my sweet, you would have had this place all to yourself,” Hengist said.  He shifted a little in the bed, wincing in pain.

“Fine chance of that,” Mabinne snapped.  “Your family would move in, or at least would find someone to take it over, and I’d be set out on the road with the clothes I stood in.”

“Not so,” Hengist smiled tiredly at her.  “Not so.  When we were in Tillgatt, I swore out a disposition oath to the King’s magistrate there.  Should I die, all my lands and properties are yours, including my ship.  It’s law here in Ikslund that a man can do so.”

“You…  did that?”

“I did.”  Hengist’s eyes were closing.  “And now, I’m glad I did.  Should I have died – should I die – you will be settled, have a place to lay your head, to feed you.  I could hardly rest easy, knowing that you lacked for anything.  You see, my sweet, I lied to you a little on the road to Tillgatt.  In fact, I find I’m already growing to love you, more than a little.”  His eyes closed, and he snored.

Mabinne sat back in shock.  She regarded the sleeping Ikslunder anew.  He did that, she mused in some amazement, for me.  When he has family living in spare circumstances?

She sat for another hour, watching Hengist with a troubled mind.  Finally, she went off to sleep in the spare bed, but found sleep evasive; she lay staring at the ceiling long into the night.

 

Hengist slept through the night and most of the next day, arising only to stagger to a chamber pot in the corner of the room.  Towards evening he sat up and drank some soup, following which he crashed back into a deep sleep.

On the next day, a blizzard moved through, dumping a heavy snow almost waist deep.  Mabinne scarcely noticed until evening, when she went outside to tend to the livestock; the snow forced her to stop and clear paths before feeding the ducks and the milk cow and its calf.

Hengist spent a ten-day recovering.  On the afternoon of that tenth day, a warm wind was melting the snow under a bright blue sky.  Hengist looked out at the sun.  “Sweet,” he announced, “I’m going outside.”

“If you like,” Mabinne replied.  “You haven’t been out since…”

“I know.”  He went to the hangers near the door and started pulling on parka, hood, and boots.  He looked over his shoulder.  “I’d be happy if you’d join me.  I was just thinking of walking to the lake.”

“Of course.”

They walked through the melting snow to the small dock on the lake shore.  The previous fall Hengist had built a small bench on the end of the dock, so they sat there in silence until the sun grew low in the sky.

Finally, Mabinne spoke.  “How are you feeling?”

“Quite well, my sweet,” Hengist said.  “My head still hurts a little, and it’s still a bit hard to take a deep breath.  But all in all, I’ve been hurt worse.”

Mabinne nodded.  She’d seen the scars.

“Dark soon,” Hengist mused.  “Let’s get inside.”

When they went in, Mabinne removed her outdoor clothing, then went through the house, stoking up the fires in kitchen, sitting room and bedroom.  “I want you to be warm,” she explained when Hengist raised his eyebrow at her.  “You’re not fully recovered yet, you know.”

For their evening meal Mabinne made a thick, warming stew with some of the mammoth meat.  When they had eaten, she cleared away the dishes and fussed over Hengist, insisting he settle into his favorite chair close by the fire.  Then she disappeared.

She was gone for some minutes.  Hengist was just considering going to look for her when she reappeared in the doorway to the bedroom.

She had let down and brushed her long brown hair into a mass of shining waves.  Hengist’s eyes opened wide; it wasn’t her hair that made his breath come short.

Mabinne was wearing the blue silk nightgown he had bought her that first evening back in Port Stronghold.

“Gods beneath us,” Hengist breathed, “but you’re beautiful.”

“I was so worried about you,” Mabinne confessed.  “Damn your oath of disposition; I couldn’t live here without you.”

Hengist found himself unable to speak, so he just held out his arms.  Mabinne swarmed into his lap and, for the first time, kissed him.  Hengist found his strength suddenly returned.  With Mabinne still in his arms, he stood and carried her into the bedroom.

The days leading up to spring were some of the happiest, most contented days Hengist had ever known, but there was one bone of contention between him and the Beretanian woman he loved and now acknowledged as his wife.

“I don’t see why you wouldn’t remove this binding collar.  You know I can control all manners of cold and ice with my magic.  I know it doesn’t seem that useful now,” Mabinne said one evening as she was clearing away the supper dishes.  “But just think, some summer.  It gets hot here, yes?”

“It does,” Hengist agreed.  “Hot and sticky.  Not for long, a moon or two; but it does.”

“How much of the meat in the cavelet below goes bad?”

“A fair amount, if it’s hot,” Hengist replied.  “I usually dry some meat to keep over the warm months, it keeps better.  But, sweet, remember, I won’t be here through much of the warm months.  Gerd comes and stays, true, but he doesn’t cook; he isn’t up to handling the stove, and so he eats mostly sausage and dried meats and vegetables.”

“And that’s another thing,” Mabinne insisted.  “I still say that I could be of great use to you in your raiding, if I had full use of my magic.”

Hengist shook his head.  “The men would never accept it, sweet.  Only last summer you were taken as a captive.  They’d never understand what has happened between us in the winter between.  Trust, sweet, is essential in that business.”

Mabinne nodded.  “Well, I still wish you’d remove the collar, at least here.  Have you not learned to trust me, at least?”

Hengist just looked uncomfortable.  Mabinne let the matter drop; her point was made.

The last few weeks of winter and the first few weeks of spring slid past as the days grew slowly longer and warmer.  The drifts of snow around the house shrank, and icicles formed as water dripped from the eaves of house and barn.  A few days of warm (well, tepid, to Mabinne’s reckoning) rain accelerated the thawing, and in time grass hidden for months by snow was revealed and started to come up green.

Whenever Hengist was otherwise occupied, Mabinne would walk to the end of the dock and try to push her magic past the binding collar.  Each time she failed.  Once she pushed to the point where she actually generated some frost on her fingertips, but the collar burned her neck.

Fortunately, Hengist didn’t notice the burn or, if he did, chose not to mention it.  Mabinne had noticed, with some apprehension, that the big Ikslunder’s mood grew more serious as the days warmed.  He pulled his leather armor and sword out of the chest he kept them in over the winter and went over it, polishing the leather, adjusting the straps, sharpening his sword.  Mabinne wisely said nothing.