Oath Bound: Day 8

Word Count: 48,017

Summary of Events:

Still tied to the tree, Friðljót tried to figure out why she had been spared a swift death, only to be doomed to a slow one, but had no guesses, much less answers. Aðalbjörn was woken by the vitki, who took him to the sacred place, where she sacrificed a calf and sprinkled its ashes over him, his hound, his horse, and the raven his father was sending with him; this symbolised that the trip would be long, which troubled Aðalbjörn. Friðljót had been awake when darkness fell and couldn't sleep, especially when she heard the sounds of a dog sniffing and became certain it was a wolf about to eat her, so she screamed until a man told her to be calm; she discovered he was one of a group of men, and the sniffing had been their hounds . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

“Please, please get me away from here,” she begged. “I can’t go back, they will try to kill me again, or they will force me to marry the man.”

“And why would you not marry this man?” the torch-bearer asked.

“He is as old as my father,” she replied.

“Are there not young men in this realm whom you could wed?” the torch-bearer asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Then why are you being betrothed to this man?” the torch-bearer asked.

“I know not, he already has four wives,” she replied. “He has sons older than me.”

“It is grotesque,” a voice from the shadows said.

“Please, please, will you help me?” Friðljót begged.

Without a word the torch-bearer drew his sword and sliced it through the ropes as if they were nothing, Friðljót’s heart quaked to think of how sharp his blade was, but was grateful as the pressure released and all the rope coils fell away; she shook her wrists free from the loops about them and winced as she moved them, they were raw and bleeding.

“Come,” the torch-bearer bid.

She followed him while the others fell into step behind; she heard one of them whistle to the hounds as they went through the trees to the southwest for a short ways before she saw the low orange coals of a fire and one man sitting up guarding it.

“Build up the fire,” the torch-bearer ordered. “Get out the bread, skin the last hare.”

Friðljót couldn’t tell how many men there were as they bustled about to fulfill orders given by the torch-bearer, who added the torch to the fire once it was restocked with wood to get it burning; she also saw horses tethered on the fringes of a ring of bedrolls, one of which she was instructed to sit on.

All of the men were warriors, and they were all young, no matter how many there were. One of the youngest-looking ones sat beside her and took first one hand, then the other, and applied a cool, stinging, but soothing salve to the raw flesh before gently wrapping it.

Another thrust a spit through a skinned hare and started cooking it over the fire, while another brought her bread, apologising that it might be a little stale, but she devoured it and was certain she had never tasted better, yet — especially at the sight of the cooking hare — her stomach wasn’t sated.

She was given water and drank it all, and when the hare was finally cooked she was told to give whatever she didn’t eat to the hounds, for all the men were sated, but she ended up devouring the whole thing herself, and felt slightly ashamed after the fact, although she had been starving.

As she ate the activity settled down and she was able to count that there were seven men, all young, and truly all quite fetching, any of them she would have gladly married over Snerrigeírr, even if they were mere warriors, and were not princes or even kings such as Snerrigeírr was.