Chapter Nineteen #2
“Father is on his deathbed, Freya,” she said, her words whispered across the distance through the crackle of fire. “You should come if you can. He wishes to see you.”
However much I thought my love for my father had faded away, given his sour disposition and unreasonable wishes upon my marriage, my chest tightened with pain at the news.
“What is it, Freya?” Soren crouched beside me and gently wiped away a tear I hadn’t realized slipped down my cheek. “What did you see?”
“’Twas Tove.” The fire fizzled away, and my sister’s face vanished in a smoky wisp on the wind. “’Tis the death I still felt coming. My father…and he wishes to see me before he passes.”
“Then we will go see him if you wish,” Soren vowed. “Straight away. We will leave this very day.”
“I do,” I confessed, surprised how much I wanted to see Bj?rn one last time, considering how foul he had become over recent years.
How obstinate about my handing over prized weapons to Soren.
Shaking my head, I frowned at my husband.
“Yet we need not deny our men a few days of rest. They have earned it.”
“Ja,” he conceded, considering it. “Why don’t we ask them what they would like to do and let the decision be theirs?”
That seemed fair, so we rallied them together once they woke, including those who had arrived before us, and asked.
“’Tis all right to say you wish a few more days,” I made clear, meeting each of their eyes. “You have done a great deal for me and Soren over the past month, serving your tribe well, so ’tis your right to take this time.” I shook my head, meaning every word. “Neither of us will fault you for it.”
“Yet I would fault us,” Ivar made just as clear, looking at me with pride. “You were willing to travel across the open waters of the sea to enemy territory, and risk your life to save Soren, so ’twould be poor of us not to leave as soon as possible so that you might see your father one last time.”
“Agreed,” another man said, then another, until all were clear that we would leave soon, and there was nothing more to say about it.
Never more thankful, I helped them ready the boats, and we set sail within the hour to calm seas and a wind once more in our favor, this time leading us swiftly back to the shores of our homeland. The other ships would return to our stronghold, and we would continue on to see my father.
“Feel this,” I urged Soren when he joined me and Sten at the front of the boat, where the wolf seemed to like to sit, as if keeping watch and warning all away.
I placed his hand over the crack. “Yet again, it proves that whilst it once divided us, now it only brings us back together. Not just us to one another, either, but back to our kin and people.”
“So it seems,” he marveled. The corners of his mouth edged up, and he wrapped his fingers with mine, squeezing with reassurance, seeing the worry in my heart that I kept from my face. “Fear not, wife. We will get there in time.”
While my father’s stronghold wasn’t all that far north of ours, I was grateful he supported me in this when he might have preferred returning to our tribe straight away after being gone so long. I said so, too.
“’Tis true I’m eager to return, yet you forget that our tribes, in their own way, are one and the same,” he said. “Your sisters are my sisters. Your father, my father. So we will be there for our father, you will be there, so that you might say goodbye.”
I could only hope, as we sailed east into a glorious sunrise over a week later, bursting with vivid shades of blues, greens, and violets. All hauntingly familiar colors that stirred me because they were a sign.
“He still lives, Soren.” I pointed out the colors of my sister’s and my talismans splashed across the sky, as if we three were together now in spirit, because there wasn’t much time left. “But not for long.”
It turned out I was right. When we approached my father’s stronghold, Tove and my father’s second-in-command, Knud, already awaited us.
“Welcome home, sister.” Tove embraced me on the dock, holding on tight for a moment, her emotions only apparent in the waver of her voice when she murmured in my ear, “’Tis so good to see you again.”
“And you.” I held on tightly as well before meeting her pale sea green eyes, moist with unshed tears. Moisture she blinked away, undoubtedly determined to remain unaffected and strong for those watching.
“Come,” she said to me and Soren. “He has requested to see you both.” She looked at our men. “My people will see you settled, as you must be weary after such a long voyage.”
Used to the oddities of seers, our men didn’t seem surprised by her knowledge, and Soren and I followed her to my father’s lodge.
Along the way, I spied my gray wolf staring back at me from the misty woodlands as if here to comfort me, and I was grateful.
Without doubt, his steady presence infused me with strength.
Though part of me wanted to be alone with my father, another part was grateful for my husband’s added strength by my side when we finally entered Bj?rn’s lodge.
Upon stepping inside the dimly lit interior, I caught the sickly scent of death approaching and felt a chill in the air that most could not.
I was stricken by how gaunt he had grown since I last saw him.
How diminished and different than the strong, powerful warrior he once was.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, I kept my thoughts from my face and slipped my hand into his. His fingers were as frail as the rest of him and icy cold, so I wrapped my other hand around them too, trying to lend him some warmth.
My father stirred awake at my touch and his eyes slid open and locked on me.
“Freya,” he rasped without the disgruntled look that had become so common after his accident.
Instead, he gazed at me through the eyes of the father I once knew.
The father who adored me and wanted me to be a great shield-maiden, now looked at me with boundless love and pride rather than fear and anger. “You came.”
“I did, Father,” I said softly, my throat clogged with emotion. “I’m here, as is my husband, Soren.”
“Ja,” he rasped. With pride in his expression, his gaze drifted to Soren where he stood beside me, resting a comforting hand on my shoulder, and then Father looked at me again.
“Tove has shared tales of your great feats on Scottish shores.” Rare tenderness lit his eyes when he looked at my swelling belly.
“And tells of a child on the way.” A small smile ghosted his face, surprising me.
“Of a shield-maiden daughter who is just as fierce as her mother.”
I could not stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks. Where I had feared disappointment in his gaze that it was not a strong son, I saw only pride and contentment.
“She is as fierce as I am.” Resting his hand on my belly and covering it with my own, I prayed they would give one another strength as they passed each other between worlds. “Just as I am as fierce as you, Father.”
“Ja,” he murmured, struggling to breathe now, almost as if he had been waiting for me just as Soren had been in Scotland.
His gaze rose to my husband. “I release you from your promise, my new son.” A tear leaked from the corner of his eye.
“I should have never asked you to take her shield and blade…never should have taken that from her…any of my daughters…”
He attempted to say more, but the words died on his lips.
Instead, he breathed his last breath, and his eyes went vacant.
Unsheathing his blade in supplication, Soren dropped to a knee and lowered his head in respect to the passing of a great warrior chieftain. Blinking back tears, I watched Tove and Knud enter and do the same, as Tove undoubtedly felt Father’s passing every bit as much as I.
Anguished, I lowered my head over my father and wept tears I didn’t think I would shed over his passing, feeling love for him I had thought lost to me. Then I unsheathed my blade, dropped to a knee, and bowed my head as well, honoring him as the great warrior he had been.
After a time, I stood as did the others, and we began a new chapter for our Helvig tribe. The first of its kind, as it turned out.
And nothing had ever felt more right.