‘Hilda,’ her father muttered. His voice was frail and his hand stretched out towards her. Five silk pillows supported his back.
‘Hei.’ She took his hands and stroked his long hair. Pushed a greasy lock away from his face.
‘I heard about the attack from south,’ her father said, worried about the future, as always. Worried about her, but forgetting that she was twenty summers old and had always taken care of herself. Even in this state, he worried.
‘It’s just rumours,’ Hilda said. ‘You have nothing to worry about.’ She wondered how he had heard. Who had told him about the rumours of southerners planning a raid on Jutland. She didn’t want his last moments to be full of worry.
Hilda caressed his hand. At the Midsummer feast, the warriors had urged her to speak to him.
‘You have to go with them, Father.’ She said it softly to convince. She knew that he was tired and hurting, but this was important. The entire village was anxious at his decision to die in bed.
‘I can’t fight with a limp,’ he said, and he raised his eyebrows a little as if it were the simplest thing in all the nine worlds to understand.
‘Don’t blame this on your leg.’ She shook her head. ‘You’ve always had that limp.’ She tucked her father into his furs as she spoke. It wasn’t fair of him to choose to die in bed like a farmer. To shame the entire village, when he could so easily join the raids and go to battle, or die in single combat against the chief. He would die anyways, might as well die with honour. ‘You don’t need to go to battle to win, you just need to leave us the right way.’
‘Great warriors have ended up in Hel’s realm before me,’ her father said, and choked on his own spit. His hand squeezed hers, and it sounded as if his insides were being coughed out.
Hilda rubbed his back until it stopped.
‘This is the destiny my actions have gifted me,’ her father said with a strained voice, as if his throat still tickled. ‘And no one, not even the gods, can escape their destiny.’
‘Valhalla is your rightful place.’
‘I won’t go to Valhalla. I’ll go to Hel.’ He was as stubborn as her.
‘We could sail together on Frey’s day,’ she insisted. ‘Make this my first raid and your last.’
‘Nej,’ he snapped. His lips quivered in resolution. ‘And stop saying you want to fight,’ he added, annoyed with her like only a child or an old man could be. ‘You won’t join the warriors on the raids. The chief promised me.’
His words cooled her to the bone.
Never before had it been so clear to her that almost everything her father did was to keep her from becoming a warrior. Maybe his decision to die in bed was also to keep her away from the raids. To stain the family’s warrior reputation. ‘Why don’t you want me to become a shieldmaiden?’
‘I want to keep you safe,’ he said, not giving it a thought. ‘Like I should have done with Leif.’
Despite how her brother had passed on, Hilda wanted to fight. Her father refused to understand that this wasn’t something he was meant to decide, that she needed to find her own path. The path the nornir had spun for her. She opened her mouth to tell him, but then she saw him there, old and worn, and he seemed so fragile.
She said nothing, just held his hand tight and looked into his eyes, blue like the ocean. She used to think her father would never grow old. Now he had three deep wrinkles on his forehead, a few in the gap between his eyebrows and two at the corners of his mouth. He was old, and soon he would pass on. There, in his bed, in the dark of their longhouse.
Regardless of how betrayed she felt, he was the only true family she had. A dying man. She searched for words that would help her father pass on with a peaceful mind.
‘You don’t have to worry about me. You leave me in good hands,’ she assured him. ‘The villagers will care for me. They always have.’
He forced a smile for her between more fits of coughing.
She rubbed his back. Stayed with him until his hacking stopped. Until the thrall arrived to care for him, and then Hilda stepped back out into the Midsummer night.
The wind scooped around her with its whispers. A couple of young lovers ran down the street past her. Drunk and giggling. The sun had set and the moon was out. It hung low over the ash tree in the inner circle. The night was warm with talk and song. Hilda almost wanted to pull off her yellow under-gown. To wear nothing but her strapped red dress and the two brooches that held it up.
Hilda walked up the hill to join the festivities. The Midsummer pyre blazed in the middle of the village near the great ash. The inner circle was filled with people. Around the fire, two dozen villagers held hands as they sang and stomped their feet in rhythm. Two steps to the left and one to the right. Their song was deep and powerful, as though a thousand people sang.
The shadows of dancing villagers swirled up against the edges of the inner circle. The laughter and conversations were loud. The smell of smoke lingered on everyone’s tunics.
Hilda moved through the crowd towards the tables by the ash. Chanted the verse, longing to escape thoughts about her dying father.
As you take,
Don’t take it all.
Leave fortune,
Good harvest and hope.
A broad man with long hair stood by one of the ale tubs twenty arm-lengths away, back facing the Midsummer fire. His hair was long and well combed, his strong arms covered with painted symbols and images. The back of his left hand was blood-red from the newest addition; the bindrune of fortune.
‘Heill, Finn,’ she said.
The warrior glanced at her and smiled. ‘No moonlit flowering for you, Hilda?’ he asked, and took a deep gulp of ale from his rune-carved horn. A cup was easier to manage, but a horn was better, and larger too.
From her belt, Hilda freed her own horn, dressed in silver.
‘By Mimer’s head!’ he blurted when he saw it.
Her wealth usually impressed, but not always so much. She stretched over Finn, towards the tub of ale, but couldn’t quite reach, and without making her ask, he took her horn and filled it for her. The ale flowed over the border and dripped from the silver tip when he gave it back.
‘Takka,’ she said.
‘So, will you finally join us on the raids on Frey’s day?’ he grinned.
She watched him plunge his empty horn into the wooden bucket to refill it with ale.
‘I’ll fight,’ she answered, though once again the chief had denied her requests to prove her worth. All because her dying father didn’t want her to raid.
‘To your first raid. May we raid together or meet in Valhalla.’ Finn raised his drink. ‘Skál!’
He emptied half the horn at a stroke and a burp escaped his throat as he raised his drink to her again. His breath stank of onions. Hilda lifted her own horn and drank and drank, so the ale flowed down her throat and filled her stomach. The drink wasn’t as sweet as she liked it, but it was stronger than she had expected. The horn was nearly empty when her thirst was quenched. She dried her lips with the back of her hand and forced out a burp of her own.
‘By Ymir’s frosty balls,’ Finn exclaimed. ‘You drink more ale than me, shieldmaiden.’
Glad to be treated like a true warrior, Hilda giggled as she watched him down the remainder of his own drink. When he finished, he no longer looked at her.