“This is not justice,” the captive man snarled. “You’ve gone mad, Arne.”
Arne lifted the man’s chin with his axe. “You conspired against Jarl Rune, Bjørn. Planned to lure him to battle and assassinate him, acting as though it were our enemies.”
Though Arne spoke these words, I tasted no certain truth of justice in them.
“You lie,” Astrid shouted. Her brother still shielded her, though it was clear her fury called her to attack in defense of her father. She may be small, but she was fearless. “You cowardly mare, you spew nothing but horse shit from your mouth.”
My lips twitched, and it took all my willpower not to laugh.
“You and your family are all accused of treason,” Arne continued, ignoring Astrid’s outburst.
All of them? That explained Astrid’s prayer. Though it intrigued me, she never specified herself. Her cry for justice had no traces of selfishness and had only been for those she loved.
Arne raised his axe into the air and Bjørn fought against those who held him. Astrid lunged toward her father and her brother held her back, though his eyes gave away his rage and desire to also save their father, if it weren’t for the other men standing in their way.
“With Jarl Rune off destroying our enemies, I will exact justice,” Arne said. “We can only pray your völva wife does not manage to enact your plans, and he returns to us safely.”
A witch for a wife? That was certainly rare, if true. I’d heard of many claims of sorcery and witchcraft by mortals in my time, but most were false. Magic had been more prevalent once upon a time, but for some reason unknown to us gods, it had become far more rare outside the gods and certain types of immortals.
I shook those thoughts from my mind. This wasn’t the time for musing. “Wait.”
Arne halted and regarded me with both curiosity and reverence. “Do you wish to exact justice yourself, Týr? I willingly offer you my axe.”
I studied him for another moment, making sure I was seeing this situation correctly. “You seem to misunderstand why I am here. I have not come to enact your so-called justice. I am responding to the prayer of a woman whose family was under the threat of injustice.”
Astrid sucked in a quiet breath, and her brother’s attention snapped to her.
“You prayed to him?” he hissed.
“How was I supposed to know he’d answer?” Astrid shot back in an equally hard but hushed tone.
This time, I did allow my amusement to show through a chuckle.
Arne hesitated. “Are you also accusing me of lying?”
I waited a moment before responding. “I cannot detect lies. I can taste injustice. And this proceeding is heavy with it. Does your jarl know what you are doing? Or are you exacting this execution without his knowledge? I wonder, if he does not know, what your true motives are.”
“As would I,” a deep masculine voice said behind me.
Arne sucked in a sharp breath, piquing my interest. I turned. A tall man with fair hair and skin, clad in blood-splattered armor, approached. His hard, green eyes pinned on Arne.
A petite woman with flaming hair kept stride with him. The dark makeup around her blazing green eyes enhanced the threatening aura about her. She, too, was dressed for battle, though instead of a typical shield maiden’s weaponry of a sword or axe and a shield, she carried a staff and shield. This must be the witch Arne mentioned.
Warriors followed this pair—weary from battle, but ready for another fight, as evidenced by the energy humming off of them.
“Jarl Rune,” Arne said. “I—”
“You will unhand my husband at once,” the woman snapped. “Or it’ll be the last thing you’ve ever done with your pitiful lives.”
The two men holding Bjørn hesitated for only a moment before releasing him, fearing her more than Arne’s wrath. Fake magic user or not, völvur and the supposed power they held were feared by most Norse people.
Bjørn rose to his feet and rolled his shoulders as if he’d only been minorly inconvenienced this whole time.
“Explain yourself, Arne,” the jarl demanded.
Arne hesitated for only a moment, the witch’s gaze boring into him, and he again explained his supposed findings of treason. This time, he offered up evidence, from allegations of supposed times Bjørn met with others to plan, to early attempts of poisoning and more subtle ways to assassinate the jarl. But even I found each accusation weak.
The witch’s lips curled into a snarl. If I had questioned her relation to Astrid, it would have evaporated then. Their shared expression of fury before an insult was like staring into a mirror.
