Wildfire, Chapter Four part 1

In which it turns out that Freyja added a few bonus warning dreams of her own to the package.  Not that it helped.

For earlier parts check the Loki or Wildfire tags.

Chapter Four.

Priests and Peaceweavers.

Raegn cursed. Aethelbald’s sword had nicked her arm and the slow blood trickled down to her fingertips. She was aware of it’s progress, as irritating as a march of ants. She cursed at herself, for acting like a wife, like a little placid woman who had never handled a sword. Too much thinking, that was the problem. Aethelbald sheathed his sword and said;

"I’m sorry. Is it bad? "

She knocked him down with the flat of her sword against his face. He was lucky he didn’t get it in the eye.

"You don’t apologise for my fault." she said. "If I was of the mettle to be badly hurt by that little scratch I would be using this sword to beat my weaving."

She walked away. Aethelbald rubbed his face, and there was a rueful look on it. Friends laughed at him sitting there in the dust, and his wife walked by and said "You look very well there, husband. You’ve never been more than a fool." Raegn sheathed her sword. She had called it Lufgifu, the love-gift. The men who had tried to get her for wife in the past had found it a sharp bedfellow…

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