He was the conqueror. She was the sacrifice.
He was powerful. She was unexpected.
He was certain. She was uncertainty.
He formed a nation. She formed his world.
Together they would make history.
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xxxviii. Shameful Repercussions
Life and death tend to go hand in hand. One cannot exist without the other. Both are two sides of the same coin. It is unnatural for one to live forever and for one to never live at all.
Being faced with death early on was a stark revelation to Kari Ragnardottir. Seeing her mother's corpse lying in what had been their home was a terrible introduction to such a concept for a young girl.
She had not been so innocent in the ways of the world. She had known what ravaged the earth. Death, famine, plague, sadness, cruelty. It was one thing to hear about it yet it was another to have it happen to oneself.
It had come without warning. That was the worst part. Her mother had just been telling her to collect some herbs for that day and to store goods for the upcoming winter. She knew that no one would help them should they lack in supplies.
The next thing Kari knew, her mother was gone and she was all alone. Death had not been kind to a young girl who knew not how to survive on her own but it was Death who taught her how to be strong, how to rely on her own strength.
Death had been a companion as had solitude. It was Death who freed her from such a life when Death claimed the souls of all those who had tormented her over the years. For a time, she did not care once about who was affected by her supposed companion.
Now, she regretted her animosity and ignorance. As Kari looked on at the men who steadily carried body after body of both the injured and the dead, she felt her heart break for every warrior she had promised victory.
She had spent all morning helping out wherever she could, tending to the wounded. She had cleaned wounds and held down men who needed their wounds sealed by heated metal. She would have done more but when she saw a young boy, barely fifteen, bite into a piece of leather as his arm was sawed off, she had to stop before she broke down in front of everyone.
She could not help but hold herself up to blame when she was one of the reasons why they embarked on that journey in the first place. All her talks of victory and conquest were what tricked their idealistic minds into losing their lives.
Vikings had a beautiful sentiment that should they die in battle, they would be joining their gods and fellow warriors in Valhalla. Even that did little to ease her, that afterlife did not make their deaths hurt any less, especially for the families they left behind.
Kari stood alone, watching from where she was. She needed to be alone. Harald had been worried but he had understood once he saw her face. They needed to talk but it was hard to speak when their voices were drowned out by the cries of the suffering.
She doubled over in pain, hurling whatever she had managed to shove down that morning. It had been days since they arrived back at Tamdrup but her ailment had not left her. She had found out why the day before.
