‘I was rat hunting in the lower deeps of Karak Krum,’ Snorri explained, smiling broadly and looking into Elemendrin’s eyes. ‘Sapphires do not sparkle as brightly,’ he said in a low voice.
They were more like steel as the priestess pierced the prince with a gimlet gaze.
‘Rats?’
Snorri’s brow furrowed and he tried to gesture with his arms.
Elmendrin snapped at him. ‘Sit still!’
‘But they were big rats, massive, and carrying blades.’
She scowled again. The expression seemed near fixed in Snorri’s presence. ‘Vermin do not bear weapons. I see no hero before me, I see the spoilt son of a king with a swollen ego.’ She examined the hand further. ‘At least your cousin has bound it properly. The wound has clotted.’
Carefully, she began dabbing the stumps of Snorri’s fingers with cloth and ointment. He winced, receiving another reproachful look from the priestess.
‘It stings,’ he complained.
Elmendrin rolled her eyes and continued cleaning the wound.
The temple of Valaya was a simple enough chamber. A place of healing, it contained baths and ranks of cots. But it was also a place of worship and the statue of the ancestor goddess stood proudly at the back of the room, overseeing the work of her handmaidens. Valaya was depicted wearing robes, over which was a skirt of chainmail. She bore no helm, though she was a warrior goddess, and her long plaits fell either side of her ample bosom. Her hands were clasped beneath her chest and a gold circular plate sat in front of the statue, engraved with the goddess’s rune.
Low lantern light painted the temple in hues of deep red and orange. The air was thick with the smell of unguents and healing incense. There were also several large beer barrels filled with the kind of restorative no dwarf would ever refuse or doubt the medicinal properties of.
Several priestesses roamed about, bringing fresh water from the wells or salves and balms from the stores. There were a few other injured dwarfs being tended, miners mostly, but due to the size of the chamber the prince had Elmendrin all to himself. A fact he intended to make the most of.
‘I have many scars,’ he said, ‘from the many battles I have fought in.’
Elmendrin kept her eyes on her work. ‘Indeed.’
‘See here,’ said the prince, twisting to show off a jagged red mark down his left side. ‘See…’ he repeated. With an exasperated sigh, Elmendrin looked up.
Snorri smiled. ‘From an urk cleaver, wielded by a chieftain. I cut off his head and mounted it on my banner pole. During the wars of my father, I killed many urk and grobi, milady. See how it has made my arm strong…’ Shirtless, his armour resting at the side of the cot where he was sitting, Snorri flexed his bicep and was gratified by the bulge he saw.
Elmendrin was unimpressed.
‘I do not know,’ she said, turning back to tending Snorri’s hand, ‘why you have removed your upper garments when it is just your hand that is injured.’ Wound cleaned, she began to rebind the ruined fingers with fresh bandages, muttering imprecations to Valaya as she did so.
Snorri leaned in to whisper in her ear, ‘Would you like me to remove the lower garments too?’
Elmendrin met his gaze, their lips not quite touching. The prince’s confidence eroded with the sudden prospect of intimacy. She purred, ‘Not unless you wish to be a prancing ufdi for the amusement of your father’s court, a bard with the voice of a beardling.’ She held a pair of prising tongs, the kind used to extract chips of wood or metal from a wound, and held them close to the prince’s crotch.
Snorri paled. ‘Not the dongliz…’ he said, and recoiled.
She smiled humourlessly, set the prising tongs down. ‘I thought not.’ Elmendrin finished tying off the bandage, binding it over tightly and bringing another wince to the prince’s face. ‘There, it is done. May Valaya bless you and keep the wound from festering. It’ll be a while before you can shoot a crossbow again, my prince.’
Snorri examined the finely tended wound, ‘Aye, you might be right at that. My sincerest thanks, milady,’ he said with genuine affection.
Despite her prickly veneer, Elmendrin blushed and turned away to wash her hands. Heat was radiating off her skin and she felt a tightening in her stomach.
‘I am sorry, I–’ Snorri began, slightly flustered. ‘What I mean to say is I–’ He reached out to touch her shoulder, admiring the way her violet robes framed her stout body and the flaxen locks bound into a ponytail that draped down her back.
She was broad chested, with a short stubby nose and strong cheekbones, a fine rinn and a worthy wife of any king. But it was her fire that Snorri so admired, her kindness and poise lacking in some dwarf women, some of whom had greater and longer beards than their dwarf men. He had spoken none of this to Morgrim, for to do so would damage the image he had worked to cultivate in his cousin’s eyes. But here, alone with Elmendrin, he had no need for such disguise.
Alas, he also found that words deserted him.
‘Do not speak further, my prince.’ Her head was bowed when she faced him, but she met his gaze furtively.
‘Let us not be prince and priestess,’ he said, swallowing his sudden anxiety. ‘Rather, we could be Snorri and Elmendrin.’
Elmendrin was about to answer, her lips framing a word, when another voice intruded.
‘I heard of your wounding, Prince Snorri,’ said a warrior in the garb of a reckoner. He wore chainmail over a leather hauberk and pauldrons of black leather, and carried an iron helmet in the crook of his arm. A small leather book along with several scroll cases was fastened to his broad belt. There was room for an axe too, or hammer, but its
