The Jarl's Son, Chapter 3-1

The Sickly Child, Part 1

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“You were there when the boy fell ill?”

Marten was quick to answer his father’s call, returning to the front hall within a minute of being asked. Gaiur’s question came at him like a blunt object as he was still crossing the threshold from the north wing.

Taken aback, the handsome man’s lips twisted into a brief and awkward grin. “Father said you required my aid, but I didn’t expect it to start with an interrogation,” he said.

His attempt to maintain a sense of joviality was a feeble one. It left Gaiur unamused. “Were you there or not?” she demanded.

“I was. Why?” he asked in kind, the door finally clicking shut behind him.

“Tell me what you saw,” she said.

Marten’s jaw set and he pushed his way past her. She’d come so close that she all but had him cornered against the door. Pushing past her, he crossed toward the cold fire pit, the thick hide soles of his boots thumping on the wood floor, he huffed through his nose and said, “I don’t much care for your hostile tone, Wolfmother. Do you mean to accuse me of something? To say that his illness is somehow my fault?”

Now it was Gaiur’s turn to be taken aback. The thought hadn’t actually crossed her mind at all, but Marten jumping to that conclusion so quickly raised questions for her. “Should I be considering that?” she asked in a low tone.

Marten wheeled on her, his green cloak billowing, he spun so fast. “I allowed you and those people into this city in hopes you might find some way to cure Erik, not to have more wild accusations leveled at me!” he barked.

Gaiur stood unflinching, her brows knotted into a pensive frown. “Someone tried to place blame on you for his condition,” she stated flatly.

Marten didn’t answer. At least, not with words. He gritted his teeth behind tight closed lips and glowered at her before turning away from her again to make for the front door.

“I won’t be able to help him if I don’t know what happened to him,” she said in a softened tone. The words gave Marten pause. “Jarl Ostock told me you were there when he collapsed. Tell me what happened; what you saw, heard, smelled, or felt.”

Slowly, he turned to face her. “Everything?” he asked dourly.

She nodded. “Even if it seems small and pointless.”

Marten sighed heavily. His shoulders slumped, ruining the proud, upright posture he’d been holding until then. The anger that had twisted his features a moment ago was gone, replaced by the grim looks of grief and depression.

“All right,” he said. “But not here. This room’s too open.”

Once more, Gaiur was led through the dining hall in the south wing. However, instead of heading through the second door as she did with the Jarl, they passed through the first. That door opened into a narrow hallway that led to three more rooms, one each on the left and right, and a third at the end of the hall. Marten ushered her though that last door, revealing a sparsely furnished bedroom half the size of the one in which Erik slept. A single window on the back wall looked out over the cliffs which made up Halvfjord’s western edge. Through it, Gaiur could see the neighboring cliffs that comprised the opposite side of the fjord, and beyond that, the open ocean and the cloud spotted sky of early afternoon.

“Apologies for delaying,” Marten said as he latched shut the door behind him. “This isn’t a subject I like to discuss, much less someplace where one might easily overhear.”

“Fear of further accusation?” Gaiur asked. She almost regretted it when Marten clenched his jaw.

“Yes,” he said through his teeth.

Wordlessly, she placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. Then he sighed again.

“Do you know what it’s like to be accused of a heinous act you had no part in?” he asked as he sank to a seat at the edge of the fur covered bed. By the look on his face, he was somewhat surprised when Gaiur nodded.

“Better than most,” she said, an involuntary smirk coming right after. “Why do you think I travel with a greatwolf and a crow as my only company?”

This time it was Marten’s turn to smirk. “I just figured it was your irresistible charm!” he quipped.

“Hardly,” Gaiur scoffed. However, as she made to explain her own situation, visions of the sick boy in the next room came to her and the words caught in her throat.

Seeming to understand, Marten cleared his throat. “You wanted to know about the day when Erik grew ill,” he said.

Gaiur nodded again. “Yes, as much as you can tell me.”

Shifting so that he sat back against the rear wall just to the right of the window, Marten began to explain. It was early afternoon, not much later than it was now, and just a few days had passed since the start of Summer. The days were warm, but not hot, and a salty breeze had come up from the fjord. Marten had taken Erik out to a small covered training yard at the back of the Jarl’s home, behind his main hall. There they did what boys and young men of means would often do in their spare time, practice their swordsmanship.

Erik had struggled with his swordplay when he was younger. He couldn’t quite get the feel for it right, always overextending and swinging as hard as he could. It made it easy for Marten to catch the boy’s little wooden sword with his own and turn his blows away, or to sidestep his swipes as he screamed in frustration and send him toppling to the ground with a swift catch of his little foot. But as frustrated as the boy would get, Marten insisted that he listen and learn, and after a couple years he began to improve vastly.

His improvement showed on that fateful day. Though only a boy of eight, Erik’s control with the sword was a world apart from what it’d been when he was six. He still made his reckless swings from time to time, of course, usually when the serious practice devolved into silly fun. That often ended with the boy trying to grab Marten’s leg and wrestle him to the ground, and on one occasion he even made a cheeky swing at Marten’s jewels! It was the only time Erik managed to bring his older brother down, and it was something he attempted again that afternoon.

Marten saw it coming, though. With a quick step back and a downward swing of his training sword, he knocked Erik’s aside and set the boy to stumbling. Then, with a wide and mischievous smirk, he stepped forward and grabbed his younger brother by the waist of his trousers, hoisting him up off the ground as he flailed and screamed and laughed!

“That’s when he started coughing,” Marten said, his expression darkening as the smile he wore shifted to a cold glare at the far wall. “I set him down, thought maybe I’d upset his stomach when I yanked him up, but he just coughed and coughed, and then he started wheezing and shaking.”

Gaiur stared at the far side of the room with him, leaning against the wall next to the head of the bed. Having seen Erik’s condition now, she could only imagine how awful it must’ve been to see him hacking and convulsing on the ground like that. To Gaiur’s mind, it sounded as if he was being suffocated by unseen hands. She pressed this idea, asking if Marten had seen anything unusual happening at the boy’s throat. Bruising, sinking of the flesh, anything that might look as if he were being strangled.

Marten shook his head, and his red blonde hair caught the light from the window in lustrous waves. “No. It looked like he was choking, but nothing like that.”

Gaiur crossed her arms and grumbled to herself. Something clearly struck the boy at that moment, but what? She needed to know more.

“What happened next?” she asked.

Marten’s account largely matched that of Jarl Ostock. While attempting to stop Erik from choking, he called out to the guards posted nearby. Hearing his voice, they were quick to respond, and he sent them off in two directions. The fastest of them were to fetch the city’s völva and her spirit helpers, the sooner to see to the boy’s healing and hopefully save his life. The others were sent down to the waterside to fetch the Jarl and inform him of what was happening.

“By the time the völva and her helpers arrived Erik had already gone pale and fallen into his restless slumber,” Marten said. “They took him into his room and looked over his body, but could find nothing unusual. Our Father returned shortly after to see what happened.” Marten paused, and for the first time since he mentioned Erik’s collapse, his gaze came away from the far wall to be cast down at the bed upon which he sat. “He didn’t take it well.”

“Were you there when the völva examined the boy?” Gaiur asked.

“I wasn’t,” Marten said. “I waited outside. I didn’t want to get in her way.”

“What about before she came? Did you see anything strange on his body after he collapsed?”

Again, he shook his head. “Nothing. Only that he went pale after he started choking, but that’s not…” Marten’s voice trailed off. He was staring at the wall again, frowning. “Wait, there might’ve been something. It wasn’t on his body and I thought it a trick of the light at the time, maybe caused by a cloud passing before the sun, but I could’ve sworn the shade in the yard grew darker just before he started coughing.”

Gaiur growled to herself. To most, a detail like that would’ve either gone unnoticed or been waved off as coincidence, just as Marten did. To her, the timing seemed far too convenient to be mere coincidence. “How dark?” she asked.

“I don’t remember for sure, but I think it was almost black beneath us,” he said.

That wasn’t good. If the shadows grew and stayed that dark while the boy suffered those violent first symptoms, then it was a good bet that an entity tied to them was involved. There was only one way to know for sure, though. Pushing off from the wall she’d been leaning against, she nodded toward the door with a tilt of her head.

“Come on,” she said.

Hurriedly, Marten slid off the bed and rose to his feet. “You’ve thought of something? Do you know what ails him?” he asked frantically.

“I have ideas,” she said, “but I won’t be sure until I examine the boy myself.”

Pausing, she looked pointedly at Marten as she unlatched the door. “You’re going to help,” she said curtly.

Marten smiled at her awkwardly. “I don’t know how much help I can be,” he said. “Soldiery, captaining the guards, defending the city, these I know. Medicine and all this dealing with spirits and curses-” He gesticulated with both hands, wiggling them about as he splayed his arms. “-is beyond me.”

“Then it’s good I don’t need your help with that,” she said.

“So what, then?” he asked as he followed her back into the dining hall.

“Familiarity,” she said as they stopped in front of the door to Erik’s room. “You’re his brother, he knows and trusts you. I’m hoping your presence will help calm him as I examine him.”

Marten considered her words for a moment, then nodded his assent. Now that they agreed on a course of action, they quietly made their way into Erik’s room. The boy lay in the same spot on his bed that he had before. Furs and a woolen blanket were pulled up almost to his chin and he grumbled when the door clicked shut behind them. There was no peace visible in his sleep. Sweat sheened his brow, his closed eyes twitched with squeezing lids, and his breaths came short and sharp.

“No matter how many weeks pass, his condition never improves,” Marten said, quickly lowering his volume as Erik whimpered and whined at the sound.

“Nor has he worsened,” Gaiur added quietly.

“What do you mean?” Marten asked.

Setting her axe against the wall nearby, Gaiur leaned over Erik’s bed and looked over his young, pale features. Strands of his dark hair plastered to his forehead and she wiped them away gently. He recoiled at her touch, and she drew her hand away, frowning, as Marten came to stand beside her.

“Something you and Jarl Ostock both mentioned,” she finally continued. “He’s been like this since he collapsed.”

She moved aside, letting Marten take her place. When he sat at the bed’s edge, she instructed him to keep his hand either on Erik’s own, or on his shoulder. As with her touch, the boy recoiled at this at first, and Gaiur worried that Marten’s presence might not be the calming element she’d been hoping for. Fortunately, after a couple moments, the boy did seem to calm down some. His breathing slowed a little and the whimpering he’d done at the sound or touch of another had lessened. Shelyn’s blessings for small victories.

“I’ll need to remove his blankets and clothing to examine him,” Gaiur said as she crossed to the opposite side of the bed. “I don’t know how he’ll react. You may need to restrain him.”

Marten nodded. “If you think it will help, then I’ll do what I must,” he said.

Thank you for reading.
The Jarl’s Son sees Gaiur the Valdunite return to embark on a new adventure and acts as the follow-up to my dark fantasy mystery tale, In the Giant’s Shadow. The previous story isn’t required reading to understand and enjoy this tale, but doing so will enhance the experience.

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