"I know most of you have never gone so far, brothers and sisters," said Grim. "And fewer still have gone so far in the winter."
Bjorn listened to him standing among the others, chest puffed out and pride firm inside his body. He had reached the title of voroir even before receiving a grain of light or finishing his time of training, and when he learned that Leif was organizing a march to help a distant city, he had been one of the first free men to volunteer.
There were also several commoners in the battalion, men and women who hoped to prove themselves before the Star and ascend. Bjorn liked that will, the determination he saw in their eyes, because even enduring the cold of a journey like that would already be a burden for commoners. But the cold was a good anvil, nothing put someone to the test as well as it did.
"Follow the leadership of those older and more experienced," said Grim. "This," he pointed to a very old man, with white hair and a long beard that went down to his waist, "is Ari, and he will be the supervisor of the second battalion."
Bjorn approved of the choice at the very instant he laid eyes on the old man, but some around him, however, did not seem to agree so much. He could hear the low murmurs and small questions, but he knew how wrong they were. The man was not there to fight as a front-line warrior, he was there because he had white hair, and that meant a great deal, for Bjorn had learned early that an old man in a profession in which the common thing was to die young deserved respect. And there were few professions as deadly as those that required wandering through the kingdom.
Amid the murmurs came a dry sound of lips smacking and a throat being cleared with impatience, right after that the people around the owner of the gesture fell quiet. There was another one, the spoiled boy, or at least the guy Bjorn had judged to be spoiled when he met him, shortly before he broke his face even while being smaller and having one arm less. There were others like them in the convoy, voroirs in general, but no one with a higher title. Grim was the oldest of all the blessed present, which still surprised Bjorn a little, the white did not seem much older than they were, but apparently he already carried many years on his back. That was one of the advantages of being blessed by megin, even more so for whites, whose flesh seemed almost to forget the passage of time.
As the young green had just done something that pleased Bjorn, he decided to go greet him. Thanks to his massive size and heavy armor, people made way as he walked. "Hey, spoiled boy," he said.
"Hello," Hrafn answered. Then he ran a hand through his hair, as if trying to remember his name. "Bright, if I'm not mistaken?" he asked with a wicked smile.
"Bjorn," answered the blacksmith, stretching out his right arm for a greeting.
Hrafn looked at the outstretched arm, then at his right shoulder where something was clearly missing, and finally at Bjorn with both eyebrows raised and his jaw clenched. "Seriously?" he asked.
Bjorn noticed his own stupidity a few instants later, then withdrew the right arm, cleared his throat and extended the left. "It was not on purpose," he said, taking the free hand behind his head, awkwardly.
"It is no problem if it was not on purpose," Hrafn answered. "I myself would do it on purpose if it were the other way around." Then he stretched out his own hand and gripped Bjorn's wrist in a firm clasp before letting go with a small smile.
The blacksmith liked the answer, smiling back. "Do you think it will be enough?" he asked, pointing with his head toward the convoy.
Everyone was already outside the walls, they had left at the first hour of the Star and were now finishing the final preparations. There were a little more than a thousand soldiers and dozens of voroirs.
"For a city of seventy thousand inhabitants?" Hrafn raised an eyebrow. "Unlikely."
Bjorn found the answer strange, since he himself had asked just to make conversation, because to his eyes that number seemed more than enough. A thousand men written on a sheet could seem little, but when one was standing around them, when one saw the steel, the provisions and all the living mass of people, going so far that even someone as tall as he was could barely see the end from where he stood.
It was hard to call that little. "It seems a good number to me," he pointed out.
"It seems just enough not to die on the road," Hrafn shot back.
"We are not alone either, are we?" said Bjorn, finding confidence in his own reasoning. "You just said that there are seventy thousand men and women in that city. There must be hundreds of voroirs there." He continued. "We will be more support than help."
"I hope so," Hrafn answered. And the conversation died there, since the young green did not seem very interested in talking more, and the two had little in common until then besides titles and a bad first impression.
A few minutes later the call to depart was given, Bjorn drew a deep breath and prepared himself mentally, this journey would be long, even most of the voroirs chose to go in carriages because of the distance. Bjorn did not judge the choice, but he preferred to ride on his own, although there were vaktars among the voroirs, the yellows and the best scouts an army could wish for. Even so, he liked to trust in his own eyes as well, even if out of stubbornness, besides, buying a carriage and taking servants just to have a little more comfort in the cold was not the kind of thing he would do.
What impressed him was seeing that Hrafn had also chosen not to go in a carriage, and that seemed almost ironic to him, since if there was anyone there with the right to surrender himself to the comfort of a carriage, it would certainly be the man with one arm less. Bjorn lifted the reins and lightly tapped the horse on the belly, just with enough force for the animal to understand that he wanted more speed. He kept up that gentle trot until he reached Hrafn's side, where the two of them followed the road ahead for some time without speaking. Ahead the path stretched white and bordered by lands that already seemed half dead beneath the cold.
"You do not like carriages very much?" Bjorn asked at last.
"I like being closer to nature," Hrafn answered. And the blacksmith let out a short sound through his nose in approval.
"The road will be long," he said. "Do you really think Vardheim will be that bad?."
Hrafn let out a low grunt of confirmation in response.
"Well," said Bjorn, straightening himself better in the saddle, "then I hope you know how to do more than break noses with your forehead."
"Me too."