Sword and Spice (Askeladd x OC)(Vinland Saga)

18. (Apr 1010) A Helping Hand

Fiadh

No matter how many arrows had found their mark in me, the sting of their bite was something I could never quite adjust to. As a distance fighter, arrow wounds ranked high on my list of most frequent injuries, with slashes trailing behind in a close second.

Stab wounds? I’d only been on the receiving end five times, all in soft spots—typically somewhere on my right side, as if fate itself had a favorite target.

But there was only one time before when an arrowhead had snapped off inside me. The memory of having it pried out by skilled hands was a special kind of agony.

And when those hands weren't so skilled…

“Damn it! I can't get a grip under it!” Thorfinn snarled, his voice muffled through gritted teeth as he clumsily tried to wedge my knife beneath the arrowhead. It was like watching a bear try to thread a needle—frustrating, painful, and probably a little too amusing for my own good.

If I weren't drowning in a sea of agony, I'd be chuckling along at Thorfinn's clumsy antics.

However, I was halfway through some alcohol I had on hand, pretending it was a magical elixir that could numb both my body and the embarrassment of letting this happen in the first place. The more I drank, the more convinced I became that if I downed enough, I might forget Thorfinn was currently digging into my flesh like a toddler with a spoon in a sandbox. I wasn’t about to let him see how much pain he was causing; that would only encourage him to give up and leave me to dissect my leg myself.

This mess was entirely my fault. I’d gotten sloppy, let my guard down, and now I was paying the price—one arrow and one inexperienced hand at a time. The damn arrowhead needed to come out before it decided to put down roots, but Thorfinn's approach was more likely to leave me with an unwanted souvenir.

An unwanted, larger souvenir.

Bjorn would’ve been the better choice for this extraction—cooler head, steadier hands. Not that I had any illusions about where his loyalties lay. Sure, he might stand by if one of the men tried to take advantage of me now that my little secret was out, but when it came to something like this? He’d probably pull the arrowhead out with a smile and maybe even throw in a sarcastic comment for good measure.

And that would be that.

But I couldn’t ask him. Not yet. Not until things cooled off between me and the men, and I had a chance to reassert myself—preferably with a few well-placed blows to some skulls. Or balls.

First things first, though. I had to survive Thorfinn's amateur surgery.

Given the situation, Thorfinn offering to help was about the best I could hope for, even if his brand of help came with a side of frustration.

The first problem before I'd asked Thorfinn to extract this arrowhead was, Thorfinn had no clue where he was dragging me. As we stumbled down the rampart, dodging the glares and wondering eyes of every Viking we passed, it became painfully clear that his plan was as half-baked as his knife extraction work. Once we were outside the fortress walls, I put on the brakes and asked him point-blank what he thought he was doing.

Turns out, his grand idea was for me to leave—just walk away and never look back. When I didn’t jump at the chance to run, he got angry. Really angry.