Peaceweaver by Rebecca Barnhouse Read Free Book Online

beseechingly with his wide gray eyes, the lashes thick as a girl’s.
    Finally, judging that she’d made him wait long enough, she turned to him and smiled.
    “Hurry,” he said, standing and pulling her up with him. Laughing, they emerged into the light.
    “Look how tall you are!” Hild said, making Arinbjörn stop so she could measure herself against him. “You must have grown overnight—you’re almost as tall as me.”
    “But not as tall as Garwulf,” he said, giving her a slylook, and she knew he must have seen them riding together earlier.
    If he meant to embarrass her, it didn’t work. “Not nearly as tall as him. You’re no Garwulf, youngling,” she said, and tried to tousle his hair, but he ducked out of the way. “Where are we going?”
    Without answering, he led her toward the path that wound behind the hall. They passed the smithy and the cheerful ringing of hammer on anvil as the blacksmiths shaped weapons of war. Just beyond the smithy’s well, Arinbjörn ducked off the path and headed down a weedy trail where rows of smelly sheepskins were stretched out to dry. Hild hurried to keep up with him as he picked his way around a trash heap. Her cousin could get anywhere he wanted to without using the stronghold’s main pathways; he had shown Hild and Beyla so many shortcuts over the years that they were almost as good at it as he was.
    When they came to a wooden wall, Arinbjörn put his finger to his lips, looked both ways, leaned down to pick up something that had been hidden behind a rock, and then beckoned Hild forward. She stifled her laughter as he moved a loose board aside, stepped through the wall, and ended up on the dusty lane that led out the East Gate, the one hardly anybody used except farmers bringing their grain to the stronghold.
    They could have gotten here directly in half the time, but Hild had to admit that her cousin’s way was more fun.Once they were on the lane, she looked to see what he had picked up. A sheathed sword. “You’ve already got a sword,” she said, gesturing to the weapon that hung from his belt.
    “But you don’t.” He looked back at her and laughed. “Hurry up!” His voice squeaked on the word
up
.
    Although she was sorely tempted to say something, Hild pretended not to hear it. Instead, she ran to keep up. “Girls don’t fight, cousin.” She passed him and, walking backward, held out a length of her skirt. “See this?”
    “It never stopped you before.”
    “But that was when—” She stopped herself from completing her thought:
when you still needed my help
.
    “When what?” he asked as she fell into step beside him.
    “When I was young enough that it didn’t matter.”
    “You mean, when you weren’t afraid Garwulf might see you.”
    “Maybe,” she said, and this time, despite herself, she blushed.
    “All right, you don’t have to. Come watch me instead.”
    At the gate, the guard stepped out, his spear raised to challenge them. He stopped short, then backed up and bowed as he recognized Arinbjörn, who passed him without so much as a nod of recognition. For all that he was just a boy, Arinbjörn occasionally showed flashes of the ruler he would become, of the privilege and power and expectation of obedience from others. Hild knew it was hard for him to train with the other boys, almost all of whom were olderthan he was and better with their weapons. She wondered if they resented him and used his weakness with the sword against him.
    Not far from the stronghold’s wooden walls, a pile of boulders left over from some long-ago party of trolls sheltered a grassy spot where she had taken Arinbjörn on sunny days when he was a little boy. There they’d been away from the noise and dust and smell of town, but close enough that they could call for the guard if danger threatened. So often had they gone there that others recognized it as their private place, and Hild had seen farmers with their oxcarts taking the long way round it in deference