Even in the semi-darkness of the healing house, Svala could see the water in the basin was already tinged a pale pink. She'd unbraided the lengths of her hair, washing her face and what she could see of the tendrils awkwardly with her uninjured hand. The long, slender fingers combed her dampened hair as best they could, smiling thoughtfully as she watched her little sister settle in beside Dagny to play some small game they'd made up on the spot, something with rhymes and small clapping hands and childish giggles that brightened the somber mood in the healing house like summer sunlight.

Teeth ground together in concentration, and then frustration, she had tried to braid her mostly-cleaned hair once more but soon gave up her efforts all together. Svala looked down at her bandaged hand, flexing the fingers slowly, a little painfully for all of Eyja's careful wraps. Her little sister had taken to instruction well, a healer born it seemed, even if this was merely the estimation of a sister who loved her dearly. But with a few moments rest all the adrenaline had passed, come on its heels the pain and stiffness she would just have to bear out 'til all was healed up once more.

Svala's eyes glanced upward as the giant blonde slave stood up and walked past them to the door and then out into the sleet and the dark, wincing at the bloody, stitched meat across his back before glancing down at her own hand again. No, no - if this thrall could bear so well what was done to him, she'd no cause to sit here and nurse a couple cuts, and besides...

Her eyes looked to that dark sky before the door shut once more, sleeting and frigid. [i]'Madir has no cloak, nor covering... '[/i] Svala's eyes fell to a corner, where Hallerna's wraps remained carefully folded. Leave it to Madir to leave with her axe in hand, but no thought to her own comfort at all... Svala stood and took up all those wraps in her arms, and made to run them out to her mother - no matter the dark look she'd likely earn for her troubles - when she was all but bowled over by the young man who burst in with some of the very best news she'd heard all day. Well, at the very least since she'd seen her Madir's face, returned from the supply run to the draugr-ridden village.

He had stood with Ragnar when they'd escaped inside the healing house, Svala was sure, though there'd been no time to pay him much mind at the time. But now so close, Svala couldn't help but realize how very young he was. Even if he raided with the thegn, he was surely no older than her brother Tore had been, and Svala's heart ached when he smiled, those impish dimples still visible beneath a young man's sparse growth of beard. 

But his news and that laughing smile could not be denied, and Svala found herself grinning right back. By the hearth she could hear Eyja cheer loudly, taking Dagny's hands in her own and clapping her approval, though Svala was fairly sure the little girl wasn't entirely sure what the happy commotion was really all about. Cradling her mother's wraps to her chest, she made to pass by the young man and outdoors to her Madir, bowing her head before the cold and the sleet, pulling her own wrap about her head with her good hand. 

"Thank you," Svala said softly, "I don't think more welcome words have been heard tonight."

********

Standing still and dangerously silent in the sleet, a carven statue of carefully-controlled rage, Hallerna watched helplessly as that treacherous little animal stalked off, free to wreak whatever havoc she knew would descend on them all soon enough. She glanced toward Sigrid who, at the very least, had the freedom to speak as she wished alongside the shield of her husband and his men, and suddenly despised her own silence even if she knew it had been the wisest choice. Harald was a cunning creature, a hateful, wily beast who would gladly strike whatever spot he knew would bleed the most.

But that didn't make her silence gall any less, particularly when whatever had passed for 'reparations' between the thegn and this would-be upstart were over without the least mention of the attack on her own children. Only Orran's skill and Svala's courage had seen them to safety, and this? The execution of a man - no... No, a mere [i]boy,[/i] no older than her own sweet son had been. So this boy's severed head and the reluctant transaction of two thralls to the Ragnarsson household was suddenly meant to make all things right now?

Hallerna could not remember a time she'd been so exhausted, so bone-deep tired and hungry, taking neither food nor rest since they'd left for the village and that ill-fated supply run this morning. Only that smoldering fury kept her upright in the sleet and the frigid cold as she stalked toward Loker and she clung to it tightly, waiting only for the instant Ragnar had stepped away before she approached the housecarl herself. Anger and exhaustion, and the passing terror for the lives of her only living children made her bold as she glared up at him, her own face mere inches from the housecarl's.

"I demand...[i] Satisfaction,"[/i] Hallerna hissed, lifting her arm with her axe in the direction that Harald had long since disappeared. "My children aren't the get of a thegn, I'll grant you that, but they would have died all the same [i]behind these walls.[/i] Eyja ran for her life, same as Sigrid's boys, and Svala? Svala had to [i]kill[/i] a man! Do you understand me? [i]Kill a man![/i]

"And were it not for the blade of the painted man, the Christian foreigner? Not a single one of them might have made it here alive - and you just let that bastard [i]walk away,[/i] as if all is settled and done!?" 

Hallerna knew well she wasn't being the least bit fair, though not a single other soul but Loker could hear the angry whisper of her voice. But the tall red-headed man seemed broad and strong to her, not likely to wilt at the assault of a woman's furious words. And though the sound of her voice never rose above the hiss of the sleet that fell over Trellesborg, Hallerna was helpless to stop the torrent once it had begun.