She turns the spearhead thrice over in her hand as though it is a ritual, the sleek metal cold on her fingertips. Her hands are warm and slick with sweat, heated by the ire that still burns warm in her breast. Her shoulders heave in sharp exhale as her thoughts mire and simmer on the outcome of the trial - or the excuse of a trial that it was. Aeshaeidr gently rubs her thumb along the slight curvature of the iron. It does little to soothe the raging fire of inaction that licks at her heels and urges her into motion. Even with her eyes trained on the pinprick edge where her foes once dared to strike at her fellows, the treason in her belly is not abated. It is fanned by the flames that cast light into her tent as she peers at the distant fire pit in between the gap of the opening. It casts thin shadows along the walls against which she rests, but it will not let her sleep.
‘Why must we all be tried by a band that hardly fears cowardice?’ The accusation of Óswine roars in her ears like a wildfire that has spread out of control. It consumes everything in its path; devouring and destroying, and not even the boldest of boys and their pails can quench the flames. ‘These moon-addled maids would sooner excuse nithings and turn their ire onto the bold and noble.’ Now the words blind her vision and her reason like smoke and ash that chokes out the sun in the sky. There is no light to be found upon this dark night, where liars twist words into the ears of others and innocent men may hang on the blade for their crimes. Aeshaeidr is choking on the smog — on the injustice of it all, and she clenches her fist around the spearhead.
The iron is no longer cold in her hand. It is now warm; searing, even, as the sharp edges dig into the softened skin of her palm. She imagines it as a sensation like burning, but it is still only hot blood — not blistering — that trickles from the thin cut left in its wake when she tosses it aside. It falls to the floor of her tent with a dull thunk, coming to rest upon the dirt. It has fallen right where the flames flicker through the crack of the entry, and she watches it for several moments as it reflects the light of the fire. Slowly her gaze drifts to the remnants of the broken spear-shaft it was sundered from. The brittle wood splinters out at the end like malignant pokes of a wheel. Aeshaeidr grabs the shaft, and then the spearhead, and she waits; she sits where she can watch the fire burn in the pit, and she waits.
When those who gossip by the fire and those who warm themselves by it on this cold night of injustice finally slip away to their colder homes and beds, she moves. Flickering across the camp, she glances to make sure that none are watching before she tosses the splintered shaft onto the pyre. With a hiss and a burst of embers, it is quickly consumed and made to be one of the other logs and sticks tossed into the flames. No one will question her for tending to the fire. It is not a crime. She sits, then, for now she must wait even longer. The burning inaction in her chest as she breathes — thinly so, with fear — has now become the thrill of action, and it is just as consuming, just as much of a theft of her breath. Her hand, now grasping the spearhead once more, trembles at the thought of what she is about to do. For if she does it, there will be no turning back, even if it should fail.
Aeshaeidr watches the flames. She listens to the pop and crack of the embers as sparks fly up and dance into the cold night air, but it does not fill her with the same hope or dread it once could have. It only draws her thoughts back to the trial in the mead-hall of Sedgebury, where from across the hearth, she stared down liars with tongues twisting and innocent men with wetness pooling in their eyes. There is no justice in blood, but it seems that there is no justice in a trial of testimony, either. So she will make her own justice, if she must. She will blaze her own way to see a resolution for the tragedy and an absolution for the innocent. So, when the fire burns low and is little more than ash and ember, and a deep dark settles over the burh, she casts her stone.
The spearhead drops into the pile of ash with a dull thunk. With hands cut and aching from the cold, she reaches out and buries it down deep enough that she hopes none will be the wiser. It is of Dunlending make, after all, and if it will prove the innocence of one man over one swine, then who could blame her for trying to offer the people of Sedgebury a sense of closure? She pulls her hands back and is faced with dirtied palms. The sight startles her into abrupt movement, yet as she stands, her hands fall far enough away that they fade into the darkness of the night. A shaky exhale passes her lips as the burning in her breast is slowly fading to a deep winter chill. Under the cover of shadow, she glances around to make sure that none have witnessed her guilt, and then she slips back away to her tent to await the dawn.
