Chapter 2 2

"Please, Sigrid, it's my fault too..." I said in a barely audible voice, as befits a frightened, weak-willed brother.

– What are you doing here?! - in the same form in which she communicated with Ilva, the warrior growled. But then she stopped and apologized. I was the last person the caring Valkyrie wanted to offend. She felt guilty before me, because today I saved her life at least twice. And even her medieval twenty-seven-year-old brain understood this well little did she know i was admiring her.

All pre-planned affairs, for a natural reason, the girls postponed. We all had a difficult conversation with an equally difficult person - our mother. Memories of her, I tried with all my might to fish out of the once alien skull. Alas, nothing worked. But all the heroes are collected. The curtain is up. It's time for the first act.

The situation, alien to me, turned my head and all these medieval landscapes on our way greatly distracted from my thoughts. Here you have dark alleys, in the gateways of which darkness reigned even at the height of a spring day, and stone-paved roads, on which, listening, you could hear every step of any of the more or less well-shod townspeople. And where without these miserable window sashes and doors, the opening of which was for me a matter of thirty seconds with the right equipment? Rare patrols, no cameras, lights or anything. Oh Gods! If not for this widespread unsanitary conditions, stink and hefty rats, I could call this place paradise!

"Glaud, it's over. Stop shedding tears, - in my opinion, the eldest repeated the demand three times already, carefully hugging me to return me to the ground. She struggled to try on the role of a kind and decent sister, unusual for her.

Oh, dear Sigrid, if you only knew what those tears were... By the way, my emotional background was obviously disturbed by something. I had never noticed such tearfulness behind me before, and something had to be done about it too.

Our not quite small, but "very cozy" two-story house was located at the very end of Dog Street. All sorts of visiting craftsmen, horse breeders and other handy part of the population, from those who had approval for living and production from the Guild of Craftsmen, lived on it. In this world, everyone and everything was obsessed with their guilds, of which, according to brief fragments of the guy's memories, there were quite a few... With the name of one of them that popped up in my brain, I was completely immersed in some kind of dissonance. Frostbitten even created the Guild of Assassins. Good God! Well, what sane and self-respecting professional would leave his contacts in such a place? For what? I still had to solve this issue, but for now ...

- ILWA!

As soon as we appeared in the house, the youngest, spinning like a fox in front of her mother, literally flew up the stairs to the second floor, hastily closing the doors behind her with a bolt. Hardly had time to hear about the attack on us, the mother, cursing the younger one, promised to personally end the torment of that one if something happened to me through her fault.

"A caring family," I thought, looking around the workplace of my newly-made very large and strong-looking mother. Helga was about a meter eighty-seven - a meter ninety. Only a couple of centimeters shorter than his eldest daughter. Tight, with huge arms and completely absent chest, she, covered with scars worse than the same Sigrid, holding a hefty hammer, stared curiously at me and at her daughter who remained below for reporting.

"You say he saved you twice?" - Not really believing in the heroism of the boy, his mother asked skeptically. Although, as I assume, she might not know the meaning of the word "skeptical" - He survived, and so do you, and this is the main thing. And this should be celebrated, too, - sitting on a bench, standing not far from the anvil, said the mother. Worried thoughts flickered in her old tortured eyes. Immersed in thought, she, having finished the interrogation, gave me the opportunity to look around on the first floor.

The ceilings on the first floor were rather low. How the mother worked with a hammer with her height and in such conditions, I could not even imagine. The same Sigrid could hardly walk with her back straight. Perhaps there was some other workshop or armory somewhere here that could provide me with many different privileges, of which access to melee weapons was only a small fraction. Sharpening and caring for tools were important duties of every self-respecting "butcher". After all, every blow, cut and rough collision with the bone could remain a notch, and therefore irrefutable, in some cases, evidence that I was not used to leaving at the crime scene, and even more so carrying it in my pocket. Among the dilapidated, in my opinion, wooden supports and walls, I noticed a large kitchen table, a couple of chairs and a haystack carelessly thrown on the ground with a filthy veil spread over it and a blanket smeared with either soot or something else. The smell emanated from him appropriate, and also ...

- Rats?! I squeaked, experiencing "déjà vu" and remembering that my clothes were still soaked with horse manure, urine and my own blood. It is worth noting that in my past life I was still that neat man who loved order in everything: in the house, at home, at work, and even at the moments when I went hunting. Everything I always had was polished, sharpened and sparkling, and here you are: mountains of wooden dirty dishes, empty barrels, bottles, tools scattered all over the first floor, some crafts and things that smell worse than me now !

"Helga, you old witch, if I can't get rid of your pig habits, then I'll have to get rid of you. For I do not want, and I am not ready to live and create in a pigsty!"

In the meantime, the older women of the family ... And, by the way, what was their last name? In the memories of the little one, everywhere and everywhere she was spinning - "Wolf" - the middle name, usually given to the lost and foundlings. But, unlike the little boy, whose conception story Helga never voiced, Ylva and Sigrid were her truly native children. Perhaps the women were hiding from someone in this wilderness, or maybe not. This was not the most worrying issue for me, but I think it will be possible to solve it over time.

What worried me most now was the position of men in this medieval society. For the most part, I saw only women on the streets. Patrolmen also, in a ratio of two to one, consisted of them. In addition, each of the persons of the once "weak" sex for me was superior to the "strong" one, both in physiological complexion and in numbers. This fact made the ladies dominant in the streets of this city. The world of matriarchy? It's funny, considering that rapists can be crossed off my list of favorite targets right away. For hunting for women who gave a man pleasure was somehow ... But, in principle, we'll wait and see.

Hurrying to my room, where, unlike the first floor that belonged entirely to my mother, there was at least a bed, I quickly threw off all my clothes that smelled of blood and urine. Pulling out some old rag that looked like a bedspread, he tied it around with that one, like a tunic. My body was literally saturated with the stench of the street, and I was not going to take what I had to wear all day in these dirty hands.

Behind our house, in a rural yard, divided into several families, there was a well. The water in it is not the cleanest and our neighbors mostly used it to water their horses. But, I think, icy water will do for my soap-and-rinse procedures.

No soap, no towels, only two leaky buckets, but hope for quick hands. I didn't want to catch a cold while pouring ice water, but I didn't want to stink like a pig even less. Having drenched myself once or twice, until redness in my hands and in the places I rubbed, I wiggled everything that I could reach. It was cold. A thin body, barely found the strength to lift a full bucket of water, and was not very happy about the load that had fallen on it. When my hands again reached the chest, in which that hefty pin stuck out not so long ago, I froze for a while,then valkyrie came to help me out in my mind was wondering should i tell her how i feel. I never wanted to ruin the friendship so i had no choice but just keep my feelings to myself