Sigrid grabbed the cloth and tied it around her head. It did well enough to cover her hair, at least until the cloth gets soaked. They began to run, the two of them, as the rain beat down harder and harder. By the time the trail was reaching its end, the droplets felt like cold knives on her back. If she wanted to be wet and frozen, she would have stayed in Jutland.

Sure enough, though, the estate was slowly rising over the horizon into view. Sigrid nearly stopped running to admire it. Her grandfather's house was large, yes, but this building could easily have dwarfed it. These Angles certainly know how to build! The house in the fields resembled a smaller version of the manor-houses that occasionally dominated a village's landscape, and was comparable to even the greatest of Jarl's halls. Better still, it meant shield from the harsh rain that seems to brew up out of nowhere in the Angle kingdoms.

However, there was a complication. Sigrid smelled it as soon as she saw the house. The complication smelled of fresh earth, that being what it was. She yanked the cloth off her head, and found it covered in watery mud. With her other hand, she grabbed for her hair, bringing it to her eyes. Just as she suspected, it was Norse blonde. If she knew any flowery curse words, perhaps she would have made use of quite a few of them. However, there was nothing she could do. To be scooping dirt into her hair now would be even more suspicious, and being driven out of a village or two was not worth risking lungwater disease for. She could only pray that the owner of the estate took kindly to daughters of Vikings.