By the Mountain Bound (31 page)

“I failed.”

Her tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth. “And the others?”

“Muire will meet us at the hall.”

She didn’t speak again. Strifbjorn was grateful for the silence of the flight.

Arngeir’s hall, with its angled roof of blue slates and glass-paned windows, caught a glare like ice off the afternoon sun. It
sat in the midst of a little village, not so isolated as Strifbjorn’s own hall had been. Herfjotur and he rode her steed in a tightening gyre into the courtyard, which was also paved with slates and shoveled clean of snow. His hooves belled on the pavement, and Strifbjorn took a long, slow look around and then glanced down at Yrenbend’s blade in his white-knuckled hand.

Sigrdrifa’s blood stained his sleeves and the front of his trousers. The small sheath in his belt hung empty as the ache in his belly, innocent of the knife he had left in her eye.

Herfjotur dismounted. Strifbjorn slid down behind her, boots clattering on the cold stones.

He had never killed one of his brethren before.

When he looked up, Arngeir and Brynhilde were hurrying across the court. Cold recognition flickered in Brynhilde’s eyes as they glanced off the sword in Strifbjorn’s hand and up to his own. Herfjotur stepped out of her way and Arngeir stopped in his tracks, but Yrenbend’s wife came forward steadily, never dropping her gaze. Three feet away, she paused, looking up into Strifbjorn’s face, and then quietly reached across the distance.

He gave her husband’s sword into her hand.

Her fingers tightened on it, convulsively, her jaw clenching as if in pain. Strifbjorn saw the ring that Muire had made for her catch the light, and then fall into darkness as she turned her hand over, weighing the sword. She nodded once, curtly, and turned away, walking down a gentle slope to the beach. She crossed the boards to the pier, which in summer would have hosted snake-prowed warships and fishing vessels. Those were all now hauled safely to rest under shed-roofs until the threat of storms passed with the spring.

Strifbjorn followed the widow only with his eyes, Herfjotur
and Arngeir turning as well to watch her walk the length of the dock. The pommel of her own sword caught sunlight at her hip; Yrenbend’s unsheathed blade shone darkly in her hand. She reached the end of the pier and stopped.

She drew back her arm, raising the sword high. Strifbjorn did not look at Herfjotur, but he heard her suck back a sob of memory. Brynhilde stood for a long moment, and then Strifbjorn saw her weight shift. She leaned back, looked up—and slung the sword on a glittering arc out over the sea.

When she climbed back up the slope, her eyes were dry. “Do we wait for them to come to us, or do we take the war to them?”

M
uire returned at midafternoon four days later with tidings of Heythe’s shadow creatures. She had encountered one on the road and bested it—but not with ease.

The next morning Strifbjorn and his army moved out through the snow, four hundred and thirty-four children and seventeen valraven strong, with the wind at their backs and blue and silver banners snapping overhead. Brynhilde and her steed reported that Heythe’s larger force was arcing cross-country to meet them: all the remaining children, a few steeds and a foul sea of sdadown. Not to mention Heythe herself, and—of course—Mingan.

Arngeir’s hold and hall were too close to cities for Strifbjorn’s liking. He wanted the sea at their back, and no humans nearby whose protection they would have to consider, or who could become weapons for the tarnished.

The army of the children of the Light fell back to the
edge of the glacier, where the snow gave way to a windswept tundra and moraine, and beat east.

Heythe caught them before they caught the sea.

M
idafternoon glazed the ragged ice overhead. The children made a broad column at the foot of the glacier, the valraven and their riders flying scout. Herfjotur herself brought Strifbjorn the report, sitting astride her heads-tossing stallion. She leaned down to speak to him, her legs concealed under the covert feathers and the bend of wings.

“Five hundred and more, war-leader. Moving north and east: they have cut in between us and the sea.”

“All the rest of us, then.” This from Menglad, walking beside Strifbjorn.

Herfjotur frowned. “The rest of them. Yes.”

“How far?”

She shook her head. “Half a day. They’ll be on us at morning.”

Strifbjorn nodded. Unfamiliar terrain for all of them, and he would have waited for sunrise, too. That would put the light at their backs—as if he needed another disadvantage.

He stared up at the glacier. “Here, then. Better to have the tundra before us and the ice at our backs than try to cut south through the taiga with fell beasts nipping our heels.”

Menglad rocked back on her heels and stretched into a crouch, levering her sword out of the way with a hand on the pommel. “We won’t win this. Strifbjorn. . . . I told Arngeir, I would break away. Give myself to the Bearer.”

Strifbjorn spun on her. “I forbid it! Not—”

She interrupted. “They have sdadown, Heythe, Mingan . . . the Imogen. It cannot be wrong to buy an intervention.”

“They are our brothers,” was all Strifbjorn could say, and she shook her head. Herfjotur fell so silent he could clearly hear the twinned breathing of her stallion. “We all serve the Light. I will not . . . countenance . . .”

Menglad stood and turned away. “I’ll see to sentries. We may as well get comfortable, then.” She looked up. “Herfjotur, have you seen Brynhilde?”

She shook her head, and a distant expression crossed her face. “I have not. And my steed says that he does not know where she and her valraven are, either.”

T
hey waited while sunset ran blood down the white slab of the ice and night stained the sky. Strifbjown stood near the edge of camp, straining his eyes into darkness. When small, bright baubles scattered the dome overhead, Muire came to him.

She stood beside him for a little, waiting for his acknowledgment silently as any old friend. He glanced down at her, noticing her tight-pressed lips and the dark bruises surrounding her eyes.

“I brought you a cup of brandy.” She held out a little carved ivory bowl. He caught the scent of it on her breath, as well, very lightly. She passed it with infinite care, so her fingers did not brush his.

“Thank you.” It tasted of cinnamon and summertime, exotic and sharp, the opposite of what hung over them and what lay before. He breathed in, drawing the scent.

They stood in companionable silence a few moments longer, and then she turned to him and took a breath. “Strifbjorn.”

“Yes?”

“Let me stand with you tomorrow.” An earnest expression marked her face, a line drawn between her clear gray eyes.

Strifbjorn wondered, in a different world, what might have been.
Mingan loved me enough to give me away to this woman.
Another day he might have pushed the thought away quickly.

This was not any other day.

She continued. “Herfjotur will be with her steed, and Yrenbend. . . .” Her voice trailed off. She had often fought beside him, while his wife reined her ice-white drake overhead. “And you won’t have Mingan to watch your back, Strifbjorn.”

There was generosity in the offer, and in the level regard of her eyes. She’d set him free—or her hopes for him, whatever they might have been—and now here she was, telling him he didn’t have to die alone if he didn’t want to.

And he knew he would rather die a thousand miles from everything he loved than watch this brave little sparrow torn by hawks. “Muire. Thank you, and I mean that as deeply as I can. But no.”

Her regard was unsurprised, her voice low and sympathetic. “Oh, Strifbjorn. Faithful to him, even now, even in this . . . insignificant thing?”

He took a breath and turned away. “You will fight in the second rank. Behind me.”

Strifbjorn heard her draw a matching breath, and before she could answer, a pale shadow descended before them. It was Brynhilde’s valraven, the coiling wyvern, looming with widespread
wings. He lowered his head and spoke on the low hiss of an outforced breath, tongue flickering.

“Einherjar, waelcyrge.”

“Bright one,” Strifbjorn said, as Muire curtseyed to the valraven.

“I bring tidings of my mistress’ death.”

Strifbjorn stepped back. “What happened?”

The valraven hissed. “She has given herself to the Serpent, war-leader. You will have your help, an you reach the sea.”

You will hear the wolves wailing

Over your husband.

—“The Second Lay of Gudrun”

The Wolf

I
imagine the eyes of my enemies glimmering like campfires in the darkness. As many lie behind me as before. The eyes of my enemies, the eyes of my brothers. The eyes of my lovers.

I slip past the perimeter, and the sentries never see me. Sdadown flit through the darkness, insensible of me as they are the moonlight. A moon like a metal-filing hangs overhead, its dim light silvering a bank of clouds on the eastern horizon.

My lovers.
I have no lovers. I am alone, as I was meant to be. The one, I have broken with. The other . . . I chuckle, dark and cold. I remember her touch, her strength, the moist silk of her skin.
That’s not loving.

The Suneater laughs in his hunger, tasting the salt of her flesh.
Love having served us so well.

I have no answer for him, but I walk into the night nevertheless.

Once, I would have known where Strifbjorn stood, almost the edge of what he thought. I would have read his presence in
the patterns of the night. But he has changed, and I have changed, and darkness has taken us both.

Knowing the inconsistency of my own actions, ignoring the howl of the Suneater under my skin, I step into the shadows. I follow his scent on the wind that blows between worlds. And when I pass out of the dead world he turns toward me, hand on the hilt of his sword, and raises his eyebrow. “Well, my love,” he murmurs. “If you wish, we can settle this now.”

“Strifbjorn.” It is too near, too dark. Too much to bear. “I have not come to fight you.”

“I have come to fight you,” he answers. “With the dawn one of us dies.”

The finality in his voice brooks no argument. “Aye.”

His hand slips from Alvitr’s hilt. “Mingan. Why?”

I shake my head. “Because the end of the world is sweet, and it calls me. It is what I was born to.”

He sighs. “Didst ever love me?”

“Until I die.” My voice chokes off. “ ’Tis not enough,” I continue at last. “Love is not enough, in a callous world. It is”—a breath—“it cannot live.”

He smiles and comes a step, two, three, closer. His breath is cool on my face, and tastes of roses. “Nothing will survive this, Mingan,” he says. “Except the memory of love.”

“I know,” I answer, but I do not move away.
How can love be so true, and yet so piteous?

“Thou dost choose her over me?”

“She will die.” The conviction in my voice is a revelation. “I swear it.”

“Then
why
?”

Oh. Strifbjorn.
I look into his eyes, and he is as he was: true, and shining and untouched by what gnaws my soul.

He cannot understand. “Ruin,” I answer, and turn away.

But his hand falls on my shoulder. “Mingan.”

I shiver. My name is a caress upon his tongue. “What?”

“We’ll be killing each other tomorrow.”

“We shall.”

“Then kiss me.”

I turn back to him. He stands in the shadows of an unkempt moon, of the windwracked stars. His eyes gleam silver in the darkness, and I know mine are dark. “What dost wish of me?”

“Just . . .” His voice breaks. “Thy kiss.”

Oh.
Love is a thing like a whip, like a briar that entangles and strips skin from flesh.
Thy kiss.

Who was it loved the wild thing? Kept faith in darkness and secrecy? Burned in my heart like a star?
I breathe. “No.”

“Kiss me. I have things to share that you will not trust.”

My love.
“Tomorrow is a war.”

A snarl tautens his mouth. “I will kill you if I can.”

“I have loved thee,” I answer, and lean into the offered embrace.

His arms encircle me; my fingers tangle in his hair. Hopeless, storm-torn, my heart soars. His lips brush mine as I take a breath, preparing. I blow my soul into his waiting mouth, and a moment later he returns the kiss—and the comprehension.

Love.
I am filled with warmth, a bittersweetness and a vertiginous brilliance. A sorrow bottomless as the night.

Mingan, my love. She has deceived you.
His fingertips outline my face, hardly more than a trace of a touch. I spin on the
rush of it, the forsaken taste of his love, his soul . . . unbridled giving.