Icefall (16 page)

Around me, the audience gasps and rumbles in anger. The mention of poison falls heavy on us.

“The traitor fled, a coward.” Alric says. “And the daughters of the warrior-king came forth from the cave to find their father succumbing to the bane in his blood. They cleaned his wounds with their tears and fed him on their song, until Odin’s shield-maidens came to carry his spirit up.

“Then, his sons piled his ship with precious stones, and swords, shields, mead, honey, gold, and spears. They buried him with tribute befitting his final act and lifted a runestone so that his sacrifice would be remembered.”

Only the fire is breathing. The rest of us wait. Alric has not bowed his head, and so it seems the tale is not yet finished.

“It is not my custom,” he says, “to comment on my own story. But I feel compelled tonight to do so. That runestone down in the woods no longer marks the honor of the warrior-king alone. Many good men died here this winter. A death by treachery is no less honorable, and would our men have been called upon, each would have willingly fallen on the spear instead to protect the children of their king. They were here for their king, and they died for their king.

“Though we sail tomorrow, we do not leave this place emptied. We leave our love and gratitude inscribed on the runestone in the forest, which now marks a new generation of heroes.”

He bows his head.

And the room inhales.

Then we applaud him. All of us. Hake actually crosses the room and pulls the skald into an embrace. Again, I find myself in awe of Alric. After a day of mourning, a day spent in the dark wake of senseless death, Alric has given meaning to our pain. Something to help us see our way out of our grief so we can leave this place in peace. My father might be a king, but it seems that Alric also has power to lead us.

I greet the day with a newfound strength. We eat a final meal of oats and fish and throw snow on the fire. Hake gives the larder key back to Bera. Then Raudi comes over to Muninn’s cage.

“I will carry him down to the ship for you.”

“Thank you,” I say.

He lifts the cage, and we all file out of the hall. Harald leaps ahead, rushes back, and skips around us. Bera strides to the larder and locks it. It’s empty, but I think there is something in the act of locking it that helps her feel better about leaving.

We make our way down to the water, where we start to board our ships, the messengers in their small boat and the rest of us in our larger vessel. I climb in and find a bench out of the way. Harald is trembling with excitement beside me, barely sitting at all. The boat rolls a little against its anchor. I hear the water gurgling under the planking beneath my feet and smell the brine in the air. Raudi sets Muninn down near
my feet and then goes to help the berserkers up the ramp. As one of them boards, leaning on Hake, he looks out across the fjord. He squints. Then he points and shouts.

“Ships!”

Hake looks up. He seats the berserker and thunders up to the prow. The rest of us crowd behind him.

“Who are they?” Per asks.

“Everyone out of the boat,” Hake says. Then he shouts across the water for the messengers to do the same.

We disembark in confusion. I look back over my shoulder at Muninn, but decide he’s probably safe where he is for now. We gather on the shore, waiting, while Hake and Per scan the water.

“There are two of them,” Per says. “I can almost make out their standard.”

“Drekars,”
Hake says. A moment passes. “It is Gunnlaug.”

I gasp and Asa pales.

“It can’t be,” Bera says. “He lost the war.”

“He retreated,” Hake says, “to bring his war here.”

T
he black ships heave toward us with the beating of their oars, the billowing of their sails. I want to scream. I want to hide. I want to drop to the rocky ground and claw my way under it. My dream has grown flesh. The wolf has come. The el der messenger rushes up. “We must go. All of you, hurry.”

“The fjord is too narrow,” Hake says. “Our ship will never make it past them.”

“Ours will,” the younger messenger says.

“No,” Hake says. “It won’t. And we need you here.”

“Two more swords won’t make any difference to you now.” The el der messenger backs away from the rest of us, pulling his companion with him toward their boat. “And we must warn the king of what has happened.”

Hake shakes his head. “You won’t make it through.”

“We’ll take our chances,” the gray-haired messenger says before they both turn and sprint for their tiny craft.

“Cowards!” Per shouts after them, and then he looks to Hake. “Should we stop them?”

Hake turns from the shore. “Why? They would only run at the first opportunity. Let them die on the water.” He marches to the trailhead. “Everyone, go up to the steading. Quickly, now.”

We all move at the same time, some up the path, while the three berserkers and Per join Hake. Harald and Asa run together, holding hands, and I am about to follow them when I remember that Muninn is still on the ship. I turn back.

“Where are you going?” Alric asks me.

I don’t answer and sprint up the ramp onto the deck. I grab Muninn’s cage; he flaps inside and caws, shifting his weight. I rush back down to the shore, toward Hake. He motions for me to hurry as he watches the water. I glance toward the messengers’ little craft pushing out into the fjord. And the enemy ships looming beyond it. The
drekars
are almost close enough for me to see their snarling dragon prows, almost close enough to hear the men clamoring for our blood. Soon, they will land.

“Go!” Hake says.

I turn away and scurry up the path. But the cage is heavy, and Muninn still thrashes inside it, and after a few steps, my
toe catches on something under the snow. I lurch forward. The cage flies away from me, tumbles through the air and lands with a splintering crack against a tree. The cage falls in pieces, and Muninn flutters free.

“No!” I shout.

Muninn flaps up onto the nearest tree branch, and from there he manages to hop and scramble well out of my reach.

“Muninn!” I am nearly hysterical. “Muninn, come back here. Right now!”

Alric rushes up to my side. “Solveig, you must leave him.”

“I can’t!”

“He survived in the woods before, he’ll be all right.”

“Muninn, come to me!”

“Solveig, hurry!” Alric tries to push me up the path.

But I fight him. Muninn looks down on me, unconcerned. And he starts to preen.

“You stupid, stupid bird!” I scream as Alric drags me away.

By the time we reach the top of the hill, I am sobbing. And then Asa and Harald are at my sides, trying to put their arms around me. “Muninn,” I say to them, but I can barely breathe and get out nothing more. My raven is gone, my friend, and it feels like a part of my own body has been torn away. I take a few deep breaths to calm the convulsions wracking my chest.

Hake and Per come up after me, supporting the three berserkers. Then the two of them charge to the cliff against a headwind, their cloaks flapping, and the rest of us steal up
behind them. Below us, on the water, the messengers approach Gunnlaug’s ships in their little sailboat. But they are scrabbling against the wind while the
drekars
gallop with it over the waves.

“They’re dead,” Hake says.

We watch as the first warship reaches the sailboat, close enough, I am sure, for the messengers to see the eyes of the enemy across the water. I wonder if my father’s men are pleading for mercy, or if they shout defiant curses, or if they are still trying to escape, their heads bowed, desperate and futile. I am horrified, and do not want to watch them die, but I can’t look away.

Arrows like little black needles rain down on them from Gunnlaug’s ship, shredding the sail. And then, the sparks of several flames arc through the air, and fire blooms on the sail and the deck. Within moments, the little boat is engulfed, and Gunnlaug’s ship prowls ahead. I realize that it never even slowed.

“We’ll mourn them later,” Hake says. He leads us through the gate into the yard. “For now, we need to get the king’s children up to the cave. I will make a stand here.” He turns to his fellow berserkers, and something unspoken passes among them. “With my men. Perhaps in the hall, so they think that’s where we’ve holed up the children.”

The three berserkers pull upright and nod.

“I’ll guide them to the cave,” Per says.

“Very well,” Hake says. “You are responsible for getting them to safety.”

Per bows.

“Ole, Bera, Raudi.” Hake points up the ravine. “You, too. Everyone, move.”

Raudi stays rooted where he is. “I will stay and fight.” He swallows. “I would prefer a spear.”

No. I almost reach to grab him in my panic. He is trying to prove he isn’t a coward, but now is not the time.

Hake shakes his head, but there is respect in it. “You may yet be called upon to prove yourself, but not now. You must go with the others.”

We break into two groups. The warriors march to the gate, while the rest flock toward the hall. I watch them go, divided. Raudi has made me aware of something I’m only now realizing.

“Solveig, move,” Hake says.

But I don’t want to leave anyone behind. The warriors are going to die if they stay here. And in that moment I realize that Hake has come to mean something more to me. I don’t yet know what it is I feel for him, but I know that I don’t want to lose him.

“Come with us,” I say.

He pulls his war hammer free. “This is what I was sent here to do.” He smiles at me. “And I do it willingly. Go, now.”

Raudi comes up and tugs me away. I join the others, reluctantly, and we start across the yard. In the commotion, I feel someone grab my arm. I turn as Ole pulls me in close and hisses in my ear.

“Remember what you told me,” he says. “You are a skald now, not the daughter of any king.” And then he lets me go and slides away. A moment later, I see him touch Per’s shoulder. “There’s something I need in the hall,” he says.

Per halts, as do Asa, Harald, and I. “What could you possibly —?”

“It’s my bone knife. Had it since I was a boy.”

Alric, Bera, and Raudi don’t seem to have noticed that we’ve stopped. They race ahead.

“We’re not waiting for you,” Per says. He leads us away from Ole without looking back, down the side of the hall, and then through the garden patch where Raudi and I pulled up carrots all those months ago. As we reach the far side and start across the field, Per slows our pace.

“We won’t make it up to the cave,” he says. “I know of a better place to hide you.”

My skin goes cold beneath my furs. “Hake said to go to the cave.”

“I don’t think he thought about how far it was,” Per says. “Gunnlaug’s men will overtake us before we make it.” He turns and trots away toward a copse of trees on the north side of the field. “Hurry, follow me!”

Harald obeys, and then I see that Asa is about to start after them.

“This isn’t what Hake told us to do,” I say.

“Per knows this place,” Asa says. “He’s been here before.”

“He has?”

“Yes, he was the one who told Father about it. Come on.” She runs off.

Something doesn’t feel right about this. I see Raudi, Bera, and Alric in the distance. They have nearly reached the base of the ravine, and in a moment of indecision I almost run to join them. But instead, I hurry to catch up with my brother and sister. I find them standing in a small clearing, while Per trudges around in circles, kicking at the snow. Then he bends over and roots around a certain area with his hands.

“There,” he says, and heaves upward.

The ground yawns open, and snow pours down into a dark hole. Per holds up a trapdoor. “This was the larder, years ago,” he says. “Hurry down inside and hide. They won’t find you here.”

Harald bites his lip. “It’s dark.”

“Come,” Asa says. “Hold my hand.” She takes him and leads him down a set of earthen steps. The two of them look like they are walking into a grave.

“We should go to the cave,” I say.

Per stares at me. “Hurry, Solveig. Get inside.”

My mind screams at me as my body does what he says. I tremble, and my eyes dart from side to side. I pass under Per’s arm and descend the stairs. When I reach the bottom, the smell of mold and clay choke me. I look back up at Per, but his face is all shadow against the white of the snow and the sky.

“Keep quiet,” he says. “It will be all right.”

The cellar door shuts.

The vein of light framing the trapdoor quickly disappears. Per must be covering it back up with snow. Within moments, the three of us are suspended in a dark and ceaseless void. My eyes focus and refocus, straining in the nothing. I catch glimpses of vague forms that dart and shift before me, black against blacker. It’s disconcerting, because I know it’s too dark to see anything. The earth is hard beneath my feet. I smell the rot of wood mixed with the sourness of stale mead.

I feel Harald’s hand grope for mine. “Tell me a story, Solveig.”

“Keep silent,” Asa says.

“I’ll tell you a story later,” I whisper.

I imagine him nodding.

And Asa is right. I hold my breath to hear whatever muffled sounds reach us under the earth. Long empty moments pass. Was that the crack of a sword against a shield? Was that a warrior’s cry? I cannot tell if my ears are hearing these
things, or if I conjure up the sounds as my eyes conjure shadows.

So we stand here and wait.

And wait.

It seems that minutes pass. Then … an hour? I concentrate and realize that I cannot feel the movement of time inside me. Time is something that is seen. It’s in the burning of a hearth-log, in the drying of fish in the smokehouse, it’s in the lengthening of a stalk of wheat. Cut off from these signs, I wonder if time moves forward. Are Asa and Harald and I now outside of it, and does the world above age without us?

These thoughts consume me. I am surrounded by apparitions; the darkness masses and assails me. The cold and endless hollow pulls on me from all sides, threatening to dissolve me into its emptiness. I need something real, something strong.

“Solveig?” Harald whispers.

“Yes?”

“Shh,” Asa says.

And then a loud voice beats upon us from above. “I heard something!” A man’s voice. Unfamiliar. “Here!” The sound fractures the darkness, and my senses are so confounded I believe for a moment that I see the shout as a bolt of lightning. But then I realize that someone has lifted the trapdoor.

The endless black around me collapses to a small mud-room. Asa and Harald stand beside me, squinting. I look up.

Three warriors loom over us.

“Come out,” one of them says.

Asa and I look at one another. We don’t move, and neither does Harald.

“Don’t make us drag you out,” one of the others says.

I know they will, and I do not want my brother or sister to be terrorized any more than will surely be done to us, so I say, “All right. We’re coming.”

I take Harald’s hand and we trudge up the steps, with Asa behind us, emerging into the white day with our hands shielding our eyes. The faces of the three warriors bear cold expressions. The men are heavily armed and heavily armored. One of them smirks at me and Harald, but his eyes change when he leers at Asa.

“That’s her,” he says, and points at my sister with his sword.

The other two men nod.

“I’d make war for that.”

Asa blushes, and I seethe inside.

“Take the boy and the other one to Gunnlaug,” the first one says. “I’ll carry the trophy along with me.”

He approaches Asa and reaches for her. But I can’t bear to see his filthy hands touch her. I strike at him, intending to slap him, but my fingernail catches his nose and leaves a white scratch. He jerks back and looks at me. The scratch turns red.

I try to meet his gaze, to appear defiant.

He lifts his weapon to strike me, not with the blade, but the broad pommel. “Who are you?”

I open my mouth to answer, but I am cut off.

“Solveig!” The voice is Alric’s, somewhere close by.

The warrior looks around, and then something huge, a bear, rams into him from the side, lifting him off his feet. It is Hake. I turn as the berserker slams the warrior into a tree. I hear something inside the warrior snap, and then Hake lifts him overhead and throws the body into the trees. That is when I notice the blood covering Hake’s pelt. That is when I see his eyes, and I know he isn’t seeing me. The
berserkergang
is upon him.