The Viking’s Sacrifice (19 page)

The curse burned Einar’s hand even through the leather, the seidr magic protecting its own. He couldn’t help the scream, though it shamed him. He had it in his hand, the little piece of wood that had ruled his life all these years.

Bausi turned back at the sound, tightened his grip on his sword and it was now, if it was ever, the only chance Einar might ever get. He yanked at the pouch, trying to ignore the sickening pulse of it in his hand, pulled it free and rolled. The point of Bausi’s sword pierced the snow where he had been a heartbeat before.

The mountaintop became a maelstrom of voices, of shouts and bellows of anger, confusion. Bausi ignored them all and swung again. Einar rolled, then up onto all fours and stumbled toward the fire.

A flare of pain shot through his knee—Bausi laughed and pushed forward, sliding the point in, the same place as before. Einar fell to the snow with the dread feeling in his gut that his death was moments away.
Not yet, you haven’t done enough to claim courage before Odin.
With a great effort he managed to free himself from the sword and roll onto his back. Bausi grinned above him, sword already arcing down. Einar kicked out with his good leg and scrabbled out of the way. The fire was close, so very close. All he had to do was burn this thing that throbbed in his hand and he’d be free—him, Wilda, all of them.

Sigdir’s eyes moved restlessly between his two brothers—deep thinking. It must have been Einar’s imagination that made the dark lines on his face darker, made them shrivel and shrink.
Pull the wrong thread and the net will draw ever tighter.

Bausi’s ragged breath was as loud as the roar of wind over mountain, hot as a forge fire on his cheek. The cool of the blade smoothed his other cheek.
Odin, let my aim be true
.

He threw the curse into the flames.

The curse fell into the flames to take all Einar’s dread with it, to crisp his need for silence, and burn his life to ashes that might grow something new. Einar lay, gasping for breath, trying to will his body to speak. He’d been silent too long.
Speak.

He was sure, later, that he felt it fall away from him, the curse flaking off in snaking black threads, letting him ignore the hot coal in his knee, grab for Bausi, bring him down in the snow with a rusted knife to his throat. Yet all he really knew was the look in Sigdir’s eyes, a sudden widening, a rush of relief from he didn’t know what, a cloud of wondering.

Einar pulled himself up on Sigdir’s proffered hand, which felt warm and solid in his.

There was no need for silence, not anymore, and yet the words were still choked in his throat, frozen there like poor Arni in his howe. The words might have stayed there, if not for Bausi’s hot eyes on his, the words forming on his lips.

“It was Bausi who killed Arni,” Einar said, and when the words were free, the secret swirling with the snow, he couldn’t stop them. “Bausi who thrust his sword in my back. Bausi who laid a curse on me and Sigdir and Gudrun should anyone ever discover it, if I should ever speak it. And so I stayed silent, for them. I was a coward who let Bausi twist this village into something black, for them. It took a Saxon, and a woman, to show me where courage lies, that it isn’t fear that makes a man a coward, but lack of action because of that fear. It was Bausi who killed Arni, and our father.”

Bausi’s laugh made Sigdir jump, and several of the others. “So says a madman and a fool. I told you, Sigdir, I told you how it happened. You know as well as I, he’s witless.”

A murmur ran through the other men, the heads of houses who’d come to bear witness, that maybe Einar lied to save his own life, another act of cowardice.

Einar nodded to one of the Saxon thralls who held the horses. “Ask Wilda what she saw, and tell her there is no need to be silent on it for my sake.”

She looked at him, quick, unsure, and he nodded, a reassurance.

“Einar is no coward, or a fool,” she began, her soft words spoken louder by the thrall, and when she was done Bausi was the one in bonds, with his own sword at his throat, held there by Sigdir whose face was clear of the net, his eyes no longer restless.

All held still, waiting for new threads from the Norns, to see what picture they would weave. Sigdir moved first, pulled free the silver jarl-torc around Bausi’s neck and held it out to Einar. “It’s yours now. And yours to decide what we do with him.”

His to decide. He looked at Bausi, at the slackness of his mouth, the wildness in his eyes. He would give him a choice, a choice that Bausi had denied him. Leave it to the Norns. Whatever they chose, whatever the web of it, Bausi was undone and that was enough.

A black flutter against the snow caught Einar’s eye. The raven, perched on Geira’s shoulder even as she perched on the sled. Gudrun sat next to her, wide-eyed, innocent again, smiling and crying. More gathered behind, Agnar panting and propped up on a thrall boy. Other men who’d sneered at him, taunted him yet now seemed to see with clear eyes and open hearts. Now it was they who were silent before him.

“I told them to come, got Geira to bring them,” Sigdir said, and he was brother again, the brother who had often looked to Einar with a question in his eyes when they were younger, who had turned those questions on Bausi when Einar could not answer.
Did I do right?
“Whatever happened, they should see, they should know which brother was true, by Ullr and the
einvigi.
”

Fjordsmen crept closer, circling, watching, silent still. Gudrun slipped between Einar and Sigdir, one hand in each of theirs.

“He said, and I believed him,” she began, but couldn’t seem to go on.

Einar squeezed her hand. “He said much. And I said nothing. We were both at fault there.”

Bausi’s mouth worked, yet loose, slack, and no words came out. Before Einar could say anything, could give Bausi the choice—the cliff or the path out of the fjord—Geira’s voice startled them all, harsh in the silence of the mountain. “On his head alone shall light the ills of the curse that he called upon mine. So says Odin. So say I. This man is a fetch already, a ghost of the seidr magic he used to curse Einar, and the fjord. Now I curse him, in Odin’s name. This man is dead in this fjord.”

The raven on Geira’s shoulder cawed, adding weight to her words. Odin’s bird. A low murmur of approval ran through the crowd, satisfied with that. A man outcast in winter was dead. A choice enough for Bausi, as Einar might have done. The path out of the fjord—or take the quick way, the cliff.

Sigdir held out the torc again. Einar looked at it, thought of the silver itch on Bausi, that he’d infected the whole fjord with. “No. The torc isn’t for me, and I don’t want it. You take it.”

Einar looked past him to where Wilda still stood, held by men unsure what to do except they had been ordered to hold her. Words stilled in him again, at the question he most wanted to ask. “And Wilda? She’s handfasted to you.”

Sigdir stared at the shaking wretch that was Bausi for long, slow heartbeats before he caught Einar’s gaze again. His swift smile was like sun on the mountain. “She’s under the protection of
our
house,” he said. “And a freed woman. I think she was never mine, or would be. Besides.” The smile grew broader. “I hanker for a wife closer in kin to Harald Gulskeg King, and there’s a lady in the valley who might ask the
godis
for an annulment. I don’t think they’d refuse her.”

Sigdir thrust out his sword hand and they clasped wrists together. Brothers true again, at last.

Wilda couldn’t be sure what was happening, only that the fighting had stopped, that Einar stood tall and strong, the warrior in his heart now that she’d always known he was. That she’d broken her silence and let them know the truth, and had let loose all that was inside her, let all the ice melt to be forgotten. Men still held her, but slackly now.

Sigdir and Einar set Bausi, oddly shrunk, by the cliff edge and the
godi
spoke harsh words, stark as the mountain, cold as the fjord. As one, the fjordsmen and women turned their faces from him, their backs cold to him, hiding him from their world. The truth had shown them who was the brave—and who was not. They turned instead to Einar with guilt and soft words that seemed to float in the still air.

She watched Einar, the set of his shoulders, the look in his eye as he received their words and gave them no blame for all they’d done to him. The Einar-who-had-been, the first time he saved her life, bold and brave, and the Einar-who-was-now, quiet and gentle. Both together now in the same man, one the rest of the fjord saw now as she always had, so that it made her heart twist for him, made her want to laugh and cry for him.

He dropped the hand of the girl by his side and stood watching Wilda, awkward on his bleeding leg. A tall figure set against the stern mountains that were like all these people, yet now she’d seen the high, sweet meadows in them too.

No hands held her arms, or could stop her running to Einar.

This was the sweetest run of all, with the cold air clean in her lungs, the snow crunching under her boots and Einar at the end. He engulfed her in warmth and furs and his arms. His beard tickled her neck when he kissed it, and she was safe, they were both safe.

“No renn, Wilda,” he said. “No renn.”

Northeast England, in the Year of Our Lord 845.

Wilda ran along the beach, chasing gulls, relishing the feel of warm sand squidging between her toes, the salt-laden air feathering her hair into tangles, the thump of Mjollnir against her chest next to her crucifix. She ran until she was breathless, until the heat of the day made her sticky with it. She stopped to cool her feet in the surf, and to watch the black speck that swooped towards her.

A raven, bird of omen. She waved at it and turned for the rough grass-topped dune, ran herself ragged and flopped down next to Einar. His sudden smile was brighter than the sun, and she basked in it, faked mock outrage when he kissed her so that he would smile again.

“There is no one to see,” he said. “And a man can kiss his wife.”

For a man of so few words for so long, he’d learned the Saxon tongue quicker than she had any hope of learning Norse. “You saw the raven?”

His smile broadened. “Odin is checking you haven’t made me a heathen like you.”

Wilda lay back and looked at the clouds like wave caps that studded the sky. “Or maybe a portent. A good one. Ravens have been kind to me of late.” She smoothed her hands across her stomach.

Mary, virgin, brought forth Christ; Elizabeth, sterile, brought forth John the Baptist. I adjure you, infant, whether you be masculine or feminine, by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, that you awaken, and move
. And there it was, the slightest flutter inside her. She grabbed Einar’s hand and laid it there, and prayed again, that he would feel it too, that this one’s birth wouldn’t be accompanied by a magpie on the roof. Smiled at his wide-eyed look as the flutter came again.

“I think we should call him Arni,” she said.

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