By the Mountain Bound (11 page)

He cannot in good conscience refuse her, so we three sit along the bench and speak quietly, Heythe in the middle. Sigrdrifa stands off to right, just within earshot. The rest of the
brethren avoid us except for Herfjotur, who rises from the cross-bench where she has been attending her armor, and brings us drink.

“I flee a terror,” Heythe begins. She sips her mead, then balances the horn between her hands so that she need not drain it at a draft. “I fled a land much destroyed by war—a war of the gods against the gods.”

She glances at me for confirmation. Dizzy coldness swells at the base of my skull. I must remember not to gasp for air, remember I am not being strangled. My collar binds tight as a noose, and I force myself to breathe only lightly.

Fighting the snare only deepens the wound. One must lie in wait, hoarding strength until the hunter returns.

I shake the vision from my head. Less than a memory, more than a fancy. Only a moment has passed.

Heythe speaks still. “The battle was fierce, and I thought”—she glances at me again—“that only I escaped. But the Wolf here, he is also from my world.”

Strifbjorn gives me a narrow-eyed look. “Keeping secrets, Wolf?”

“I recall it not. . . . No. Not precisely true. I recall snow, and hunger and falling. And then the song, and the land. That is all.”

Heythe seems to study me. “And you recall nothing of the time before the ice? It was a hard journey getting here, and I would not have survived it without this einherjar’s help. In fact, the cloak of falcon’s feathers I used to fly here did not survive the journey.” She nods to Strifbjorn. The war-leader regards her much as a bird regards a snake too near its eggs.

“Not . . . clearly,” I say, and stammer, because she places her left hand on my right thigh, above the knee. She smells of
moss and fallen leaves. She turns quite indifferently to pin Strifbjorn on a look.

She slides her hand the length of my thigh and lets it slip into her lap again. I am stiff in my seat for a long moment after she no longer touches me.

She might have forgotten I was there. “You’re troubled by what, Strifbjorn?”

“Ugly rumors I would like you to dismiss.”

His words hang. She waits, leaning in. I draw slow breath, willing myself to sense anything—some shift in the wind bearing scent or sound—to say where the danger lies.

He does not fill her silence. I applaud him his control. Eventually, she leans a little more toward him and murmurs, “Rumors?”

“You mean to fat your army on the souls of innocents.”

She does not laugh, though for a moment I would expect it of her, like the villain in a saga. She sighs, and says tiredly, “Innocents? No. Criminals and captives. Waste not, want not.”

“Lady”—Strifbjorn, his own horn drained, folds his arms over the table—“although I owe you service only after the Bearer of Burdens, I will not stand silent.”

She stands and quaffs her drink as well, and lays down the horn. She places one hand on his shoulder and one on mine. Her nails graze my neck. A shiver follows.

She leans close to him, not me, and speaks into his ear. “Strifbjorn. You’ll understand, I promise. We’ll need that strength—your strength—when the giants come.”

Then she pats him on the shoulder, lets her other hand brush down my arm and turns and strolls away.

Strifbjorn turns to watch her go. He lifts her horn and
stares into the dip until it cracks in his white-knuckled fist. The pieces he places on the table with a long and eloquent sigh. “Wish she’d keep her hand off my thigh.”

I sigh as if in agreement. But know not if I agree, or if I crave the touch again.

The Historian

O
f the mead-halls, Strifbjorn’s was oldest, largest, and of the most primitive construction. The outer walls were turf-chinked log, and within, against them, we had each an alcove for our tools and clothing and whatever things we did not hold in common. The alcove walls only stretched a little above head-height—for Strifbjorn, that is; they were quite taller than me—and each niche was closed by a curtain.

My own niche was thick-walled with the old texts, and my bench laid over slabs of rune-etched stone, and my books filled the next alcove as well, which had been ceded to me by an amused Yrenbend when he joined his fate to Brynhilde’s.

I needed the soporific of work, and I needed to be away from Strifbjorn—and the Grey Wolf as well. I had drawn a table and a sand-tray outside into the meadow, to write under the clean, pale light of the wintering sun. The book roll I was working on lay pinned flat with lead-stuffed leather weights as I bent over it with my pens and colors. No gold leaf out here where the breeze would tatter it in instants, but with my finest brush and a clamshell of crimson tempera I was succeeding in bringing light into the heart of a page of verse.

The letters were designed for scratching in wood or stone,
and we still did so when carving a spell in a stick or a ring. But they paint as neatly on vellum, and it makes for tidier storage.

I loved the work.

I was not the only one distracting myself with mundanities. The rhythmic belling of steel on steel rose from the seaward side of the mead-hall: Ulfgar the blacksmith at work on the forge I also used for my instruments and sculptures and bits of jewelry. A comforting, domestic sound after recent turmoil.

Herfjotur emerged from the hall perhaps a quarter hour after Heythe entered it. She waved as she passed; we shared a worried glance. This was not how it should have been—the brethren divided by one who should have unified. But as we looked at one another, Heythe followed Herfjotur from the mead-hall, and so nothing was said.

I did not watch the Lady. But, tempera thick on my brush, I turned on my bench and watched Herfjotur pick across the crisping grass. She stopped a few dozen yards past me and casually held out her arms. A shimmer raced through the air, weft of silver across the warp of daylight, and her valraven stood before her.

The great steed was horse like in general form, two-headed, enormous wings translucent as quartz half-spread as he stepped out of thin air. Herfjotur took the last two steps to him and threw her arms around one of his necks while he bobbed his heads—one horned and one antlered—over her back.

I didn’t know his name, of course: the valraven were few, and gave their names only to their riders. Each was different; Yrenbend’s Brynhilde partnered a steed like a miniature dragon, all pale wing-leather and blinking gold eyes.

Not for such as me.

I looked away, to give them privacy, and saw Heythe staring as I had been. As if she felt my notice, she shook off the seeming trance and stepped forward, whistling jauntily, veering slightly to pass near my table. I did not look down. And she returned the stare.

When someone’s eyes are said to be sky-blue, how rarely is the true color meant, in all its implications. Hue and darkness, and a certain transparent depth. It is not just blue; it is a blue you could pierce, sound, sail up into.

Heythe’s eyes were colored like sky. And something in the reaches of them brought a vibrant flash, the vivid memory of a foundry pour.

I tilt the crucible, metal flooding out in a silken river. It had always been difficult to resist letting it splash across my hands like icy water—so fluid and so bright. I was waelcyrge; fire could not burn me. And this fire is so close and so real that the heat warms my skin and the stink of hot metal and char fills my nostrils.

The mold tops too quickly, metal bulging at the rim. Some spatters the floor, catching a piece of planking alight. I stamp out the flames, the metal sprays from beneath my boot, falling, freezing in the shape of a splash, red cooled to silver, still too hot for human touch.

I blink. Blinked.

And Heythe’s gaze slid from mine, her expression haunted by unspoken terror or wrath, and the seething metal receded from my awareness.

But the disturbance roiling my stomach remained. Heythe walked toward the cliff over the sea, and I turned away to see that a drop of tempera had fallen from my brush to splash the history.

It was easy enough to repair—hide could be scraped—but
I must wait until the paint was dry. My peace and focus, in any case, had been shattered, and there was no hope now of a steady hand. I sighed and sat back on my stool. The half-finished manuscript held no more charm for me than three-day-old porridge, so I brought it in and weighted it on my bench to finish drying. A second trip to bring the rest of the tools in also allowed me to fetch my cloak and Nathr.

Strifbjorn bent close to Mingan’s ear at the south end of the hall. I was too far away to hear the conversation, but I saw no need to stare like a child, and looked around for anything else to occupy me as I crossed and recrossed the hall. The Raven Banner caught my eye; I stopped my fingers from absently rubbing Nathr’s smooth, cool pommel.

There are times when the last people one wants around one are one’s beloved family.

Ulfenfell beckoned. I hiked up the rock-scaled trail past the scholar-tree and a stand of white birch with their bare branches catching the late autumn light like fingerbones. Higher, firs and cedars clustered beside the trail. I saw the tracks of deer and wolves as well as smaller beasts, but no tracks from the gray-booted feet I knew used this trail as well.
Might as soon call him the Grey Ghost, for all the trace he leaves of his passage.

A cold thought, and I shivered. This was his wood, his mountain. Ulfenfell, rising stark and green and silent from the very edge of the sea. His de mon ess dwelt on its heights. The Imogen was another one of those mysteries from before the First Day, a creature bound to him by some ancient debt or magic, a winged avatar of appetite and fury. I had seen her twice: once on the First Day, a shadowy glimpse of a thing like a feathered razor, and again many years later, when she was called to
war for the first and only time. A living scythe. Our weapon of last resort.

We had made sure never to need her again. I could imagine nothing that could stand against her, except perhaps the Wyrm, the Bearer of Burdens itself.

I paused to listen to the cold wind scraping branch on branch and rustling the desiccated leaves. It was not yet noon, but under the shadow of the conifers twilight ruled. I lengthened my stride, bending into the slope as it became more extreme. Something slipped away from me through the underbrush—a deer or a boar, I thought at first, but those crash or rustle, and whatever this was glimmered cloud-white and silent, just a flash. I stopped, one foot raised, hoping to catch another glimpse, but there was nothing more.

An hour along, the wind brought the distant ring of voices—two men, arguing, and a woman calm and coaxing. There was no threat in their tone, although I could not make out the words, and no
swanning
urged me to hurry, so I left them to their own pursuits. The wind was cold in my hair as I climbed.

Some time later I found their footsteps on a cross trail—they had come upmountain from the village of Dale, probably with the dawn, and returned along the same a few hours later. Squirreling, probably, or after bigger game.

I stood on the silent shoulder of the mountain, watching the sunlight slide between the ferny branches of the firs to dapple the hard ground. I took a breath seasoned with the scent of ice.

Then I spun in place and walked down the side trail. Not homeward but toward Dale, nestled among the roots of the mountain.

The Wolf

W
hen I leave the hall, I smell her before I see her, a scent that should be perfume. I know it is not. She awaits me beyond the birches. I stop when she comes into sight. “Heythe.”

“Hello, Mingan.” She steps from the shadows of an ancient red oak to greet me. Afternoon sunlight silhouettes her, tangles in her amber hair, glitters from the gold threads and jewels of her necklace. “Or do you prefer ‘Wolf’?”

Her face lies in shadow, but I can hear the smile in her voice.

“As you wish it, Lady.”

We’re of a height. As she comes toward me she tilts her head to one side, so I can see her features.

I would back away growling. Were I not a man. Or the masquerade of one.

She stops, hand extended. “I would not try to trap thee, Master Wolf, bind or change thee. But I ask thou considerest my offer.”

“What offer is that, Lady?” Her scent wreathes round my head. Musk, and a field of pungent flowers. Heady, not sweet.

She holds my gaze, lets her hand fall fluidly to her side. “You have Strifbjorn’s ear. My presence threatens his power.” She shakes her head, turns her eyes aside. She takes a half step closer that is matched by my half step back. “But you are his friend.”

“You wish me to witness to him?” I need not force my chuckle. If I would do so, Strifbjorn would not hear me.

“No. I want you . . . to serve as a liaison between us. To hear my thoughts and his thoughts, and with your own judgment bring us to compromise. Is that so hard a thing?”

It’s sense
, I think, while we live under the wings of the Raven spread wide on the Banner behind her chair. “Have you spoken to Strifbjorn?”

“I need someone to smooth over the rift created by Sigrdrifa.” She shakes her head. She sighs. “She’s not the sense to grasp a sword by the right end. Wolf—”

“Aye, my Lady?”

“I’ll treat with you. Do this thing for me, which costs you naught and serves your brethren, and I’ll see what I can learn about . . .” Her fingers tap her own white throat, and the nails that click on her necklace might scratch my flesh, by the shiver they draw along my spine.

I cannot breathe to speak. As if she twisted my damned collar with those damned white hands.

Again.

Her bones, so fragile. Moving under the skin of her wrists. I must not clutch my throat. I
will
not.

And I will not give her Strifbjorn, even for that. Even for freedom. Not Strifbjorn.

But perchance, anything else.

She smiles, shakes her head again, brushes my panic away with the unfurling of her hand. “I may have resources you do not.”