By the Mountain Bound (14 page)

“She almost seemed to—well, Lady, she just
sucked
the life right out of him, if you rightly know what I mean. And then she looked up, and her eyes weren’t really
silver
anymore.”

I leaned forward. He was taller than me, but he cowered. “Not starlit? What did they look like?”

He paused, afraid to give a wrong answer, and I waved him on. His words, when they came, seared me. “More like steel. Except, stained, you know? Sort of . . . tarnished.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “No, no, no. No, no.”

I was halfway back to the mead-hall when I realized that I still clutched the sack with the eleven apples in it in my right hand. The grocer’s final word rang in my head like the toll of a bell.
Tarnished.

The Wolf

T
he night falls away as I enter the mead-hall, for all I would rather climb to the edge of the ice field and summon my sister,
who could ease the ache in my heart. But it is not good to become too reliant on her kiss.

My brethren are assembled, although there is no formal council. Strifbjorn sits in his place at the head of the bench. The fires flare in the long trench. The rushes have been swept out and replaced with pine boughs, so the hall smells as it did for Menglad’s wedding. The smoke from the fire and the scent of mead combine with evergreen sharpness in a strangling pall. None of my brethren—drinking in a strange silence—seem to notice.

I pace the length of the hall and swing my leg over the bench, beside Strifbjorn.

“Brother.” I greet him as Skeold brings me drink.

Firelight turns his hair to copper. “Where have you been?”

“Having conversations.” I drain the horn, sweetness cloying. “I shall tell you later.”

“Ah.” He’s silent for a little while, watching our brethren move about the hall, clustering in knots for conversation. “You’ve left your cloak somewhere.”

“I loaned it to the Lady.”

Another angled glance. His tension speeds my heart as if it were my own, the drive for some direct and concrete action. I drop my gaze.
All I have to offer thee, my brother, is more negotiations and compromises. And no clean answers.

“I see,” he says, and then impulsively claps me on the shoulder, harder than he might normally.

I drop my voice low enough to carry to no other ears. “You are angry.”

“Of course I am.” He shakes his head. “Do you think you can play both sides of this and walk away unscathed?”

A sigh slips away from me. “I
hope
sides need not be chosen, Strifbjorn. That is the accommodation I will try to reach between Heythe and yourself.”

He leans in to my ear, further lowers his voice. “We’ll speak more later.”

“Meet me on the trail.” I stand to go. But am halted when the banded doors burst wide on their wooden hinges and our littlest sister stumbles in, falling to her knees among the pine branches. I vault the long trestle, Strifbjorn a step behind, but Yrenbend and Menglad reach her first.

Menglad waves her husband back when Arngeir, too, strides forward. Muire gasps for breath. We gather in a silent circle, Menglad helping the Historian to her feet while Yrenbend fetches mead. He tilts the horn to her lips. She steadies his hand with her own to drain it.

When she has had what she will, though, she throws the horn aside with enough force that it splits against the wall.

It is not fear that transfigures her.

It is fury.

I turn to follow her wavering finger. Sigrdrifa’s eyes widen in startlement. Muire, though, unsheathes her sword and takes one heavy step. “Sigrdrifa, were you in Dale yestereve?”

Sisters fall away from the accused waelcyrge as Muire advances. The Light of wrath that flares in Muire’s eyes, that flickers the length of her blade, is only a hint of her courage.

She’s no match for Sigrdrifa with a blade. All know it.

Sigrdrifa does not even lay her hand on her sword. She stands straight and meets Muire’s challenge with a cool laugh.

“And were I?”

“Some justice was carried out there that was not justice.”
With sword-tip, Muire prods Sigrdrifa. Menglad, behind her, steps forward if to intervene. Yrenbend halts her with a hand laid on her sleeve.

“Explain yourself.” A trickle of blood stains Sigrdrifa’s shirt. “Level your charges, if charges you have.”

“You slew a man in Dale last night, and his innocent wife. Both through means we term abomination.” Muire’s voice is a low snarl, her eyes live wells oozing of silver fire.

A gasp rises round the room, and is met by Sigrdrifa’s mocking smile. “You challenge me?” Confidence, arrogance, in her light, cool voice. Even I might pause.

But Muire seems as if she could not care. “Trial by combat? Aye. Yes, I do.”

“No!” Strifbjorn steps recklessly between the waelcyrge. He slaps Muire’s blade aside. “No combat. No trial. Not tonight.”

Unbelieving, they turn to face him. He jerks his fist toward the south end of the hall, the black-stained Banner unstirred by any breeze. “While that Raven hangs on that Banner, and while I am war-leader in this hall, there are no quarrels between us. Not until the war is fought. Understand?”

He holds first Muire and then Sigrdrifa on the barbs of his stare until each, in turn, looks down. An exasperated breath puffs his cheeks out. He snarls at the taller. “Excellent. Sigrdrifa, may I suggest you take a walk? Muire, Mingan.” He glances around the room. “Yrenbend and Menglad. With me.”

Rage drips from his stiff shoulders, apparent in the rigid set of his spine as he leads us to the south wall under the Banner. He speaks not, nor does he look back to see if we follow. At last he turns and faces us four.

“You three I trust to hear this,” he says, indicating Yrenbend, Menglad and myself. “Muire, tell your tale.”

Quickly and in a spare style, she gives us details of a crime committed. As she speaks, wrath swells Strifbjorn—or perhaps, the vaulted ceiling lowers. His breath is a growl by the time she finishes. Muire herself fights tears, rage dropping out of her like sunset draining the sky.

I could embrace and comfort her, had she not flinched from my touch before. But Menglad bridges the void and wraps her arms around Muire’s shoulders, pulling Muire’s face into her shoulder. It’s only a moment before Muire controls herself and straightens, but in that moment Strifbjorn’s eyes flicker to mine.

“Go there,” he says. I nod, and turn away, seeking the shadows where my pathway lies.

The Warrior

M
ingan vanished into the shadows, while Strifbjorn’s heart thumped in the hollow of his throat. Mingan had meant to tell Strifbjorn something, and now Strifbjorn would have to wait to hear it. And a challenge stood still between Heythe and Strifbjorn: wits, not swords.

Unfortunately, not Strifbjorn’s strongest suit.

He laughed at the truth of it, which drew a strange look from Menglad. “Thinking,” he said. “Muire?”

The Historian stared still at the shadowed corner whence Mingan had vanished, but her name seemed to draw her back as if from far. “Aye, war-leader?”

“Sigrdrifa. It was she?”

“Who else? She did not deny it.”

Strifbjorn looked at Yrenbend, who shook his head. “Too soon for a judgment.” But the line between his brows told of more to say.

“And?”

“There are witnesses. We could bring her before the village.”

Menglad rocked onto the balls of her feet. “Let the humans judge her?”

Yrenbend shrugged. “They won’t be able to claim it wasn’t a fair trial. Of course,” and he grimaced, “such a decision would be under the purview of the Lady.”

Muire rubbed temples with forefingers, head ducked. “Historian? You’ve a level head . . .”
usually
. “What think you?”

She looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the Light glittering at the backs of them waxed chill. “If she’s done this thing . . .
tarnished
herself”—the word stuck in Strifbjorn’s heart like a dagger—“there must be ways to tell. And there were, indeed, witnesses. The whole of the human village, in fact.”

Yrenbend, ever so casually, rested his left hand on Hjalmmeyjar’s hilt. Menglad mirrored him, actually going so far as to draw Skogul from her sheath and examine her smoke-dark crystal blade. The waelcyrge, when she finally looked up, caught Strifbjorn’s eye. He understood the message.

She was ever-faithful, and where she went Arngeir would follow.

“Tarnished,” she said. “Ugly word.”

“Yes,” Muire answered. “Ugly happening.”

Yrenbend reached out deliberately with his right hand and slit his thumb on the tip of Skogul’s blade.

Blood, red and thick, ran down the bevel, dripped one glistening drop at a time into the white pine needles carpeting the rammed-earth floor. Menglad jerked the blade away and wiped her hurriedly. “Yrenbend!”

“That’s what you talk of shedding,” he said quietly. When he looked up he caught Strifbjorn’s eye, not hers.

“Aye,” Strifbjorn said. “I am. Lady or not. . . .”

Muire’s breath came a little more quickly. She said, in bitter sarcasm, “Lady, no matter what. Right?”

“Would you follow me off a cliff, Historian?”

“The right cliff,” she answered, a trace too fast. She gnawed the inside of her cheek. “We’re not meant for this, Strifbjorn.”

“Not meant for what?”

“Free will, deciding life or death. Policy. We’re here to right wrongs and raise the humans to adulthood. How, then, if we are not . . . adults ourselves?”

Strifbjorn’s gaze flicked unbidden to the corner Mingan had stepped into. “Some of us are more adult than others. And there comes a time when your parents cannot direct your life anymore.”

He gestured over his shoulder to the glowering Banner. “Is this one of those times? You were eager to oppose Sigrdrifa earlier, for all she would have killed you.”

Muire snorted. “Sigrdrifa is not the Lady.”

“No,” Menglad put in, polishing her blade on a bit of cloth. “But the Lady may support her.” She gestured toward the door. “And, by the way, seems to have returned.”

Strifbjorn’s gaze followed the gesture. His neck tightened. Heythe still wore Mingan’s cloak wrapped around her shoulders for warmth, clutched with one narrow white hand.

Strifbjorn’s fingers fisted; Yrenbend put a cautioning hand on his shoulder. “Lady,” he said. Then he sucked the blood from his healed finger, slipped the flute from its case with his other hand and walked toward Heythe with a skirling tune following his steps.

The war-leader sighed and looked at the two waelcyrge. “No more counsel?”

Menglad did not look back. Her eyes followed the tall Lady as Heythe met Yrenbend halfway up the hall. But Muire looked Strifbjorn dead in the eye and shook her head. He blinked at the shock of seeing her, suddenly, as an equal, not a love-struck girl.

“Right,” he said hoarsely. “Then I’ll see you all in the morning. I have an errand to run.”

Yrenbend distracted Heythe. Strifbjorn made a straight line for the door.

The Wolf

I
pause in the world between worlds, sheets of ash swirling about me like autumn leaves, cinders crunching under snow. From safety I can test the scents of the human village, filtered through the veil into dead Niflheim. One scent in particular seems a likely prospect.

Rannveig, the woodcutter’s daughter. I turn in the shadows and seek her.

She sleeps in a loft above the packed-earth floor of her father’s cottage, under the roof where the scant warmth of
banked coals collects. The rest of the house is dark and still, except for the faint sound of her father’s snores rising from his own bed by the fire. The cottage has no chimney, only a pit hearth under a hole in the roof. Two sheep, a shaggy goat and a bony milk-cow share the byre at the back of the dwelling. A long-coated dog lies against the railings, her feet twitching as she dreams.

I step from darkness, kneel on the narrow ledge beside Rannveig’s bed. By my own pale light she lies revealed in slumber, sweet as a child, yellow hair tangled around fingers pressed to her mouth. I brush the strands away. She blinks, startles, jerks upright. Before she cries out I still her with Ansuz drawn upturned against her lips, the letter with branches downswept like a fir. Her lips shape words. Her eyes widen as the words make no mark on the smoky, beast-sweet air.

I bend low and speak against her ear. “Hush, child—I will harm thee not.”

Her nostrils flare and she flinches against my glove, but she does not struggle. She nods, pressing three fingers against her mouth. I reverse the rune, making her heated breaths loud. “Soft,” I whisper. “Lest thy father awaken. Dost understand?”

She nods again, shivering in her high-collared nightdress. I lean back, offering space, and try to soothe her with a smile.

“What do you want, Master Wolf?” She pitches her voice so low even my ears strain to hear it.

“Killing was done here, not long since. Didst witness?”

Aye.
Just the shape of the word on her mouth. She presses her fist against her lips again.

“Wouldst recognize the murderer?”

“Yes, my Lord. . . .”

Not “Bright one.” Never do they call me that.

The reflected glow of my eyes on her pale skin increases. She shrinks back.

“I pledge thy safety, lass. Wilt come with me, though ’tis a hard road, and frightening?”

She shakes, but it does not stop her throwing aside the covers and offering her hand. “Aye, my Lord.”

I miss my cloak a moment, for I would wrap it about her shoulders against the chill of Niflheim, and too of the night outside. But all I have is the embrace of my left arm to pull her within, so the heat of my body can warm her. “We go,” I say into her hair, and take her into the dark behind her little bed.

She quakes against me, stifling a scream, and I tighten my grip until she swallows the sob hovering on her lips.

“Where are we?” she asks, the words half-choked. She gags on char.

“The shadowed road.”

“Niflheim,” she whispers, and seems as if she will take a step away. “Where are all the souls?”

“Long gone. The gates stand open, the bridge unwarded. Midgard is wasted, and where the dead of Valdyrgard go . . .” I wonder if she sees me shrug by mine own light, or feels the movement on her shoulders. Cold. The cold must burn her; already, she quakes like a withy.