Icefall (15 page)

“And what if the king’s children are still in danger?” Hake asks. “You would risk their safety for your own sake?”

“Of course not,” Bera says. “But do you really think they’re safe here? Perhaps you need to go take another look in the cowshed.”

Hake explodes, “Don’t you dare speak of my men in such a way!”

“Why are you so keen to keep us here?” Ole asks Hake.

The berserker looks at the thrall, and then away. “Stick to fishing, slave.”

“It would seem to me,” Ole says, “that you must have a reason. Are you leaving some work here unfinished, perhaps?”

Hake laughs. “Such as?”

But Ole does not need to say it. He is accusing Hake of being the traitor. I look at the berserker, and I remember his night-prayer. I know he didn’t do it, for I have seen his heart. But the others haven’t, and by the wariness on their faces I can see that Ole’s words have trailed doubt into the hall after them like a cold breeze.

“I agree with Hake,” Per says.

“Of course you do,” Ole says, and then he looks at Asa. “Why would you want to go back to your king’s hall?”

Per lunges. “You forget yourself!” And he backhands Ole. The old man tumbles over his bench. I cover my mouth, shocked.

Ole struggles up, rubbing the side of his face.

“Ole speaks the truth!” Bera says. “It could have been you, Per.”

“Me?” Per looks like he is about to strike her as well. “You accuse me? You’re the one who cooked that cursed goat!”

That brings Raudi to his feet. “How dare you!”

Per’s hand goes to the hilt of his sword, and Bera gasps.

Harald starts to cry. And the shouting rises to a roar, accusations filling the air like arrows.

It is finally too much. We have fractured under the strain and are undone. It wasn’t the hunger that broke us. It wasn’t the meat from my Hilda, nor the death that ravaged us. Suspicion is a different kind of poison. A potent toxin of whispers and air. We’re all infected, and it will be our end.

In the next moment, I know someone will be hurt. I cannot allow it. I must do something. And so I rise to my feet.

“Listen to me!” I cry. “For I have many stories to tell.”

The hall falls silent. Everyone stares.

“All of you! We cannot let this enemy divide us. We cannot let our suspicions and our doubts run wild, or else we will destroy ourselves. Brave and honorable men have died, and it is true that there may yet be a traitor among us. But if there is, we hasten his purpose if we turn on one another.”

I look around the room, at the faces of the people I love.

“We cannot forget who we are,” I say. “Who we were. If ever you listened to me, hearken to me now. For I would remind you …”

I
do not bow my head. I want to look each of them in their eyes, to hold their gaze, till one by one they turn away from me.

At last, Hake clears his throat. “We would be wise to listen to Solveig.”

No one responds to him. But I can nevertheless feel the room emptying of anger and hate. I feel the tension in my own body recede before a wave of relief.

“We will have no more of this talk,” Hake says. “We stay until the king sends for us. Not because it is what I want. Nor because it is what Per wants. But because that is what the king ordered us to do.” The berserker looks around. “Are we agreed?”

Heads hang low around the room, and still no one responds.

“I think we are agreed, Captain,” Alric says.

The skald sits away from the rest of us in a corner, and it occurs to me then that he never said a word during the entire outbreak. He sat there and watched, and now he watches me. But the expression on his face is pained.

When he approaches me later, I find out the reason.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he says. “Nor what to say. But you did. Once more, I see you are a better skald than I.”

“But I was not acting as a skald,” I say. “In that moment, I was only Solveig.”

And I realize that, for once, being myself was enough.

Six days later, Ole comes back to the hall without any fish. He stands in the doorway, a silhouette against the white of the snow and the light of the sun.

“A ship,” he says.

We all race from the hall, through the gate, to the cliff. I am already planning ahead, to the attack I dreamt about, and how I will take Harald and Asa and Raudi and lead them up the ravine to the cave. My eyes look for a
drekar
, and my ears strain for battle cries over the sound of my heart beating. But I find neither. Instead, I see a small boat coming quickly up the fjord as though aloft on its white bird wing of a sail.

“Who is it?” Harald asks.

“Messengers,” Hake says.

Hake and Per remain by the water to greet the boat. The rest of us return to the hall. I try to sit quietly, feeding Muninn in his cage beside me. Bera frets over the meager food we have to offer our guests. Ole pokes at the fire, and Harald races back and forth between me and the open doors. “I don’t see them yet,” he reports each time he reaches me, and each time I say, “They’ll be here soon.”

But eventually, Harald rushes back to the door and stays there. He points out into the yard. “They’re here!”

We all stand.

“There’s two of them,” Harald says.

And then Hake and Per lead the messengers inside.

They are men I recognize but cannot name. Their cheeks are wind-whipped above their beards, and their shoulders sag. One has dark hair, and the other, gray. Their clothes are wet with ocean spray, and they appear exhausted.

“Come to the fire,” Bera says. “Eat.”

She guides the men to a bench by the hearth. They sit and accept their plates from her with bowed heads.

“Our stores are down to oats, I’m afraid,” she says.

They thank her and eat as though it doesn’t matter what is on their plates, or where it came from. We all settle in around them.

“How was the voyage?” Bera asks.

While the younger of the messengers replies, I notice Per and Hake talking in whispers at a distance. It seems they have
already learned something about why these men are here, and perhaps the message they carry.

When they have finished eating, the older of the two messengers stands.

“Thank you for your hospitality. We made our journey quickly, and have had little food or sleep. We bring a message and a call for you to return to the king’s hall.”

Bera claps and Harald leaps into the air. I wait for the rest of the message.

The man continues. “The gods have smiled on the king and led him to a victory in battle. Gunnlaug retreated before him, and very few of our warriors fell or were taken. The war is ended, and our lands are safe once more.”

My father is victorious. Our hall is safe. Asa is safe. We can go home. And it seems my dream was just a dream after all. Now I sit back as relief and gratitude bathe me, though after a moment, a hint of dread edges in.

“Gunnlaug retreated?” Hake says. “Where is he now?”

“His armies are scattered,” the messenger says.

Harald grabs me in a hug, and then he runs to Asa. Bera wipes a tear from her eye with her finger, and Alric pumps his clasped hands before his chest. Hake is the only one of us who doesn’t celebrate. The berserker captain frowns and sits by the fire. He leans forward, his chin resting on one of his fists, and stares into the flames.

“Now,” Bera says, “I will pack.”

“Make haste,” the gray-haired messenger says.

I notice that Per is also silent, and Asa is watching him. Knowing that the two most seasoned warriors in our steading are uneasy makes me uneasy as well. Later that evening, I approach Hake where he towers over the hearth.

“How are you?” I ask.

He looks down at me. “Why do you ask?”

“You seem troubled.”

“Nothing escapes your notice, does it? I am troubled, but you shouldn’t worry.”

“Why not, if it worries you?”

“Because I am a restless warrior too accustomed to the battlefield, and you are the daughter of my king.”

“It’s something about Gunnlaug, isn’t it?”

He stares at me, and I see the fire flickering in his eyes. “Yes.”

“But he retreated. He gave up.”

“Did he?”

I want to say yes, but Hake’s question causes a moment of doubt.

The berserker fills that moment with a chuckle. “These thoughts are not for you. Go now and leave them here with me, all right?” He places a paternal hand on my back and gently pushes me toward Alric. “Go and practice with the skald.”

“All right,” I say, because I’m left without a choice.

We spend the next few days preparing. Bera and Raudi pack up what food we have left, along with some of Ole’s fish that they’ve salted and smoked. Asa and I tie up the blankets and gather all the other gear together, while Hake and Per ready the ship.

During all of this I keep Muninn locked in his cage, and I think he resents it. He flaps around inside, cawing, and I feel guilty. But with all the commotion in and out of the hall, I can’t take any chances letting him loose.

The fresh fish have done the surviving berserkers good, and they are able to walk about now and help. Mostly, they just try to keep Harald out of our way, but we did need their backs to get our ship down into the water. We don’t have men enough to crew the berserkers’
drekar
, so we’re taking the smaller boat in which my siblings and I came here those months ago.

The return voyage will be slow. Without men to row, we’ll be traveling entirely by sail. I don’t think I will mind that at all, so long as we are moving.

Something must be done about the bodies in the cowshed. We don’t have time to dig their graves, but we can’t leave them. When summer comes, they will rot and bring scavengers, and we will face the wrath of their unsettled spirits. So we must bring them home with us where they can be honored properly.

When every thing else is loaded and stowed, Hake and Per go to the shed and open the doors. The rest of us stand in the yard, solemn as runestones, as the two of them emerge bearing one of the bodies.

They cross the yard and leave through the gates, and we follow them down through the stirring woods. The dry silence of winter is gone, and all around us the trees stretch out of their wet snow-furs. We go down to the water’s edge, where the waves are waking up, slapping their cheeks against the rocky shore. Hake and Per carry the body onto the ship and lay it into the tomb-like cargo hold.

They disembark, and without looking at any of us, climb back up through the forest to the steading. And we follow them. They reenter the cowshed and come out again with the body of another fallen warrior. Out of reverence, no one speaks.

We go with them back down to the ship, where they lay the body with the first, and then they climb again, and then again. And each time, we go also. Each of the men deserves his own procession. Each of them deserves our honor and love.

As we make the trip for the fourth time, I begin to breathe more heavily in the brisk air. As we make the trip for the sixth time, the muscles in my legs begin to burn. As we make the trip for the tenth time, my legs begin to tremble, and I do not know if it is because of the strain on my body or my soul.

This grim task, and the grave-ship that waits for us, have made plain what we have lost, what was stolen from us by
treachery. These men did not have to die, and I find that as I make the trip for the final time, my grief has turned to anger. Then fury, as we pack in snow and ice around the bodies for the return journey, burying them in the boat. My earlier pain retreats before the storm inside me. But it’s a storm without an eye, without an enemy on which to center all my rage. And now the fact that one of us could have caused this is more than I can stand.

When the ordeal is ended, and the shed is empty, we all decide it would be better to wait until tomorrow to leave the fjord. The messengers want to leave this evening, but Bera persuades them to eat another good meal and get another good sleep before they depart in their smaller boat. Our ship waits for us, so heavy with our grief I do not know how it stays afloat.

After we have eaten a slow, silent meal, Alric stands. He and I haven’t talked about a tale. I feel unable to gather any words tonight, and I worry that he will call on me. But he begins without looking or nodding toward me, and it seems he intends to tell the story himself. So I am able to relax and listen, a part of his audience once again.

“It seems so long ago now,” Alric says, “that Solveig found the runestone down in the forest. I studied it and determined whom it was meant to honor, and then I set about harvesting his story from the lore. Now I will tell you what I have remembered of him.” And he begins.

“Many generations have passed since the gods first made kings of men, back when the fjords were still raw from being rent open. At that time, a warrior chose this place, where we have spent this winter, to build his meadhall and make his home. His household grew strong. His sons were mighty in battle, and his daughters delighted the eyes of all who beheld them.

“But then the frost giants came from high above the warrior’s hall, through the black forests, and over the mountains. Towering monsters of cunning, with the strength of ten men, the giants looked down on the fjord and spied the warrior’s daughters. They decided among themselves to steal the maidens away, to carry them back to their realm of rock and ice as brides.”

The story makes me think of Asa, and I glance at her. She sits near me, leaning forward with her hands folded against her stomach, her eyes fixed on Alric as though he is divining her past and her future.

“The giants descended,” Alric says. “The ground trembled beneath their feet, and the walls of the steading shook as though to fall. The warrior-king heard their coming and hid his daughters in a cave. Then he and his sons waited with sword and spear. In the shadow of a glacier, in the grip of a ravine, they stood ready to do battle with the giants.”

As he tells the story, I can almost feel the walls of our hall shaking.

Alric continues. “The sight of the giants would have caused lesser men to lower their spears, but the warrior-king raised his sword and cried, ‘No daughter shall be taken from this land, and death shall fall upon you if you make war with us!’ ”

As he speaks, I am reassured by the knowledge that my father would do the same for me, and has done for Asa.

“The frost giants roared and laughed,” Alric says. “Up the ravine they came, tearing boulders loose and toppling trees.

“The warrior-king looked with pride upon his sons, and spoke. ‘We hold them here,’ he said. ‘None shall break our shield-wall.’ And after hours of battle, not one single giant had. Because of the narrowness of the ravine where the warrior-king and his sons had made their stand, no two giants could pass through, and so the warrior-king and his sons fought each giant in turn, and in turn, sent each to the sleep of the sword, filling the ravine with the bodies.”

The expression on Alric’s face appears more earnest than I have ever seen it. It is almost as if he is finally telling a tale that he, himself, believes.

“After the last of the frost giants had fallen, and the ground was wet with their blood, the warrior-king broke gold rings on the battlefield and rewarded each of his sons for their valor. But there was one son among them, an assassin, who had treasure from the giants in his purse, given in payment for treachery. And as his father offered him his reward, the evil son drew a poisoned dagger and slashed his father’s hand.”