Raven Speak (9781442402492) (16 page)

Exhaling in relief, she thanked the gods it wasn't Jorgen, though it would be soon enough. Already she discerned slender strips of gray light across the floor. She climbed to her feet and carefully pushed the byre door open. Rune shoved his head against her, nickering concern.

“Ssh … ssh,” she soothed, cupping her hand, stiff with cold, over his muzzle and pushing him backward. The mountains stood silhouetted against a fading sky. Day was coming. Jorgen would be coming.

She gazed toward the longhouse. Did she have a place there anymore? Did she have a place anywhere?

She continued to calm Rune with caresses. What should she do?

Feed her clan. That's what she had set out to do. And she plunged back inside the byre to gather up the dead calf. Quietly, she crossed to the longhouse and laid the body on the stone door-slab. Rune watched with pricked ears.

Next she needed to get the cow and surviving calf back to their byre. The rain had stopped, and if the pair weren't ambling their way homeward they were most likely in the same brushy mountainside shelter where she'd left them. She ducked into the small byre once more to grab the bags. There she hesitated. On an impulse she knelt beside the raised planks supporting a shrouded body and swept her hand beneath them. There it was: a bit of cheese, horribly moldy by its odor. She pulled it out, dropped it in the bag containing her wet cloak, and searched for more of Jorgen's selfish hoard. In a matter of minutes she discovered a pouch of what felt like nuts, a rather hefty bag of barley, dozens of tubers she didn't recognize, the molting head of a long-dead fish, and the charred remains of some partially plucked bird wrapped in cloth. The cloth felt rather slimy in her hand; the meat was definitely spoiled. She stuffed it all inside the bags and was ready to leave—Rune was pawing all too noisily on the door-slab—when she hesitated again. She had to let Jorgen know his stab at leadership wasn't going uncontested.

Returning to her mother, Asa carefully unfastened the gold-and-silver brooch and lifted the blanket from her face. The waxy
image, bereft of her mother's spirit, stirred little pain in her. Carefully she rolled the blanket back on either side, revealing her mother's hands clasped across her chest. With a shivery thrill Asa tore a piece from one of the dried fishes and tucked it between her mother's hands. When Jorgen returned, he'd find all of his food gone. That made her smile. Let him think her mother, a chieftain's wife, had eaten it all and had even found her own; let him think she was a
draugr
, one of the walking dead. And let him tremble for all the evil he had done.

A thick coastal fog muted such details as branches, speckles, or crevices. That tumble of boulders resembled the place where she'd found the cow last night, but the longer she searched, the more she suspected she was on the wrong mountainside. Rearranging the beaded blue cloak around her shoulders—how amazingly warm it was!—she whistled softly for Rune. Fog swirled through the brush, like damp smoke seeking kindling, but other than the muffled lapping of the surf below, she didn't hear a sound. No matter. He'd just wandered off. Best thing to do now was climb higher and figure out where she was.

She leaned into the effort, her clouded breath mimicking the drifting fog, and reached an open space nearer the top. Stands of white-trunked birch trees gave way to a thicker pine forest blanketing the rising slope. She still couldn't see much, couldn't get her bearings, but in searching the area she came across a picture-stone, fully the size of a man, silhouetted against the gray sky.

Picture-stones were rare; she'd only known the one on the whale-nosed bluff north of their village, so she approached this one with great curiosity.

Carvings ornamented it from top to bottom. They'd been dug into the rock some time ago, for the lines had been softened by weather and in places cradled bits of damp green mosses and lichens. She trailed her fingertips over the beautiful illustrations, catching droplets of condensation that rolled down her wrist. With a quickening heart she began to sense that the night-chilled stone held a story as momentous as any Jorgen had ever told. While fruited trees crowned the top, embracing robust animals and thatched houses, below and around them wound an enormous, flat-headed dragon that flicked its tongue at one house while stretching its claws toward another. Menace or protector? Rather boldly, she tapped its tail.

Squiggly lines buttressed more fruit trees—furrows? waves?—but beneath them were three straight lines, quite barren. She passed over some incised hatches and dots, symbols that explained the story, she knew, though that magic was known only to skalds. For her the stone held its silence.

Farther down she touched a ship leaping over ocean waves. Men rowed vigorously. Their leader, standing in the prow, pointed toward the horizon. But here the lines describing the sea stretched on and on, and as she followed the turbulent pattern around the side and then to the back of the stone, the men left in the boat seemed to shrink in comparison.

A crunching split the morning's fog-shrouded stillness and she looked down to find a spattering of rock chips and dust beneath lines that were powdery white and new. They reminded
her of the pale inner bark of a tree freshly exposed by the bite of an axe. Somebody, it seemed, had recently carved new designs, and she bent to study them more closely.

At the edge of the undulating lines, racing into nothingness, galloped a horse. The girl on his back wore no head cloth and her windblown hair unfurled in long ribbons. She carried a sword in one upraised hand.

A girl warrior? Who was she? How long ago had she lived, and what had happened to her? And … who was commemorating her now?

The faint, distant cry of a seabird, carried on a freshening wind, distracted her. The fog was breaking up, and as she turned away from the stone she found herself gradually falling under the hypnotic spell of the ocean's cold blue-gray expanse. It stretched into the distance until it met with an equal expanse of watery blue sky. Both appeared endless, timeless. They had always been and would always be. She shifted position and, as her boot crunched the stone chips again, she became aware of the mountain beneath her. Immense. Immoveable. Unchangeable. The mountain and the sky and the ocean would be here long after she was gone, and she suddenly felt as small as the men in the boat, as inconsequential as a breath of wind. As if to mock her, a gust whipped the hair across her eyes, temporarily blinding her. She brushed it aside, clamping it to her cheek, and looked at the picture-stone anew. It, and the people on it—their images at least—would pass all the days, forever and ever, here
with the sky and mountain and sea. A hundred winters from now they would still be rowing, pointing, galloping. A thrill rippled through Asa. Wouldn't that be something? To slip from life's bounds and meld with the earth, to slow one's breathing and become timeless.

More birdcalls punctured the silence, though this time they didn't come from the sea. These were the hoarse cries of ravens. Again? Were they following her? Mocking her? And just as she thought it, the familiar pair flapped into sight, circled above her, and then alit on a shrub, bending the bough perilously close to the ground with their combined weight. They bobbed and preened and snapped their bills, all the while pretending not to watch her, though she knew, just
knew
, that their beady brown eyes marked her every move. As moments passed she got a strong sense that they were waiting for something—or someone—and that gave her a prickly, unsettled feeling.

Asa held her breath and listened. Just when her growing impatience was pushing her to continue looking for Rune and the cow, she heard someone coming and spotted Wenda's hunched figure climbing the same path she'd taken. Asa had no choice but to wait now, though her irritation with the old woman stiffened her jaw.

Maybe she should run and hide. She was younger, faster. But even as her heart kicked and her toes lifted slightly, she knew it would be useless. The ravens would find her, even in the wildness of these mountains they would pick her out, and they'd
communicate her whereabouts to Wenda, and the chase would never end. Besides, she was done running.

And so she waited, while the breeze whipped her hair, stinging her face, and the emerging sun nudged her around. On impulse she picked up one of the larger stone chips and fiddled with it, noting the roughness between her fingers, savoring its heft. She'd keep this one piece, she decided, and think about the stone's carvings later. Maybe someone from her clan would remember who the girl on the horse was.

In between these skittering thoughts Asa shielded her eyes and checked Wenda's progress. As the old woman neared, Asa pulled herself tall and glared.

Raspy breaths preceded the woman. Understandable, since it was quite a climb. Admirable, even. Wenda staggered close and grasped the stone with the ferocity of a drowning swimmer clawing at a rope. Her chest rose and fell with her sucking inhalations. Her head lolled forward and her one eye closed tight, and Asa thought she was about to faint. But Wenda seemed to be concentrating on something instead, and as her breathing slowed, she opened her eye and found the two ravens hunched on their bough. Immediately the birds began chattering. Wenda didn't move. She stood rooted, one mottled hand still clutching the stone, the other wrapped around the strap of her satchel.

When it seemed they might pass the entire day in this tableau, Asa demanded, “What are you doing here?”

Wenda let go of the stone just long enough to effectively shush her with an open palm.

That rankled. Well, she wasn't waiting any longer; there were more important things to do than grow old on this windswept bluff watching an addled crone engage in some sort of raven speak. The blue cloak gave a rustling sigh as she started off, and it occurred to her that maybe Wenda had followed her to get her cloak back. Of course, that was it, and so she began unfastening it, though somewhat unwillingly.

“No, no, no!” Wenda cried, flapping her hands. “You are the one who must wear it now.”

Asa let the elegant brooch fastener click back into place. “Why?”

Wenda was busy searching the clearing. “Where's that horse of yours?”

“I don't know; I'm looking for him.”

The woman had only to turn her eye on her two ravens and nod, and they lifted off the branch. Ignoring Asa, she took her time digging through her leather satchel.

“My mother's dead.” The words sounded accusatory somehow, even to Asa's ears, yet Wenda, now crouched over her open pouch and apparently oblivious to them, continued digging. That irritated Asa. In a louder voice she repeated, “My mother's dead.” And announcing it atop this mountain and having the breeze strip the words from her lips made the loss freshly painful.

Wenda lifted her head. “I know, Asa.” Compassion filled her
voice though a sense of urgency overran it. She glanced toward the birch trees. “I've always known.”

She returned to searching through her pouch, pushing its contents this way and that and making the strangest chirruping noises with her tongue. “Yes, here it is! What you've been wanting since you first crossed my path!” From the depths of the pouch emerged a silver-accented strike-a-light and a blackened hand torch.

Asa opened her mouth to ask a question, but a noisy disturbance in the forest interrupted. They both turned to watch Rune and her father's two horses come crashing into the open. Ears pinned and tails switching, they trotted briskly. The two ravens swooped, zigzagging, over their backs, pestering them onward.

Wenda turned. “He's coming.”

By the way in which the one gleaming blue eye fixed on her, Asa knew who “he” was. “Jorgen,” she murmured.

There was something different in the air. His nose alerted him. He thought he'd sensed it last night but hadn't been sure. This morning, though, even with the blinding fog, he was certain he marked a radical change. It felt like an intrusion. He lifted his chin and sniffed. Someone or something had visited the village in the night. An animal, perhaps? Something he could track and kill?

Wedged as he was between the partially open door and its frame, he had to twist his neck with some effort to look over his shoulder. Tora abruptly resettled herself on her pillow, feigning sleep. He snorted. She was always watching him of late, eager as a fawning puppy to be his ally. That pleased him. Perhaps he'd find a use for her after all.

A suspicious crackling echoed through the misty forest and he twisted again. Those horses. Taunting him. Could that be the intrusion? Had one of the horses ventured into the settlement during the night? He sucked in a deep breath but captured only the sea's saltiness on the back of his aching throat. What was it? What was different? He turned for one more glance about the room and, assured no one was watching, at least openly, stepped outside.

Something hard caught his toe and sent him stumbling off the stone door-slab. A calf carcass, blood-spattered and with gaping eye sockets, spun to the slab's edge and teetered. His heart jumped. Instantly he searched for signs of intruders or pranksters and, in doing so, detected a line of new footprints in the mud; they led directly from the smaller byre to the longhouse. How could that be?

With his heart pounding, he listened for movement. The mist that shrouded the thatched roofs muffled the burbling of the nearby stream. Water dripped steadily from the roof onto the door-slab, splashing the carcass's stiff limbs. But then, somewhere on the mountainside above, another crackling swelled into a brief squeal and died in a single thud. He startled. Just a dead limb falling, he assured himself, nothing more. Though it took some time for his chest to stop aching. When no further noise ensued and his breathing had eased, he tiptoed across the shallow prints in the mud. He paused at the byre's partially open door to cock an ear, then laid an eye to the crack.