Raven Speak (9781442402492) (18 page)

High above him the loud flapping of wings, then the rustling of pine boughs told of a large bird's arrival. His hunger leaped and with it came the heat of blood rushing through his veins. Was it possible to catch it?

Quork, quork.

Ugh. His lip wrinkled. It was the same sound he'd heard the evening those two ravens had dumped … well, he preferred not
to think of that. (Though he couldn't help rubbing the back of his neck, then checking his hand.)

Time passed, and bit by bit his anger crept back. The clear stream below him gurgled and bubbled across stones and pooled behind fallen branches to spin decaying leaves. Idly he stabbed at the leaves with his sword, pushing them to the bottom and holding them there until they gave up floating. The unseen bird prattled to itself.

As cold sunlight broke through the fog, a noise across the clearing signaled the approach of something large. Expecting to see the vexatious horses, and savoring the thought of stabbing his sword into at least one of them, he looked up. The vision that emerged from the opposite forest sat him straight.

It was a horse, yes, but with a rider—and no ordinary rider, for sunlight glinted off the thousand jewels embellishing this rider's blue cloak. They winked in rhythm with the horse's steps, and he found himself gaping in astonishment.

A different hunger stirred inside him. He would have that cloak for himself and relish the taking of it. He needed to spill some blood today. His fingers closed around his sword and he held himself motionless—except for the smile teasing his lips—and let the horse and rider proceed innocently toward their deaths. His heart beat painfully fast.

But as he waited for the pair to cross the clearing, the beat slipped its rhythm and his vision swam. Snippets of stories he'd told—or heard (he was suddenly confused about that)—shot through his
head.
Winter winds came howling … He wandered. Alone. Until one morning … a woman rode out of the forest. And the sun blazed
.

He rubbed his eyes and blinked. This was no common rider; it was the seer! Across the clearing, riding toward him—straight toward him as if she could magically look through the overhanging boughs and see him—was the seer of his father's stories: a beautiful woman
dressed in every shade of blue
.

The hems of both garments
(his lips moved with the words he'd committed to memory, though even his clever mind had never imagined anything as beautiful)
sparkled with blue glass and clear crystal beads created in a far-off land.

The thudding in his chest doubled. Seers appeared rarely and only to a chosen few. Had she come to interpret his dreams, to confirm his wishes? Would she proclaim him clan chieftain?

Steadily she approached, steadily and slowly. Noble. Her mount could have belonged to one of the Valkyrie, for it flaunted the distinctive chopped mane, a mane that rippled like black flames with each toss of the horse's head.

Near to trembling with excitement—he was chosen!—he pushed the bough aside and scrambled up the stream's opposite bank. He pulled himself tall.
Walk straight
, he chided.
No limping
. The seer's unwavering gaze was upon him.

But as he neared the field's middle he realized with a shudder that it was no battle horse that approached, but only that runty little dun. He'd been deceived! And the rider? He squinted, his vision still wavering.

Asa!
Not dead then. Or maybe returned from the dead to torment him, to prevent him from being clan chieftain. He tightened the grip on his sword. Well—dead or alive—she wasn't going to do that. She'd had her chance. And he'd labored too many seasons now molding the clan to
his
way of thinking.

The jewels captured the sunlight, shattered its brilliance, and tossed it back into the air. The dazzling display triggered random words in his mind:
She came to this man riding on a white horse.

That gave him pause. He was confused again because there had been a white horse once. It was not owned by a seer, however, but by a sorcerer, a witch who had bewitched his father. That horse was no more. His father was no more. And, as far as he knew, that meddlesome woman was no more.

“What is it you seek?”
she had asked. The words played out in his mind and across his lips even as Asa rode closer and closer. He heard himself mumbling the lost man's plea:
“I seek to stop wandering. I seek to not shiver. I seek to be other than alone.”

He remembered how the woman of the story had walked with the man so that he wouldn't be lonely and how she helped him build a house of stone and wood and turf so that he needn't wander.
Then one stormy day this man said, “I am still cold. I am still hungry. Will it always be winter?”

And she had done nothing.

His teeth ground together. Just as Asa had done nothing—after all he'd offered her. He drew his sword.

No, he thought, slowly swaying from side to side, testing the
sword's feel. She
had
done something: she'd thwarted him at every opportunity! She'd attacked him and humiliated him!

One day, while the man waited beside a stream, the woman's white horse appeared to him. “I can make you warm,” it told him. “I can feed you. And I can bring summer.”

Was this horse speaking to him now? The blood roared through his head such that he couldn't be certain. But he wanted summer to come. They all needed summer to come. And he'd certainly be warm in that sparkling robe. With a widening smile he pictured himself in the chieftain's seat, the regal blue robe spilling over its sides to lap at the piles of food the others would bring him. All he had to do was slay this horse and slay its meddlesome rider, Asa. He should have stopped them long ago.

The dun horse was tugging at its reins. It did appear rather fearsome with its ears pinned flat, its yellowed teeth champing on the bit. He remembered the creature savaging him in the byre. A purple bruise still marked his thigh. But look now—it was shaking its head, nodding its head. Telling him what to do.

“
Take my blood,” the horse said, “and scatter it on open ground. And take my bones and grind them into the dirt. And take my skin, emptied of all its worth, and mount it on a wooden frame at the edge of your new field so that all who see it will know what a gift I have given you.
”

Yes. He would have this horse's blood. And the girl's, too. He had been chosen.

And this man, who was a dutiful man, did as the horse instructed. He picked up his sword and in one stroke
…

The broken sword snaked a menacing arc through the air. Rune jumped and grunted surprise as blood trickled down his shoulder. Too late Asa yanked the reins to spin him away. How was she going to defeat this crazed man? She had no battle training.

Momentum had carried Jorgen off balance, and he staggered a step before raising the sword again. Both hands clutched the hilt as he lurched toward her.

She held Rune in place until the last instant, then booted him aside, and this time the sword sliced empty air.

The old skald stumbled sideways, panting. A thatch of hair that had fallen across one eye slicked itself to his cheek, yet he didn't shake it aside. His mouth gaped and closed, fishlike. Was he ill or simply out of breath? No time to ponder the answer; here he came once more. Common sense urged her to flee, but she squashed it without hesitation. She wasn't fleeing. Not from him or anyone. Not ever again.

Doubling the reins around her fingers, she prepared to signal Rune, who was growing more and more agitated. He snorted whistling blasts and broke from his prancing to paw ragged
furrows into the ground. Jorgen rushed closer, his face twisted in a clenched-jaw sneer, and just before she spun Rune away a third time, she saw that the man's eyes shone as glassy as marbles. The pupils were blown so wide and black that he seemed to not even recognize her.

“What are you doing, Jorgen?” She pulled Wenda's knife from her waist and brandished it, though it was obviously more utensil than weapon. “You're not going to hurt Rune. And you can't hurt me.”

Oddly, the skald retreated. As if performing some solemn ritual, he pointed the sword to the sky, then drew it close to his face, pressing its broken blade flat against his nose. With his chest heaving and the vertical sword halving his face, he focused his dark glare on her and Rune. A silence ensued in which he spoke not a word, and only Rune's impatient snorts and swishing tail made any noise. She got the impression that some sorcerer's spell—or many bowls of ale, perhaps—held him in thrall.

Rune's temper, meanwhile, was approaching a boil. Over and over he tossed his head, trying to yank the reins from her and grab the rattling bit in his teeth. Flecks of foam spattered his neck and shoulders. She'd not seen him this unruly in years, but she well remembered how explosive he could be. If he was planning one of his berserker fits, there was no way she'd be able to stay on his back. She booted his shoulder.

In response, he bucked. Hard. Before she could grab a fistful of bristly mane he bucked again, throwing her off-balance, and in
the next heartbeat he was pivoting toward Jorgen. His challenging whinny split the air.

“No!” she cried, fighting for the reins as she was flung backward. But Rune had snatched the bit; he was in control, and his powerful haunches carried them straight toward Jorgen and the jagged-tipped sword now aimed at his belly. With the violence of a battering ram, Rune knocked the man to the ground. She heard the air forced out of the skald, a pained sound echoed sickeningly by Rune's deep grunt. She felt her horse falter. Had the sword gotten him? His hindquarters shivered, and for several uneven beats his gait rocked like a storm-battered ship. But then the powerful rolling gallop returned and he was circling back. The gusts blasting through his nostrils crackled like wind-whipped sails.

Jorgen was climbing to his feet, regaining his sword, and readying himself. Rune, ears pinned flat to his head, galloped straight for him. She'd not seen such recklessness in him in all the summers and winters they'd shared. Usually—with playful exceptions—they worked as one, his back soft, his neck pliant. Now she straddled one of Thor's lightning bolts. And that bolt—fierce, frightening, direct—had no cognizance of her. Still she tugged on the reins, hoping to guide him from harm. Otherwise he was going to get himself killed, get them both killed.

They were upon Jorgen again. The sword came swinging and Rune neatly dodged it. She felt him lash out with a hind hoof as he passed, nearly unseating her; she couldn't tell if the blow landed.
Then, instead of continuing in another circle as he had before, Rune stopped abruptly. His front hooves slammed the ground and his hindquarters dropped like an anchor. But they couldn't sustain the effort, and their sickening wobble—something was definitely wrong!—and near collapse sent him reeling sideways. The accompanying groan as he righted himself described so much pain her stomach sank. He was wounded; she had to get him away from this battle that wasn't his. With both hands she pulled on one rein as hard as she could.

She might as well have tried elbowing a lightning bolt. Stubborn to the bone, Rune shook away her attempts, gathered into a gallop, and pounded toward Jorgen. The fury that consumed him raged stronger, and she felt him rising into a full rear and coming at the man with flailing hooves. Just in time she clutched another hank of mane. To keep from slipping off his back she clamped her legs and pressed her cheek close to his neck. It was like flying; for that instant she was soaring toward the clouds, leaving the ground and all its burdens behind. Amidst the blur of a tilting sky she caught a glimpse of Jorgen beneath them, his arms flung across his face, as Rune's hooves came pummeling.

That moment of euphoria, of triumph over the enemy, was immediately replaced by a panicked feeling of falling, of a great weight crumbling ever so slowly, and she—helpless—with it. As if through a nightmarish fog she felt her leg jamming the ground, her ankle twisting painfully; she fought for air as a massive amount of horseflesh smothered her. She tasted mane and mud and blood.
There was a great scrambling and slamming of limbs—hooves clacked one upon the other like stone on stone—and instinctively she tried to drag herself out of danger. Her nails clawed the grit, one knee shoved against the ground in frenzied spasms. Then, somehow, she found herself unfettered. Rune lunged to his feet.

Dazed though she was, she saw that the reins tangling his legs yanked his head low. He stumbled, his eyes rolling to white. Alarmed.

Jorgen, panting in anguished gasps, was fighting to get to his knees. He located his sword in the mud and reclaimed it, clasping it with his own two-fisted fury, and staggered toward his vulnerable attacker.

She had the knife in her hand and was lunging for him even before she realized it. Rune's scream pierced her fog, and a crystalline ray of fear and anger and love brought the knife slamming down on Jorgen's back. The point tore through the wool cloak and thunked into his shoulder. A dark stain surged as Jorgen yelped.

He struggled to turn around, to face her, but wouldn't let go of the sword buried in Rune's groin. Blood splattered the black-stockinged dun legs, the mud, the cloak. She yanked the knife free and sank it into him again. Over and over she stabbed, and then he was out from underneath her and, with one arm hanging limply from his shoulder, he charged. Haphazardly he slashed at her legs. Behind him, Rune staggered sideways and fell partway to the ground, splayed in an ungainly stance.

Back and forth, back and forth, the sword swept knee-level from the ground. Jorgen lurched behind it, his haggard face twisted in a hungry, evil-eyed grin. Her blood rose up to meet his. She took a firm grip on the knife and nimbly evaded the sword's arc while searching for an opening. Her breathing roared in her ears, burned through her nostrils. She was filled with fire. The sea wind scoured her skin; the mountain buttressed her bones. She, Asa Coppermane, was the clan's chieftain, and she was going to rid them all of this menace.