Raven Speak (9781442402492) (7 page)

No. She couldn't—she
wouldn't
—risk Rune's life by returning to
their clan. They'd have to sacrifice her first, because if they killed her horse, well … Odin himself would have nothing on her fury. Though her heart drummed in her ears, she disguised her fear with murmurs of soothing nonsense and sidled over to Rune. She scratched his withers and, after a few more snorts followed by another long stretch of silence, he relaxed.

Side by side they continued, finding nothing more dangerous than additional dark shore stretching ahead. Like the walking dead they plodded, step after numb step, mindlessly retracing yesterday's gallop—or was it the day before that the
Sea Dragon
had sailed? She shook her head. When was the last time she'd slept? Her mind tried to sort the events, but images of Jorgen leered through the haze. His hungry, heavy-lidded stare. The pale brown mole at his temple. The cheese crumbling in his hand.

He wanted to be clan leader, she knew that much now. Which, she realized with the sudden clarity of a light beaming through a cracked door, was completely different from wanting to lead the clan. Jorgen wanted the power that came with being first, of being on top. He coveted the seat of honor. But leading the clan meant putting everyone else's needs ahead of your own. That's what her father had done. His trip into the storm was foolhardy in so many ways, but he'd done it for the good of the clan.
He
was a true leader.

If he never … No, she wouldn't think of that. She wouldn't think of anything except keeping herself and Rune alive.

And the other horses? It seemed her mind had to gallop
through all the dire possibilities. Well, they'd fled the byre. She didn't know what they'd find to eat, but hopefully Jorgen's knife wouldn't find them. Her mother had said to keep the horses safe, and so far they were.

The stars spun above them, following their own dark course, and still no path climbed into the shelter of the forest, no rocky niche offered refuge on the shore. The night's cold rimed her cheeks, pulling the skin taut; the ocean's breath dripped from her nose. When she blinked, droplets quivered on her lashes.

Apparently the months of watered soup and bitter bread had carved a hollow inside her. She didn't realize how weak she'd become, though, until she was slipping behind Rune's shoulder and then his flank, and finally she was trailing him. Nor did she notice the ocean's rising tide creeping ever closer to them. Unheeded, it swallowed so much ground that when they reached the tip of the middle finger of land, the snub-nosed bluff there loomed straight out of the oily black sea. There was no dry passage around it. She couldn't judge the water's depth and stood peering into the darkness, listening to the waves rush up, splash against the walls, slap down, and recede. Rush, splash, slap, and recede. Rush, splash, slap, and recede. The dreamy recitation held her entranced, unmoving.

Rune banged his head against her. Getting no response, he nudged her again, harder. Finally he nickered his concern, four honeyed notes that started deep and descended deeper, reaching through her numbed darkness. Asa grabbed hold of them with
the desperation of a drowning person and let them lift her up and onto his back.

Rune plunged ahead with enough confidence for both of them, although the icy waves leaped up to soak his belly and she had to lift her feet to his withers and ride hunched, swaying, like a bird on a windblown bough. Because of him they managed to round the bluff without being washed away. They returned to the ever-narrowing strip of crunching sand and proceeded.

After a longer period, when the fog lifted from her mind again, she whispered to him to halt and slid off. Gently she touched her fingers to each dark slash. The neck wounds felt sticky; the bleeding had stopped. His chest wound still oozed blood but much more slowly now. The dark wool thread still wrapped his leg. Holding two fingers to it, she repeated her chant to Odin, demanding him to heal her horse. Then, shoulder to shoulder, they took up walking again.

She had no idea how deep the night was or when the sun would appear,
if
it would appear for them. Inside her shoes her feet felt as if they had hardened to ice, and each crunching step seemed to shatter the bones, shooting stinging pangs up through her legs. The water-laden air left a briny moisture in her lungs that further weighed her down. In her stupor each step seemed to be carrying her from this world into the next. She didn't really care anymore. Rune was faring no better: His head drooped past his knees, and his hooves dragged wet furrows across the sand.

At last they reached the steep-sided cliffs banding the
shadowy fjord beyond the fourth finger and couldn't go any farther. As black as the shore was, as dark as the vast sky was, the fjord was blacker. Silent. A bottomless cauldron that swallowed light and sound. The end of the world. She could see nothing, and standing there, frozen to the bone and with no place to keep walking toward, she gave in. Her journey was over.

Looming over them like a giant cresting wave was a bluff much taller than the previous one. Wind had carved a slight hollow at its base and, more recently, knocked a massive chunk of stone onto the shore. The narrow space behind the fallen rock wasn't much of a shelter, but it was high enough to be out of the tide's reach. They could squeeze in there and be partly protected from the wind. They could fend off the cold's hunger a little longer.

At her urging, Rune followed her step by halting step beneath the angled walls of the bluff. She had to duck her head to avoid the rough outcroppings, and she could hear the stone scraping his withers. When they'd wedged themselves behind the fallen rock, she turned, tugged on Rune's forelock, and pointed to the ground. It was a cue she'd taught him years ago, and obediently he folded his knees and dropped with a wheezy groan.

She dropped onto her own knees. Reaching through the darkness, fingering his coarse mane and fuzzy neck and iron shoulder, she again felt for and found each sticky wound. They'd not reopened, but some of Rune's spirit seemed to have run out with his blood. He seemed shrunken, bony. Heaving a sigh, he flopped his huge head across her lap and closed his eyes. Out of
habit she stroked the hollows above them awhile, then buried her fingers in the warmth trapped beneath his thick mane.

All she could see between the rock in front of them and the bluff above was a horizontal strip of dark sky. Wispy clouds banded the view, but thousands of fiery embers from the gods' fires burned there too. Was her father staring at these same bits of light? Or had his eyes forever closed to their brilliance? How much longer would her own eyes be open? Judging by the ragged haze clouding her vision, not much longer. What would take her and Rune? Cold? Hunger? A knife? Toughening herself to live with the choice she'd made, and if necessary to die by it, she began rocking, waiting for whatever was coming.

Birds. Huge, rough-voiced birds, calling to her. Loudly. The geese! Drawing summer on their wings.

Asa struggled to waken, her heart already skipping. She would tell her mother first—nudge her shoulder and whisper the incredibly good news—and then they'd tell the rest of the clan, and together they would breathe in the promise of warmer days and greening grass and new life. They'd made it!

Except that when she pushed onto her elbow, it dug into damp sand and not her straw mattress. The fingers she lifted to her face rubbed stinging granules of the same stuff into her eyes. She bolted upright, blinking in pain. Where was she? Handicapped by her watery vision and the predawn gloom, she managed to identify a massive rocky wall an arm's length in front of her and she felt the pressure of its mate at her back: the shore's bluffs. She was waking near the ocean—and she wasn't alone. Within that same arm's length she saw booted feet poking from beneath a dark gray cloak. Her heart left off its skipping to drum an alarm; she craned her stiff neck upward, following the shrouded form. Silhouetted against a horizontal strip of sky that still sparkled with a few stars
was the deeply furrowed and well-weathered face of a one-eyed old woman. Scowling. Behind the woman's shoulder a large black bird—a raven—strutted back and forth on the rock.

Asa had never given ravens much consideration, but at that moment this one seemed the very embodiment of evil. It was the bird's demanding, guttural calls that were shattering the morning.
Gronk. Gr-r-o-n-nk
.

She had to flee. Where was Rune?

Through the slits of her crusted eyes Asa spotted him beyond the rock, closer to the ocean. Only his uplifted head showed against the strip of sky, but she could tell he was annoyed, and then she saw why: Another raven swooped past his ears, worrying him with beak and claws and that same harsh cry. Rune shook his head as his teeth snapped on air.

The raven on the rock complained again, loud and insistent, which brought her back to her own tenuous situation. It was shifting anxiously from foot to foot and making hungry stabs with its beak. But not at her, she realized—at something cupped in the palm of the stranger. While she stared, thickly, trying to get her mind to work, the hand extended toward her; the palm opened. On it lay a nut-brown barley cake.

In a flash she had it inside her mouth, her tongue swelling with water, her eyes brimming with unexpected tears. A rich oily flavor permeated the cake; it tasted of the summer sun, nothing like her clan's recent crumbly cakes stretched too far by bark and peas. And like a flash of sunlight on a clouded day, it was gone too soon.

To her amazement, her shrunken stomach protested the thick sweet lump, and immediately vomited up the precious food. She flushed. What was wrong with her? And what would the old woman think of such ingratitude? Doubled over, breathing fast, she didn't dare look past her own knees.

Teetering on the edge of living, she watched with bewilderment as the woman calmly reached into the pouch slung across her shoulder. Another cake appeared and, ignoring the anguished rumblings in her stomach, Asa snatched it and devoured it in three barely restrained bites. It hurt but she held it down.

The raven, obviously jealous, shrieked and unfurled its wings as if they were weapons. The feathers slid apart with the sound of rustling leaves. Even without the sun, their blue-black color glinted to iridescence. When the bird opened its bill to repeat its displeasure, its stub of a black tongue twitched spasmodically. The woman elbowed the creature aside to offer a third cake, and this time Asa remembered to nod a thank-you. She shoved it into her mouth with no less haste, however, and as she was plucking the crumbs from her lap, she cast a curious, upward glance at the stranger.

The woman was old to be sure, older than any person Asa had ever seen, and the winters she carried seemed to have dragged her into a permanent stoop. That put her in the same no-neck posture as the raven at her shoulder, which wasn't the only feature they shared. Its downward-curving bill was mimicked in her drooping nose, the fleshy point suspended like a globule of cold sap. Its beard of feathers found a likeness in the blackberry-colored scarf she'd
wound round and round to her chin. But while the bird continued to strut and fret, the woman stood motionless, her clawlike fingers gripping the pouch's leather strap with a strangulating possessiveness. Her good eye, which she fixed on Asa, was the palest of blues and nearly concealed by folds of gossamer wrinkles, though that did nothing to diminish its intimidation. Even the grotesque hollow beside it, empty of eyeball, seemed threatening. When an ocean gust whipped through the short white hairs not fastened into the woman's braid, it haloed them around her face in a display that was nearly majestic.

“Who are you?” Asa asked.

“Who are
you
?” came the reply. In her voice Asa found yet another resemblance to the raven: It, too, grated as harshly as splintering wood.

“Asa Coppermane.”

A dismissive snort. “An unlikely enough name for a girl, though not a horse.”

Rune, trying to escape the other raven's devilment, galloped up to the bluff and pushed his way into the narrow gap. His keen senses immediately detected the barley. Brazenly he bumped his muzzle against the pouch, demanding a share.

“Rune!” Asa scolded even as the woman was producing one of the precious cakes and feeding it to him from her palm.

“Ach! He's forgiven. The winters get longer and longer, and we old ones have to tend to each other.” Her scowl belying her genial words—which made Asa wonder if it was a permanent
expression—she pulled out yet another barley cake. Rune took it and, as he chewed, nodded his head with intense equine pleasure. The woman returned her attention to Asa. “I've heard of you.”

“Of
me
? How? Where do you live?”

A storm cloud seemed to skid across the woman's face, screwing the scowl tighter. “You ask too many questions for one so young. Just how many winters have you seen?”

“Fourteen.”

“Too few to ask so many questions. You should squawk less and listen more.”

Asa found herself bristling. “My father is clan chieftain. He taught me to ask as many questions as I needed.”

“How noble of him.” The throaty response reverberated as from a deep chasm. “And how very nearsighted. He'd have better spent his time teaching you to divine some important answers, such as one for this question: What are you doing so far from your clan? You're a fool. I could have slit your throat while you slept and fed you to my birds.” Sensing an invitation to a feast, the other raven flapped its way toward the rock and joined its twin in a raucous chorus—a crowd of two chanting for a sacrifice.

Flushed with new alarm, Asa climbed unsteadily to her feet. Every bone and sinew in her body ached. Her movements accidentally disturbed the hem of the woman's cloak, which released an odor of blood and something else strong-smelling but indefinable. “Thank you for the barley cakes,” she said, pushing at Rune's chest to get him to back away. “I'll be off now.”