The Viking’s Sacrifice (11 page)

“He’s Sigdir’s brother, this Toki, did you know that?” Myldrith said. “Sigdir and Bausi’s brother, and terrible though they are, even they despise him.”

“How did—”

“It’s written plain as day on your face,
my lady.
You and him, they’s been talking of it all over. The way he spoke to you when he ain’t spoke to no one, how he tried to buy you. And you, you didn’t send him off either, as you should have, as lady, as a Christian, thrall or no. Made Sigdir that mad, it did, made it all the worse for us. Didn’t think of that, did you? And when he finds out what you did last night—oh, my lady, it’s going to be terrible bad for all of us, and you the worst. And you deserve it.”

Wilda shrank back from the poison in her voice. Sweet Myldrith, turned to this. “How can—”

But Myldrith wasn’t about to be quiet. Two patches of hectic red blazed on her cheeks in her otherwise pale face, a dreadful fervour on her. “Whatever your harlot ways have got him to promise you, I won’t be saved by a heathen, I won’t. He won’t save you neither. Sigdir and Bausi, they despise him, fear him a little, I think. I don’t know why, but I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it when they warned him away from you. Those two are Satan’s own children, yet they wanted to protect you from him. Their brother can only be worse. I hear tell of him, of Toki and his ways, and it fair turns my stomach. Heathens, barbarians, they is sent by the Devil to kill us, my lady, and they will. Or maybe God sent them to punish us, punish people like you who sin without thought, who lay with the Devil, willingly,
wantonly.
I won’t be saved by no heathen, or his harlot. I won’t!” With that last, Myldrith fled from the room in tears.

Wilda stared after her, blind with tears of her own. She shook off Rowena’s hand and scrabbled on the floor for the ruined skein. Myldrith was right, she was a harlot.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
She picked up the threads of her task and let her mind go numb with it, with the repetition. What would God rather her do? She knew the answer—she shouldn’t have gone to his bed. She shouldn’t have asked a heathen for help. But God had sent him, she was sure of it. Why else would Einar help her?

After a time, she looked up to find Rowena staring at her with a worried frown.

“What’s he done that they despise him so?” Wilda asked.

“I don’t know. I only know they say some fear turned him simple, that he didn’t have the courage he should, and it robbed him of his senses.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Devil to me, or a reason Sigdir should fear him.”

Rowena laughed under her breath. “Myldrith—Toki isn’t the only one to have his mind turned. It’s been hard for her, devilish hard, and getting his child too…you know how pregnant women can be, they latch on to the strangest things. It’s easier for her to blame you than to accept what’s happened to her. Besides, you had a choice. She didn’t. And I’m glad you made it.”

“Are you?” Wilda stared down at her hands. “I’m not sure I am. I’m not sure I can say enough Hail Marys ever to be forgiven.”

Rowena took the wool from Wilda’s twisting hands, where it had tangled beyond repair. “This too shall pass. I’ll take this and finish up. It’ll be hours before the milk curdles enough for the skyr. Go get some water from the well. It may be biting cold, but maybe some air will help, seeing God’s earth in all its beauty.”

The raven was back, perched on the roof of the spae-wife’s hut. It watched Einar avidly, head on one side, and a shiver rattled down his backbone. He stood outside the hut, just watching for a time before he screwed himself up to go in. It wasn’t that the spae-wife wasn’t held in high regard, or that her magic was frowned upon—quite the opposite. She was no seidr, no black artist as Bausi’s mother had been rumoured to be.

It was him, and the rune-curse, that held him back. Fear that she’d see it on him and somehow it would all come apart, and then he and Gudrun, even Sigdir, would be at its mercy. That had kept him from her door for eight years, kept him from going anywhere near her, made his only words for years after coming home a desperate begging that she not tend his wounds, because she would see, would
know,
and then all would be lost.

Now he had little choice. The curse mattered less and less, Wilda mattered more and more. There was no way to get her away that he could see. The mountain passes were choked with snow, the high pastures too frigid to hide in, even if any smoke wouldn’t have been seen from the village. If he had a boat—even something as small as a fishing creel—he might have managed it. But he didn’t, and had no way of getting one. Even if he had, it would mean leaving with Wilda and he couldn’t do that either, much as he wanted to. The curse held him here, in Bausi’s subtle net.

The raven cawed at him and flapped its wings. Bird of ill omen, or bird of portent? Odin’s bird, either way. Einar made the sign of Thor’s hammer and pushed open the door into a world as dangerous as any wyrm’s lair.

The hut was dark and thick with an odd-smelling smoke. The only light came from the doorway, the fire and the cracks around a shutter that covered the one small window against the day. The floor was covered with skins and furs so that his feet sank into it. Things fluttered from the rafters—a forest of tangled bits of feathers, bones and other nameless things that made his shoulders twitch.

The spae-wife—Geira, her name was—sat with her back to him, stirring a kettle over the fire. Steam rose from the kettle in moist, aromatic waves, making his stomach rumble. Beef.

“Aye, there’s plenty for you, Einar, I made sure of it.” Geira hadn’t turned to see who it was, or given any other indication she knew he was there, but sat and stirred. “Come on, sit down. Don’t tell
me
you’re not half-starved.”

Einar shut the door behind him, shut out the fjord and the snow and everything else, it seemed like. In here there was only…in here. A dark hole in time and place, where the skin between here and the Other was thin, the air thick with wyrd, with magic. The faint cawing of the raven above him was the only indication the fjord outside still existed. He took off his cloak and sat down across the fire from Geira. She’d been old when he was a boy and now was ancient. Her hands were crabbed, the knuckles and veins prominent, and her grey hair hung lankly over her shoulders. Yet in the dim light of the fire her face looked young, a striking woman in the prime of life with high cheekbones and knowing eyes.

“I knew you’d come in the end.” Geira ladled out a good bowlful of the stew and handed it to him. Her fingers were cold as ice where she touched him, somehow slippery and inhuman. “They always do.”

The feel of her fingers was forgotten, everything was forgotten in the steam of beef stew. It had been a long time since he’d had beef, or anything decent to eat. And this wasn’t just any beef stew. It was rich with herbs, thick with gravy. Einar had to force himself not to shovel it in, but instead to savour it.

“So, was it worth it? Sleeping with your brother’s betrothed, I mean.”

Einar almost choked on a lump of beef. Geira watched him keenly.

“Maybe it was, after all, Einar Sheen-mane. There’s something strange about you, about you and Sigdir and Gudrun. Something dark, though I’ve never got close enough to any of you to find out what, exactly. Something kept me away. That’s odd in itself. But then, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

The stew had lost all taste. It might have been water and raw meat for all its flavour now. He swallowed, hard, and worked up the courage to speak. “I have to get Wilda away. She has to go. For all of us.”

Geira’s eyebrows pinched in a delicate frown. “For her it would be good, I don’t doubt. But why for you? Why does the Jarl’s simple-minded brother care what happens to a thrall, or rather a freed thrall under his brother’s protection?”

Einar ducked his head and stared into the bowl without seeing it.

“Hmm. Look at me.” Her icy fingers gripped his chin and raised his head. “Look at me, Einar.”

Her face wasn’t Geira’s face any more. He tried to pull away but the fingers held him in a firm grip. He couldn’t have said what it was, exactly, but there was something about the face…almost as though there were three people there. He had no choice but to look, to stare. An old crone, bent and wrinkled and grinning, a girl’s face, smooth, bright and smiling sadly. A third, a woman of middle years perhaps, regal and wise. Then they were gone, whatever they’d been, and she was only Geira again, looking too young for her years but just the spae-wife, born in the village, who’d helped most of them into the world with her herbs and magic.

Her eyes held his for a moment before she clucked impatiently and began to look him over like a horse. She pulled down his eyelids, checked his teeth and behind his ears, letting out little
hmms
as though she didn’t much like what she saw.

Finally she sat back, chewing on her lip and frowning deeply enough that her eyebrows almost hid her eyes. “Explains much, that does. Much. You got a black net on you, Einar. A dark and dangerous curse, and not just you, I’m reckoning. Not just you but Sigdir and Gudrun too. I seen the same shimmer on them as I seen on you, but it’s only now I can see it close, now you’ve eaten the stew to open my eyes to it, I know it for what it is. A seidr-net, rune-cut. A death-curse. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

Einar nodded and watched her warily. If it should all come undone in the wrong way…this was why he hadn’t come before. Seidr magic, Bausi’s magic, wasn’t to be trifled with, not even by spae.

Geira got up, stiff and awkward and moaning about old bones in the cold. She opened an old oak chest, dark with the smoke of years, and drew out a staff. More trinkets, like those that fluttered from the roof, were wound about its top. She stared at them with a frown, muttered a few words over them.

“Sigdir used to have a good heart, eh? A good, strong heart full of courage, like Arni. Like you. Or he did until you abandoned him, left him to the curse with only Bausi to look to. It might not be too late to save him. And little Gudrun, ah, now, her heart is just starting to twist and blacken under it.”

She shot him a look, steel-hard, that made him shiver in his boots. “You saw the Norns, the web-weavers. You’re the centre of the threads that have been cast around you all, aye, even that thrall. The Norns don’t weave their webs so lightly. There’s a reason they didn’t snip your thread short. It’s rune-cut, this curse. You can’t run from this, Einar, you can’t keep still and hope, holding all your courage in thoughtful inaction, in silence. Aye, I see that was courage, bearing the unbearable, quiet courage, Odin’s deep thinking, making the wise choice. I saw it, and so did others but they dare not say.
She
saw it, didn’t she? That’s what made you so rash as to betray your own brother, because she showed you what was inside all along, made you believe it. Yet now, Einar, now you need the other sort. Loud courage, Thor’s courage. Red blood and iron. You’ve got that in you too, and to spare. You must turn and fight, like a cornered bear, and with its claws. You have to find where the rune is cut, and burn it.”

Rune-cut—the rune hung round Bausi’s neck, a silent reminder to Einar of what he was bound to, what he had promised. He couldn’t. Even if he wanted to, and he did, he couldn’t get the rune. Not from Bausi’s neck. “If I can’t?” he managed.

Geira patted his hand, and the feel of her cold, slippery knots of fingers made him want to flinch, but he dared not.

“If you can’t, then you must find the right thread to pull. Pull the right one, the net will fall apart. Pull the wrong one and it will bind you ever tighter. Finish this curse, and you can help your thrall too. These are all parts of the same web. It’s up to you, Einar Sheen-mane.”

She sat down, her back to him, and began to stir the pot again. He was dismissed from her thoughts.

The grey light of the sun trying to push through thick, snow-laden clouds was still dazzling after the dark of her hut, but the wind was fresh and clean and blew away the smell of the smoke that had clogged his chest.

He’d gone for help to get Wilda away, but Geira had all but ignored that plea. The curse weighed less in his mind now than getting Wilda safe, getting her
away,
however he could. Yet with the curse still on him, on all of them, it wasn’t possible. Even without it, it wasn’t possible. He made his slow, halt-legged way back to his hut. Two days wasn’t long enough, two
months
wouldn’t be. Yet two days he’d promised, and he was a Norseman, a man of Thor in his heart. His word was iron.

Wilda broke the ice on the well and lowered the bucket. Rowena had been right. The biting cold air was fresh and had cleared her head, and the sight of God’s earth—a beauty cold and harsh and brooding, that He’d made—calmed her. He’d made the towering dark mountains that loomed above the village like sentinels, the still black water of the fjord, the silence that only a deep blanket of snow could bring. She tried not to think of anything else, of the confession she would have to make when next she saw a priest, and how she would have to confess also that she didn’t repent.

The bucket was heavy and banged against her legs as she made her way back to the house, spilling frigid water on her dress that re-froze almost immediately. Rowena was wrapping the pot so the milk could curdle into the delicacy that was Sigdir’s favourite, skyr. The house lay quiet, the men-thralls all out gathering the cattle and sheep that it was calculated could not be kept through the winter on the hay available. The strongest, and those that produced the most milk, would survive and overwinter with the people.

Bloodmonth they called it, a subdued affair. To slaughter, Rowena said, was almost an admission of failure. The more cows a man had to slaughter, the more he’d failed to provide with winter fodder. Yet the meat was welcome. Cows had been slaughtered all over the village in the last few days and the smell of smoking pervaded the whole valley. Joints lay in whey to be pickled or were salted or even, to Wilda’s disgust, buried to ferment. Today was the turn of the sheep, and their plaintive bleating as they were led to the slaughter, as though they knew what was coming, echoed round her head. A feeling all too familiar.

Wilda and Rowena bundled in cloaks and watched, waiting for the hard work ahead, the pickling and salting, the preparation of the parts that wouldn’t keep and had to be eaten soon, while some of the men prepared for curing the skins. Sharp knives for trimming, blunter ones for scraping the fat, piles of salt for the first part of the process.

Sigdir led the slaughter. First he made a sign over the heavy knife, almost a short broadsword, they called a scramasax. Then, with one hand on the sheep, the other holding the knife, he spoke, rhythmic, powerful words before the scramasax came down and blood splattered the snow.

“A, well, not a
blot,
not yet,” Rowena said. “But an entreaty to Odin and Freya, to make sure of fertility next year, to make sure we have enough to see us through the snows and the dearth even of summer before the next harvest. A kind of heathen prayer.”

Sigdir carefully wiped the blade clean and made the sign again over it. “Thor’s hammer,” Rowena said. “Strength, protection. But also god of the sky, of the weather that kills or keeps them, and fertility.”

No matter how strange the customs, the personifications of the gods, one look at Sigdir’s face told her how deeply he believed it, how they all did. With a curt nod to the head karl to take over, Sigdir strode away.

Rowena fussed with the skein of wool that Wilda had tangled while they waited for the meat to come. Wilda watched the men, the free karls and the thralls. The karls did the killing—it was theirs to kill, their right and duty. The thralls did the hard, dirty work, the gutting, the skinning and jointing. Theirs too would be the job of scraping the skins ready to cure.

The sun dimmed even further behind grey snow-clouds that crept down the mountainside, and the meat began to come to them from the slaughter. As she turned away to get to work, Wilda thought she saw a thin figure creep across the square, keeping to the shadows of the buildings until it reached the one opposite and slipped inside. Before she could think why it troubled her, she and Rowena were overwhelmed with lamb and mutton to cure. But it did trouble her, the more so when she realised she hadn’t seen Myldrith since that morning, and she should be here and helping. Even if Wilda quaked to face her, knowing that no matter how shrill or furious or even a touch mad she’d seemed about what Wilda had done, she was right.

Wilda kept looking toward the door as they worked, waiting for Myldrith, wanting to explain, to apologise, though she wasn’t quite sure how or why, only that Myldrith was her friend. The day grew steadily darker, and the succession of meat seemed never-ending. By the time they were done, it was near full dark and there was still no sign of Myldrith.

Wilda wasn’t the only one worried.

“She was in such a state, maybe we should try to find her,” Rowena said. “It’s not right for her to be gone so long. No doubt Sigdir will be back soon and he’ll want to know where she is. Wilda, you take the buildings here, I’ll go farther afield, in case she’s wandered off.”

Wilda pulled on her thin cloak and dashed out into the almost-dark, stopping only to pick up a rushlight. The building opposite, some sort of barn, where she’d seen the thin figure earlier was her first thought. The figure had reminded her of Myldrith, even though she’d no cause to think so then. Thin and furtive. Maybe she’d wanted time alone to think, somewhere quiet to pray and find strength. Wilda tried the door, but something blocked it. She pushed again, calling Myldrith’s name. “It’s Wilda, please, Myldrith, I’m sorry. I only wanted to get you help, to get us both away from here.” A lie to compound her sin.