The Witches’ Kitchen

by Cecelia Holland

  “I don’t know,” Raef said. He reached for what he did have: what Corban had told him. “Pap just said we have to get out of here. Us and Sweyn and Palnatoki. And not wait for him if we have to run.” His hair was standing on end. He looked up into the sky; the sun was setting, and the great wings of cloud spreading across the sky were fiery bright. An awful frizzle went along his nerves. “Come on,” he said, and broke into a trot going around the corner of the lean-to.

  At the last of the horsepens he stopped. They were too late. Up there in the gloom under the trees the dooryard of Palnatoki’s hall swarmed with men, little blobs of torches blazing here and there among them, and now, suddenly, while he watched, the first flames shot up along the thatch.

  Beside him, Conn saw it, too. He cried, “What are they doing?”

  “Bluetooth,” Raef said. “Corban thinks. Some huge plot, to kill everybody.” He knew Corban had not told him this. He looked around him wildly; he had forgotten Corban’s advice, that he should find a weapon. And already, they had to run.

  “They’ve got Palnatoki trapped in there! Where the hell is Sweyn?” Conn leapt forward, struggling to get his new sword free of his belt.

  “No—wait—we can’t—”

  Conn swung up the sword, and a shout came from him that shook Raef down to his heels. With the sword cocked back over his shoulder, Corm launched himself across the bloody trampled meadow toward the crowd around Palnatoki ‘s door.

  Everything in Raef strained after his cousin, every bone and every muscle. He wheeled toward the horse pen, gripped the top rail in both hands, and broke it free. “Conn,” he shouted, “Conn, I’m coming—” With the rail in his hands, he charged up the shallow little slope after Conn.

  The whole top of the house was on fire now, and the roar of the flames sounded like a high wind in the trees. The flames were climbing up over the hall from the back; they must have started the fire there to force the people trapped inside toward the front door. There, at the only way out, the great crowd jeered and called challenges to the men trapped inside, and coming at them from behind Conn got in several hard blows before anybody noticed.

  Raef caught up with him as the mob turned, howling, a mass of arms and swords and furious eyes, the flames behind them roaring up in a thundering sheet of light, glaring into his face. He swung up the fence rail; keep them away, he thought, let no one near him, strike at whatever came near.

  There were too many of them. Charging at him from the crackling light of the fire, they were a single churning swarm of shadows. Two pieces of the swarm detached, came at him in unison, one from either side, howling like wolves. In his terror he almost dropped the rail. Beside him, Conn screamed, “Watch out! Watch out!”

  In his mind suddenly everything went cool, went clear, and he saw himself and Conn, side by side, with the men coming at him, and he knew exactly what he had to do. He jabbed the rail at the man on his left, driving him back a step, and then swung his club at knee level, hard, and knocked the onrushing man to his right flat to the ground.

  The fire dazzled his eyes. He could see nothing but the hot fiery blast, but he felt someone leaping at him from behind and dodged and chopped down with his club. Conn screamed. They were surrounded. Raef got shoulder to shoulder with him, and struck hard, and for a long moment the two of them held all the others back, but then Raef in his mind saw them failing, and an instant later Conn stumbled against his side.

  Then astonishingly the wall of their enemies burst and scattered. The fire rushed up before them, but there standing between them and it, looking dazed, was Palnatoki, with little flames and smoldering embers all in his hair, and Sweyn, just behind him, bare-chested, his sword in his hand.

  Screaming. “Run! Run! They’ll gather again—there will be more—keep going!” Sweyn got Palnatoki by the arm and made him run again.

  Raef dropped the club; the fighting spirit left him, and he saw again what a good thing it was to get away from here. He followed Sweyn and Palnatoki quickly down across the trampled meadow, strewn with the deer’s bones, toward the lean-to of the horse barn. A few other men straggled after them, panting and cursing and whispering prayers. Conn beside him was having trouble carrying his sword as he ran. Behind them the hall blazed up in a sudden whoosh, a great crackle of embers blossoming up into the night sky, and he thought he could hear people screaming.

  At the edge of the pens, Palnatoki was waiting, Sweyn beside him; the tall man had gathered himself again, had his hands out, was shouting, “Everybody, listen to me, quickly.”

  The men all crowded toward him. The horses in the pens were stirring restlessly, and one let out a piercing neigh. Beside Raef, Conn lifted his sword and kissed the blade. He said, under his breath, “I shall be worthy of you.”

  “You’re mad,” Raef said. He was suddenly glad of his new shirt; the night air bit, damp and still. The moon was rising, showering its weak treacherous light across the broad meadows. The stink of smoke hurt his nose. Behind them somebody screamed.

  Palnatoki was saying, “If we separate we’ll have a better chance. I’ll go to Funen. You, Sweyn, go to Hollandstadt. There’s a ship there, you know the one. Get out of Denmark fast. Go to Jorvik. I’ll gather ships and send for you.”

  Sweyn said, “That’s good. All of you, get horses, and—”

  A howl went up, behind them. Another horse began to neigh, over and over, like a trumpet blast. Raef wheeled around, seeing men rushing down the meadow, through the coppery dying glow of the fire; he saw the light winking like silver ribbons on the edges of their swords. His skin crept. Behind him Palnatoki shouted, “Here they come! Hold—use the barn—”

  Raef yanked out his belt knife, wishing he had not thrown aside the club of wood. Conn grabbed his arm. “This way!”

  They scrambled toward the nearest of the horse pens; the horses inside flowed in a solid mass against the far wall, their hoofs pattering on the ground. Raef wheeled around, feeling those brightedged swords getting nearer, and with his back to the outside wall of the pen he braced himself to meet the onrush.

  He could not see Palnatoki anymore, or Sweyn, anybody else save Conn, and the half dozen strangers rushing straight at them with their swords drawn. He screeched. The belt knife felt like a piece of grass in his hand. Conn, beside him, whirled his sword up over his head, and the oncoming men crashed into them.

  Raef sank his knife into the first body, wrapped his arm around it, and held on, trying frantically to free the blade, desperate not to lose his only weapon. The big man in his arms wrenched around and butted Raef’s shoulder, and a moment later a hot pain shot through him.

  He yelled, fought the blade free, and stabbed down again, and again, until the great weight of the other man sagged against him. The wall of the pen behind him gave way and he fell backward, the body on top of him. He thrust at it, his breath sawing in his throat. The horses were whinnying and trampling just beyond his head. He rolled the dead man off him. His shoulder still hurt; the man had bitten him through the thick stuff of the shirt. He lunged up onto his feet, looking for Conn.

  All around him, in the pen and outside, men stood swinging at each other. A sword. He had to get one of those swords. He had to find Conn. In front of him a man lurched forward, a sword in his hands, and Raef flung himself on him, one hand locking on the wrist of the man’s sword arm, the other wrapped around his head.

  The other man screeched in his ear. They fell, fighting for the sword, and rolled on the ground. He came up on top and braced himself with one leg, the other man thrashing beneath him. He caught a sharp blow in the mouth; he jammed his elbow hard into the other man’s ribs, felt the stiffness of some kind of armor, and with his other hand still locked on the wrist below the sword reared back and aimed his elbow higher. His elbow went hard into the other man’s throat. He reared back, the man going slack under him, but now he could not find the sword.

  He bounded to his feet. In the smoky air before him another sword swung into sight, cock
ed back over somebody’s shoulder, and he lunged for it, got both hands on the hilt, and tore it free.

  He roared, triumphant, the weapon heavy and strong in his hands. Before him the man whose sword this was now stood with his arms still stretched upward, ready to strike. Then with a low grunt he crumpled to the ground, and beyond him stood Sweyn, with an axe.

  He said, “That’s twice you’ve saved me, Raef. Now, come on. They went for the rest of them, they’ll be back.”

  “Conn,” Raef said, looking around. The fighting had ebbed. Behind him on the dark ground a man groaned, and another rolled over. Several lay still.

  “He’s there:’ Sweyn said. “Come on:’

  Raef followed him across the horse pens, vaulting over a fence; the horses were huddled in a close pack against the wall of the lean-to. He heard hoofbeats galloping off. Conn was standing in the middle of the pen, holding the bridles of two horses, his fists full of leather, while the animals danced and sidled around him. Then the lean-to barn behind them whooshed up into a hot gusting blaze.

  The loose horses bolted, shrilling, their manes and tails fluttering like dark flames. One on either side of Conn, the horses he was holding reared straight up. Sweyn leapt forward and caught one by the bridle.

  “Go! You two—” He brought the wild-eyed horse toward Raef. “Go! Follow the Danewirk—”

  Raef took the reins uncertainly, a hard lump in his throat; then Sweyn was hoisting him almost bodily onto the horse. He wrapped his legs around the shaggy barrel under him, and the horse bolted.

  Conn shouted. “This way! This way!”

  Slipping and sliding around on the horse’s back, he pulled hopelessly at the reins of the bridle, which were both on the same side of the horse’s neck. “I can’t ride!” Then another horse ranged up beside them, and Sweyn on its back caught the reins from him, and led him on, and all he had to do was hang on.

  He was streaking into the darkness, clutching for the mane, banging up and down on the bare thrusting back under him, sliding sideways, about to fall. He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around the horse’s neck, but that made his legs lose their grip. The light of the fires fell away behind him into a cold darkness. The horse’s strides jolted him painfully. With his head pressed to the horse’s neck, he saw the ground flying away under him. His horse was chasing two other horses down along the foot of the Danewirk, looming high on his left, its crown blurry with trees. The horses ahead of them wheeled and stopped, and his horse ran in between them and stopped, and Raef pushed himself up off its neck, his hands on its withers, gasping with relief.

  “Ah, ooh—” He straightened painfully upright, reaching down into his crotch to ease his abused parts. “How do you keep this from killing you?”

  Conn laughed, breathless. Beside him in the darkness, Sweyn said, amused, “Sit up straight, keep your feet in front of you.” He turned his horse, and they started on again, slower now. He tried to sit back, but his thighs were raw meat, and every jarring step of the horse tortured him.

  Presently Sweyn said, “Where is Corban Loosestrife?”

  Raef said, “He went to Hrafnsbeck.”

  “To Hrafnsbeck!” Sweyn turned wide-eyed toward him. Then nodded gravely, as if Raef had told him something in detail. “Yes—Bluetooth isn’t just attacking me, he must be dealing with everybody at once, even Gunnhild.” He faced forward a moment. They moved through the shadowy dark, with the Danewirk on one hand and the road, a hundred yards away, on the other. Raef understood why they weren’t taking the road. His groin throbbed, exquisitely painful still.

  Sweyn said, under his breath, “It’s kill or die, now, that’s certain.”

  Raef wondered what had changed. The horses broke into a trot. Jangling along, trying to keep his male parts out from under him, he realized suddenly that he had dropped the sword again. He was useless, a waste as a warrior. He couldn’t even keep on his horse. With one hand on the withers he tried to push himself up off the blade of its spine. His legs were already cramping. Grimly he set himself to keeping up with Conn and Sweyn.

  Corban had a fair wind most of the afternoon, rowing only enough to keep out of the way of the constant stream of ships traveling up and down the chain of lakes that lay between Hedeby and the river to the sea. The sun slipped down the sky. Just before sundown the wind died, but by then, sailing over the biggest of the lakes, he could see the old stone tower there on the north shore, its foot hidden in a fringe of green reeds. When he rowed in to the dock he saw the hall, on the higher ground behind the tower, its deep thatch yellow among the yellowed leaves of the gnarled old trees around it.

  Something about it gripped him, the yellow, the stillness, and he stared until the little ship bumped into the wharf. He came out of himself, caught a pier, and got the ship still against the wharf, and then went quickly up to the bow for the painter and climbed out onto the wooden dock.

  The sun was still above the horizon, the sky still blue, patched with long clouds. He thought about Conn and Raef, back there with Bluetooth, and wondered if he should have brought them with him.

  He could not keep them safe. They were tangled in this, deeper and deeper. He felt Conn set on his own course, away from Corban, and Raef trailing after, as he always did; in any case, they were lost to him.

  Now he had this to do.

  A wooden causeway led through the spiky marsh grass toward the hall; during high tides this black muck would flood, probably, all the way up to the bank the hall stood on. Its back wall was flush to the bank, and a wooden ladder set against the dirt ran from the wooden walk to a back door. Corban stood a moment, unsure, thinking of Gunnhild, with her piercing look, and her power.

  He looked westward and saw the sun sinking. Grimly he walked down the causeway, climbed up the ladder to the door, and pulled the latch and let himself in.

  The moment he stepped inside, into a shadowy darkness, he could hear her voice, clear as ringing silver.

  “You are entirely wrong, as usual. The Pope of Rome must always be a man. But the Emperor in Constantinople can be a woman.”

  “I see woman priests.” That was Eelmouth. Corban went forward, into a broad hall, splendidly appointed, with hangings in bright colors, and gold and silver fittings for the torches. Only two of the torches burned, down at the far end of the room, and that was where they sat, leaning over the edge of the table, a chessboard between them. Corban, walking forward, trod on a softness of woven stuff, layers deep. His feet made no sound, but up there she raised her head and looked at him.

  She had been beautiful once. She was beautiful still, her hair gray instead of golden, the skin of her face chased with faint wrinkling, her eyes clear and blue and hard, her gaze on him that old familiar punch in the gut.

  “So,” she said. “You did come, after all.” She pushed the chessboard away, so violently the pieces flew off. Eelmouth stood, took a step back and away, and waited, his hand on his sword.

  Gunnhild waved him still. One arm draped over the edge of the table, and the other hand playing with her hair, she looked Corban calmly up and down. “Well,” she said, “you look no different, really.” Her lips turned into a humorless smile, her gaze sharp and not amused. “You know that you are—as we say in Denmark dreadfully attended.”

  He made a little gesture with his hand, pushing that off. He said, “Gunnhild, I killed your husband.”

  She lunged at him; he stepped back, and barely on her feet she caught herself, folded back onto her chair, and began furiously twisting a lock of her hair around her finger. She said, “You did, that. You killed Eric, who was not what I wanted, but was whom I loved. I have lost my children, one way or another, Denmark’s gone to the Cross, there’s nothing left for me to do, but I have this pleasure left, that I can deal properly with you.”

  “Eric was trying to kill me,” Corban said. “I had no choice—”

  “You set up the ambush,” Eelmouth said, “and led us into it:’

  “I led nothing. I set up nothi
ng.” Corban kept his gaze on Gunnhild, utterly still except for the finger twisting and twisting her hair, her eyes unblinking on him. Belatedly it came to him how they could justly see things as they did, with him as the villain; hastily he pushed toward the one chance he had with her.

  “But I have wergild to offer you,” he said. “Your life, and Eelmouth’s. You have to get out of here. Bluetooth has some great plot going; he is attacking all his enemies at once. He meant to do it at Jelling, but when you didn’t come—you and Grayfur—you threw his plans off. But now Grayfur is come, and he has set Gold-Harald against Grayfur and given you to Hakon.”

  Her face went pale. Her eyes shone, and she lowered her hand to her lap. She said, “Hah, what you know, Bluetooth fostered my Harald. Hakon is a friend of mine.” But her face trembled; she looked older suddenly, her lips trembling. “What do you mean?”

  “Where is Grayfur now?”

  “I don’t know. He has shut his mind to me. The Cross has taken him from me. What do you mean?”

  Corban looked for the first time at Eelmouth, standing there by the table. “I think Bluetooth is playing Gold-Harald against Grayfur, and whoever wins is left to Hakon. The trap is closing. Grayfur is in Denmark now. Hakon will come here before dark. You know they would not strike at Grayfur without her also. And Hakon was asking questions about her—”

  “No,” Gunnhild cried. She swung toward Eelmouth, pleading, as if convincing him would make all different. “He loved Harald. His namesake. He will not—” She swallowed hard. Her gaze left Eelmouth; she slumped down on the bench, leaning heavily on the table. Her shoulders sagged. “Damn him,” she said. “He is not a Dane for nothing, Bluetooth.”

  Corban licked his lips. Outside, somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard the shrill neigh of a horse. Eelmouth heard it also; he swore, drew his sword, and strode around the table, but not at Corban. He headed toward the main door, in the middle of the hall’s long front wall, opposite from the little back door where Corban had come in. Gunnhild lifted her head, her face haggard, old as a skull.