Smoke in the Glass

by Chris Humphreys

  Stromvar stood, testing the weight on his broken leg, now nearly healed, as was the way of the gods. ‘And us? What do we do while you journey? Just wait for your return?’ He shook his head. ‘For which, I have to tell you, the odds are not very good.’

  ‘You cannot wait. Whether I return or not.’ He looked at his eldest brother, largely silent throughout all the talk. ‘Hovard?’

  He stood too, faced Stromvar. They were nearly of a height, the two warrior gods. ‘We have talked of this – Einar, Luck, Freya, Bjorn and I. My brother here,’ he pointed at Bjorn, ‘was especially hard to convince. He’d rather keep fighting you—’

  ‘And beating you – as I would have done today!’

  Hovard took Stromvar’s arm to still his response. ‘But even Bjorn is convinced now.’ He took a deep breath. ‘All know how deep the ancient rivalry runs between Askaug and the Seven Isles. So if you and I can make a truce, others will too. We will spread word of it throughout the land,’ he looked once at Luck who nodded, ‘and gather all, every god and principal mortal of the land … atop Galahur.’

  Stromvar stepped back, eyes wide. ‘For a … Moot? Why not wait for the regular one? The last was, what, thirteen years ago? So … seven years. Nothing to a god.’

  ‘Have you not been listening, Lord of the Isles?’ Luck said sharply. ‘We do not have seven years. I don’t think we have one.’

  ‘So, a special Moot.’ Stromvar shook his head. ‘There has only ever been one special Moot before. When our fathers went to Galahur to decide the Laws of Combat for the gods.’

  ‘Rules, surely,’ muttered Luck. Now he’d got his will he felt no elation, only a deep exhaustion. ‘It is, after all, a game.’

  Einar and Bjorn glared at him – but Stromvar tipped back his head and roared with laughter. ‘Little man, I do not know why you say you have no courage. You have just mocked the entire reason for living of all the gods! Before two of its greatest killers!’ He wiped tears from his eyes. ‘Ay me! Well, if you can do what you plan to do, perhaps your brother and I can do this.’ His face changed, his voice lowered. ‘But tell me, Hovard of Askaug, do you think to make yourself king over us all? Like Haakon from the legend?’

  Hovard’s voice was as even. ‘Perhaps you will be king, Stromvar the Dragon. Perhaps none of us will. It will be for gods – and the people – to decide. The living and the dead.’ Hovard stepped closer again, held out a hand. ‘At the Moot on Galahur.’

  Stromvar looked at Hovard for a long moment – then reached out and gripped the other’s elbow. ‘Then let us do this,’ he said. ‘Do we bring men?’

  It was Luck who replied. ‘The ancient rules of a special Moot state that each god will bring the twelve principal men or women of their kingdom. For at such a meeting, the outcome will be for both gods and mortals to decide.’

  ‘A dangerous precedent, to give mortals an equal say in the dealings of the gods. But if it is the way of the Moot—’ Stromvar shrugged, stretched. ‘I will return to the Isles and prepare for the journey.’

  ‘No, lord.’ Luck stood. His head came to the large man’s middle and he stared up. ‘Others must prepare. You five gods must bear the summons throughout the realm. For the Moot must take place in ten days’ time.’

  ‘Ten days? Ten—?’ Stromvar’s jaw dropped. ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘No. Difficult, of course. But each of you will bear one of these.’ He reached into his satchel and pulled out a slim white ash stave the length of his forearm. ‘I have carved the tala of summoning into them.’

  Stromvar’s mouth was still wide, as if he sought flies to trap. He took the stave, stared at it, perplexed. ‘Bear it? How?’

  ‘Why, in your beak, of course.’ Freya smiled. ‘Choose whatever bird you like. Though the dove always flies the fastest, I have found.’

  ‘And is easiest taken by a hawk.’ Stromvar closed his mouth, never shocked for long. ‘I’ll go as an eagle, thank you, as I always do. Let a hawk try to fuck with me then.’ He tapped the stick on the table. ‘But transformation is wearying, as you know. How far do we have to bear this stave?’

  It was Hovard who replied. ‘We will pass the stave on to the first gods we tell. They will hand it over to the next, till all of Midgarth has the news. Since Galahur is in the middle of the land, at the joining of the four great rivers, and the six droveways, all should be able to reach it in time.’

  ‘Since I now appear to be taking orders,’ Stromvar shook his head, ‘is there a place you wish me to go?’

  ‘Einar goes to his home in the far south-east,’ Luck replied. ‘Freya and Hovard to the towns north and north-east. Bjorn to the southern peninsula. Would you take the south-west? Lorken?’

  ‘Lorken? I’ve raided it often enough. Should be able to find it. I’ll go tell my men.’ Stromvar moved away, still limping slightly. At the mead-hall door he turned back. ‘The noose you caught me with was clever, Luck. But I think you will need all the power of your name and more than your cleverness where you are bound. There is a reason no one has returned from the Lake of Souls. Good fortune on your journey.’ He looked at each in turn. ‘All your journeys. By the favour of the gods, we will meet again … in ten days’ time. On Galahur.’ He nodded, and left the hall.

  ‘I’ll see him to his fleet,’ said Bjorn, following.

  ‘Bjorn?’ Luck called and his brother turned. ‘Do not pick a fight.’

  ‘Me?’ Bjorn grinned, and left.

  The four remaining gods were silent for a long moment. ‘So, it has begun,’ said Einar the Black.

  ‘But what has?’ Now he’d got his will Luck felt as empty as a drained mead butt. He sat down heavily. ‘What has?’

  The great thaw started the next day and came fast. A sudden hot sun melted snow and ice, turning the streets to muddy slush. Children ran laughing through the town, while their parents stopped to turn their faces to the returned light, close their eyes, and smile.

  It took till late afternoon before Luck was ready. Behind his hut he’d packed and repacked the killer’s strange vessel – it had done the journey once, so he would take it, and fill its storage holds forward and aft. There were hard choices to be made, for though it was spring near the sea, the high mountain passes he hoped to cross would be deep in snow for a month yet, and the highest would never be clear. Since he was not gifted with weapons, he need not weigh himself down with much metal, save for a small cooking pot, and an axe that was more a hatchet for wood. The one weapon he was good with, his slingshot, weighed almost nothing being rope and leather and he took only twenty of his small, shaped hunting stones. His food was light, dried fruit and meat; he would forage along the way. Clothes were easier. Half the time he would possess animals to travel and they, of course, had their own clothes upon them.

  It was midnight. He would leave with the sunrise. Hovard had stopped by, just before he set out himself. He’d given Luck his best knife. They’d talked, but Hovard had never needed much advice when dealing with gods or men. Bjorn hadn’t come, sent his wish of fortune with Hovard. He had always hated farewells. For such a hard warrior, he was strangely soft about his brother god.

  The last god of Askaug came later, close to midnight; the one he most wanted to see, the one to whom he least wanted to say goodbye. She came as he was standing in the doorway, drawn by a sound he loved – the first cuckoo of spring. ‘He’s too keen,’ Freya said, striding up the narrow pathway between his herb beds. ‘Can’t you hear the desperation in his voice?’

  ‘Hear it? That’s me calling. What you’re talking to here is just my shadow self.’

  They laughed, and she moved past him, into his hut. It was always crammed with things. He lived alone, after all, and rarely had the desire to tidy. Animals that he’d killed, torn apart, dried and reassembled peered life-like from shelves; birds flew again from strings attached to the beams. The jumble was worse because of his pack
ing.

  He came in behind her, looked at the mess, suddenly embarrassed. ‘Let me get you a chair. I know I have one … somewhere.’ He rooted about, found it under a pile of skins and furs, threw them onto his bed, beckoned her to sit. She did, and he sat on the thrown furs, their knees almost touching.

  ‘You leave with the sun?’

  ‘I do, Freya. And you?’

  ‘And me. You have everything?’

  ‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘I cannot know all I will need, because no one has been where I must go. I have chosen the essentials and will figure it out from there.’

  Freya looked beside her. On a shelf was the globe that the stranger had brought, in which smoke still swirled. ‘Do you take that?’

  ‘I had thought not. But then I realised, since it is how they … communicate, in ways I do not understand, that I may need it to—’

  He broke off. She finished for him. ‘… to communicate with them? Whoever they are?’

  ‘Perhaps, yes. I may have to. After all, as we know, I am better at talking than I am at fighting.’

  ‘That is true.’ Freya took her lower lip between her teeth, sucked in a breath. ‘I have been thinking. They – this unknown “they” – will have an advantage if they can speak to each other over distance and we can’t.’

  ‘It is true. But there is nothing to be done.’

  ‘There is, though.’ She leaned closer. ‘You know I have my gifts, as you have yours. Some, not so dissimilar.’ She looked to the open door. ‘That cuckoo that still calls? He is barely a year old. This will be his first spring, the first time to try for a mate. But there is another older bird, five years old, a male also, who will not give up his territory easily. He is wily, does not call yet and is, even now, stalking his young rival.’

  ‘You know because you have possessed them today, one, other or both.’

  ‘I have not. I know this because I can send my mind. But birds are simple creatures, want little, driven by simple desires.’ She reached out a hand, laid it on Luck’s cheek. He could not help the slight lean he made into her palm. ‘Mortals are different, it is almost impossible to read their thoughts, which are always in such a flurry. And immortals,’ she added, her fingers running down his face, ‘are the hardest to read of all. But there is a way.’

  He wanted to move his head away from her caress. It … hurt too much. But he found he couldn’t. The words he formed half caught in his throat. ‘What way?’

  ‘This.’ She leaned closer then and brushed his lips with hers. Pulled back a little so she could see into his eyes, his unblinking eyes. ‘When two gods are joined in love, their bodies and their spirits entwine and their minds follow. If I choose, I can know where Hovard is any moment of any day. If he’s at sea, on a hunt, in battle, even in beast, I can send my mind to enfold his. I can talk to him over distances that matter not at all. And he can talk to me.’ She raised her left hand, showed Luck the faintest of white scars already nearly healed upon the palm. ‘You saw me do it, when I spoke to Hovard to get him to stop the killer.’

  Luck didn’t dare move, barely dared to speak. ‘So you are saying that if we … that what we need … ?’

  ‘I am. You see? Even just a touch of lips and you already can read my mind.’ She smiled. ‘At a distance we will need blood, a little pain. Here—’

  She leaned in again. He leaned away, but only a little. ‘Hovard?’ he said, a final, weak protest.

  ‘He knows. And he doesn’t. But he also realises that for you to succeed in what you do, you must be armed with every weapon we can give you. He brought you a knife. I—’ She stood, looked past him. ‘So – is there a bed under all that?’

  He reached back. Swept the bed clear. Things fell, things broke, he didn’t care. He had loved Freya for a century, in every way it was possible to love her but one. Now he had that too and it was everything he’d ever dreamed of, and more. Much more.

  Afterwards, they lay naked under the furs. He’d lit a whale-oil lamp so he could see her, needed sight as well as touch to believe in the truth and the wonder of it. She stroked the bulk of his shoulder, ran fingers down his bunched back, his weaker arm. It was the first time since the passing of Gytta that anyone had and he found that, as with his wife, he didn’t mind the touch.

  ‘You know,’ Freya said, ‘my mortal friends will tell me how hard it is to be with one man for a lifetime. I tell them: try five!’

  She laughed and he did too. He didn’t often and it felt good. She stopped first, turned his face to her. ‘You will be careful,’ she said, ‘and you will let me know how you are?’

  It took him a moment to realise that she hadn’t spoken the words aloud.

  ‘I will,’ he replied, in thought. ‘And you the same.’

  They slept. He woke and she was gone but it hadn’t been for long, there was warmth beside him still. He stared up until the roof beams of his hut came slowly into sight and he knew that dawn was there. Then the cuckoo began to call again. He wished the young bird well in his quest. Sometimes love will win, he thought.

  He rose, dressed swiftly. Only the first light was in the sky and the town still slept. The strange boat was all but packed. There was a hole through the prow stem, just below where Karn had been placed, and he’d run a thick leather cord through, knotting it. Now, after stowing the last few things, carefully wrapping and placing the globe with its vial of liquid, he slipped a rope through the prow loop and began towing the boat. His hut was high up in the town, there was still snow on the ground here and he moved as swiftly as a man with only one really good leg was able.

  Puffing heavily, he came eventually to the first downward slope. A trail ran along it, swooping down the valley before rising again and climbing east. He knew that a long, hard winter had brought hungry animals closer to the town than in other years. Soon, in the forests ahead, he would possess a beast, and place its foot in the loop. Then he would limp no more, for a day at least, before he grew tired and the beast too strong.

  ‘Bear or wolf, do you think?’

  The voice, in that deep silence, made him jump half out of his skin. Luck yelped, threw himself sideways into a pile of snow, looked up. There, perched directly above him on the branch of a tree, was a god. ‘Hello, brother,’ he said, with a grin.

  ‘Bjorn, you half-brain! I nearly soiled myself.’

  ‘And you probably haven’t got many changes of leggings, have you?’ With his usual grace, Bjorn swung his whole body around the branch then dropped lightly to the ground. ‘So, bear or wolf?’

  Luck sat up, brushing snow from his beaver-fur coat. ‘What are you talking about?’ he grumbled.

  ‘I think wolf myself.’ Bjorn scratched at his beard. ‘Bears are stronger but so much harder to control, don’t you find?’ He looked down into the valley ahead. ‘While I was waiting for you I spotted a she-wolf and her mate.’ He turned back. ‘Play throw-sticks for who gets which?’

  Luck’s head was perhaps still a little fuzzy from the night behind and the task ahead. ‘Are you saying—?’

  ‘That I’m coming with you? Of course I am. And before you ask, it was my idea not Hovard’s, though he agreed fast enough.’

  Something stirred around Luck’s heart that he was not used to. But this was no time for sentiment. ‘Bjorn, I’d like your company of course. But your task is to fly the summons south.’

  ‘Strumbum agreed to do it.’ His brother grinned. ‘I mean, his mouth’s certainly big enough for two staves. And the peninsula is only a little past his destination, Lorken.’ He stopped smiling. ‘Besides, Stromvar knows, as we all do, that your wits will only get you so far. There may be times when Sever-Life will be needed instead.’ He reached up, tapped the hilt of his sword, strapped across his back. ‘Besides,’ he added, looking to the east, ‘there is someone I need to speak to, at the Lake of Souls. The one who decided to use my friend Karn as a boat deco
ration.’ For a moment he stared ahead, into the forest’s depths, beyond them. Then he looked back, and his smile returned. ‘So wolf it is. But which one for you? Oh see, I just happen to have some throw-sticks with me. Best of three?’ The grin widened as he held them up. ‘Your call, little brother. Noggin or bum?’

  6

  City of Women

  ‘One more. One more,’ urged her guide.

  Nak was from these mountains – short, browner than her, with the narrow eyes of the mountain people – and could speak rapidly to the wagon driver, Bok, in a tongue that had nothing in common with Bunami, the language spoken on the coastal plain and, with slight variations, in the volcano city, Toluc. Atisha suspected that the two words were all Nak had of her tongue – and that he did not know what they meant. He used ‘One more. One more,’ on her like he used his sharpened stick to goad the llamas. If she was flagging near day’s end he would point to the crest ahead and say it. Reaching that, he would say it again, gesturing to the next one. A week after setting out, once she’d regained some strength, she’d decided it was better to walk than sit on the lurching, bone-jarring wagon – the trails they took were strewn with rocks the size of apples. At the start his words were agony, disappointment at the top of every rise. Now, two and a half weeks later, she welcomed them. She didn’t know what awaited her in the City of Women that was her destination, but she knew she’d need her body to be strong to face it. Between the walking and the diet – llama milk, llama butter, dried llama – the little weight she’d put on in pregnancy had largely gone. She was getting lean again – unlike little Poum, fat on mother’s milk, of which she had an abundance.

  The child gurgled now in the cloth sling on her back. Nothing had changed in the baby’s anatomy. But though Atisha had given the child a name that could belong to either sex, she had decided she had a daughter. She had to. The opposite was unthinkable.