The Song of the Ash Tree 03 - Already Comes Darkness

by T L Greylock

  “He is the spawn of Loki,” came a shout. “He will bring darkness upon us.”

  “His death will please the Allfather!”

  Vakre’s gaze flickered here and there, Raef saw, but he did not draw a weapon.

  The rush came with surprising speed, a single body leaping at Vakre with a yell, but Dvalarr thrust out at the man’s head with the butt end of his axe handle, knocking the assailant to the ground. He groaned and lay still, blood pumping from a growing welt on his temple.

  “The next man to move will die,” the Crow said. All was still and Raef sought words that might muster a peace, even an uneasy one, but Dvalarr spoke first. “You who followed Fengar,” Dvalarr spread his arms to encompass the warriors, “that spineless wretch who called himself king, be glad you draw breath and thank Skallagrim for it, for you would be lying in the snow, your frozen eyes staring at the crows that come to peck them out, if not for this man who let you walk away from death.” The Crow took a deep breath and went on, his voice ringing over the stones. “And you, men of Vannheim, you should be ashamed, you who swore oaths to the Skallagrim, our king. Do your words mean so little? You have sworn to lay down your lives in service to him, to uphold his will and word, but now, in his hour of need, you dishonor him and in doing so, you tarnish the names of your fathers who came before and your sons who will hope to follow. Are we oathbreakers? Are we cowards, fit only to die old and frail by the hearth, beyond all dreams of glory? No, we are wolves of war and we are sworn brothers. Conquer your fear and hold your tongues or I will tear them from you!” The Crow was red in the face now, and shaking with anger. “Will none of you stand with me? Will none of you hold true to the oaths you swore?”

  “I will stand with you, Crow.” Rufnir stepped forward and planted himself beside Dvalarr.

  “And I.”

  “I will.”

  Three, five, then ten men came to the edge of the fire and formed a wall between Vakre and his accusers. A log cracked, sending a shower of sparks into the air, and so silent was the eagle’s nest that Raef was sure he could hear each and every spark hiss against the cold stone ground.

  Raef nodded at Dvalarr and then pushed through the barrier. He looked from face to face, trying to discern the minds behind the shadowed eyes.

  “I speak to those who came to this valley with Fengar and to those who came with Torleif. I do not ask for your oaths or your loyalty or your lives. I will not keep malcontents here simply to fill my shield wall. I will not let disgruntled minds sow dissention and doubt among the rest. If your heart longs for a far off place, a home left behind, then go. I have no quarrel with you.” Raef let that hang in the air for a moment. “Unless,” he went on, sharpening his voice, “unless you threaten that which I hold dear. You have until the sun rises to make your decisions.” Raef paused again and let his desperation, his fury well up to fill his lungs. “And to the rest, to you who were born and bred in Vannheim, whose fathers and fathers before have called these hills and waters home, to you I say this. Are we not brothers of Ymir? Are we not raised on that mighty giant’s blood? Is his heart not our heart, beating still? It is not in my nature to succumb. Let the gods do as they will.” Raef’s voice dropped. “Will you lend me your shields? Your hearts? Your lives?”

  For a long moment, the crowd of warriors stayed rigid, and then they scattered like raindrops in a pond. Some went with quick, furtive steps, others with careful, deliberate strides. A few spoke, their voices coming to Raef like the sound of water falling in the distance, but it was the Axsellund warriors who moved as one, collecting their belongings and then huddling together away from the light of the fire.

  “Is it wise to let them go?” Rufnir asked.

  “Perhaps not. But I meant what I said. Resentment is like a rotten wound. It spreads.” Raef reached up the sleeve of his left arm and unhooked one of the silver rings from his forearm. He held it up so the others might see. It bore the head of a bear and its eyes were tiny blue gems. “Crow,” Raef said, “I want you to have this.”

  Dvalarr took the ring in one large hand, a hand still crusted with the blood of dead men, a hand that cradled it as though it were a gift from Odin himself.

  “And I am proud to bear it, lord.” The Crow curved the bear around his wrist and pushed the ring up his arm as far as it would go. “But what will you do with him?”

  Alvar of Kolhaugen had been propped up near the fire, so close that the blanket wrapped around his legs was beginning to smoke. Visna shoved his legs to the side and stamped out the sparks that were smoldering at the edge, but her movement caused Alvar to slump sideways to the ground. Dvalarr grabbed Alvar’s shoulder and hauled him upright again, but Alvar was as limp as an eel and he flopped to the other side the moment Dvalarr released him.

  Raef squatted down to peer in Alvar’s face. His lower lip hung open, revealing brown teeth, and his glassy eyes stared at the flames without seeing. Without his red glass bead, Alvar was nothing more than a common warrior, and Raef wondered what the farmers and fishermen of Kolhaugen would think if they saw him now. They would surely not see him as a lord, a ring-giver, a fame-bringer.

  “Will he last the night?” Raef spread the lids of Alvar’s right eye but even this got no response.

  “I do not think it is the cold that will kill him,” Vakre said.

  “If he has not changed by morning, I will bring him a good end, lord,” Dvalarr said. Raef nodded, thinking of Alvar’s brother Eirik, who fought for the Hammerling. Visna and Dvalarr drifted away from the fire, leaving Vakre alone at Raef’s side.

  “How many families will be torn apart by this war? How many brothers will fight brother? How many sisters will smile at the deaths of their kin? Inge drew her last breath under the snow today,” Raef said, referring to the blonde sister who had freed them from Fengar. “Do you think she wept for the hatred she bore in her heart? Or do you think she spent her final moment wondering if her sister died first?” Raef stood and faced Vakre. “Would Eirik be glad to see his brother like this? Or would he think back to when they were boys, when they played and fought together, and wish they had walked a different path as men?”

  “Freyja herself could not grow a tree in barren soil, Raef. The bonds of blood do not run deep in some.” Vakre’s voice was bitter and Raef knew his mind was on his uncle and his mother, cast out and forsaken.

  “Hate is a strange thing. So often born out of so little. Erlaug, son of Hymar, do you remember him?”

  Vakre grimaced, his teeth glistening in the firelight. “I would not soon forget the lord of Grudenhavn and his son.”

  For a moment Raef stood once more in the forest of Balmoran, staring at a face full of enmity. Erlaug of Grudenhavn might have taken his life that moonlit night if not for Vakre.

  “Once we promised eternal friendship. We swore that nothing would come between us. We were eight and we were foolish. I remember being caught up in the moment of meeting him, knowing that one day we two would be lords. I had dreams of brave alliances and hard won battles. Four years later, he summered in my father’s hall, and we loathed each other from the moment he arrived all because I had not grown so tall as he and he was quick to be sure I knew it. I disarmed him and threw him flat on his back and that was the end of our dreams.” Raef was not sure why he spoke of Erlaug in that moment, but then the question came to him, the one he had never asked. “What did you do to him?”

  Vakre was quiet for a long moment before answering. “There is a plant that grows in the deepest forests in Finnmark, in the ravines that hardly see sunlight. My mother showed me these places when I was very young. A single seed is deadly.” Vakre looked at Raef. “I smeared the arrows with a paste made from one hundred such seeds.”

  “A foul way to die.”

  “For a foul man.” Vakre nudged a smoldering piece of wood back into the flames. “He needed to know agony.” The son of Loki frowned. “Be glad that you never knew your mother, Raef, for you never had to see her suffer.”

&nbs
p; “And yet I never saw her smile,” Raef said, his gaze fixed on the smoldering embers of the fire. Vakre accepted this with a nod and Raef turned to his friend. “What now?”

  “Now you wait and see what the sunrise shows you.”

  TWELVE

  Raef rubbed his hands together and blew hot breath on his palms. The morning was frigid and frosted over and though the sun spilled into the valley below, it was a cold light made even colder by the ripping gusts of wind that battered against the walls of the nest. The day would be cold, perhaps the coldest yet that winter, but somehow it made Raef glad, for it suited his mood, and his own clear mind was a reflection of the clear, pristine sky above.

  The fire burned still, but it seemed to be a fire without heat so quickly was the warmth swept away by the wind. Men clustered around it all the same, furs pulled tight over their ears. Others huddled at the entrance to the largest cave, waiting, though whether they waited for him or for death, Raef could not say. Their faces were grave, the faces of men who did not know if they had chosen well.

  Seventeen men had made the choice to stay. The last of those who departed the nest were still in sight, their descent made tricky by slick frost on stone, but some had slipped away in the night, as though the sun might shame them into staying. Each and every man of Vannheim had answered Raef’s challenge, and each had come to him in the night with words of fervent loyalty on their lips. Of Fengar’s men, none remained and Raef was sure they had been the first to vanish in the night. But one face he was surprised to see. Eyvind, the warrior from Axsellund with the snake tattoo, had chosen to stay.

  Alvar of Kolhaugen was dying. It was a peaceful death, his blood draining away from the slice Dvalarr had made into his neck. They had set him up by the edge of the nest, as though giving him a last view of the world might either wake him from his stupor or send him gladly into death, though Raef was sure he was conscious of nothing around him, not even the cold. His eating knife, for that was all that remained on his belt, was pressed into his hand in the hopes that the gods might see him and take him to Valhalla, and Vakre had hooked the red glass bead into his ear once more. It glistened now and Raef stepped forward to close Alvar’s eyes.

  “Little of Alvar remained in this husk of a body,” Raef said, “but we will build him a pyre nonetheless and let the gods see if him if they can.” Raef looked to Eyvind. “They will see Torleif, I know.”

  Raef took to the task with vigor, leading a few men into the valley to select and fell a pair of young trees. Their axes chopped into the trunks, sending chips of bark and wood flying, and the forest came alive with the rhythmic sounds of steel meeting wood and labored breathing. They dragged the trees back to the nest and soon the pyre was stacked high. Dvalarr and Rufnir lifted Alvar’s stiff corpse onto the wood, and Eyvind did the same for Torleif, but for Raef this was no longer a pyre for the man who wanted to be lord of Kolhaugen or for the ally who had gone to Valhalla too soon. It was a pyre for those he had not been able to burn, who had not had the light of a fire to lead them to Valhalla. In his mind’s eye, he placed their bodies on the pyre. Asbjork, Rufnir’s brother, was among them, but last of all was Siv.

  With a nod from Raef, Dvalarr held a burning log to the base of the pyre. For a moment there was silence and then the kindling and pine needles began to smoke and spit and a fire was born.

  Without oil to help the flames spread and burn hot, the pyre would burn slowly and linger through the daylight hours and well into the night, and yet Eyvind took up his vigil as Raef had known he would. When Raef came to stand at his side, the warrior of Axsellund did not begrudge him a place.

  “Do you stand vigil for all your foes?” Eyvind asked. “Alvar of Kolhaugen would not have done the same for you.”

  “I do not stand here for him.”

  Eyvind nodded, his eyes clear with understanding.

  “I did not think you would stay,” Raef said.

  “There is little enough to return to,” Eyvind said. “And I want no part of what will follow?”

  “And what is that?”

  “Torleif’s widow, she carries his child. She will fight for that child’s inheritance.”

  “And you do not wish to see a child of Torleif claim what its father left behind?”

  Eyvind looked away, his brow furrowed. “I do not know what I wish for a child of Torleif.”

  “What did Torleif want for Axsellund?”

  When Eyvind looked back at Raef, his eyes were clouded with suspicion. “You mean the demands he made to Fengar.”

  “Were they just a ruse? Or did Torleif hold this dream in his heart? Did he wish to rise above his ancestors and be marked the greatest of them all?”

  When Eyvind answered, there was a smile on his lips. “No. It was never about his name, his family. All he did, he did for Axsellund. But the sea did not speak to Torleif. He never craved ships or the influence they can grant.”

  “I would have given it, all he asked for,” Raef said. “If he truly wanted it and he brought me victory, I would have carved a path from Axsellund to the sea for him.”

  Eyvind seemed surprised. “And the Hammerling? Axsellund and Finngale have not quarreled in many generations. Nor, I think, have Finngale and Vannheim.”

  Raef took a deep breath. “The Hammerling will come for me in time. There is no chance of reconciliation now.” Even if the Hammerling remained ignorant of Raef’s naming as king, even if he might yet harbor good will for Raef, he had a serpent whispering in his ear, for Raef was certain Hauk of Ruderk would slander the name of Skallagrim. Raef waved away a gust of smoke. “I see you are not the only man of Axsellund to remain behind. Will they fight for me and uphold Torleif’s oath? Will you?”

  Eyvind was quiet but his face betrayed little emotion. “Your friend. Is he truly the son of the silver-tongued god?”

  Raef nodded. “He is.”

  “Fire is a dangerous plaything.” There was no judgment in Eyvind’s voice, but Raef felt a twinge of ire creep into his chest.

  “Those flames have saved my life more than once.”

  “And if he should choose to end it? What then? Will he set a fire in your flesh? How many deaths will he be responsible for? How many bodies will he leave in his wake?” This last was hissed in Raef’s ear, the vehemence bursting into Eyvind’s voice with sudden strength, and then Eyvind turned and retreated from his vigil, striding as far from the pyre as the bowl would allow.

  Raef closed his eyes and when he opened them, Vakre had come to stand by him.

  “He blames you,” Raef said.

  “He is not wrong.”

  “We do not know that Torleif would have survived that battle.”

  “And still, he is not wrong.”

  “He fears you,” Raef said, then corrected himself. “No, not fear. He does not understand you. I think he only feared one thing and that has come to pass.”

  “Let me speak to him.”

  Raef searched Vakre’s face, though he knew not what he was looking for. He nodded. “Go.”

  He watched from a distance and through a veil of smoke as the two men, perched at the edge of the nest, conversed. There were no wild gestures, no raised voices, only cloaks lifted by the wind and silence. The sun had ridden far across the sky by the time they finished. Vakre returned alone.

  “He will stand with you. As will the rest of Torleif’s warriors who remained.”

  Raef felt his stomach unclench. “What did you say?”

  “I think perhaps that should stay between us.”

  Raef frowned. “Did you threaten him?”

  Vakre shook his head. “No.”

  “Then I will ask no further questions.”

  The stars burned bright when Raef finally released himself from his vigil. The bodies of Alvar and Torleif were nothing but bones and ash, and Raef’s throat was dry, his eyes burning with smoke. He stepped away and filled his lungs with cold night air, clearing his senses, and when he had breathed his fill, it seemed to him that
the walls of the nest were closing in around him, that the only thing holding them back was the icy air that swelled within him. Raef scanned the walls of the bowl and found her, her sunset eyes dancing with firelight as she watched his every move from on high. He did not need to call, did not even move, for the kin was already sweeping down to land at his side.

  Around them, warriors drew back, uneasy so near to the strange beast, but Raef was blind to them. He felt the life that had been drawn out of him by the funeral pyre return with new force as he climbed onto her back.

  She took to the dark sky, rising higher and higher until the nest was the size of Raef’s fist and the moon and stars were spread before him, so close it seemed he might stretch out to touch them. If Hati, the wolf who chased the moon was near, Raef could not feel his vile presence.

  They soared high above the mountains, then dropped with terrifying speed back to earth, skimming the surface of the fjord. For a moment, Raef’s thoughts turned west and he longed to fly her to the Vestrhall and descend upon Isolf, but the thought faded in a heartbeat for the kin was tiring, he could see. She pushed onward, her joy in the flight boundless, but Raef tapped the side of her neck to steer her back over land. They climbed once more, this time up above the slopes on the southern side of the valley and landed on a ridge between two summits. Across the way and beneath them, the bowl was aglow with the light of the funeral pyre, but Raef turned away from it and let the darkness of the mountains fill him.

  Raef put a hand on the kin’s rib cage and felt her heart beating there. The pulse was strong and sure but the lack of meat on her bones and her faltering flight knit Raef’s chest with concern.

  “You are not well. Tomorrow we will find you a good meal.” Raef patted her shoulder and sat down on the narrow crest of the ridge. Below him on both sides the ground dropped away in steep cascades of stone spotted with snow. The kin folded her limbs close and settled next to him. “I know you do not care for moss. Perhaps birch bark would suit you better?” She blinked her bright eyes and Raef laughed. “No, no, you need meat. A nice, fat pig would do.” Raef leaned against her and she rested her nose on his knee. “You may have to settle for some leggy hares and a barrel of fish.”