Dolor and Shadow

by Angela Chrysler

  Furs, blankets, and hides were placed in between the pole supports, providing makeshift beds and seating that was spaced around a small fire positioned in the tent’s center below the smoke hole. Pots and baskets were scattered about with satchels, all bagged as if ready for travel. Beside a silent, single drum with etched figures, Rune sat, staring through the doorway. His arms rested comfortably on his knees with his back to Kallan, as if waiting.

  Peace eased her worries and Kallan relaxed as she studied the curve of his back. Memories, too bold to forget for too long, surfaced and waves of tears pricked her nose. Kallan bit her bottom lip.

  If ever she was to say anything…to tell him…

  Kallan pondered, but couldn’t bring herself to speak. A sigh she stifled emerged as a sniffle, and Rune turned with the inescapable look of relief holding in the silver of his blue eyes.

  “You’re awake,” he said, but didn’t smile and remained seated in the door.

  Kallan rolled her head back and peered up at the smoke hole then dropped a wrist on her brow as if shielding her eyes from light.

  “Where are we?” she said weakly, desperate to steer the conversation clear from certain topics. Rune seemed just as content to oblige.

  “You’re in a finntent,” he said. “There isn’t much left of the longhouse. We burned it.”

  The statement seemed definitive and Kallan nodded.

  “If you’re asking about the land,” Rune said. “we’re still in Throendalog, two days’ march from Plassje where the Raumelfr begins.”

  “Plassje,” Kallan repeated.

  “It’s what Halda calls it,” Rune said, and looked out to the open once more, leaving Kallan to her bed and silence.

  For a short time, Kallan wallowed in thought, allowing her mind to wander and drift. She remembered snippets of blood and earth from the night before and her spine stiffened as she braced for the usual barrage of sharp pain to stab at her chest and rob her of breath. When only a dulled ache came instead, Kallan’s thoughts altered to Rune and a part of her softened with regret.

  “Rune?”

  Kallan heard him turn, but she didn’t dare look away from the smoke hole. She stretched her thoughts to the iron wall where she stored her woes in the darkness, and, catching her breath suddenly, gasped.

  She heard Rune shuffle away from the door, and fought to keep her eyes ahead. He sat alongside her, waiting, like he knew she would break.

  “I don’t…” A tear fell. By the time she opened her mouth to speak, the words she had amassed had fumbled apart. She gulped down a wave of cowardice to begin again. Another tear streaked her face.

  “I don’t…”

  “You don’t know what to say.” Kallan met Rune’s gaze as he spoke for her. “So you’ll decide to say nothing. Then we’ll both pretend you didn’t want to tell me ‘thank you’ or that you were wrong or that you now believe I never killed your father.”

  Kallan bit her lip. Tears swelled and she looked to the smoke hole, avoiding Rune’s eyes just as he looked her way. Knowing the time to be silent, she waited and listened, letting him do the talking.

  “Instead, you’ll lay there and nod.”

  Kallan nodded.

  “And we will both pretend,” he said, “for one small moment, that you did not want to thank me or kiss me.”

  Kallan whipped her face to his, her eyes wide with objection.

  “I didn’t,” she said, but Rune was already smiling.

  “You found your words,” he said and caught her smiling before Kallan wiped it away.

  “This doesn’t change anything,” she said and allowed Rune to see a smile lift the corner of her mouth.

  As she exhaled, she released the temper, the anger, the hate she harbored just for him.

  Rune grinned. “Of course it doesn’t.”

  Half-gasping, half-smiling, Kallan shook her head and bit the corner of her bottom lip. Without a word, Rune stood and left Kallan alone in the finntent.

  * * *

  Sunlight pierced Kallan’s eyes, forcing her to take a moment to adjust to the daylight. The stench of rancid, burning flesh and hair seared her nose and Kallan gasped.

  A field of carnage spanned the whole of Bern’s land from the hide flap of the finntent to the dilapidated remains of the charred longhouse that formed a pyre. At the base of the pyre, Rune stood watching giant flames devour the house and bodies of reindeer and cattle as streams of sweat trickled down his bare shoulders.

  “The boy?” she asked, failing to force her eyes away.

  It was a long while before Rune responded.

  Exhaling, he passed his gaze over Kallan, and extended an arm to the distance. Stones now outlined the shape of a boat over the ground where Kallan had dug up the earth the night before. She didn’t have to ask to know he had finished the job for her and put the boy to rest in the ground.

  The sight twisted her insides and she averted her eyes from the grave.

  “The animals…” Her voice cracked as she spoke. “The blood.”

  Rune nodded. “Olaf passed through.”

  The name stabbed at Kallan’s chest. She was quickly growing to hate that man.

  “Bern and Halda hadn’t heard of his arrival,” Rune said, not bothering to wait for the color to return to her skin. “They didn’t know of the massacre of Odinnssalr or his tyranny in Nidaros. They didn’t know that Hakon Jarl was dead.” The longhouse creaked as it buckled under its own weight and Rune stared into the flames. “When Bern refused to denounce their faith to Freyja,” he continued, “Olaf killed their livestock, burned their fields and home, and stabbed their child, leaving him to bleed out.”

  Another stab tightened Kallan’s chest.

  “But Olaf was heading south to Viken along the western roads through Upplond.” Kallan rushed through the words. “It’s the reason we came this way.”

  Darkness blanketed Rune’s face as Kallan paused to think for a moment.

  “What are his troops doing this far east from Dofrar?” Kallan asked.

  “He came with a fraction of his men,” Rune said. “Bern believes the majority of his troops still march along the road to Aeslo while he followed a different path with a selected few. Bern isn’t sure.”

  “Rune.”

  Bern’s voice diverted Kallan’s attention to the human’s burly form. In the darkness he looked menacing, almost wild, but in day’s light, he looked old and worn, exhausted from grief. He waited until he crossed the carnage, seeming indifferent to what he passed.

  With a weak smile and a brief nod to Kallan, he looked to Rune. “I’m almost through here, then Halda and I will start packing up the tent. Shouldn’t take us more than an hour before we’re ready.”

  “I’ll be along to help,” Rune said, dismissing Bern with a nod.

  “Ready?” Kallan asked, studying the woman scurrying in and out of the finntent. The forty-year-old woman had tied back her long, black hair into a braid and had fastened her apron dress with hand-carved soapstone brooches.

  “Halda is Finn,” Rune said at Kallan’s side. “Her people live off the reindeer and move when the reindeer move. She settled down with Bern ten winters ago.”

  Rune stepped over a pool of blood, and, when he walked, Kallan followed.

  “With the boy gone, they’ve made plans to return to Finnmork,” he said.

  “Where is that?” she asked, peering up with an unusual gentleness in her eyes that caused Rune to stop and meet her gaze.

  “Wherever the Finn call home,” he said. “With Svenn’s wounds too great, they couldn’t travel.”

  Inhaling, Rune forced his attention out to the barren, blood-soaked plain.

  “Now that he and the house are gone, nothing keeps them tied to this land.”

  With nothing left to answer for, Rune gazed at Kallan, who was, once again, fixed on Svenn’s grave.

  The blue in her eyes was vivid. The thin line of her neck drew his eye down to her collarbone.

  “What?”<
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  Rune jumped, unaware that Kallan had turned.

  “Nothing,” he said and pretended to not see the bit of a smile as he stared at the finntent behind her.

  A solid thunk ended the peace between them as Halda and Bern dropped a shaft into a growing pile of poles. The tent was already half down and all their possessions placed onto a large stretch of bound leather.

  “They’ll accompany us to the lake where the Raumelfr begins,” Rune said. “With luck, they’ll find the Finn along the way. If not, we’ll part ways at the Raumelfr where they’ll head north of Throendalog toward Naumudalr.”

  “And we along the Raumelfr,” Kallan said.

  Rune nodded.

  “Hm.” Kallan shrugged and bounced her way over to help Halda with the sheets of hide.

  * * *

  Within minutes, the finntent was down. With several more minutes, they had the poles splayed upon the hide, secured and wrapped into place.

  “We usually fasten the harness to a reindeer bull, but the horse should do,” Bern said, untangling a mass of leather straps as he and Rune approached Astrid.

  After many derogatory snorts from Astrid, the straps were fastened into place while Kallan managed to distract his disgruntled objections with an apple.

  “He took to the harness well,” Halda said as she finished tying down the last of their possessions onto the hide bound to the harness. “For not being a plough horse, I mean,” she said nervously.

  Too long, her eyes lingered on Kallan’s pendant, but before Kallan could ask, Halda was off, bounding toward Bern.

  With a hearty pat to Astrid’s shoulder, Kallan took up the reins at Bern’s word and they started their way back to the river that would lead them south to Aursund. Passing gray clouds rarely permitted the sunlight as they journeyed. Songs of birds carried through the wood. At a distance, grouse drummed off as they took flight. The river was as wide as it was constant, leading them on without fail. Its banks housed a fair number of white-throated dippers that skittered and flicked across the surface, disappearing into the water to re-emerge again. They had walked for an hour in silence before Rune slipped to the back of the line, leaving Bern with Halda at the lead.

  Kallan eyed him suspiciously as Rune fell into step beside her.

  He extended his hand to Kallan. “Here.”

  With a furrowed brow, Kallan opened her palm, where Rune dropped four orange-white berries.

  “Cloudberries.” She looked at him.

  “We aren’t going to be able to stop and I figured…” Rune didn’t finish.

  Mouthwatering memories surfaced of sweet cloudberry cake interspersed with the bitter bite of the berry. A smile turned the corner of her mouth, but, by the time she looked up again, Rune was gone.

  The first half of the river snaked its way through a plain that resembled a wetland despite being dry. On either side of the river, the land rose with the trees until the peaks of the hills were out of sight. The further they walked, however, the narrower the valley between the hills became. The land stretched to the sky until mountains boxed them in like a pair of hands cradling them between its palms, like a child cradles a glowworm.

  The mountains pushed them on, forcing them to the river’s edge where the water had almost no room to flow.

  Within hours, the mountains rolled down off their peaks and opened the valley, granting them room to breathe. As Rune promised, they didn’t stop. Not at midday, when the sun passed high overhead, nor five hours later at sunset. They walked in darkness along the river with less moonlight than they had the previous night, as if counting down the time Rune had left.

  * * *

  Within a quarter hour, Bern and Halda had pitched the finntent and rabbit roasted over the fire inside. They chattered idly amongst themselves about the farm, the war, and Halda’s heritage. After they ate, Halda withdrew her drum and struck the softened hide pulled taught across the wooden frame while Bern pulled out his long smoke pipe, encouraging Rune to follow suit.

  Around the fire they sat, saying very little as they listened to Halda’s voice ebb and flow like the wind. She sang for more than an hour as Kallan, lulled into serenity, tucked her knees to her chest beneath the heavy overcoat.

  At times, Halda’s voice dipped so low, so soft, Kallan strained with her Alfar ears to hear the faintest hum. Smoothly, her voice would rise again like the wind passing in and out of the trees at a whim. At the end of the hour, when Halda set the drum to the side, Kallan dismissed herself and emerged from the tent, lost in endless memory that had awakened.

  Purple lights moved overhead much like Halda’s music. Free of the pain that had haunted her, Kallan remembered the streets of Lorlenalin all dressed for the Midwinter Jol, when the giddiness of the Raven’s feast stirred the mischievous nature of the children, and she would run through the streets with Eilif, elated for the break in her studies.

  She raised a palm and summoned a ball of gold, which spun on her command. Kallan remembered Gudrun and her Seidr lessons. She remembered her father’s voice as he guided her through each sword lesson. The reprimand and scolding she and Eilif received when they overturned the table Cook had laden for feast one Disablot on the eve of Disting. The look in Kri’s eyes when she and Eilif showed up one Jol with bowls of pudding.

  Kallan smiled and flipped her palm about, encouraging the Seidr to obey as she recalled the day her father first tossed her onto Astrid.

  “They’re beautiful tonight,” Rune said.

  Kallan jumped, extinguishing her Seidr.

  “Beautiful?” she asked, not daring to look at Rune.

  Inhaling, he drew a breath through his long pipe as he settled himself down beside Kallan.

  “The Valkyrjur.”

  Rune pointed to the cool blues and purple lights dancing in the sky. He released a long line of smoke. “The days are getting shorter,” he said thoughtfully.

  Kallan raised her hand and summoned her Seidr. The line of gold light filled her palm, captivating Rune’s attention.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “Seidr,” she said, holding her gaze on the Seidr as she flicked her hand over once more.

  Rune pulled another draw through the pipe.

  “I thought the Seidr is what you light my back side with.”

  Kallan cracked a wide smile and shook her head.

  “No.” She afforded a glance to Rune. “That’s fire. Seidr flame.”

  In silence, he watched, as if enthralled with her hand enclosed in threads like streams of gold.

  “This,” she said at last, “is Seidr…just Seidr in its basic form.”

  She flipped her hand over once more, commanding the light to pull up and around her fingers like flame.

  “This is the energy I manipulate to create the fire I try to burn your back-side with.”

  Rune released the smoke. The moon was little more than a sliver.

  “Two nights will be the new moon,” he said, releasing another draw as Kallan played and pulled on her Seidr. She felt the shadow clearing her eyes, leaving behind a hint of kindness and she relaxed her shoulders, adding a pleasantry to the air.

  She flicked her wrist and the Seidr obeyed as she proceeded to play with the ball of light, pulling back on the Seidr and letting it go.

  Taking another long draw, Rune looked to the moon and released a long breath.

  “Kallan.”

  Silence.

  “I realize this is probably going to end with us locked in combat…but let’s assume for a moment that a Ljosalfr didn’t kill your father.”

  The wind passed by, ruffling the tension between them.

  “Alright.” Kallan’s voice was gentle enough to encourage him to continue.

  “The day he died…was there anyone else you may have seen?”

  Kallan extinguished her Seidr and she felt Rune relax. Her chest rose and fell with the deep sigh she took and remembered: Daggon riding off after the warrior, the empty keep, her father and the black blood.<
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  Kallan shivered.

  “No,” she said. “Just you and your kin.”

  “And what about your father?”

  “You aren’t suggesting—”

  “No,” he said. “I’m asking. Try to remember. Was there anyone?”

  Kallan shook her head.

  “Just Daggon.”

  “And Daggon wouldn’t—”

  “No. Daggon wouldn’t.” Kallan’s voice was firm. “He was my father’s captain before he was mine. Daggon held his allegiance without question. My father died—”

  A flood of tears burned the back of her throat and filled her eyes before she could stop them from falling. Looking away, Kallan forced her worries in check and shoved the tears away.

  “My men had orders to apprehend Eyolf and bring him back to Gunir alive.”

  Kallan looked at Rune. Disbelief twisted her face.

  “I had hoped, with him there, we might commence negotiations,” Rune said.

  Kallan hugged her knees tighter and stared at the ground. She caught the sympathy in his voice when he added, “If one of my men did kill him, then it was against my orders.”

  Kallan dug at the exhaustion in her eyes.

  “Did you see anyone?” he asked.

  Kallan shook her head. “No one.”

  Rune sighed and pulled in another draw from his pipe.

  “Am I meant to believe you?” Kallan asked, “That your orders weren’t what killed my father?”

  Rune met her eyes.

  “I didn’t do it,” he said.

  “Why should I believe the son of the king who laid waste to the Dokkalfar during the feasts of Austramonath?” she breathed.

  Her voice had grown cold.

  Images of the Austramonath Massacre flooded back: Dokkalfar women hewn in two at the foot of the pikes that impaled their husbands. Children that lay, left to die in pools of blood, and a single boy clutching the remains of his brother.

  “Not one of the three hundred lives was spared,” Kallan said. “Not even the children.”

  “Long have I suffered to shed my father’s shame,” Rune said. “Long have I yearned to share their anguish. It is the shame I and my brother bear.”