I tried to move my feet faster and faster, pushing against the snow until they burned with pain, but slowly, slowly, he disappeared from view. The snow swirled around me, surrounding me in every direction. I screamed for him, screamed until my voice gave out and my mouth simply moved, soundlessly. As panic began to set in and I imagined dying out here, never seeing my sister again, never seeing Ivar again, I stopped walking and closed my eyes. I saw a warm house. A fire in the hearth. Food on the table. It wasn’t my home, but it felt like it was, more often than not. I could see Ivar seated by the fire, scrolls lying all around him, lost in a world of symbols and markings.
I wanted to be there with him, safe and warm, more than anything else in the world. That longing somehow pulled me back to the present, back to the wind and snow.
We’d been walking east, towards the village. I envisioned the stars in my mind, pictured which ones would be where and which ones I’d need to follow to get back home. For all I knew, I could have been turned around. Could have been heading in the entirely wrong direction. I followed my instincts. I hadn’t had many lessons with Ymir yet, but I knew enough to not get lost.
When I opened my eyes again, I pressed onwards, and when at last I reached home, I didn’t speak to my father for three days.
Ri’s legs kept moving, though I no longer knew in what direction we travelled. Perhaps we’d turned and were heading back towards Is̊avik. Perhaps soon the shelter of those trees would engulf us and the wind would die down. Curse this wind, this biting, evil wind. My face, my eyes were so cold, my hands long since numb, I couldn’t find the energy within myself to stop Ri. Even moving my head was a struggle, my bones giving complaint with the smallest of movements.
I’d left home yesterday and already Skane wanted to claim me.
Snow.
Wind.
Darkness.
It never seemed to end.
If it hadn’t before, certainly by now the sun had gone down. Cold as I was, I could feel the temperature dropping. It wouldn’t be long until hypothermia set in. If I survived, I’d be one of those poor souls who’d lost limbs to the cold. Then I’d be no use in the mountains. No use in a war against the Ør.
I slumped forward on to Ri’s neck, and soon she stopped walking, unwilling or unable to fight through the storm any longer. Better that we sit here together, and perhaps fall asleep from the cold. Then we wouldn’t have to be awake, wouldn’t have to feel it when death came for us.
A presence.
Something changed in the air around us. I fought to open my eyes, peering through my wraps, and there was light. The snow continued to swirl around us, but something shone through the darkness. And it was moving. Coming closer and closer. I couldn’t sit up, couldn’t move towards it or away from it. If it was danger, my mind was too numb to recognize any instincts. I simply lay there, blinking the snow from my eyes.
And then Ri began to move again, unbidden, her legs carrying us on to the Goddess knows where. Another bit of light joined the first, and then another. I was so, so tired. So close to giving up. I let my eyes close, let myself fall into a beautiful abyss of darkness where there was no more wind and no more cold.
Chapter 15
Ivar felt nearly every bit of the walls again and again. He examined every nook and cranny, and even stood on a chair to have a look at the chimney. As far as he could tell, there was no way out of this house except for through the locked front door.
The only option was to wait until someone came back, and either try to talk his way out of this, or fight. He did still have a knife on hand, and there would likely be other items that could serve as weapons lying around the house, but if they returned armed as well, it would be of no use. He’d be vastly outnumbered. Eventually he just stood in the centre of the room, staring at the door and imagining a hundred different ways their next interaction could go. He’d been told of the things terror made people do, but this seemed far worse than any stories he’d heard.
He tossed another log on to the fire, determined to at least keep warm.
It was the small hours of the morning when they came for him. Ivar must have fallen asleep because he sat up groggily at the sound of shuffling feet and the door being pushed open, bringing with it a whisper of frigid air.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” answered a voice, though he wasn’t sure if it was Areld or one of the other men dragging him from the house.
The pre-dawn air was biting cold, even more so after his closeness to the fire. The only good it served was to shock his mind into full clarity. Questions rose in Ivar’s throat, but he knew before speaking that they would refuse to answer him. Now was his time to watch, listen, and take the first window of opportunity he saw to escape. He tried to walk in a manner that kept his cloak around his knife, in hopes that no one would notice it and remove it from his belt.
The same group he’d spoken to earlier shuffled him out of the village, but more and more joined them as they progressed. After ten or so minutes, there were perhaps fifteen people following them. All wore sombre, stony expressions as they moved along the narrow pathway which began to rise steadily upwards. The trees began to thin, until they stopped atop a small, snowy knoll that offered a view of the surrounding forest. But it wasn’t the view that held Ivar’s attention. It was the wooden post that had been dug into the ground, and the kindling piled around it.
“No,” Ivar said quickly, shaking his head. “You don’t want to do this.”
“But we do,” said Areld, pushing him against the post. “It’s the darkest part of the night. We can see Her clearly” – he swept a hand up to the constellation of the Goddess – “and She can see us. By sacrificing you, we don’t have to lose one of our own. It was as though She delivered you to us for this exact purpose.”
There were murmurings of agreement throughout the group.
“Why do this now?” Ivar shouted as he struggled against his hands being tied around the post. “I’ve told you we have someone on her way to speak to the Goddess. She could be there within days. You could keep me until then. Just wait long enough to give her a chance!”
“The plague may be back within days,” said a man a few paces away. “Or the Ør, if your story was true. We don’t have days to lose.”
“What if you’re wrong?” Ivar tried again. “What if sacrificing me angers Her? You could bring something down upon Skane far worse than whatever was already coming.”
The hands tying him faltered, but then continued.
“People survived last time,” Ivar said, as one of the men removed the knife from his belt. He gritted his teeth in fear and frustration, his voice rising. “People have always survived. You can survive again.”
Areld motioned for a woman with a torch to come forward. The flames illuminated her face in a sickly yellow glow.
Ivar shook his head over and over, panic rising. “No. Don’t do this. Don’t do this. You won’t solve anything.”
“That’s for us to find out,” Areld told him. “Your lot can wait for days and pretend to train with weapons, but we have studied the Goddess and chosen the right path. It is time for Skane to give back, and you should be honoured that it’s your life we offer.”
“If it’s such an honour then why don’t you sacrifice yourself?” Ivar hissed through his teeth, kindling crunching beneath his feet.
Areld took the torch from the woman and bent to light the kindling.
Ivar tried to shrink away, but the post remained strong. “Please don’t,” he whispered, as the first few sticks caught fire. Fear shook his body. Tearing his eyes away from the flames, he forced his eyes to the sky, where the stars shone like sparkling snow in the sunshine. There was such darkness behind them, but each one blazed with a power that spoke of hope and defiance. They spoke of the kind of strength Ósa carried within her, the kind she had been born with, and the kind he had always admired. Even without him, that hope would live on. She wouldn’t let it die.
She would fight for Skane until her lungs could no longer draw breath. He closed his eyes as the first flames curled around his feet.
There was a snapping noise that made all those who were gathered jump. An arrow pierced the rope tying Ivar’s hands to the post and seconds later, another followed, freeing his feet. Confused faces turned to stare into the darkness. Areld and his men pulled knives from their belts and held them at the ready.
Two figures on horseback rose up the hill. One was short, with a mess of blond curls that could only be Móri. The other Ivar recognized in an instant: his father. Móri rode close to Areld and held a strung bow to his face.
“Get on,” Sigvard ordered his son, who snatched his knife from where it lay beside the post, and then jumped on to the horse behind his father. The crowd shrank back, their faces fearful.
“Another minute and there wouldn’t have been much to save,” Ivar said, eyeing the flames engulfing the post.
“We knew something was wrong when you didn’t come back,” Sigvard replied, a long knife held tightly in one hand. Then, to the others, “You are forbidden from entering our village or any of the villages who will come to join us. May the Goddess have mercy on your wretched souls.”
“You don’t understand,” Areld spat, swatting away Móri’s bow. “We’re trying to help you, not hurt you.”
“If you hurt my son, you hurt us all,” Sigvard said.
“Even if killing him could save everyone else?” Areld moved closer, anger and desperation rampant on his face.
“It’s not too late,” Ivar offered, gesturing to the fire. “If you’re so sure it will work, you have a perfectly good fire all ready to go.”
Areld looked around, then grabbed hold of a boy standing a few metres away, whose eyes were wide with fear. “Very well,” Areld said through his teeth. “You’ll do.”
“No!” the boy shouted, trying to wriggle free. “I never wanted to kill anyone!”
“Let him go,” Sigvard warned, sliding down from the horse. The menace in his voice made even Areld’s men take a step back.
“It’s the only way,” Areld said, shoving the boy towards the blaze. When Sigvard moved to stop him, Areld only moved faster. Screams split the night as the edges of the boy’s clothing caught on fire.
In a blur, Ivar leaped down from the horse and sped across the distance to the fire. With a firm kick, he pushed the boy off the flames and rolled him into the snow, his clothing sizzling. When he turned around, Sigvard and Areld were locked in a knife fight, metal clanging and clashing.
“You’ll ruin everything!” Areld shouted, his breath ragged from the exertion. “This is the only way!”
“Fear and desperation is no reason to take an innocent life,” Sigvard answered in between blows. “Especially not my son’s.”
“Then you’re all going to die,” Areld hissed back. “Every single one of you. And it will be your own fault.” He stopped fighting Sigvard and took a step back, a strange sort of calmness seeming to come over him. “But not me,” he said, quieter. “That, at least, is something I can control.”
He dropped his knife and turned towards the flaming post. Then, closing his eyes, he entered the fire.
His screams erupted into the night, ceasing only when the flames had silenced them.
Chapter 16
Smoke permeated my nostrils. I opened my eyes, blinked, then sat up quickly.
A cave.
Stone walls surrounded me, a roof stretched over me and beneath my body was a pile of the wraps I’d brought from home. A few metres away was a fire, slowly smouldering. Just inside the entrance, where daylight shone in, stood Ri, one foot cocked as she rested, her eyes closed.
The very last thing I remembered was the plain, a storm blowing around us, beating down, and then falling asleep. We’d still been so far from the foothills, and with the state we’d both been in, there was no way we could have reached them. Not without any sense of direction. Not before freezing to death. Don’t be on the plain at nightfall, Gregor had said. Yet we’d done exactly that.
I stood, my body aching. It was dark, the light not reaching very far from the entrance, but it was relatively warm and safe. I grabbed a handful of the grain from the pack and offered it to Ri; she ate it lazily. The rest of the packs were piled inexplicably on the floor.
“How did we get here?” I asked, patting her shoulder and gazing out of the mouth of the cave. The sky was overcast, but the snow had stopped falling. Some of it had blown into the entrance, piled a few centimetres deep in miniature drifts. I wracked my brain for a memory, a fleeting hint that would shake free some thought of what had happened the night before, but there was nothing. I’d simply come from the plain, to waking up just a moment ago, like a book with pages missing.
Back in the part of the cave where I’d been sleeping, I tied my cloak around my shoulders. We were out of the direct elements here, but the air grew chillier the longer I stood still, especially away from the fire. Had I made that fire? None of the materials to do so were anywhere in sight.
It was while I was taking a long drink of water that I noticed the writing.
The walls around me were covered in runes. For a moment I stared dumbly, spooked to silence. Then I dropped my flask and grabbed a candle from my bag, lighting it on the still smouldering fire, and holding it aloft. Shapes and scrawls spread out before me, so many that some seemed to run into one another. It was as if the writer was running out of room and began to write in overlap. I would never have the time to translate it all, to read every inscription, but perhaps I could grab snatches, small bits that may or may not prove useful.
Thank the stars Ivar had thought to pack me the scrolls. If only he was here. He could start reading it right away, making sense of the madness before me without having to refer to the papers.
Taking some of the scrolls from my shoulder pack, I flipped through them, searching for a handful of the runes before me. It was slow-going at first, the pages filled with rune after rune, and the walls teeming with marks that I couldn’t seem to find a definition for. How the hell did Ivar do this so quickly? Once I’d established the pattern in the scrolls, the order in which they’d been written, it became easier.
The first word that stood out to me made me hesitate.
Jōt.
I kept going, scouring the scrolls and studying the walls until my eyes burned.
The jōt walk near.
It was almost certainly not an exact translation, but I didn’t have to dig any deeper to know what it meant. Giants roamed these hills, as I’d both expected and feared. But this was their land, I reminded myself. Here, I was an intruder.
I skimmed ahead, looking for other single words that might jump out at me.
Tall.
Voices.
Hunt.
I forced my eyes away from the wall. If I continued reading, I might be encouraged to turn around and go home. That couldn’t happen. I’d come too far. Returning the scrolls to their bag, I gathered my belongings and tied the packs to Ri in preparation for another day of travelling. If my body ached this much, I couldn’t imagine how she felt.
It was just as we were about to depart from the cave that something else caught my attention. There was writing on the wall that wasn’t runes. It was our own writing, the kind we wrote and spoke today. It was Agric.
I became caught in a storm on the plain. Forced to stop. Lights. They just disappeared.
My breath all but left me. The words were written in my own hand.
Chapter 17
Feelings of intense panic and of warmth spreading throughout the kindling under his feet plagued Ivar’s mind. He couldn’t escape the memory of such a blind terror. And then there was the memory of Areld’s screams as his body was consumed by fire. It echoed in his sleep and haunted his quiet thoughts when no one else was around.
Early in the morning, Ivar and a small handful of other villagers left to trek north and south to find the ship on which the two Ør scout
s had arrived. Ivar was in the southern party with Sigvard, his father, and Eldór was in the northern party with Leiv and a hunter named Torald. He and Eldór brought in the vast majority of Neska’s meat, as well as that of the surrounding villages.
Ivar opted for the southern party, partly because, after Eldór’s doubt of his daughter’s eyesight on the boat, he was afraid of what he’d say to him when they found it; biting his tongue would be a struggle. The other reason was because, judging by where the Ør had found them in the woods, his instinct told him they’d find it in the south.
They first made for the familiar bits of coast just outside the village, filled with well-trodden pathways and the occasional wandering soul, out looking for berries or collecting firewood. Their approaching footsteps frightened the wanderers, white faces and round eyes staring at him and his father, before recognition dawned. Ivar couldn’t blame them. At a time like this, everyone feared their own shadows.
When they left those paths behind, the terrain was much less accessible. They had to walk single file in many places, where the only ground on which they could get a foothold was so narrow that they risked plunging into the crashing waves on their left. Ivar walked behind Sigvard, glancing into the trees now and then, as if the hulking form of an Ør might emerge at any moment. He was on edge, tightly strung, like a bow about to be released.
Somewhere between one and two kilometres to the south, they found it. The land jutted sharply inland, forming a sort of icy cove that was nearly impossible to get to without careful consideration of every step. The waves were far less rough here, as they’d lost much of their power upon entering the inlet. A wooden boat, affixed with a black sail that had been torn ragged in the wind, lay almost on its side, washed ashore.
“There she is,” Sigvard said under his breath, shaking his head like he almost couldn’t believe it. “Let’s have a look at what’s on board, shall we?”
Ivar’s stomach twisted as they made their way painstakingly down, imagining Ósa having seen that wretched sail out at sea. Imagining her father not believing her.
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