Corpse in the Mead Hall

by Cate Martin

  "If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, you're underselling yourself," Thormund said, his voice a low rumble that might have been meant just for his brother but filled the entire hall all the same. "You were in that fight as much as the rest of us."

  "At first, at first," Thorbjorn conceded.

  I looked around and saw everyone gathering on the benches nearest the fire. The flames lit up their faces, but so did the excitement of what they were about to hear.

  "This is about the fire giants, isn't it?" Kara asked with genuine eagerness.

  Thorge flushed even more deeply as he nodded, and I finally realized what Thorbjorn was up to.

  He was playing matchmaker for his little brother.

  "Indeed," Thorbjorn said, ignoring my attempts to catch his eye. "But as you all may know, I was conked on the head almost at once and slept through the whole thing."

  "Not remotely," Thormund said.

  "Yes, I remember it quite differently, brother," Thorge agreed.

  "I have the scar," Thorbjorn said, touching the still-visible wound on his forehead.

  "Oh, you took one to the head all right," Thormund said. "But clearly, you're not to be trusted with this tale."

  "Well, someone tell us," Kara said, her eyes darting from Thorbjorn to Thorge and back again. Thorbjorn made a show of throwing up his hands, then settling back on the bench beside me. "Thorge?" she prompted.

  "Did you want to...?" Thorge said, gesturing towards Thormund.

  "No, you tell it," Thormund said, also settling back on his bench to listen.

  "Well, it's a rare thing, to go out into the hills with all four of my brothers by my side," Thorge said. His words started out halting, but he quickly grew confident in the telling of his tale, and by the time he had described each of his brothers and the weapons they carried and started in on the moment they had first seen the fire giants, he had every listener in that hall in the palm of his hand.

  Except for me, but then this was not a high tale of adventure to my ears. It was the story of how I had nearly gotten one of my closest friends and all of his brothers killed through sheer negligence. I wasn't going to enjoy this story, no matter how entertainingly it was told.

  "I see what you did there," I whispered to Thorbjorn. He glanced over at me.

  "What do you mean?" he asked with feigned innocence.

  "You're not fooling me, Thorbjorn Valkisson. I can see clear as day that you're looking out for your little brother," I said.

  "It's not a lie that I was knocked unconscious and missed most of the fight," he said. I must have flinched at his words, because his eyebrows drew together in concerned confusion.

  "I don't like to be reminded of that," I said.

  "I have a hard head," he said, rapping on it with his knuckles to demonstrate.

  "Don't joke," I said. "Head injuries are not joking matters."

  "They are if nothing bad came of them," he said.

  "No, they're not," I said.

  "Fine," he said, and turned his attention back to his brother's story. Judging by the way everyone around us was leaning in, he had reached an exciting part of the narrative.

  I let the words wash over me. I didn't want my guilt at hearing them to show on my face, so I just tuned them out.

  But I watched Kara as she listened to this story. She glanced at Thorbjorn a time or two, but otherwise her eyes were glued to Thorge. There was nothing in her gaze that spoke of love or even attraction. Nothing like the way she always looked at Thorbjorn, or the way she looked when she just talked about Thorbjorn. But she was looking at him, which was more than she had done just weeks before.

  And when she glanced at Thorbjorn, that customary besotted look in her eyes wasn't there either.

  I hated how pleased that made me feel. Thorbjorn wasn't mine in any sense of the word. I had no right to wish ill on any potential suitors of his, least of all one of my dearest friends.

  "Thorge has been fond of her for some time," Thorbjorn whispered close to my ear. "Longer than even he knows. I have spent years waiting for him to realize it, and now that he has, I wait for her to realize it too."

  "That she loves him?" I whispered back. I hated to break it to him, but I had seen no sign of that.

  "No, I don't know what's in her heart," he said. "I meant I'm waiting for her to notice his feelings. I truly hope she feels the same, but I don't think she's even considered it before. Is she noticing him now?"

  "I think she is," I said with a smile. "How long have you been trying to cook this up?"

  "I've only been waiting and keeping out of it," he said. "It's called for so much patience. If only I could've shipwrecked them together on some island for a month or two, this would've gone much faster."

  "You knew she liked you," I guessed.

  "Of course I knew," he said, offended. "I don't like to talk about such things."

  "But you're talking about it now," I said. My tone was teasing, but the look in his eyes was completely serious.

  "Yes. I am."

  I didn't know how to respond to that and was immensely relieved for the distraction as Gunna declared the stew ready for eating. It was a warm and filling meal. Despite my help with the cook time, it was still quite late by the time we'd finished, and it would be an early morning.

  After cleaning up the dishes and stacking the benches aside, everyone pulled out the bedrolls from the back of the hall and started spreading them out on the floor around the firepit. I found myself between Nilda, with Kara on her far side, and Sigvin.

  "There's a pot behind that divider there," Sigvin whispered to me as I pulled off my boots and set them at the foot of my bedroll.

  "A pot?" I said.

  "No going outside after dark," Nilda said sleepily. She was already in her bedroll, the blankets pulled up past her ear. "I know you know that rule. We all heard Gunna yell at you and Thorbjorn."

  "Got it," I said, and was grateful I didn't have to go.

  But at some point during this hunting trip, I was likely to. The idea of doing anything with nothing between me and a hall full of people trying to sleep but a flimsy little divider was mortifying. I'd rather go out and do it on the snow, cold be damned.

  But it wasn't just the cold. It was the unnamed danger that lurked in the night.

  Why hadn't Haraldr mentioned it before I'd left that morning? Perhaps the two of us could've come up with some sort of protective magic.

  That thought led me to remember that I hadn't done any meditating that day. I had to be sure to do it in the morning. No slacking off.

  But Haraldr had also told me to dream on the rune. The card was in my pack on the far side of the hall from where I was now. The idea of tiptoeing around everyone and digging through my bag now didn't appeal. It would be rude to wake everyone.

  Plus, I was exhausted. My eyes were already closed, and I could feel even the racing of my thoughts slowing down.

  I tried to at least call to mind the shape of the rune. I think I did it, but I can't say for sure, because before I knew what was happening, sleep blotted out my mind.

  Only it wasn't a proper sleep. I was lying perfectly still, but my awareness never left my body. I could feel myself lying there, my arms and legs heavy, too heavy to move. My pillow was scrunched up under my head in a way that wasn't entirely comfortable, but I couldn't stir myself enough to fix it.

  My last concrete thought was that Mjolner wasn't there. He had been sharing my pillow, but now he was gone.

  Then suddenly my awareness expended out of my body, out of the lodge itself. I was spreading out through the night, higher than the treetops.

  I was everywhere.

  Then I felt it, that presence I had felt before, the one that had been following me to my cottage that morning. It was here, here in these woods. And it definitely didn't belong. Its energy wasn't connecting with anything around it.

  It had followed me here, somehow, without me even knowing it.

  I got control
of my awareness, but I didn't wake up. Instead, I retracted myself to focus on just the lodge around me.

  Yes, that thing was there, just outside the walls. It was closing in around us, searching for cracks, for any way into our protected space. It wasn't finding any.

  Yet.

  Then my magical awareness contracted, once more outside my control, and I was trapped in my body again, too heavy to move, but that thing was pressing in on the walls all around me.

  Around us. Me and all my friends.

  And I couldn't move.

  I couldn't even breathe.

  I summoned every bit of power I could find within myself. I focused all of it on just drawing in a breath.

  I felt a blackness closing in around me. My consciousness was slipping away.

  Then suddenly I was sucking in breath. I was sitting up in my bedroll, pulling in long breath after long breath. It was such a relief, that cold morning air.

  And there was something warm and furry pressed close to my hip. Mjolner, sleeping away as if nothing had happened.

  But I didn't want to open my eyes yet, not even to look at him. That cold air I was still struggling to breathe made me sure that when I did open my eyes, I would be staring into complete darkness. With the fire gutted out, the glow of the embers that had lit the room when we'd bedded down would be gone.

  But when I finally gave in and opened my eyes, I saw the hall around me dimly illuminated by the gray light of dawn. And that light was streaming in through the open door. Then the light was gone.

  Then it was back again, as someone else opened the door and slipped outside.

  I looked around and saw that nearly everyone else was awake already. Most were gone, but a few were still getting dressed.

  "Are you all right?" Nilda asked me. She was standing over my bedroll as she redid the braid in her hair. "You were breathing kind of funny. I wasn't sure if I should wake you."

  "I'm all right," I said, although I felt like I was still breathing funny. "Just a weird dream. It's nothing," I insisted when I could see that the worry wasn't leaving her eyes.

  "If you're sure," she said. She didn't look like she quite believed me, but she just tied off the end of her hair then pulled a fur cap down over the top of it. "We're all meeting outside to split up into hunting parties. You should get dressed."

  "Oh, I thought I might stay here," I said.

  "On the first day?" Nilda asked incredulously. "Just what was that dream you had?"

  "Nothing," I said. "It's fine. I'll be out in a minute."

  "Well, hurry up," she said. "It's almost dawn already, and I have a feeling Thorbjorn is going to make everyone wait for you before we head out."

  "Got it," I said and reached for my boots. Mjolner opened a single eye and regarded me. "You staying in or coming with?" I asked him.

  He shifted his position on my bedroll, turning just far enough to not make eye contact with me before going back to sleep.

  "I thought so," I said as I pulled on my second boot then got to my feet. "See you tonight. Enjoy your nap."

  Then I went outside to join the others.

  7

  The sun was not yet visible in the east when I stepped outside. I was sure it must have risen over the lake, but not yet over the tree-covered hills that stood between us and the shore. Its light was filling the clearing in front of the lodge, if diffusely, but the forest beyond was still in deep shadow.

  But it was warmer, finally. I loosened the wraps of my wool scarf and left it draped around my neck in case I needed it later. It was a relief to breathe fresh air without that damp-smelling filter in the way. The air smelled subtly of clean snow and more sharply of pine trees.

  "There you are," Thorbjorn said, leaving the other men who had gathered in a rough circle to talk together. He came towards me, but as he approached the warm smile on his face became a frown of worry. "What is it?"

  "You and Nilda both? Do I really look so bad?" I asked, touching my mittened hands to my cheeks.

  "You don't look like you even slept," he said. "Was it too crowded in the hall? Too noisy?"

  "No, that was fine," I said. But I caught hold of his sleeve and drew him a little farther away from the others. "I had bad dreams."

  "Normal dreams or something more?" he asked. I had been walking backwards, towards the door to the stables, but now he took the lead, pulling me to the very edge of the clearing, just inside the tree line and all the shadows lurking beyond.

  "I'm not sure," I said. "I felt like there was something all around the lodge. Some menacing presence."

  "Because of what I said last night?" he asked.

  "It was you and your mother both," I reminded him. "But you were both so vague. What exactly is out here at night? Because I don't see any tracks in the snow besides what we've made ourselves."

  "The stories vary," he said. "We aren't closer to Old Norway here, not like in the north. But there are other things that haunt these hills. Some of them are familiar from our old stories. Men who can take the shape of bears or wolves, that sort of thing. But other things aren't from our stories at all. They might be Ojibwe things. Our two cultures were closer once, before the later settlers came and we had to hide more. I don't really know."

  "Stories and tales," I said, "like things told to children, do you mean?"

  "They are based on real things," he said firmly.

  "But you've never seen these real things," I said.

  He sighed. "You should ask my mother about it. She knows more than I."

  "I'll do that," I said, and started to head back towards the hall.

  "But not now," he said, catching my arm to pull me back. "It's the first day of the hunt. It's very bad luck to miss out on that."

  "Really?" I asked. "Bad luck for me or bad luck for everyone? I'm assuming this is just luck with hunting, and as I didn't really think I was going to actually hunt anything myself, I can take the bad luck."

  "Come on, Ingrid," he pleaded. "You came all this way. You can ask my mother a million questions tonight, but for today I want you to go out hunting with us. Don't stay here." He was pressing his hands together pleadingly and practically hopping from foot to foot.

  "All right," I relented. "But tomorrow I will have to stay back. I do have things I'm supposed to be working on, and the hall is too crowded and too loud in the evenings for me to do it."

  "Tomorrow you'll stay behind, but the day after you'll come out again?" he asked.

  "We'll see," I said. I tried to give him a reassuring smile, but I couldn't quite get my mouth to turn up more than a smidge.

  "That dream really bothered you," he guessed, his face somber once more.

  "It might just be any normal nightmare, fueled by the events of the day," I said.

  "I didn't think you'd scare so easily, just being told to stay indoors after dark," he said.

  "It's not just that," I said. It was time to tell him about what I had sensed the day before, if only a carefully edited version. "When I was walking alone through the woods yesterday, practicing containing my magical glow, I felt like something was following me. What I felt around the lodge last night was I swear the exact same thing."

  "What kind of thing?" he asked.

  "I'm not sure," I said.

  "Should we set guards at night?" he asked.

  "No, I don't want anyone to lose any sleep because I had a nightmare," I said after thinking it over for a moment. "It's probably something only I can sense. No point in posting a guard for that. But I'll put up some protection spells before I go to bed."

  "Hey, you two!" Nilda called to us. "Get over here!"

  "We're holding up the hunting, aren't we?" I guessed.

  He shrugged as if suddenly hunting didn't matter to him. "You'll tell me if you need anything more from me, right? If you don't want to tell the others, I can keep watch myself."

  "I'll tell you if I sense anything again tonight," I promised. "But if I do, we're telling everyone. I won't have you sitting up
alone keeping watch."

  "Of course not," he laughed. "I'd make my brothers take their turns."

  "Thorbjorn!" Thormund called with real impatience, and Thorbjorn jogged across the clearing to where the others were waiting.

  I followed more slowly, reaching out with my magical senses. But there was no sign of what I had felt the night before. There was nothing around the lodge but the usual forest creatures, and most of those weren't even stirring yet. I doubted I would find any trace of the malevolence during the day even if I stayed at the lodge in meditation. Whatever it had been, real or dream, it was gone now.

  The only thing I could do if I stayed behind would be to meditate on the rune, which I wasn't particularly fired up to do. And the hunt itself was important. Haraldr had emphasized that more than once.

  "You're with us," Nilda said when I had reached the fringe of the group.

  "Who's us?" I asked.

  "Kara and I, Roarr and Sigvin, and of course Thorbjorn," she said. "We're heading to a meadow south of here."

  "You don't have a bow, do you?" Kara asked.

  "No. I don't even know how to use one beyond the basics," I said. "I shot one once at summer camp. Just one time, a long time ago."

  "I have a spare," Roarr told me as he and Sigvin drew nearer to the three of us.

  "Can she even draw it?" Kara asked.

  I was about to indignantly declare I could draw anything, and even had the supplies to do it. Then Roarr squeezed my upper arm through the thickness of my parka, and I remembered that word had another, more archery-relevant meaning.

  To my chagrin, he didn't seem impressed by what he felt. "I guess we'll see."

  "I really wasn't expecting to shoot anything," I said. I didn't want to tell a group of hunters that I wasn't even sure I could murder some poor woodland creature, but my lack of archery skill was not all that would be holding me back.

  "All right," Thorbjorn said, slapping his mittened hands together as he joined us. "It's the southern meadow today, but we're rotating tomorrow so we'll be going to the western grasslands then."