A Mighty Dawn

by Theodore Brun

  They padded on through the powder.

  It began so quietly that at first he mistook it for some distant echo floating down over the trees. A faint groan, and behind it the crumpled sound of snow shifting. The groan grew louder, higher, almost to a whine, and then there was a sudden, sickening crack. Panic flooded his veins.

  They were still fifty yards out. He didn’t know whether to run or stand still. In the end, his fear chose for him. He froze, listening with dizzying dread to the sound of cracks racing in every direction. Idun sensed the danger too, tossed her head, tried to push past him, but he gripped her reins tighter to stop her bolting. As if that would make any difference now.

  Something instinctual made him reach for his sword in the bundle slung over her rump. He’d hardly got his fingers to it when there was a lurch beneath him, a loud ripping sound and then he was tilted headlong up and over her back. His one thought was to snatch his bundle, to cling to it tight, and then he was plunging into a whirling, sucking world of ice and water.

  The shock of the cold slammed his chest like a war-hammer, jolting his heart. He flailed blindly, unable to breathe, not knowing up from down, but sensing the mass of thrashing horseflesh beside him. He tried to get clear, fearful of the flailing hooves or that he would founder under her.

  The cold was crushing, a vice at his temples, the icy water sucking at his boots, turning his woollen clothes to lead. A chunk of broken ice banged against his head. He cried out, clawing to get a grip on something, anything, with his free hand, kicking madly to keep himself from going under. And then, out of the maelstrom of movement came a leaden blow – his head burst into a thousand pieces and the world went black. . .

  When he opened his eyes, his first thought was that his hands were empty. His second that his lungs were filling with liquid. Everything was obscure; he was underwater. He felt his knees butt against something massive and solid. Praying it was the lake bottom, he pushed against it with all the strength left in his legs, tearing at the water above him. In only a few moments, he broke the surface, hacking and spluttering and spewing up icy water.

  He steadied himself against the jagged edge of the ice. There was a splashing sound behind him. He turned and saw Idun, smashing, stamping, staggering her way through the ice, mad as a berserker, breaking it up any way she could, intent only on getting out. Somehow she had made it all the way in to the shallows. Behind her trailed a passage of bobbing chunks of ice.

  Erlan was shaking violently – from cold or shock, it hardly mattered – and his head was pounding from whichever body part Idun had struck him with. He set out after her, dragging himself weakly through the freezing water, his only thought to get to shore.

  A minute or so later his toes scraped the bottom and he managed to haul himself, slipping and tilting, the last yards out of the water. At last he flung himself down on the shore, exhausted. But within a heartbeat he was over on his belly, heaving out half the lake onto the stones.

  When there was nothing more to come, he lay there, breathless, shivering like a palsied man, staring up into the grey sky while the falling snow flecked his cheeks.

  Slowly he lifted his hands and looked at them. They were shaking uncontrollably. And they were empty.

  He swore.

  His sword was still out there. Everything was. Everything except the long-knife he kept at his waist. He sat up and looked back out over the lake. Its clean white surface was now disfigured by the ugly black gash out to the ragged hole where they had fallen through. The sheepskin he used as his bedding was floating pathetically among the bits of broken ice, but there was no trace of anything else.

  His breath was coming in strange short shallow pants. He needed to get warm and dry, fast. But he needed his weapons more.

  Never be more than two paces from your weapons on the road, his father had taught him. But he never said what to do when they were at the bottom of a fucking lake.

  He couldn’t go on without them. He had to retrieve them if he could. So, forcing himself into action before he had time for second thoughts, he stripped to his breeches, pulled off his stockings and boots, and crept gingerly to the water’s edge.

  Idun stood nearby under a tree, looking about as miserable as any horse ever had. ‘What? Aren’t you coming in again?’ muttered Erlan past chattering teeth. But she only levelled an accusing gaze at him, as if to say, in her humble opinion, that he was the stupidest son of a whore she’d ever had the mischance to meet. ‘Don’t look at me like that. It was time you had a bath anyhow.’ But then he remembered that Gotars never did have much of a sense of humour.

  It took him three trips out and back before he couldn’t stand the cold any more. He looked down at his haul: the sheepskin and the shield had been easy enough. The axe he found on the second trip, though it took him two attempts of foraging around in the murk ten feet down before he had laid his hands on it. The third trip had taken him to the very brink of what he could bear. But Wrathling had been his reward. Four times he had dived to the bottom. Four times he had stayed under, scrabbling around in the pebbles and the silt, his lungs strained to bursting. Four times he had resurfaced empty handed. But on the fifth, his fingers had closed around something flat and hard. He’d recognized Wrathling’s leathern sheath, tugged it free and resurfaced with a yell of triumph that sent a flock of nearby crows flapping into the sky.

  The rest – his other knives, his cooking pot, his aleskin – he had to leave for the lake. He looked down at his naked torso. His skin was blue.

  He needed a fire, right now. But moving quickly was not something he was capable of any more. Even so, luck had not completely abandoned him. There was an old dead tree, half-fallen, leaning out of the forest over the stony shore. He took his axe, hobbled over and went at it. By the time he had gathered enough wood to make a fire under the shelter of the trees, the quivering in his muscles was completely beyond his control. The cold seemed to have seeped right through him now, saturating him, stiffening his veins, hardening his lungs, turning his heart to stone. Even his eyelids seemed weary. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep and sleep and sleep.

  But he knew if he did, he would die.

  The fire was laid now. All he needed to do was light it. But when he reached into the pouch on his belt, he found that his firesteel wasn’t there. He thrust his hand in deeper, nails scraping at the sodden leather, but the familiar ring of steel was gone. Desperate now, he scrabbled among his other things, praying that it had only fallen out after he came ashore. But it was nowhere to be found.

  He groaned in despair.

  Without firesteel, how could he start a fire? Rage at his impotence welled up in him. He screamed into the pitiless sky, snatched up his axe in fury and hacked and hacked at the nearest tree until his arm was burning with fatigue. He flung it down. As it hit the ground, there was a crack and a stone shattered into pieces.

  Erlan stopped screaming and looked dumbly down at the broken shards. Of course, he thought.

  He snatched up two pieces, threw himself down beside his fire and set to knapping one shiver against the other, willing the senseless stone to birth a spark. His whole life seemed to be concentrated in those two jagged pieces. They were to be his judges. They would decide whether he should live or die.

  He was weeping like a child, gibbering prayers to he knew not which gods. To anyone who could hear him. To anything.

  Again and again, he chipped away, desperate for the little orange shower of sparks to rain down on the wisps of moss and twigs he had gathered for tinder.

  Then he stopped, tears and snot stringing from his nose.

  Maybe this was his end. He could feel this cold death taking hold of him from within. Why not just let it take him? Why not give up, just as Inga had given up? What was there to live for anyway?

  He let his hands fall limp into his lap, and his head fell forward. A kind of darkness seemed to rush forward in his mind, as if it had only been waiting for his surrender all that time. He would sle
ep, and then he would die.

  So be it.

  He heard a faint click, clack on the stones behind him. He hadn’t the will even to lift his eyelids to see what it was. Something warm blew behind his ear, then butted against his neck.

  He opened his eyes. He could see the blur of Idun’s dark lips. They pushed against his face. He groaned.

  If he died, she would certainly die. More blood on these hands.

  He shook his head. No. She at least doesn’t deserve this. For her sake, he would try again.

  He lifted his hands and began doggedly striking stone against stone. On the sixth strike, the sparks flew. His mind was so dazed, he went on hitting the stones even as the tinder caught fire and started smoking. Suddenly, he saw it – yelped in triumph – and blew gently until the flame caught in earnest.

  The wood cracked and popped; the flame surged, ready to devour more.

  Erlan rolled onto his back and pulled the damp cloak and sheepskin over him, his eyes rolling back in his head.

  They had fire.

  They would live.

  When he awoke, there was nothing of the fire left but dying embers. It was dark, but whether the night was nearer the mark of midnight or the coming dawn, he couldn’t tell. His head was thundering mercilessly, the left side worst of all. He lifted a feeble hand to touch it and immediately regretted his curiosity. Pain shivered through his skull. That side of his face was all swollen.

  His coverings were still damp, but they seemed wetter on the inside now. He was shivering still, but realized that he must have sweated in his sleep. Sweated enough to fill a bucket.

  He cursed, sensing a fever’s cruel fingers slipping around his body, settling its grip on him. If he could only hold on till morning, they could at least leave this lonely place.

  They had to keep going. To stay there was death for both of them.

  He staggered to his feet, took up his axe and stumbled back to the fallen tree, weaving like a drunk. It had stopped snowing at least. But the weakness in his arms scared him as he worked to cut enough fuel to reach daybreak.

  Back at the fire, the heat was not yet all gone from the embers. He managed to coax a flame out of them and lay on more firewood. Then he stretched out again, exhausted. And while the heat of the fire warmed his face, the heat of the fever burned within.

  The morning came like some grey-veiled dream. Somehow he roused himself from the ground, limped around gathering his things. He was burning up on the inside, though the sweat beading on his face was chill as ice. There was nothing to eat so he bundled up his things, heaved himself astride Idun’s back and touched his heels to her flank.

  That was the last conscious action he took for many days. Afterwards, he couldn’t tell whether what he saw was real or else mere conjurings of his fevered brain.

  North and east, north and east – words whispered in his ear, over and over, like some hideous lament, unshakeable as a curse. And the endless rocking as Idun picked her way over the terrain, directing her course whichever way seemed best to her. She was the master now, he nothing but her burden. Or more truly, she the mother and he the helpless child, borne away to horizons he knew not where.

  To say he was lost had no meaning. For to be lost would mean there was some place he meant to be, some road he meant to take. But if there was such a place, it was far, far from his thoughts, if what his mind beheld could be called thoughts.

  Later, he would recall things that could not have been: corpses hanging from branches, murmuring songs to the Slain-God, their tongues black, eye sockets long-empty, faces half-eaten away. Wolves kept pace beside them, sometimes whole packs at a time, as if accompanying them in a kind of funeral march in honour of the beast and its burden as they plodded onwards to hunger, exhaustion and death.

  Surely, death awaited them at the end of this road. Or perhaps its threshold had already been crossed and this world was his to wander until the end of time and the coming of the Ragnarok.

  Sometimes other riders would appear, warriors with snow-blond hair, faces stained bloody, mouths racked with screams and war cries, yet no sound came from their throats but silence. Silence laden with messages from some other world beyond this endless forest, which would never be heard. Silence like the quiet of his mother’s barrow-grave, set on that lonely hill. And sometimes, she sat behind him, drew him close, ran her fingers through his hair. ‘My son,’ she whispered sweetly in his ear. ‘My son. My monstrous son.’

  Day and night flew like winged creatures across the sky, dragging the shadows after them. All colour had fled the world. All was black and white. Even his blood, caked around the wounds of his weathered hands, was black.

  Once, he saw a bright light above him, when all around was cloaked in murk. The light shimmered, as if struggling to reach him, and he suddenly knew he was underwater. Perhaps he had never left the lake after all. And faces appeared above him, peering down at him. His father shaking his head in sorrow and shame; Konur laughing down at him, mouth a cold and vengeful sneer. And Inga. . . always Inga came last and longest. Weeping at first, smiling sadly at him as he called to her from below. But she couldn’t hear him. And as he looked up, it was almost as though her sadness was some pretence she could not keep up for long. So that soon there was laughter dancing on her lips, and she was mocking him for an oath-breaker, for a coward and a fool.

  Why did she laugh at him?

  He recalled a haze of lakes and forests and streams, snowfalls and the winter sun’s blinding shards piercing the forest veil, the rustle of the wind and the patter of scattered snow. But he never knew where he was or where he was going.

  And last, and most vivid of all, was a clearing. He thought he lay upon a soft blanket and beside him he sensed something warm and very large. He awoke to see a pair of bright eyes staring at him from the shadows.

  He sat up.

  The eyes moved, and in the dimness he saw it was a deer – a beautiful red doe with almond eyes. When the doe spoke to him, he knew he must be dreaming.

  ‘Are you a fool, my love?’ she said.

  But he didn’t understand. And the doe circled around him, just beyond the clearing. She passed behind a pine and when she appeared again, the doe had gone and Inga walked in her place.

  He cried out her name, but she only smiled and said, ‘A fool shuns a friend on the road.’

  But he didn’t understand. He reached out to her and cried, ‘Come back!’

  She passed behind another tree, and there was the doe once more.

  ‘Inga!’

  But the doe only replied, ‘Are you a fool, my love?’ He rose to go to her, tried to run, but his ankle weighed like lead.

  ‘Wait!’

  The doe only laughed Inga’s laugh and leaped away towards a bright light glowing through the trees. He pursued her, dragging his ankle like a curse, but it was all for nothing. He could only watch the doe’s silhouette grow smaller and smaller until the light had swallowed it completely.

  He sat upright.

  Something was different.

  His mind felt. . . clear. He put his hand to his brow. It was cool and dry.

  He stared wide-eyed about him. He was in a clearing. It was a few moments before he recognized the shapes of the trees, faint but discernible in the half-light. The dream. He looked up and saw beyond the treetops the sky, already paling with the dawn.

  Suddenly a pang of hunger hit him so hard he thought his stomach would turn inside out. He wondered when he had last eaten. Wondered if he had eaten anything at all since his fever had taken hold. He turned and saw Idun lying beside him. There was something starkly striking, even beautiful, about her that caught him in the throat. He leaned over and touched her neck. She flicked her head round at him, and then got stiffly to her feet. He hauled himself up after her.

  He smiled.

  It was good to smile. Good to think a straight and simple thought.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  She looked back at him, blank as ever. He took
her face in his hands and laid his forehead against hers. She didn’t seem to mind. He let his breath blow in and out in time with hers.

  It was good to breathe.

  He would have stayed like that for longer, but a sudden sharp light came lancing through the trees. Distracted, he turned to look at it. It took a moment or two before he realized it was only the rising sun. But then he remembered the dream – the fleeing silhouette swallowed up by the light.

  Curious, he went towards it. As he did, he saw the trees ended hardly fifty yards further on. Picking his way through the snow, he breached the treeline, staggered out into the morning light and found himself standing on a rocky ledge overlooking the biggest lake he had ever seen.

  The easterly sun was slanting off its frozen surface. From his elevated perch he could just make out the far side, but to the north and the south, the shoreline stretched beyond the horizon.

  Down and to his left, perhaps half a league along the shore, a tiny village huddled, smoke roiling cosily up into the empty sky.

  Are you a fool, my love? she had said.

  It was time to find out.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The first human he had seen in days was an old greybeard fisherman who was sat on a boulder, plucking away at a net that looked almost as frayed as he did.

  ‘Saw you a ways off,’ croaked the greybeard, as Idun clopped wearily up to him. ‘Hel’s teeth, but you’re a skinny son of a bitch close up, ain’t you? Why, you’d make a scarecrow feel sorry for yer.’

  ‘I need food. . . And shelter,’ said Erlan, each word strangely awkward on his tongue.

  ‘I’ll say you do!’ cried the old man. ‘And plenty of it.’ He hawked up a gob of ancient phlegm and shot it like a bolt out the side of his mouth. ‘If it’s shelter you’re needing, ask at the house with the painted gable.’