by Joyce Holt
The smith shouldered his way in, his eyes dark and fierce, no longer smiling. "You want a good man? I'm him. Handy with every kind of tool you could possibly want."
"Woe he who hinders," Jorunn blurted. "Heedless, needless meddling—"
He clapped a hand across her mouth, pinning her with a knock of the head against a stall partition. "None of that witch-play on me," he snarled, grabbing her arm.
Eyes wide, Jorunn pried at his grip – but a smith's muscles take on something of the iron he works with.
"Fleinn!" the other man snapped. "None of that wench-play in my byre! Out with you! Nei, you're not taking her. You know she's Gyda's."
The smith squeezed Jorunn's cheeks hard before letting go. He grinned again, and gave her a light flick under the chin. "Come see me any time," he crooned, then his voice turned hard. "But leave your witchy words behind. They'll have no strength against me." He wheeled and strutted out to the houseyard.
"Your mistress calls, girl," the stableman said, his voice gruff. "Take my advice. Don't set foot near the smithy."
Shaken to her core, Jorunn scurried back across the houseyard but slowed before she reached the hall. She couldn't trust the sword of words to protect her, not when her foe was so quick on his toes. She shouldn't have taken so much pride in vanquishing that fool, Sverri.
What was she thinking, with her plans to trek home alone? Not even a strapping warrior could afford such arrogance. "Never walk away from home," she muttered, "without axe and sword in hand. You can't feel a battle in your bones or foresee a fight." Sage advice for husky fighters, and far more so for a scrawny, swordless maiden.
She dashed tears from her cheeks. Scrawny, worthless. What good could she do Svana, even if she could make her way home?
Gyda spent the day scouring the three bedchambers for overlooked items, ordering Jorunn to take things down from shelves and hooks, haul them around, help pack and repack the belongings of Dagmær and Aslaug. The middle-aged sisters argued about garb to wear at the windy coast and whether they would need gowns of lighter weight should their stay last until summer.
Jorunn asked several housegirls and youths about skis, but they each told her to speak with the steward. She could never catch up with him.
Drifa pulled her aside when she heard the rumors. "What are you thinking?" she scolded. "You'd need to travel with a large party in the best of times, and now we're looking at the worst! No matter if you were the most skilled of skalds, a war-host would trample you flat before your words had chance to rise above their yells!"
"I need to return home. For my sister. I must!"
"Not now. For Frigg's sake, not now! And you'd better hope Gyda doesn't hear you've taken up this folly again."
That evening the walls of the hall loomed dark and bare without their panels of tapestry. The storage huts had all been emptied. There was no butter for anyone's porridge except the nisse's. Gyda ate supper with a crude wooden spoon like the lowliest among them.
Jorunn had seen nothing of Sverri all day, and hoped he would have a long hard struggle driving the pigs higher into the mountains. Let him work off the bounty he'd been feasting on.
The smith stared at her from the nearest table below the dais. Let him ogle. Let him leer. He was staying behind, too, hard at work forging new arrowheads and repairing old helmets.
She was leaving. She had no choice. Unless she stole a pair of skis, she couldn't go home. She felt as hemmed in as a swaddled babe, as a crated piglet, as a horse bound in the traces of a sleigh. "I'm not a thrall," she muttered even as her fate fell ever more into Gyda's keeping.
There was no extra porridge to take to Valka, but Jorunn meant to visit her anyway. One last desperate ruse, to beg refuge in the goatshed until the travelers had gone – but instead of dismissal at the end of supper, she got a summons. The steward handed her a parcel.
It was a heavy cloak wrapped around a pair of sturdy boots, a pair of scuffed slippers, and several soft woolen tubes of a stretchy weave. Stockings, she realized, netted in a springy manner that let them snug up tight against the calves.
She stared up at the steward, eyes wide.
He shrugged. "Let no one say she can't be kindly if she so wishes." He took her arm and in a not very kindly manner marched her to Gyda's chamber.
In bed that night, while Brynja wept about delays to her marriage, Jorunn wept at the chains of chance that bound her. The marvelous tube stockings warmed her feet – a soft comfort she'd never known before. A generous gift, but one that fell far short of freedom. She would gladly suffer chilblains if it meant she could go home.
* * *
Day dawned overcast and chill. Gunnarr's men reported no travelers on the road, no troll tracks near the steading.
Folk talked with cheer about the uneventful night. Perhaps the string of bad luck had indeed ended – just in time for them all to leave. Who would see to the nisse now?
After a hurried morning meal, Jorunn waited for Gyda outside the hawk house. The ice pack did not chill her feet, not with good boots and springy wool stockings to muffle against the cold. She drew tight the cloak Gyda had given her, feeling like a finely-garbed scarecrow propped in the field at someone else's whim. Once again with a full belly and an empty heart she must follow a path not her choosing. She pulled down the fur-trimmed cap to warm her ears and stared at the skis and poles leaning against the hall. One by one they were taken by their owners, armed warriors ready to escort the women's sleighs.
She rested fingertips on her belt pouch where hid the silver ingot and the silver key, jangling against the bag of glass beads. A weight of wealth, but no more use than lumps of clay.
Ketill stood beside the horses of the lead sleigh while Gunnarr helped his daughters and their housegirls climb aboard and settle in. Brynja and Drifa already sat in the second sleigh where Lingormr Eight-Finger held the reins.
The spisshunds darted in and out, yipping at the tumult in the houseyard and spooking the horses until Toli called them to the byre. Jorunn's last glimpse of shaggy black dogs darting into the byre triggered again that wrenching heartache. Who was the raven-cloaked thief who had ruined her mother's life? Who was the scoundrel who had set off this avalanche of woe and misery that had swept her daughter into thralldom? If only she could leap back in time, Jorunn would whisper in her mother's ear. Be watchful! Be wary!
When her mistress emerged from bidding farewell to the goshawk and peregrine, Jorunn followed her onto the sleigh with Brynja, Drifa and Lingormr, hitched her new cloak around, settled into place and tucked in the robes and furs. Straight south lay Morgedal. South over ridgeback spines and deep-trenched dales, a path no sleigh could follow.
The company set out from Kvien – downhill at first to the Keel Road, then heading not south but west into the highest heights of the great mountain spine of the North.
28 – Over the Keel
Jorunn yearned to use the key to look for Svana during their journey, if only Gyda would take a nap. But nei, her mistress practically thrummed in her seat as the sleighs and their escort coursed ever westward.
They swept past the avalanche site where Gunnarr's folk had cleared the Keel Road. Gyda talked Lingormr into slowing long enough to look for Ragnvald's ski tracks. When they went on she told her uncle about her three days in Harald's company, including the sagas about doughty warrior-kings stealing brides from neighboring realms.
Brynja got in a word or two about Harald's rivalry with Erik Weatherhat in the east, and her kinship to Erik. "Papa is his nephew, though few folk know it, beyond the ridges and dales of Morgedal," she told him.
"So Harald would be glad to snatch either one of us," Gyda said. "If he's learned of it by now."
"Me, out of strategy," Brynja said to her cousin. "You, out of lust."
"Lust and strategy," Gyda said. "Wedded to me, he could lay claim to Hordaland if any dire fate befell my father and brother, which I'm sure he would be glad to arrange."
Lingormr grunted from the dri
ver's seat. "I thought you approved of a great-king-to-be adding realm to realm like Charlemagne."
"He doesn't know what to do with the realms he already has! Goes from one to the next, feasting and collecting dribbles of tribute and bragging of all his conquests. Like a drooling fool at the helm of a ship."
"Vel, I'll be content if the fool just keeps drooling down by the coast. Sounds like he has enough of a force, at any rate, to fend off Weatherhat and keep those Swedes from plundering our Nord Way."
Gyda sat back, thumping her foot beneath the furs. "He's just strong enough to keep any wiser ruler from rising and taking the reins."
"And what would such a wise ruler do instead of feasting and bragging like Harald?"
"Organize. Tally the people in each corner of his realm. Assign each hundred warriors to fit out a warship and stand ready for summons. Set jarls over lands to collect greater tribute to pay for the king's own fleet, and for his guards, and for his regalia so he can stand before other mighty men of the world in the full glory of the North!"
Uncle Ormi grunted again. "Greater tribute, hmm?"
"So he can reward those loyal to his purposes. So he can hire scholars from afar. So he can bring wisdom's light to our lands!"
"In the dark, are we?"
Gyda huffed. "The world is changing. There is much to learn if we do not wish to be left behind. How many books do we have at Kvien? Two. Have you ever heard of the libraries of Alexandria and Constantinople?"
"Who are they?"
"Not who. Where. Far lands. Far, far away, and rich in knowledge and wisdom. It is said there were hundreds of thousands of scrolls at Alexandria before it burned. Just think of all the wonders now lost!"
"Your two books," Brynja put in, "I suppose you brought them along?"
"Of course," Gyda said. "At the bottom of my gown chest. You think I'd go into exile without them? What if we never go back?"
Jorunn sucked in a breath of alarm. She had to go back to Kvien in order to find her way home again.
Lingormr glanced back from the route ahead, rubbing his beard. "The world is changing, you say. You'd like to see changes here in the North, and to pay for them with a greater tribute. Skatt and taxes, fees and fines."
"Nothing comes free."
"What benefit to those paying the tribute? What is it we gain, here in the heights? We're a world away from the skirmishing along the coast."
"Protection from wolves like Weatherhat."
"Whose levies would be the less, I wonder?"
"Protection from wolves," Gyda repeated, "and constancy. Our taxes would go to the king of our own kind rather than to a foreigner. We'd not be forever washing about in different tides of conquerors."
Lingormr harrumphed. "I don't see the benefit, not this far inland."
Gyda sat forward again. "Think of the numbers, Uncle Ormi! If all the folk from coast to coast, in the mountains, along the fjords, if we all unite together, what a great force we could become!"
"But at what price?"
Gyda blew out a breath. "If folk prosper on the coast, even so will we inlanders prosper in our trade with them. It's plain as the beard on your chin. Why must you be so contrary?"
He turned half around from his seat up front, draped an arm over his backrest. "When your Beste-Papa is gone, I will be bonde at Kvien. The well-being of all my kin will rest on my shoulders. How will I fulfill that duty? The old ways have always served us. We take care of our own. We've never needed anything from the coast."
"Salt," Brynja put in.
Ormi nodded. "Nothing but salt. We don't even pay tribute to our own king beyond a token gift or two, of our own choosing. We are free. We have always labored and toiled to provide for ourselves, and our hard work has led to prosperity. A heavy tribute will bleed that all away."
"I didn't say the taxes would be heavy."
"I can't imagine them being light. See now, Gyda, free folk can easily support a small king like Harald. If he were to travel the road over the Keel, we would welcome him in and prepare him a lavish feast. As a gift. Not as any duty. And he would ask nothing more of us."
"Except perhaps a niece in marriage," Brynja grumbled.
"We are free. A great king would make us thralls, under the weight of his skatt." Lingormr turned back to the reins.
Gyda fell silent a while, brooding like the heavy clouds overhead, then said, low but clear, "That is why we need scholars from afar, and books. Elsewhere there have been strong and mighty realms where freedom yet thrived. We must learn how it is done."
When the company halted to yoke fresh horses to the sleighs, the womenfolk climbed down to relieve themselves. It took all four housegirls to help portly Dagmær go about the business, with her complaining all the while that they ought to unpack a chamberpot, not squat behind a tree where ticks and spiders waited to pounce on bare flesh.
"As if," Jorunn muttered, "there'd be creeping things abroad in the middle of winter." She sniffed at the cold clear smell of snow on the breeze.
Brynja's mother griped about slush getting down one boot, for she broke through the hard-packed ice the youths and housegirls had tromped flat. Then a fjord horse farted just as she passed, and she had to bemoan that insult as well.
Jorunn hardly had time to tend her own needs. She managed one glimpse of Svana, who sat bent over handwork in her lap.
Then back to sleighs and furs and talk of lofty plans, the hooves of the horses throwing up the odd snowball. Jorunn watched the mountainsides creeping closer to this frozen-stream route while flurries and snifters dusted the furs with snow. Lingormr sang a ballad about a mountain man and his golden harp, and with each verse his cap and beard turned whiter. When snowfall thickened, Jorunn held a wicker basket above Gyda's head to shield her.
They halted for the night at a roadside byre, a traveler's shelter with stalls below and a sleeping loft overhead. It took three of Lingormr's outriders to hoist Dagmær up the ladder. Her housegirl followed with the lady's own chamberpot. Brynja's mother would not be coming down that ladder until morning.
Lingormr's men dug out the entries to the stable and the shed that sheltered a cesspit. Some set to building a cookfire, others to tending the horses. Gyda took one look inside the latrine and ordered Jorunn to sweep it clean of cobwebs.
When she finished, Jorunn took a few moments to spy with the silver key. She could see nothing of Svana, not inside her father's gloomy fireless shack. She hunted for Ragnvald and Guttorm, and saw them, by rushlight, crammed with their men into some cotter's hut. They had not yet reached Harald.
She searched for the king himself, and found him tossing dice by lamplight with a man in rich attire. One of his jarls, perhaps. They laughed and drank from alehorns and gestured towards someone out of the key's field of sight.
Jorunn sucked on her lip and wondered about the debate of the day. Which would do the Norse folk the most good: the age-old swarm of petty chieftains along the coast, or a grand king who gathered all the Nord Way into one mighty realm?
She shrugged. She couldn't sway the matter one way or the other. Warriors and highborn, jarls and great-bondes, they were the ones to decide.
The great-bonde of Kvien must by now have moved his remaining household and armed men and livestock to his high mountain refuge. Jorunn had never gone further from Kvien's hall than one could shoot an arrow, but pictured Gunnarr's borg as high and stone-strong as all the tales of Odin's fortress Valhalla in Asgard. She spied after Gunnarr, found him talking with Lingormr beside a glowing brazier. No grand ramparts in sight. Nothing like Valhalla.
She searched for Valka, but the goatherd must be nestled down in the dark already.
"Trylleri has its limits," Jorunn muttered. "Can't see whoever lies in darkness. Can't send a whisper of comfort to a lonely child."
Drifa called, and she trotted off to serve at a simple fireside supper outside the byre. At the sight of shivering folk gathered around the flames, an old saying spilled from her lips. "The traveler ne
eds shelter for the night, when faring over winter fjells. Food he needs, and fire to warm legs numbed to the knee."
Lingormr chuckled. "Right you are."
Gyda threw Jorunn a silencing glare.
Darkness deepened. Snow swirled in eddies as everyone hurried to finish the meal. Gyda ate all that had been dished out for her, leaving none for her housegirl. Jorunn had just turned to the man who'd doled out food when Gyda summoned her to help her up the ladder.
The high-born young women took it slow, mounting both feet to a rung before pushing higher, their rumps swaying in a manner not very becoming. Of course they'd never had to climb to storage, but surely during sweltering summer months they'd retreat to the airy upper-floor chambers of outbuildings, wouldn't they?
In the loft, Dagmær complained about the paltry amount of food brought up for her, about the musty hay that served for cushions, about cobwebs and vermin, and about the frigid air. "You can hear the cloud of my breath tinkling as it freezes!" she cried.
Gyda and Brynja huddled close together, glancing about by rushlight, looking no more pleased than Brynja's mother. Gyda's mother Aslaug directed the other housegirls in laying out furs and blankets.
"I'll go for heated rocks," Jorunn said, but folk coming up the ladder blocked her way. She could see the food crate being closed up. Her belly rumbled. She edged out the door, swung to one side of the ladder, found fingerholds and toeholds in the upright planking of the byre wall, and lowered herself as far as she could before jumping free.
Above her, Dagmær squawked. "That fool girl just threw herself over the edge!" Faces peered out.
Jorunn dusted herself off. That would have been an easy enough feat in summer, and even more so now, with snow piled halfway to that upper chamber. She was used to scrambling up trees to raid nests. A poor cotter's daughter had to forage wherever nuts and greens could be found, up cliffs, down ravines, along ledges.
The keeper of provisions would only give Jorunn one round of flatbread. "This is no cookhouse where you can come scavenging any time of day or night," he said as he carried the crate into the byre for safe-keeping. "You should have taken your portion along with everyone else. Don't wait like you do in proper surroundings."