by Joyce Holt
So here he sat, all this glorious afternoon. His snares had yielded two hares and a squirrel, and he'd managed to pick out the notes from a threshing song. Enough idling for one day. He reached across the lute to open the case. The hem of his sleeve slid along a string, and drew out one long sweet note.
His eyes widened. He took up the bow, and drew the taut strands of horsehair across one string.
The air rang with a clear, blade-sharp peal that only ended when he ran out of bow.
Oddleif leaped up and cavorted along the ridge, pressing strings with one hand, sawing the bow with the other. It made a jumble of music, as if a song had been stirred in a pot. But by the time he'd danced his way down from the heights, he'd managed to pick out the tune he'd heard that day beside the waterfall.
His brothers stared, their mouths agape.
"Perhaps there's a bit of fossegrim in you after all," the eldest said. "I'm thinking he visited you in the night and gave you the gift." He wiggled the fingers of one hand.
Oddleif studied his own fingers. That night of agony, he realized, had come on the heels of his chance meeting in the gorge, his words of praise, his giving of the spoon.
A narrow-necked lute and a knack. Two wondrous gifts from Alfheim.
43 – Mountain Swallow
In the heights high above Kvien, the wind carried the scent of wildflowers and spruce, and a distant trill of flute. Jorunn tugged on her stubborn pony's reins. Her mistress would scold if she didn't do her part in flushing quarry. Gyda still rode across the upper end of the meadow. The peregrine wheeled high overhead.
Jorunn shaded her eyes and squinted after a speck that flitted across the shoulder of the mountains. Was that a swallow? Too far to tell.
What kind of omen would it be if the mountain swallow appeared, and Shriek snatched it mid-flight? Could a falcon unravel the Norns' threads?
"We should have brought the hounds to flush quarry," Gyda said when they rejoined and headed toward a further stretch of moor. She sighed. "I will miss them, too, the rascals."
"Does Eldjarn keep hawks?" Jorunn asked, clambering astride Lazybones.
"Ja, but they won't know me. I must get another fledgling to raise."
Shriek fell into a swoop toward the mountainside above, but rose again with nothing in her grip. The falcon flapped her way to a lone pine and settled on a branch near the top.
Gyda nudged her horse in that direction. "I spoke with Ketill last night. He blushed like a maiden when I told him my plans. He said he had no objection. He holds you in fond regard. This will be a good match."
Jorunn pulled lips tight. "If you say so, Mistress." She gazed up the pine trunk. Shriek made a splotch of dark against the patchy canopy high overhead.
Gyda grumbled. "We'll have no luck today, I see. She's not interested in the hunt. Fetch the meat."
The peregrine would not come down to the swing of the lure, nor the offer of food from Gyda's outstretched hand.
"She must have fed too well yesterday," Gyda said. "Vel, I'm not well-fed. Bring out the flatbread."
"Ja, Mistress."
The cook had softened the rounds and spread butter between several layers. Jorunn noted the delightful taste of honey, as well. The best of everything under Gunnarr's reign. How would Gyda fare in Trondelag, sheltering with her great-uncle? Would he shower delights on the haughty young woman? Would Harald still hold her in favor after all these months? He might be too drunk with victory to remember the allure of a fickle maiden.
Jorunn ate the portions of flatbread Gyda passed over with a sniff. Too darkly seared in one patch. Too thick and chewy in another. Even in the rough confines of her father's hut, her mother's knack with flatbread had worked like magic, like trylleri, fitting for a king's table – but the lout had never uttered one word of praise for that fine fare.
The wind sighed. Shriek didn't stir from her branch. Distant flute notes wavered in and out of hearing. Gyda paced. Daylight dimmed, for the cloud cover thickened even as the sun sank into the west. Always wary of the wilds after dark, Jorunn took off her yoke-apron and hiked her skirt. "I'll go up after her," she said.
Gyda stared open-mouthed for a moment. "Up the pine?"
Jorunn nodded, and circled the trunk, looking for the best handholds.
"You can't do that!"
"Why not?"
"Vel, it's a tree, after all. You're not a forest cat."
"I am when I need be." Jorunn sprang up and grabbed the stub of a broken branch.
"You'll fall, you ninny!"
"Not to worry. One thing I do well. Robbing nests." Jorunn ignored the continued protests as she lurched higher up the pine.
The falcon cocked her head and watched every move, her golden eye glinting among the shadows.
"Come now, Shriek," Jorunn crooned, mimicking Gyda's voice as she drew close. "Evening soon to fall. Let's all go home, shall we?"
The peregrine leaped from her bough and sailed past, so close overhead that Jorunn felt the wind of her passing. She sighed in relief. She hadn't thought to take Gyda's gauntlet, and had no idea how to climb down a tree with raptor on arm.
"Shriek, you prankster!" Gyda called out. "Down, down! To me!"
By the time Jorunn reached the ground, her mistress was circling the base of another pine down the slope. This tree looked a harder climb. Twilight coming – still a long way down the mountain – no more time to dither. Jorunn kicked through grass and heather, found a stone, and chucked it into the branches.
"Hold, you lackwit!" Gyda yelped. "You'll hurt her!"
"Wouldn't hit her. Aimed to startle her."
"You risk striking her? How dare you! Don't you know how fragile her wings are?"
"We have to get her down one way or another. We must leave, mustn't stay in the heights after dark."
Gyda poofed out a scornful breath. "Let them fret. They pay no heed to my words. Why should I bother to ease their peace of mind?"
"I'm not thinking of your kinfolk nor peace of mind. I'm thinking of true peril." There'd been little sign of troll for the last month, but Valka thought her kin still lurked on cloudy nights. And such an evening was coming on. Jorunn glanced all around and wished they'd had at least one spearman for escort. She lobbed another stone.
"Wretch!" Gyda clamped onto Jorunn's arm. "How dare you disobey me!"
"Let's go tell your uncle. He can post men to watch Shriek through the night."
"Swallow your impudence! I'll keep my own counsel." She pushed Jorunn away from the stand of pines. "Bring me the blanket and the last of the food. I'll stay as long as need be."
"But Mistress, twilight—" She fell silent at the glare in Gyda's eyes and trudged off to the bags. The horses had meandered across the hillside, cropping the lush spring grasses. "Troll-bait," Jorunn murmured, peering in all directions again. They still had a good long time until full darkness, but the heavy overcast twanged her heart, a message of danger. She rummaged in one bag then the other until she found a traveler's packet with flint and tinder. A bonfire would lessen the peril, and draw any searchers to their aid.
Jorunn laid a pile of tinder and twigs a few paces from Shriek's chosen pine, then went to look for deadwood. She was downhill searching in the forest fringes when she heard the first whinny of alarm. Juggling her armload, she headed uphill and broke into the open.
One of the mares pelted down the slope, eyes showing white in the dusky light and reins flying. Her own mount, moving at such a clip Jorunn had never seen out of the creature.
Gyda's mount lagged behind, still cantering along the brow of the rise. It reared, swerved, broke into a gallop downhill.
A dark shape heaved up from beyond the crest.
Jorunn dropped the firewood and sprinted toward the pine stand where she had left Gyda. But her mistress had already broken cover and was running to head off her mare. She stumbled to a stop when a troll as tall as a two-story loft thundered over the ridge and snatched up the mare in one great clawed hand.
; Gyda and the fjord horse screamed together.
The falcon burst from the pines, beating the air as rapidly as a wood pigeon. Jorunn dashed uphill, darting from cover to cover. "Gyda, back off!" she cried.
Gyda stepped back once, twice, her movements stiff with fear. A fitful breeze swept at the hillside, caught and waved her yoke-apron like a banner.
The troll shaded its eyes in the twilight, paying little heed to the horse in its grip which twisted, shrieking in pain and terror.
Jorunn dashed the last few steps to her pile of tinder near the falcon's last stand of pine. She struck knife blade to flint. Fire, flame, their only hope.
Something thumped the ground, loud as a boulder tumbling from a cliff. And again. And again, growing louder and closer.
Jorunn whimpered in despair as the sparks she struck flared and died. The tinder would not catch. Her stubby blade was too short a striker.
Gyda screamed again.
Jorunn whipped her gaze, to see her mistress in movement at last, running with abandon down the slope – with the hulking jotun-troll in pursuit. Treetrunk legs, nose like a butter churn, fangs that jutted like spears.
Jorunn leaped up, flint clutched uselessly in her hand, gazing in horror as the jotun swooped one long arm and snatched Gyda by her feet. He pounded to a stop, drew upright – so tall, so tall – and dangled the maiden upside-down, peering close. As if in idle thought, the ogre raised the mare and bit off its head, studying his struggling captive while blood sprayed down his front.
"Let me go, you brute!" Gyda's voice shrilled across the hillside in the deepening dusk.
The troll took two more chomps on the horse, grinding those massive jaws, while turning his golden-haired prize back and forth. "Little white-skin!" he chortled, like the rumble of a landslide. "Sweet! Tasty!" He cast aside the mare's limp hindquarters, picked at his teeth, dislodged the shredded saddle and flicked it away, and set off tromping northward, swinging Gyda loosely at his side.
Jorunn hurtled madly after them. She ran as fast as she could, but barely kept the monster in sight. How could she keep to her feet when full darkness fell? What could she do against such a great hulking troll?
Twilight deepened. Jorunn stumbled in the gloom. She could hardly make out the lumbering shape ahead. Gyda's cries of mingled terror and outrage led her on.
Jorunn's quarry rounded a shoulder of the mountain. She picked up her skirts and ran across the open hillside. She slowed crossing over the brow, caught a glimpse of movement at the base of a cliff, then nothing.
Had the troll stopped, hearing her pursuit? Jorunn paused, squinting into the night. There was no ogre-sized shadow, no great hulking jotun waiting.
She scrambled up the last slope of scree to the bottom of the cliff. She searched along every hand span of the rugged granite wall. There was no crack large enough for her to wriggle into, let alone admit a troll. No natural chink or crevice.
Gyda had been berg-taken, swallowed by the mountain.
44 – A Knot in the Strand
Jorunn huddled there all night, shivering in the chill mountain air. Folk tales and nightmares ran through her head, and sagas of heroes hastening to a kidnapped maiden's rescue. But those had been cases of seduction, hadn't they? The stealing of a mortal bride?
Her heart wrenched with fear. This troll had in mind something more malicious than taking wife or slave, Jorunn feared. "Sweet," the ogre had growled. "Tasty." She shuddered with horror. No one deserved such a fate. Not even a cold-hearted, haughty, demanding task-mistress like Gyda.
And witty and knowledgeable and keen of vision. Jorunn moaned in pain of soul. In spite of all, she admired the lady she served.
Were they feasting upon her, even now? Too late, too late to save her. What should she do? Hurry down to Kvien and give Gunnarr the dreadful tidings?
"Gyda has been berg-taken," she would cry, to their utter dismay. "Snatched by a troll, swallowed into the mountain—"
Her thoughts jumbled and tumbled topsy-turvy, and when they fell into place again, they echoed the Norns' words. "When you see the mountain swallow—"
The mountain had swallowed up ogre and captive. It was not a bird she was told to watch for.
This was the knot in Gyda's strand the Norns had foretold.
But why did the trolls want Gyda? It was Valka they were after.
Jorunn shook at the thought of giving Gunnarr this horrid news. Would they blame her for failing her mistress? She could slink straight to the byre and hide until the young men arrived to carry her away. She could.
Nei, that was a coward's path. Gyda's kinfolk deserved to know what had befallen.
"Honor calls for courage and giving," she chided herself with one of the old sayings. "The brave and the generous live best, of all men. The coward forever cringes in fear." She choked on her own dread at the thought of the path that made her cringe, the path that needed taking, the path that called for a fount of courage.
The path of folly, if Gyda was already dead.
Something Valka had said tugged at her mind. Hope leaped. Perhaps it was not too late.
She fretted through the night. It was a perilous path, the one she might take. And at such cost. Her life, perhaps. Her hopes. Had the traveling youths already come to the byre? Would they wait for her? What if trying to save Gyda lost her the only chance for returning home to Morgedal? Svana needed saving, too. Wasn't Utlagi as horrible a monster as any troll?
The wife-killer wouldn't latch onto Svana until she came of age, it was true, but how long might it take for Jorunn's trek home? It might demand more than a year to travel that far on her own. She'd already had far too many obstacles to returning. She couldn't bear the thought of delaying any longer.
She couldn't bear the thought of Gyda's horrid fate.
Gyda never shrank from battle. Perhaps she would wage her own war and emerge victorious.
Jorunn waited and listened all night. No sound broke the stillness. No triumphant tread of slim dainty feet striking the stony ground, no huff of disdain after dispatching of the over-sized rabble, no sharp voice ordering her housegirl to rise and get on her way.
* * *
Come first light, Jorunn studied the ground. The troll's heavy footfalls left clear tracks through turf and heather, up until the stretch of loose scree skirting the cliff base. "You will know the path to follow," she murmured, heart trembling. No time to go all the way back to Kvien for help.
She built a cairn at the spot of the last dagger-nail prints, then pulled out the key. Jorunn murmured Valka's name, and swiveled about until she spied the hulder-girl with her goats. She sighted a lumpy crest on the horizon in that direction and set off.
Jorunn kept to a straight line, down gullies and up crags, darting across the rough landscape. It seemed like she ran forever before she caught sight of the goats and their herder. "Valka! Øy, Valka!" she cried. "Gyda, berg-taken, huge hulking troll snatched her, gone, gone!" She staggered her last steps, then sagged to the ground, weary to the bone. "Berg-taken!" she wailed again.
Valka squinted up at the sky. "Nei, not in bright sunshine days, can't be! They not come out now. Too hard, almost, even for me."
"Heavy clouds, at dusk, yesterday. Dim and gloomy."
Valka planted hands on hips and glared down at her. "Why you run up, up, up for to tell me?"
"Not up. We were out riding, hawking." Jorunn pointed back along her path at the humping skyline. "It happened near sundown."
"Fools," Valka snorted. "Why you do that? You know dangers at dusk!"
"The falcon would not come down from the pine. We'd coaxed all evening, and Gyda wouldn't leave her." Jorunn swiped at tears chilling her cheek.
"Fools!"
"And we've seen no troll spoor for a month and more! I thought your kin had given up."
"Fools! Tell me what look like, this hulker."
"Tall as that birch there. Nose like this."
"Tell of eyes."
"Eyes, eyes—" Jorunn frown
ed, trying to remember. "I could see no eyes. Shaggy mane hiding brow and all."
Valka hooted. "Klump's sire, that be Klump's sire! He still lurking, big oaf? Hah!"
"He ate Gyda's horse right then and there, and dangled Gyda at nose-height. Is he going to eat her, too? Has he already eaten her? I tried to go in after them—"
"Fool!"
"Help me, Valka! She doesn't deserve to be eaten! You said time passes at a crawl inside the mountain, so maybe she's still alive and I can save her, if I can just cross the threshold between worlds!"
"He say anything?"
"What?"
Valka threw back her shawl and squinted beady eyes. "You say, dangle her near him's nose. He say anything when peering?" She mimicked the very pose the troll had taken, arm cocked, clawing hand held at eye level. Her tail escaped its hiding place.
Jorunn shuddered, as much at Valka's true nature, hideously clear in the light of day, as at the memory of the hulking jotun half-seen at dusk. "Ah, 'white skin,' he said."
Valka jigged from side to side and chortled, a haunting echo of the troll's laugh in the twilight gloom. "He not eat her. Good news, good news!" She bared long pointed teeth like those that had ripped apart Gyda's mare.
Jorunn gulped at her first daylight glimpse of the hulder-maid's grin. "Not eat her? Are you sure? Good indeed! Perhaps I can—"
"Good news for me. They gots foolish plan, going to brew, brew, brew with white skin, try make love spell. I too canny for that. Won't work, and give me time."
Jorunn got to her feet. "What do you mean, a love spell?"
"White-skin maiden."
"Nei, you don't mean— I've heard of a potion made with a white-skinned snake but—"
Valka waved her aside. "Too weak, just snake. Good and strong with maiden in brew."
Jorunn gulped. "Brew. In a pot. Over a fire."
"Ja. Need dragon spit, too. Not easy to get. Your gold-hair be safe till they gets dragon spit. They don't want purple bruises on that white skin when she goes in pot."