I could just make out the low, snow-covered mound that marked our qarmaq. This far away, Brandr wouldn’t hear a shouted warning.
Over the pounding of my heart and the splashing of my paddle, a Norseman’s rough voice carried across the water. “If you let the skraeling get back to shore, he’ll warn his people!”
Another man’s voice. “Hand me my throwing spear. He won’t get back.”
I swung the boat with a swift stroke, realizing belatedly that I’d almost led the Vikings straight to Brandr. They would follow me to the qarmaq, where my friend slept beneath our furs, thinking himself safe. They would kill him. And I’d be to blame.
I balanced my paddle across my lap and hoisted my harpoon. I could take out one of them at most—but if they thought a band of fierce hunters defended these lands, they might decide to keep on sailing. Brandr would be safe.
But when I looked up at the bow of the ship, my courage drained away. The great monster on the prow loomed above me, so large and lifelike I felt its wide jaws might swallow me whole. Beside it stood a figure yet more terrible—Freydis Eriksdottir.
Nothing in my dreams had prepared me for her fierceness in life. Her orange hair whipped loose on the wind. Her nose slashed her face like a raven’s beak, and her gray eyes bored into me even across the stretch of sea. A dark-green dress billowed around her wiry frame. She stood as tall as the massive, yellow-bearded man beside her—the murderer of Uimaitok, of Nua, of Kidla, of the baby boy I’d carried in my hood. Ingharr Ketilsson raised a long spear to his shoulder.
“Wait.” Freydis placed her hand on his throwing arm. “Don’t kill him yet. We don’t want a war with these skraelings, too.”
Ingharr nodded toward Freydis, and I thought for a moment they’d decided to let me go.
Then he flung his shaft. At the same instant, I threw my harpoon at his smirking face. Our weapons crossed in midair. He ducked away just in time, my harpoon flying over his shoulder and clattering to the deck. The Norseman’s spear struck true—not into me, but into my boat. The long iron blade ripped easily through the thin bark. Water swirled around my feet as the boat slanted precipitously, bow-first, into the ocean.
My father and grandfather had both drowned. Now I would as well. I didn’t know how to swim.
I scrambled backward, pulling my legs away from the gushing water, but there was nowhere to go. The cold hit me like a punch. Warmer surely than the northern ocean of my home, but still cold enough to kill. The sea poured in the tops of my boots and the waist of my trousers, weighing me down.
Before I squinted my eyes shut against the stinging salt, I saw long fronds of swirling black seaweed just below the surface, as thin and tangled as a woman’s hair. Sanna. She had followed me all this way, waited for me all this time. The seaweed grabbed at me, twisting around my limbs. I struggled, lashing out, and opened my eyes in time to see a girl’s thin face, glowing like an iceberg in the faint sunlight from above.
Sea Mother…
She seemed small, weak, perhaps unused to these southern waters. She reached out narrow arms, a gesture of both succor and menace. I heard her voice distinctly in my head. Let go, little girl. Let go.
Behind her, a mere shadow among shadows, I glimpsed a familiar profile: Issuk.
I had sent him to Sanna’s lair. Now he rose up from the depths to seek his revenge.
I have my greatest nemesis to thank for my survival. I might have succumbed to Sanna’s will—she was one of the great spirits, after all. She had the right to demand my death. But I would never give Issuk what he wanted.
I pulled Brandr’s small, sharp knife from its sheath and slashed at the grasping seaweed, at Sanna herself, until I was free.
I pushed my way to the surface, gasping for breath, only to find myself in the chill shadow of the Viking ship. Beneath me, Sanna lay in wait, ready to drown me in her watery embrace. Would my fate be any better in the hands of the Vikings above?
My arms and legs swung in an instinctive effort to keep me afloat. I wouldn’t survive much longer, but I had to warn Brandr. I opened my mouth to scream but could hardly make a sound for lack of air. I managed a weak shout in my own tongue, “Run! They’re here! Run!”
A gray shadow slipped across the shore. White Paw had heard me. She raced toward the water, growling so fiercely that foam flew from her mouth.
“No!” I gasped. “Go back!”
I felt a rush of air against my head and glanced up—a long wooden oar swung toward me.
Then all was darkness.
BOOK FOUR
VIKING
The infant girl lies silent within her cradle of snow, protected by a great white wolf. Soon her aunt will come to take her back into the embrace of her family. Watching from his stolen perch on Odin’s silver throne, Loki smiles and turns away. For now, the child will be safe. The Trickster is patient.
But one girl alone is not enough, for Loki’s plans are vast indeed. He looks to the East, toward those who worship Odin and Thor, Frey and Freya. Loki has found a home among these folk. They tell his tales of cunning and mischief with laughter and fear in their hearts. But even now, the fair-haired folk have begun to forget the gods of old. The Trickster must look far to find a land where Christ’s cross has not replaced Thor’s hammer.
There—there—at the farthest reaches of the known world. A vast island with shores as green as emeralds in summer and as icy as Jotunheim in winter. Perched on the slim stretches of habitable land, their backs to the glacier-strewn mountains and their faces toward the sea, a few hardy souls carve out their lives.
It is deepest winter now, and the folk leave their homes only to tend the sheep in their turf barns. Too weak to stand, the animals eat dried grass from their owners’ hands and sip from pails of melted snow. Herdsmen have slaughtered the frailest animals before the winter even began—many more will lose their lives before it is over.
Loki watches a young girl with ember-bright hair coax a spindly ewe to eat a handful of hay.
“Come, sweet one, my babe. Come, eat,” she murmurs, holding the sheep’s head upon her small lap. “You’ve been my friend, little lamb. Don’t you remember the springtime, when we ran together in the green meadows? Spring will come again—you need only live a little longer. When Father gave you to me, I knew you were the best gift any girl ever got. The best lamb in all of Greenland. I won’t let you starve.”
But the lamb will not eat. The girl strokes the soft wooly ears, the dry nose, the hollow cheeks.
“What can I do to make you better? Shall I pray to Frigg to make you healthy? Or Odin to make you wise? Or Thor to make you fierce?”
But still the sheep will not eat. Will not move. The child sighs deeply and strokes the soft brow one more time. She moves the sheep’s head gently off her lap and rests it on the lip of a low leather pail. She fingers the hammer pendant at her throat. “Hear me, Thor. If you won’t grant your gift to my lamb,” she prays, “grant it to me. Make me fierce. Make me strong. Make me a weapon in your hand.”
She takes the knife from her belt and slits the ewe’s throat, making sure to catch every drop of the hot, nourishing blood. She does not cry.
From his high perch, Loki claps his hands and crows with delight. The Aesir’s great hall is empty. No one hears his glee.
He looks down once more upon the icy island at another orange-haired child. The boy sits beside the fire in his turf house, carving designs onto a wooden sword. Around him, a family, warm and jolly even on this coldest of nights. The father, hair as bright as his son’s, sips milk from a stone bowl.
“Ah, Brandr,” he says, watching the boy’s work, “what do you mean to do with that?”
“Practice. Until I can wield it like a true Viking.”
The fair-haired mother laughs and bounces the babe at her breast. “You find a piece of driftwood—more precious than gold in a land without trees—and you make it a sword? Better a spoon, or a pail, or a shepherd’s crook.”
But the boy mere
ly smiles and keeps carving the sword’s hilt with spirals and dragons and beasts without name.
The baby ceases to suckle and cries softly. “Here,” the mother says, handing the infant to her older son. “I’ll tend the sheep if you’ll tend your brother.”
The boy doesn’t complain but puts aside his carving and takes the babe in one arm. He pulls a small whistle from his pocket and begins a slow lullaby. The baby’s cries subside. They sit together through the night, these brothers, blue eyes meeting blue, one whistling and one smiling.
Loki rubs his hands together. “They are all there. One to lead, one to dream, and one to swing the sword.”
An approaching footstep rouses the Trickster from his reverie. He leaps from the forbidden throne and slips back into the shadows, donning his disguise as a slim goddess. But he grins still. He has seen enough. For all his love of chaos, Loki was born a Frost Giant—he is a patient god. He can bide his time until the children grow. Until the worlds collide, as he knows they must. Until then, the Christ will grow more powerful and Odin more frail. And Loki… Loki will merely smile. And laugh. And wait.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The oar’s blow didn’t knock me unconscious for long, yet in those moments, I dreamed. Not of Brandr’s past, this time, but of my own. Puja was there, and Ataata, but my parents as well, both Inuk and Wolf. I believed that when I woke—if I woke—I’d live in the body of a newborn babe, ready for a fresh start, safe within the embrace of my people.
Instead I woke in my own flesh—a body that, for once, I was happy to inhabit. There were too many things still to do in this life.
My wet clothes crackled with ice, and I shook uncontrollably despite the unfamiliar fur thrown across me. The pain from the rope around my wrists and ankles paled before the throbbing in my head. A slow trickle of blood crawled across my scalp to pool in the hollow of my ear.
I lay on the deck of the Vikings’ wooden ship—a knarr, Brandr had called it. I could tell by the calm slap of water against the hull that it had stopped moving. A slender boy with a spear sat on a crate beside me, his hair as bushy and brown as the curled ruff of a musk ox. He nearly leapt off his seat when he noticed my eyes open.
“He’s awake!”
A light tread. Freydis’s stony eyes stared down at me. I expected her to raise her husband’s bloody hammer and strike me down just as she had so many others. She frowned and looked out over the water as if sniffing the air. “Keep him alive.”
A man’s gruff voice from somewhere beyond her: “Why bother? Skraelings with furs like that murdered one of our men and almost killed Ingharr, have you forgotten?”
“Husband,” she said with a sigh. “If he dies, he’s worthless. Alive, he’s a hostage in case his people attack. And if we need to land, he might show us the best hunting grounds.”
The man moved into my sight. Balding, red-nosed, flabby about his waist and jowls. What hair he had left must once have been as yellow as Ingharr’s, but now his beard was more gray than gold. I recognized him from Brandr’s dreams as Thorvard Einarsson. He wore a war hammer across his back like the one his namesake, Thor, carried.
“Why do we need a skraeling to point the way?” he asked, sounding more like a petulant child than a grizzled old man. “If you’d let us go after that wolf, I could be wearing a fine pelt right now!”
“Have you ever seen a wolf run straight into the ocean?” she asked scornfully.
“No,” he conceded.
“Animals in this land are not like those we know. You’re too reckless with things you don’t understand.”
I felt a small knot of fear loosen in my gut when I realized White Paw had somehow survived, but my joy was short-lived. As Freydis turned to go, she said, “Ingharr—get the skraeling out of those wet clothes.”
At that, I nearly cried out. I’d relinquished my secret to Brandr—I was not ready to hand it to these murderers. I bit back my outburst and tried to pretend I hadn’t understood her. I couldn’t reveal that I spoke Norse, not now. They’d know I learned it from another of their kind, and they might realize Brandr was nearby.
I struggled against my bindings, hoping to reach Brandr’s knife. With a jolt, I realized it’d fallen from my hand when they knocked me unconscious. Now it lay on the ocean floor, deep in Sanna’s lair. I would not see it again.
I was truly helpless.
Heavy footsteps shuddered the deck beneath me. I felt the chill of a long shadow cross my face and forced myself to turn toward the new threat.
Ingharr Ketilsson loomed above me. If he still suffered from the harpoon wound I’d given him beside Issuk’s iglu, he showed no sign. As he bent over me, his plaited yellow beard swung over my nose, wafting a bitter scent like an abandoned fox den. No glimmer of recognition crossed his face. To him I was just another faceless skraeling. For that, at least, I was grateful. He leveled his knife a hairbreadth from my throat.
“Don’t move now, skraeling, or I’ll slit your neck along with your clothes.”
I felt the chill from the knifepoint against my collarbone and heard my parka rip at the neck. My atigi next. I didn’t raise my head to watch his progress—I couldn’t bear to see the inevitable surprise on his face. Instead I looked straight up, to the vault of sky overhead. Everything else disappeared from view. Only Sila remained.
A few stray clouds moved across my vision, wisps of white like shed caribou fur. A thick stripe of black birds coursed between them, bending and shifting as one. Once I flew on wings like yours. Let me fly again, I begged. Let me leave this earthly body, this rocking boat, this Viking stranger with his rough hands and his sharp blade.
I felt myself grow lighter, almost dizzy and, for a moment, thought the spirits had answered my prayers. Then Ingharr’s coarse laughter dragged me back to the earth, and I once more lay on damp wood. The cold air sliced across my naked breasts.
“No wonder this fish was so slippery in our nets!” he laughed, rocking back on his heels. “Come look!”
More faces peered down at me. The curly-headed boy, his mouth agape. Other Norsemen, young and old. Then Freydis herself, her green dress swirling at her ankles.
“Do you want to sink the ship?” she scolded. “Everyone back to your places. Don’t stand and gawk. Have you never seen a woman before?”
“Not one in pants!” the boy exclaimed.
Ingharr laughed. “Nor one so ugly!”
My cheeks flushed hot.
A frail old woman with gray hair cropped short against her scalp leaned close to Freydis. “She’s bright with fever, mistress.” She lilted and hummed her words in a way the other Norse did not.
“Yes, Muirenn, cover her and keep her warm. Stand back, Ingharr.”
And so the woman I most feared became my guardian. Together, Freydis and Muirenn, the old woman, pulled my ruined parka and atigi from my shoulders, then yanked off my trousers and wet boots. They wrapped me in scratchy wool blankets, covering my nakedness. On top of it all, they laid a heavy bear fur.
Slowly I grew warmer, but fear shook my body as violently as had the cold. Still, I couldn’t sink into despair, not yet. My quest hadn’t ended how I’d planned—but it had ended nonetheless. I would finally find Kiasik.
I peered furtively around the ship, searching desperately for my milk-brother. What will I say when I find him? I wondered belatedly. What kind of fool would come all this way to rescue someone, only to wind up as helpless as the captive?
Muirenn crouched beside me and offered a hunk of some strange white substance she called cheese. I hoped it tasted like blubber. It didn’t. I almost gagged trying to force the crumbling, foul-smelling food down my throat.
Freydis stared at me for a moment with an appraising glance. “She looks like a dwarf.”
“I wonder if all skraeling women are so short,” Muirenn mused.
“We’re not going to find out. Where there’s a woman, there’s sure to be a man, probably many. Probably a whole band of skraeling demons, ready to ki
ll us. We sail north.”
“The farther north we go, the harder the winter will be.”
Freydis tossed her a scornful glance. “Yes, thrall, the winter will be harsh. But better to suffer through hunger than die at the end of a skraeling’s spear.”
“Surely Norsemen can protect us from mere skraelings!”
“For all your years, you still trust in the skills of men? Did they not fail me in the forests of Vinland? Cower like children from a band of skraeling men not half so fierce as this woman?” She laughed, a sound more bitter than joyful. “No, Muirenn, we go north.”
She walked out of sight, but I heard her calling, “You there, come guard our prisoner. Make sure she doesn’t kill herself in the night. We may find use for her.”
Muirenn propped me upright. The curly-haired boy stood guard, his attempts to look threatening hampered by the dimples in his cheeks. He looked barely old enough for his first hunt.
Men bustled around the deck, grabbing oars and ropes. The ship creaked in protest, the hull swung northward, and we began to move. I strained against my bindings, hoping to catch a glimpse of my qarmaq. But the ropes were too tight and the sides of the ship too tall.
I wondered where White Paw had gone. Hopefully, she’d managed to warn Brandr. You should take the wolfdogs and forget all about me and my foolish quest, I begged him silently. Stay far away, safe from your enemies, safe from reckless Inuit. Yet I knew he wouldn’t. Brandr would try to rescue me, just as I tried to save Kiasik. And his quest would end just as badly.
The wind pushed me forward faster than any man could walk. Faster even than a wolf could run. Brandr would never find me.
Only once before, that first night after the murder of Issuk’s family, had I felt so alone. And then, at least, I’d had my weapons and my clothes. I had to find Kiasik. If I didn’t—if all of this had been for nothing—Freydis was right to warn that I might take my own life. The scratch of wool on my unbound breasts reminded me that the Norsemen saw me as something even worse than a nameless skraeling. They saw me as a woman. With all their ambatts dead, how long before their disdain shifted to desire?
The Wolf in the Whale Page 33