With a torrent of angry clicks and squeals, the dark narwhal who had once been Sweet One slid across the ice and into the path of the oncoming shaft. It sliced through her tail, pinning her to the ground. I bent to grab the arrow in both hands and yank it free, then threw my whole weight against the injured narwhal, shoving her into the open water. “Get them to safety,” I begged White Paw. If I couldn’t save Brandr, I could at least save my pack.
She swung her heavy head toward me. Her long, spiraled horn scraped uselessly against the ice, and her yellow-rimmed eye, more wolf than whale, burned into mine.
Another arrow, clearly aimed at me, clattered beside Floppy Eared’s flank. White Paw whistled once, then slammed her tusk into her sibling’s flank until he slid across the ice. They both splashed into the open lead.
Olfun and the others had made a bridge of sorts across the channel by lashing their spears together. Bjarni ran across it, nocking another arrow to his bow as he came and aiming for the departing whales. I grabbed my staff and charged him. He was stronger than I, broader; I could never defeat him in a wrestling match. But I didn’t need to. I swung my staff wide, catching the tip on Bjarni’s bowstring and sending the arrow sailing harmlessly overhead. I couldn’t kill him without ensuring Kiasik’s death, but I jabbed my staff at his stomach; the young freeman took a swift step to the side, reaching for the ax at his belt to fend me off—and plunging through a dark patch just beside his left heel.
He slammed his arms against the rim of stronger ice, holding his torso out of the slushy water while Olfun rushed across the makeshift bridge and hauled him free.
Brandr had already lunged for Ingharr, his hood flying backward as his sword flashed in the moonlight. The yellow-haired Norseman skidded away, barely avoiding the blow.
“Brandr Gunnarsson,” Ingharr hissed. “You’re supposed to be dead.” He dropped his hunting spear and slid his own sword free. Beside Brandr’s gleaming blade, Ingharr’s looked as flat and unremarkable as an Inuk’s slate knife. He blocked Brandr’s next slash, but the hardened steel bit into the softer iron—and stuck there.
In the space of a single breath, I saw the future as clearly as if I were an angakkuq again: Brandr would free his blade, strike again, shatter Ingharr’s sword. Then he would slice the head from Ingharr’s body as easily as he’d once done to Patik.
And Kiasik would die.
Yet if Brandr stopped fighting now, he would lose his head.
I stood frozen, unable to choose between my milk-brother and my Viking.
Snorri made the decision for me.
The boy who’d once protected me now surged forward like a winter gale, knocking me from my feet.
My cheek burned against the ice as he knelt on my back. I stopped struggling when he pressed his knife against my bobbing throat.
Brandr jerked his sword free of Ingharr’s and spun toward Snorri.
“One more step, Gunnarsson,” the boy snarled, his voice made old and rough by rage, “and our blood debt is paid. This woman dies for your sins.”
I tried to choke out a warning, to tell my friend that if he surrendered now, the Norse would only kill him later. Snorri cut through skin. Hot blood trickled across my neck like tears.
Brandr stood as stony and silent as an inuksuk. Only his eyes spoke of his torment.
His gaze fixed on mine, full of regret, full of fear. He knelt upon the ice, bending first his good leg, then his bad. Slowly, as if fighting against a rushing current, he laid his sword on the ground before him and surrendered to his fate.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Only scant torchlight seeped around the edges of the crude door that imprisoned us in the knarr’s storage hold. I wanted to bend the light to my will and cast it on Brandr’s face so I might read his expression. His silence weighed on me more heavily than the iron chains around my hands.
I made a grim attempt at levity. “At least this time they didn’t cut off my clothes.”
“They shouldn’t do that to a woman.” His voice was solemn.
I snorted. “But when you thought I was a man, then it would’ve been fine?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I’m still the same.”
“No,” he said with a forcefulness that surprised me. “You’re not. Neither of us is.”
Despite Snorri’s pleas, Ingharr hadn’t killed us on the ice. Remembering the way he’d savored the red men’s spread-eagling, I decided he preferred executions with a little more spectacle. While Olfun tended to shivering Bjarni, and Snorri paced with ill-concealed rage, Ingharr bound our hands with rope. He dragged us like recalcitrant dogs back to Freydisbudir.
A great commotion had greeted our return. I saw little but hatred in the Greenlanders’ eyes as Ulfar’s murderer walked by. They would welcome Brandr’s death.
Kiasik had stood among them in his patched cloak. Blinking as if snow-blind, he swiveled his gaze from me to the tall, flame-haired stranger who walked protectively at my side.
But even Kiasik’s shock paled next to Freydis’s. At the sight of Brandr, she raised her hands to her mouth as if to stifle a scream. Then loathing twisted her features. She finally understood: I was no seer sent by her gods—only an accomplice of her great enemy.
“Where Brandr Gunnarsson comes, an army follows!” she snarled, a finger jutting toward us.
Even Ingharr looked stunned by her pronouncement.
“Wife,” Thorvard began. “He came alone. Why—”
“Quiet,” Freydis snapped, all pretense of wifely patience gone. “Lock Gunnarsson and the skraeling woman in the hold of my knarr. Put her brother in the other. Then back on board, all of you. ”
“But the longhouse—” protested Olfun.
“Is not safe with an army on the move,” interrupted Freydis. “Now, hurry! And bring the flock. I won’t lose our sheep to this treachery.”
The Norsemen dragged us to Freydis’s boat and thrust us in the hold beneath the foredeck that had once held the milking ewes and their lambs. They wrapped cold iron chains around our wrists and ankles. A tattooed freeman stood guard outside the makeshift cell. Shouting seeped through the deck above as the Norsemen argued our fate, their words muffled by the nearer bleating of the sheep milling outside our cell. I wondered if Freydis’s men finally believed her dreams of Frost Giants coming to kill them. Or that Brandr had truly planned to lead an army of skraelings against their camp. It doesn’t matter what they believe of dreams and prophecies, I realized. They know Brandr killed Ulfar. That alone will seal his fate. Snorri’s voice—high-pitched with youthful outrage—cut through the noise. He wanted vengeance for his father. Blood for blood.
In the darkness of the ship’s hold, I tried to block out the sound of our doom.
After so long apart, Brandr and I could finally resume the conversation we’d begun so many days before. But our newfound intimacy had vanished, replaced by a reticence we hadn’t felt since our first meeting. With no secrets to cloak me, I felt unsure how to speak to him. I had imagined pulling off my atigi, running my hands along his skin. But now…
“You thought I’d left you,” I said. A statement, not a question.
“I awoke and you were gone. White Paw and Floppy, too. And for a moment… yes. I thought you’d seen what happened with Galinn, seen me for a coward—and you’d run. But then I saw you’d taken down the bear pelt. And I knew. Even before Sweet One dragged me outside by the cuff of my parka, and I spotted the knarr on the horizon, sailing north. I knew. You had seen it all. And you’d decided to stay.”
When I thought of how he’d turned our sled into a boat to chase after me, I felt like new ice above a rising tide, swaying with emotions I couldn’t control.
“You’re cold,” said Brandr.
“Me? I’m used to the cold!”
“I can hear your teeth chattering. I’d give you my parka if I could get it off,” he apologized, the chains clinking as he raised his bound hands.
“I don’t need it,”
I insisted, my teeth still knocking.
“Omat.” The warmth of his voice only increased my trembling.
He didn’t reach to touch me, yet I could imagine the muscles straining against his parka as he clenched and unclenched his bound hands.
Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. For so many moons, I’d feared to touch him. And I knew that after learning about the horrors in my past—and acknowledging the horrors in his own—he wouldn’t reach for me first.
I eased closer and lay down, resting my head on his lap. I didn’t speak, just lay there shaking. After a long moment, his calloused fingers brushed the hair from my cheek. The iron chains around his wrists hovered above me. When he finally spoke, it was with an unusual hesitancy.
“Did I ever tell you of Frey and the giantess?”
I shook my head. It seemed a strange time for storytelling. Then again, we had always spoken best through tales.
He took a deep breath and began. “Frey, the god of growing things, once owned a magic sword. Dwarven forged. Odin All-Father warned him to keep it close, for it would be needed to fight Surtur, the fire fiend in the Ragnarok.”
Brandr settled into his usual easy cadence, reciting this tale as he had so many others. I could almost imagine myself back in our warm qarmaq with the wolfdogs curled nearby. “But one day, Frey glimpsed a beautiful giantess emerging from her father’s home. He vowed he’d give anything to make her his wife. A stranger appeared—as they so often do in tales such as these—and offered to get the giantess for Frey. The stranger asked only one thing in return: the magic sword. And Frey, whose heart has always been stronger than his head, let the stranger have it. The giantess’s name was Gerda, and she was a fearless shield-maiden—but even in all her battle rage, she could not withstand that magic sword. They say that when the stranger brought her before gentle Frey, all her wrath disappeared, and she fell in love with the golden god.”
Brandr twisted his fingers gently through my hair. “Frey went to thank the stranger for retrieving his beloved. The man removed his disguise—and there stood Loki. The Shapeshifter. They say Frey has a sword no longer, and the other gods mock him for falling for Loki’s tricks. Why sacrifice such a weapon for a giantess? Gerda isn’t fair and slender like the goddesses of the Aesir. But Frey doesn’t mind. He thinks she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.” He paused just long enough to trace a finger across my heated cheek. “Besides”—a smile warmed his voice—“he doesn’t need a sword any longer. He has her to protect him.”
I thought you didn’t believe in tales, I wanted to say. You shouldn’t believe in that one. If you think I’m strong enough to protect you, you’re wrong.
We sat in silence for a moment longer. Against the top of my head, I could feel the rhythmic pulse of his breath. My eyes fluttered closed as he traced my lashes, my lips, the smooth curve of my jaw.
“I guess you’ll never grow a mustache,” he mused, breaking the sudden tension.
I found a thread of laughter for him and felt rather than heard his chuckling response.
He fell silent when an angry shout pierced the walls of the hold.
“You know what they’re doing up there,” he said, his tone somber again. “They’ve gathered in council to decide if we live or die.”
I sat up, wishing once more that I could see his face.
“Are you afraid to die?” I asked.
“You know the answer to that. I wasn’t. Until I met you.” I could feel the warmth of his gaze even with his eyes in shadow. “I’ve only just found you. I’m not ready to let you go.”
An iron bolt clanked, and the rough door jerked open.
Freydis stood silhouetted in the light of the guard’s torch. She’d removed her wimple, and her hair gleamed like fresh-shed blood in the firelight.
“The Althing has decided,” she said. “For the murder of Ulfar, you, Brandr Gunnarsson, will be put to death on the morrow. The gods demand it. You escaped their justice once before—you will not do so again.”
Brandr’s shoulders straightened. “You killed a houseful of women with your own hands. It’s you who should be tried.”
“I only did as the gods demanded.” Color flooded her pale cheeks. “I know you, Gunnarsson. I know your plans.” She turned her flashing eyes on me. “But you. As strange as you are, I thought I understood you. A woman who fights like a man—I thought you and I had something in common. Now I find you with this traitor—this demon who would lead an army to destroy me and mine. You bring him here to kill us all. You thought to trick me into leaving your land, but now I see the truth. You lied to me, skraeling. Loki doesn’t freeze the ice to trap me; Thor does it to reward me. He wants me to stay. He sent me dreams of battle not so I would flee Vinland, but so I would ready myself for the fight to come.” She tossed her head like a proud caribou bull displaying its antlers. “The men do not believe me. They think I rave about a phantom only. But I know better. We will defend the ships from whatever demons you send against us. And I will not leave when the ice thaws. I’ll send the other knarr back to sell our timber and pelts. It will return with swords and horses and men. Your brother will stay as my thrall; he’ll tell me the ways of your kind. Then any skraelings who think to fight us will die upon our blades. From Helluland to Markland to Vinland—all will be Freydisbudir.” Her voice rose, as if buoyed by her visions of conquest and triumph. She looked at me as if at a beetle to be smashed beneath her heel.
“I don’t know how Brandr Gunnarsson came into your life,” she went on, “but you’ll regret he ever did. Tomorrow, at the sky’s first lightening, he will be spread-eagled upon a cross of wood. You, skraeling demon, will be right next to him, watching him die. And when the blood has left his body and he hangs there, a harmless husk of a man, then you, too, will be killed.”
Brandr strained against his iron chains. “Have you gone mad, Eriksdottir? Drunk on Vinland wine? There is no army! And Omat has never harmed you. Neither have I.”
Freydis paced closer to him, laying one white hand upon his bearded jaw and turning his face to the torchlight. “Not yet. But the gods tell me you’re a danger. Ulfar was only a prelude to the destruction you want to rain down upon us all. And this skraeling will help you do it. So I will kill you both—just as I killed poor Galinn. He bleated when Ingharr’s sword carved out his gut, you know, as weak and mild as the sheep he herded.”
Nostrils flaring, Brandr snapped his teeth as if to bite off her fingers. Freydis stepped calmly out of his reach.
“Tomorrow you will die, Brandr Gunnarsson. And finally, you will cease to haunt my dreams. I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep.”
The guard bolted the door behind her, throwing the hold once more into darkness.
My shaking resumed.
Brandr sank back against the curve of the boat’s hull. I could see it before me even now: Just as they’d done to the red men, the Norse would lash him to a cross, slit open his back, pull out his lungs, and spread them wide. They would pump like the flapping of an eagle’s wings.
He reached his bound hands to me, his fingers barely visible in the dark. I crawled closer; he clutched me awkwardly against him. In the racing of his heart, I knew his easy confidence was shattered. This was no flimsy bark hut for us to break through. No wolfdogs would come to our rescue. We both knew we would die. And not just us.
“My family,” I groaned. “You heard Freydis. She’ll stay. She’ll destroy my people. If I hadn’t tried to trick her, she would’ve fled to Greenland when the ice melted and never looked back.”
“Perhaps,” he acknowledged, “but other Norse would hear of Vinland’s riches, and they’d make the journey. The future is already spun, or so my brother would say. Freydis or not—the Norse will come.”
I knew he spoke to relieve me of my guilt. He only made it worse. “I’ve killed my family. And you with them.” My voice shook more with anger than with grief. “Why did you come for me?” I demanded. “You, at least, might have surviv
ed.”
“I don’t regret it,” he whispered against my hair. “The only thing I regret is all those months with you, never knowing what was right before my eyes.”
An exclamation, half laugh and half sob, burst from my lips. Freydis and Kiasik, Vikings and skraelings—it was all too much. I was no angakkuq. No leader. No hero. Tomorrow we would die. For now, I’d make the most of the time I had left.
I took his hands and raised them to my face.
His fingertips rested gently on my cheeks, my neck. “I’ve been thinking about nothing but you all the way up the coast. Of all I’d told you—and all I had left to say. Nights in the boat, the narwhals breaching around me, no real hope of finding you, much less rescuing you. Knowing I faced almost certain death. I dreamed only of this.”
He pressed his lips upon my eyelids. He tasted my new-sprung tears, my skin, the corner of my mouth. I’d wondered about this Viking custom, this kiss. I wondered no more.
His lips closed over mine, his beard rough upon my chin. I opened my mouth willingly to his, breathing the scent of his skin, tasting his tongue. I pressed my own bound hands against his chest, wishing I could split apart our chains and put my arms around him—
Then his hands suddenly dropped from my face. He broke our kiss, breathing heavily. His nose rested upon my cheek in an unconscious imitation of an Inuk’s caress. I turned my face into his, feeling the roughness of his skin, the smooth bone of his straight Viking nose.
In a voice hoarse with desire, he echoed my thoughts from a moment before. “I want to get out of these chains. I want to hold you. And I do not want you to be afraid.”
“Afraid? It’s too late for that. I am afraid of spread-eagling. Afraid my family will be killed. Afraid for Kiasik and for you and for the fate of us all. But afraid of you? Of your touch?” I took a deep breath and gripped his hands in my own. “No, Brandr. I am not afraid of you.”
I heard the relieved smile in his voice. “I should’ve known better. What does the fearsome hunter Omat, whose skills in a fight, against man or bear, I could never doubt, have to fear from a lowly Norseman, and a chained one at that? I might’ve been blind for the past months, but I wasn’t deaf. I heard many times about how an Inuk would never lose a fight against a Viking, and I believed you. You’ve nothing to fear from me, unless you’ve been lying to me all this time about more than just your sex.”
The Wolf in the Whale Page 39