The Blood-Tainted Winter

by T L Greylock

  “Take care you do not wake the sleeping malice.”

  Raef met Vakre’s eyes. “He should do the same.”

  The Hammerling’s two hundred soon overran the camp and Raef lost sight of Eira. He spoke to Erling to ensure the perimeter was yet intact. “Take more men and make it larger,” Raef said. “With so many men, I do not know how we can remain undetected here much longer.”

  “Do I still travel tomorrow lord? To Andrik’s stronghold?”

  “Yes.” Raef turned to go then caught Erling’s arm. “The Hammerling may give you orders.” He did not have to continue.

  “You will know every word, lord.” The captain bowed his head and then began to shout the names of Vannheim men to do as Raef had bidden. For a time, those from Vannheim had outnumbered all others, but no longer. The Hammerling’s arrival had changed that, though Raef knew his remaining warriors would arrive on foot with the rest of the Hammerling’s host. Only then would the balance of power be known.

  With the darkness of night came a flowing of ale. The Hammerling was well supplied and generous with the men, especially those who had survived with Eirik of Kolhaugen. He called them great heroes and promised the spoils of the Palesword’s defeat would be theirs. Raef watched men drink, their faces bright in the light of the fires the Hammerling had demanded with no thought to caution, but he felt none of the cheer that had spread across the camp. Finishing his ale, he turned to leave the drunken revels behind but came face to face with Eira.

  Her face was dark, the firelight blocked by Raef’s body, but he did not need light to know the line of her jaw, the hollow in her throat, the shape of her waist. Instinct told him to reach for her, but instinct also held him back.

  “Where is Cilla? I left her in your care.”

  Eira shrugged. “She wished to stay.

  Raef frowned. “Your arm?”

  “It is better.”

  “Can you fight?”

  “My fingers can grasp a shield. And if they grow tired, my blade will do the work alone.” Her confidence was admirable but Raef wondered how much strength she could have regained in her shield arm in such a short time. The last words they had spoken to each other hung in Raef’s mind and he knew not what would follow.

  Eira stepped close and ran a finger down the shape of his ear and then along his jaw. Raef watched her eyes. They were calm. Leaning forward, Eira kissed him. There was no longing in it, nothing tentative or slow. Just hunger that mirrored his own.

  Twenty-Seven

  Raef plunged into the icy pool, touched the bottom, and resurfaced under the narrow, gentle waterfall that fell from above. He stood with his eyes closed, his skin burning with the cold, and let the water run down his face. In his mind’s eye, he saw his father emerge from a pool that might have been this one’s brother deep in the hidden places of Vannheim. Snow had fallen that day, just as it did now, in fat flakes, and Raef saw his younger self look up to the tree branches and beyond to the sky until the snow caught in his lashes and he was forced to blink it away. His father had laughed at Raef’s reluctance to brave the cold waters and had threatened to push him in. Not one to back down, Raef had submerged himself, certain he would jump out the next instant, only to find the cold was exhilarating. His father had smiled.

  Stepping from the water, Raef dried himself with a blanket and dressed, delaying as long as he could before returning to the commotion of the camp. There he saw the Hammerling and Fengar deep in conversation. Hauk of Ruderk hovered at their shoulders. All three looked his way but he was not asked to join them. The Hammerling looked angry but resigned. Fengar wore a pleased expression. Hauk had the face of a man who was close to achieving his goal but knew the other two could be at each other’s throats any moment.

  For some time this went on. The Hammerling made wide gestures while Hauk kept his precise. The Hammerling’s voice rose and carried to Raef more than once. He heard something about false friends and then later a curse on the Palesword. At length, they broke apart. Hauk first followed the Hammerling, speaking a few words in his ear, and then trotted after Fengar to convey something further. Raef did not need to hear anything to know some kind of bargain had been struck. What terms had been agreed to and what threats had been made Raef did not know or care. They would fight a common enemy together.

  “And afterwards?” Siv had been watching beside Raef. “What happens when the Palesword is dead and burned? Will they be blood brothers still?” Siv grinned.

  “You know they will not. They will call it a great alliance for as long as it suits their purpose. And then they will remember all the reasons they hate each other.”

  “Still, we need more men.”

  Raef sighed. “Even then, I do not know how we can win this fight.”

  Fengar wasted no time. With a horse under him and a small escort on all sides, he rode from the camp with speed. When the Hammerling approached as Fengar disappeared into the falling snow, Raef was surprised.

  The great wolf skin across the Hammerling’s shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep breath and let it out. “There goes my kingly prize. Ten days, and then we meet in the high hills of Gornhald. He could take his army and flee to the farthest islands and I would not know until it is too late.”

  “Even the farthest islands will fall to the Palesword if we do not stop him. Fengar must know that,” Raef said.

  “That is the only reason he goes free. And he does know it.” The Hammerling turned his wolf-shoulders to look at Raef. “But will he remember it when his warriors are all around him? When they clamor for him and him alone? When they vow to spill my blood in vengeance for his capture? Will he remember it then, Skallagrim?”

  “I do not like it any better than you, but Hauk had the wisdom to see what our stubbornness would have made us blind to. We cannot fight the Palesword alone.”

  The Hammerling was quiet for a moment. “Have you seen these warriors who do not bleed?”

  “No.”

  “I would think it a lie, a fool’s tale, if it did not come from so many mouths.” Brandulf shifted his feet and shook his head. “Send a man to intercept the warriors who follow. They will no longer join us here. We will meet in Gornhald.” He turned, leaving Raef to watch him depart. Calling for Finnolf Horsebreaker, Raef asked the young captain who his fastest rider was.

  “Svelbarr, lord,” Finnolf said.

  “Give him the best horse and send him south. He must find Vathnar of Norfaem and the rest of the Hammerling’s army and direct them to Gornhald. Now.” Finnolf ran off and within moments a horse raced past Raef, a young warrior crouched low on its back. Raef wondered if he was sending Svelbarr to his death. One man might pass through the wilderness unseen, but one man could not fight his way through a wilderness filled with the enemy.

  The camp was brimming with men and the air was thick with their voices and their sweat. It would only grow worse for there was nothing to do but wait. Wait for Erling to return. Wait until it was time to ride for Gornhald. Wait for the Palesword to strike. The idea came to Raef quickly and he did not let it form fully before seeking out the Hammerling.

  “Lord,” Raef said. The Hammerling was speaking to Hauk of Ruderk but he turned at the sound of Raef’s voice. “We gain nothing by waiting here. Let me take twenty men and search out the Palesword. Learn what I can before we face him.”

  The Hammerling studied Raef but he did not look to Hauk for his opinion. He nodded and Raef thought he could see relief. “Go. You have ten days.”

  Choosing a northwesterly route, Raef led his band of twenty through the snowdrifts that deepened with each passing dawn. The world was still around them. Birds twittered but remained out of sight. The tracks of deer and rabbits were not hard to find, but none crossed their path. Of people, they saw nothing until the second day when they came upon an abandoned village near the river that marked Hullbern lands. The homes had been ransacked and one set alight and now turned to ash. Yet the plunderers had not been thorough for the snow was litt
ered with possessions that had fallen through their hands, as though they had fled, interrupted. The ash pile told him the fire had been set perhaps three days before and there were no bodies or signs of struggle, as though the village had been empty before the raiders came. The snow was a muddle of prints, man and horse, and Raef could not determine how many of each had passed through.

  A small piece of wood caught his eye and Raef knelt, brushing the snow away to reveal a carved longship, sleek and sturdy, so small it was swallowed in Raef’s palm as he picked it up. A square, white sail flew from a tiny mast and eight pairs of perfect oars waited, ready to dip into the waves. A fierce beast snarled from the prow, its eyes made bright with flecks of red paint. The wood was smooth under Raef’s fingers and he closed his eyes, hearing the call of a gull and the crash of a foaming wave, smelling the brine, feeling the deck of a ship beneath his feet.

  “What is it?” Siv peered over Raef’s shoulder, her voice quiet in his ear.

  “A child’s toy.” Raef swallowed away the bitterness that had risen with the words but there was no fooling Siv. She ran a hand down his forearm until her fingers reached the tiny ship.

  “It was made with care.” Siv tuned the carving in her hand. “Just like the real thing, no?”

  “Yes,” Raef breathed. “But the real thing can take you where the sun sinks into the sea, where the stars climb into the sky.” Raef clenched the hand that had held the ship, trying to quench his thirst for the salt sea. He opened his palm again. “My rowing calluses are gone.”

  Siv’s touch was light as her fingertips kissed the hard surface of his hand. “Are you sure?” she teased, her mouth curving in a grin. Then she grew serious once more. “They will return.”

  Raef stared into Siv’s eyes, searching for a thread of her certainty that he could anchor to himself. “When?” he asked, desperate for an answer.

  But Siv was silent and then Eira was there, her gaze roaming over the ship without seeing, her boots crunching through the snow, and it was time to move on.

  Leaving the village behind, they crossed the churning, icy water into Hullbern, but before leaving the far bank, Raef dismounted and set the tiny ship free in the river. He watched it ride the rapids, so small yet so defiant in the face of the water that could overwhelm it, but a shout from ahead called Raef away before the ship disappeared from sight. He turned from the river, his heart sinking, and it was there, among the trees, they discovered the bodies. The warriors were half-buried in fresh snow but the frozen faces and remains were easily spotted. Pulling one man from the snow, Raef searched him for any sign of who he was or where he came from. There was nothing, but the third body yielded an answer. It was a woman and her hair, now crusted with snow, was long and blonde. Raef knew her. He had never learned the names of the three sisters who fought for Fengar, the so-called daughters of Thor, but there was no mistaking the corpse for one of them.

  “These were Fengar’s men,” Raef called out. There were twelve bodies in all and all had died brutally. Only one of the sisters was among them. Raef’s men pulled them all from the snow and Raef noticed that nothing of value had been taken from the dead. “Arm rings, fine swords, even torcs,” Raef said to Vakre. “Whoever did this took nothing.”

  Vakre touched the skin of the blonde woman. “Three days old?”

  Raef nodded. “Why have the wolves not come?”

  Vakre looked grim. “Perhaps they learned to fear what did this,” he said, voicing Raef’s thoughts. “A rescue party,” Vakre said, gesturing to the dead around them, “looking for Fengar. But they found something they were not looking for.”

  “Or it found them. Eirik said the Palesword was keeping Freyja’s army close and sending out his men instead. No more, it seems.” Raef had no proof that the blonde sister and her men had been hunted down by the dead warriors, but it fit. Something had driven Fengar’s men from the village and its spoils, something they did not wish to fight. “It was perhaps not their first encounter.”

  After taking what they wanted, they left the bodies behind and continued on until darkness forced them to stop. Raef chose a place that would give them high ground against anyone who dared to approach through the trees and called for a fire. As he searched for kindling that would light easily, Raef left the knoll behind and stopped to fill his water skin from a swift, narrow stream that had just finished a long journey out of the mountains that stretched across Hullbern.

  As he knelt and dipped his skin in the water, Raef felt eyes on his back. Giving no indication of his wariness, he finished filling the skin, stood, and hooked it back on his belt. All the while, his ears strained for any noise, any sense of where the watcher might be.

  At last, Raef turned, his hand on his sword, but the figure that stood in front of him chilled his mind and body and he did nothing.

  The Deepminded’s smile was as cold as he remembered, a frozen thing that seemed to poison Raef’s senses. There in the last twilight, she stood not ten paces from him, though how she had gotten so close without giving herself away entirely, Raef could not tell. She was dressed in the same robes but she carried no bow or quiver of arrows.

  Their eyes met and held and Raef, knowing he should cut her throat, tried to speak. “What do you want?”

  “The very words I was going to ask you, Raef Skallagrim.” Her voice was honey on steel and Raef felt his skin tingle.

  “No games, no empty words. If you have something to say, say it. If not, leave me be or risk your life.”

  The smile grew and Raef felt like a child only pretending to be fierce. “Such malicious words. You have changed since we last met.”

  Raef said nothing.

  “You wish me to speak? I will.” The smile vanished. “You will find what you seek, Skallagrim, and it will be your end. The wolf-song and the serpent-breath are coming for you.”

  “Is that all you have to threaten me with? Do you not think I know this?” Raef heard his voice rising. “There is no wisdom in what you say. Only madness. The madness you seek to fill me with.” As Raef said it, he knew it to be true. “Your words are poison and I will listen no more.”

  “I can tell you who killed your father.”

  The woman’s words froze Raef to the snow at his feet and snaked into his ears. “Jarl Thrainson killed my father, and has paid for it.” His voice sounded hollow and weak, a paltry defense against the Deepminded’s knowledge.

  “And are you satisfied with Jarl Thrainson’s death? No, you crave more. I can give you that.”

  “For what price?” The question tripped off Raef’s tongue before he could stop it and the Deepminded’s smile widened.

  “Not a price, no, but a choice, Raef Skallagrim. The name of he who conspired against your father, or victory over the Palesword. You cannot have both.”

  Raef’s ears burned, his tongue was thick in his mouth, and, as he blinked back dizziness, his father appeared before him, a shadowy figure reaching for him. Einarr’s eyes were full of sorrow and grief and shame that mirrored Raef’s heart, and he took a shaking step through the snow, his fingers stretching to meet his father’s hand. But there was nothing, not the warmth or the calluses Raef knew from memory, not even a breath of life ebbing from Einarr’s cold lips.

  “What will it be, Skallagrim? Will you let your father’s murderer go unscathed? Or will you restore Vannheim’s honor at last and give your father peace at Odin’s table?”

  Raef’s head felt swollen, waterlogged, his knees as limp as fish, the whispers rippling through him until even his own heartbeat was overwhelmed.

  “The name, by the gods, give me the name!”

  The cry seemed to come from the sky, but it was his voice, his misery, and the shadow-formed Einarr shattered.

  “You fool! You beg like a dog. Such weakness. Such a pathetic form of life.” The Deepminded threw back her head and laughed, her mouth gaping wide enough to swallow the sky, and Raef stepped backward, dragging himself away from the abyss she had opened, reaching for th
e hilt of his sword as though it alone could bring him back.

  “Then I will carry my shame to Valhalla,” Raef whispered, drawing the blade forth.

  He lunged at the Deepminded but he met only empty air. A hard laugh caused him to spin to his right but she vanished again the moment he made to strike, this time appearing close to the water. She laughed again but Raef willed away the sound and the ringing in his ears. He closed his eyes as the skin on his wrist began to feel warm and he knew the burning sensation would follow. Breathing deeply, he opened his eyes. She stood yet by the mountain stream. Raef stepped forward again, his sword held high, but this time when she reappeared to his right, Raef’s knife was quicker and the blade, flashing away from his other hand, caught her shoulder. It was not a solid hit but it opened a line of blood through her robe. The knife fell to the snow behind her.

  The Deepminded’s face showed more surprise than pain as she reeled backward and then she let forth a howl that shook every fiber of Raef’s being. Her voice contained all the rage in the world in that moment. When she disappeared again, a flare of nothing in the growing darkness, Raef knew she would not return. Raef exhaled, relieved to be free but unable to rid himself of the sight of his father, so close, but forever out of reach.

  He collected his knife from the snow and looked close at the smear of red that lined the edge of the blade. A noise drew his attention and he looked up to see Vakre sprinting through the snow. Siv and Eira were close behind.

  “Raef,” Vakre shouted. He drew closer and stopped, confusion on his face. “What happened? We heard a scream.”

  Raef flipped the knife to Vakre, who caught it with one hand. “The blood of the Deepminded,” he said.

  Vakre’s face grew grave. “She was here?”

  Raef nodded, not ready to speak of the choice the Deepminded had given him and the ease with which she had stripped him of his will. “Perhaps she will not trouble me again. She will have a mark to remember me by.”