Asa loosed all her fury; she scratched his greasy, pitted face and battered his chest and slammed a fist into his ragged teeth. Blood darkened his beard. He tried to block her blows, but they fell as relentlessly as hail. When he finally managed to catch her forearm and stop it midair, he gave it a vicious twist downward, roughly yanking her off him. The move tore a fire-hot pain through her shoulder and a cry from her lips. The cry hardened into a scream of determination, and the skald got only as far as his knees before she knocked him flat again. This time his chin hit the dirt at an awkward angle, and she saw the shock in his eyes as his arm flopped uselessly and the knife came free.
She buried one knee between his lumpy shoulders and braced the other against the ground. Both of them eyed the knife; its handle lay tantalizingly close. The skald wriggled beneath her. He stretched his arm longer and longer, using his fingers to pull himself through the dirt. It took all her strength to keep him pinned while trying to reach over and past him.
She was almost there. He squirmed with surprising strength, and his middle finger scraped the handle. Alarmed, she made a desperate lunge. That teetered her off balance, and he seized the opportunity to heave himself upward and toss her off.
His fingers closed around the knife’s handle. He was breathing hard, and for a moment she thought he was going to lie there, but with a rasping snarl he turned on her. His arm drew back and—as if she were watching it happen to someone else—she saw the point of the knife come stabbing through the air straight at her.
Instinct jerked her aside, and the knife seemed to bury its blade in her tangled hair, though another fire seared her neck. He lifted the knife again. She rolled to safety, calling for Rune.
She couldn’t see him but she knew he’d come. And just as she pulled an arm across her face, her world became a storm of stamping hooves and sickening thuds. There was another scream—a man’s scream this time—and she found her feet and stumbled away. From the other side of the byre she watched in queasy horror as the dun horse savaged the skald. He reared all the way to the ceiling and brought his sharp hooves down on the cowering man. Jorgen hugged the wall but Rune turned and delivered a barrage of kicks. The skald managed to twist out of the way and take a few running steps, but Rune chased after him, his teeth clacking like iron on iron. He trapped the skald in the corner.
Jorgen turned to face the furious animal. Panting, and cradling his ribs, he yet managed to lift the knife high and charge at Rune. The knife slashed across the horse’s chest.
Every pore of Asa’s skin felt Rune’s pain, and she screamed with him. To her bewilderment, Rune didn’t retreat. He lifted onto his hind legs again, an effort that spattered blood across the skald’s face and arms. The hoof that glanced off the man’s shoulder crumpled him, but as he fell Jorgen kept stabbing the knife at the horse’s legs.
She had to get Rune out of here; the horse was going to kill himself trying to protect her. She ran up the earthen ramp to push the byre door all the way open. The red stallion nearly knocked her down rushing through it; the bay followed on his heels.
“Rune!” He flicked an ear but reared up again, striking relentlessly at the skald. She’d never seen him in such a rage. “Rune! Here!” He turned his head then, giving the skald a free opportunity to deliver the death blow. “Here!” she yelled at the top of her voice, and the horse lunged toward her as the knife swept the empty air. She raced ahead of him through the doorway and darted aside, crouching slightly. The moment he shot through, she leaped for his mane and pulled herself across his back. Barely holding on, she urged him toward the black shore.
The skald’s anguished howl echoed in their wake.
ÁTTA
If not for the giant silver brooch of a moon pinned against the night sky, they might have tumbled over rocks or tangled themselves in the ocean’s debris. But with it they were able to mark the shoreline by its undulating ribbon of moonlit waves.
Was it just yesterday they’d galloped here? It was too much to ask of an old horse, especially after Jorgen’s attack, so when they were safely around the first finger of land and alone with the sea, Asa tried to coax Rune to a walk. Clutching his thick mane, she thrust her heels forward and fought the pounding momentum. “Whoa.” That got her nothing but jounced off balance, and for a few dizzying heartbeats the ground rushed perilously close. “Whoa!” she hollered again as her knee sought a grip. She managed to right herself, but Rune kept charging along the shore, carrying her with him. The gray-whiskered prankster was taking full advantage of galloping bridle-less!
Again she tugged on his mane, nearly yanking the hairs from their roots, and this time she stretched her leg all the way to the point of his shoulder and thumped hard. “Whoa!” she demanded. Rune sank to a halt. His immediate and indignant snort, though, which he trumpeted through the dark, denied his submission. He pranced sideways, swished his tail, and shook his head in defiance. He could go on, he seemed to claim, even with his breath coming in roaring gusts like the waves at his feet.
Feet that were limping. Now that fear no longer buoyed their flight, she detected the unevenness in his gait and hastily slid off him.
Blood splattered his shoulder and forelegs and oozed, glistening, from two gashes along his neck and a deeper one under his chest. Cupping a hand beneath his jaw, she coaxed him to take a few steps. His wincing effort showed it was the chest wound that hurt the most. But he wasn’t trembling, wasn’t dropping to the ground and giving up. This was Rune, after all. Between his labored breaths, he managed a soft nicker, a depositing of his trust in her.
She needed something with the healing color of black—a raven’s feather or a polished stone or … even a simple black thread. That she had in her tunic. Admittedly it was more of a woody brown, but in the moonlight the piece of wool she was working free of its woven pattern would serve as black. She picked the thread loose, in and out, in and out, until she could snap off a length with her teeth.
“Bone to blood,” she chanted as she tied the thread around Rune’s foreleg, as close to the chest wound as she could get. “Blood to sinew and flesh to hide. Odin, I call to you! Heal!” Rune worked his lips across the top of her head as she repeated the chant a second and third time. Already the deepest wound seemed to be dripping less. Satisfied, she rose.
What were they going to do now? Where were they going to go? She looked up and down the strip of shoreline, and for the first time she became aware of the stinging pain in her neck. Running a hand behind her ear, she felt a stickiness that could only be blood—her blood. She’d narrowly avoided being killed herself. With a renewed sense of danger, she looked behind to make sure Jorgen wasn’t following.
The frosted light of moon and stars revealed no shadows slipping along the path leading from the fjord. They were alone. Safe for now. But where were they going to pass the remainder of the night? Such exhaustion gnawed at her bones that she felt she could very nearly make a bed atop the shore’s mosaic of rocks. As she stroked Rune’s face a blast of sea spray reminded her they needed to find some place more sheltered. Hating to push him on, she nonetheless whistled her command, and they turned away from the familiarity of their fjord and began walking. The unnatural sequence of crunching steps punctured by a sudden grunt and thud marked Rune’s hobbling progress. Each snort of pain stung her afresh.
The sheer cliffs on their right offered no shelter whatsoever. When the two followed the shoreline inland, poking along the base of the ridged fingers, the steep forests loomed so dark and forbidding that they stuck to the narrow strip between mountain and water rather than risk their lives on those precipitous black slopes. The moon lit their way for a while, but when it finally slipped behind the mountains, taking its icy light with it, the boundary between water and land bled into shadow, and Asa, at least, walked blindly. For comfort she slipped her hand through the coarse fringe of Rune’s mane, resting it lightly on the warm crest of his neck. He was moving more steadily now, and though she had to hunch her stiffening shou
lders against the frigid gusts hurled from the ocean, they went on searching for shelter without mishap.
It was when they were trudging around a shadowed cove lying deep between two craggy, rock-strewn knuckles that an eerie whine sounded above them. Rune stopped, ears pricked toward the darkness. Was something stalking them? Had Jorgen somehow gotten ahead of them? She listened harder. Only the innocent splashing of water against the rocky shore broke the silence. But as she hesitated, frozen in place, she realized the damp cold was seeping through her clothing. She envisioned her mother curled beneath the sheepskins and feather quilt. If she hurried, if she turned around right now, she could be back in the longhouse lying beside her mother before she awoke.
But Jorgen would be there too.
Rune’s sudden snort and shy from underneath her hand shot her through with alarm. He stood tensed, ready for flight. What? What was out there? As hard as she tried, she couldn’t see anything. Yet every nerve in her own body screamed at her to go back.
No. She couldn’t—she wouldn’t—risk Rune’s life by returning to their clan. They’d have to sacrifice her first, because if they killed her horse, well … Odin himself would have nothing on her fury. Though her heart drummed in her ears, she disguised her fear with murmurs of soothing nonsense and sidled over to Rune. She scratched his withers and, after a few more snorts followed by another long stretch of silence, he relaxed.
Side by side they continued, finding nothing more dangerous than additional dark shore stretching ahead. Like the walking dead they plodded, step after numb step, mindlessly retracing yesterday’s gallop—or was it the day before that the Sea Dragon had sailed? She shook her head. When was the last time she’d slept? Her mind tried to sort the events, but images of Jorgen leered through the haze. His hungry, heavy-lidded stare. The pale brown mole at his temple. The cheese crumbling in his hand.
He wanted to be clan leader, she knew that much now. Which, she realized with the sudden clarity of a light beaming through a cracked door, was completely different from wanting to lead the clan. Jorgen wanted the power that came with being first, of being on top. He coveted the seat of honor. But leading the clan meant putting everyone else’s needs ahead of your own. That’s what her father had done. His trip into the storm was foolhardy in so many ways, but he’d done it for the good of the clan. He was a true leader.
If he never … No, she wouldn’t think of that. She wouldn’t think of anything except keeping herself and Rune alive.
And the other horses? It seemed her mind had to gallop through all the dire possibilities. Well, they’d fled the byre. She didn’t know what they’d find to eat, but hopefully Jorgen’s knife wouldn’t find them. Her mother had said to keep the horses safe, and so far they were.
The stars spun above them, following their own dark course, and still no path climbed into the shelter of the forest, no rocky niche offered refuge on the shore. The night’s cold rimed her cheeks, pulling the skin taut; the ocean’s breath dripped from her nose. When she blinked, droplets quivered on her lashes.
Apparently the months of watered soup and bitter bread had carved a hollow inside her. She didn’t realize how weak she’d become, though, until she was slipping behind Rune’s shoulder and then his flank, and finally she was trailing him. Nor did she notice the ocean’s rising tide creeping ever closer to them. Unheeded, it swallowed so much ground that when they reached the tip of the middle finger of land, the snub-nosed bluff there loomed straight out of the oily black sea. There was no dry passage around it. She couldn’t judge the water’s depth and stood peering into the darkness, listening to the waves rush up, splash against the walls, slap down, and recede. Rush, splash, slap, and recede. Rush, splash, slap, and recede. The dreamy recitation held her entranced, unmoving.
Rune banged his head against her. Getting no response, he nudged her again, harder. Finally he nickered his concern, four honeyed notes that started deep and descended deeper, reaching through her numbed darkness. Asa grabbed hold of them with the desperation of a drowning person and let them lift her up and onto his back.
Rune plunged ahead with enough confidence for both of them, although the icy waves leaped up to soak his belly and she had to lift her feet to his withers and ride hunched, swaying, like a bird on a windblown bough. Because of him they managed to round the bluff without being washed away. They returned to the ever-narrowing strip of crunching sand and proceeded.
After a longer period, when the fog lifted from her mind again, she whispered to him to halt and slid off. Gently she touched her fingers to each dark slash. The neck wounds felt sticky; the bleeding had stopped. His chest wound still oozed blood but much more slowly now. The dark wool thread still wrapped his leg. Holding two fingers to it, she repeated her chant to Odin, demanding him to heal her horse. Then, shoulder to shoulder, they took up walking again.
She had no idea how deep the night was or when the sun would appear, if it would appear for them. Inside her shoes her feet felt as if they had hardened to ice, and each crunching step seemed to shatter the bones, shooting stinging pangs up through her legs. The water-laden air left a briny moisture in her lungs that further weighed her down. In her stupor each step seemed to be carrying her from this world into the next. She didn’t really care anymore. Rune was faring no better: His head drooped past his knees, and his hooves dragged wet furrows across the sand.
At last they reached the steep-sided cliffs banding the shadowy fjord beyond the fourth finger and couldn’t go any farther. As black as the shore was, as dark as the vast sky was, the fjord was blacker. Silent. A bottomless cauldron that swallowed light and sound. The end of the world. She could see nothing, and standing there, frozen to the bone and with no place to keep walking toward, she gave in. Her journey was over.
Looming over them like a giant cresting wave was a bluff much taller than the previous one. Wind had carved a slight hollow at its base and, more recently, knocked a massive chunk of stone onto the shore. The narrow space behind the fallen rock wasn’t much of a shelter, but it was high enough to be out of the tide’s reach. They could squeeze in there and be partly protected from the wind. They could fend off the cold’s hunger a little longer.
At her urging, Rune followed her step by halting step beneath the angled walls of the bluff. She had to duck her head to avoid the rough outcroppings, and she could hear the stone scraping his withers. When they’d wedged themselves behind the fallen rock, she turned, tugged on Rune’s forelock, and pointed to the ground. It was a cue she’d taught him years ago, and obediently he folded his knees and dropped with a wheezy groan.
She dropped onto her own knees. Reaching through the darkness, fingering his coarse mane and fuzzy neck and iron shoulder, she again felt for and found each sticky wound. They’d not reopened, but some of Rune’s spirit seemed to have run out with his blood. He seemed shrunken, bony. Heaving a sigh, he flopped his huge head across her lap and closed his eyes. Out of habit she stroked the hollows above them awhile, then buried her fingers in the warmth trapped beneath his thick mane.
All she could see between the rock in front of them and the bluff above was a horizontal strip of dark sky. Wispy clouds banded the view, but thousands of fiery embers from the gods’ fires burned there too. Was her father staring at these same bits of light? Or had his eyes forever closed to their brilliance? How much longer would her own eyes be open? Judging by the ragged haze clouding her vision, not much longer. What would take her and Rune? Cold? Hunger? A knife? Toughening herself to live with the choice she’d made, and if necessary to die by it, she began rocking, waiting for whatever was coming.
NÍU
Birds. Huge, rough-voiced birds, calling to her. Loudly. The geese! Drawing summer on their wings.
Asa struggled to waken, her heart already skipping. She would tell her mother first—nudge her shoulder and whisper the incredibly good news—and then they’d tell the rest of the clan, and together they would breathe in the promise of warmer days and greening grass a
nd new life. They’d made it!
Except that when she pushed onto her elbow, it dug into damp sand and not her straw mattress. The fingers she lifted to her face rubbed stinging granules of the same stuff into her eyes. She bolted upright, blinking in pain. Where was she? Handicapped by her watery vision and the predawn gloom, she managed to identify a massive rocky wall an arm’s length in front of her and she felt the pressure of its mate at her back: the shore’s bluffs. She was waking near the ocean—and she wasn’t alone. Within that same arm’s length she saw booted feet poking from beneath a dark gray cloak. Her heart left off its skipping to drum an alarm; she craned her stiff neck upward, following the shrouded form. Silhouetted against a horizontal strip of sky that still sparkled with a few stars was the deeply furrowed and well-weathered face of a one-eyed old woman. Scowling. Behind the woman’s shoulder a large black bird—a raven—strutted back and forth on the rock.
Asa had never given ravens much consideration, but at that moment this one seemed the very embodiment of evil. It was the bird’s demanding, guttural calls that were shattering the morning. Gronk. Gr-r-o-n-nk.
She had to flee. Where was Rune?
Through the slits of her crusted eyes Asa spotted him beyond the rock, closer to the ocean. Only his uplifted head showed against the strip of sky, but she could tell he was annoyed, and then she saw why: Another raven swooped past his ears, worrying him with beak and claws and that same harsh cry. Rune shook his head as his teeth snapped on air.
The raven on the rock complained again, loud and insistent, which brought her back to her own tenuous situation. It was shifting anxiously from foot to foot and making hungry stabs with its beak. But not at her, she realized—at something cupped in the palm of the stranger. While she stared, thickly, trying to get her mind to work, the hand extended toward her; the palm opened. On it lay a nut-brown barley cake.
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