Winter's Fire: (The Rise of Sigurd 2)

by Giles Kristian

  ‘Should I stay then?’ Runa asked, resisting the temptation to look at Sibbe whose gaze she also felt upon her.

  ‘You could not now walk away if you tried, Runa Haraldsdóttir,’ the crone said, pushing back her hood and hissing at one of the Freyja Maidens to pull up a stool so that she could rest her old bones. Then she sat down, shrinking in that ring of women which drew tight around her like a knot because everyone there knew that she had something important to say.

  Runa was tempted to test the magic then, to see if she could walk away after all, but as if to prove the witch’s seiðr she found herself pushing closer, eking into the gaps which the other women made for her because she was somehow now a part of this night, despite having known nothing about it until Vebiorg and Drífa had woken her. Had hauled her out of that dream she’d been sharing with Grimhild her mother, who waited for her in the afterlife. Almost without knowing how she had got there, she stood in the first ring now, looking into that known and yet unknown face, the stink of those cat skins, and of stale piss too perhaps, getting in her nose.

  Her staff laid across her knees, the Prophetess looked up at Runa and nodded, took the cup which Skuld offered her, drank long and deeply, then put the empty cup on the ground and closed her eyes.

  After a long while, during which the Freyja Maidens waited in patient silence, Runa thought that the old woman had fallen asleep. Not that Runa blamed her, for she was very old to have been wandering the world, as far north as Osøyro and then back here, and the gods only knew where in between.

  But then the Prophetess exhaled a long, sour-smelling breath and began.

  ‘I have walked far on these old feet since I was last here. More steps have I taken out there in the world than there are strands of hair on all of your heads together. I have walked with the wolf and the bear, the boar and the fox. I have soared with the eagle and talked with the gulls and the crows. I have seen the past and I have seen the future.’ She shook her head then. ‘And let me tell you that I prefer the past.’

  Perhaps she was seeing it all now behind those closed eyelids. Who could say?

  ‘The old ways are dying,’ she said, her mouth puckering as she considered it. ‘It is a slow death, yes, like that from a disease of the flesh. But there is no cure. Not that I have seen.’

  She was quiet again, this time for so long that Runa could have easily slipped out to relieve herself as she needed to. She wished she had done when the old woman picked up the thread of it again.

  ‘Our people are forgetting the ways of those who came before. They do not honour the gods as they should. And by not giving the Æsir their due, we weaken them. Do not the prize bull’s ribs begin to show if he does not get good pasture?’ Her dry lips pulled back from what few teeth she still had. ‘There is a new god,’ she said, as though the words were rancid. ‘The White God. And his seiðr spreads like the roots of a great tree, a tree that will one day put Yggdrasil itself in the shade.’

  Some of the Maidens shook their heads or mumbled that this could not be so. Skuld herself looked unsure, as though she suspected the Prophetess of having made some mistake.

  ‘Shaking your heads will not change it,’ the Prophetess told them. ‘Just as the bear who lumbers off to his cave to sleep the winter away does not stop the winter coming. Nor does the fish who swims deep to stay warm stop the lake from freezing. This god already rules in distant lands where the old gods are long forgotten.’ She extended an arm which looked like the branch of a silver birch. ‘But now he reaches into the north. Even our King Thorir has dealings with this god’s priests. He feasts them, shares his hall with them.’

  ‘King Thorir would not turn his back on the Goddess,’ Skuld said, shaking her head, making a stand on that point.

  ‘No, he will not,’ the Prophetess said, opening her eyes to look at Skuld. ‘But many will. Not in your lifetimes perhaps, not here where the old gods still hold sway.’

  ‘Then what has this to do with us?’ the High Mother asked on behalf of them all. She looked like a goddess herself standing there amongst them, all bearing and beauty and fiery red hair.

  ‘The time of kings and jarls is ending,’ the old woman said. ‘There will come a day when one king will rule everything beneath the sky as far in every direction as a raven can fly. And he will not support the Freyja Maidens. He will bend his knee to the White God.’ She shook her head. ‘All across the north, few kings and one god. That is what I have seen.’

  ‘Are you talking about Ragnarök, Wise Mother?’ Vebiorg asked, the first of the other Freyja Maidens to dare to speak directly to the old woman.

  The old woman looked at her. ‘Perhaps it is Ragnarök. Perhaps it is something else. But yes, the doom of the gods is coming.’ She closed her eyes again, her claw-like hands white upon the staff across her legs. ‘We and many before us have lived on this island, beyond the sight of men, our days given to prepare for when we might serve Freyja the Giver in the time of her greatest need. But I tell you now that we will be the last.’

  A murmuring hum rose from the women then, and it was clear that this news was more terrifying than a failed harvest, or when a village hears that a ship full of her men has turned over in some wind-driven fjord.

  ‘Quiet!’ Skuld said, looking back to the Prophetess who had not finished yet.

  ‘Even though all I have said is true, for I have seen it while you have been hiding from the world, the old gods are not without power,’ the old woman said, opening her eyes and grinning. ‘There are still those men . . . and women, whom the gods love. The way they used to love the kings and heroes in former times. There are still those in whose lives Óðin, Thór, Loki and Freyja like to meddle.’ She moved a hand out before her, some invisible thing gripped between her thumb and forefinger. ‘Making a move here and there as though these beloved mortals are pieces on a tafl board,’ she said, then rested her hands on her staff again. ‘One such woman is amongst us here this night.’

  All eyes turned to Skuld now, but the High Mother had followed the Prophetess’s eyes and those rested not on the Freyja Maiden but on Runa.

  ‘Runa Haraldsdóttir and her brother are threads in the hem of the kyrtill of all this which I have spoken of.’ She twisted her scrawny neck, her gaze raking over every pair of eyes in that place. ‘But your time, my fierce children, is ending.’ She nodded at Skuld, who looked defiant, as though she did not accept any of it. ‘Yes, High Mother, rage against it. Why not? The Storm is coming,’ the Prophetess said, ‘when the Allfather and Freyja and all their great war host will ride because they have been summoned. And the wind from their passing will raise a tide of blood.’

  The old woman bent and lifted the cup and one of the Freyja Maidens filled it from a jug. When the Prophetess had drained that cup she stood, planting her staff in the rushes.

  ‘What are you telling us to do, Wise Mother?’ Skuld asked.

  ‘I am telling you what I have seen. Now you must decide what will become of us.’

  ‘We will live as we have always lived,’ Skuld said. ‘What else is there?’

  ‘Why not ask young Runa what she would do?’ the Prophetess said, grinning at Runa.

  ‘She is not one of us and does not have a say in it,’ Sibbe put in and some of the others let it be known that they shared Sibbe’s feelings about that. And nor did Runa want a say in it. What did she know about such things?

  But Skuld looked at her and lifted her chin, a small gesture yet enough to make it clear that Runa was supposed to speak.

  ‘I know a warrior woman,’ Runa said, suddenly knowing how Sigurd must feel when he was giving the commands and acting the lord in front of seasoned warriors and full-beards who would have every right to doubt him. ‘She is called Valgerd and her grandmother Ingun was a Freyja Maiden living here on this island.’ A couple of the older Maidens looked at each other then. Perhaps they had been girls here in Ingun’s time. And it struck Runa that the Prophetess might have been the one who had let Ingun leave the islan
d with her lover, the champion who would become Valgerd’s grandfather. If so, had she known who Valgerd was when she had stayed with them in Burner’s hall?

  ‘Valgerd lives in the world of men and she is respected wherever she goes because she is a great warrior. I have seen her fight in the shieldwall. I have seen men fall beneath her blade and I have seen them struck down by her arrows. She does not hide away. She is proud and brave, and you cannot tell me that the Goddess will not take her to Sessrymnir at the end of her days.’ Some of the women looked excited, some looked confused. Most looked angry and Runa almost felt sick at the thought of the sword- and spear-training next day, for there were plenty of them in that longhouse who would repay her words with bruises.

  ‘Our life is here,’ Sibbe said. ‘We are sworn to it, just as men swear to their jarls and kings.’

  ‘More so!’ another woman said. ‘For an oath sworn to the Goddess is a heavier thing than one sworn to a man.’

  There were murmurs of agreement with that.

  ‘That may be so,’ Runa said, ‘but if what the Wise Mother says is true then perhaps you can serve the Goddess better out there in the world than you can here on this island. You can prove yourselves truly worthy of Sessrymnir.’ She did not say that fighting real enemies was more proof of skill and courage than fighting practice bouts with wooden swords, but she did not need to, and Sibbe spat some or other insult in her direction though the words were lost amongst the rising hum as the Freyja Maidens began to argue amongst themselves. Some were hooked on this idea of leaving Fugløy and seeing something of the world beyond, as Valgerd’s grandmother Ingun had done years before. Others claimed they did not have the right to abandon the way of life which had existed since the time of the Yngling kings. They would not be the ones to destroy it all, like a beautiful old mead hall burnt to ashes in one night’s raiding. Still others could not believe what this night had dredged up, that there was even talk of leaving the island.

  Drífa’s eyes were alight though. She had lived on Fugløy her whole life and for her this new idea of going into the world shone like hacksilver in the scales.

  ‘It cannot be just by chance that Runa has come amongst us,’ she said. ‘You all heard the Wise Mother.’ She was looking from her companions to Runa, bringing all eyes with her. ‘If Runa is beloved of the Goddess, then could it be that Freyja Giver gave her to us? Placed her amongst us for a reason? Perhaps to show us that we can better serve her out there like Runa’s friend, this Valgerd.’

  The Prophetess was silent now. She had delivered her message and seemed content to let Skuld and the others decide their futures. If there was even a choice where wyrd was concerned.

  ‘Enough,’ Skuld said, stilling every tongue. ‘The Wise Mother has travelled far and needs her rest. All of you back to your beds. I will seek an answer from the Goddess. Then we will know what we must do.’

  The women seemed content with that and began to leave the longhouse, more than a few of them looking at Runa with different eyes now.

  ‘How will the High Mother learn Freyja’s will?’ Runa asked Vebiorg as they walked out into the night. Vebiorg had seemed less than sure about leaving the island, though Runa knew she would follow where Skuld led.

  ‘She will go under the cloak,’ Vebiorg said.

  Runa had seen Asgot practise utiseta once, or sitting out as he had called it, for it involved sitting undisturbed in a wild place and then journeying either inwards to the very depths of self, or outwards to other worlds, perhaps even that of the Æsir.

  When he had done it, Asgot had gone two days without food or water, until at last the answer to his question had come, though Runa could not for the life of her remember the question or the answer. What were the ways of the godi to a little girl? Now look at me, she thought, considering again how she had never imagined that she would see the seiðr-kona again. And yet, here she was talking of the gods and of Runa and her brother in the same breath.

  ‘Look, there is Sibbe,’ Drífa said, catching up with them. ‘She meant what she said, then.’ Runa looked over to the smithy and saw Sibbe standing there talking to Ingel, who looked half asleep, his face cast in shadow by the glow of the furnace behind.

  ‘She cannot get enough, that one,’ Vebiorg said as Runa strode across the dewy ground towards that fire glow. Towards Sibbe.

  The Freyja Maiden heard her, or sensed her perhaps, and turned, her hand falling to the hilt of the sword at her hip even as Runa’s fell to the handle of her scramasax.

  ‘I do not care what the Wise Mother says about you—’ Sibbe began, pulling the sword, but she said no more because Runa reversed the long knife and hammered its hilt into Sibbe’s head beside her eye and the woman dropped like a stone, her mouth still full of words.

  Ingel’s own jaw dropped and if he had been half asleep before, he was awake now.

  Runa looked down to see Vebiorg who had run over and was crouched over Sibbe.

  ‘She’s alive,’ Vebiorg said, looking up into Runa’s eyes, though Sibbe did not look alive.

  Runa took Ingel’s hand, felt his fingers curl round her own. ‘You coming?’ she asked.

  The young man nodded. And together they walked off across the clearing, and Runa wondered how she would climb the loft ladder with her legs shaking so.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IN THE MORNING after they had won the borg, they gathered up the dead. Those of Alrik’s men who had been killed, of which there were twenty-three, were to be buried side by side and with spears in a stone ship with a mound raised over them. Alrik promised to raise a rune stone in their memory too, which if he did was doing them a great honour.

  ‘That’s the least the lad deserves,’ Solmund had said when Sigurd himself had gone to recover young Kveld Ottarsson’s body from the slope below the borg where it had lain since Alrik had cut the lad down.

  ‘He gave himself a good end,’ Bram said, looking at the slashed corpse.

  ‘A good end? The lad hadn’t even lived yet,’ Olaf said, shaking his head.

  ‘The ruse would most likely have failed without him. If he had not gone for Alrik like that,’ Sigurd said, keeping his neck stiff so as not to pull the stitches and reopen the wound. His slashed forearms hurt too, but there was no puffiness, no sign of the wound rot that took men to their graves in boiling, sweat-soaked agony.

  To maintain their pretence of being Guthrum’s men, Kveld had attacked Alrik’s shieldwall knowing that the warlord would have no choice but to cut him down. It had been one of the bravest things Sigurd had ever seen, and from a young man in his first fight. ‘If anyone won Alrik this borg and all the iron in it, it was Kveld,’ he said.

  Perhaps that stretched it a little, for there had still been plenty of killing to be done, but no one disagreed with him then, with Kveld lying there looking up at the sky. They made sure he had a sword with him in the grave, which was no small thing given that there were plenty of living breathing warriors in Alrik’s host who did not own one themselves. Guthrum’s dead they flung into three large pits to the north of the borg. No burial mound or standing stone for them, just the cold earth and the worms in it.

  Despite their capture of the fort, the mood amongst Alrik’s men was gloomy. This was not helped by a thick fog which smothered the new day and had men muttering that it was the ghosts of the dead wandering amongst the living. Men whispered that Guthrum’s slain warriors could not accept that they had fallen for that trick. They would not rest or pass on to the afterlife knowing that they had been undone by such Loki cunning.

  ‘You would think they had lost the fight,’ Bram said, nodding at a knot of Alrik’s warriors who were arguing over which of them was going to have to pick a severed head out of the stew of mud and brains it was resting in. ‘Miserable, squeamish buggers.’

  ‘They’re tired, Bram. Like us,’ Olaf said, for even amongst Sigurd’s crew the mood was lower than it might have been. Bones and muscles ached from the fighting. Skulls were splitting from all the al
e they had drunk the night before and which also made their stomachs queasy, a thing not helped by the stench of open bowels, blood, piss and filth which hung in the fog.

  The stiff corpses were piled one upon another so that Sigurd asked Asgot how the Valkyries would know who was who, if those death maidens had not already chosen the best of them for Valhöll in the night. For Guthrum’s men had fought bravely and surely Óðin and Freyja would welcome many of them, whatever the truth about ghosts wandering in the dawn.

  ‘These warriors won’t have been judged on yesterday’s fight alone,’ Asgot told Sigurd, ‘but on every fight they have been in. The Spear-God will have been watching with his one eye those men who were born to the sword-song. The choosers of the slain have taken their fill, you can be sure. But they will return soon enough.’

  ‘Your runes told you that?’ Sigurd asked, recalling the godi casting them the night before.

  Asgot tugged at one of the little bones knotted into his beard. ‘Óðin watches you, Sigurd,’ he said. ‘But you drew Loki’s eye too with that trick of yours yesterday. And now the Trickster cannot resist the temptation to play his part in all this. Let us keep our heads down for a little while.’

  Sigurd looked at Olaf, who arched his brows. ‘That’s not like you, Asgot,’ Olaf said. ‘Did some sod drop a rock on your head? What happened to Sigurd having to keep the Allfather’s attention now that he has it? Which means risking our lives a little too often as far as I’m concerned.’

  Asgot curled his lip. He did not like the accusation that he was retreading his own path backwards on this matter. ‘I am just saying that Loki has come aboard and when he is around things are not as simple as just slaughtering your enemies.’

  ‘Well, Loki can piss off,’ Olaf said, which had some of them touching their Thór’s hammers to ward off ill-luck.

  ‘Uncle,’ Svein said, pointing to a group of men who were coming out of one of the other longhouses, each of them carrying a bar or two of iron. ‘Isn’t that the man you recognized yesterday?’ Alrik had ordered every scrap of iron and silver to be brought to him so that he might know how rich he was and reward his warriors accordingly.