The Raven's Table

by Christine Morgan

  “Njord see these men safely on their journey!” he called, hurling it as far as he could. It struck with a splash, bobbed back up, and then sank.

  A brisk wind blew to fill the white-and-black-striped sail, ruffling the proud wolf’s-tail nailed as a banner to the top of the mast. The narrow hull sliced a clean foam-track in the water.

  Hillfort receded with a goodly speed.

  But, Farald, standing at the ship’s prow with his long red hair streaming, was gripped yet again by that unsettling disquiet.

  ***

  They are vigilant men.

  Alert for enemies and danger? For prey and opportunity?

  She does not know. She does not care.

  What matters is that they keep guard even by night. They have a dog—a dog!—with them, an immense shaggy elk-hound with an absurd curl of tail and a skull-splitting bark.

  When darkness and fog swallow the ship so completely that the guards can see no further than an arm-length, and sounds are so strangely muffled they might have had tufts of fleece plugging their ears, she no more than sets a hand on the rail than the wretched beast smells her.

  Does it never sleep?

  It comes on the run, baying and howling, and these vigilant men are ever quick to respond.

  She cannot get to her beloved. She can only follow.

  They cross a sea-stretch and sail into a fjord of clear deep-green water. To either side, meadowland rises in gentle slopes toward dense forests. Higher still are snow-peaks and stone spires snagging the clouds.

  Soon, there are farmsteads, sheep-fields and cow-pastures. Folk stop in their work to wave greeting. Children run along the fjord’s edge, cheering, brandishing sticks as if they too are bold Vikings. The men wave back, and cheer as well.

  Ahead is a large settlement of log houses. It is a lumber-camp where tall trees are felled to be shaped into strakes and masts, planks and oars. Other longships and knarrs are being built, repaired or refitted.

  The settlement bustles and flourishes with people. Eylig slips ashore. She finds it easy enough to mix with them, just one more among many.

  She chooses a place where she can wait and watch from concealment. The harp, in its leather case, she grips in anxious hands.

  When he is away from the ship, that is when she’ll go to him. She’ll hold out the harp-case. How eager she is to see his surprise and delight!

  Her beloved says his farewells. He moves through the village.

  His gaze seems searching.

  He is looking for her!

  Eylig starts to approach.

  “Farald!” cries a voice.

  He turns swiftly.

  A young woman runs toward him. He also breaks into a run. Those nearby look on, grinning, as the two meet.

  Her beloved sweeps the woman up in his arms, her blonde braid flying. Both are laughing and crying and talking all at once, showering each others’ faces with kisses. He brings out a strand of fireworked glass beads to affix around her slim throat. They kiss with even more ardor.

  And Eylig, clutching the leather harp-case tight to her chest, retreats into hiding again.

  ***

  Farald set the hatchet to lean against a stump. He wiped sweat from his brow, then studied his palms, his smile rueful.

  How it was that a man could pull hard at the oars, and still have parts of his hands left uncallused… yet, there they were, red places that might grow into blisters.

  Despite doing all manner of ship’s labor for long months at sea, he simply was not accustomed to the hewing of wood. Not only his hands felt it, but the muscles of his back, his arm-sinews, and the rest of him as well. But he did not begrudge his body the aches. They were well-earned, and would be well worth it.

  He’d hoped to come home with considerable silver. The deaths of Utwald and so many others had left him just glad to come home with his life.

  Happily, Asgrina’s family felt the same, and consented to their marriage. Her uncle had gifted them with this fine parcel of land, not far from where he had his own modest longhouse.

  There was still much work to be done. He needed to dig out the well-spring, setting flat stones around it. The field would have to be readied for the next grain-planting. Once he’d built the byre, they’d buy a good milk-cow.

  Until then, they had chickens… Asgrina’s garden of vegetables and herbs was already sprouting… the fish-traps sunk in the fjord kept them provided…

  Best of all, most important, they had each other.

  He smiled again, this one much less rueful. He sang as he made his way back to the house. It was humble, a single long room, not lavishly furnished, but he wouldn’t have traded it for a king’s hall.

  A leather case, worn and battered, leaned against the threshold.

  Farald stopped in his tracks. The song died from his lips. He set down the hatchet and bundle of sticks.

  The case was still there.

  The case was his harp-case!

  Which could not be possible. He’d lost it when the Wind-Chaser sank.

  He crouched and picked the case up. The weight was familiar. So was the harp within, if wood-warped and water-stained.

  On the nape of his neck, the skin began to crawl.

  ***

  Her beloved is more beautiful than ever, stripped to the waist and sweat-gleaming, hair pulled back and tied with a cord.

  He slowly turns, still crouching. He sees her.

  Now is when! Now!

  His eyes go very wide.

  “You,” he says. “Eylig.”

  The surprise is there, yes, the surprise, absolutely.

  But… the delight… where is the delight, the welcome, the love?

  Why does the color drain from him so that his face goes ashen?

  “Farald—”

  She’s barely uttered his name when he springs to his feet.

  “Asgrina!” he shouts.

  There is no answer.

  “Asgrina!” Again he shouts it, with increasing desperation.

  When there is for a second time no reply, he whirls on Eylig again.

  “Where is my wife?” he demands.

  “Farald, listen to me.” She holds out a hand to him, but her beloved ignores it.

  He rushes into the house, out of the house, around the house to the garden, past the pen where hens peck, shouting for the woman. He carries the harp in one hand, but it is as if he’s forgotten he has it.

  Eylig follows him. She moves now with much less of a limp, having gotten more used to this clumsiness of walking.

  She tells him how she adores him, how she’s come so far and done so much. He continues ignoring her. Then a glint in the grass catches his eye. He stoops and plucks something from the ground. It is a small fireworked glass bead.

  He finds another, and another, and a scattered trail of them that lead to the fjord.

  ***

  The water was so clear that it seemed Asgrina lay encased in green amber. Her white arms drifted. Her skirt and apron billowed. Her fair hair wavered like a golden cloud around her head.

  Farald leaped in and swam down. It was deeper than it looked. A large rock had been set upon her stomach as a weight. He heaved it off. Asgrina’s back arched and her arms swept gracefully to either side as she floated upward.

  He burst to the surface with her. He struggled onto the bank with a strength he hadn’t known he possessed. Gasping with horror as much as for breath, he lowered Asgrina to the grassy earth.

  Any illusions of grace, billowing, wavering and clouds were gone. She dragged slack, dripping, motionless. Water ran from her mouth. She was cold. Cold and dead.

  “This is how it must be,” said the pale, plain-featured girl.

  Eylig. It had come back to him as soon as he’d seen her.

  He hadn’t imagined it. He hadn’t imagined any of it.

  “What did you do?” he cried. “What do you want?”

  “You,” she said, as if he should have known. “Now we will be together.�
��

  “You killed her. You drowned my wife!”

  “She was not the one you belong with.”

  A quaking rage replaced his horror. “You mad hag!”

  The girl blinked, and when she did so, her strange dark eyes somehow changed. They became stranger, and darker. “Farald, I love and adore you. This grief will pass, and you’ll know it for the meaningless—”

  “I would never be with you!”

  “Don’t say such things!” She stepped closer. He saw that although the shapeless grey-green kirtle was the same, and the dank locks of hair, she moved with less of a hobbling gait. “I brought you your harp—”

  “Get away from me!”

  Before he entirely knew his own intentions, he’d sprung up, seizing the nearest object at hand. Which was, as it happened, the harp… wood-warped and water-stained, unwieldy, woefully unsuited as a weapon.

  He swung it with all his might just the same.

  ***

  The harp smites her a violent blow to the temple. Eylig falls, reeling, feeling thin and salty blood gush down the side of her face.

  The physical pain is enormous.

  The other pain is far, far worse.

  She stares up at him, her beloved, who stands over her now with his handsome face contorted in murderous fury.

  He lifts the harp. He means to bludgeon her with it as if it were Thor’s own hammer.

  She blinks again. A slow blink that leaves her eyes revealed as they truly are… glistening black orbs, shark’s-eyes, the eyes of the sea.

  He falters. “What… what are you?”

  Eylig’s lips draw apart to reveal rows of teeth like ivory needles.

  Understanding seeps into him. He speaks in a stunned whisper. “Njord’s daughter?”

  Njord’s daughter, yes, but no alluring wave-maiden from the songs lonely sailors like to sing…

  “I saved your life,” she says, the words hissing through her teeth.

  Her beloved lowers the harp. His throat works as he swallows. “Did you kill the others as well?” he asks. “The men of the Wind-Chaser? Was that storm your doing?”

  “Forget them. Forget her. You and I—”

  “No!”

  He attacks her with renewed rage. She almost fails to raise her arm in time. The harp crashes into it instead of her head. She feels and hears the bone snap. The next one, she tries to twist away from. The harp slams into her back with such force that the instrument breaks apart. Her beloved is left with wood fragments, some splintered thick and sharp as spear-points.

  Eylig screams. If she’d been underwater, porpoises would have thrashed with agitation in the deep. Up here, it is shrill and piercing enough to make him recoil.

  She flings herself into the fjord and swims to safety. Clumsily, with her lamed arm. Painfully, with her head bleeding, her back and ribs throbbing. She has never been clumsy or painful in the water before.

  Only when she’s far enough from shore does she surface, facing him where he stands on the bank.

  “You are mine,” she tells him, then dives away.

  ***

  The skalds, sages and wise-women he spoke to all gave the same reply.

  If she wanted him, she would follow. Wherever the seas reached, she would follow. She would find him.

  If he fought, and managed somehow to kill her, he would surely draw Njord’s wrath… which would also extend wherever the seas reached.

  His only chance, his only hope, was to forsake the sea forever. To never again sail the wide grey whale road, to make his home in no coastal settlement, on no fjord, by no river that flowed to the sea.

  He knew the tale of Njord and Skadi, did he not? How the sea-god had been unable to abide the mountain peaks, while the giantess refused to dwell in the depths?

  Farald did.

  And so, he did what he must do.

  He packed what possessions he could bear on his back, and went inland.

  Inland, ever inland.

  And higher, ever higher.

  He traveled through thin-aired valleys where no trees grew, and agile goats grazed on moss and white flowers. He traveled across broad frost-covered plains thick with reindeer-herds.

  Finally he came to a great mountain range of stark snow-crowned cliff-faces. Glaciers made mantles of ice on their slopes. Black crevasses split jagged cracks into the stone. Fuming gases spewed like dragon’s-breath from holes in the earth. Gaping craters bubbled with boiling mud.

  Inhospitable as it was, hardy folk did yet dwell there. Hot springs steamed, the water foul-smelling but said to have healing powers. Winter hares abounded, as did fat tufted grouse, hunted by men and foxes and lynx.

  Narrow trails and dangerous passes connected one stronghold to another. Farald was making his way along one of these when, without warning, the deadly rockslide struck.

  He revived, groaning. Every part of him ached. He felt jarred, bruised and battered. Gritty rock-dust caked bloodied scrapes on his body. It caught in his throat and lungs, making him cough.

  His legs were pinned, buried, half-crushed beneath boulders. He could not shift them. He could not get free.

  Farald tried calling for help, though expected no answer. The chances of some other traveler being near enough to—

  Then came the sound of footsteps approaching.

  She appeared around the bend, dark eyes filled with satisfaction.

  It could not be her!

  But it was. Oh, it was.

  Instead of the old faded wool kirtle, she wore a tattered reindeer-hide, her feet wrapped in scraps of leather. No hint of a limp marred her gait. She moved sure-footed as any mountain goat.

  A whimper escaped him, an unmanly mewling sob.

  “You knew,” Eylig said, smiling, “that I was Njord’s daughter. What you did not realize is that I was Skadi’s as well.”s

  A FEAST OF MEAT AND MEAD

  Men died, screaming.

  There was no glory in it. Just rage and fear, pain and blood.

  They died with their skulls crushed in, brains bulging through shattered bone. They died gut-split, entrails strewn in their laps. They died with limbs hewn off and throats slashed open.

  Danes and Umberlanders alike… pagan and Christian… Norse and Saxon… screaming in the mud and blood, they died. Ravens, the greedy corpse-pickers, were already converging. Wolves would soon follow.

  Only young Osbert, watching from the dubious safety of the log palisade, saw what else happened next. Only he could see it.

  He stared upward as the clouded skies broke apart in rifts of terrible light. Dark beasts emerged, fire-iron shod, snorting and thundering. Their riders shrieked fierce war-cries that went unheard by anyone else. Gold gleamed on helms and mail, on spear-points and sword-blades. Crimson cloaks streamed like banners.

  They swept low over the battlefield. Smoke roiled. Ravens scattered in a great black flapping of wings.

  Osbert trembled, not wanting to see, but unable to turn from the sight. The horror had come, as he’d known that it would.

  At last it overwhelmed him. His legs came undone. Though his ears rung as if bells filled his head, he still heard the screams and the shrieking war-cries… following him, dwindling, until he sank into a silent blackness.

  Some days previous…

  Osbert stood still, the laden tray heavy in his hands. He knew better than to fuss, or fidget. Patience was just one of the virtues his mother had impressed upon him through his young life.

  And, in here, the fire was warm… while, outside, a grey rain fell.

  Back and forth the discussion went.

  “The king,” Lord Harold said, for at least the third time, “has made peace with the Danes. They are leaving our shores. You may send your men home to their farms.”

  This swayed the imposing Lord Aelfstan, who commanded the town’s defenses, no more now than before. “The men stay.”

  “You do not trust the king?”

  “I do not trust the Danes.”

&n
bsp; “Then do you not trust God?” At that, Harold threw a smug glance at the bishop. “For it is by God’s own grace—”

  “It is by gold’s own grace,” said Aelfstan. “The king paid them to go.”

  Back and forth they went, on and on.

  Meanwhile, Bishop Cenric sat listening, watching the flickering hearth, ink-stained fingers interlaced at his chin. Unlike those clergymen who tended toward plumpness, comfort and opulence, he was lean and fit. He still wore a monk’s humble robes and kept his brown hair in a tonsure.

  Though Osbert had neither moved nor made a sound, the bishop’s gaze shifted to him. He lifted his chin in a slight, beckoning nod.

  “My lords,” Cenric said, as Osbert crossed to set the tray on a table. “Let us pause in our discussion to take some refreshment.”

  They turned, Aelfstan ever-agreeable when it came to the wine for which the monastery was well-known, Harold with a faint sneer when he saw that the cups and plate were simple clay instead of wrought silver or jewel-studded gold.

  “You may sit until we are done, then return the tray to Brother Leomund,” the bishop told Osbert, indicating a little stool near the fire.

  The three of them ate and drank. A harder rain lashed at the room’s narrow window, beading the thick glass panes with fat droplets. A draft guttered the squat white candles, dribbling runnels of wax down their sides.

  “Osbert,” said Cenric after a time, “what are your thoughts?”

  “His thoughts?” cried Harold. “What have his thoughts—if he has thoughts at all!—to do with this?”

  “The lad’s touched,” said Aelfstan in a mutter, rubbing his thumb over a crucifix on a chain around his neck. “He knows things. Fore-knows them, too, sometimes.”

  “Osbert?” Cenric repeated, his tone gentle but urging. He had always held steadfast that young Osbert’s afflictions were a blessing. Not a curse, not witchery, not pagan magic, but a gift from God.