Winter by Winter

by Jordan Stratford

“I can show you, if you like. I have maps.”

  “It all seems a forever away,” I admit.

  “Three days, two maybe, with the wind. A boat is a swift thing.”

  In my head, I’m a child again with my father’s boats, so new and yellow with the scent of fresh-sawn timber on the fittings, the ropes coarse in my small hands. I’m a wild thing, roaring with the wind, my hair gold as the sun in my face and the taste of salt and yes, yes, a boat is a swift thing and my heart trembles to breaking at the loss of my father–

  “Jarl Hladgertha? Ladda?”

  “What? I’m sorry. Yes, I just… nevermind.”

  “Of course.”

  “So, Ragnar,” I say, trying to return to the present.

  “Indeed. He has asked me to speak with you.”

  “He said.”

  “Before we speak formally,” Eindr pauses, “will you accept some advice?”

  “Please. So far the only advice I have is from elves and a dead dog.

  “You have more advisors than that, surely,” he says.

  “I do. Well, I have Brandr, but I know what he’d say. He’d tell me to give my troth to Ragnar in a heartbeat,” I tell him.

  “Is that bad advice?” Eindr asks.

  “He just wants my belly full. He wants me fed and safe.”

  “Then no, it’s not bad advice,” he says, almost allowing himself a shrug. “However, I would offer this: marriage is business, and business is war. You win by knowing–truly knowing–what you set out to achieve, and then put in place all that is required to achieve it.” He is being kind, but he’s nervous. He thinks he’s overstepped his role here. “So,” he’s half-whispering, “what is it you want?”

  I think for a moment. It’s embarrassing how long this moment is.

  “I want us all to be fed and safe. Here. I want war well away from us. I want us to make it through the winter, though it is only spring, and the next winter, and the next. I want the story of my people to survive. I want my mother’s… legacy to survive. That’s what I want.”

  Eindr nods. He has much to say, but he’s holding back.

  “So we are going to build ships for the war,” I continue. “Especially now we have tools and more hands to work them. And Ragnar can take our ships to war for a share, and that share will feed and secure the village.”

  Again Eindr nods. “A solid plan. But you need hands…”

  “Ragnar’s crew,” I interrupt. “I want some of them to stay. To build, to plant. To make boats.”

  “Ragnar will want to bring his crew with him south, to the war,” cautions Eindr.

  “He has hundreds. Leave us two dozen.”

  “Two dozen warriors is a modest bride-price,

  Ladda.”

  “If we took more we’d need to feed more. We need strong backs and spears. There are wolves in these woods, on two legs and four.”

  “Understood,” Eindr says. “But know that Ragnar has lands, and from those lands come taxes in silver and wool. Bronze too, and trade to the south and east.”

  “I don’t understand those things, and you asked me what I want. Well, I want what I understand. I know we need parents for our orphans and a crop in the ground. I want Ragnar to buy our boats as we build them. And that way we survive, all of us.”

  And Kara’s runes, I think. My mother’s runes, the secrets of her people. My people.

  “That way we don’t disappear.”

  I wake in Ragnar’s arms. I do like the scent of him.

  I like too how the hall has been roomed off with thick woolen blankets, and our bed warmed by not one but two tripod fires kept going all night without having to wake to tend to them.

  In the half light of dawn, I look at his sleeping skin. I look at the body of my betrothed.

  He’s lean. His shoulders are earned, not born, as the aunts say, which means he is not large by birth but by work. Were he a boat he’d not be a buss, with its broad beam and deep draught, or even a karr, narrower and sleeker, but a skeid–a thing light and nimble on the water.

  He wears his hair in glibs. Shaved up the sides, and grown longer at the top, twisted into mats like pine cones. These are waxed, with some kind of fragrant oil he also uses in his beard. Even for a man who wears goat-pants, he’s not completely without vanity.

  I wonder if I ought to be in love. In some weeks Ragnar says Fro will be dead, and he will truly be king, and I shall take an oath before Var and him as husband. A queen, then. But love? I’ve come to admire Ragnar in these days. I was foolish to dismiss him so readily, but he says I don’t need to apologize for my anger, which was warranted.

  I like kissing him. I like waking up to him. He makes me laugh. And I think I trust him, a little, at least.

  So we understand each other in this.

  “Shield up!” Ragnar calls. His sword cracks again and again on the rim of my shield as I keep it high, duck my head nearly into my shoulder and lean into the boss, the metal hollow that protects the hand. There’s nothing gentle in his blows.

  “I thought we were practicing!” I shout over his assault. He withdraws, panting.

  “We are practicing fighting, not practicing playing,” Ragnar says.

  “I’ve only seen training with branches,” I complain.

  “That will teach you to protect yourself from branches,” he says in all seriousness. “How about we find Fro’s army and ask them politely to use branches because we’re not ready for swords?”

  “If a sword is worth a kingdom, I’d imagine we’d see more branches,” I say, brushing the sweat from my forehead.

  “Not every sword is so valuable. Just that one, and its kind,” Ragnar tells me.

  “Why? I’ve been wondering that since you gave it to me.”

  “Let me see it,” he says. I find myself reluctant to hand it over.

  He props his shield at an angle against the base of a tree, kneeling before it.

  “So,” he says. “This is my enemy standing, yes? And this is me standing.” He means the shoulders are at the same level. I nod, understanding. He takes a few thrusts around the shield.

  “I am not attacking the shield, but the one behind it. But he is not so ready to be stabbed, so he blocks with the shield, over and over. Like so.” And Ragnar changes his thrust at the last minute to stab at the shield itself to demonstrate.

  “A sword is not an axe. It is not for chopping, and has no hook for pulling the shield down. Also, it is not a spear; it has no shaft and no shoulder behind it. So it must seek where the shield is not. And most times, if your enemy is good, it will fail to do so.” Again and again, the sword thuds against the shield, harder each time, sending little flecks of linden wood into the air.

  “So the sword itself must take its own blow, if your enemy’s skull refuses to do it. See how it bends? With each strike, it bends and snaps back. It does not stay bent; it does not shatter.”

  “All right,” I say.

  “Most swords stay bent. Or shatter. Not the first time, or the tenth, but eventually. Which is why an axe is better, or a spear is better. Unless it is this sword. That is what these runes mean,” he says, meaning the +VLFBEHRT+ letters set into the blade.

  “So a sword that strikes a hundred times…” I begin.

  “Is worth a hundred warriors, yes.” And Ragnar and I again understand one another “And with a hundred warriors…”

  “You can carve yourself a kingdom.” He returns my sword to me. “I’ll make you a sheath for that, to keep it out of the rain.”

  I turn the weapon in my hand, admiring once more its beauty and its balance. Its purpose.

  “Pick up your shield,” Ragnar says. “Again.”

  In the night my shoulder aches as I turn, and my elbow is a solid bruise. But I’ve learned to not simply hide behind a shield, but to use it, to move the force of an attack around me. To break a spear like a wave on a rock. To transform from a wall to a flat thing like a table that can be driven into throat or collar bone. And with the swo
rd to take an axe-hand, or an ankle. Flexing my hand, I wince a little and wonder if I’ve broken my little finger.

  I place my hand on Ragnar’s chest, watch it rise and fall as he sleeps. Like the tide, the distant tide of my childhood, receding in the dark. Little Ladda, sailing away, never to return.

  I don’t know how much of this is routine discipline among the crew, or a show for the villagers. But it does set the grey-beards to roaring.

  We form a shield wall on command. We step on command, spears resting on the shields to our right. We thrust on command, withdraw on command, step again, forward, back, on command.

  A second row of warriors with longer spears, shafts as big as my forearm, send a chorus of spearpoints over our heads. Then on command (always on command), we drop our spears by our sides, pull the axes from our belts, and swing in unison, each shield opening slightly but covering the warrior on our left, ourselves protected by the shield on our right. And repeat until the breath is ragged in the throat and the arms are burning.

  As the smallest (though not the youngest, this falls to Rota), each step for me is a stutter, a step and a half. Voices behind me telling to me to raise my shield up, up, up higher, so that I can barely see over it. But if I dig my hips into the motion, I’m strong and solid on my feet. I have to resist the temptation to skitter to catch up with the others, slowing my movements so they are deliberate, focused.

  There is a woman here, and she has decided she does not like me. Perhaps because Ragnar has chosen me, or I remind her of some past rival. There’s no telling.

  Still, we are pared often because she is not that much taller than me, but her blows are meant to kill with each axe-strike to my shield.

  We circle one another in the wet earth, she with her spear clutched tight to her chest, the point barely a palm’s width from her hand. I raise my sword to catch the thrust, and turn it, but her jab is a feint, and as my sword reaches out she spins the spear’s blunt end to catch me square in the chest, winding me and knocking me into the dirt.

  Gasping, I note two three things: the first, that I didn’t drop my sword. The second, that I will always remember such a spear-grip, improbable for thrusting. Thirdly, that I bear no anger to my attacker, because she has taught me the first two things.

  A hand reaches out to clasp my forearm and near-tosses me into the air like I’m nothing. I’m on my feet and looking into a dark red beard.

  “Not bad,” says red beard. “Keep your feet under you.”

  “I’m better at sea,” I tell him, catching my breath.

  “Oh, you’re a pirate girl,” he smiles, mocking me.

  “My father was a boat builder. I had my sea-legs before I could walk on land.”

  “That’ll be useful,” he says gruffly. “Still, keep your feet under you.”

  Nodding thanks, I square off against my opponent.

  Again.

  Ragnar’s crew of eighty strong backs do in a week what would have taken our two hundred a year. There is a new barn, pens hammered into the earth, gates with hinges. The hall is clean, the floor leveled and inch-deep with sawdust, the roof tight against rain and snow. Trees felled, and timber squared for building. An oven, a kiln, a forge, brambles cleared, and rows for planting. Fish sheds by the river. But that leaves hunting.

  The deer will get smarter and farther afield. So that increases the likelihood of running into others, if there are others. Most likely upriver.

  So, in the morning Ragnar and I will ride, just the two of us, until dusk, and return after nightfall, seeing what we can see. But before then, Brandr has a task for me.

  At dusk he comes to me.

  “There is to be a blooding tonight,” he says. He leans on the spear he uses as a walking staff. He’s tired. “We have no priests, so it falls to you.”

  “We should keep the cattle,” I argue. “For labour or breeding. Slaughter them when winter comes, we’ll need the meat.”

  “Without appeasing the gods, we’ll not see the end of winter,” he says, “and the salmon should be good this year.”

  “I do not think the gods talk to me, Brandr,” I tell him. “I’ve waited and tried, they know. I went with my mother and made a shrine to Var in the forest, our old forest, but nothing ever happened.”

  “The gods may not speak to you,” Brandr says, “but they listen. They are watching you, Ladda. And you should be seen to do this thing.”

  “Kara should do it,” I say, seeing the obviousness of it. He ponders on this.

  “She is not strong enough to kill an auroch with one blow,” he says.

  “Neither am I. But she can say the words, and one of Ragnar’s crew can slaughter the bull. Or Ragnar himself can swing the axe, the people will like that.”

  “The gods will like it, I think, yes.” Brandr nods.

  I look for Kara to speak with her, but she’s not in the lodge.

  Movement there, up the path and into the woods. More of a fluttering of darkness, against the fading twilight.

  She’s not far along the path. She sits on a moss-covered rock, waiting for me. She tells me as much.

  “What are you doing?” I ask her. She’s become so strange, so distant, since all of this happened. I barely recognize her. Her face is the same, my little doll of a sister, her cleverness and quickness. But there’s something else to her now, something I don’t understand. She’s been somewhere the rest of us haven’t.

  She doesn’t answer, but looks down at her lap. And there is the bundle, the secret bundle, in blue leather wrapped in thong. The thong’s since become a braid, and there’s a bead there now of bone or stone I can’t make out in the dark.

  Unwrapping, I see it’s a bundle of sticks. Staves, actually, the length of a hand, but each as narrow as her little finger. A single glyph carved and stained into the end of each one.

  Runes.

  “I’ve been speaking with them since we got here,” she says. “That’s how I’ve known.”

  “Known what?” I ask.

  “Everything. About you and Ragnar. About the blooding tonight, and why you’ve come.”

  I rub her back, just taking all of this in.

  “Do you see the dead?” I ask. I have to ask. “Have you seen our parents?”

  She shakes her head. “Father is in Valhalla,” she says. “He died protecting us, iron in his hands.”

  “And our mother?”

  “She’s somewhere else. I can’t see her.”

  “Somewhere else? Where else is there to go, but Valhalla or Hel?” I’m desperate now. “Kara, is our mother with Hel?”

  “No, silly. She’s somewhere else. I just don’t know where that is yet.”

  “Perhaps she’s gone to Elfheim, where they say her people were from.”

  “I can’t see into Elfheim, even with these,” she says. “But I like to think so.”

  “I need your Elf-nature tonight, little sister,” I say.

  “You want me to preside over the blot,” she answers. Nobody’s told her, I’m sure of it. It’s just one of the things she knows.

  “Please,” I ask her. “It just seems… right. You’re better at this than I am. Things with the gods, I mean.”

  Kara looks at me and smiles, but it’s a strange and disconcerting smile.

  “You haven’t seen her yet?” she asks. “No,” she says, answering her own question. “Soon, though.”

  “Seen who?”

  She picks up the rune staves just a palm-width above their leather shroud and drops them again, peering.

  “You’ll see,” Kara says, pressing a stave into my palm.

  Perth. The dice-cup. The vessel from which chance emerges.

  There are different ways to do this, they argue. Almost always during the day. Only rarely at night, which means something different. They are debating what, exactly.

  Still, fires are lit, and the great black bull, skinny as he is but still a mountain of a thing, comes along on his rope, either not sensing his fate or not caring.
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  Not sensing, it must be.

  There’s quiet, but when Kara appears in a long tunic of white flax I’ve never seen before, there is silence. The difference between quiet and silence is something I’ve never felt before, but it’s on me, on all of us, like a weight now.

  The words she speaks are in a language none of us know. None of us have heard it. And when she sings to the flames and the bull and the night, her chant is weird and terrifying and beautiful; a tune that opens the heart as it chills it, words that haunt the caves of our bones. A mist clings to her, and I notice the runes that form there, hardly believing I can really see them. Othal for land, heritage, and belonging, and jera for harvest, and the berka for new beginnings. The runes are things as much as song as shadow, and any surprise I feel is distant, dreamlike, chastising myself for not having seen them before. But I see them now and their simple ask; let us belong here, give us a year, give us a spring. Please.

  And when her song stops, Ragnar’s axe falls heavy on the beast’s neck, and the animal crashes to the earth with a moan and a hot spray of blood that glints black in the firelight.

  Brandr takes the broad bowl to catch the flood of gore, the scent thick in the night air, the metallic heat already catching in the back of my throat. With great solemnity, each of us dip a finger into the bull’s blood and mark a spot special to each, for blessing: lips or eyelids, chest or belly. Rota streaks crimson along one forearm, catches my eye and nods, as she always does.

  I suck the blood from my fingertip. I’m going to need the auroch’s strength in my body. I need the blessing to fill the hollowness there, to ground me so I don’t blow away in the next storm. The taste is copper on the tongue.

  And when each has had their turn, the bowl is presented to Kara, and the look in Brandr’s eyes is almost fear as he hands it to her arms, the weight of it obvious. She chants the names of gods I know: Thor and Odinn and Frey, Freya and Bragi and Baldr, Var and Skathi, but also others I’ve never heard of, elf-kings or giants perhaps. With effort, her slight arms raise the shallow bowl of now-cool blood and she tips the entire thing over her head, transforming herself from some kind of white flower in the firelight to a nightmare.