She paces, like a dance and like sleepwalking, through and past the circle of watchers, each bloodied now, and we fall in line behind her as she walks to the main field behind the lodge. Staves hammered into the ground and string marking rows to plow, or what to plant at which time as rain and the moon will allow.
Kara stops, like a pendant suspended from the sky, and we each of us come to a less elegant pause, stumbling a little in the torchlight and uneven ground. My sister, covered in blood, throws herself face first into the mud of the field, as though diving from a cliff. Then still face down, bloodied arms spread out in a rune.
Tyr. An arrow aimed at the sky.
For a moment I fear she’s dead. That the gods have taken her from us because she’s so perfect.
It is Eindr who reaches out to her after a painful silence. Takes her arm. Brushes the bloody mat of hair from her eyes.
Then she rises to one knee, no longer an elf-thing but my little sister, the same child I held in my arms when she was a baby, out of whose mouth I would pluck beads or stones or other things she’d find to choke on, whose back I’d rub in the night after troubled dreams. Just a girl.
She’s just a girl. I keep telling myself that.
Ragnar wakes me at dawn, with a kiss on each of my eyelids, his fingers gentle on my cheek.
As the fur slides from my shoulders, the air is chill on my skin, so I make to pull it back up but he stops me.
“No, no time for sleeping,” he says, kissing me again. “Now, we ride.”
My horse has been readied for me, and the aunts have dressed me and wanted to re-braid my hair, but I tell them to leave it as Kara had set it, with smaller rows tight against my head, and the rest spilling down my back.
There’s a polished silver plate, and never before have I seen myself so clearly. Sort of half-way between Kara’s white-blonde and Rota’s coppery brown, or perhaps blonder than that. My jaw, too, is softer and rounder than Kara’s point and Rota’s square. My lips are full, and I wasn’t aware of this before.
In minutes, we’re clear of the village and any sign of others. I can only guess that Ragnar has dismissed whatever bodyguards would insist on riding with us.
“It’s good for the two of us to ride alone, in silence,” he says.
“Why in silence?”
“So we can see if we’re going to be friends,” Ragnar says.
“We’re not friends?” I ask.
“You have my troth,” he says. “It means I’ll care for you, no matter what. But it would be good if we were friends.”
“Why?” I’m laughing at him.
“Because when I do something stupid, it’ll be easier for you to forgive me.”
“Are you planning on doing anything stupid?” The rhythm of the horses makes this kind of back-and-forth easier. He’s been my lover for a week and only now is he flirting with me, or at least in any way I can recognize.
“Only someone wise can answer that. So, I have to say I don’t know.”
“And you’re not wise, Ragnar?” I tease him.
“Oh no. You, I think, are wise. Me, I’m just stubborn.”
“I can be pretty stubborn,” I admit.
“I know,” he says.
“You know?” I pretend to be insulted.
“I’ve asked,” he explains. “You’re famous for it. Ladda the stubborn. You are a legend. There is a great hall in your honour in Stubbornheim.”
He has me laughing freely now. It feels good.
“So if I slay you in battle?”
“Oh yes, we will meet in Stubbornheim. In the great hall of Ladda the Stubborn.”
“I think we should go back to the plan where we ride in silence.”
“See? That is very wise, Ladda.”
And we do, for hours, the horses following deer trails. We stop to pee or eat apples, and we have some salted fish he has brought from his boats. The sky is clear save for high thin clouds, and only the threat of spring rain well to the south.
The horses are too loud for deer or bear, though we see signs of passage for both. Nothing human though. While it is a bright and simple day, with only the faintest ache from riding, we are still both of us attentive, with each rustle of birds or squirrel chatter a possible warning. But there is nothing but the slow arc of the sun sliding into afternoon.
“We should go back,” he says. “Before it gets too dark.”
“We could go farther a few hours and just camp. I don’t think it’ll rain.”
He stares up at the sky for some time.
“An hour then,” he decides. “Then we go back.”
I cluck the dapple ahead in agreement.
For almost an hour, nothing but the green of the day, the forest the same as the one since dawn. Only the light has changed. But my horse has caught the scent of something, and I hold him up.
“What is it?” I whisper to the horse.
But then I catch it too, and look to Ragnar, who sits tall and alert on horseback.
Smoke.
He beckons silence and slips from his horse. I do the same. We unstrap our shields and tether the horses together, though loosely, and we make our way down the trail calm as sticks on a current.
The path opens and the trail falls away somewhat, another bowl of land by the water similar to our own village, complete with the low hill to the north.
A much larger village. Here the river is closer, not dammed to a creek but the full river itself, so there is a dock and boats. I look at Ragnar and he is counting, counting men and counting horses, counting buildings and counting animals. He gestures we return.
When we get back to the horses, he says nothing, for fear that our voices might carry or that someone may have seen us, may be tracking us. For an hour I follow his horse, my mouth dry and my heart hammering. Because I know what it means.
It’s a matter of time before this village discovers our own, before our hunters meet one another in pursuit of the same prey. A matter of time before we both want the same thing and there’s not enough to share. Before they can mount a challenge we couldn’t repel, even with my bride-price contingent of Ragnar’s forces staying behind.
“My mind is racing, Ragnar,” I tell him. “Stop, please. Talk to me.”
“I know what you’re thinking, Ladda,” he says. “There are a few options.”
“All right,” I say.
“First,” he pauses longer than he should. I’m anxious. “We could move the village. South, south of the fjord. Or east to Kaupaung.”
“We would never survive the journey,” I insist. “Not all together. And east would lead us right through that village, and through others.”
“South, then. South to the sea, to my home in Jutland. Viborg, maybe.”
“How?”
“You’re already building boats. Build more and get in them.”
“These people are not Jutlanders. This is our home,” I plead.
“What would you have me do?” he asks. “What?”
“You are the king,” I remind him. “Send word to that other village that we are under your protection.”
“Ladda,” he sighs. “I am king to who? To my ancestors? To my father? To the gods? Or just to my crew? No. I must kill Fro. Then everyone will know I’m king. But until then… they just see me as eighteen, spending a chest of his father’s silver on a handful of boats.”
And I had not seen until that moment how young he was. His scars and his fierceness, his muscle, yes, all these masked that my betrothed, my king, was so close to my own age.
“Besides,” he says, “in a year my men will want to go home anyway.”
“What do you mean, home? They are home. The Gaular is their home.”
“Ladda, these men, they have fields and wives of their own. They stay because I pay them to stay. I can’t pay them forever, and they wouldn’t take my silver to stay.”
“So a year? My bride-price buys me two dozen men for a year?”
“Yes. Did Eindr not explain
this to you?” He’s genuinely puzzled.
“No. Yes. He may have. I just thought…”
“They’re not slaves, Ladda. They joined me for a share. For silver. And to stop Fro from raiding their homes in the south.”
“Ragnar,” I say calmly, though I am shaking. “I can’t marry you if you can’t protect my people.”
“You’d break our troth?” He’s hurt.
“Haven’t you broken mine?” I’m trying to not yell. Trying not to cry. “You came to find me, you made an offer. I only accepted this because we needed your help.”
“You had my help. We’ve built. We hunted. We repaired. You’ll make it through a harvest and a winter. And if I can end this war, you can stay forever.”
“So stay and fight, Ragnar,” I plead.
“I go and fight, Ladda,” he tries to explain. “For you, for them. For all of us. At month’s end we return south and find Fro. I want you to come with us.”
“Why? I won’t marry you, so why will you have me?”
“Because,” he says, turning his horse to me in the night. “Because we are friends.”
At the boatyard, or what is to become one.
The sound is soothing. It’s the sound of my childhood, of my father’s hands, and the promise of adventure with each new boat as we would take her out for the first time. Chunk and scrape and the zzif of saws.
The familiar patterns taking shape, from keel and strake, overlap and beam, stringer and scarf, rib and knee and gunwale. All in gleaming new-sawn wood, and a treasure of rivets. This is a karr taking form here. A warship.
Ragnar’s crew are wrestling glima on the shore, trying to grapple one another into the water. Each grip countered by a twist or escape, and this met with a trip, or a wrist lock. We’ve all known each move since we were children.
I could stay. I could remain with my people and simply work the boatyard. Let Brandr be jarl. Make Eindr stay, he’d be an excellent jarl. Me, I’d be a boat-builder.
But no, this is a good-bye. I’ve agreed to go with Ragnar, and he, for his part, has agreed to pay for two dozen men to stay behind for a year–this last not as a bride-price but as a kind of deposit on these very ships we build for the war. For his war.
Even though it’s not in a marriage-bed, my fate is wedded to Ragnar’s.
Rota is straining not to beg to come, but I already have a promise to stay and help. Kara said something cryptic while redoing my hair. Brandr weeps a little with his farewell and calls me granddaughter, and it’s true he loves me like one.
“Brandr,” I begin. I’ve practiced this. “Kara is to act as jarl in my stead. This will, I hope, root her here in this world. She’s drifting too far away. Also see to it that none of Ragnar’s men touch her. I’m counting on you for this.” And I have his word.
And so soon after I arrived at this village as a refugee, I leave as jarl. I’ve joined Ragnar’s war for a share of silver, so that I can pay for his crew to remain in the Gaular, or find another to replace them. But by the gods, I will garrison the place for my people, one way or another.
The dapple will stay with the village, but Ragnar has found me another horse, a beautiful animal of dark chestnut. Eindr hands me the reins and offers me a hand, and I’m grateful for it as this creature is taller than I’m used to. It’s wider too, so my hips hurt at first.
Ragnar hasn’t said much. I don’t think he’s upset with me, or maybe he was but is less so when I agreed to go with him. His mind is heavy, I think.
So we ride, the eighty of us, north alongside the ridge where old Gudrunn and her bronze bell look down on us. North to where his boats are beached and watched by a small crew who’ve camped and fished these few weeks.
There are cheers as crew are reunited, deep kisses from some of the men awarded to the women among us, though some of these rebuked with good humour or a stiff thump to the chest. Not all, though. It’s short enough work, fires lit and some last cooking while the boats are dragged over the stuttering rocks to the river, clear and cold from the last of the snow-melt.
Blocks of beeswax passed up and down to smooth edges, waterproof exposed folds in cloth, or to write runes of blessing or obscenity. The heavier men lean well overboard on the riverside as the horses embark, shushed and coaxed with apples, hands over their eyes until they are secure, side by side, into the familiar swaying. Bales of dried fish and strips of rabbit and other game, casks of tree-pitch and buckets of sand all packed in so there seems no room for crew at all, and here I find some use for myself, checking rigging, unfouling ropes, stowing and coiling. My hands know boats, and I want to be useful.
When the oars hit the water they do so in unison, and only then is the full perfection of the craft obvious. The boats draw hardly any water, so they perch on its surface like a bug. Only much, much swifter.
An hour, they say. An hour and this river meets the broader one, where we can raise the sail and make our way to the sea. At the thought of this, the green and salt of the ocean, I come alive in a way I’d thought long buried, my father’s stories of the pirate queen Alfhild settling again in my heart. Alfhild, daughter of Siward–that can’t be right. Another Siward, another Danish king. Ragnar’s grandfather? Could Ragnar be descended from the heroine of my father’s story? I’ll have to ask him.
But the chatter and grunts of the rowers fall eerily silent, and as I look up to investigate, I see that I’m alone in the boat.
Alone in the whole world.
The others have vanished.
Gone too, are the other boats, and there’s only myself, and this one skeith, and the river.
It’s something maybe Kara could explain.
Then a sound, soft but strong, a wingbeat of a single, white swan, arrow-swift overhead and low.
The world now restored, crew and boats and gossip and singing, swearing and boasting and the creak of rope and wood and the slice and glide of oars.
That swan. I remember her from the beach, the fires of the huts reflected in her feathers.
“You haven’t seen her yet?” Kara asks in memory. “Soon, though. You’ll see.”
And then another her for seeing. A girl, perhaps ten, black hair a-tangle, stares out at the boats from the river bank.
The wolf’s-head girl from the forest. I’d swear to it.
A handful of hours to sail past the site of my old village. I can’t look to the shore as we make our way past it. I don’t know which would lay heavier on my heart: to see its charred ruins, or to see those few who remained having rebuilt some of it. Either way, it’s the grave of my mother, my father. My self.
The speed fixates me. Nearly a week overland through forest, with outlaws and wolves and sore backs from sleeping on tree roots, all that distance dispensed with by a few hours of oar and sail. Impossible that anything can move this fast. And south to meet the rest of the fleet.
I’m not sure what I’ll find there. Ragnar hasn’t spoken of it, nor is there much talk of war here–just reunion, mostly. One owes another some weight in silver, or ale, and is either dreading or anticipating repayment.
When I first see them, I think it’s some mistake. Some trick of the light. I try counting masts, sails, but then one bobs behind another and my brain can’t make sense of them, or some flutter of oars and I have to start over.
“How many ships in the fleet?” I ask aloud to anyone listening.
One rower stops, cocks his head, squints. Counts thumb-tip to knuckle, twelve a hand and begins again. “Thirty-two, looks like, not counting the little ones.”
Thirty-two ships. Each with between forty and sixty rowers, or if it’s a buss then that’s another hundred. Somewhere between twelve hundred and almost two thousand warriors. And these able to land anywhere in the Nordvegr in less than a day, or cross the sea to Sjeland or Jutland in another.
What can stand against such a fleet? I catch myself with my mouth open and laugh. I grip the rope tighter and pull myself up until I’m standing on the gunwales, something my f
ather would chide me for but this… this is amazing.
A horn. Another. A cheer. It’s for Ragnar, the son of their fallen king Siward, and curses for the rowers of Birka and Uppsala.
We beach the skeith and the two knarr, the men shirtless but with the silk striped breaches in gaudy colours instantly soaked by the sea. They haul and drag until the keel catches sand.
Ashore, the haggling begins, inventory taken and traded, promises made and contracts entered. Which hands to which ship under whose command. Signals and flags, strategies and stories.
But I have business of my own.
When I set out this morning, I had no glimmer of this idea. Skathi, goddess of the tide, who provided for my family and lulled me to sleep at night with slow shushing beat of her heart, cast this plan on the shore of myself.
So now I have a move to make.
Ragnar is there, squatting on the beach with men, drawing shapes in the sand with a stick. I’m reminded of the uncles planning farms on the dirt floor of my hall in the Gaular. But this is a plan for war, for rumours, sightings, local tides and currents, and this army of stories of this cliff, that bay, this beach.
“Ragnar,” I say quietly. He raises a hand to silence the others and rises. He comes to me, smiling, and takes my arm. Eyes glower from bearded faces at this girl who dares interrupt the affairs of men.
One small boat, perhaps just a fishing boat, tacks sharply away from the fleet and heads southward with purpose. I’m not sure why I notice this, but it’s something. News to bear, or some disagreement. But swift.
“You’re having fun,” I say. His smile broadens.
“I suppose I am,” he says. “Are you?”
“Ragnar,” I begin. “When you handed me my sword you said it was worth a kingdom.”
“An expression.” His characteristic shrug.
“Yes, but still,” I say, serious. “I told you to sell me one.”
“I offered you a kingdom, Ladda. But you won’t marry me.” He’s not hurt by this. I think he is still flirting with me.
“So, sell me a kingdom, Ragnar. My own. I give you the sword, and you give me the ships and men I arrived with.”
Winter by Winter Page 7