“There is that. But they’ve been there long enough to get a grasp of things. And some are my own men, changing alliances.”
“Complicated,” I say.
“Business,” he shrugs.
“A business you can die in,” I remind him.
“Any worthwhile business, you can die in,” he laughs. He raises his cup to me.
“I’m tired, Jarl Rorik,” I tell him. I am, suddenly.
“No titles between friends, I think, Ladda.” He half-whispers this, leaning towards me slightly. I catch his scent, and he smells good. Different from Ragnar. Sweeter. Like beeswax.
“Rorik, then.” and I smile at him. “Tell Ragnar… where is Ragnar, anyway? He was right here.”
“I believe he and the Princess Thora have their own business to conduct,” he says.
“And die in,” I answer, perhaps gruffly.
“As you say,” Rorik nods. “But shall I tell him you’re coming south with us?”
“Yes, you can tell him I accept his offer,” I say, standing. “And tell him…”
“Yes?”
“Tell him I want my sword back.”
Again the spray of salt and wind in my hair. Not my ship, not yet, but Ragnar’s karv, a smaller nimble vessel best suited for inshore. There’s a chill to the air the sun hasn’t yet chased from the water.
“Where are Rorik’s boats?” I ask Ragnar. “Why isn’t he with us?”
“I don’t know,” Ragnar says, unconcerned. “Behind us. He will be there at the rally point.”
The point has only been roughly described, but our twenty ships sail towards it. A headland just north of the entrance to the Limfjord, farther south than I’ve ever been, and not even half-way to Ragnar’s hall at Heithabyr. Just keep the beach to our left, and when the beach ends, that is the mouth of the fjord, more of an inland sea, Ragnar had said. A round bay, leading to two rivers, with Aalborg first to the north, then on the easternmost shore. If Harald knows we’re coming, he’ll choke off the entrance to the bay and meet us with Greek fire, a kind of dragon’s breath that pitches balls of flame ship to ship. When I ask Ragnar why we don’t have this, he shrugs.
“Who would be on board with such a thing?” he asks.
“The enemy,” I answer.
He doesn’t seem to take the matter seriously, and I resist the urge to shove him overboard.
“What if we beach north of the mouth and march overland?” I suggest.
“It’s a long walk,” he says. “We lose speed. Also,” he adds, “there is no open country past the beach. Small groups of archers can pick us off as we march inland. There would be none left alive by the time we got there.”
“And to the south?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know this country.”
“Which is why Rorik should be here,” I add sharply.
“He should,” Ragnar agrees, and changes the subject. “We’ll get you to your ships soon.”
I squint into the summer sun. How many months since that day on the river, leaving the Gaulardale? How many months since I’ve seen my siblings? My heart seems to stab itself with worry, particularly for Kara. I’m not sure I trust Ragnar’s men. But I do trust Brandr, and I trust Rota to keep our sister safe.
Forest.
It took everything I had to leave my ships there, in the midst of battle. Harald knew we were coming, and tied his ships together into an island of war.
The tide had pushed much of this to the north, and bound up in a fortress were less maneuverable. So I left my seven, newly-won ships with Ragnar, and took my skeith and two karr,–one hundred and twenty warriors–to the south bank of the Limfjord, seemingly abandoning the fight.
We were ready for ships to break away from Harald’s fleet to engage us, but either they didn’t think of it, or couldn’t. Whichever.
And here we are, half-running with shield and spear, leaving only twenty to fight and die for our beached ships. The last hundred of us raking air into our lungs, eyes wide for any sign of the enemy.
How many hours north? None of us knows. Rorik might, and could tell us if he hadn’t disappeared. Maybe some rogue fleet of Harald’s got to them before the rally point, and it wounds me to think of him dead.
Could I love him?
He’s, what, charming? Yes. Rich? Of course. And there is a confidence to him that doesn’t cross into Ragnar’s arrogance and seeming laziness. I’m unkind. Ragnar isn’t arrogant, he just seems trusting in his orleg as king. Wedded to the gods as he is, he can seem unapproachable, or at least, impenetrable. Rorik on the other hand, impressive, yes, but still with a man’s vulnerabilities.
Where in Hel is my head? Right now, we march and stay alert. All this green sets my mind wandering, and I have a body to stay in if I wish to keep it breathing throughout the day. Belts are wrapped in swaths of cloth to keep gear from rattling. We’re single file and moving fast.
A scout returns from the left advance, following a ridgeline above the fjord. He sees smoke that might be Aalborg. Two mil, maybe more. If we push, we’ll make it by sunset.
We’re betting on the place being unguarded, with all hands to Harald’s fleet. But we have no way of knowing. If we’re wrong, we can recede into the forest, south, but no way, really, back to our boats. So we’ll either take the hall, or be scattered, walking home. None of this instills me with confidence, but for whatever reason I’m not afraid.
I’m too stubborn to be afraid.
This explains the scars on my knees from when I was little, the scar too under my chin, now pale-white and all but invisible but once red and glaring for a whole year. Too stubborn now to stop and rest, knowing we are racing the sun, with five hours to go before the battle can even begin.
A branch nearly takes my eye out of carelessness. I swear and struggle to keep up with the column.
There’s no time to pause when we see the village. No time for orders as the forest falls away. We are lean and hungry and sore, but without cover and with the suddenness of clearing, we have one choice.
We run at them.
Howling, we run. Praying, we run. Cursing, we run. But we run. With shield and spear and short bow we loose whatever we can upon the enemy, which at this point is merely the sides of some buildings, some goat-herds, and some startled men who look around on the ground for wherever it was they placed leather helmets. We’re upon them.
We’ve stumbled on a terrace above the village proper, and it gives us good vantage on the place. Mercifully, it’s probably half-empty. Comically, we realize the area is huge. Hjorring would probably fit on this perch on which we find ourselves.
I wave scouts ahead, although we’ve been seen and shouts of warning ring through the town below. As the sun sets, I can see well up the river, to the battle still raging, ship to ship. We’ve caught most of the residents gazing out to sea.
What I assumed to be the great hall is merely a barn, given the traffic of cattle going into it. The hall itself is some distance away and has a roof of beam and wood, not of earth. Iron and bronze reflect pink light, as rivets and mail, shield and spear are brought into a line between us and it. And beyond the hall, down to the water, the docks we must take.
If we take the docks–and hold them–we take any resupply ships that leave the battle. If the docks fall to us, Aalborg falls. Harald falls.
“Archers!” I call, and forty, sixty warriors are at my back at a word, the creak of bowstring a chorus.
I cut the air with my sword, and scores of black feathers fill the sky like a hail of crows.
Another volley, and another, are loosed before the first arrows hit a disciplined wall of shields. As the storm continues, however, here a shield falls. Another.
Another.
And with a thrust of my sword, I am a rock in a river of women and men, leaping, joyous, shrieking, growling as they pour around me in a torrent toward the shield wall. Their return fire is sporadic, a spitting of arrows, yet each shot more effective than ours—our shields are n
ot up to catch them. I race behind the crest of the tide I have unleashed.
One hundred against so many. They’re fed and rested. They know the land, each rock and ankle-tearing hollow. We have only our shields and axes, our fury, and the speed of running downhill.
It’s chaos. There is no wall-to-wall of wood with spears overhead. It’s a pit where the back to yours could be crewmate or foe. You fight only what you can see.
This spear-arm is too open on the thrust, so I duck a little and stab into the armpit. This neck is exposed for a heartbeat between collar and helm, so I thrust there and the heart beats crimson into the ground. Low, there is an unprotected hamstring on a lunge, so I reach out and snap it, drawing back. Simple. Where there’s metal, I dodge from it. Where there’s flesh, I stab at it. The rest is madness and rage and fire in the blood.
There’s a sound like singing, or like the peal of a bell, incredibly close. Then everything is black for an instant.
On my back, I can taste the blood, my cheek hot like I’ve been branded. I prop myself up on my left elbow, pain stabbing through my shoulder, and touch my face with my right hand.
There is blood, and pain, and ringing, and the setting of the sun.
And then there’s nothing.
Water. Not of the shore or a river. But a basin. The wringing of a cloth and the pressing of a bruise. I’m awake.
Smoke. A warrior dabs blood from my face, not aware or not caring his own could use the same attention. A red beard I recognize, the man who pulled me to my feet a lifetime ago in the Gaulardale.
I should have expected Valkyries, I’m thinking.
“Shh,” he says, stopping my hand from my face. “Spear shaft. Point’s taken a bit of your ear, hence all the blood. Nothing bleeds like an ear. And the shaft itself has given your cheek a good pummeling. Can’t tell if it’s broken, though.”
I probe my tongue into my cheek. Pain, but it’s not that bad.
He reads my eyes. “No? All right in a week, then, Jarl Ladda. Maybe two.”
“Where are we?” I ask. It’s dark, and few fires where we are.
“Where you fell, in the field behind the hall. The rest are inside.”
“The rest?” I prop myself up on one elbow, and the world is nearly white with pain. I try the other one, and it leans me away from my red-bearded caregiver.
“Half. Maybe.” He says, grimly.
“But?” I’m looking for news.
“Aalborg is yours, Jarl Ladda. We have the hall, the dock, and a dozen ships. Most here don’t seem to care that we’re here and Harald is gone.”
“How long?” I ask.
“How long were you out? Half an hour? An hour, maybe. Enough for it to get dark.”
“Help me up,” I say, and he does, though it’s clearly against his better judgment.
My head objects; there’s a darkness and a pounding there.
The man is practically a giant, and he places my wincing shoulder over his, one hand on my hip. He could wear me like a scarf and not notice much, I think. He hands me my sword, and I thank him.
When we get to the door I tell him to put me down, and it’s on unsteady feet that I enter the hall of Aalborg.
There are many dead, few wounded, so that all who hold this hall now, most into the mead, are in decent enough shape. They’ve had the sense to stay out of the great chair that has served, apparently, as a throne for the pretender-king Harald. Rorik’s chair.
I have no such sense, and limp and drag my gory self to the seat of power. Someone hands me some wine. I almost put it down, the cup heavy and makes my shoulder complain, but I take it in for a moment. The oaken solidity of the chair, the pile of furs on it, the gold cup with Frankish wine. My crew, victorious and grateful, around the fire, flashing one another wounds, scars, and joking. The sound of their cheering as they raise their cups to me.
I’m sitting too, I realize, upon a cloak, rich and heavy. I put the cup down on the chair’s table-sized arms, and carefully wrap myself up in the generous wool.
“Wake me when Ragnar gets here,” I say, though I doubt anyone can hear me.
A dream.
I’m in my old dress, the one my mother made me. The one blood and war took from me that day on the beach. Only clean now. Mended.
Not mended. Perfect.
Everyone is gone. The world empty like the day I left the Gaular. There is a light the colour of sea-foam coming from outside the door of the hall of Aalborg, and I rise from the great chair without pain.
White steps in stone down to the water, which I know aren’t really there, but still this path, under a moon, takes me to the shore.
A woman waits in a dress, now green, now blue, her hair shimmering copper. Her bare feet in the tide. A swan glides behind her, its black eyes watchful.
“Meyla,” she says. “Come. Come sit.”
“I am no longer a little girl, Skathi,” I tell the goddess. “And there’s nowhere to sit.”
“As you wish,” she says. “And no, no you’re no longer a girl, Ladda.”
“Why did you bring me here?” I ask her.
“You brought me,” she says. “With you.”
“You kept Harald’s fleet to the north, so we could land on the southern shore,” I say, trying to remember the day. It seems difficult.
“I did,” says the goddess of tide. And of scars, I remember.
“What happens now?” I ask. Is that what this is about? Did I need to ask this?
“What would you wish for?” she asks.
“Same as always. I want to keep my people safe. Kara and Rota, safe.”
“And you have done this,” Skathi says.
“No. More,” I tell her. “More than just for a year. I want them to have a life there, in the Gaular. With the great-aunts and the grey-beards and all the songs and memories and stories of my mother’s people, my father’s. I need…”
“Yes?” the goddess asks.
“I need my mother’s runes to survive. The stories and secret of them. Kara’s runes, now, and mine too, I suppose. I don’t understand it yet. But that’s why I have to go back. To learn them. To keep it safe. Alive. Remembered.”
“You wish for silver, then,” she states.
“Not silver, just what it can buy. A future. Survival.”
“Silver,” she says, nodding. And the sea sparkles with it, waves in moonlight. Fish scales. I can see dancing in their flash and play, forming individual runes.
Her runes are still spelling out the world. Runes of wealth, and transaction. Of the aurochs, great-shouldered cattle, and a thorn in a thicket, and the mouth of a god. And the god rides a chariot, its wheels spinning spokes which become a brand of fire. And the fire is a gift, then, in the darkness, warming hands and supper and becoming stories, all these hearth-side joys. And outside the hearth, a rain of hail, rattling and murmuring of need, of ice, and the wheel of the year, harvest long faded. And a yew tree, its wood now a dice cup spilling chance and fate, and an elk and the sun and a birch tree and…
“Stop it,” say. “Please. Stop. It’s too much.” I try not to look too apologetic. “All at once.”
“You have a question,” says the goddess, understanding, and she is once more one thing and not a thousand. The runes are still there in the glint of the waves, but less demanding.
“Should I marry Rorik?” This, I think, is the question I dragged to a goddess, or perhaps the other way around.
“Not for a palm of land,” she answers cryptically.
“Does that mean no, or just not for his land?”
She says nothing. If Kara were here, I think, she could teach me how to make the gods more co-operative.
Behind the goddess, easing from the sea arises a great armada of ships. Dozens. Hundreds, maybe. More ships than in all the world. Karv and karr, skeith and buss, all of golden wood. Each fly a banner of a swan, wrought in knotwork. At the vanguard, a dragon-headed drakkar, one of the boats I took in victory over Harald as a prize.
&n
bsp; As soon as it appears, the vision of the fleet subsides, and there is simply the lull of the ocean, and Skathi.
“Eindr thinks I’m the goddess Thorgertha,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says.
“Am I?” I ask.
“Are you?” Her voice is laughter, but it does not mock.
“Thorgertha’s just a legend,” I say.
“So are you, Ladda.” says Skathi. “So are you.”
And I’m awake.
“You’re in my chair,” Rorik says. He looks… normal. Untroubled. Composed. Certainly not fresh from battle.
“Where in all of Midgard were you?” I ask him, waking.
“North. We came overland, same as you. It just took a little longer”
“I hope you had a pleasant walk, Jarl Rorik,” I say, pulling myself up to sitting straight. Shoulder and ribs complain, a wince and a gasp. My ear stings like a thousand wasps wage war against it, and I can’t open one eye all the way.
“Not entirely uneventful. We did manage to persuade most of the households from staying out of the battle.”
“What about joining our side?” I ask.
“There’s only so much one can expect,” he replies.
“Ragnar?” I ask.
“At the docks, drinking. He should be here any minute. A great feast is upon us, if we can get the kitchen fires hot enough so late. But I think it’ll be worth their while.”
“I’m in no mood for a feast,” I tell him, though I’m suddenly starving at the thought of food.
“I need to get my ships,” I finish.
“At dawn we’ll send horses, enough crew to bring them to dock here, though we’re running out of room,” he chuckles.
“And the fleet?”
“Few losses,” he assures me. “None of mine or yours as far as I can tell. Some of Ragnar’s. Still, there are sixty boats in the harbour.”
“Sixty!” We have again doubled a fleet we’ve opposed. One final question. “And Harald?”
“Escaped. Or it seems so. Some of his fleet broke off late in the battle and headed south. Ragnar wanted to pursue but didn’t have the numbers. Still, Harald is broken after this. He borrowed a great deal of silver to pay for the ships now under our control. And most of the jarls will support Ragnar now that he’s back in the Jutland.”
Winter by Winter Page 10