Winter by Winter

by Jordan Stratford

  “So, it’s over,” I say.

  “War is business, Ladda,” he says, touching my sliced ear gingerly. “It is never over.”

  We have had to wait until Friday for the wedding. The day of Freja, goddess of love.

  A great deal was made over whether to do it here, or move on in a show of force to Viborg for a more public display. Ragnar, in his fickle way, decided to remain in Aalborg, which has been doubling in population every hour throughout the week as householders stream in to prove their loyalty. And, of course, to distance themselves from Harald, whom they all claim to despise. Politics.

  Thora for her part is beautiful, and there’s an expectation that I will somehow find myself in her wake like the other prominent women of Aalborg. But I don’t know how to set my hair or how I’m to wear the dresses here. Ragnar solves this problem by sending two girls to the house Rorik has lent me, and they simply dress me like a doll as I stand there.

  Last night there was a great blot, which while it was expected of me to go, I was forgiven in my absence to recover from my injuries. Although despite an angry red line on my ear, with a bit missing no more than the nip of a mouse, and the great bruise on my cheek, both are largely unseen. My shoulder has made simple things such as brushing my hair impossible, and my ribs ache when I sit too long, or stand too long, or sleep more than an hour.

  But also, there’s a hardness to my words, to my voice, to my dreams.

  In battle, in the midst of blows exchanged, there’s no room for fear. Or if it was there it was polite enough to wait its turn and not demand my attention. But at night it comes, and I wake with my heart in my throat and my hands trembling. I hear the bones against my shield, smell the blood’s metal hit the air, and the stink of the offal on a withdrawn spear. It’s not the roaring during, but the screaming after. The whimpering and mewling, the twisted songs of pain. This is what haunts me. And I wear it as much as I wear this grand dress Ragnar has sent me for his wedding.

  A wedding that could have been mine.

  I’m surprised this doesn’t bother me. Should it? But no, Thora is beautiful and I suppose that it’s her purpose to be beautiful. I was more jealous (was I jealous?) to see them flirt. But all these details of mundr, the bride-price and the morning-gift of morgengifu just look like the hall-dealings of port access and bails of wool. It’s just business. Rorik would agree.

  I’ve begun to notice the way he looks at me, battered creature though I am. Eyeing me up like a horse he considers buying. Maybe I should see him the same way. Business.

  Even then, there is a glint there. We intrigue each other. Could we be lovers? I don’t entirely trust him, but then I doubt he would want me to. He’s a complicated thing. So different from Ragnar, whose nature assumed I would share my bed and it was easy as yawning. Much laughter back then, hoping not to be heard by all who no doubt heard us. Maybe I miss that. Maybe that’s why I resent Thora, to what little extent I do, or might.

  But it was the fear that made me excuse myself from the blot. I’ve seen enough animal-dread in the eyes of the people I’ve killed; I have no pressing need to see the same fear in the faces of animals facing sickle or rope, left hanging in the forest like Odinn from Yggdrasil, the Tree of Worlds. Is the god so satisfied, that his own suffering is reflected back to him in offering? I have only met one god, so I couldn’t know. Maybe Kara has met Odinn. Maybe she’s wed to him by now, there is no telling with my god-bound sister, whom I miss painfully, and such missing is a fist of ice in my chest.

  However, there is a wedding to endure. At the end of which I shall return to the Gaulardale with at least twenty ships and near eight hundred crew, stopping along the Jutland to collect families, livestock, household goods, and I mean to create a great village that will be defended, peopled, and enduring. A future I’ve purchased with my sword and my nightmares.

  One wedding to endure.

  Ragnar seems happy, and he embraced me when it was over. His great arms around me and he lifts me just a little off the ground (which makes my shoulder crunch in a hideous way), because he can. Not the embrace of a former lover, but of a comrade. I do see now that I love him, although not in a way either of us could have expected.

  Thora kissed me on the cheek as I gave her the blessing I could remember, words of my mother’s which seemed odd in my mouth, but they were received well. She’s my queen now, I suppose, a contract.

  “Jarl Hladgertha, a word?” Turning, it’s Eindr, his face expressionless.

  “Of course, Eindr,” I smile, hoping he’ll smile back. And he does, just a little, though this pleases me more than it should. We walk together away from the throng of well-wishers, all crowned with flowers and some already into the ale.

  “Jarl Rorik would like to know what you plan to do,” he says.

  “Don’t you?” I ask.

  “Me?” He’s puzzled.

  “You’re not curious?”

  I’ve led him between granaries, the wood silver in the sun, sanded soft from seasons, yet it catches on the sleeve of my dress. Not for long, not a snag, just the plucking at a thread. A place for private conversations, or stolen ones.

  “Well,” he says, relaxing, less formal. “I imagine you’ll do what you said you’d do. Take your ships and your silver and go back to your village to build.”

  I nod.

  “But Rorik has an offer,” I say.

  “He does, Ladda,” Eindr says carefully.

  “I’ve been expecting as much.” I’m trying to look unconcerned, but it’s not working. I keep looking at the shape of his face.

  “Jarl Rorik would marry you. He would grant you a large bride-price of lands in Aalborg that would bring in an annual fee, allowing you to garrison your village with two hundred men and their families.”

  “I have eight hundred crew,” I insist.

  “Yes, but you’ll need to feed them. And almost all are Jutlanders which will not want to remain so far north.”

  “It’s not so bad in the Nordvegr,” I say. “At least in the Vestfold.” I can’t imagine them not wanting to come. The Gualar is green, and quiet.

  “It’s warmer here,” he says. “With more grazing land. Ladda, if you dropped eight hundred people in your village it would be like an invasion.”

  He’s right, of course. There would be more Danes than any of my village have ever seen, and their ways, their stories, would swallow ours in a generation.

  “Two hundred,” Eindr continues, “year after year, that gives you strength with fewer mouths for the land to feed.”

  “We have salmon,” I retort.

  “Eight hundred people require a great deal of salmon,” he says. “Or so Rorik would tell you, I’m sure.”

  “I’m sure,” I say. He’s still right. And I’ve thought about this, night after night, staving off dark dreams by untangling this knot, and I’ve known it. I didn’t like the taste of the fact in my throat.

  “So Jarl Rorik would have you stay. Send five boats with those who would go, leave the rest of the fleet here in Aalborg. And you, too, would remain with him.”

  There’s a weight on me. I can feel it pressing my shoulders down to the earth, my heart sinking to my belly.

  “Eindr,” I say, “what do you think I should do?”

  He pauses, considering. “For my part, Ladda, I would see you happy.”

  “Happy?” I’m not even sure what that means anymore.

  “Yes. I think you deserve happiness.” His honesty and kindness are chipping away months of hardness from me, and I’m not sure I want that. Not now.

  “Can I be happy here, with Rorik?” I ask. Would he even know?

  “I can’t tell you that, Ladda.” and I notice when he drops the title, that he has for most of this conversation. “But I do hope you could be happy here.” He smiles, too briefly, then clearly fearing he’s crossed some line, stiffens and steps back.

  I’ve been standing too long, and everything is beginning to throb again.

  “I
need to rest,” I say. “But tell Rorik…” What? Tell him what a goddess told me in a dream? The pause makes me look like an idiot.

  “Jarl Hladgertha?” Eindr asks, again formal, concerned.

  “Tell him I will agree to marry him, but not for one palm of his land.”

  “Then what would you like?” he asks. All business.

  “The fleet,” I say, remembering the vision of a forest of masts, all under the banner of a swan. “The ships are to be mine. All of them.”

  “All of them,” he repeats, nodding, dismissing himself courteously.

  And Eindr is gone and I’m leaning against the grain shed, my palm pressed into its sun-silvered wood, trying not to throw up.

  Unsuccessfully, it turns out.

  — PART III —

  I wake in my bed with no sign of my husband. There are a few candidates for whose bed I might find him in, but I don’t care to look for him. It’s an insult, and it’s likely meant to be.

  The winter has been the easiest of my life. I have no chores, no worry. There’s always meat, and bread. There are hands to tend the fires and hands to pour Rorik wine. Always more wine. And sometimes his own hand reaches out to those who welcome the touch of a gold-ringed hand.

  Wife. I taste the word with my tongue, roll it around in my mouth.

  I’ve shared my bed with two men; a king and a jarl. The king was always a thing of hunger, boy-like in the way boys throw themselves naked off the dock in summer. Joyous and wild, then ravenous, always laughing. But sometimes impatient, ungentle. With Ragnar it was the strength of his arms and his legs, the desperation in his mouth, like swimming. Like drowning.

  But my husband, Rorik–he’s an articulate lover. Fingertips, lips, the hair brushed gently from my face, his kisses on my throat, between my breasts, down my belly. A tongue-tip skillfully flicked on a hip-bone. An attention artful, cultivated. But it’s been months without, and I sleep alone or for warmth in a pile of the girls who braid my hair.

  Caldr returned not long after Ragnar left with his queen to his halls in Heithabyr. Throughout these months Rorik’s table has been haunted by Caldr and his grumbling, an unprofitable war in the north against lands once loyal to Fro. I can tell him that many of the villages he’s raided had never heard of their supposed king, or of his war against Siward and Ragnar, but no word of mine has any weight at all in his ears, and increasingly I’m waved away by the man I married, the man whose fate my own is now tied by troth. By contract.

  As the month of Thorri fades into Goi, ice recedes from the harbour, and the men speak more of war. And Rorik speaks of war as though the ships frozen to the dock for another month or so are not mine, their crews promised to me as bride-price.

  Months since word from the Gaular. The voice of Brandr echoed in the messenger, sailing south, who tells me the garrison is established, as is trade with the village upriver Ragnar and I discovered. Rota and Kara are well, Kara unchallenged in her role as jarl in my place. And this is all I know of what I’ve left behind.

  Safe, in a single word. If only this were enough to allow me to breathe all the way in and all the way out, just once. I thought it would be. I thought it should be.

  I have spent the months of Ylir and Morsugur shaking off my attendants, with their combs and trenches, and training with my crew in the snow. My shoulder healed, it’s supple again, and stronger now with a spear. My sword however is wrapped in goatskin and tucked away in a box near my bed, and I fear picking it up; I fear what it cost me, fear that I’ve shamed it by what I’ve become.

  And what is that? Kept and ignored? Surely that’s not all I am. I’ve made good on my word so that the Gaular would not fall to wolf or winter. So that’s something. The rest is merely the idleness of the first snow I’ve never been required to brave in search of firewood or rabbits. Is there guilt in that? Some, if I’m honest with myself.

  I can see why Rorik finds solace in Frankish wine and admiring girls. He tries to erase the cost of sitting on a fur-piled throne, cup in hand, while others work and freeze. It’s too much to face entirely sober.

  Mercifully, few expect sons to begin issuing from me like eggs from a hen this year. Not yet. Of course, I’d need my husband to share my bed for this to happen, and then with more blood than wine in his veins.

  I think he’s a different man in summer months. The Rorik I know–kind, clever, knowledgeable about the world–will return with the sun. But each night Caldr is there at the table like a storm cloud, blocking out any hint of sunrise.

  I shake my head of the whole thing. Rising, the girls who attend me today fetch cloak and basin. I nod for my wolf skin, still a collar due to my mother’s brooch. I no longer bow my head to allow them to slip it on, as I expect them to manage. They can get a box, if they have to.

  I should learn their names. But I’m afraid that every face, every meal, every morning tethers me to this place and not to my own home, my own people, where I’m jarl in my own right.

  I want the cold air on my face. Winter is honest, at least. It promises nothing other than that which it brings. Mud and dung from the pens are smoothed over, ripe scents stifled, sound turned to whispers. The creak of the ice is that of the pines in the wind.

  So I stand just outside the door of my house until my cheeks hurt, and my eyes slit against the sun on the snow.

  Eindr slides the white game piece across the board, smiling.

  When we play he insists always that I am to be red—outnumbered and surrounded, avoiding capture. I have enough of that away from the board.

  I always thought tafl was a game for old men, but Eindr says it’s designed to teach strategy. So in each game we pretend the king-piece is me ashore, surrounded by my crew and cut off from our boats. The enemy is white, in the forest, four separate forces trying to coordinate and pen us in before we can reach the river, which is the table’s edge. We feint, plan, fall back, counter.

  I have my own weapons at my disposal, despite the fact that the king-piece cannot capture enemy forces.

  If my eyes catch his, he looks away, swallowing, and his hands unsteady after. When it’s my move I look off for a moment, play with my hair or adjust the rings on my fingers until I feel him watching me. He doesn’t let me win, but I can distract him, evade.

  And so we pass the hours, and with each dawn the crack of ice sloughing off the harbour is a day closer to my escape.

  “I plan on leaving, you know,” I tell him, as though it were nothing. I move a game piece, closing ranks.

  “I know,” he admits.

  “And?”

  “And what?” he says, almost laughing.

  “What does my husband think of this?”

  “Jarl Rorik’s thoughts are his own, Jarl Hladgertha.” I never know when he’s teasing me with my title and formal name.

  “Eindr, you know him better than anyone,” I press.

  “I don’t believe that’s true,” he says, sliding a white piece across the board. An obvious move.

  “Regardless, what do you think he thinks?” I could crack open my friend’s skull sometimes, he’s so elusive.

  Eindr’s response is careful.

  “You own the fleet, but not the crew. Jarl Rorik can’t allow you to leave Aalborg without ships, and there’s no profit in allowing some three hundred warriors to leave with you simply because you wish to visit your family.”

  “So?” I had assumed as much. I slide a counter piece, making slow progress.

  “So whatever you offer to pay them to leave, he will pay them more to stay.” His fingers hover above a game piece, contemplating.

  “A bidding war,” I say.

  “One you can’t win. Ships without crew are wood, crew without ships are farmers. And little profit is found in trading the axe for the plough.”

  “A draw, then,” I suggest.

  “Certainly a position with which to begin negotiations,” he says, pretending that this is all theory.

  “So, in this scenario, what should I ne
gotiate for?”

  He moves before speaking. Then: “A single ship, to Hjorring.”

  “And why Hjorring?” I ask, though I think I know.

  “Early spring trade, gather news. Harald is still out there, somewhere, and you can rule out the north as a scout. No open ocean, easy to beach if a storm hits on the way. No risk, and a chance of reward if you hear of anything. Many here have family there, and will even pay for the passage. Offset your cost.”

  “And from there…” I say, sliding a red piece in defense.

  “Well, at that point you are a day’s sail south of the Nordvegr, with a paid crew under your command, and Jarl Rorik nowhere in sight. Where you sail after that is entirely your concern.”

  His last white move falls short of my defences, and I slide my king piece to a corner. Escape.

  Victory.

  “Something suitable then,” I say. “The drakkar.”

  The dragon-headed boat of war. My prize.

  When the storm hits, it’s at least predictable. I’m getting bored of cursing myself.

  Hjorring was uneventful. Business was conducted, families reunited, there were gifts of courtesy and diplomacy. Rorik has a trade-house there, to store whatever balance or profit is left over from such dealings, and I mean to gather it all on the return journey.

  If we survive.

  The storm is leaden and growls like an animal. A sea black with white teeth.

  We row, all of us, every hand, and I lend my back to the oars, pulling just so we can stay in place, to be hammered again and again by the freezing rain. The alternative is to be dragged west, out to sea, our only hope then to snag some island—if there is one—before being swamped and drowned.

  Lightning catches the ring on my finger. A purple glass bead set in silver, and a line in Arabic I can’t read. Eindr gave it to me when I left, as it was mine anyway, he said. Rorik had no interest in the thing.