“What does it say?” I had asked Eindr.
“It is the name of the Arabic god,” he explained.
“Just the one?”
“Their god is vast. It contains all the qualities of all the gods.”
“So much,” I said in awe. And I thought how our gods are in turn temperamental, foolish, selfish, yet intimately loving. Human, though grander and more fickle. So in this way, we’re their children. A god with so many faces, all at once, seems a cold and distant being, and I can’t pretend to understand it.
It’s Thor now who tests us. Not some distant god of all but a presence here, now, sudden and violent, throwing light and fire at us. The Skagerrak Sea at the end of winter is still a dice cup, and we’ll see what comes out of it. We row until we’re nearly dead.
But nearly dead is still alive, and to cease rowing is to cease breathing air.
Hour, and an hour, and an hour, hands blistered, backs burning, eyes blinded by salt and wind, each beam and rivet aching for release like a bowstring pulled back and back and back.
But the dragon-head is fearsome itself, and we’re not so easily swept aside by the whim of a god. Our boat gains distance, oar-stroke by oar-stroke, one cursed breath at a time, until the storm subsides into a spitting thing the colour of wet wool, spent of malice, still rich in misery.
And so, a fire is set in the tripod, and we warm frozen fingers and dig out layers unsodden from the thwarts. Some are lucky enough to find something dry.
Two lost. Two men whose name I never knew are simply gone from a crew of forty. Somehow plucked away from those sitting next to them without noticing. Words and prayers are uttered, and mead is poured overboard in memory. Some will mourn later. Most will forget. But there is meat, and fire, and rest for now, even some shelter beneath leather tents.
Every wound I ever took is howling now: a broken finger, my ribs, my shoulder, even the crack in my cheek which has yet to heal all the way and may never, all a chorus of throbbing reminders. We’re all held together with scars, and that barely.
The tide is pulling us east now, the sails down as the wind from the north does us no favours. Hopefully not so far east as to land us in the Svear, but we’ll see.
Thor has let us go, and Skathi, lady of tides, has us now.
The stone in the water nearly makes me burst into tears.
A large, round stone in the midst of the river, which is at least full as the snow has given the first hint of melting.
I’m thinking of the last time I saw it, with Rota beside me, remembering the summers we spent as naked and swimming children, trying to catch salmon with our bare hands and failing, laughing. And then seeing it as a signpost of my uncle’s lodge, our journey from massacre and captivity to some kind of weary hope, my wolf skin new and raw over my shoulders.
I could have taken the longer route, past the fjord and inland from the river to the north. The route Ragnar came to claim me. But whether it was impatience or faith in the draw of my boat, we took the shorter path, though the oars scrape the river bed here in parts.
What I was expecting was… not this. What I left, maybe, only stronger. More huts with grass roofs. A new barn or granary. But not this.
The river’s been dredged here to make way for a port the size of Aalborg, with three docks jutting out into the river in a curve, and these are ringed by a stone wall. There’s a girl with a crown of winter-flowers in her hair and a good woolen cloak who sees us and runs; she’s the bearer of news. But I can hear the town, the lowing of cattle, a blacksmith’s hammer somewhere. And all this behind the fleet of my dreams.
Gods, there must be thirty ships here.
By the time we reach the dock there are horns sounded, and bells, and cheering. I make out familiar faces in what seems like a sea of unfamiliar ones. There’s no sign of Rota. No sign of Kara.
But there is Brandr, standing proudly, if leaning a bit on his spear.
As we dock and lines are thrown, I can see into the new boats. Wet from winter, but the wood still new and golden, curves unworn from hand or storm or battle. Each a field of snow without so much as a single footprint.
Hands reach out to me, generous smiles, horns of ale thrust at me and a thousand questions of war, trade, weather, families. It’s a beautiful madness. A boy scurries past, chased laughing by others. Villi, the boy I saved from the wolf, grown a head taller by a single winter.
And then I come to Brandr, who smiles to the point of a tear on his cheek, and he embraces me near to smothering. I hold him as though all the scents of home could be pressed into my heart like this, and there is the memory of the fragrance of my father, sweat and smoke.
He lets go, though his hands never leave my shoulders.
“Jarl Hladgertha, welcome home.”
“Gods, Brandr, what have you done?” I ask in astonishment, looking past his shoulder at the village.
“What you have done. What your silver has brought us. Walk with me, and I’ll take you to your sister.”
I have smiles and thanks to return to the crowd, which seems reluctant to make room for our progress to the hall.
Brandr continues. “Ragnar’s troops gave us a good start, but it was Rorik’s people who got us ahead of the winter. We had a good harvest, with plentiful fish. Everything else we traded with Vikoryi.”
“The town upriver,” I nod, putting it together, though I’ve never heard the name.
“Yes, they turned out to be excellent neighbours once they realized we were fortified and convinced we would neither attack nor leave. There are some families which have homesteaded half-way, and they’ve done well enough. But come. How was the journey?”
“We lost two,” I tell him. “A storm in the Skagerrak.”
“A terrible thing,” he says gravely.
The path from the docks to the hall is paved with flat stones, quarried from somewhere not conveniently near. There is the constant scratch of sweeping. So many houses, and not just dug into the earth but erected with great beams and clad in planks. Cooking smells I don’t recognize.
I enter a hall, and it takes a moment to realize that it is in fact my hall. The floor now boarded and covered in hide. The old boat-shaped hearth still there, but further towards the back a great trench of stone with split wood stacked all around. And behind that, a chair I’d never seen before, piled with furs, and upon them, my little slip of a sister, pale and beautiful.
“Kara!” and I rush to her, nearly pulling her off the chair as her arms are around me as when we were girls, when I’d carry her over brambles or carry her back to my mother after a scraped knee or bee sting. Her hair smells like smoke, but also like honey and some flower I can’t identify. I press her into the Kara-shaped hole in my heart, and am amazed she still fits. After everything.
“Hladgertha,” she says. “I knew you were coming today.”
“Who told you?” I ask, teasing. “Elves or gods?”
“Runes.”
“Of course,” I say. I pull her away. “Let me look at you, Jarl Kara.”
“I’m not the jarl,” she says. “You are.” She’s grown. Taller and more beautiful, a hint of our mother about her that’s stronger now. But there’s also a confidence, and a presence in the world—this world—that’s new.
“This chair suits you,” I tell her.
“I missed you, Ladda,” she says, a child again. “I missed you so much.”
“Where is Rota?” I ask.
“Rota kept your promise,” Kara says. “A harvest and a winter. And now is off to war.”
“To war? What war?” And my heart is suddenly pounding at the prospect that I’ve left my people in danger.
“Raiding. Some of the warriors are raiding the villages that supported Fro last year.” I think of Caldr’s unsuccessful raids against the Svear, and wonder if Rota is mixed up in all that somehow.
“And what do the runes say about Rota?” I ask, not really believing.
“Rota is dead, I think,” Kara tells me
. It’s as though she is discussing the weather.
The air is out of me. There is nothing I can say to this, and no breath to say it with. This can’t be right. It can’t be.
“No. What?”
“I haven’t heard anything, I just think so,” Kara says. I breathe deeply, like being deep underwater and then breaking to the surface.
“Well then, let’s keep Rota among the living until the runes or the elves tell you otherwise, all right?” and she nods at this in agreement, seeming somewhat relieved.
“You’ve seen her,” Kara says definitively, and I know at once what she means.
The goddess.
“Yes. In…in a dream. And once as a swan, I think.”
She just nods. It’s all she wanted. “You’re married now,” she continues. “We heard.”
“Jarl Rorik, yes.” There’s an edge to my voice I haven’t intended.
“Do you love him?” she asks. A simple question a girl asks of an older sister, though I look around before I answer.
“He’s a good man,” I say, the answer to a different question.
“Is he?” And this, a third question.
“I hope so.”
“But you’re not happy,” she says. “Not like Brown-eyes.”
“What?” I ask, though I know. I just don’t know how she knows.
“Brown-eyes. He makes you happy.”
“He does,” I say, and tears are coming to my eyes though I don’t know why. “But he’s my friend.”
“Your husband will kill your friend,” warns Kara, suddenly from a distance, “but only if he knows.”
I take both of Kara’s hands in mine.
“I wish that I could take this off you, all the things you know.” I let go of a hand and wipe my cheeks, sniff in a way my mother would have scolded me for.
“Here. I brought you gifts,” I say, remembering. “They’re on the ship. Dresses and beads. Things for the house.”
“I don’t care about that stuff,” says Kara. “I’m just glad you’re back for good.”
“Am I?” I ask, honestly.
“Aren’t you?”
“I hope so, Kara. I hope so.”
There’s less business than I thought. Kara wanted a blot before any councils were held, but I overruled her. The gods have taken enough of a price from me. Let some goat bleat for another day.
Kara’s judgments were both rare and just, Brandr’s council wise and in the interest of peace. That the people of Vikoryi would trade rather than simply take speaks well of the land, and the choice we made coming here. The hungry are rarely so agreeable.
But still, I lean heavily on Brandr for advice, and wish to all the gods that I had persuaded Rorik to allow me to bring Eindr. This, now that I think of it, is the first time in days I’ve remembered my husband at all, but Eindr, my friend and tafl-opponent, is rarely out of my head. And there’s a weight on my chest when I think about him… it’s best not to think about him.
There have been feuds. Not between villages, but among Ragnar’s warriors. There were blows, and suit was brought to Kara. Brandr says he felt that sides were being divided, so once he had the promise that peace would be kept by both arguing parties, he speared one through the back in the hall. As some drew weapons in outrage, he persuaded all there of the wisdom of his actions, and that seemed to be the end of it.
In the early days after I left there were disputes and agreements that led to some householders owning three-fifths of a cow, but this became something of a running joke. A family from Vikoryi sought to contract one ten-year-old girl from the Gaular in troth to their son, but Kara forbade it, at least for five years, and this too was taken well and with patience. So, too, was her decision, despite the protests of some farmers, that a particular stone of elvish interest was not to be moved, and in the end, they ploughed around it.
So, with the security of food and person assured, the entire village threw itself into what they understood was my wish—boatbuilding. Almost all have had their first sea trials within the last few weeks, with the river at last clear of all ice, and the more experienced of Ragnar’s crew have been recruiting and training the bored and aspiring sons of Vikoryi. So there’s almost, but not quite, enough hands to crew the fleet here.
Contracts have to be made to secure enough iron for rivets and shield bosses, which I have learned is different from the iron used in pots and hinges. There’s a source, but the traders want some kind of long-term interest in the land, which I’ll have to think about. Still, there are forty shields needed for each boat, and currently a hole in the center of each shield. The blacksmith, Brandr assures me, can work the iron once it arrives, after a deal is made.
I have brought not only gifts for Kara (and Rota, which will have to wait) but also adornments from Hjorring, so that doorways and the end caps of tables can be chased with silver and bronze beasts, in knotwork. A year ago, I would have thought of this as a waste of metal, but now I see that it adds stability to a place, and is a kind of blessing.
There are those here who now seek to return south, their service to Ragnar having been completed, and will need boats for that. Some will stay, and that too is a blessing. When Brandr asks of my plans, I think only of sleep, so later as I climb into bed with Kara as we did when we were small, and she my wild and tiny sister-thing with the whistling snores of a barn cat, I think I should miss Rota more.
Though the eyes I think of as I fall asleep are not Rota’s, but Eindr’s.
Weeks of this, and it’s dreamlike.
Snows recede like all the storms were some bad dream, the aches in me from fetching wood or helping my mother in the kitchen. But the mornings I wake up cold, barely breathing, the faces of pain and fear filling my vision. Men whose death I brought. There’s a bruise inside me, or a gutting, that doesn’t show, though sometimes I see a similar wound in the eyes of others before we both look away.
Nights, Kara tells me the stories of the runes, to see as she sees. Not just sounds scratched in wood, but more like the stories of ancient families, with conflict and love, of friction and ease. About how the first sound in a line can recall an entire saga, just by placing it ever so slightly towards or away from the next. Still, to me, most of these are coded references to stories I’ve never heard.
“You need to teach others,” I say. “This is too important.”
She just shakes her head.
I’m no skald, no story-keeper. I never will be. I’m grateful to learn this as best as I’m able, but it’s almost like my heart is too small to bear a secret this big.
No, it’s not that. My heart is large enough. It’s just that the stories themselves don’t wish to live there. I can feel them tapping on the inside of my chest, like we’re doing something wrong. Though not when Kara tells them. It fits for her.
I don’t know.
For the most part, as flowers return and some sense of normalcy asserts itself, it’s easy to forget, even for an hour at a time. Those returning south were making plans, packing, set on delivering those boats Ragnar had already paid for.
“So much livestock,” I mention to Brandr, noticing the rattle and bleat of them as Brandr and I walk the path to the docks.
“We agreed,” he says. “No slaughter last year. The meat we bought from Vikoryi, and we went sealing in the fall.”
“Still, the numbers.” I’m impressed.
“Oh, these are ours,” he says smiling. “Shortly after you left I sent a party of Ragnar’s men to the coast, to the old village site. They came back a week later with cows, sheep, goats. Even horses.”
I’m stunned at this.
“How?”
“During the raid,” Brandr tells me, “most just opened the pens. The raiders took most of the horses, yes, but the livestock scattered to the hills, and we didn’t get the chance to collect many of them. Over time they drifted back to the village.”
“And what of the remainders?” I remember that I had declared they would be left with noth
ing.
“There were a few, they said. Perhaps a dozen living in the ruins. Some complained, but Ragnar’s men were armed, on horseback. They were told they could return with the men to the Gaulardale, or they could stay and catch fish all winter.”
“But none returned.”
“None, Ladda.”
Mine were always a stubborn people. They had expected to die there, that night, and their extra months of life were more burden than boon.
Brandr and I often stroll now as we discuss the business of the town. How to get goods to the markets of Kaupang without paying Vikoryi as a go-between, how much silver we’re likely to get from Ragnar for the other boats, or if there is a market for them which doesn’t require crossing the Skagerrak. I realize now that I’ve spent more time in this village—the one with stone walls and its bustling dock—than I did the one I left behind, the village of refugees staring into a distant yet menacing winter. I’m glad of it.
And then the bell robs me of all gladness.
Instinct has me reaching for shield and spear I’m not carrying; that I’m nowhere near. I stride toward the hall with more fire in my veins than the ice which first cascaded through them.
I see Kara there and shoot her a look.
“No warning from your elf friends?” I fire at her, but she is in some kind of shock, and I feel bad for saying it.
In a linden-wood box by my bed is my sword. Someone brings me a shield and a spear.
By the time I leave the hall’s threshold, perhaps a hundred heartbeats since I entered it, my fear has calmed somewhat. A corridor of warriors, fifty a side, greet me with shield and helm, spearpoints glinting in the spring sun. There are twenty men on horseback, the horses pacing backwards with their blood up.
Wolf’s-heads. Or the upriver town of Vikoryi, come to take whatever they wish. Raiders from what remains of Fro’s forces after the war looking for retribution for their defeat. Whichever, we stand armed.
Trained. Experienced.
Ready.
“Horses,” I say, and those mounted bolt into the forest path in the north, the same path where I met Ragnar a year ago.
A year ago, when I was barely sixteen and had only killed two men and a wolf.
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