The swallow swung high and scanned. She saw nothing else at sea but a few fisher boats, fleeing from the warcraft, and a pod of whales, huge, barnacle-studded, on their own course—nothing of warlocks or trolls or angry gods. Best she withdraw.
She let go of the bird, let the wind break and scatter what it had been. Wrapped again in mist, the shadow hastened west from a sun with too few clouds around.
That was into the wind. It stiffened as she went, yelled, tore. She must fight to keep her cloak whole. The flight home became one long struggle.
She won back to her body. For a span she groped through bewildered half-wakefulness. Thereafter she lay while the candle burned low, staring into the dark beneath the roof. Every bone and thew ached. She was too wrung out even to shiver much in the cold.
A sending always left her weary, but never before like this. Well, she had grown old.
At last she gathered the will to rise, put her gown on, squat to stow the shaman things, lock the chest, and hide the key. When she hobbled to the door and opened it, a gust blew out the candle.
Ragnhild hurried to her. “Mother,” she cried, as she had not cried since she was small, “are you well? You look ghastly. What can I do?”
“I’m very tired,” Gunnhild whispered. “What I found was good. Bring me some broth in my bed. Then leave me to sleep.”
And sleep and sleep.
Afterward she must fly anew, over and over. Not daily, though. She must spare most of her strength against dire need. She could not sit back as formerly and wait to hear how the battles afar had gone. Too much hung on this, when only two sons of Eirik and her were left alive.
XXVII
Having learned that Haakon Jarl was in the Thraandlaw, Ragnfröd steered north past Stad and harried in South Moerr. No few men of that shire joined him. Thus it is when invaders go through a land; those who bear the brunt seek whatever help for their homes and themselves is nearest.
When Haakon heard, he called out his ships, had war-arrows cut and sent, and readied as fast as he was able. It was not hard for him to raise a following. Soon he was outbound down the fjord.
He and Ragnfröd met in the fairway along northern South Moerr and at once fought. The jarl had the most men, but smaller ships. The strife grew furious. They struck at each other from the bows, as was wonted in a clash at sea; but Ragnfröd’s crews did so out of their higher freeboards, and Haakon’s began to give way. A current in the sound started all drifting shoreward. Thereupon the jarl, with horns and shouts, had his ships back water to a spot which he saw offered the easiest landing.
As they grounded, he and his men sprang overside and dragged the hulls up after them, lest the foe haul them off. He formed his array where the footing was good and egged Ragnfröd to do battle there. But Ragnfröd did not take the challenge. He lay to farther out. The air thickened with arrows. Little came of it. At length Ragnfröd led his fleet away. He feared that Haakon would get fresh warriors from inland.
However, Haakon did not give chase. It seemed to him the ships were too unlike. He returned to Thraandheim.
Hence King Ragnfröd was free to bring the lands south of Stad under himself: Sogn, Sygnafylki, Hördaland, and Rogaland. Here he kept a big troop.
Throughout the winter, both lords would be busking for war. Meanwhile Norway lay unhappy but quiet.
That was well for Gunnhild. The flights she made, to watch how her son was doing, had drained her. She too needed rest, renewing herself if she could, against this coming spring.
Then let there at last be an end, and she at peace.
XXVIII
It was seldom warm here. Though the sea glittered green beneath a blue empty of all but screaming, wheeling fowl, wind whistled from the west, sharp and salt. Scud blew off the manes of the waves. Even at low tide, surf growled loud at rocks and cliffs.
A skuta bucked its way around the headland and inward to the mole. As oars were drawn from their ports to clatter across benches, men ashore caught the mooring lines tossed them and made fast. They kenned this crew from before, and mingled eagerly. Gudröd went up the path with two others. When he reached the house, his face brightened beneath the hat-brim. Gunnhild and Ragnhild were waiting at the door.
He halted before his mother and grabbed both her hands in his own horn-hard paws. “Welcome; welcome,” she said, not quite evenly.
Ragnhild stayed aside. No smile crinkled her hollow cheeks. Her voice was flat. “How went your faring?”
“Well enough,” answered Gudröd, mostly toward Gunnhild. “Back again, I heard you were still here.”
“Someone was to come for me about the first of fall,” she reminded him.
“Is this too soon, then?”
“Oh, no!” Her body longed for the snug house on Mainland. “How good of you to come yourself.” It kindled a glow in her that grew. But she could not say so aloud, she a queen, he a king, and two vikings listening.
Glee sprang from Gudröd’s lips. “If nothing else, I wanted to be the one to bring you the news. Ragnfröd beat Haakon. He’s taken the southwestern shires.”
“Yes, we know,” said Ragnhild.
Gudröd stared. “What? How? Surely no fisherman—”
Gunnhild cast a slight frown and head-shaking at her daughter, to bid silence. “I dreamed about it,” she said. “My dreams are often true.”
The warriors looked a bit uneasy. Gudröd was slow to speak. “Are the saints that kind to you?”
Gunnhild’s mind grinned, while the little hearthfire in her died down. “Who am I to question Heaven?” She heard how that sounded almost like mockery, and went on in haste, “But come inside, do, you, Folkvid, Thorgeir.” The men smiled when she remembered their names. It was a skill she had always found useful. “Sit down by the hearth and wash the spindrift from your mouths with a stoup or three.”
Ragnhild pinched her lips together, irked. “Yes, of course.” As the lady of the house, she should have made the offer, But she hadn’t thought of it. How much else had she lost in her years alone?
They entered, settled themselves, took brimful ale horns from a maid. Gudröd told at length how first a ship sent by his brother, then later chapmen from Norway, had brought the tidings.
“Good thus far,” said Gunnhild. Flamelight in the dim, shut room showed grimness come upon her. “But Haakon lives. He’ll be back next year, with more behind him than formerly.”
“Ragnfröd will have more too,” said Gudröd. “I know him.”
“Will you be among them?”
Gudröd sighed. “I’ve thought on that. But—” Wrathfully: “Believe me, my first wish is to meet Haakon shield to shield and kill him myself.” He calmed somewhat. “Ragnfröd, though, he already has nearly everything and everyone we could get in the West. As I said, he’ll have raised more in Norway. What could the few ships left me add to that? Better I stand by with them.”
Gunnhild nodded. “Lest the war-tide turn against him.”
“We pray not. But no man foreknows.” Now Gudröd dragged his words out. “I won’t go in viking again, however much my crews chafe, before we’ve heard that it went well yonder.” The voice softened. “Come the worst, I’ll be here for you.”
The last was only to Gunnhild. Ragnhild marked that. Gunnhild saw her inwardly withdraw further yet. It hurt to understand that she did so neither in sorrow nor in anger. “For us,” said Gunnhild. “Your father’s house.”
“Yes, it’s what I meant,” said Gudröd, having had it called to his heed.
“This can’t be easy for you,” Gunnhild gave him. “We know you’re neither afraid nor unwise. Thank you, my son.”
He tried for heartiness. “Well, it lies months hence. No use in fretting, is there? We’ll live merrily on Mainland while we wait.”
Gunnhild turned to her daughter. “Won’t you come too?” she asked. “We’ll share my home.”
“No,” Ragnhild said.
Gudröd looked around him, through the shadows, at the cats, the e
erily woven hangings, and furniture otherwise not much better than a farmer’s. “This is no life for a sister of mine,” he grumbled.
Ragnhild shrugged. “It’s what the jarl gave me. If I don’t keep it, he’ll take it back. Then what will I have?”
“No, he won’t. I’ll see to that.”
“Nonetheless, I’ll stay. I’m wont to it. Being among the highborn, being like them, isn’t worth the work.”
He and his man sat shocked.
“We don’t see many where I dwell,” Gunnhild told her.
Gudröd scowled. “High time something was done about that too, Mother.”
“No need. I’ve household enough, for Orkney.” More than she wanted, Gunnhild thought. “Once we have Norway, it’ll be otherwise.” Her glance and heart reached for her daughter. “But would you truly liefest stay behind?”
“I will,” said Ragnhild.
Gunnhild could not but feel a kind of easing. Here at Rackwick, where they need reckon with nobody else, they had found how to live together, the older woman’s witchcraft, the younger woman’s moodiness, sometimes day after day with hardly a word between them, then times by themselves when they harked back—warily, neither of them opening her soul, but with a rich hoard of memories from the old years to draw on. Her house on Mainland was not so offside that this wouldn’t raise awkward questions.
Still, “If you change your mind before we go, we’ll not think the worse of you,” Gunnhild said.
“I won’t,” answered Ragnhild.
“Well, you’ll not be alone forever,” with the ghosts. “I’ll return early in spring.”
“Why on earth?” barked Gudröd.
“To be with my daughter,” Gunnhild told him and the world. “And to keep—vigil unbroken—for Ragnfröd’s sake.”
To send the shadow and the swallow as often as she was able, watching over him. To spend everything that was in her if she must, on a spell for him and all their hopes.
Gudröd gulped. “As you wish, Mother, if, if you think it’s right.” He shivered and beckoned the maid to refill his ale horn.
XXIX
Men flocked to Hladi from far and wide that Yule, not only to feast and do worship. Haakon made great offerings. Blood streamed; flesh seethed; hlaut-staves reddened halidom and throng. Ale went down in rivers. When the gathering drank Odin’s beaker, they shouted that this was for victory not to the king but to the jarl. To Njörd they said that the gods ought to keep on giving them good harvests, for then they would have the strength to fight. The Bragi draught plighted that they would die where they stood, free, before yielding their foe one more foot of Norse earth.
Later Haakon got their leaders, jarls, reeves, hersirs, great yeomen, aside for workmanlike talk. Before the last guest had started home, the first messengers were bound off. From house to house would the word go, north to Naumdoelafylki and Haalogaland, south over the Uplands, through the Dale, along the shores to the marches of the shires held by Ragnfröd, on into Vikin. Let men everywhere take weapons and whatever else they needed. On foot, on horseback, on ship or boat, let them set forth as day-length drew close to night-length, to meet with him and his Thraands and then with the son of Witch-Gunnhild, a springtide storm that would cleanse the land.
For a while afterward Hladi seemed almost forsaken. When Haakon went outside, he found a still deeper hush. Some snow had newly fallen, a thin whiteness over trampled soil. The air lay barely cold under a leaden sky, with no whisper of wind. The fjord glimmered steely. A few gulls mewed above it. Now and then a crow cawed, a lonesome noise quickly lost.
Haakon waved guards aside. “I go by myself today,” he said. They nodded. He would not need the spear he carried. Soon after his return he had hunted down whatever outlaws had skulked in the neighborhood while he was away, he happy to chase game as risky as boar or aurochs.
Snow and the duff beneath muffled his footsteps on a path into the woods. Nobody else took it without his leave. It ended at a clearing wherein stood a cote, small but well-made. Haakon leaned his spear by the carven sign of the blood-knot, unbarred the door, and trod through.
Wintry light followed him. To right and left, tapestries decked the walls of the one room. At the far end, the man-high graven image of a woman stood on a dais behind a stone block. Brightly painted, a helmet on her head, she wore a byrnie over a gown of the finest linen; a scarlet cloak lined with ermine hung from her shoulders; a golden ring coiled on either arm, a silver ring around a finger. Everything was new. The Gunnhildssons had burned the former shrine and chopped that idol up for firewood.
Haakon lifted his sword-hand. “Greeting and honor to you, Thorgerd Shrine-bride, you who watch over me, speak for me to the gods, and at the end will bring me to the afterworld,” he said. “True to my oath, I have brought your offering.”
He undid the purse at his belt and laid it on the block. Coins chinked, English, German, French, Roman, Moorish, Arabian, enough to ransom three men’s lives. He would take it back with him to the coffer he kept for her.
She did not stir, nor were there any shadows today to play across her face.
“Well do you know of the battle awaiting us,” Haakon said. “Help us win. This is not merely for ourselves. It’s for the gods. Remember what my foes did. It will go like that in all of Norway, unless I overcome them. Who then will give the gods their honor?”
Maybe that was too haughty. Haakon went on his knees. “Thorgerd,” he said, “I ask for victory; I ask for the might to hold this land against the wolves that want it. Give me that, and I will build you a halidom like none ever seen before. It shall be as big as a church, in its own staked-off grounds. There shall be glass windows, so that nowhere during the day is your house dark. There shall be wonderful carvings, inlaid with gold and silver. The images of the high gods shall stand with yours. And always will I call on you and give to you.”
He lay down full length. He had seen Christians do that in Denmark and the Westlands; and Christendom held sway from Ireland to Armenia.
Through the open door and the cold silence rang the croak of a raven.
Haakon rose. He bowed, went out, shut the door, took his spear, and turned homeward. He had done what he could. The norns foredoomed the world long ago. But a man kept the freedom to meet his weird undaunted.
XXX
Spring drew near. In Norway, jarl and king gathered men and ships. In Orkney, a storm roared out of the west. Next day, the waves that crashed on the cliffs of Hoy were still overrunning the mole at Rackwick. As they lessened, folk who went down to see how things were found a dead man on its rocks. He must have been washed off some craft, unless it foundered altogether, and borne here. The gulls were already at him. Torn and sodden, his clothes told nothing about who he had been, and his face was battered beyond any knowing. It did seem he had been young.
As they were bringing him up the path, Gunnhild came from her daughter’s house. The fishers halted for her. She stood awhile in the salt wind and thunder of surf before she asked, “What will you do with him?”
“What we do with all such, lady,” said one. “Dig him a grave. We’ve a spot nearby for ’im.”
“No,” she answered. “This man shall have better than that.”
She made them lay him out in good garb, which she paid for, and bury him on Rora Head to overlook the sea that had been his life. Before they covered him she put a gold ring on his breast. “Whoever steals this will soon die a bad death,” she warned. They heaped a cairn above and slaughtered a cock, which she had also bought. A bigger offering would have made them wonder too much. Besides, a golden cock in Aasgard and a black cock in Helheim would one day waken the dead to fight at the ending of the world.
By the time it was done, the sun had sunk low above a broken bridge of light and shadows were long. “Go home,” she told the men. They went, stiff with an unacknowledged fear.
Alone with him, she said, slowly and evenly, “Now be you my witness before the gods. I have given you back to them
, and, through you in your namelessness, all men who were ever lost at sea—yes, and women and children—for the sake of my seafaring sons and for the sake of the gods themselves.” She looked aloft, beyond wings and clouds into the deeps of heaven. “Do you hear me, Odin, Thor, Frey, Njörd, your brethren, goddesses, elves, every olden Being throughout the North? By this man who is dead, by the strength of death itself, I bind your weird to mine and to the house of kings that you founded. Hark well, you gods, for your strength shall be mine.”
She turned and made her way back. Each step hurt. Weariness weighted her bones. Her sendings since she returned had worn her down. The greatest was yet before her, for when last the swallow flew it saw fleets bound off to their meeting.
The sun was set and dusk had begun to fall when she passed the door. Firelight wavered over Ragnhild’s weavings. She went to greet her mother. A cat bristled, arched its back, spat, and slipped off into a corner.
“You’re late,” said Ragnhild uneasily. “Will you eat? I’ve had the stew kettle kept hot for you.”
“No, I’m not hungry,” said Gunnhild.
“You’ve taken hardly a bite for days. You’re gaunt as the wind.”
“I’ve other things to do. I am thirsty, though.”
“Bring ale,” Ragnhild bade her maid. “And mead. You can at least drink the soul of honey.”
Gunnhild gazed into the thin face, the big eyes. “You’ve never been unkind to me,” she said, “but neither have I erenow heard such care from you.”
Ragnhild shivered. “You’ve been dealing so much with the unknown.”
“Because I must.”
“What did you really do today? Why?”
“It was nothing to harm you. Rather, it was for those I once bore under my heart; and you’re the third who’s left. I want to give you back your hope.”
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