Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Grimr also held a bow, elegantly backed in hardened oak with a belly of seasoned yew. The arrows were steel tipped and beautifully fletched, each shaft as straight and true as any weapon of war. He handed her the bow and the quiver. “Put this across your back, like this,” he said, and strapped it behind her. “And the quiver at your hip behind the knife. You have learned to aim well enough, for hare if not for bird. This is both for hunting, and also for defence.”

  She was puzzled. It seemed too much. The jarls were watching her. For the third time she said simply, “Thank you.”

  He stood, still looking down at her. “I have taught you a great deal over three months,” he said. “Your education has entertained me. Your performance over these past nights has also entertained me. Now, I expect you to continue entertaining me.”

  Skarga frowned into the wind. She did not understand and she was blushing. “You said -”

  “I said I would let you go,” he answered, smiling again. “I said I would release you and this is what I am doing. You are educated in the art of defence and survival, you are dressed for the difficulties of the countryside in winter and you are well armed. You are now free to go.”

  Her heart was pumping so fiercely she thought she might be sick. She looked around. The jarls were watching her too intently, crowding closer. She saw Asved lick the snowflakes from his lips and she saw the steam from his mouth as he stared at her. She was not sure what to do. She wondered if she should run.

  “You may leave as and when you wish,” Grimr continued. “You may go in any direction that you wish, and you will not be stopped.” He paused, smiling, and added, “Yet.”

  Now she was sure she might vomit at the man’s feet. “Yet?”

  “I once told you I would never give you my promise,” Grimr said. “But now I shall honour you with a promise, rare for me, and quite honest. I promise you that for the rest of this day and for this night, and for all tomorrow and tomorrow night until the first rising of the sun by midday on the day after, not one man shall attempt to follow you, or to trace the direction in which you have gone.” He smiled into her eyes. “After that, our hunt begins.”

  The heaving, thundering sickness reared up again and closed her throat. Her voice was very small when she answered, as if suffocating. “I don’t understand,” although in fact, she did.

  “I am sure you do,” he said. “You are not entirely stupid, after all. I am telling you, quite clearly, that you have more than two full days and nights of freedom. I have trained you for this, with much investment of my time and considerable patience, and now I believe you are capable of giving excellent sport.”

  “Sport?” whispered Skarga.

  “Dear me,” said Grimr. “We are back to the repetitions. Perhaps I should explain a little more. When you run, as you should do so very soon, you will be neither followed nor watched. You should judge your route very carefully for my dogs are even better trained than you have been. The weather is both your advantage and your disadvantage, for the cold and lack of available food will threaten you but the snow will cover your tracks and your scent. At sun up in two days’ time, myself, my dogs, your brother and four of my men will begin to trail you. If you are clever and have the luck of Sigurd, you may even win your freedom. However, if I catch you, which is highly probable, you may defend yourself as you wish. You have good weapons. You will be outnumbered, but you will be fighting for your life which always adds the force of desperation. A cornered animal will usually demonstrate exceptional courage and you have already proved no coward even while weakened by injury and fear.”

  “So you intend to kill me after all,” whispered Skarga. “After all this time. After everything. Nothing has really changed.”

  “I accepted a commission,” Grimr nodded, “and will see it through, in my own way. I have been paid for your death, and will deliver your death. But I am also giving you your freedom. The Fates will decide.”

  The jarls stood close, attentive. Skarga straightened her shoulders and stared back at the man she had thought, for a little while, was beginning to care for her. “Very well,” she said. “At least I prefer to die this way, fighting for my life, rather than face some vile, slow execution you’ve arranged.”

  “There are many possibilities,” said Grimr, “and I cannot read the runes of destiny. If you escape entirely, Asved will return my payment to your father, but it is not in my nature to accept defeat and it would be many weeks before I could consider abandoning the chase. Indeed, I anticipate a prolonged hunt, being the motive for your extended training. If you are taken too soon, I shall be disappointed. And I do not intend killing you immediately, once you are caught. If possible, I will ensure that you are not badly wounded during your recapture and I shall then bring you back here, once again my property. I have enjoyed your body many times already, and intend doing so again. I am proud of the improvements I have made to you, and those improvements have brought me pleasure in countless different ways. Most of all, they have given me a certain fondness for you, as I would be fond of any exceptional accomplishment. However, I am also a leader of men and therefore, when I have finished with you myself, I will pass you on to my retinue. Asved, I believe, is particularly eager. I sympathise with your misfortune in brothers, but that is not my concern. After my retinue has been fully rewarded for the rigors of the hunt, I will arrange your death. It will be quick and comparatively painless, for by then you will also have earned your reward.”

  “You dare infer justice,” Skarga said, staring directly up into the depths of his gaze, “when everything you’ve done to me has been utterly unjust?”

  “Questioning my values now,” Grimr smiled, “is hardly likely to weaken my resolve. Although, of course, you know me well enough to realise how absurd that possibility is. I may, however, point out that I have rewarded you in many ways, quite as often as punishing you, and my experiments are always without rancour. Your reactions have been your own to choose.”

  Skarga lifted her chin. The swirling, biting wind made her squint, but she did not shiver. “And I choose my reactions now. To despise and loathe you.”

  His smile widened a little. “Yes,” he nodded, “I have always enjoyed your courage. But now I will give you one last piece of advice. When you are caught and cornered, think very carefully about who first to attack. Anger will turn you against either Asved or myself. Although I am the better fighter, I advise myself. By killing me you would have a greater chance of winning your freedom, and I shall temper my defence, as I have no wish to injure you too severely. Asved is the only one amongst us who will kill you without compunction, since he has no control. My jarls are looking forward to their perverse and interesting rewards, so do not want you dead. But beware Ingmar. He exercises charm and offers friendship, but his real nature is less apparent. If you attack me directly, I will order the others to stand off.”

  She knew it would be ludicrous and she knew she would never do it, but she said, “And what if I deny your sport? What if I sit here and refuse to move? What if I spoil your hunt?”

  He frowned. “I do not advise it. I would devise a different, far more intimately elaborate method for your death. As you know, I can be most inventive.”

  Skarga turned immediately and began to walk towards the long shadows of the forests. The storm was building and the long stripes of the tree trunks were turned into moving phantasms behind the swirling snow. Grimr’s words echoed in her head but she did not look back. He had promised that she would not be watched, and she believed it. She had two days of freedom and she would enjoy them, before the misery of the end.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  In the forest there was shelter although noisy droplets fell from the branches, loosened by the wind. Skarga managed a steady and efficient speed. Boy’s clothes would have given her greater ease of movement, but she was warm and well shod. Above all, she was well armed. She did not suspect Grimr of giving her weapons which would later prove false. He wanted sport, not an e
asy conquest. She walked for some hours, choosing always the natural slope of the land downwards, towards the easier country, the warmer plains and the south.

  Skarga allowed her passing to seem hurried and took no care to hide the falling of pine cones and small twigs, or the kick of her boots in the banked snow. Her footsteps disappeared quickly beneath the scattered falls but other marks would remain. Although she dared not risk leaving behind the packaging of her food or some broken shoe buckle, for Grimr would recognise too obvious a trick, Skarga hoped the dogs, if not the men, would still find some clue of her direction after two days had passed. Grimr did not believe her utterly foolish but would expect any woman to choose the easy route, away from the bitter starvation of the northern snows, the dreadful fury of winter’s ravages and the home of her father. The impassable mountains, the blocked passes, the avalanche and unutterable freeze, all lay north. There were wolves and there were bears. Anyone would head south.

  Suddenly, with the stomach lurch of fear so acutely learned, she was conscious of being watched. She looked up. An eagle sat high amongst bare branches, a beech skeleton with snow traced bark and the first blinks of a waking predator. Skarga stood still and looked into the hesitant dawn and the silhouetted bird. Where its talons gripped the branch, the snow banked, as if the eagle had been waiting a long time.

  She had thought to practise her archery, to shoot, and inevitably miss, some small animal. She could leave the misdirected arrow, perhaps high in a tree, to be seen two days later. But she could not bring herself to shoot at the eagle, nor even to disturb its contemplations. Skarga pulled her hood down over her eyes, looked straight ahead again, and trudged on.

  When the sun rose fully around midday she finally began to change direction. Trudging up again, veering from the temptation of the sweet green valleys in far southern lands, she turned to higher ground, now suddenly careful of her way. Now she avoided brushing the ice from the trees and did not stumble through the deeper drifts. She kept her shoulders narrow, slipping between shadows, following neither the flattened deer tracks nor the open paths.

  She was already some way on when she turned sharp again and headed directly east. Before her, shelved, sheer, thick misted into their own shadows, was the great soaring barrier of the peaks. The trees became sparse and there was little shelter but she was a long way from the longhouse and its out holdings and now had no need to hide. Swirling snow spitting wind in her eyes, blowing out her cape like a sail, she struggled into a small blizzard. It further hid her passing.

  Skarga climbed for many hours. The sun, which had at first guided her way with a little leaking daylight, crawled back again amongst the woods behind her, and she continued climbing through the long dark. The wind calmed. By moonrise she was in the low foothills and sat behind a rock to eat the food Grimr had given her. It increased her strength and lightened her load, and the food was good. No maggoty winter rations, he had given her his best.

  She tied the half empty leather bag to her belt and set off again. She drank from a stream whose icy banks opened to a thin still liquid trickle. There were no more trees to climb should she encounter wolf or wolverine, but she hoped that any brown bears inhabiting these mountains would already have chosen a cave and be deep into their winter hibernation, a reminder to be careful of any shelter she found for her own night’s sleep.

  When she was desperately tired she slept at last. She did not dare interrupt her flight for long and there would be no light to wake her but she trusted to her own desperation, doubting she could dream for more than an hour or two of star glimmer. Her nightmares had lately been all of Grimr but now it was the great white bear and the sledge that reappeared again in her slumber. She panicked and woke. The storm had escalated and the snow was whipped all around her. She stamped herself free of the white insidious blanket. With only bread and biscuit left to eat, she would not risk breaking fast. Nor did she acknowledge hunger for it was deep night with the stars still vivid. She continued climbing, hoping to reach the high passes before the sun rose.

  Grimr’s conceit had been in preparing an escape worthy of the hunt and Skarga had been taught to climb well. Now she intended fulfilling her tutor’s pride and proving her skill for she must not be caught. The desire for freedom, beautiful but transient, was less urgent than fear of failure. She imagined the horror of capture, surely injured, then passed from man to man and finally to her own brother. Grimr would surely have other secret cruelties planned. There would be more to dread before final death.

  Trained to accept pain, she tried to ignore the weariness of her scrambling legs, the pressure dragging against her back, wrenching muscles, the throbbing of her feet and her neck, and the increased trembling of her arms. The moonlight spanned the vague white shapes of the peaks. Cutting between them, like the chop of an axe, was the mountain pass. Her aim was poor in all things, said Grimr. But now she aimed for the pass, which would be the entrance to her new life. It would be snow deep but it did not look impassable. Resting on the high ice would mean death instead of peace but she had been taught to recognise the safe places. She knew how to regulate her breathing, finding its roots deep within her belly instead of the shallow places behind her ribs. Stumbling, hitching her skirts up into her garters, she hoped to reach the way by late morning’s sunrise, a little more than a day since her leaving, and still a full day before Grimr’s pursuit began.

  “Ribs of a rotted skeleton,” Grimr had ridiculed, his thumbs probing her bony ladder to protruding collar bones. So roast venison and mutton fat to smooth over the ridges, dumplings for dimples. “I want your arse like a horse’s rump, not as hard and flat as a stone on a beach.” Memories. Grimr watching her, poking her, lying back comfortable and warm in his sweated silken bed, laughing at her. “I want to see your buttocks quiver with good muscle when I slap you, and blush as rosy as a sunset when I beat you. I want you groomed and washed and trimmed and neat. Those I permit into my bed must bring honour to it. Nails cut straight, not ripped like the bear’s claws on a boar’s hide. Teeth scrubbed and picked clean, not wedged with old food like a hag’s gums. You call yourself a king’s daughter but you’re as untutored as a simpleton with the habits of a slattern and the understanding of a thraell’s brat. You still wipe your nose on your sleeve when I slap you. Do you wipe your arse when you shit? Come here and I shall check. You will learn, and take great care to improve as I feed you and train you. If you turn your head towards me in sleep, your breath must be as sweet smelling as new hay and your cheeks buffed and oiled. You will brush your hair twice a day and if I grab it and find knots, I will cut them out and make you eat them before I flog you.”

  So he had flogged and beaten her, he had humiliated and wounded her, but he had taught her as well. Now it was a full day and more she’d not brushed her hair and the curls were matted with leaf and pebble dust and snow. Then the wind had clasped her curls into its own embrace, frozen quickly into shards, and as the blizzards sharpened, broke off as brittle as copper filings.

  She felt the layer of snow across her eyelashes, blurring her sight as she blinked, and thought they would snap too. She could breathe only through her nose, for her mouth was filled with ice crystals that numbed her tongue. These things slowed her but none of them stopped her. Crossing the mountains would take her to new lands and new hope and the tumult which threatened her also hid her passing and would disguise for ever the prints of foot and palm.

  When the sun dawned directly before her she saw the pass again, much closer. It was higher than she’d realised, but she was almost there and daylight gave each foothold greater identity. Grasping, pulling, panting, eventually she stood on flat crusts of crumbling ice over rock and the soaring precipice of the peaks rose up either side. The first opening was narrow. She could see only struggle ahead, for the pathway twisted and disappeared into darkness. Then the sun, on its short risen journey back to imminent night, struck light against the snow with silver beams flaring all around in dazzling, dancing white bril
liance. Skarga leaned back against the rock face and watched, reinforcing her breath and calming exhausted muscles. She stood there for some time. The sudden glory created colour, slanting blue ice, shimmering greens and the gentle pink of rock through water. Then the sun’s blaze passed again into the mountain’s shadow, the heavy dampness of the cold crept back around her, and she hurried on.

  Facing the crevice, she measured her shoulders within its opening, turned sideways, and inched inside. Her body pressed against the clinging freeze and old walls of ice splintered and crumbled, falling away, widening the entrance. Crab-careful, she slid deeper in, stretching out her hand and feeling the way before trusting her body. Her feet did not slip, her fingers found no blockage, but the width became so pinched it pressed against her breasts. Pausing again, she looked up. Above her head where she could not reach, the mountain flared wide and generous. This was the pass she had seen from below, thinking it an open road. Within the secrecy of its shadows she had not seen how forbidden it became. But she pushed on, step by grinding step. Finally her reaching hand felt sudden wind, tentative fingers touching no further hindrance. She pushed around one final corner of rock and faced the world on the other side of the mountains.

  She had not expected Valhalla, nor peaceful crops or pasture. She had not expected sudden warmth and welcome, but nor had she expected everlasting ice and a thousand more peaks and mountains beyond horizons. She stood, buffeted by the sudden resurgence of the open cold, and stared in misery. The snows went on forever. There was no way down and no welcoming valley. There was no end to her journey. She leaned back against the rock, quietly crying.

  At last, choosing her way most carefully, she began to walk again. The hood of her cape was soaked but the wolf pelt had kept much of her clothing dry. There was less climbing now and although the way was both up and then down, by edging along crevices and keeping her back to the ice face, it was easier than reaching the pass had been. For the first time she was hungry but there was nothing around her to eat. Nothing grew and perhaps nothing lived. What she had been taught to hunt did not exist here. No berries, poisonous or otherwise, no leaf, no bush. “You can even eat grass, if you must,” Grimr had said. There was no grass. So she ate the remains of the bread and the last crumbled biscuits as she walked. The long twilight soon hurried grey across the snows and when it was night and the first stars gathered again, Skarga found a small rocky inlet where some shelter allowed her to curl and sleep.