Skarga sat down, the snow cold and wet beneath her skirts. “Do you think you could possibly keep a constant link with them? With Thoddun perhaps? And just let me know what’s happening all the time?”
Kjeld frowned, once more conflicted. “Canner, lady, an’ mighty sorry an’ all. Orders. Orders from lord. Gotta listen fer hoomans. Big army commin’.”
Skarga sighed, and climbed back up. “I understand. I’ll ask someone else.” It was to Egil and Erik that she gave her orders. “Go and ask those men over there. Tell them I want constant news from the castle.” Then she curled up on the little fur quilted bed within her tent, closed her eyes, and asked every god and hero of Valhalla whose name or title she could remember, to help keep Thoddun safe.
Later she was offered food. She eyed Kjeld’s raw clams and politely declined. The other men offered wine and cooked fish but she felt sick, heaving with the suspense of prolonged anticipation. She tried to pass time by sleeping, but could not. The sun began to sink and the day’s brief warmth faded. Skarga shivered. Eventually she wandered the camp’s empty boundaries, talked, endlessly to Kjeld, to Erik and to Egil and sat with the twelve men set to guard her, listening to their commentaries on the battle. Finally she stood alone, breathing deep, and watched the sun diminish into the ocean.
They attempted to reassure her. The battle had gone well. There was some rumour that Thoddun had recently been wounded, but if it was true, then it was an injury that did not threaten his life. They told her Lodver was also wounded, far more seriously, and she was sorry for that. Then one of the men roared, calling her over. “Lady, they say it’s almost done. Victory’s clear.”
“It always was,” laughed another. “As if any of those feeble bastard humans could beat us.”
“Quiet, you fool, and remember who you’re talking to.”
Skarga thanked them and walked away. She found she was dizzy and trembling with utter, almighty, uncontrollable relief. She walked further, feeling her legs shake and her heart beat like the waves pounding on the beach. She wondered if Thoddun was listening to her thoughts, or if he was still busy with the last remnants of fighting, or if he was lying wounded and in pain, doctored by some chanting healer. The joy of relief still swayed her and she could neither fully absorb the news, nor banish fear. She continued to walk, pacing along the coastal ice which creaked and shuddered, the tidal surge tugging beneath. Now the light had dimmed and the horizon misted into a pale twilight. Her sight blurred as she peered into the gloaming.
She heard something and thought it was Kjeld calling. She smiled. He would be shouting to tell her of final victory assured, but she knew already. She hugged herself with renewed excitement. The dogs were barking too. She turned to hurry back and celebrate with them all. But when she turned, she stared straight into her father’s astonished face.
Ogot glared up into his daughter’s startled gaze for less than half a breath, then thrust one hand hard around her neck and the other flat palmed over her mouth. Her exclamation was little more than a squeak before she was silenced. She tasted blood on her father’s fingers.
Her father hauled her with him, stumbling and tripping, as he strode back to the remains of the camp. There Skarga saw why Kjeld’s call had been only brief.
Kjeld’s great bulk lay stretched beside the faltering flames of the little fire he had built to warm her. His limbs were hacked and battered, bloody pulp upwards from his hands, where broken scarlet fingers still grasped his axes. His legs were hewn, one taken off at the knee, the stump ragged and thick with cold wet blood. His body lay part open, its snuggled insides exposed between the ruined rips of his clothes. He gazed wide eyed and open mouthed, as if he had been shouting. The top of his skull was entirely smashed in. Ogot led one hundred and twenty men. In defence, Kjeld had killed fourteen and wounded others. It had taken all of them to kill the walrus.
Skarga lurched away from her father’s grasp and stumbled to her knees, crying desperately. She curled beside the butchered corpse and traced one shivering fingertip to the blood stained stubble of Kjeld’s jaw. Ogot spat at her. She looked up but was blind with tears. “Slut. You cry for a monster? Turn against your own people and run off with giants and the filth of Utgard?”
She tried to swear at him and tell him how much she despised him and hated his people, but her throat closed with misery and sobs. He dragged her up and away from her champion’s ruin, swinging her around. The men came behind him. “We’ve killed the twelve by the other fire, lord. But we can’t find anyone else. The place is abandoned.”
Ogot fisted one hand and struck Skarga in the mouth. “Where’s your fucking people, bitch? Has Grimr routed you all then? Is this all that’s left?”
Skarga stared wildly, searching for Egil. She could not see him, nor Erik. Ogot’s jarl had reported killing twelve men, but mentioned no boys. The men she knew from her old home now pushed around her. One kicked her and she tumbled over, face down across Kjeld’s body. She stayed there, catching her breath. Kjeld’s bristles were blood soaked spikes beneath her cheek. His blood smelled thick. He had spilled it for her.
Ogot’s men were squabbling, not sure what to believe. Ogot shouted above the clamour. “If Grimr’s routed the enemy, then where is he? Where’s his men? Where’s Asved? Where’s my boys?”
“Inside the castle,” someone shouted back. “Drinking all that ale as should be for us poor buggers, arriving cold and tired after this long fucking march.”
Ogot shook his head. “Then where’s the bodies? A grand slaughter leaves a grand heap of bones. Where’s the dead monsters, then? No signs of massacre and no signs of burial neither.”
Many of the men had begun rummaging through the empty tents and sleds, searching for treasure or food. There had been a little wine left by Skarga’s twelve dead guards, and a handful of clams by Kjeld’s feet. They found nothing else. Some of the dogs had also been killed, others had escaped. Skarga could hear their distant barking. But closer, there was her father’s impatience, and the hot panting breath of the men she’d once called neighbours. They were eager, pushing around her. She knew these men and she recognised their expressions. Her father had long wanted her dead and would not protect her. He would walk away and ignore whatever was done.
The toe of Ogot’s boot wedged between her ribs as Skarga struggled to sit. “Come on bitch. Where’s Grimr? Are any of your filth still alive?”
She shook her head and kept silent. The hatred and contempt she felt for her father remained clamped tight and hidden in the back of her eyes. If she expressed it now, Ogot might kill her. She hoped Thoddun would come, racing from the castle with the victorious transanima at his heels. Then she heard a woman’s voice.
“Where’s the bitch?” For a moment Skarga thought it was her step-mother Tove. Then she remembered the voice of a women she’d barely known, one of the hired sluts who worked the fields in season, and the men’s beds when the winter pastures were bare. So the fools had brought a clutch of women with them; camp followers, selling their flesh, or in the hope of catching a lonely husband.
Another female voice, screeching, “There’s still half a fire here. Find us something to cook, and we can eat at last.”
“What are we still doing out here anyway?” said the first woman. “Let’s get into the castle and join the real feasting.”
A man’s voice. “Shut up, wench. Trust a woman to nag, even when she’s half dead with cold.”
Someone else laughed. “Throw the troll’s woman on the fire instead. And we’ll cook her, the witch.”
Ogot sniggered. “Wouldn’t get much meat off my daughter’s skinny bones.”
Her determination to stay silent unravelled. “Filth?” Skarga turned in fury. “You call my people filth? You’re the dirt, and foul as shit. Gloat your last. My people killed all Grimr’s. It’s them feasting in the castle. You’ll all be surrounded and killed before you’ve time to draw your swords.”
It was two of the jarls who grabbed her by each a
rm and threw her at Ogot’s feet. Ogot’s knife blade shimmered in the glare of the dying flames. He leaned over her, spitting. She saw his eyes looming at her through the dimming twilight. “Still cursed, bitch? And now dare to curse me, your own father. No other bugger dared kill you after all, so this time I’ll do it myself and to Hel with you.”
He plunged his knife so quickly that she saw the sudden splatter of her own blood before she closed her eyes. A faded peace enclosed her like old fallen petals, faint perfumed, and the beginning of a gentle sleep. No dreams followed. Everything finished, as if a door quietly closed.
Pouring from the castle and direct from their victory, gates flung wide and the hoards screaming as they charged, the transanima faced the impudence of a new menace. Some were dancing, some cheering, some already intoxicated. But the celebrations subsided when they saw their queen.
Thoddun knelt beside Skarga’s body in the snow and took her into his arms, holding her gently against his cheek. Her blood bubbled from between her ribs, pale seepage like pink striped spittle. He had already removed the knife.
They killed Ogot’s small army. Inspired by fury, they ripped and butchered them, men growling, bears hissing. The female camp followers were hauled aside as spoils of war, but no other prisoners were taken. After tramping long freezing miles over several weeks, Ogot’s people were annihilated in moments.
Only Ogot lived. Held struggling, livid in anger, he faced the man he had once called Grimr. The man he had once paid to kill his daughter now held her body, embraced and cherished as utterly precious. Ogot discovered nightmares.
The wind whistled low. A new night curtained the stars and the moon’s pale aura peered. Thoddun stood nursing Skarga, listening carefully to the fading whispers of her breath. He ignored Ogot and ignored his own men, taking no interest in anything beyond the woman in his arms. He bent a little, raising Skarga’s face closer to his, and leaned as if to kiss her lips. Then he breathed deep and the heat of his breath entered her mouth.
Egil landed at Thoddun’s feet, Shifting back alone and too quickly. First staring in horror at Skarga’s body, he then turned to Ogot, once his chieftain, always despised, always hated. Ogot was white faced and pale as the ice all around him, his arms wrenched wide and held by four men almost as huge as the troll he had watched slaughtered. Now Ogot saw Egil change from eagle to boy and he recognised the slave child he had once ordered drowned. The nightmare surrounded him, swirled closer, and became reality.
“Get him on his knees,” hissed Egil.
The four men holding their prisoner smiled, and nodded, hurling Ogot down. They pushed his head lower, forcing the old man to bow to the boy. Ogot swallowed snow. Tongue stuck between clamped jaws, no retaliation or fury mitigated the fear and humiliation. He raised his eyes and struggled desperately, peering upwards.
Egil lifted his tunic and pushed aside the overlap of his britches. As Ogot looked up, Egil pissed in the old man’s face. The liquid spurted, pale gold and steaming a little in the cold air, dripping from Ogot’s cheeks like stinging yellow tears, collecting in the corners of his open mouth.
Thoddun looked from Skarga’s face to Egil’s. “Don’t play,” he said quietly. “Kill him. Take my sword and make your first kill.”
He stood a moment, allowing Egil to reach and pull the great double bladed sword from his belt. Then, staying only half a breath to see it done, he turned and began to walk carefully back to the castle, Skarga cradled against his blood stained chest.
Egil took the sword two handed. It was too heavy but he swung it high. The four transanima, still grinning, held Ogot down, flung flat on his back now with their feet hard on his belly and groin, Ogot swearing, spitting and screaming. Egil plunged the sword point into Ogot’s throat. It made a soft gurgling sound, moist as boots in mud. The blood spouted. Ogot’s eyes still stared. He mouthed something, the fear and anger slowly glazing, the lips hanging limp, drowning in his own blood, feebly alive but unable to move or speak. Egil dropped the sword and turned away. Then he followed his king and queen and trudged back into the shadow of the castle.
Across the deserted carnage of the camp, many transanima stayed. They piled the slain bodies of their enemies, Ogot’s remaining shallow gasp and the wide horror of his life’s last awareness disappearing beneath the heaped bodies of his people, left for the crows and the ravens and for other animals to scavenge. The dismembered remains of one hundred and twenty one men solidified into forgotten crystals beneath the great freezing darkness.
They carried their own slaughtered guards in honour, bringing them to the courtyard outside the castle gates. In the central place they laid Kjeld. Six men had carried his body. All their dead from the battles within had been brought out and laid beside their companions, and the living left them there, three hundred and thirty of the community awaiting the burial of their custom. The rows of slain transanima lay rigid on the quiet snow. Their eyes had been closed, their weapons crossed over their chests, their hands at their sides. Kjeld’s huge shining axes lay crossed over his ruined corpse, the ravages of his body covered by someone’s fur cloak, his steel reflecting the first shimmering points of stars above.
Then they set the fire. All along the rows, clothes catching flame in blue, jade and gold, the transanima fire caressed and soothed. For a long time it destroyed nothing but danced in tribute, as joyous as life. Then the snows beneath became dark pools of slow melt and the dead men’s hair began to crackle.
With a rush of wind, they took light. Encircling the fiery burial, the watching men stood bent in silence. Then gradually, streaming out through the open gates, the whole community came. Quietly, pacing each beside his friend, the transanima men took their places around the pyre. The flames were high now, metallic thunder in sweeping verdigris, wild bright poppy, the old gold of harvest wheat and streamers of turquoise and cobalt. The men bowed their heads, and very slowly, very quietly, began to chant.
As the dead burned, the chanting became wild and loud. Through the crowd, many started to Shift. The music twisted, writhing, shooting high as the rushing flames. Then it seemed as though, consumed by brilliance, the dead also began to Shift. A ruined face opened its eyes and became osprey intent. Burning clothes became burning fur. Withered arms turned to wilted feathers. A tight closed mouth gaped into a bear’s jaw and rugged flesh faded to the soft white of beluga or the grey sheen of the dolphin. Kjeld’s fists tightened around the handles of his axes and appeared to raise, dead muscle clamped by the shrinkage of fire. The steel blades shone vibrant, the great peaceful face strengthened beneath its fiery whiskers and the huge ivory of his tusks shone as Kjeld once more took back the love of his channel. So each man carried his channel with him into death, and were cremated together.
It was the traditional burial of the transanima and the chanting continued for a long time, on into the deepening shadows as finally the fire burned low and the spit of ashes rose and scattered like scarlet spinning stars in the night’s wind, to be carried south to gentler valleys.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Thoddun brought Skarga to the chamber where he had recently been taken himself, for healing and for rest. Knut still sat there on the empty bed, patiently waiting for his father to return. Now Thoddun lay Skarga. He heard the chanting from outside. He knelt beside the bed, both Skarga’s cold hands clasped in his, and began to sing. Knut left quietly and Thoddun let him go.
Thoddun continued to chant. At first, as with the funeral music, it was slow, like the wandering of a lost soul through long dark corridors or the gliding of heavy wings in the night. Then, gaining rhythm, the chant sped. As he sang, so Thoddun’s own injury began its healing, licked sweet by music. But he did not Shift. He remained crouched by the bedside until his chanting absorbed all nature, infusing and suffusing his own life, and the remnants of life still holding the woman on the bed.
Then finally, after a long time, he lapsed. The singing faded, blurred, and seemed no more than the hoarse breathing of a tire
d man. Then Thoddun bent over Skarga and once more put his lips to her mouth. He did not kiss her. Through his breath he exhaled into her body the full force of heightened transanima life now accumulated within him. For a long time he did not breathe for himself but only for her. He remained on his knees and the silence became suspense.
Outside the chanting had also ceased. The funeral flames faded, exhausting power. The breezes caught the soot and the faint smell of roasted flesh. The bitter cold closed over the shrinking pyres. The men returned to the castle.
Skarga slowly began to inhale the transanima breath that now filled her.
Knut wandered back through the long darkness. Some corridors glimmered; torch lit. Others remained obscure. The halls were once again filling. Fires, feasting, barrels dragged up from the sunken cellars, raw meat from the despised larders now speared on the roasting spits. The singing began again. This time not the mystic chanting but the raucous celebration of drunken men and the common bravado of victors, singing of heroism and the death of their enemies.
Knut crossed past the open doorways and hurried into shadows, remembering the way to Grimr’s chamber. He was excited. He peered at the men as he scurried past them, watching a moment as some bear Shifted by the fire, or an eagle slowly flapped one seductive wing. But no one knew him. Officially, he was the enemy. These men would not recognise their leader’s son, nor perhaps acknowledge his latent transanima force. He kept away, peeping, spying, running forwards, then waiting to watch, and on again. His heart raced, more delight than fear, but quietened by cautious discretion and the need to hide.
His father would be long occupied; the woman perhaps dead, perhaps dying. Knut was accustomed to a son’s subordination. He searched out his other father, unsure even whether Grimr remained alive. He found the chamber door fast locked. He heard Grimr’s thoughts from within and knew him living and asleep. Knut sat on the ice ground outside the room, his back to the wall, hugged his scrunched knees, balanced his chin on top like a small obelisk, and closed his eyes.
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 81