By the Mountain Bound (24 page)

“Blood and the cold of Niflheim,” he cursed, hatred on his soul like nothing he had known.

“What?”

He was on his feet again, fists clenched white. He stared at her boots and thought of air coming in and out of his lungs, counting breaths until he could speak. “Heythe. The wolves. Damn her. She planned it. She broke him, Herfjotur, and she took him away from me, and I was the blind bloody fool who let her do it. First the children, and then Mingan. She’s got us at each other’s throats, and I warrant it has nothing to do with any giant army from over the sea.”

Herfjotur lifted her head. “Can you be sure?”

“I can never be
sure
. But I’m as certain of it as I’ve been of anything.” He looked up from the snow. “I need you to get me into that mead-hall. Will you risk it?”

She needed that. She needed direction. A job.

She needed him.

She gathered herself and stood, dusting snow from her seat. “For you, war-leader?” she said. “I will risk whatever you need me to.”

The Wolf

O
n the evening of the seventh day, we meet in council. The
Althing
. Heythe takes her place at the head of the hall. Skeold and I flank her chair. The Raven Banner flickers against my
back, rippled by the draft through the wall. Arngeir—stiff and hostile—sits in what was Strifbjorn’s place, Yrenbend in what was mine. Arngeir, at least, will be trouble for the Lady, and the Lady has my oath.

Yrenbend alone still will meet my stare. He regards me steadily, his hair shining red in the torchlight over the planes and hollows of his face. His lips shape words while Heythe looks away, down to the cross-bench, with a small crease between her eyes, as if counting the waelcyrge there.
I hope you know what you’re doing, brother.
And then he turns away to Arngeir, as if nothing had passed between us.

Sigrdrifa brings ale to Heythe and myself. Skeold steps down from the dais to wander the hall. If the venom in Sigrdrifa’s look as she hands me the horn could drip into the drink, I would be convulsing on the floor. But I salute her with it, and speak in a voice that only she and Heythe will hear. “Habit of stepping into thy place, haven’t I?”

Heythe does not glance up. Sigrdrifa turns her head and spits into the pine boughs, then wheels and strides away.

“You’ll have to kill her,” Heythe says, out of the corner of her mouth.

So easily, she sets this other aside. It’s no surprise. “After the battle, my Lady.” I tilt my head at the Banner. Heythe offers me her hand and I support her to her feet.

“After the battle.” The hall falls silent as she rises.

I step into the shadows behind her chair, just watching. Yrenbend seeks my eye. I shake my head. I swore to serve her.

If there is treason in the hall, I will choose not to know.

If there is—and I choose not to know if this is so—Yrenbend is at its root.

I think now that I will someday kill him. The Suneater smiles with my lips, remembering the taste of blood. I have always liked Yrenbend—intelligent, unflinching, strong.

And yet there is no pain.

Heythe takes a breath, surveys her small kingdom. She doesn’t trouble herself to rule it, leaving whatever decisions must be made to Skeold and Sigrdrifa. She takes no interest in the daily business of the einherjar.

I wonder how it would have been, if Strifbjorn had stayed. I think of yellow hair through my hands.

I tell myself there is no pain.

The Lady’s eyes meet with Arngeir’s, especially, and those of Herewys. Ulfgar the smith pushes back from the table as if to rise, his bearded face wreathed in a frown. A tense ripple runs the length of the hall, rebounding and returning like a wave in a washtub.

“Brethren,” Heythe says, her voice ringing clear, “it is time to take up our great task again. This has been a season of turmoil and upheaval for the children of the Light . . . but that must now come to an end. I charge each of you to go back into the world, to take up your burdens and wait for my summons.”

Her voice falls on our ears with rich and sonorous tones, lulling and exhorting. Her eyes flash as she throws her mantle back, golden embroidery blazing in the torchlight. At the cross-bench, I see little Muire scribbling with the quill and inkpot that are always on her person. Charmed, I could laugh, if the Suneater were not watching; she is writing on the cuff of her kirtle.
For posterity.

She does not look up as Heythe takes breath and speaks again. “There is a war on the horizon.” She gestures floridly
over her shoulder, toward the Banner I stand before. A rustle among the crowd. Voices murmur among the stirring of cloth. “But we cannot permit that war to interfere with our duties to the world and to men. You know what I have asked you.”

The rhythm of her words washes me. I study the others. There is Brynhilde, leaning forward, nodding tightly but unhappily, and Yrenbend watching her rather than Heythe, as if immune to the spell of Heythe’s words. I barely hear, so far-flung is my attention. And yet I step up to stand at heel behind her, a carrion crow at the beck of a songbird.
Sorcery?
I wonder, remembering the cataract of remembrance in which she washed me.

My brethren nod, frown. Most of them. Menglad Brightwing bites her lip and looks down, leaning to speak to Muire, who nods like the others but still does not look up, even when she dips her pen and turns her wrist, still writing. I stand behind a wall of ice—clear as rock crystal, cold and unyielding. Tens upon tens of them, so many they range against the walls and scatter near the fire trench, almost every face upturned to Heythe, ensorcelled by her power.

Her voice dips and sways. “Each of you will return to your tasks—but I grant you this new right, children of the Light. To carry out your retribution with a kiss, when convenient, and hoard that strength for whatever enemies may find us.”

She pauses for breath, drawing my attention. Her face is white and taut beneath the rouge and jewels. She lays her hand on my arm, as if in benediction. The coldness of her touch seeps through my sleeve. I lay my opposite hand over hers.

She never looks at me, but I see her struggle to stand. She’s enchanted them all. Almost all. No sorceress I’ve heard sing of could manage such a thing.

Even for a goddess, it has exacted a price.

She draws herself up. Through my lust and loathing, I admire her courage, for I think that only I glimpse her weakness. “Sigrdrifa and the Grey Wolf will instruct you tomorrow.”

Clever, for by laying her hand on me, she turned every eye in the room to me. I know what they think.

They still cannot look at my face. Eyes slip from my defiance, resettle on the Lady. I sense them stretching toward her, reaching like waves up a cliff.

Heythe trembles. She draws breath again, and only I hear her sob of effort. The Suneater looks at her with my eyes, appraising her weakness. Prey? Not yet.

But even she has limits.

“We begin in the morning.” She nods, and dismisses their attention. Their focus falls back on themselves like that wave into the ocean, and around us the tide of discussion swells. Heythe clings to my arm, white and shaking. She leans close, as if to offer me her kiss. I bend until my lips brush hers. Her arms go around my neck, and only my grip at her waist keeps her from falling. The brethren do not scruple to hide their mirth.

They have their theories, no doubt, of what wedge drove between myself and Strifbjorn. Inane as grackles. They do not see the weariness that folds my Lady into my arms.

“Carry me to bed,” she whispers. “Make it look good.”

Ribald laughter dogs us as I sweep her from her feet and bear her down the dais, but for once she is too tired for what I coldly term love, and I am grateful.

The warrior-god, wolf-destroyer

War-tempered,

Better payment bequeathed me:

My grief-gift given voice.

And to song-craft supplied he

One more measure of mettle

A heart gorged on hate.

—
Sonatorrek,
by Egill Skallagrimsson

The Historian

I
did not wait for dawn, but left the
Althing
minutes after the Grey Wolf carried his new lover off to bed. It was all I could do not to turn my head and spit on the floor as they passed.

Before I left, I changed my kirtle and surcote for trousers and a tunic, and wrapped my star-blue cloak about my shoulders. Then I slid my belt-knife from its sheath and I went to work on the dress. It was the work of moments to pick out the stitches binding sleeve to bodice. I folded my scribbled cuff into a roll, careful of the ink so it might not smudge.

That done, I followed the strains of his flute to Yrenbend.

He had dragged a little bench outside, beside the door, and sat in the starlit darkness playing a fragile descending tune I’d never heard before. I leaned against the wall beside him and started binding on my skis. He played a few bars to me, eyes
dancing behind the flute despite the sorrow in the music, and then he brought the tune to a close with a flourish.

He stood and slid the flute into its case at his hip. I handed him my sleeve.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“You tell me, Yrenbend.” I kept my voice low. “And come out here.” I led him into the meadow, gliding on my skis while he floundered behind. He stopped at last, amid a bright expanse of starlight, and I skied in a circle, coming back to him. He held my sleeve up to the starlight, squinting at soot-dark ink blotting white linen.

“This is from Heythe’s speech,” he said.

“But not all of it,” I answered. “Only stressed words and alliterations. Some linking bits.”

“It’s poetry.”

“Worked into the text.”

He looked down at me, lowering his arm to his side, the sleeve trailing from his fingers like a flag of parley. “It’s not my specialty, Muire.” His clever eyes went dark and thoughtful, and he frowned.

“Sorcery.”

“Ah.” He glanced toward the open doors of the hall, at our brethren coming out and going inside in clumps and clusters and trios and pairs, deep in worried conversation.

The Raven Banner hung behind Heythe’s chair, prophesying war and victory. Heythe was our Lady, our leader, and perhaps her path was the only one to assure victory against the terrible enemy she foresaw.

But I was a poet, too, and I recognized the strains of sorcery she wove over my brethren, although I could never have
matched her power. “It’s a spell of willing mind, Yrenbend,” I whispered. “A binding.”

“She’s . . . the whole hall? Such strength! Damn me, Muire . . . I felt nothing.”

I chuckled. “See there?” I point at the other side of the sleeve.

He lifted it again, and examined the smaller, hasty scribble. “Runes. Your name, and mine and protection?”

“Shelter and hiding, aye. I warded us.”

His laughter rang out clearly through the night. I held up a hand in warning as a figure approached, behind him, and then dropped it again as he turned and we both recognized Herfjotur.

“I’m going for Strifbjorn,” she said, her voice brooking no argument. “If we are moving, we must move. He—can you make a spell that will hide him, Muire? Even from the Lady?”

I did not know. But I nodded.

Yrenbend touched my shoulder, approving. He said, “I will direct the trustworthy ones to Arngeir’s hall. We will regroup there.” Yrenbend’s jaw tightened. “Muire says a sorcery was laid over us all.”

Herfjotur touched an amulet at her throat. A gift of her dead husband. “I felt it,” she said. “But my thoughts were not changed after.”

“Others will not be so strong,” I answered. “You were not willing to be swayed by Heythe in anything.”

Her hand dropped. “Can you break her hold on them?”

Frustration a sourness in my throat, I had to shake my head. “I haven’t the strength. But it will fade if they are out of her presence. And I can ward a few.”