Odin's Child

by Siri Pettersen

  THE CHIEFTAIN AND THE BLIND ONE

  Where am I?

  Dark beams. A leaded window. Pain? No. Just the recollection of pain. Rime knew straightaway he was going to wish he’d never woken up, but he couldn’t work out why. It was just a feeling.

  He’d been here before. Or had he just opened his eyes before? There were no glass windows in Blindból. He wasn’t back in the camp. Not with Kolkagga. He was floating above the floor. No. A bed. He was lying in a bed. Definitely not with Kolkagga.

  Something moved in front of the bed. A dog? Red hair. Hirka. She was sleeping on a blanket on the floor. He felt warmth fill his chest. He’d give anything to know the truth about the rot. There was a rustling in the trees outside. A raven calling. Another one answering. Otherwise quiet.

  There is no Seer.

  The reality was spelled out to him as though he were reading it in a book. He turned the pages, one at a time, and he remembered. He ought to have been dead. Rime lifted his arm and looked down at what he expected to be a gash in his own body. An opening through to his heart. It was bandaged. Tight across his chest. He sat up, ignored the dizziness, and put his feet on the floor. It was cool. Soothing. It felt like he had been warm for a long time. Since the snow.

  Snow. Had it snowed? A dream?

  He got up and had to support himself with the bedpost for a moment. Whose bed was this? It was spacious. A simple wooden bed. Above it, a woven banner hung against the wall. Blue with a golden crown. The old kings of the north.

  He was in Ravnhov. Rime smiled briefly. If only Eisvaldr could see this. The crown was a banned symbol. A reminder of the hard times before the Seer, it was said. It brought misfortune.

  They brought misfortune on themselves.

  Grief howled in his stomach like a wolf. A cry to the moon that nobody could hear or reply to. An emptiness the like of which he’d never before felt. He had nothing. He was no one.

  Ilume had fallen before him. She had confirmed all his fears. What more could she have done to hurt him? Die. That was the one thing. And she’d done that. What had she died for? A lie. For a false god, and a delusion of sovereignty. His choices had driven her to the edge. But he wasn’t the one who had killed her.

  Urd …

  Rime clenched his fists. Pain shot up his side. So he was alive. He had fought and survived. Not everyone had been so lucky.

  Launhug. In the Seer’s na …

  A small avalanche of consequences came crashing down on him. A false seer. What was going to happen to all the sayings? In the Seer’s name. Go with the ravens. What about all the holy days? The Seer’s halls? The augurs? The books? What about the laws? For a brief moment he understood Ilume. This was what she’d been talking about. Suddenly he understood why the thousand-year-old lie mattered to her. What else could they do? Tear down the cornerstones and build new ones out of sand? Out of nothing?

  Better that than the lie.

  Rime tiptoed around the sleeping girl and looked for his swords, but of course they weren’t there. His clothes were folded on a wooden stool with a sheepskin over it. Both his Kolkagga blacks and his light guardsman clothes. They had emptied his bag. His throwing knives and poison arrows were gone too.

  He dressed as the person he now was. Kolkagga. Rime An-Elderin—the protector and heir to the Council—no longer existed.

  He glanced out the window. There was a candlestick on the sill. The tallow stuck up like a bone pipe. Outside, spruce trees climbed the mountainside. Houses huddled together on steep slopes. A wild landscape that someone had attempted to tame. He had a vague recollection of someone telling him about this place.

  Hirka.

  Muffled chatter and shadows on the ground below revealed that the house was guarded. Anything else would have been a shock. Rime left his hood behind and walked toward the door. Every step sent pain shooting up his side. He needed a mirror. He had to see what was left of him. But he also had a more urgent matter to attend to.

  He pried open the door silently, so as not to wake Hirka. She was lying on her side like a wrung-out cloth, with her knees tucked up but her head turned in the opposite direction. She had one arm covering her eyes. The other was wrapped around her bag. He closed the door behind him. He was standing at the top of some steps that led to a courtyard. The buildings encircled an enormous spruce tree.

  He wasn’t alone. Seven men guarded the house. One of them was sitting on the bottom step, leaning against the wall. His eyes were shut. His helmet was pushed so far forward that it almost looked like his nose was broken. A sparrow hopped around him on the ground, pecking at what remained of his meal. His sword was resting on his knees.

  Another guard stood leaning against the wall, absentmindedly picking at the clay in the foundations with a pocketknife. A couple more sat on the ground throwing stones around. Some of them were talking quietly about how people frowned upon them for just standing here every day. That didn’t surprise Rime. He was in enemy territory. But seven men to guard someone who was half dead? They clearly let superstition get the better of them in Ravnhov too. And clearly it was no secret that he was here. He was everything they despised.

  He cleared his throat.

  The group stumbled into position with such haste that it cost one of them his footing. But he managed to stay standing. They drew their swords and held them out. Now that they were standing, they actually looked fairly disciplined. Like they could all defend themselves. Not well enough, but still.

  “Take me to Eirik Viljarsón, Eirik the Stout. The one who you call chieftain.” Rime spoke loudly to make sure that his voice didn’t fail him after an unknown amount of time in bed. One of the men nodded and started to go. Another grabbed him and held him back like a dog, without taking his eyes off Rime. “Why do you want to see him?”

  Right. Power games it is. Didn’t they know where he came from? Rime knew all there was to know about power games. He’d had his fill of them a long time ago, and he was only half the age of the dark-haired warrior in front of him.

  Rime didn’t answer. He walked down the steps and stopped in front of the bravest of them. His adversary’s eyes darted between him and the others, as though he was searching for support that wasn’t coming.

  Oh, for Seer’s sake, I’m unarmed.

  But Rime said nothing. He waited for the men to make up their minds.

  “I’m not sure he’s in!”

  Rime would have laughed on a normal day. One of the others took mercy on his fellow guard to prevent an embarrassing situation from developing. “We’ll check. Come.”

  Rime walked in the middle, surrounded by seven nervous men. He noticed a charcoal drawing on the wall. A circle with arrows pointing toward the center. The old symbol to ward off the blind and the undead.

  To ward off Kolkagga.

  The chieftain’s household showed signs of having just woken. So it was morning. He hadn’t been sure. All activity came to a stop where they walked past. Girls and boys in blue hesitated with baskets or linen in their arms. Some ended up with their hands hanging in midair, halfway through feeding the hens and collecting eggs, as they followed Rime and the warriors with their eyes. The grindstone stopped. The horses stopped. He was death incarnate, an enemy among them. He was Mannfalla.

  “Wait here.” The bravest of the guards entered the great hall, a central wooden building he recognized from Hirka’s descriptions. Despite Rime’s certainty that nothing mattered anymore, he couldn’t help but feel excited about meeting Eirik. According to Hirka, he was a good-natured teddy bear who was afraid of medicinal herbs. According to Eisvaldr, a bloodthirsty heathen.

  Eirik came out into the yard and looked to be a bit of both. He scrutinized Rime from head to toe without making the least effort to conceal it. He rubbed his shoulder, which hung lower than the other, as though the weight of the world rested there and required his attention. But he didn’t seem burdened.

  He dismissed the men, telling them he wanted to be alone with “the shadow.” R
ime smiled crookedly. Eirik didn’t know how right he was. He meant shadow as in Kolkagga, a black shadow. But now Rime was a shadow in more ways than one.

  One of the men protested, but Eirik raised a bushy eyebrow, and that was the end of it. Eirik turned and started to walk away. “Come. There’s something you need to see,” he said in a gravelly voice. The guards watched them go. Rime followed Eirik down a path that went behind the buildings and farther up the mountain. Rime recognized the pointed turfed roofs from Hirka’s stories. The town right beneath them. The bridge over the ravine where the ravens lived. It was beautiful. Enduring, timeless, like the camps in Blindból. He was about to say so, but he stopped himself.

  “My men think I’ve lost my mind, letting you live. Harboring Mannfalla’s assassin. One of the shadows who sent me halfway to Slokna in the most cowardly way possible. A knife in the back. Hidden in the shadows like an animal. Like the blind. Had it been up to them, you’d be raven fodder by now. Have I lost my mind, Rime An-Elderin?”

  Rime understood at once why the Council wanted this man dead. He was a man with convictions. A man who made choices, and who was prepared to face the consequences. Eirik walked ahead of him on the path, with his back to him. The same back that one of Rime’s own had thrown a knife at, but he didn’t look back. True enough, Rime didn’t have a weapon, but Eirik had a knife at his hip that would have been ridiculously easy to get hold of. But Eirik had just told him that he had chosen not to kill him. Rime felt the need to make it clear that the deed had already been repaid.

  “You must have lost your mind if you think your men can stop me from killing you.”

  Eirik turned to face him. “They’re not there to stop you, Kolkagga. They’re there to keep you alive.”

  Rime studied the bearded face for signs of deception or hidden motives. He found none. Eirik spoke plainly, without expecting anything other than an honest answer in return.

  “I don’t want anyone dead, chieftain. Not north of Mannfalla. I realize that Ravnhov would like to see me in pieces, but I also realize there’s a reason I’m still alive.”

  They started to walk up the path again. It grew cooler.

  “I thought the girl was our best hope,” Eirik said. “Blue blood from Ulvheim, right? Old blood. With disdain for the Council. Skilled enough in the Might to rip the ground out from under Mannfalla’s army. I was told that she turned stone to dust when someone tried to smash her head in. That she survived things that would have knocked the Might out of full-grown men. The raven came to her, they say. Wild and untrained.”

  Rime ran his hand over his face and smiled resignedly. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill. Misunderstandings that could pit kingdoms against each other. But it seemed that Eirik had long since figured out that Hirka wasn’t what he’d hoped for.

  “We know what she is now. A child of Odin. Unearthed. But she certainly isn’t mightless. Hirka promised to help, and she has. She has brought us more than we could dream of. An heir to the Council! Ilume’s grandson! Ravnhov is strong, Rime An-Elderin, and the outcome of this war has not yet been decided. But you are our insurance. That’s why you’re still alive.”

  Rime smiled. Honest words. Not strategic. Eirik said it the way he saw it. Rime decided to do the same. “I’m not insurance. I guarantee an attack. Urd Vanfarinn hungers for Ravnhov, and he needs no other reason to attack than the fact that Hirka and I are here. We’re outlaws.”

  “Do you think we’re blind and deaf? We know what you’ve done. We know what Urd has done. I’m sorry that you’ve lost Ilume, but you won’t find us grieving. Ravnhov will celebrate every single dead chair. I know you’ve betrayed your own, but that doesn’t change who you are.”

  Rime realized that Hirka hadn’t made a secret of anything while he had been fighting to escape the clutches of Slokna. She had told Eirik all there was to tell. Ravens had presumably been flying between Ramoja and Ravnhov every day since that night in Eisvaldr. Had Hirka told them about the Seer? Did Ramoja know? And the raveners? How did you describe that in a scroll? That the tower was empty. That there was no salvation. That they were alone.

  Everyone is alone.

  They reached a pass in the shadow of two snowy peaks. It was like walking into winter. A wall of ice rose up just ahead of them.

  “Doing all right?” Eirik asked without turning or stopping.

  Rime could think of countless things that weren’t all right, so there was no telling what Eirik was referring to. “With what?”

  “Your side was sliced open a few days ago.”

  “I’m doing better than I should be. Thanks.”

  Eirik chuckled. “I thought the girl had suffered a blow to the head when she first came here. Her bag full of horsetail and vengethorn and the gods know what. I wouldn’t have rubbed that filth on me if I were two steps from Slokna. But there’s life in you yet, isn’t there? And in me. That speaks in her favor, I guess. You were out for days, so to be fair, you shouldn’t be on your feet. People say the Might held you together. One of the more hysterical ones among us says it’s because Kolkagga can’t die. They’re blessed by the Seer. I suppose they’ll have to find someone else to blame now.”

  They know. Ravnhov knows.

  Eirik’s voice didn’t change. He talked about the nonexistent Seer as though talking about the weather.

  “Aren’t you going to retaliate?” Rime asked.

  “For what?”

  “For everything! Eisvaldr has committed a thousand years of injustice against you! You’ve been coerced and oppressed. Lied to. After the war the northlands were stripped of their crowns, robbed of their kingdoms. Weighed down by debt to Mannfalla. You had to subjugate yourself to our great name. My forefathers. And now they’re amassing an army under the pretext that you’re harboring traitors. Traitors to a Seer who doesn’t exist. Why don’t you retaliate, Eirik? You could have killed me!”

  Eirik stopped and turned once more. “Many mistakes have been made. Lives have been lost. People have suffered needlessly and lost much because of these mistakes.”

  Rime nodded. He felt his jaw tensing. This was what he had come for. He was going to pay the price. Eirik drew closer until he filled his entire field of vision. “Most of them were committed before you were born, boy.”

  Rime blinked as though he’d just woken up. He looked at the chieftain. He felt dizzy. He had to answer, but what could he say? He’d grown up in Eisvaldr. He was part of the problem. He’d never confronted it. Just run away. Joined Kolkagga and added insult to injury by being a weapon for a system he despised. He had made mistakes. Many mistakes.

  But Eirik kept talking as if none of that mattered. “A wise woman I know once said that collecting other people’s mistakes is dangerous. You soon end up with so many. And it’s even worse if you take them on as your own.”

  “You’re making a mistake if you think my only crime was being born in Eisvaldr.”

  “Come,” Eirik replied.

  He led them toward a wall of ice between the peaks. It was the height of many men and shone bluish white above them. Eirik continued through a crack that barely accommodated his girth, and Rime followed. It was like walking at the bottom of the sea. Muffled creaking could be heard from the glacier. They were at the mercy of the ice’s temperament here. If it decided to move, they would both be crushed to death. Rime could see a distorted reflection of himself on its surface. He looked like a ghost. The crack widened into a cave. There was a figure on a platform of ice and snow in the center of the room. Asleep. Dead?

  Rime stepped closer. Something was wrong. He could feel it in the pit of his stomach. A growing unease. He knew what he was looking at. He’d never seen them, never heard about anyone seeing them. But he couldn’t have been more sure of what he was looking at now than if it had been a dog.

  It was one of the blind.

  Rime’s arm moved involuntarily to his hip, but he had no sword to draw. It wasn’t moving. He—for there was absolutely no doubt that it w
as a he—was lying on his back with his arms by his sides. Skin as white as bone. A purple wound gaping across his stomach. Lurid colors, perhaps intensified by the light from the ice.

  Rime walked toward the creature as though in a trance. The body was built like his own. The arms. The chest. The same muscles stretched over the same places, and seemed to be made for the same purpose. He didn’t know why he’d expected anything else. But it was the small differences that made his blood run cold.

  The fingers ended in claws, but they weren’t like claws on any animal he’d seen. They didn’t grow out of the fingers. They were part of the fingers, as though someone had sharpened them with a knife. Hardened skin that tapered into a curved thorn.

  The head was slightly narrower than what would be considered normal. Wild black hair was splayed out on the ice beneath him. The head was tilted. The face twisted into a smile that might have been a scream. The eyes were shut. The mouth half-open. A blue tongue was tucked behind two sharp canines. The tools of a carnivore.

  Rime felt like he was standing on the edge of a precipice. He was looking at something he was never meant to see. Something not of this world. He walked right up to the body and lifted the eyelid with his thumb.

  White.

  Completely white. No iris, no pupil. Not even a vertical slit like a cat. Though he had no idea where he’d gotten that from. The blind were blind. At least there was truth in some of what he’d been told. But that was no relief. He let go of the creature. The cold lingered on his thumb. Different from the cold that was freezing his breath in front of him. He turned to Eirik.

  Eirik stood with his arms crossed, waiting. Waiting for Rime to digest what he was seeing.

  “I … I didn’t know … I didn’t believe …”

  He recognized the truth of his own words. Deep down he hadn’t believed. The blind were back. He’d heard it. The Council had openly discussed it, but it wasn’t something you believed until you saw it. What had he actually thought? Or hoped? That it would turn out to be something else? Wild animals? Or that the Council would be proven right in their theory that it was lies spread by Ravnhov? That same Council was still reeling, so what was he to do with this discovery?