A Whisper of Smoke

by Pauline Creeden

  A crying cormorant above the blue

  The clear waves churning sea-brine swirling

  A lone ship sails riding the whale-road

  And here was the old mead hall, well off the path, hidden among the young trees that had grown up around it over the years it had been neglected. He walked to it with the others.

  “Hey, where’s old Horace at?” Ostryg asked, because the porch was empty of the old man who sat there.

  An old Roman named Horace lived here. He was the caretaker of the place, as Thora needed somebody to maintain and watch the place when she wasn’t around. Horace would sit out front and yell at people and insult them until they went away, or until they became friends. Gefjun always loved getting into insult wars with him.

  “You hammerhead halibut!”

  “You butt weasel!”

  “You one legged jackass!”

  “May you grow like a turnip with your head in the ground!”

  And then Horace would cackle. “Well, don’t just stand there with your mouth open like a turkey in the rain. Come over here and sit down. I have some ale, I have some bread.” And Gefjun and the other sword friends would come over and join him, and Thora would come out and scold Horace for talking to her friends like that, and Horace would cackle some more, showing his toothless gums, and slap his knee.

  “Horace should have started yelling by now,” Skeggi muttered.

  The covered porch where Horace usually sat was bare, and its chairs, woven from oak strips, were empty.

  “No sign of a struggle,” Dyrfinna said quietly, casing out the place. “Look carefully. Does anything look out of place?”

  “Besides our missing Horace?” Skeggi said.

  “Aw, you’re full of it,” Ostryg said. “He’s probably out hunting or something.”

  “Shh,” said Dyrfinna sharp. Silence followed.

  “Where are the dogs?” Because they were usually met by a bunch of barking dogs. But, silence hung all around, peaceful as a spring morning.

  “They can’t all be sleeping,” Dyrfinna muttered.

  Everybody quietly drew their weapons.

  “Take the trench,” Dyrfinna whispered. The old mead hall had a long trench surrounding it for defensive purposes. It was a trap to lead the unwary attackers into a dead end where they could be shot at from all sides.

  “We’re not going to the dead end, I hope,” Skeggi said.

  Dyrfinna shook her head. “We’ll get closer and check for the enemy there. Trap them and slaughter them, if necessary.”

  She always had a lot of confidence in herself as far as warfare went. When she and Skeggi had been a couple, Dyrfinna had spent a lot of their time together trying to shape Skeggi into a great warrior, or at least a passable one. He’d improved, but he was nowhere as good as she was on that subject. He was fine with that. She still couldn’t write a poem.

  They hurried forward through the trench. Everybody kept low, as they knew that the Queen’s guard kept a close eye on the trench. Skeggi kept looking up at the mead hall and smiling and waving, just in case one of the guards was getting ready to loose an arrow at them. But he saw no faces at the usual places. Where was everybody?

  Dyrfinna, far ahead, looked around the corner of the trench – it turned a sudden, sharp corner – to look at the dead end. She shook her head again. “Go back,” she whispered. “Nobody is there.”

  “Nobody’s watching us from the defenses either,” Skeggi whispered.

  “What is going on?” Ostryg muttered. “Usually this place has a bunch of watchers.”

  “Let’s knock on the front door,” Skeggi joked.

  Dyrfinna just gave him a look as if to say, Are you crazy?

  “Then what should we do, O great warrior?” Skeggi asked.

  “First, you can stick your sarcasm somewhere,” Dyrfinna snapped.

  “Guys,” Gefjun said sleepily. Skeggi realized she must have had a sleeping spell sung over her to try and dull the pain for a while. “Guys, this is not the time.”

  Dyrfinna huffed and turned away, looking at the mead hall. She finally said, “I’ll go in through the side window. The rest of you, look around on that side and see if you can find any trace of soldiers or tracks or … or anything.”

  “Maybe Thora came up alone so she can meditate and pray,” Gefjun said drowsily. Her head lay against Ostryg’s back, her mouth squished up a little so it was hard to understand her.

  Dyrfinna nodded but she touched the hammer of Thor talisman she wore around her neck. She didn’t have too much interest in the religion that the monks were bringing into her country.

  “Go on in,” Ostryg said. “I want to get inside and find a place where I can put Gefjun down. My back is getting tired.”

  Ostryg was not going to be much good in battle, if it came to that, with his ladylove on his back. “Lay Gefjun down over here,” Skeggi said. “Just for a moment so you can catch your breath.”

  “Yeah, good idea.” Ostryg ducked behind a large oak. They carefully helped get Gefjun off his back and helped her to comfortably sit down.

  Skeggi turned around only to find that Dyrfinna had vanished.

  “Typical,” he muttered. From the bushes they waited, keeping a lookout.

  The girl stood over Gefjun, an arrow nocked on her bow, carefully watching through the brambles. Her chin jutted out, her eyes narrow. Her butchered hair, short, had some spruce needles in it, and her face was grimy.

  Skeggi wondered what kind of person the girl had been before her captivity, before she’d been stolen and maltreated. How would she have greeted him in her happy past, when she was safe at home? Would she have worn her hair in intricate braids? Did she have leather slippers on her feet? What would her family have been like? If she’d met him, maybe they would have greeted each other. Maybe they would have sat outside her home, watching the chickens scratching, and speaking poems to each other, or coming up with stories to put to music. Or she would tell him stories about her family, and she’d laugh ….

  If we bring her back home safe, Skeggi thought, maybe she could get a little of that old life back. Give her a chance to laugh again, someday.

  Skeggi looked around peering through the brambles as the girl did. But no sound came to them. Only a strange prolonged silence, except for several songbirds calling back and forth.

  “Do you think Thora’s even here?” he asked Ostryg.

  Suddenly the side door swung open—but it was only Dyrfinna, alone. “There’s nobody in here,” she said. “I can’t find her anywhere.”

  Skeggi sat up straight. “No kidding?”

  “Come, see for yourself.”

  Skeggi and Ostryg carried Gefjun inside the house, and the girl followed, fussing over Gefjun. “You better not hurt her,” she told Ostryg as he started to set Gefjun down.

  “I’m not going to hurt her. She’s my girl.”

  “I don’t belong to anybody, you lunkhead,” Gefjun said. “But we’re in love, yes. Ow!” she added as her leg touched the ground.

  Ostryg took off his cloak and rolled it into a pillow for Gefjun, who lay back on it and shut her eyes.

  The little owl flew in after Skeggi and perched on the chair where Horace usually sat. She swiveled her head around to look behind her, then swiveled back to make a purring noise at Skeggi, clacking her beak happily.

  “Doesn’t look like there’s anything outside,” he said. “She’s looking comfortable. If anybody was outside she’d be acting more concerned than this.”

  “Monitor your owl once in a while and see if anything changes,” Dyrfinna said urgently. “But in the meantime, let’s go check through the house. I’m not sure what’s going on here. It’s too quiet. If Thora went ahead and left, I’m going to be very mad at her.

  “But we can’t leave this house until we make absolutely sure that she’s not hiding out somewhere. Or … um, or if she’s lying somewhere dead.”

  The way she said that opened a pit in Skeggi’s stomach. What if the s
oldiers had found Thora and old Horace and the dogs … and took them prisoner? Or killed them all?

  12

  Into Darkness

  Skeggi drew his sword and they all three went in different directions. Dyrfinna went into the basement, Ostryg searched the main floor, Skeggi climbed the stairs. The girl stayed by Gefjun’s side, dagger drawn, watching the door and windows for intruders.

  Skeggi climbed a set of narrow, rudely-built stairs that led to a level over the mead hall. His owl flew after him, fluttering up into the dusty alcove. She folded her wings and dove to the floor. For a moment, she sat there, looking around her, then flew up to the top of the banister with a limp mouse in her talons. She settled there and looked around boldly as if daring somebody to take it away from her. Skeggi patted her head as he climbed up the stairs past her.

  Skeggi had never been up in the loft in the mead hall. He’d seen the loft from the floor below during his occasional visits, so to be up here was oddly familiar and yet completely new.

  He found a open area overlooking the hall below, lined with some empty casks and barrels brought to the top and stacked against the wall to be reused someday. This upper level overlooked the floor below with a short wall so people could walk there without pitching straight over the side.

  Here were some bedrooms and storage rooms for less valuable things, like chairs, old furniture, and linens. He walked past them, peeking into each one. He saw a stash of pumpkins in one room, along with what appeared to be a small keg of spices. He shook his head and walked on, still looking for Thora.

  But at the far end of the mead hall, farthest from the steps, was a single dark oak door in the back of the hall, among the shadows. He’d never gone through this door and knew nothing about it.

  Skeggi took hold of the handle and pulled it.

  It didn’t budge.

  He yanked on the handle. He leaned back and pulled.

  Damn, he thought. Do I have to cut this thing down with my axe?

  He leaned on the door – and the door opened inward, tumbling Skeggi right into darkness.

  He froze there on the floor where he’d stumbled. Even with the faint light that came through the door behind him, his eye couldn’t pierce the darkness in the inside of the room.

  His owl launched herself past Skeggi with a brush of wings on his face, and she vanished into the darkness without a sound.

  Skeggi got up slowly, staring into the darkness, Smoke’s wings were absolutely silent, so he couldn’t hear where the little owl had gone. He could tell, just from the echoes he’d made in the room as he fell in, that the room was a large space, and the air was fresh, not stale. Fresh air was coming in from someplace. It couldn’t have been a window, because light would have been coming in. But not a sound came from anywhere around him.

  Oddly, his eyes were still not adjusting to the dark. He should have been seeing something in the dark by now, from the light behind him.

  Then he crashed into a chair he didn’t see and went over, his legs in the air.

  A silvery laugh from ahead of him.

  Smoke made a purring sound ahead of him, farther back in the darkness.

  “Thora?” Skeggi got up and carefully walked toward where the laugh had come from, taking one cautious step, then another, feeling his way forward. “What are you doing, sitting in the dark like this?”

  Suddenly he found himself standing in sunlight in the back of the room.

  Confused, he threw an arm up to shield his eyes and blinked. It was as if he’d crossed a border, or a curtain, of darkness that had concealed this part of the room.

  His eyes adjusted to the light, and here was Thora herself in a reddish-brown dress, sitting in a soft chair by a thin slit of a window. She wore her blonde hair braided into a crown around her head, very elegant. A spear and sword leaned against the wall within arm’s reach. An open book lay in her lap with pages of vellum, an item that only royalty and monks could afford, and even now, after Skeggi had staggered into her presence, she was still reading it. Smoke sat preening herself on the arm of the chair with her eyes half closed while Thora idly stroked her brown feathers.

  “Hi, Skeggi,” she said. “I’m glad to see you again.” As if her sudden appearance out of the total darkness was of no account. Thora’s smiling brown eyes went back to the book for a moment, but then she shut the book and finally met his eyes, an apologetic gaze. “Sorry,” she said. “These books tend to suck you in.”

  “That’s fine, your majesty. I’m very glad to see you,” he stammered. “But ….” Confused, Skeggi turned around to see where he’d come from. A line of darkness crossed the floor behind him, a straight black line – the edge of darkness he’d stumbled through. On the other side of the darkness, barely seen, was the faint glow of the open door that he’d tumbled through. “I’m glad you’re okay. But I need you to explain this line of darkness behind me. Is this a spell?”

  “Yes, but it’s a spell that I cast,” Thora said. “I sang darkness into that half of the room so that anybody walking through that door can’t see anything. Did it work?”

  “Oh, yes. It did.”

  Thora nodded, pleased. “Even if you’d brought a torch in, you wouldn’t have been able to see anything by its light. You’d just think it was an empty room with nothing. I was just sitting here, watching you stumble around.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Skeggi said ruefully. “But what would you have done if I’d been a bunch of Danes?”

  “If you’d been an enemy, I would have set a ward along the edge of the darkness to keep you from walking through it. Then I’d jab you with my spear until you had utterly perished,” Thora said matter-of-factly.

  “Where is the rest of your people?” Skeggi said. “We’ve been sneaking around trying to find you and figure out where all your guards went. And Horace and the dogs, too.”

  Thora closed her book, set it gently on the table, and covered it with a light, white cloth to keep the dust off. “I didn’t bring any guards with me,” she said. “Sometimes I like to get away and pray and have a little quiet time in the forest. Away from the stone walls and all the people. I’m in full-on hermit mode right now.”

  “But there’s a Danish invasion going on?” Skeggi asked, a little flabbergasted.

  Thora shrugged. “It’s just a little invasion. We get invasions all the time, and it’s so boring.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  Thora laughed a little at herself. “Well, yes, I am. But I figured I was safer here than at home. Nobody ever invades this place. All I have here are pumpkins and a few practice swords and an old man who insults you.” She shrugged. “Horace was anxious, so I sent him back to the castle with the dogs to keep him company, and I told him I’d follow him soon. But I lied. I set up a little enchantment here and settled in. It works pretty well, doesn’t it?”

  “The queen sent us to bring you back,” Skeggi said. “I hope you are ready to go, your Majesty.”

  “Ugh.” Thora slumped in her chair and rolled her eyes. “Can’t I just stay here and read?”

  Time for the sweet talk. Skeggi bowed deeply. “Your majesty, O Thora, protector of the small, mouse goddess, defender of the insect realm. We beg you, we adjure you to come with us.”

  Skeggi smiled. He’d dredged up that old memory from who knows where from back when they made up official titles for each other.

  Thora laughed. “I’d forgotten about that, O Skeggi, poet of the gods, table player, sad warrior, rabbit singer.”

  Skeggi smiled. “I’m not that much of a sad warrior.”

  “These days, you’re an owl god,” she said.

  “Anyway, we need to bring you home.”

  Thora shook her head. “I think I’ll be safer here. You should have seen how confounded you were by my little darkness spell. In fact, why don’t you and your friends stay here until the invaders leave?”

  “You won’t be safe here,” Skeggi said. “Nor will the rest of us. The warrior who is leadin
g the Danes is Iron Skull. And ….” His heart sank suddenly. “And we have one of Iron Skull’s escaped prisoners.”

  Thora’s eyes went wide. “A prisoner actually escaped Iron Skull? Is the prisoner here now?”

  Skeggi nodded. “Yes. She hates him. He’s treated her very badly and she wants to get away.”

  “So you are, in effect, leading Iron Skull here.”

  “What? Wouldn’t he be busy commanding his forces?”

  “Mostly, but Iron Skull’s personal vendettas are brutal.” She shook her head. “He never lets his prisoners go. I’ve heard about one gal who escaped him, and he traveled across a whole continent to get her back.” Thora jumped out of her chair. “If that’s the case, the young lady needs all the help she can get. And we need to leave, now.”

  “Dyrfinna would probably kill all the Danes that are following her.”

  Thora shook her head. Tendrils of blonde hair that had escaped her braid swayed around her face. “I’m sure Dyrfinna would make a good dent in Iron Skull’s forces. But it wouldn’t be enough.” Thora stood, shaking out her reddish-brown skirts. “I need to put on my warrior pants, quickly.”

  “Go ahead,” Skeggi said. “The rest of the gang is checking the other floors for attackers. I’ll go out and make sure they haven’t found any enemies skulking around the place.”

  “I was going to suggest that myself.” Thora opened an old trunk in the corner. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  Skeggi came out of the room—Thora vanished behind him as soon as he crossed the line of darkness—and he felt his way to the open light of the mead hall.

  He leaned over the railing. “Guys. Hello? Anybody down there?”

  Ostryg appeared on the floor of the mead-hall below, a sword in his hand and cobwebs in his blonde hair. “Just me and the girls. Finna’s still checking the basement.”

  “All right. I’m coming down.”

  Skeggi’s owl swooped past him over the wide floor of the mead hall and flew in wide circles under that high-ceilinged roof, pipping happily.