Others called out, “Our berserkers will destroy the invaders!” and “We will take to our dragonships!”
Walking Stick raised his namesake. He swung it above his head in a blurry circle. While this was not exactly an argument in itself, it did refocus the recruits’ attention. He ceased the spinning and struck a rock with a disconcerting boom. “You will indeed need all your fury! Your berserkers and your ships will be needed before we’re done. But fury alone will not save you. Discipline is what you need, and a sense of unity.”
Magnus stuck to his theme. “Who is he to speak to us?”
“One who knows war! You speak of bravery as the greatest virtue? But I do not want warriors who will attack a troll unarmed or cross a fjord without a boat.” There was laughter at that. “The greatest virtue in war is thought. There is art to war. But do not fear. You have the foundation. You love your land, you will fight for it. Fight for victory, not for show. Spare no thought for the songs of the skalds. In victory there is time for all that.”
“We can’t trust him!” Magnus yelled. “He’s no Kantening!”
“He’s an outlander!” another man called out.
“He looks like the invaders!” said another.
“I beg your pardon,” Walking Stick fumed at that last. Joy knew the story of the War Sage who’d liberally decapitated recruits who wouldn’t listen. These men didn’t realize how easy they had it. But the beatings were about to start.
She put her hand on Walking Stick’s arm.
“May I speak to them?”
After studying her a long moment he nodded.
She harvested her chi and reached Magnus’s rock in two great leaps. The man stared at her, confounded.
“Warriors!” she yelled. “I am Joy. Daughter of Snow . . . Joy Snøsdatter! You may have heard of me.”
There were mutters and scattered cheers of assent. “I saw her fighting in the sky!” And Peik shouted, “I saw her battle the uldra!”
“Listen to me! This man is a warrior and my teacher. He speaks the truth. You must train. You are already heroes. Simply by making it here you’ve proved that. But now you must become a unified force. An army for Kantenjord.”
Queen Corinna had emerged from the monastery with Snow Pine, Flint, and Haytham, where they’d been discussing the building of balloons. Corinna bore a look of concern, but Joy’s instincts led her on.
“Your land touched me before I ever came here! I believe it is my purpose to defend you! Unite as an army, and I will fight at your head!”
And she revealed her hand, turning so all could see.
“The Runemark!” someone cried. “Then it’s true!”
Someone else said, “The Runemarked Queen!”
Beside her, Magnus scoffed. “How could this be our foretold champion? She is a child, an alien, an outlander! She looks more like the invaders than like us!”
Others took up the theme. “A girl? You would have a girl rule us?”
“Only a real Kantenjord man could be the chosen one!”
“This is some trick.”
“The Easterners want to conquer us from within and without!”
Joy could feel the crowd’s emotions shifting like a balloon lost in the wind. She looked to the queen, reading fear and dismay on Corinna’s face.
The real question was, was it fear about fighting Karvaks and trolls? Joy remembered Corinna wanting to send her away from Svanstad. Despite her apparent friendliness, did the queen share the others’ feelings? Did she need the Runethane to be a man? And a pale, native one at that?
Well? Joy silently mouthed the word at her.
A voice from the edge of the crowd turned all their heads. “Swan’s Blood! Look at the sky!”
They looked and saw a pair of clouds swirling into complex shapes, shapes resembling winged dragons approaching each other sidelong. As the humans watched, the clouds touched heads, and a peculiar transformation took place. The two sideways-looking eyes seemed to become a pair of forward-looking eyes. Two toothy mouths seemed to become one much larger toothy mouth. Claws and wings now seemed frills upon an enormous face looking down on the gathering with an immense hunger.
“Taotie!” said Snow Pine. With astonishing bravery her mother grabbed a sword from a slack-jawed recruit and stood ready to confront the monster. “Everyone into the forest! I’ve seen this before. It will try to blast you with wind, knock you off the mountain!”
The taotie roared, and the echo reverberated through the mist-cloaked mountains.
Upon the boulder, Joy stared. She stood alone, for Magnus had yelped and ran. She wanted to obey her mother’s command, but she couldn’t move. The entity had a perplexing beauty. It seemed to belong to both this world and another reality, one of pure form. The taotie’s aspect shifted from one forward-facing being to two sideways-facing creatures in the blink of an eye and back again.
As the recruits dispersed, the taotie opened its titanic jaws and plunged toward Snow Pine. Flint was running toward her, shouting, waving a sword. Once, Joy remembered, her mother and her lover had wielded magic weapons. They had no such advantage now. Only courage. And love.
And me.
Joy’s chi was already awakened from her leap. She used it to draw forth the power of the Great Chain. This time instead of blasting away with invisible force she wrapped that force around her body and leapt between the taotie’s eyes.
Her energies tore asunder the cloudy head.
The concussion in the air toppled her hard onto the grass. Her side hurt. She hoped she hadn’t broken a rib.
Above her the clouds composing the taotie split and retreated, two separate cloud dragons again, flying toward what passed within the scroll for east and west.
Snow Pine and Flint helped her up. Flint said, “I have no idea what just happened. But it was impressive!”
“It was a spirit of the scroll’s reality,” Snow Pine said. “I met one long ago. Maybe the same one.”
“Why did it come here?” Joy asked.
“I think it may have been attracted by the new power within you.”
“Look,” Flint said.
Corinna returned, and shame-faced recruits shuffled back into the clearing, Magnus among them. Joy’s eyes met Corinna’s. At that moment, the queen of Soderland looked little more than a girl herself, despite the difference in their ages.
As Corinna ascended the boulder once occupied by Magnus and Joy, the queen’s eyes showed the worry of one who wished her elders were still able to guide her.
But when she spoke, that was swept aside by the power of her royal voice. “Kantenings!” Corinna boomed, pointing at Joy. “Well do I know this girl! Well do I know her courage! Now, you all do as well! Know this also! I choose her to be my champion!”
Corinna met the gaze of Magnus, and Magnus lowered his head. He was the first to raise his weapon. “Hail, Joy Snøsdatter!”
“Hail!” called out others, and “Runethane!” and “Soderland!” or “Five Fjords!” or “Oxiland!”
Someone cried out, “For Kantenjord!” and it echoed around the throng.
“Kantenjord!”
“Joy Snøsdatter!”
“Kantenjord!”
“Runethane!”
“Runemarked Queen!”
“Kantenjord!”
“Runemarked Queen!”
Even with her side screaming in pain, A-Girl-Is-A-Joy, daughter of Snow Pine, felt she was ascending like a pine indeed.
She hoped she would not end up breaking, and falling like snow.
CHAPTER 37
HEARTS
Innocence recognized the great boulder upon the barren plain. He had nearly frozen to death here.
It was colder now. The wind keened. White covered the brown scrubland and the mountains. Half the sky was thick with cloud, though no snow fell.
Leaping Bison leapt no more. It was landlocked beside the vast boulder, whose bulk kept the ship upright.
As they got their bearings and saw to th
e wounds of those who’d survived the uldras’ arrows, Innocence felt a stabbing pain in his right eye. The troll-splinter there had awakened. At once his companions seemed to change.
Before they had seemed ordinary men and women or, in Northwing’s case, neither. They’d been mostly no uglier nor comelier than anyone else. His parents commanded his attention because he saw himself in their faces, and because Gaunt in particular stirred his memory, but he did not find them lovely. He supposed some of the other men were handsome, but they made little impression on him. Malin he found pretty, though her lack of eye contact, and her unwavering focus, unnerved him. Steelfox’s athletic body drew his eye, but she was a trained killer, and knowledge of that slew much of his appreciation. And Alfhild might have been gorgeous—he’d found her so on their first meeting—but her chief expressions were haughtiness, cruelty, scorn, and more haughtiness.
The transformation of his vision was even more unnerving now than the first time. Suddenly the crew of Bison transformed into extremes. Much of the crew became ugly. Katta and Malin were particularly hideous. A fraction remained plain—the crewmen Yngvarr had brought, Taper Tom, Erik Glint, and Innocence’s thieving father.
Yngvarr retained his good looks, though it seemed to Innocence the slaver had been comelier when the demon was within him. Alfhild was even more attractive than before. He looked away from her, fearing for the captain, whose arm she kept touching.
He could trust his mother’s ugliness. And his father—well, he wasn’t a good man, but he wasn’t so bad, and he was on Innocence’s side. He understood that now. He didn’t know where his path led, beyond freeing himself from Skrymir. But he didn’t want to be their enemy.
Deadfall, meanwhile, was just Deadfall. In response to an argument between Erik and Yngvarr, the carpet said, “Cease. I will remove the five dead men and arrange cairns for them amid the rocks of the plain. I can do this swiftly. I can perform no rites; I feel equal scorn for cosmic beings as for earthly ones. But this minimal respect I can give.”
“That is enough for me,” Yngvarr said. “They have beheld a Chooser of the Slain. They will go to the All-Father’s hall, or none will.”
“Let it be done,” Erik said, but he made the sign of the Swan over his heart and pounded the charm of Torden on his chest. As Deadfall began its work, Erik said, “Steelfox, can your falcon survey the area?”
“As we speak,” Steelfox said. “We are in Oxiland. Not on the main island but on the outlier that holds Loftsson’s Hall.”
“And Huginn’s,” Innocence said, finding his voice.
Katta studied him. “Our companion’s troll-splinter is awake again; his respite is over. Let us say nothing of ultimate destinations.”
“Indeed,” said Bone, putting his hand on Innocence’s shoulder. “Steelfox, do you see that river?”
“I do,” she answered.
“So,” said Gaunt, “how do we move a longship?”
The answer was, on their shoulders. Innocence reflected that it was a great change from the moment when the Fraternity of the Hare had carried him on a litter. He felt guilt at the Fraternity’s destruction, all to protect Steelfox and him. Power and guilt, neither one asked for, piled up upon him.
But everyone had something on his shoulders. Or her shoulders. No one seemed to begrudge those who stayed out of the work—Alfhild, Malin, Northwing, a few men who’d been wounded by uldra arrows. It made Innocence feel he was part of a true crew, that people pitched in, but no one was compelled.
It was hard work, but not quite as hard as it had first appeared. The structure of the ship was light. Still, he was glad after an hour when they reached a horse path and it became practical to pull Bison with a long rope, the crew rotating between the task of hauling and the job of keeping the ship balanced.
There was something satisfying in the work. Walking Stick had said, A superior man would gladly work a hundred times harder than an ordinary man, in order to learn more. Innocence had thought it rather a heavy-handed thing to say to a boy and girl who just wanted to stick-fight a little longer.
But leaving aside how he felt about Walking Stick, maybe a not-quite-so-superior man could work a little harder than an ordinary man. There was much to learn.
Such thoughts made his troll-shrouded perceptions a little lighter.
They caught sight of the river and also of a farmhouse carved from the side of a snow-covered hill. An armed band rode out to meet them. Erik called a halt.
“Who are you,” called out the blonde-haired, hard-eyed woman leading the band, “and what is your business? Are you otherfolk, who come from the Moss-Stone with a longship?”
She and her men were ugly in Innocence’s sight.
“We have come a long way,” Erik said, “but we are human beings. I am Erik Glint, the Larderman, lately captain of Raveneye, now commander of Leaping Bison. We are on the business of Corinna of Soderland. And though we come peacefully, my ship is thirsty for your river.”
Innocence bowed. “Hekla, companion of Huginn. Hail. We mean no harm.”
“Innocence!” Hekla gasped, lowering her sword. “Innocence Gaunt! Why, I never thought to see you again. What . . . has happened to you?”
Innocence could not help but smile a little. “There are many answers to that, Lady, but I sense you wonder about my forehead and my eye. The one is a gift from Qiangguo, the other from Kantenjord. I am not altogether pleased with either. But it’s said that a gentleman who loves comfort is unworthy of the name.”
“Tell me, lad, have you word of Huginn?”
Innocence shook his head. “I know he was at Svanstad when it fell. That is all I know. I am sorry.”
Hekla surveyed Bison’s crew. “You travel with Karvaks . . . and the boy has a troll-splinter. And yet you serve Corinna? This is a riddle.”
Steelfox stepped forward. “My bodyguard, my shaman, and I are considered renegades. Yet it is my sister Jewelwolf who has truly betrayed our ways, by allying with trolls and using their cold magic. Speak what is in your heart, Kantening. Is Oxiland ruled by the Karvaks?”
“It is. My own bedmate, with his Oxiland volunteers beside him, opened the gates of Svanstad. In return for his treachery, this farm is allowed autonomy, in anticipation of the return of Huginn, the Crowned King of Oxiland.” Her voice was not proud. “All this was six months ago. Yet the winter goes on. Fimbulwinter, folk call it. We are given supplies and promises that the cold will break soon. Such is my lover’s work. We will have words one day, he and I. Meantime, I won’t give you over to the Karvaks. But you had best be quick about your business.” Hekla pointed her sword to the north, where a distant pair of balloons drifted above the horizon.
Innocence said, “Can you tell me if the Oxilanders Rolf and Kollr yet live?”
Hekla said, “The names of Rolf and Kollr have emerged as those of Huginn’s scribes.”
Innocence laughed, and the sound was bitter.
Erik said, “I can only guess at your worries, Lady. I don’t want to add to them. Will you allow us to reach the river?”
“I don’t think I could stop you,” Hekla said. “That’s what I’ll tell the Karvaks when they come. For I doubt you’ll long escape their notice.”
Innocence said—and for this he needed all his courage—“I would ask you, Hekla . . . do you know the health of one Jaska Torsdatter? She lives on a farm north of here.”
Through all her worry, Hekla’s eyes widened a little. “Of course she is known to me. I have taken her into my service, for we are short-handed. She is well. Do you wish to see her?”
Innocence stared toward the farmhouse in the hillside, wondering if he would be disappointed or relieved if Jaska was peering out at the strange ship. He became acutely aware that whatever Jaska might be doing, everyone else was looking at him. “No. There is no time.”
Hekla moved closer and put her hand on his shoulder. So only he could hear, she said, “Shall I tell her you asked after her?”
“I—yes. Please.�
�� He wracked his brains for something wondrous, brave, and memorable to say to the dark-eyed girl. But only Walking Stick’s classical quotations came to mind. “A sage of Qiangguo once said, ‘If I hear Truth in the morning, I’m content to die in the evening.’ I feel this way about having met Jaska.”
“They have the hearts of foamreavers in Qiangguo,” Hekla said. “It must be. I will tell her.”
Innocence retreated, feeling all those stares. Alfhild in particular watched him as he worked beside Kollr to get Bison to water. “What was all this about, Innocence Gaunt? This girl Jaska? Is she very beautiful?”
Alfhild herself seemed astonishingly beautiful in that moment, and Innocence tried not to look at her or at the jealous glance of Erik. “She was kind to me once. That is all.”
Bison floated at last. Innocence’s father was the one who tossed the rope up to his mother, beside the ox figurehead. They were graceful together, and Innocence felt a strange pride. He waded into the icy waters and boarded the ship.
They rode the river south in a meandering path. The banks became rocky, and the water became a frothing roil of white on blue. The ship sped. In an hour they were in a low gorge of white water, swishing between shores of pocked gray basalt.
“There’s another gentle region beyond this,” Steelfox said, looking through the eyes of Qurca, “but then there are more rapids and then a waterfall into the sea.”
“We’ll portage soon, then,” Erik said.
“Beware,” Steelfox said. “Karvak horsemen are headed this way.”
“Why do they not use the balloons?” Persimmon Gaunt asked.
“To surprise us, I’d assume. They must not know about Qurca and me.”
“Will we make it?” Bone said.
Steelfox shut her eyes. “I think it will be close.”
“What’s your sense of the ship surviving the falls?” Yngvarr asked.
Steelfox shook her head.
“We’ll move Bison by land then,” Erik said.
The rapids ended, but it seemed nearly an hour before a suitable landing shore appeared. At last they dragged Bison onto a bank of egg-sized rocks. There was salt in the air.
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