A Fire of Roses
Page 19
“He’s a puffin,” Varin said with a chuckle. “They don’t have feelings.”
“Don’t tell me puffins don’t have feelings. Especially my puffin friend. So what kind of magic do you have, mister? Can you call puffins?”
“No,” he said incredulously. “What kind of magic is that?”
“It’s perfectly good magic. Don’t you have any funny odd magic that’s just fun?”
“No. Why would I? I’m a king.”
“Ooooh, so all your magic is king magic. Very posh.”
He snorted, amused. “Yes. Of course.”
Gefjun thought about it for a moment. Then she said, “Nope. I’m not buying it.”
Varinn was quiet. The stars shone overhead.
“Well,” he finally said. “There’s one thing I can do.”
“What?”
“I haven’t actively done this, though it comes in handy in the garden. It’s not something that means anything.”
“It doesn’t matter. What can you do?”
He chuckled to himself as if he couldn’t believe he was doing this. But then Gefjun felt something very odd. It felt like a line of cold moving down her body, a feeling that came from his body next to hers. After a moment, it stopped.
Then he said, “Look at the boards of the ship … closely.”
Gefjun squinted. She was sitting next to the ship’s inside wall, and for a moment she didn’t see anything different.
Suddenly she did.
Hundred of tiny lichens were growing on the boards.
Gejun stared in fascination. Lichen was a low-growing kind of moss that she’d often see on tree branches or rocks. As she watched, these lichen were branching out slowly before her eyes on the boards of the ship, lichen in soft greys and bronze and pale green. And now, soft green mosses sprouted before her eyes among the lichens as well, creating a faint green carpet that grew and thickened. She leaned her face against the boards and lay her cheek on their cool softness. They tickled under her cheek. Still growing.
“That’s pretty,” she murmured, lifting her head to admire the quiet colors. “Are those little plants yours?” Softly, so Nauma and her ilk couldn’t hear.
“That’s my power,” he said quietly. “Outside of warfare. I’ve infused my castle with this magic. I love my gardens, and I wanted to plant a paradise on earth as the Persians do. So I whisper this magic into the earth, whisper it to the roses and my trees and shrubs, and to the herbs and the flowers that grow. Of course I also give them the best soil to grow in and plenty of light. My plants would probably grow fine without my magic. But it seems to encourage them. So I use it.”
“This is a marvelous skill,” Gefjun said quietly, watching the small lichens put out small lobes or little branches that lay flat on the boards of the ship, tidy designs of soft orange or slate gray or shy yellows. “It was wrong of your teachers to frown on it.”
They were coming up on the shore in the early, early light of dawn. Gefjun suddenly realized that Nauma’s awful fog had lifted, and now she could see the wolf light, faint, glowing in the east.
Nauma stood at the front of the ship, looking out toward the shore and guiding the longship between rocks that barely peeked their heads above water. She held up her hands in various signals for the oarsman to steer between the many obstacles, and her gestures were happy, the smile on her face broad as she glanced back at the oarsman to check on how well her messages were being followed.
But that smile never reached her eyes.
Gefjun, sitting in the back in the bilgewater, hated that smile. Nauma was clearly excited. The rest of her crew, on the other hand, were doing their work with their heads down, and their gossip and talk had died completely away—as if they were coming up on a task that they were not entirely willing to do.
Most of them had stopped looking at Gefjun and the king. There was one, on the other hand, who had started bothering them more and more. He’d grin meanly at them while heaving on a rope with the other warriors, or he’d stomp his foot in the bilgewater as he passed, splashing both Gefjun and Varinn, and then he’d laugh to himself as he went on.
“Today’s going to be a good day,” that man said, gloating, as he passed.
“He’s taking a lot of delight in our misery,” Varinn muttered.
She leaned on him. Gefjun was not a proud woman—all right, actually, she was—but right now she was not ashamed to say that she was frightened. The knots in her gut drew tighter. Now, more than ever, she dearly wished for Ostryg to be there, wished that she could see him return, wished that he was there to ease her pain and fear. They could draw their swords and fight their way free from this place, from these awful people.
She thought of how she and Ostryg used to sit by her mother’s chickens while they were scratching through the grass and stones around her house. The hens singing softly to each other, the little roosters fussing when anything large with wings came sailing into sight. They’d sit there, watching the flock working their way along the ground, talking about anything that came into their minds. They’d talk about some poetry they’d heard, or something her sisters had said today, or try to figure out why they had been put upon the earth. Or a rooster would say “crwwk!” and they’d look around to see what had caused their warning.
Those sweet days seemed so far away, as if those memories had happened to somebody else.
The ship made a run at the shore. Vikings at the oars pulled hard, once, twice, three times as the shore came rushing up.
“Heave!” someone shouted, and the oarsmen heaved, and the ship rushed up on a cresting wave and leapt forward. The ship flung itself out of the water and onto the shore. Rocks grated under the ship until it slid to a stop fairly well out of the water. All the bilgewater rushed to the back, tumbling over the warriors that lay, still spelled-asleep on the bottom of the ship. Gefjun and Varinn managed to fight their way to their feet before the bilgewater came rolling back and swamped them, curling around their knees.
Instantly a number of warriors leapt out with ropes to haul the ship up on land as high as possible, assisted by the pounding waves that would lift the boat high off the rocks. In this way they secured the ship, so it would not slide back out to sea when the tide rose.
Nauma’s army started gathering their things and leaping out of the ship.
“I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do this,” Gefjun whispered so nobody could hear.
Varinn started pulling at his bonds. “I can’t,” he said after fighting for a while. “There’s nothing that I can break here.”
Gefjun reached back with her fingers and measured his ropes. “They must have wrapped that rope around your wrists six times,” she said, her anger boiling up. The rope around her wrists and arms were thick and heavy, and her shoulders were in pain from being pulled down by that heavy burden. “Are they expecting us to watch this?”
“Of course they are. They want to break us.”
Varinn was silent for a while as warriors donned their gear and loaded up supplies to take with them. Beyond the stony shore was a rocky, open meadow filled with low grasses and spring wildflowers. A fir and spruce forest stood on the foothills of a mountain range, and the slope led up to the heights, where snow and glaciers gathered far above them. The tops of the mountains were high enough to seem, from where she sat, to be in another world altogether.
Suddenly, Nauma’s voice rang out over the ship. “Wake them. Wake the prisoners.”
Gefjun convulsed. She jerked, wanting to fight Nauma, wanting to make this stop now.
Varinn barked, “No.” She felt him trembling as he said, “How dare they? How dare they?”
Nauma turned dramatically, of course, and rang out with a powerful music in a language that Gefjun didn’t know. The music acted on Gefjun, chasing away all her sleepiness in one flash. All around them, lying on the floor of the ship, the captured soldiers began to stir, yawning, shaking their heads and looking around them with confused expressions.
The crew that had been captured began to slowly get to their feet. Gefjun saw some of them drop their hands to their sides, only to find that their scabbards were empty of their swords. Others reached for a pants leg or kilt, only to find that their hidden daggers had also been removed. During the whole voyage, Nauma’s troops had been searching the sleeping warriors, helping themselves to every weapon and all the valuables they could find. Battle axes were now in the hands of Nauma’s soldiers, who twirled them at the captives.
The captives’ faces darkened with fury when they looked around and found some precious heirloom weapon sitting in the hands of the enemy, or found some amulet of theirs now around the necks of their captors.
“Get up, move out,” Nauma said. “No uprisings today. Now move!”
A guard hooked Gefjun under the arm and began hauling her to the side of the ship, as if she didn’t know how to walk.
“Undo these knots,” she told him, nodding her head toward her back. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere, and I have got to pee like you wouldn’t believe. There’s nowhere for me to run to, even if I did get away. Undo the knots.”
He actually did as she asked, on both of them—a real surprise. Gefjun massaged her arms, then checked Varinn’s arms and hands for any sores that had been rubbed into his arms by the ropes.
“I need my medical bags,” she said, reaching down to pick them up.
The guard blocked her with the handle of his battle axe. “You can’t have those,” he said. “Who are you going to heal? We’re killing all these guys. I mean all of them.”
Gefjun went cold, but said, “Yeah, but what if one of your army falls sick? You want to lie on some mountain path, dying of sickness, because I didn’t have a little comfrey on me? Please.”
“Fine. I’ll bring the bags. How about that?” said the guard, picking them up and looping them around his shoulders. “That way I know you’re not going to try any tricks.”
Gefjun snorted. There he was, acting like he was doing them some kind of favor. All the same, she said, “Don’t mess up anything in those bags. I have a place for everything, so I know I’m making mint tea and not foxglove tea, which would send your heart rate through the roof. Got that?”
The guard just smirked. “I know that. You’re not the only healer on this ship.”
“You’re a healer? So where are your bags?”
The guard scowled at her. “Get up and start moving.”
They clambered over the side of the ship and followed the herd into a group. Gefjun thought, Okay, I can organize a riot. We can break these people out of here. We can fight back.
But then Nauma turned and sang their mouths shut, both she and Varinn. They couldn’t make a sound. She and Varinn looked at each other in horror.
Then her soldiers drove them forward, all unwilling, in a forced march through the meadow and toward the forest and the mountain beyond. They stopped for a short rest now and then when they found a stream.
Nauma shook her head angrily when they made their stops. “This is a waste of time,” she said. “Why should we stop at all? I’m going to kill all the prisoners anyway. There’s no reason to coddle them.”
A henchman at her side muttered, “Do you want to kill them off before we get to our destination? They need to stop and rest. And so do we, your troops.”
She glowered. “Your troops should be stronger than that,” she muttered, but she let it go.
Talk was all but nonexistent between the prisoners at first. At first, Gefjun fought to stay on her feet as she walked, stumbling. She and Varinn had been sitting down too long, and now her legs were stiff and aching. But the other prisoners had been lying asleep the whole time, so they had it worse.
Gefjun walked with them. She swore with every insult she knew at Nauma, because she knew perfectly well what was going to happen to her friends at the top of the mountain, but she couldn’t warn them. Nauma’s spell to silence her and Varinn had been very effective.
After a while, however, the prisoners began talking to each other, quiet conversations to pass the time while they were being taken to who knows where. Gefjun simply listened—not that she had a choice in the matter, since Gefjun couldn’t speak.
“You think Nauma has a keep up in these mountains?”
“I don’t know, it’s kind of a long ways to go. And there’s no real road here.”
“Well, if we’re going for a nature hike, we need to stop more often and pick some flowers.”
“Nobody should pick flowers. Let them grow. If you don’t need them for cooking or medicine, don’t waste them.”
“I want to adorn myself so I can go to the grave looking pretty as a bride. I want to fill my beard with daisies.”
“Real men put daisies in their beard,” one of the other bearded men said, and they chest-bumped.
“So do you think we’re being taken to the wilderness for them to kill us?” somebody said quietly, eyeing the guards who were further up.
“That’s the only reason that checks out,” somebody else said in a low voice. The prisoners who were closest leaned in to hear. “Who would live this far out in the wilderness? Who would live this far from a port for great ships? And you have all seen the way she looks at us, the leader-girl.”
“The way a wolf looks at the sheep,” somebody replied.
Gefjun nodded vigorously.
“You seem to know something about it,” one of the archers said.
Gefjun nodded again, angrily, but pointed to her throat and tried to speak, but nothing came out.
“Lost your voice, did you?” somebody said.
Gefjun made an angry face and jabbed a finger at Nauma.
“Ooh,” some of the guys said. “She lost your voice for you, then?”
“Here’s a question that might be more important: So they’re going to kill us?”
Gefjun nodded again, wishing she could tell them the reason.
She longed to say, Fight them, fight them. We cannot be sacrificed, we must not be sacrificed.
But they were talking now, murmuring about how they should fight against their doom.
“Who’s talking back there?” Nauma said. “Don’t make me kill you now.”
“She’s not making any bones about killing us,” somebody said.
“Yeah, just in case there was any doubt.”
“Then let us sell our lives as dearly as possible,” said one of the shieldmaidens. “We will make an honest stand with sticks and rocks and fists, and if they want to take our lives, then we can take many of theirs in return.”
The prisoners faced forward, sharp and alert as they listened. Men straightened their robes and furs. Women drew themselves up and cracked their knuckles.
Some people muttered, “Why are they throwing their lives away? All over a silly idea of honor. My idea of honor is getting back home to my family.” Which Gefjun could also certainly appreciate. All the same, she was throwing her lot in with the fighters on this day. King Varinn, himself, stood tall and glared around him as if ready to hew down enemies with his bare hands.
19
RUBY AND DIAMOND
The march went on and on. As the endless day wore her down, Gefjun’s legs felt like jelly. As the prisoners struggled to keep walking, all talk about rebellion and fighting died away.
They were halfway up the mountain when Nauma’s forces stopped to eat, lighting campfires and roasting rabbits and pikas they’d killed along the way. The savory smells of cooking floated over to Gefjun and the prisoners.
Guards watched the prisoners, who sat and waited, grumbling. B
ut once Nauma’s troops started eating, it became apparent that nobody was going to bring food to the prisoners.
“Are you going to feed us?” the old veteran warrior said.
“You don’t need to eat anything,” Nauma shouted, her mouth full as she ate something off a skewer.
“So now we’re hungry and we’re angry,” somebody muttered.
“But weaker,” somebody else said. “Exactly what they want.”
Nauma just shrugged and made a show of enjoying her food.
Gefjun had been gathering herbs all the way up the mountain, wrapping them in her apron. She had a good bundle which she’d been carrying over her shoulder. She showed it now to the hungry troops.
“Better than nothing,” the veteran said, picking out a handful of greens. “Gather ’round, fighters. It’s not meat or bread, but it’s nourishment. What have we got in our backpacks? This will be our last meal. Come, share your food. We won’t need it after tonight.”
A feeling of doom came down on Gefjun, but she reached into her pockets and found a heel of bread, all she had left to eat. She split it with a Viking archer, a young woman who had nothing but blood-spattered battle armor.
“I have nobody left in this world,” the young archer said. “I have no home, no family worth claiming. I have nothing but my armor. Therefore, I am willing to die in this last attempt to gain our freedom.”
Gefjun’s heart warmed to this warrior. She grabbed a stick and wrote in the dirt, Can you read?
The archer looked at what she’d written and said, “Can anybody here read runes?”
”I can.” A Moorish man stepped forward, a slim youth with a white turban wrapped around his head. “My name is Ibn. Whatever language you write in, I can probably read it.”
Gefjun smiled. She began writing on the ground. She would write a line, and he would read it aloud to the crowd around them, then she’d run her hand over the dirt to brush it out and write a new line. He read along as she wrote and the others leaned in, listened, and absorbed what she was saying.