Ravens' Will

by Terry Graves

  If Alarr was to become a warrior, he needed a proper weapon, and there was no better one than a sword, which seemed to be reserved only for chiefs and their followers. If he worked hard maybe he would be noticed later in the spring and picked for the summer raid, he thought, when he had to turn up for levy training. Then he would be far from the smithy for months, perhaps forever. Far and away from his father’s shadow, which is what he yearned for the most.

  “Now give me mine,” said Gerda.

  Alarr handed one of the swords to her. He had made them both from the same clay mold, so they were twins. They’d had to wait until father got sick and had to rest in bed for a week, so they could use the forge freely without being caught. His was a bit small for his big hands, and Gerda’s was a bit big for her. She held it in the air, assessing the weapon’s balance, and smiled.

  “Let’s try them!”

  “It is not yours until you pay me,” said Alarr, only half-serious.

  “So what do you request for your services?” Gerda narrowed her eyes.

  “A kiss.” Alarr tried to demonstrate aplomb, but his voice failed him. Again, it was only half a joke. He was not expecting the girl to jump into his arms then, but his cheeks reddened anyway under his beard. Gerda did not seem to notice it.

  “Here, there you go,” she said, and brought her hand to her mouth to send him a kiss. “Don’t use it all at once.” She laughed, and he laughed with her. “When I become a famous shield-maiden and the skalds sing my feats, I will let you take part of my hird. But for the time being, I will train with you, oh mighty Alarr.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Then let’s go.” Gerda picked up the linen clothes to conceal the swords again and walked to the barn’s entrance.

  “What, you mean right now?”

  “Yes, yes! Don’t you see? Torgeir left two weeks ago, so the king’s men will be about to arrive. Who knows if there will be a chance to show our skills to them?”

  Alarr had not thought about this. He pictured his father again. There was work to do, as there always was, and if he noticed his absence, the boy would regret it. The wounds from the last time Alarr had defied him had taken many weeks to heal. It had been a long time since his father had dared to hit him — Alarr was now taller than him, and stronger too — but there were other ways to harm him, and he knew them all.

  Still, one look at Gerda was enough to erase the old man’s image, and the sharp edges of his belt buckle, from his mind.

  Alarr clutched both swords under his arm, then they left the barn together and walked out of Veraheim and into the woods beneath. They soon left the narrow path trodden by the cattle on their daily trips to the brook and entered the wilderness, until they found the clearing, which extended ten paces in each direction. They had been there many times before and, with the passage of time, they had cleared the ground of weeds, brambles, and treacherous roots. Gerda unfastened her cloak and let it slip down her shoulders. She picked up her sword again and drew it briskly. Alarr did the same. The scents of pine and resin drifted through the chilled air of the afternoon.

  “Ready?” he asked her.

  In response, the girl attacked.

  They had been sparring partners since they were children, first with sticks, then with wooden swords. When they grew older, they had to hide in the forest to practice, more because of Alarr than because of Gerda. Nobody minded if a woman learned the ways of the sword to defend herself from abuse or her home from invaders, or even to become a shield-maiden and fight alongside the men in the raids if she had the spirit to do so. In this case, the shame fell on Alarr for fighting against a woman. And sometimes, for losing against her too.

  He raised his weapon. The swords clashed with a clang and, for a brief moment, Alarr thought that they were going to break. Perhaps he had miscalculated the quenching and made them very brittle. He had checked before, and the blade had bent as it was supposed to, but this was the first time the weapons were being used in real combat. It was just an impression, though. The swords resisted and Alarr felt a pang of pride.

  They exchanged thrusts for a while. Every time Gerda attacked, she found the iron of Alarr’s blade blocking the way. They were still testing them, getting accustomed to their weight and trying to get comfortable, finding great joy in the swift, metallic sounds they produced instead of the dull noise of wood against wood they had grown used to. And they also felt contempt, as this was the first time they were using real weapons. The swords were sharp and the last thing they wanted was to harm each other.

  “They need a name,” said Gerda, panting because of the effort. “All famous swords have a name. Skofnung, for example. Or Gram, or Tyrfing.”

  “You’re better with names. You choose.”

  Alarr used the distraction to lunge against her. Gerda stepped back and turned around. The point of his sword found only the empty air.

  “What about Huginn and Muninn?” she said, as if no interruption had taken place.

  “They lack charm. Try again,” Alarr replied. It was impossible to know if he was referring to the girl’s wit or her sword skills.

  They knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses and had learnt to take advantage of them. Gerda was smaller, lighter, faster. Her wrist turned at great speed, so she was able to change the direction of the blade in the middle of a movement, which made her great at feinting. Alarr was the opposite: tall, strong. And yes, slow. He had learnt to move less and pay attention to the footwork. He used his greater endurance to his benefit, and had mainly practiced his stance, resisting blockage after blockage, until Gerda grew too tired and left a spot undefended.

  Which he found just then.

  He sent her a powerful strike that pushed her sword down. The tip ended up buried in the ground, so he kicked it and sent it away. Then, he charged against Gerda and pushed her with his shoulder to knock her down, but she used her leg against his calf, so they both fell over in the pine needles and rolled, and Alarr ended up on top of her. His sword searched for her neck. The blade was just a couple of inches away from her fair skin, covered in sweat.

  All he could hear was the forest’s gentle afternoon noises — the burrowing sounds and the birds’ chant and the incessant buzz of the insects — and Gerda’s wheezing.

  “Then what about Geri and Freki?” she said, still trying to catch her breath, but with a half-smile.

  Threads of steam came out of her lips. He could feel their heat, the light breeze caressing his face. His eyes were lost in hers, and he felt as if he was falling. There was no way to express how much Alarr had been craving this.

  Kiss her. Do it already, you idiot.

  “I’ve been speaking with Fyrnir,” Gerda said, all of a sudden; almost whispering, almost embarrassed.

  The moment was gone. Alarr still lingered over her for an instant, trying to capture the feeling and never ever forget it. Then he pushed it aside, left the sword on the ground, and simply lay next to her. “After that day?”

  “Almost every day since then.”

  “If Sveinn finds out…”

  “But he will not,” Gerda exclaimed. And as if to convince herself, she repeated, “He will not.”

  The naked tree branches broke the gray sky into a thousand mosaic tesserae. Alarr thought about the giant, about the crown, about the finger Sveinn had cut off and given to Torgeir before he jumped on his old mare to carry it all the way to Heiðirsalr. At the time, Alarr had thought this a smart move. He had expected the finger to grow back, because some stories stated that giants could regenerate limbs as if they were lizards’ tails. But that had not happened, so perhaps those tales had been embellished after a thousand retellings.

  “So what have you two talked about?” asked Alarr.

  “About Jötunheim,” said Gerda, “about his love for the mountains and their hearts of stone, about the music of the landslides and the rumor of the earth. About gods and men and giants and how sometimes other gods and men and giants end up trapped in thei
r schemes. About the feeling of solitude, of being trapped in a place we don’t belong, whether it be underwater or above it. We have talked about all that.”

  “And about his freedom.”

  Gerda remained silent for a bit, as if she was thinking.

  “Do you think he’s trying to trick me?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Alarr replied, and he was speaking the truth. “I know what you and everybody else knows. That neither gods nor giants can be trusted, for they behave very much like men, but that in this never-ending war we have picked the gods’ side, so giants are our enemies. And that is enough knowledge for me.”

  “Well, maybe there’s more to it than that,” Gerda said stubbornly. “And this is no longer about gold, but about principles. The king’s men will come and they will remove the ice on top of his head and kill Fyrnir by thrusting spears through his eyes and shatter his skull to pieces with their bloody axes. And they will take the crown and melt it to mint coins, and will put them in a vault with a million coins more. And then, they will pay a small amount to the skalds so they will sing about how they bravely fought the last giant in the world.”

  Alarr sat up. The ground was very cold and he was starting to feel the numbness in his muscles. He opened and closed his hands to help blood reach his fingers. “All this is idle talk. You cannot free him even if you wanted to.”

  “Yes I can,” said Gerda with a low voice. “He has told me how to.”

  Alarr felt a sliver of fear in his gut. Things were getting real very fast. He picked up the sword he had tossed after the combat and looked at both edges. They had not been jagged. These weapons need scabbards, he thought. I wonder if Runa would not mind making a couple. She’s good with leather and wood.

  “Don’t you want to know how?” Gerda insisted.

  Alarr did not reply. He paced around the clearing while looking for the second sword, the one he had sent away with a kick. He found it next to the trunk of a pine. He held it with one hand and examined it as well. This one was also undamaged.

  Gerda’s features hardened. “Are you a damn coward?”

  Alarr raised his head fast and his jaw clenched, as if he had received the lashing of a whip. “Careful, now.”

  “I won’t be careful in front of you. How many more chances do you think we will have in life?” Gerda spoke very quickly now, enraged. “The son of a smith, the daughter of a pigman. Do you think the world is cut out for our kind? An iron sword will not give you a place in the shield wall or grant you passage to the southern kingdoms. That place is for chiefs and their kinsmen, for those who can pay for it. There is no room for you in there, Alarr, much less for me.”

  “So your answer is to free the giant.”

  “My answer is to take action, to seize the world for ourselves.”

  Alarr closed his eyes and breathed in a vain attempt to calm himself. He had a sword in each hand. He had spent so many months working on them, and now all she was saying was that they were the product of a childish dream. The weapon did not make the warrior. The wealth did.

  Alarr was not good with the big questions. When they were little, he was always trying to outthink the others, especially Kai. He wanted to best them at everything and, for a while, it had worked. Alarr was the strongest one, the one who would win all the races and, in direct competition with Gerda, perhaps the bravest as well. But he didn’t have the smarts of the others. He would always lose at hnefatafl, it didn’t matter if he played as the king or the army. With the passing of time, he concluded that he had become a man of a simple straightforward mind, like the mighty god Thor, and decided that this was not necessarily a bad thing. There were gods with wits like Óðin and Loki, who were sly and sharp, but deceitful as well. So he didn’t mind leaving the thinking to Gerda. She was a good woman, the best he had known in his life. He loved her, and that was enough for him. If they ended up at Hel’s gates, at least they would end up together.

  Alarr sighed.

  “Tell me what I have to do.”

  BOOK 2

  Stone-heart

  SIX

  The king’s men marched through the forest, among trees as old as ancient gods, dark as goat entrails. Some of them walked on foot, some rode horses. They carried spears and shields, thick cloaks and winter leather gloves.

  Good and brave men, thought Hafgrim, looking back at the line of warriors with their tired faces and their wet noses. The mood of the company had worsened in the past couple of days. They were in serious need of a warm bed, good food, and better drink. It was spring, but since they had started walking the days had become shorter and shorter, the sun had gotten pallid and thin, the wind cold and unwelcome.

  It was unfair for him to bring them to these forgotten lands following the claims of a man with a frozen finger. There was a crown, the man had said, but no gold for them, no reward. Not even fame to claim, even if it was indeed a giant, the trapped beast waiting at the end; even if it was the last giant to roam the earth.

  But such were the king’s orders and Hafgrim had pledged serfdom to him, and an oath spoken out loud was a bond that he could not, would not, ever break.

  “Make haste!” he exclaimed. “My ass is freezing and we’re losing daylight.”

  The men grunted, but sped up. Eigil, who marched next to him, threw Hafgrim a reproachful look. “I would not force them, Lord. The beasts are exhausted,” he said, “and the horses are not much better.”

  Despite his discomfort, Hafgrim laughed. Ingolf turned around and frowned. He had frost in his fair beard. “Mark my words, Eigil. One day that mouth will kill you.”

  Sigrún hit him in the ribs with her elbow. “Behave.”

  Eigil grinned. Ingolf was not one to joke with, especially when he was tired and irritable. Hafgrim was not used to traveling in the company of women, and he had been wary when she offered herself right before the mission, but Sigrún had proved more than worthy. She never complained or created problems. During the first night, when one of his warriors had tried to make advances toward her, she had been able to defuse the tension admirably. The man still had both eyes, arms, and legs afterwards; and for Hafgrim, that was enough.

  What interest she could possibly have in this journey, he did not know and he would not bother to ask.

  Hafgrim wrapped himself up in his wolfskins and silence fell over them again as they kept walking through the grim forest. Torgeir was ahead in the column. He was a thin man with a narrow face and a weak chin. He had described himself as a hunter, sort of a ranger, but there was no conviction in his words and Hafgrim had immediately dismissed him as untrustworthy. After all, he was a product of the north, a place where the women were ugly, the children malnourished and hunchbacked, and all men had a shine in their pupils, a glint of malevolence and desperation Hafgrim had only seen in cornered rats. Seeds would not take root in the frozen ground, fishermen’s ships wrecked on the coastal cliffs.

  He thought about his children, Havard and Gudrun, in the safety of his domains next to Heiðirsalr. They had been born at the same time, and they had grown healthy and had become excellent hunters.

  Hafgrim saw the glint of a helmet among the trees only a moment before the attack began, so he had no time to utter a cry of alarm. Arrows discharged through the air with a whooshing sound and he raised his shield and the solid oak wood stopped three of them in rapid succession. His horse neighed and reared, and he used his free hand to pull on the reins to calm it down. Shadows were taking cover rapidly behind the trees, closing down the ambush.

  The noise of swords being unsheathed from scabbards was followed by the first screams. Hafgrim saw then the appearance of the attackers, men and women, all jumping and drawing axes. Some were old and their faces were wrinkled, their hair gray and white. Some were young, barely able to hold their weapons, and their eyes were tinted with fear and excitation. But all of them were scraggy and dirty and ragged, and had ochre paint smudged on their faces. From the moment he saw them, coming out of the woo
d like savage beasts with no proper equipment and no tactic in place, Hafgrim knew the fate of the fight had already been decided.

  Still, there were many of them, and he had learned that cornered rats fight more wrathfully than any other animal, and that sometimes wrath makes for lack of skill or swordsmanship.

  They had archers somewhere above the trees and there was a new rain of arrows. One pierced his boot from side to side, and missed his calf by an inch.

  The bow was frequently called a weapon for cowards, because with an arrow and a stroke of bad luck, even the mightiest warrior could perish without the chance to prove himself in front of Óðin. And to die at the hands of one of these vicious brigands would be shameful, he thought.

  Three of the forest men jumped from the dark thicket and tried to surround him. They grabbed the shafts of their spears firmly in their hands, but they lacked technique. Hafgrim drew his sword and waved the shield in the air to keep the first spearheads at bay. At this point, his mount was more a nuisance than an advantage, so he got off and charged. He knocked the first man down and stabbed his belly several times. Then he grabbed the spear of the second attacker by its shaft, pulled it away so it was no longer a menace, and smashed his face with the shield. The iron boss made a satisfying noise when he drove it into his cranium.

  The third man dropped his weapon and ran.

  “Have you not seen the banners? Are you blind?” Hafgrim heard Eigil’s voice shouting next to him. His friend, shaken and very upset, was trying to remove his axe from the back of an old woman covered in furs. By the look of it, she would never answer his question. “How can they send old hags to fight against king’s men? They should be fleeing in panic!”

  Because of hunger, thought Hafgrim, and because in these lands, a life is worth no more than a good day’s meal.