Ravens' Will

by Terry Graves

  A bit later, he surprised himself by looking at the sky through the big window of his room. It was still clear, and the stars glittered. I should be tending to the bird, he thought, even for practice. Perhaps it is too late for flying outside, but I can try to control it inside the room first.

  He picked the bird up and placed it on his lap, and tried to empty his head of thoughts. But he was distracted and soon gave up. He walked to the window with the intention of starting the fire, but glanced at the stars again and got lost in them. Óðin’s Wagon was clearly visible, his seven stars titillating against the black background. He tried to find Freyja’s Wain and failed at first, but then he discovered that he was so far north that it was almost on top of his head.

  Kai was not an expert at reading the sky, but Hallbjorn had been, and he had given some notions to Gerda and him. He tried to connect the dots to replicate the carvings he had seen in the chamber downstairs, to remember every little dot and where it was to check them again in the morning. He did it while he placed the wood over the rafter and used two twigs to build the fire. Afterwards, he lay on the bed, left the sparrow next to him, and kept looking through the window. The flames were too bright and the stars began to disappear from his vision; the sky went dark and, soon, he fell asleep.

  At some point, the snowstorm started, but this time it did not wake him.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The forest was thick and dark and spanned many miles south, and most sounds were muffled by the wilderness. All but the ring of hooves, the squirrels unearthing their winter stock, the caw of the solitary raven. Alarr had one hand on the reins of his horse and the other pressed against his side. He didn’t know how to ride well, but the wound was a good excuse. And, excuse or not, it still hurt.

  He had noticed that Hafgrim’s kinsmen did not drink when they were marching. Hafgrim exerted a ferrous discipline on them, and they responded with quiet efficiency. Everyone knew their place in the column and what to do when they stopped. They rarely needed orders from him, so used were they to their routines. At night, they set camp at one side of the road, joined around a fire, and shared food and vulgar tales. Alarr kept his eyes low and tried to laugh when he deemed it appropriate, but most of the jokes were private — about enemies they had defeated, about drinking or swiving, or about strange customs from places he had never been — and he did not get them.

  “Oh, the frigid whore. You saw how she moved?” Eigil had said one night. He was referring to the Snow Queen. “Never in my life am I going to achieve such a level of expertise. She slid over frozen soil as if she was on skis. But then, she’s a goddess, and I’m just a man.”

  “She’s not a goddess. She’s a Jötunn,” another man had replied, one with a missing ear and a face covered in dark spots, “but I would bed her just the same.”

  They had laughed at this, but when the laughs had faded, Alarr had said: “Jötnar are gods too. Just older.”

  His words were received with cold silence. They probably gave it some thought and discovered that, if Alarr spoke the truth, they had faced a god themselves not three weeks ago. Fyrnir had killed a third of the warband, and if it hadn’t been for the Snow Queen, he would have killed many more.

  “Listen to the Smith,” Eigil said. “He’s a northerner. He has not seen shit, but he knows stories.”

  They referred to him as “The Smith” or simply as “Smith”. It had become his name. Alarr wanted to stop it before it stuck, but he didn’t know how. For a day or two, he got into the habit of not replying, but that only made matters worse. “Are you deaf, Smith?” they would say then, yelling, with their mouths inches away from him, “Are your ears frozen?” So he got used to it. They only addressed him when they needed something mended or fixed, anyway, and he sharpened their weapons with his whetstone and made other small and quick repairs. But at night, when he lay next to the fire and the bitter wind shook his hair, he frequently thought about Veraheim and his friends. He missed them all very much, and also missed his old place in the world.

  They marched southwards for several days. With the passing of time, snow started to fade from the ground. It heaped in drifts at both sides of the road and soon disappeared completely. Then even the forest ended, and there were grasslands, green only broken by thickets or flowery patches. There were many farmsteads and peasants raised their heads when the warriors passed by. Some nodded when they saw the eagle banner over the pole, either in acknowledgement or as if they approved. Others gathered their children and paced away from them. Not with fear, exactly; perhaps with caution.

  Soon, the road bustled with merchants and travelers, with chariots and ponies. It got wider, and the roadbed became flat and smooth, except for the ruts made by wagons. From time to time, a stray dog joined them for a couple of miles in the hope of getting a bone to gnaw, but the only thing they got most times was a kick when they drew too near.

  They occupied a farm one night, and the peasants brought them broth and stew and killed and cooked half a dozen hens for them. After dinner, Alarr paced by the limits of the fields with Hafgrim and two other men. The night was clear and warm, and there was a pale light glowing behind the hills which whitened the horizon.

  “That’s Heiðirsalr,” said Hafgrim. “We’ll get there by the morrow.”

  “It seems large.” Alarr tried to imagine the size of the city, but couldn’t. In Veraheim, most of the lights were extinguished by night. “How’s King Fróði?” he asked.

  “He’s no ring giver. He’s…” Here he paused. “…fair, I guess. I’ve served worse men than him.”

  And that was all he said about the matter.

  Heiðirsalr was large indeed. A tall palisade enclosed a jumble of thatched roofs next to the sea. Alarr saw the ships docked, with their serpentine prows and their masts and their bright shields on the sides, painted blue and red and yellow. He had never seen a ship before, but he had learnt to identify them by the tales and the descriptions from travelers. There were many small vessels, but also longships and drakkars swaying on the white crests of the waves.

  They rode their horses through the main doors and into the tangled streets and stopped at the entrance to King Fróði’s hall, which stood at the center of the city. It had been built many years ago, and it had seen wars, storms, floods, and countless Great Colds. Logs had been erected as pillars to support the weight of the portico and the timber roof, which was covered with grass. The frame had two carved patterns interwoven like a pair of snakes, and the oak wood from the door had been engraved with a warrior-god.

  They dismounted and waited in the antechamber while Hafgrim entered the hall and had his audience with the king. They did not have to wait long before he opened the doors again. “Come along. We’ve come back successful and they will want us to tell the story a thousand times.”

  Alarr looked at the warriors. They were covered in dirt and sweat, and smelled of horse dung. He had not wash his long hair in weeks and thought it inappropriate to have an audience with a king in such poor condition. But the others did not seem to be bothered and walked through the doors and into the large lavish room, so he followed them.

  It was barely midday, and the tables were empty. The beams inside were carved and so were the rafters. The king waited on the dais, seated on a throne with old animal furs draped across it, surrounded by half a dozen advisors and trusted men. Warriors with spears were posted on both ends of the platform and in every corner of the room, and some thralls waited patiently against the walls with trays and pitchers.

  King Fróði peered at them. He was a tall, slender man with a prematurely gray beard. His profile was aquiline, with penetrating eyes and a sharp nose. Quite fittingly, there was a large banner with an eagle embroidered on it behind him, its beak open, its wings extended. From Alarr’s position the throne blocked the raptor’s body and it almost seemed as if the wings came out of the king’s back.

  “Welcome!” he exclaimed, and forced a smile. He clapped his hands twice. His arms wer
e full of gold and silver rings, a dozen or more on each that jangled with every gesture. “Drinks and food, make haste!”

  For the next hour they sat at one of the tables. They drank and ate as they pleased and, as Hafgrim had predicted, told the same story a thousand times. They spoke once to the king, then made a more detailed account to his steward, a bleary-eyed man named Óttar. A little later, a scoop entered the hall and requested that the tale should be told again. It was not a particularly heroic battle — not on the part of Hafgrim’s men, at least — but that did not seem to bother him, as he listened with delight.

  They are all missing the point, Alarr thought. They had not been there. They did not understand. And still, most of the warriors were indeed happy. They envied those who had died, because to fall in battle against such a creature had to mean a preeminent position in the battlefields of Idavoll, and they were satisfied to have survived, because to outlive a giant had turned them into heroes.

  Alarr sipped from his cup without enthusiasm. He remembered what Solfrid and Nefja had told him about the stone-heart, the Ragnarök, and the wars that would come before that. If a Jötnar army was to march against Heiðirsalr, it would crush the city to pieces.

  “Battle…” said King Fróði, and his eyes wandered away from the hall’s walls, dreaming of who knows what feats past. “Every winter I grow fat and weak and slow in this hall. But soon it will be time to sail again. You’ve seen the wharfs, I’m sure. Under their shipmasters’ commands, men are getting ready for the summer plunder. Soon, we will sail to other lands seeking wealth and glory.”

  The men cheered, raised their cups, and drank, but the comment surprised Alarr. King Fróði seemed to him more sly than fierce, a plotter rather than a fighter. But there he was, longing for battles and wars, eager for blood. He could understand the feeling, because to sail in one of those ships had been his dream not so long ago. And perhaps it still was. But he could not stop thinking about his friends, and how he had failed them when they needed him most. By now his wound had almost healed, and he toyed with the idea of abandoning Hafgrim’s hird, traveling back north, and trying to find Gerda and Runa on their way to Thrymfell. But it was too late for that, and he knew it.

  When the banquet finished, the hird said farewell to one another and disbanded quickly after. Some of them lived in Heiðirsalr, but most had their own farmsteads nearby and were eager to see their families. They would return to their homes to tend to their personal affairs until Hafgrim required their services again, probably not before summer. They hugged and patted each other’s backs and laughed, and were soon on their way. On the contrary, Alarr was under Hafgrim’s direct command, and he would follow him to his place, where he would replace the blacksmith who had died during the brigands’ attack.

  “There are some matters I have to deal with,” Hafgrim told him. “We will leave in a couple of days, so enjoy the city while you can.”

  It was forenoon. Alarr barely had any money to spend and he decided to go to the wharfs, to see the ships at close range and admire the fierce prows in the shape of dragons and eagles. The sun shone bright and the weather was fair as if they were already in midsummer. Seagulls glided in the blue sky and perched on the masts and the roofs. He had never seen the sea before and was surprised by its briny smell and its color, which was a darker hue of blue than the ponds and lakes that surrounded Veraheim.

  There was a great bustle on the wharfs and on the nearby beach, where men were painting shields and sanding wood. He was not hungry, but bought an apple from a seller and munched it distractedly while he walked along the docks. All seemed new to him. A slave with almost black skin ran into him and apologized with a thick foreign accent. He saw a Christian priest, a young man with a gray robe and a wooden cross hung around his neck, which at first he had mistaken as Thor’s hammer. Alarr had heard bad things about Christians and frowned as he walked beside him and disappeared.

  Then he saw two women, covered in mantles the color of fresh mud, and recognized their faces.

  “How have you arrived so fast?”

  “The road is not the only path through the forest,” said Solfrid.

  Nefja brought a finger to her lips. “Come with us.”

  Alarr followed them through the streets until they reached an old dilapidated shack with its roof covered in rye. There was a raven’s skull hanging from the door frame and runes painted across the timber. The interior smelled of burning herbs and sulfur. An old mongrel raised its head and greeted them with a low moan.

  “Were you following me?” Alarr said this with scorn, but in truth, he was happy to have found them so fast. Heiðirsalr was an impressive city, but he felt lonely and purposeless there, and it was nice to be able to meet people from Veraheim so far from home.

  “Of course we were,” said Solfrid. “But we could not follow you inside the hall, so you will have to tell us what happened there.”

  “You can imagine. We ate and drank, and the king asked us to tell what happened.” His eyes scanned the small room. There was not much to see, except for the amulets hanging from the ceiling, made of bones and little sacks and strings of dried plants. There was a small table and a single stool, and a bed to one side. It looked like a seeress’s place, and it probably was. “Is this shack yours?” he asked.

  “Nefja’s,” Solfrid said with a tired gesture. “Now, tell us. What did the king say?”

  “He was pleased that the giant was dead.” Alarr tried to remember if he had added something else. There was nothing even vaguely important about the conversation they had held. “That was all.”

  “Nothing else? He is not planning to send troops to the north?”

  “What for? The giant was not a soldier, just a creature trapped for a hundred years. There is no attack.”

  “There is the Fimbulvetr,” said Nefja, “which is fading. And everybody can see it just by looking at the sky.”

  “Nobody talked about that.” Alarr shrugged. “King Fróði seems eager to sail and he will, and needs all the warriors available for the summer campaigns.” He patted the dog on the head and it licked his hand in return. He had always liked dogs, but Runa could not stand them, so he had never owned one.

  “Well, you have to convince him.”

  Alarr laughed. “Me? The Smith? Nobody would listen to me. In two days I’m leaving with Hafgrim to wherever he lives. I will stay there until summer, then I will probably have to join his ranks in a ship and cross the sea to the lands they’re planning to raid.”

  Solfrid shook her head. “That is not going to happen, for if there are no warriors here to face the giants, it will be the end.”

  “There’s nothing you can do about that, I’m afraid.”

  The old dog yawned, and its breath smelled foul. Nobody knew when the Fimbulvetr would end, not even Solfrid, and she could not expect five hundred warriors to wait on their hands for a whole year just because of some old story about the Snow Queen which most of them did not believe in anyway.

  “You will go with Hafgrim,” Solfrid said, but that point was clear. Alarr had made an oath and he was not going to break it. “He has seen the menace and will listen to you. Then Hafgrim will talk to the king and he will listen to him.”

  Alarr deemed the plan unlikely, but agreed because it was simple and did not require much of him. It was easier to speak with Hafgrim than with King Fróði, but he knew that nothing would stop the ships sailing with the first winds of summer.

  He spent the following days wandering the streets of Heiðirsalr, with not much to do but grow accustomed to the city and its people. He visited all the shops and got drunk with some northerners he met on the docks, who were trading wolf pelts and salt, and talked about Veraheim and the magnificent views from the top of Groennfell.

  During the day, Solfrid and Nefja made some money from Nefja’s hut by selling herbs and ointments to fishwives and sailors. They also read the future in the fish guts and uttered omens that were probably half-invented. At night, A
larr slept in the hut with them. The space was so cramped that he could feel Nefja’s breath on the nape of his neck. She was twice his age, but she still had the body of a woman and to be so close made him feel uncomfortable, and Alarr spent many hours wide awake. He toyed with the idea of making an advance, even with Solfrid snoring next to them, but concluded that nothing good could come from lying with witches.

  The third day, he met Hafgrim under the shadow of the palisade. There was also a short man with his beard decorated in braids and eyes as black and shiny as two pieces of jet. He did not introduce himself, but later Alarr heard Hafgrim address him as Ufi. They mounted their horses and traveled south.

  After a while, they stopped to eat next to a meadow. Alarr, assuming that he was the man with the lowest rank in the group, helped them dismount and tended to the horses. When he grabbed the reins of Ufi’s stallion, the man looked at him for the first time and frowned. His eyebrows were very thick.

  “You must be the new smith.”

  “And a warrior,” said Alarr. He did not want to be stuck as a smith his whole life, so he hastened to make it clear from the beginning.

  “Ah, so you want to kill many men on the battlefield and gladden the ravens, aye? Unsheathe your sword then, warrior.”

  Alarr looked at Hafgrim for confirmation. The man nodded with a vague smile, but he seemed more interested in cleaning his knife to cut the cheese. Alarr took the sword and held it in front of him. “It is of his making,” said Hafgrim, without raising his head.

  “I see.” Ufi gazed at the weapon, unimpressed. “Any smith can forge a horseshoe or a nail, even an axe head. A sword… that’s another thing. Perhaps you’re a good smith, but you cannot call yourself a warrior.”

  “How do you know? You have not seen me fight.”

  Ufi smirked. “I don’t have to, boy. That is a fine sword, but I like mine better.” He showed him his weapon with its edges nicked after clashing with a hundred blades. “This is a warrior’s weapon, a tool. Yours is virgin like a little girl.”