by Joyce Holt
Brynja, Jorunn saw, was a lovely lass as well, but compared with Gyda's perfection, her fair pink cheeks seemed a bit too wide, and her cute but stubby nose too short, and her teeth, though daintily small and lily-white, as crooked as a worn ivory comb. Her laugh put all her uneven features on display yet at the same time, through sheer joyfulness, hid the flaws.
When they retired for the night, it shocked Jorunn to be told to climb onto the grand pine-planked, cushion-lined sleeping platform and under the blankets. She'd never suspected rich folk piled up for warmth the way drudges did. "I haven't had the chance to bathe," she whispered to Drifa while Gyda locked brooches and necklaces in a small casket.
"Nor have I. Don't worry. She gave you a sniff. You're not rank. Climb in right after her and take the outside, blocking any drafts."
Jorunn folded Gyda's garb, then shucked her own borrowed yoke-apron and wool gown, tucked them in the corner with her old ragged gown, and slipped under the layered blankets. The linen shift felt smooth as moss against her skin.
Drifa blew out the tallow candle and climbed in on the far side. Gyda and Brynja talked on in the dark, snuggled up together, tossing names that meant nothing to Jorunn. Her toes were still icy. She tucked her feet up out of the way, breathed on her cupped hands, then caught another murmur of voices. From beyond the plank wall, through some chink. Rimhildr in her own chamber.
Gyda pulled on Jorunn's arm, and she snuggled up close. Jorunn shivered, but not from the cold, not here under a wealth of blankets and furs. She'd trade all this luxury in a heartbeat, just to be back with her mother and Svana, cuddled in straw in one corner of a drafty hut.
10 – Rumors and Wrath
Next morning Jorunn scurried about, hauling the chamberpot out to the cesspit to dump, warming Gyda's garments by the hearth, fetching coals for a brazier for the small chamber then heated water for the wash basin. The troll-mauled man from Moen no longer lay by the first fire.
Gyda pointed at a chest and ordered a particular yoke-apron. As Jorunn rummaged about, Brynja spoke up with teasing accusation in her voice. "You've enchanted my little cousin Bjørn."
"That mophead with the lackwit grin?" Gyda huffed as Jorunn refolded all the garb she'd disturbed.
"He didn't grin like that until the day he first saw you," Brynja said. "That makes one-and-twenty dazzled young men you've left sighing in your wake on this trek alone."
Gyda sniffed. "Your Bjørn can hardly be called a young man yet. Just a boy. I'm head and shoulders taller than him, and not a trace of fuzz on his cheeks." She snapped her fingers and held up a comb. "My hair."
Jorunn unbraided Gyda's silky golden tresses and combed them out as gently as ever she did for Svana, the little tender-head.
"I'm going to tell Grandfather," Brynja went on, "that we'll never find me a husband if you come on my rounds. All the menfolk we meet go swooning over you." She poked her cousin.
"Prince Dond didn't spare me a glance."
"Rheumy eyes. He couldn't see you. And he's my old-papa, not some suitor."
Gyda patted at her head, felt along the braids, examined the ends. "Done already? That's a light hand." She cocked her head and sat still. "I hear bells."
A distant clanging grew louder.
"Who would be traveling about before sunrise?" Brynja wondered.
"They've missed the Yule festivities, whoever they are." Gyda rose and sauntered out to the hall.
There was no formal greeting, Jorunn saw as she trailed in the wake of her mistress. Roald and Hadd spoke with snow-spackled messengers near the first hearth, then welcomed them to a low table and sent for food and drink.
Gyda settled herself at the high table and watched the goings-on. "Not good news, from your father's face," she said.
Brynja plunked down on another stool. "Shall I send Drifa to find out?"
"Nei. News always makes its way to the top."
"May as well eat while we wait." Brynja turned to Drifa. "Go see to our firstfare."
"More trout, if they have any," Gyda said. "And honey for the porridge."
The meal soon turned into a noisy affair, with most of the menfolk preparing to set off on a hunt up the mountainside, seeking the troll's lair. The monster had attacked again in the night, this time stealing a heifer from a not-too-distant steading.
Jorunn scooted platters within Gyda's reach as she called for them, and kept her cup filled with mead. She and Drifa made a fine meal cleaning up scraps their mistresses left behind, then scurried off again to their beck and call.
Jorunn stole a few moments to beat dust and ashes from her old gown and dab at the worst splotches. With only one garment to her name, most winters passed without the chance to do laundry. The garb on loan from Drifa, clean and neatly mended, seemed like queen's attire after her own rags. And copper pins at the shoulders! Jorunn marveled. Her mother had fastened her own apron straps with pins whittled from wood.
Once the men finally departed, Rimhildr invited her female guests to sit together at the dais and sew. The womenfolk brought out their embroidery while servants lit rushlights and tallow candles. Gyda sat next to the lady of the hall, which brought Jorunn in arm's reach of the she-wolf as she helped her mistress settle in.
Jorunn sighed in relief when she could at last pull back into the shadows, unnoticed and unseen by the grand folk. Drifa handed her a drop spindle and nodded at a basket of carded wool. No idle hands for the housegirls while their mistresses busied at their own craft.
While she spun she watched other Dondstad-folk at their tasks. Yrsa came and went, clearing away bowls and platters. Once Inga stepped into the hall, looking wan, and cast an imploring glance toward her mistress, who turned her head aside, chin lifted in dismissal.
The lad who must be Brynja's cousin Bjørn Roaldsson lingered halfway along the first table below the dais, pretending to whittle at a spoon handle, but stealing glances at the beauty on the dais and inching his way closer. Gyda ignored him as well.
"Drifa," Brynja said, "My needle broke. Go fetch another."
Jorunn's companion set down her spinning and went back to the guest chambers.
A grey-haired man with a wide leather belt and an air of authority came in from the houseyard. He strode the length of the hall straight to the dais and waited for a lull in the conversation.
At a nod from Rimhildr, the steward stepped forward and reported, "The rumors prove true. A girl of that description has indeed been lurking there, but hasn't been seen since last evening. She's gone now. Left nothing behind but this." The man held out a grubby length of cloth woven in brown and russet hues.
Jorunn sucked in a breath. Her shawl! A shabby thing it looked amid all the finery worn here at the high table.
Lady Rimhildr's shoulders went stiff as a wooden yoke. "I know this piece!" she hissed, and fingered an edge. "Once was my own. Cast off years ago, before— So it's true. A daughter of that thief, sent to prowl for more takings. When you find her—" Menace prickled in the woman's voice.
"She's already gone. I searched well. One of them saw her with snowshoes. Spoke of leaving at first light. Though why she'd leave her shawl behind—"
"Stole a better one, I'll wager." Rimhildr's jaw jutted, Jorunn could tell even from this angle. "Send a boy after Roald and Hadd. Give them her description. They can keep an eye out for the shiftless wretch while they're tracking that brute."
"What would you want done with her should they catch her?"
"Feed her to the troll, for all I care."
Drifa returned with a new needle for Brynja as the steward bundled up the shawl. "What shall I do with this?" he asked.
Rimhildr jerked her head. "Burn it. Nei, nei, not in the hall-hearth. Throw it on one of the bonfires. I don't want that stink in here – the stink of treachery."
Jorunn lurched one step forward, raising her hand. Burn it? Not her mother's shawl, cast to the flames!
But she couldn't claim it without claiming Rimhildr's wrath as well.
; Jorunn clutched the drop spindle, sagged backwards, leaned against one of the roof posts. Her snowshoes snatched away, and now her shawl. How was she to make her way in the world, shorn like a sheep in spring?
Her fingers trembling, Jorunn set her spindle a-twirl again. She shot glances from one person to another. Rimhildr the vicious wolf. Gyda and Brynja, like clouds floating high above the muck she crawled in. Drifa, along with Groa, the only two people in the steading who knew the wandering drudge from the cookhouse now served in borrowed garb at the high table. Would they unveil her secret if they knew what anger was raging in the lady's heart?
Her yarn spun lumpy and uneven as she thought back to the previous morn. When Groa seized her snowshoes, had she thwarted Jorunn's escape – or kept her safe from pursuit? Rimhildr's folk would be searching for a drudge in rags, trudging on snowshoes. Would they look twice at a girl in decent, layered garb, on skis? Wearing Drifa's neatly-mended attire, perhaps now she could approach one of the stablemen and ask to buy a pair of skis. Then skid away with stolen clothing on her back.
Nei, nei, she would not become the thief they named her to be. She must leave her ingot for Drifa, find this Lodmundr who held her snowshoes, and flee – to where? Not back to Morgedal where her father would drag her to the hut of Utlagi the wife-killer. To Moen? Nei. She had asked too many people how to find Moen.
North, higher into the mountains, they wouldn't be searching for her there. Did folk live higher up?
Trolls did. She had nothing to fend such a monster. She'd be berg-taken, snatched down, dragged into that world beneath the mountain bergs, devoured or set to slavery. A troll's thrall.
Nei, not north. The Norns had said west.
Jorunn gasped at a slap to her cheek. She blinked clear her fog of panic.
Gyda glared. "Gather it up, I said. Bring my things along." She wheeled and strode toward the guest chamber. "What kind of lackwit did you find to serve me as maid, Drifa? I'll swear I've never seen such a blank look. Her head must be as empty as a larder in spring."
Rimhildr had left her seat, too. Jorunn glanced all about, caught sight of the she-wolf walking down the hall along with another guest.
With shaking hands Jorunn swept up the embroidery still on the table, folded the fine linen cloth, placed it in the basket with the skeins of thread, and hurried after her mistress, her head buzzing, as full as a hive of bees about to swarm.
She meant to speak with Yrsa and seek her help, but Gyda kept her busy running errands or demanded her to stand ready at hand. All that afternoon she managed only one task for herself. She discovered that Lodmundr was a stableman who slept in the byre.
The menfolk returned shortly after sunset. They'd had no luck tracking the troll, for an avalanche had wiped out all trace of its path.
Hadd and Gunnarr came to speak with Brynja. The time for light-hearted festivities was past, her father and grandfather agreed. The guests' visit must cut short. Prince Dond had had his grand Yule feast, but now his heirs needed to pour their efforts into defending the folk of his realm. Brynja went to bid her old-papa a quiet farewell, and Gyda made plans for their departure in the morning.
Jorunn numbly worked at each task she was set. Drifa would want her garb back in the morning, and then there'd be nothing but that old threadbare gown to wear. No soft linen shift underneath. Not even her ragged shawl to throw over it all.
When Brynja returned and the cousins set to making plans, Jorunn stole away and off to the byre. A couple of cattle-men looked up from their work, mucking out stalls. "Is Lodmundr here?" she asked.
"Nei, off talking with the smiths."
Jorunn peered around. No snowshoes hung in plain view. She'd still have to ask the man.
"At the smithies," one herder said with an arched brow.
"Many thanks." Jorunn ducked out again and looked around the circle of outbuildings. There was no smithy in sight. A steading so grand as Dondstad, and no forge? "Ah ja," she muttered, remembering. Roald's smithies, a whole settlement of them, nestled in a lower side valley branching off Morgedal. She'd need snowshoes to go fetch word of her snowshoes.
She groaned, crossed to the cookhouse, poked her head in, looked about. Groa wasn't there. Inga was, and all the other drudges, some of whom had been talking about her, gossip that had run up the tables to Rimhildr's ear.
Jorunn backed out again and slogged across the houseyard under the star-spangled gaze of the heavens. She went back into the hall, kept her head lowered as she passed the dais where Lady Rimhildr, Roald and Hadd sat with Gunnarr, grandfather and guardian of Gyda and Brynja. They spoke of matters much loftier than the worry of where to find refuge from lies and loss, blame and blizzard.
She had come in the turmoil of guests arriving. She would leave in the turmoil of parting. When the guests set out in the morning, the tracks of the skis and sleighs and sledges would make a hard surface she could walk upon for a while. She would hurry along behind them, though they headed east.
Trudge east, the Norns said, and your trek will stall. How could it stall to any greater a stillness than what it was now? Jorunn felt rammed into a corner. There was no way to wend west, not without showshoes.
There had been a third line to that riddle, but she couldn't remember it. Her belly knotted. She had overlooked something of utmost importance, lost in that whole-hearted resolve to push west. What had the third line said?
11 – The Longest Leap
In the middle of the night Jorunn jolted awake. She could hear the slow breathing of the three other women. No chariot-goat lurked in the guest chamber, breathing out fumes of half-fermented cud, but she could hear echoes of his blatting voice in her mind.
For the longest leap of all, stand still, right where you are. The third line of the riddle, that was it. She had been standing still now for five days.
Jorunn clenched herself, wrapping up tight. A long leap it would be to get berg-taken, leaping clear out of the world of mankind. Is that what the riddle meant?
She fell into dark dreams where Rimhildr turned into a long-nosed troll, hulking and hunchbacked and wielding a huge rusty key like a club. The ogress bellowed orders to a host of trolls large and small, from the young hulder-children to the towering, ancient jotuns. At every command, Rimhildr's skirts heaved with the lashing of her tail, long and tufted like a cow's.
* * *
When the steading-folk began to stir, Jorunn dressed quickly in her borrowed garb, wound her way between the youths sleeping on the hall floor, and carried the chamberpot with the night's waste to the cesspit outside the hall. From there she went to the byre. She found Lodmundr up and around, helping ready Gunnarr's horses, but he said he no longer had the snowshoes. Someone had borrowed them for the hunt the day before and hadn't returned them.
She stifled a gasp. "But they were mine, and I need them!"
"Leaving today, are you? But didn't you come by sleigh?"
"I don't go anywhere without my snowshoes."
"A sorry set they were, and too small by half. I'd say you're better off without them. But however that stands, I can't help you. Someone else has them. Have your mistress take it up with our steward."
Jorunn swayed foot to foot where she stood. "How much silver," she asked at last, "would it take to buy a pair of skis?"
"Who wants to know?"
"Someone who needs them. How much?"
Lodmundr scratched his beard and narrowed his eyes at Jorunn. "That depends. New and finely crafted, perhaps a silver spoon or a handful of coins from afar. "
"If I can't get my snowshoes back, I need skis. Would you have a spare pair to sell?"
"Do you have silver?" He crossed his arms in scorn.
"Perhaps I can talk my mistress into a Yule gift."
"But you'll be riding in the sleigh," he said again, speaking slowly as if to a lackwit. "If you can talk your mistress into such a gift, then you must have a tongue of silver."
Jorunn showed him it was of flesh and blood, then ducked back
out to the houseyard. She set the chamberpot down and drew the ingot from her pouch. It would take a hammer and chisel, she figured, to break off a chunk the size she needed. But again, there was no smithy on the grounds where she could find such tools.
Give him the whole bar, and take blankets and a bag of oats into the bargain? Perhaps. It wouldn't do to rush right in again without time to go beg her mistress for this supposed boon.
Jorunn gritted her teeth, hunched shoulders, and blew out another groan, glaring up at the sky.
Stars glinted like ice crystals. It would be a clear day. The first clear day after Yule. She looked at the cookhouse where plumes already rose from the smokeholes. Groa had promised a week's worth of provisions.
Drifa appeared at the hall's doorway. "Jorunn, what's keeping you? Gyda is waiting."
Lodmundr came out behind Jorunn, leading a horse, and gave her a quizzical look.
She snagged the chamberpot and headed inside on Drifa's heels.
At the high table Gyda sat with Gunnarr, Roald and Hadd. In a low but sharp voice Gyda said, "Comb," as Jorunn scuttled past with the chamberpot.
"At least she can dress herself, if she must," Jorunn muttered as she ducked into the room where Brynja was just stirring from bed. She fetched Gyda's ivory comb.
"Make it tight," Gyda ordered when she returned. "Too loose and it'll worry to frazzles, what with us jouncing about all day long."
Jorunn worked away at her mistress' hair. This would be the last time. The tresses shone like gold in the rushlights, a bright glory among the other heads at the table—Roald's mane black as night, Hadd's a dull sandy hue, Gunnarr's shoulder-length hair grizzled and thinning at the temples.
When Brynja came out to join her kin, Hadd put his arm around her shoulders. "Don't look so glum, daughter," he told her. "We have two more days together. I am coming along on the first leg of your journey home."
"You are?" She brightened.
"I have business down by the coast. A sword to deliver."
