The Song of the Ash Tree- The Complete Saga

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The Song of the Ash Tree- The Complete Saga Page 84

by T L Greylock


  Raef nodded, then turned his own gaze skyward once more, squinting to ward out the light, one hand raised, fingers splayed in vain.

  “Vakre.” His voice caught in his throat, a feeble, uncertain thing that he was sure the half god would not hear, much less heed. Raef tried again. “Vakre. Come back to us.” The blaze did not dim, the heat did not weaken. “Come back to me.”

  At length the flames darkened, growing orange and yellow once more, and then Vakre drifted to the ground. Beneath him, warriors scrambled to keep their distance and at last he settled on the snow once more and the flames vanished on the night breeze. Raef blinked, struggling to see in the sudden dark. At last Vakre’s face came to him, a face lit only by starlight and moonlight and free of the tangle of flames.

  Raef rushed forward, ready to catch Vakre should he fall, ready to defend himself should the son of Loki not know him, but he pulled up when he saw the calm in Vakre’s face. Their eyes met and Raef could still feel the heat pouring forth, but he closed the distance between them.

  “Are you well?”

  To his relief, Vakre nodded. “Yes.” He looked over Raef’s shoulder and inclined his head once more. “This is not over.”

  Raef turned and saw the Hammerling caught between two of Ailmaer’s men. Brandulf fought to keep his head high, to keep from crumpling, but his face was etched with pain and Raef could see the wound in his side even from a distance.

  Around them, the Hammerling’s men were laying down their weapons, some with quick, nervous hands, others with reluctant faces, but all succumbing to the spears aimed at their chests by Ailmaer’s mounted warriors. A few tried to flee, seeking freedom in the darkness, but these were quickly run down and herded together with the rest.

  Raef approached the Hammerling, who had dropped to one knee, his head sunk against his chest. Raef nodded at the pair of warriors, who backed away, and he lowered himself so that he might look in the eyes of the man who had been his king, his ally, his enemy. Raef placed a hand on Brandulf’s shoulder and the other man struggled to raise his head. Death ate at the edges of his eyes and the hand clamped to his wound, a deep slash that had ripped apart the thick leather, was dripping with blood.

  “Say your piece, Skallagrim, and be done with me.” A last torrent of defiance burst out from between Brandulf’s clenched teeth and then the other leg gave way and the Hammerling pitched forward. Raef caught him by the shoulders and steadied him.

  “How is it that I have had to watch two good men die, two men who might have made great kings, and the third survives still?”

  The Hammerling coughed. “Your father would have been a better king than I. Or the Palesword.” He clutched at Raef’s shoulder with a trembling hand. “Is he dead?”

  Raef frowned. “Fengar?”

  “Hauk.”

  Raef thought of Eira and the blackness woven around her, of her starry eyes, of her disappearance with Hauk. “He lives.”

  “Find him. Finish him.”

  “Where is your son?”

  “I sent him away. Home.” The Hammerling’s fingers tightened on Raef’s shoulder. “Will you kill him?”

  Raef shook his head. “No.” He hesitated. “I never meant to make you my enemy.”

  “And yet you broke your oath.”

  “What would you have done for your father?”

  Brandulf’s courage fled from his face and he sank against Raef, who lowered him to the ground. “Perhaps you will yet become a king we might be proud of, Skallagrim.” His voice was low now, rough and broken. “My sword, my sword.” Raef glanced around them but the Hammerling’s blade was not in sight. Raef drew his own and pressed the hilt into Brandulf’s outstretched hand. The fingers curled tight, a warrior’s grip still, and something like contentment came into the Hammerling’s face. “I am ready. I will greet your father in Valhalla.”

  Raef felt his throat close up. “Tell him,” he paused, unsure. “Tell him,” he tried again, but then he saw that Brandulf Hammerling was already gone.

  Nineteen

  The fire that burned the Hammerling lasted to morning. Raef had stood vigil over it until the smoke drove him away, and then, after leaving instructions for the Hammerling’s warriors to be released, he retreated to his chamber in the Vestrhall and did not emerge until a bright sun was high in the sky and the Hammerling’s ashes were being swept into the fjord by a gentle wind.

  He sought out Siv first, who waited alone in the hall, knees tucked to her chest as she perched on a bench. Raef slid onto the bench beside her.

  “I am sorry.”

  She reached out and tucked a strand of his hair that had worked loose behind his ear. “For what?”

  “For shutting myself away.”

  “I know what it is to seek solitude.” She smiled and held out her hand, palm facing him. Raef placed his palm against hers and wrapped his fingers between hers, his heart full to bursting with joy over Siv’s understanding. He stood and pulled her to her feet and settled a deep kiss on her lips.

  “Come,” Raef said when he pulled away. “It is time I spoke to Vakre.”

  They found Vakre by the fjord at the end of one of the docks. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his face turned toward the sun. He wore no cloak, nothing to keep winter at bay, and when Raef came close enough to touch him, he could feel the heat emanating from Vakre’s skin. It was a tender heat, an easy warmth free of malice or anger.

  Vakre smiled at Siv, but then his eyes sought Raef. “Did I kill anyone?”

  “No.” Raef watched the water shimmer in the sunlight and a deep longing for spring came over him. He swallowed that down. “I have to ask, Vakre, what did you do? How did you rise into the air?”

  The son of Loki shook his head. “I do not know. I could feel my father, as I always do when wreathed in his gift. The power, the fury, the fear, they burned through me, and for a moment I could feel the lives of everyone below me as though they were beating hearts in the palm of my hand. Hearts I was meant to crush.” Vakre’s gaze met Raef’s and the pain there was laced with sadness and guilt. “I could have killed you all.”

  “But you did not.”

  “Not this time.”

  There was nothing Raef could offer Vakre, no words of reassurance to counter the truth Vakre spoke.

  “You told the Hammerling that Hauk still lived,” Siv said, breaking the silence.

  Raef’s mind swam with visions of Eira as she had appeared on the field of battle under the stars. It seemed difficult to find the words to express what he had seen.

  “Eira came for him.”

  Siv frowned and Raef rushed on.

  “Her throat was ripped open, torn to shreds by your arrow. But the blood was dried, and she was angry, so angry, but,” Raef paused, “uncertain, lost, somehow. She knew me and yet did not know me. Her eyes,” Raef hesitated again, then brushed past that image and continued. “She carried a sword, dark of blade and finely wrought.” Raef looked at Vakre. “It is a sword we know well.”

  Understanding dawned in Vakre’s eyes, but he said nothing, leaving Raef to speak the words to Siv.

  “She is a Valkyrie.”

  The words hung over them, a shadow between them and the sun.

  “Visna left to carry out her final task, one she dreaded and yet could avoid no longer. She had to find another to take her place, to carry her sword. There must be nine.”

  “Would that she had chosen any other,” Vakre said. “And yet when you faced Visna at the burning lake, her sword was as a shard of sunlight. You said the steel was dark in Eira’s hand.”

  Raef nodded. “Perhaps the sun will fill it in time. I do not know.”

  “She will hunt you,” Siv said, her face darkened by a frown.

  “I am not so sure. If she can remember, yes, if her hatred for me burns as bright now that she is of Asgard, if she still does Hauk’s will. But she may lose something of herself, just as Visna began to forget pieces of herself and her past life when she came to th
e world of men.” Siv did not seem convinced but she kept her doubts to herself. Raef put two fingers under her chin and drew her head up, his eyes searching hers. “Nothing good will come of thoughts like those. If Eira means to come for me, then she will come and I cannot stop her. But I will not live in fear of that moment. Not when there is so little time left to us.”

  “And Hauk?” Vakre’s voice was soft but insistent. “If you find him, you may find her.”

  “Then I will ask Odin to guide my hand, to put strength in my legs, to fill my lungs with breath enough to do what I must, what I owe my father.”

  “Skallagrim.” Ailmaer Wind-footed stood with one foot planted on the dock, his arms crossed, a fox-fur hood pulled over his greying hair. “Our terms?”

  Raef shifted his stance so that he faced Wind-footed head on. “Will be fulfilled. But I mean to see this view that pleases you so greatly.”

  **

  The hill stood over a wind-swept stretch of beach and under a swirling grey sky spitting snow. In summer, Raef knew, blue waters would lap at the sand and deposit new treasures dredged up by the sea’s waves, but winter held dominion here and the waves rolled up to the shore with increasing vigor, battering the cover of snow molded so carefully by the relentless wind.

  They had ridden north for three days under snow-laden skies, ferrying across fingers of grey water, passing within half a day’s ride of the valley where Raef had left Rudrak Red-beard to be sniffed out by hungry wolves. He wondered if any of Rudrak’s bones lingered yet under the spreading limbs of the oak Raef had tied him to, or if the wolves had long since removed any trace of the traitor. More than once on the ride north Raef had felt eyes watching them, but no threat revealed itself and he saw nothing.

  “Old Troll, my father called it,” Raef said, looking up at the crest of the hill, a misshapen, rocky thing. As a boy he had laughed with delight to discover, with his father’s aid, the troll’s bulbous nose, craggy chin, and narrow eyes. At the summit, tall waving grasses had served as the troll’s unkempt hair. Now he saw only stones and Ailmaer Wind-footed’s unspoken words.

  Little had passed between Raef and Ailmaer during the journey, for the mercenary was not inclined to answer Raef’s questions and Raef had forced himself to bite back words that might have sparked irritation.

  “The earth is full of sand here,” Raef said, his voice carried to Ailmaer on the wind. “And the wind would eat away at a house.” He did not think Ailmaer intended to build a home and farm the land, but he hoped his words might open a leak in the other man’s stubborn tongue.

  Ailmaer looked at Raef, said nothing, and put his heels into his horse, urging the beast to climb the hill. Raef grimaced and did the same, his cloak dragging behind him as the wind grew fiercer.

  “A fine view, no?” Ailmaer’s voice was laced with humor and the mercenary took in a deep breath of salt air as he gestured at their surroundings. From above, the site was even bleaker, the thick grey clouds pressing in, the sea a roiling mass of steel-colored water.

  “What do you mean to find here, Ailmaer?”

  To Raef’s relief, Ailmaer did not ignore the question. The humor left his face and he confronted Raef with hard eyes. “I swore an oath to hold my tongue.”

  “An oath? Who holds your leash? Do you mean to hand over this piece of Vannheim to another lord?”

  “Not that kind of oath. I will bring no harm to Vannheim, Skallagrim. But I will not say.” Ailmaer must have caught Raef’s glance to the beach below where the rest of the warriors waited, Ailmaer’s and Raef’s. “Nor will they,” he added, not unkindly.

  “I could make them talk.”

  “They will not say because they do not know. But I will not listen to you threaten them.”

  Raef sighed. “What would you do in my place? Would you ask no questions when a man you have known for a matter of days lays claim to a piece of land that has belonged to your family for generations?”

  “No.” Ailmaer turned his horse and began to descend from Old Troll’s head and Raef was forced to follow. “I would do as you are doing, Skallagrim. And you would do as I do,” Ailmaer called back, his words catching on the gusts of air that churned up the slope.

  It was then, halfway between Old Troll’s wrinkled temple and cracked ear, that Raef caught sight of a lean grey shape crouched alongside a downed tree a spear’s throw from the base of the hill. He pulled up his horse, which had caught an unwelcome scent and stepped nervously under Raef’s firm hold, but the moment Raef’s feet touched the ground, the grey shape raced away, no more than a blur amid the drifts of snow, and Raef blinked, shaking his head at what was surely his imagination.

  They shared one fire that night, finding a measure of shelter behind a crumbling shelf of rock, but there was little camaraderie to be had. Ailmaer’s men were as Raef had first met them, vigilant and little given to talk, while those of Vannheim were uneasy around the strangers. They would part ways in the morning, Raef leading his men south again, Ailmaer remaining to seek whatever had drawn him to this remote piece of Vannheim. It did not sit well with Raef, but he had given his word and Ailmaer’s mounted warriors had been invaluable in the defense of the Vestrhall.

  It was Siv who spotted the glimmering eyes in the dark. They reflected the firelight, but they were far too low to the ground and far too wide and round to be those of a man. Raef took a branch from the fire and brandished the burning end before him as he ventured into the dark, his hand on the haft of his axe where it hung from his belt. Siv stalked forward as well, a knife in hand, but the eyes remained fixed on Raef as they drew closer.

  A low growl caused Raef to halt and then something was hurtling out of the darkness toward him. The creature was around his legs in an instant, quick feet dancing between his, tufted ears rubbing against his shins. Raef dropped his burning branch and began to laugh.

  He knelt down and stroked the lynx’s sleek fur. “A brave little girl, you are, and a survivor.” The lynx cub had grown since Raef had watched Vakre lead her away into the hills that stood watch over the Vestrhall’s walls, enticed into the trees by the carcass of a freshly slaughtered deer. Raef looked around, searching for any sign of the female cub’s younger brother. She butted her head against his knee. “All alone, then?”

  Raef’s laughter had drawn the attention of the closest men, who watched him now with curious faces and murmured to each other. Ailmaer pushed his way through from the other side of the fire, his brow furrowed with concern until he saw the lynx, content under Raef’s hands, and then his eyes went wide and he froze where he stood.

  “Do you toy with me Skallagrim?” Ailmaer’s voice was sharp and full of apprehension.

  Raef stood, his joy at seeing the lynx alive and well overshadowed by Ailmaer’s sudden show of emotion. “I do not know what you speak of.”

  With effort, Ailmaer steadied himself and his face grew smooth and stern once more. “You encourage a wild animal to come near.”

  “She is an old friend,” Raef said.

  “Take care that she does not grow too fond of your scent.” Ailmaer retreated through the crowd of warriors, but Raef was not blind to the two men who followed hard on his heels, the same two who had conversed with Ailmaer at the summer farm, and how they huddled close and conferred with each other in urgent whispers.

  At length the warriors ceased to stare at Raef and the lynx, and many sought sleep in the warmth of woolen blankets and thick furs. Not Ailmaer. He sat across the fire, hunched over, hood drawn so far forward that Raef could not see his face, but he was sure the mercenary was watching.

  It was dawn, though, before Ailmaer approached Raef, who had slept fitfully with the lynx draped over his chest. Ailmaer’s boots scuffed against the pebbles strewn across the beach, drawing Raef out of a dream. Wind-footed stood over Raef, his face impassive. The lynx stirred and drew back her lips at the intruder, but Raef lifted her from his torso and set her to the side.

  “Come with me,” Ailmaer said, his voice mask
ed by the steady murmur of the sea.

  Raef turned to Siv, who slept still, and lifted the edge of her fur to cover her exposed neck, then got to his feet and followed Ailmaer as he skirted the edge of the campsite and headed toward the base of Old Troll. The lynx padded after on silent feet, her nose twitching with the smells of the ocean.

  Ailmaer followed the curve of the hill, his eyes tracing the uneven surface as though searching for something. More than once, Raef saw his gaze flicker back at the lynx, who would stop mid-stride every time Ailmaer looked at her. Only when they had gone the length of the base of Old Troll did Ailmaer come to a stop, halting where the hill’s shoulder joined with the rest of the ridge overlooking the sea.

  “How did you come to know her?” Ailmaer said, gesturing to the lynx.

  “I killed her mother.” Raef tried to hide his impatience, not understanding what Ailmaer wanted.

  Wind-footed frowned. “And then?”

  Raef sighed. “She followed me to the Vestrhall. Until last night, I had not seen her since.”

  “And yet she came all this way, drawn by your scent.”

  Raef threw up his hands. “What do you want?”

  Ailmaer ignored him and his gaze swept over the lynx. “She is small for this time of year. A late cub. And yet she survives. Freyja has been kind to her.”

  “And the goddess has led her here, is that what you mean?”

  “Her presence here is no accident.” Still Ailmaer had eyes only for the lynx.

  “Or she hungered after the deer your men took down in sight of the Vestrhall and followed us in search of a meal. I would have you speak plainly, Ailmaer. Enough of these secrets.”

  The calm face that had betrayed so little to Raef in the first days of their meeting was now awash with desperation and hesitation as Ailmaer warred within himself. He turned from Raef, clenched fist raised as though he would strike the bare rock, but he pulled up and instead let out a great shout of frustration that ricocheted out to sea where it was swallowed. Raef waited.

 

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