Icefall

by Matthew J. Kirby

  With each warrior’s fall, Hake has become angrier, but with out something to rage against, he can only stand and watch and seethe. I do not think he is accustomed to feeling powerless. He and Per are arguing about what to do with Harald, Asa, and me. They don’t know if it is safe to have us in the hall with the sick, but it is too cold for us to remain outside the hall at night.

  In the end, we are hurried straight to our bedclosets, and the doors are shut fast. The sounds of the sick keep me awake for some time. Bera calls orders all through the night. But her voice is assured, like she knows what to do, and it comforts me.

  By morning, the rest of the steading is taken with the sickness. Gunnarr and the remaining berserkers, as well as the new thrall. There aren’t enough tables and benches in the hall to hold them, and some are laid out on the dirt floor. But a few of us remain well. Bera, Raudi, Ole, Per, Harald, Asa, and myself. Hake and Alric, too. None of us have fallen ill.

  Hake stares out over the hall, at his decimated troops. He looks so helpless, his hands fisted at his sides. But there is a wildness in him I haven’t seen before, even when he was breaking up the fight. He has the desperate, quivering rage of a cornered animal, ready to lash out at anyone.

  “Poison,” he says, deep in his throat.

  “What?” Per asks.

  “Three nights ago they all ate the goat.” He looks at me. “We did not.”

  “Could the meat have simply turned?” Per asks.

  Bera sniffs deeply, pulling upright at the accusation. I know that she would never have served bad meat.

  “No,” Hake says. “If the meat had turned, they would have been retching the night they ate it. It wasn’t bad meat.” He squares his shoulders toward Bera. “It was a slow poison.”

  Bera folds her arms and stares up at him. “And who do you think did it?”

  “You prepared the food,” Hake says.

  “What?” Raudi says.

  “Ridiculous,” Ole says, arms crossed.

  “A trial at the Thing will decide it. For now, I accuse you, Bera.”

  Per steps forward. “You can’t —”

  “I can!” Hake shouts. “I am the highest warrior in this steading, and my king entrusted me with the protection of his children. If you block me from fulfilling my duty” — his eyes look even wilder — “then you are my enemy.”

  Per pales and backs away. We are all stunned. Hake grabs up a piece of rope, and Bera lets him tie her hands behind her back, confusion crinkling her forehead, as if she can’t accept that what’s happening is real. Only days ago, we were fine. We were hungry, but we were fine. And now, the hall is filled with dying men, and Bera stands accused of poisoning them. What if others had eaten the goat? Harald? Asa? What if the poison were in some other dish that I would have eaten? Could Bera have done this? I did hear her say she wished the berserkers were gone from here. I sicken at the thought.

  Raudi lunges at Hake, fists flying. “Let her go!”

  But the berserker captain shoves my friend to the ground and drags Bera across the room. She goes with him, scuffing her feet, looking around at a world I don’t think she recognizes.

  Raudi gets up. He shouts at Per, “Do something!”

  Per only stands there, mouth open, blank. “Hake is right.”

  “You lie!” Raudi says.

  Per turns to him. “Watch yourself, you little bench-ornament.”

  Raudi falls silent at the insult.

  I manage to clear my own head enough to step forward. “You are wrong to do this, Hake.”

  That stops him enough to at least look at me. “I am not wrong.”

  “You are,” I say. “Bera would never do anything to harm us.”

  “How can you know what’s in her heart? Perhaps she was worried we wouldn’t live through the winter, and thought this was the only way to make sure there was enough food.” He looks down at her. “Was that it, woman? I could maybe respect it, a little, if you did it to preserve the lives of the king’s children.” His grip tightens. “But you did it at the expense of my men. Good men who would have died to protect you in spite of your resentment toward them.”

  “I did not do this thing.” Bera finally lifts her head to face Hake. “I did not!”

  “You see?” I say.

  Hake waves me off and hauls Bera up against one of the wooden pillars. He takes another length of rope and begins to tie her to it.

  “Hake,” Alric says from behind all of us. He has been so quiet, I’d forgotten he was there. Even Hake blinks at the skald. Alric points at the rope. “Where is it exactly that you expect her to run?”

  Hake looks down and fingers the rope in his hands.

  “She has done much to heal your men,” Alric says. “To ease their suffering. Would you not like her to continue in these duties? It would be quite difficult for her while bound to that pillar.”

  Hake stares at Alric like the glacier, a wall of ice. Alric manages to smile, the way he does, so mild, and I wonder at his ability to summon it. Moments pass, and gradually Hake melts. I see his shoulders relax, his arms lower. He unties Bera and lets her go.

  “You are free for now,” he says. “You will make it your sole mission to heal my men. I will be watching you, and if I see any dereliction of these duties, I will tie you in the cowshed to freeze instead of the hall. Is that understood?”

  Bera brushes off her hands. “I’ll do what I can for your men. But not for you, Captain. I care not what you command.

  I do it for them, because I do not want to see a single one of them die.” She tries to step past him, but he blocks her with his arm.

  “Your larder key,” he says and holds out his hand.

  She snatches it from her brooch and slaps it into his palm. Then she storms by him and goes to her hearth.

  Raudi fixes Hake and Per with a hate-glare and hurries over to her.

  “She is still under my arrest,” Hake says, and rumbles away.

  I turn to Alric. “Thank you, sir.”

  “She isn’t cleared of suspicion,” Alric says.

  “She will be cleared,” I say.

  Per leads Asa away into a corner. She appears agitated, whispering and pointing her finger at him. I watch them go, angry at Per for failing us again, angry at my sister for saying nothing to defend Bera.

  Alric sighs. “Let us just hope that none of these men die. The captain is not in his right mind. And looking around at this nightmare, I cannot say I entirely blame him.”

  “You don’t really suspect Bera, do you?” I ask.

  “I have to. I also must suspect Ole, and Per, and even Hake. And you should suspect me.”

  I swallow down a skip in my heartbeat. “Why?”

  “Because I doubt the venomous traitor ate his or her own poison. The enemy is very likely one of us who did not partake of your goat.”

  I’m speechless. He is right.

  Alric smiles his bland smile and walks away, just as Raudi approaches me.

  “Thank you,” he says, and his voice catches.

  “For what?”

  “For defending my mother. But now I don’t know what will happen when we leave this place.”

  “It will be all right,” I say. “No one but Hake believes it.”

  He shakes his head. “But it’s Hake. That is enough for the Thing to find her guilty.”

  “Hake will see the truth on his own before long.” I nod toward Bera as she bends over one of the men, adjusting his blankets. “Look at your mother, how she tries to save them.”

  “You’re a true friend, Solveig.”

  He grabs me into a tight hug that squeezes the air out of me, then he lets me go and walks away without looking back. Surprise renders me silent. I am grateful that Raudi and I have restored some of our old closeness, but I feel guilty that it has come at such a high price.

  The hall is very quiet after that, and everyone keeps away from Hake. Now that we know it was poison, no one is afraid of catching this plague. I am allowed t
o tend to the sick. I wipe their dry lips with a wet rag to keep them from splitting. I change soiled bedding. I whisper encouraging and comforting things to them. And when I am not helping, I sit next to Alric by the fire. Asa has gone to bed, red-eyed from crying about something, and Per sulks in the shadows.

  I am unsettled by thoughts of enemy ships, and clouds in the shape of wolves, and falling glaciers. “What is on your mind?” Alric asks. “My dream,” I say.

  He nods. “That has been on my mind as well.” Later that night, one of the berserkers dies.

  Asa later wore our mother’s dress, the one she had tried on, to a feast. She came out, and Father beamed with pride while those gathered in the hall murmured in appreciation and wonder. She passed the mead-horn, and I think it felt to everyone as if they had a queen again. And you were beautiful, Asa. With Mother’s dress, and your hair braided like a woman, and your jewelry. Everyone loved you.

  I stood off to the side, next to a pillar, and Per, you came up beside me.

  And even as you talked to me, you stared at Asa.

  I did not mind. Everyone was staring at Asa.

  “That will be you, one day,” you said to me.

  “Not me,” I said.

  You then said to me, “Beauty isn’t all that matters. Wisdom and kindness, these are important, too. And you have them.”

  “Do you think so?” I asked.

  “I do,” you said, looking up at my sister, and even in that moment, you had never looked so handsome to me.

  “My father doesn’t think so,” I said.

  That’s when your eyes met mine. “Perhaps not yet. And that is why you must show him.”

  CHAPTER 12

  DEATH

  The ground is frozen, cemented with ice and snow, so we cannot bury the body. Hake and Per trudge across the yard, carrying the berserker between them, and lay him in the cowshed. No one else goes with them, but I don’t think any of us want to treat this as a funeral. The time for burial will come after we have returned home, where we and his kinsmen can honor him properly. For now, I turn my attention back to the suffering of the living.

  Bera has assigned me to a group of warriors. One of them is the thrall, the fallen berserker who was banished and taken back in as a slave. I kneel down next to him with a bowl of cold water and a rag. He moans, but it isn’t the sound of someone in pain. It is how I would imagine a distant ghost would sound, something lost and wandering in the night. It reaches deep into my chest, and I ache for him. I cry for him as I dab his forehead and squeeze drops of water into his mouth. He is weak, but he swallows.

  Then he exhales a raspy breath that carries a single word. “Story.”

  “You want me to tell you a story?” I ask.

  He closes his eyes, and a shiver rattles him. I pull the blanket up to his chin and feel him quivering beneath my hands. How can such a man, once a powerful berserker, feel so weak and frail? And in this moment, how can he want a story from me?

  I don’t know what story to tell. I try to think of a tale of healing, but I can’t remember any. But perhaps it doesn’t have to be a true story. Perhaps, as Alric says, it is more important what the story does, and I can tell a new story of my own. I take a moment to gather the words about me, piling them up in my mind, and I begin.

  “High up in Asgard, there grows a tree on the Hill of Healing. And surrounding the tree are nine shield-maidens, nine Valkyrie. When our heroes are slain in battle, it is the Valkyrie who escort their spirits up to Odin’s hall.”

  I notice that there are others listening to me now. Those men that can open their eyes watch me, so I stand and continue my tale as I walk among them.

  “One of the nine Valkyrie, Eir, who was gifted in the healing arts, grew curious about our mortal world. So she with-drew from the Hill of Healing, passed through the gates of Asgard, and came down to our world, where she spied a frozen fjord. And there in the fjord she found a hall, small and heaped with snow that rose almost to the roofline.”

  Our fjord. Our little hall.

  “She drew near to it,” I say. “And she wondered what manner of men would dwell there. She decided to enter, and inside, Eir found Odin’s finest warriors….”

  Our warriors. My voice threatens to break with grief. I look into the faces of the fallen men around me and tears fill my eyes. But I continue.

  “All of them brave, all of them honorable, all of them strong. They had been felled by treachery, struck down by a coward’s poison. And the greatness of the men moved Eir in her heart. She leaned and touched the tips of her fingers to their lips, lit upon them snowflake-soft, and left a drop of dew from the leaves of the tree that grows on the Hill of Healing.”

  I kneel by the nearest berserker and wipe the tears from my cheek. I kiss my fingertips and press them to his lips. Then I do the same for the next. I go to each man in turn as I speak.

  “And one by one,” I whisper, “the warriors wakened from the poison-sleep. Bodies purified. They strapped on their armor and took up their spears and their swords. They stood tall and proud under the winter sun. Eir smiled upon them, and then she climbed back up the cloud-paths, back to the Hill of Healing. There, she spoke to the other shield-maidens of the healing she had wrought in the finest of Odin’s men.”

  I touch the lips of the last berserker, stand up, and look around the hall. Bera and Asa have tears in their eyes. Per hangs his head as though he cannot look at me, while Alric’s wide eyes stare at me almost without blinking. Ole nods from a corner of the room.

  I hear heavy footsteps and turn to see Hake rushing toward me. I take a step back as he falls and kneels at my feet.

  “My princess,” he says. He takes my hand, kisses it, and touches it to his forehead. “You are no skald. You are Eir, herself.”

  “I am not, Captain,” I say. “But I wish that she were here.”

  “She was here,” Alric says. “If only for a moment.”

  I bow and go back to the thrall I was attending before, the one who asked for the tale. He is smiling instead of moaning, and when I touch him, I find he is no longer shivering. I begin to let myself believe my own story, that my words can summon shield-maidens. That my stories can shape the world. The thought of so much power is exhilarating and terrifying.

  I ask Alric about it later.

  “I know what you are feeling,” he says. “You realize that you now have the power to create gods and goddesses, warriors and dragons.”

  “Yes,” I say. “But if they are not real before, can a story make them so?”

  “Real to whom?”

  “To everyone.”

  He sharpens the point of his beard with his fingers. “I can barely decide what is real for myself, let alone what is real to everyone else.”

  “Alric.” I shake my head. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re really saying anything at all, or if you just make it sound that way.”

  “Never trust a storyteller,” he says. “We’re all of us liars.”

  The mood in the hall is a little lighter for the rest of the afternoon. The warriors seem to be resting a little easier from the pains of the poison. We attend to them as we have done for the last few days, but my story has stoked the room with optimism. Later that evening, I take some food to Muninn. I have been neglecting him and decide to let him out of his cage. But instead of perching on my shoulder, he flies up into the rafters and glares at me.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t had you out,” I say. “But you can sulk if you want to.”

  He squawks at me.

  For the rest of the evening, as I move about the hall, I notice that he’s usually perched on the rafters just over my head. I don’t know if he’s trying to put more droppings in my hair, or if he’s just reminding me that he’s not on my shoulder where I want him. But he’s there, and it makes me smile.

  But then he’s not there, and I hear Hake’s voice bellowing.

  “Who took the key?”

  Everyone looks around in confusion, and I search the rafte
rs for Muninn.

  “The larder key?” Per asks.

  Hake charges right up to Bera and looms over her. “Yes, the larder key. Where is it, woman?”

  She puts her hands on her hips. “I have no idea.”

  And then I see my raven, strutting toward his open cage, eyes glittering, the key in his beak.

  “Muninn!” I rush toward him. He flaps away from me, racing for his cage as though he’s hoping to hide the key before I reach him. But I grab his tail feathers and snatch it from him. “Bad bird!” I say.

  Everyone in the room starts laughing, including Hake.

  Muninn caws at me and ruffles his feathers in fury before hopping into a corner of his cage. Then he actually turns his back to me, and I can’t believe how like a person he is.

  “Your bird thinks he should be running the steading?” Hake says as I hand him the key.

  I close the door to Muninn’s cage. “I think he just likes the metal for his nest.”

  “Well, I told you he was a smart one.” Hake stands over Muninn with a look of pride. “I’ll just have to be more careful around this little thief.” He chuckles and walks away.

  Muninn jerks his head toward me.

  “I’ll try to let you out more often,” I say.

  Not long after that, I climb into the bedcloset with Asa. She lies awake on her side, facing me. I could touch her if I wanted to, without even needing to reach. But I don’t want to. I still cannot believe she did not defend Bera, nor can I believe she continues her relationship with Per. I have never felt further away from her than I do right now, our faces inches apart. These months spent trapped together have made my sister a stranger to me, and I feel a loneliness I haven’t ever felt before.

  “I loved your story,” she says.

  I want to roll away from her. “Thank you.”

  “You brought the men comfort.”

  I nod.

  “It was beautiful,” she says.