Icefall

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “Nothing. I’m fine, Solveig.”

  I think back to that night. “Is it what Per called you?”

  Raudi’s gaze drops.

  “Don’t listen to what Per says.”

  “Your father does. Per called me a bench-ornament.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “You are no coward, Raudi.”

  He takes in a breath as though he’s about to speak, but then says nothing. I wait. He takes in another breath, and still says nothing.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “I am a bench-ornament,” he says.

  It grieves me that he would think of himself in such a way, but nothing I say afterward changes his mind.

  I lie awake that night until everyone else has gone to sleep. Then I rouse Asa, quietly.

  “Solveig?” She yawns. “What is it?”

  “Shh. Keep your voice down.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes.” I lean into her. “Asa, you have to tell me the truth. And I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  “The truth about what?”

  “Did Per poison the stew?”

  I feel her stiffen and push away from me. “What?”

  “Did he do it?”

  “No! And Hake accused Bera —”

  “Bera didn’t do it and you know it. Hake knows it, too. He told me tonight he thinks it was bad meat.”

  “Maybe it was.”

  “No. It wasn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. And that is why I needed to make sure.”

  “Solveig, listen to me. Per did not do this.”

  I listen to her voice and I believe her. Or at least, I believe that she believes Per is innocent. That does not mean he is, but it means Asa had nothing to do with it if he isn’t. Though I am still angry with her, a meager trust in her begins to grow back.

  “Thank you,” I say. “You and I and Harald are the only ones we can count on.”

  “And Per,” she says.

  I let that pass. “We need to protect each other.”

  “Oh, Solveig.” She pulls me into her arms, and I go reluctantly. “I would never let any harm come to you. No matter what happens, you will be safe. I promise you. We just need to hold out till spring.”

  I nod and try to relax in her embrace, but I can’t. I don’t want spring to come. With spring comes the thaw from my dream, the wolf-cloud over the hall, the opening of the icefjord, and the terrible enemy ships with their curses on the wind. If I could, I would keep this steading frozen in the heart of winter forever.

  We have food enough now, and no more fear that we will run out. But every bite is heavy in my mouth, purchased for a price that I never would have willingly paid. Now we gather silently around the hearth in the morning and evening and eat our guilt.

  Over the next few days, the berserkers continue to improve. They regain the color in their faces. They appear alive again. They sleep without fevers. They still occasionally tremble or suffer fits, but they are mostly well. We take up telling stories nightly, as we did before. Alric and I, with Muninn on my shoulder. After several weeks have passed, bringing us closer to the far edge of winter, the berserkers are able to sit up, and one or two of them can even hobble about the hall.

  Today, Harald is going to each of the berserkers and challenging them to arm wrestle. They laugh and oblige him, and he wins every time. They tell Harald he is mighty.

  “When you beat me,” Harald says to them, “you’ll know your strength is back.”

  “Indeed,” they say. “Then we’ll know for certain.”

  I call him away to let the berserkers rest.

  “Do you want to arm wrestle me?” I ask.

  “That wouldn’t be fair now, would it?”

  “How so?”

  “You’re a girl.”

  “Girls can be strong.”

  “Not as strong as boys.”

  I tousle his hair. “I dare you to arm wrestle Bera.”

  He shakes his head vigorously.

  “Why, because she’s a girl?”

  “She’s not a girl.”

  “No? Then what is she?”

  He looks at me as though I’m daft. “She’s a mother.”

  I laugh. “That makes all the difference, doesn’t it?”

  He screws up his mouth, and then he blurts out, “Did she poison those men?” The question comes in such a rush that I can tell he’s been holding it in his mouth for a while.

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know her, and Bera would never do that. Neither would Raudi.”

  “What about Alric?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Per?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I know it’s not Hake,” he says. “Ole?”

  “He has served Father for so long.”

  “But that’s everyone.”

  And it is everyone. Perhaps Hake is right, and it was the meat after all. But I still find that hard to believe. The poison came on late and did not work its way through the men in the way of bad food. It persisted too long in their bodies, and those facts hover over me like swords about to fall.

  “When they …” Harald’s lip begins to quiver, and he looks at his feet. “When they poisoned the men, were they trying to kill me? Was it my fault?”

  “What? No!” I reach out and pull him into my arms, squeezing him. “Of course not. It isn’t your fault, and no one would want to kill you.” I’m not just trying to soothe him. My brother is much more valuable alive, for ransom. Which is the only reason I don’t worry about him sleeping with Per and Hake and the men. “Have you been worrying about that all this time?”

  He nods against my chest.

  “Harald, you mustn’t think these things. Whoever poisoned the stew knew that you and Asa and I wouldn’t eat it. Because it was Hilda.”

  “Then why did they do it?”

  “I think what they really want is to weaken the steading. That’s why they got rid of the cows, and why they poisoned the berserkers sent to protect us. If our enemy wanted us dead, they could have poisoned something else that all of us would have eaten, but they didn’t.”

  He slides away, and his forehead wrinkles up. “I see. But now I don’t know if I feel better or worse.”

  “Just be brave for me. All right?”

  “All right,” he says. “I’m just glad that winter will be over soon.”

  The weeks are relentless. The days are stretching, lengthening, as though someone is spinning the gray wool of winter-light into golden thread. The others enjoy the sun, and spend more time outside in its warmth, while I hide away from it inside the hall. I have come to dread the sun’s rising, and I watch in fear as it drags each day across the sky.

  I huddle by the hearth and try not to think of my dream. I pretend that I’ve locked it in the bedcloset; that it isn’t real out in the waking world. It doesn’t help that Alric seems to be thinking about it, too. He has started complaining loudly about the cold as though it’s still midwinter. He tells stories of terrible snowstorms, and of the icy realm of the frost giants, as though he can keep spring at bay with his words. I have learned that stories do not have such a power. But it helps that I am not alone in my fear. And I have Muninn, on my shoulder even now.

  I remember a moment in the sun with him after Hake first gave him to me. I remember looking up and closing my eyes, and the brightness turning the insides of my eyelids red. It felt so warm, and I was content with my raven in his cage beside me.

  I wonder if Muninn has bonded to me after these long dark months spent together. Would he leave me if I took him outside? I know that I need to find out sooner or later. I cannot carry his cage with me wherever I go, especially if I am to be a skald and travel from hall to hall.

  I turn my head to look at him, and he flaps his wings.

  “Will you stay with me now, my memory, bird of Odin?” I stand and move toward the hall
doors. “Or will you leave me if I give you the chance?”

  I reach the doors and pause, staring at them. I place my palm against the wood and feel the deep grain polished black by smoke and many hands. I whisper, “Please don’t go.”

  Then I pull the doors inward, drawing a sharp draft of cold air over us. I stand under the lintel, one foot forward, a slice of sun across my boot. It is as far as I can bring myself to go. I look at Muninn by my cheek, and he is perfectly still. Transfixed. As though he is trying to remember the sky.

  Out in the yard, Harald is throwing snowballs at Ole and Alric, and the two men seem to be fighting back. When my brother sees me, he stops and points. Everyone turns to look at me, but I ignore them. I stand there, waiting to see what Muninn does. It is not too late; I could close the doors.

  Muninn bobs his head, cocks it, and turns it, trying to see from all angles. His little talons shift on my shoulder as though he is preparing to leap away. I swallow and wait.

  And then I feel it. A cold drop of water on my forehead. I look up and see the icicle. Dripping. Melting. I look again at the yard and notice that the drifts of snow have begun to sigh and slump in the warmth.

  And on the breeze, I can almost hear the sound of voices, low echoes up the fjord. I listen to them and realize they do not come from the sea, but from the ravine. And they are not many, but one. I feel sick and clutch my stomach. I shut fast the hall doors against the sound. The groaning of ice.

  Above us, the glacier is waking.

  It seems so long ago, now, that Father ordered us to leave. So long since that early dawn when we boarded the ship under cover of darkness. We had so little time to prepare, but we took what we could. And Father chose carefully each man and woman he sent with us.

  Per, I think you were chosen because of all of Father’s men, he trusts you second only to Hake. And that trust extended to the men you brought with you, Gunnarr and Egill.

  Bera, I think you were chosen because you have served so faithfully, for so many years, and proven your love for my family. The same can be said of you, Ole.

  Raudi, I think Father chose you because he knows you have as much bravery, if not more, than did your brother, and he knows that you can be counted on when all others fail.

  And Hake. It is obvious why Father sent you after us with your men. If there is any warrior or force capable of protecting us, it would be you.

  Alric, you sit there silently, but I think you know Father better than anyone here, his mind and his will. In many ways, better than his own children. I think that is why you were chosen.

  Aside from me and my siblings, that is everyone.

  And knowing that, I ask you, which of you did Father misjudge?

  CHAPTER 14

  FEAR

  The ice over the fjord is thinning. The dark water laps it away from below, rising closer to the surface in faint, shadowy ribbons against the white. So long as the ice holds, we are safe. No ship can enter. But it is thinning, and I do not know how much longer it will resist.

  “Father will send someone soon,” Harald says. “To tell us that we can come home.”

  “That is the hope,” Hake says. “Come, we must return to the steading.”

  “Thank you for letting me look again,” I say to Hake on the way back.

  The berserker captain nods. I think he is irritated with me.

  We still do not know who might have left the footprints by the runestone those months ago, who or what might be out in the woods, and even though we have all come to suspect that the enemy is one of us, Hake takes no chances. He insists on accompanying me to the cliff where I go each day to check the ice. Hake thinks, like Harald, that I am excited for the opening of the fjord.

  But I am not.

  We walk through the gate, now left unguarded most of the time, and Hake closes it. With the surviving berserkers still weakened, there aren’t enough men to hold the wall anyway if the steading were attacked. The hall is our only safety.

  We go inside for our day meal. Porridge, as it always is. I am afraid to think about what I would trade for just a pat of butter and a drizzle of honey. I am sick of oats.

  After everyone has eaten, Alric pulls me aside. “We should think about what story you shall tell your father.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m sure when you tell him you want to be a skald, he’ll want you to demonstrate your skill. He’ll want to determine your aptitude for himself.”

  I begin to panic. “I can’t. Not for him.”

  “You must. And you can. You just need to practice, and that’s why I suggest we start now.”

  “No.” I’ve been so consumed by the fear of my dream, that I haven’t been thinking about my father or what awaits me back home. “I’m not ready.”

  “You need to be, Solveig. Winter is ending. You know it is.”

  I shake my head. “Just give me a few more days.” He sighs.

  “Just a few more days,” I say. “That’s all, I promise.”

  “All right, then. But this delay won’t help you. Practice will.” He shakes his head and walks away.

  A few days later, we are standing on the cliff, and the wind rushing up to us is warm enough to smell of the sea. And within a moment, Harald is jumping up and down. He points. I see it.

  An opening in the ice, a weeping seam.

  “We’ll go home now, won’t we?” Harald says.

  Hake lays his millstone hand on Harald’s shoulder. “Not until we’re sent for. Your father will wait until he is certain of your safety.”

  “But his messengers will be able to reach us now,” Harald says.

  “That is true.”

  Something knots up and sinks in my stomach, like a boiling-stone dropped in a kettle. I turn away from the cliff. “Come, Harald.”

  Hake raises an eyebrow at me.

  “What’s wrong?” Harald asks. “Aren’t you happy, Solveig?”

  No, I am frightened, but I won’t tell him that. “I’m tired. It’s been a long winter.”

  “It has,” Hake says. “Let’s go inside.”

  Once we’ve reached the hall, Harald tells everyone that the ice has broken, which prompts cheering and laughter. Everyone except Alric and me. The skald makes eye contact with me from across the room.

  Later that night, he asks if I am ready to begin preparing.

  Whether I am or not, I made a promise. “Let’s begin,” I say.

  “Good. First, we must select the story. Now, your father prefers the newer tales, nothing too old. He connects better with heroes of recent memory.”

  I nod.

  “He will have also just fought and, I trust, won a war. So something celebratory would probably endear you to him.”

  It is odd to think of my father in this way. As an audience. I have never paid attention to the particular songs and stories he has chosen. In this regard, he is a stranger to me, and Alric knows him better than I do, his own daughter. At that thought, a deep inadequacy pulls my gaze to the ground.

  Alric continues. “We should consider telling a tale about your father. To honor him. We need to do what we can to help your case.”

  “My case? Sir, you make it sound like a trial during the Thing.”

  “It is a trial, in a manner of speaking. You are making a claim that will require evidence. And witnesses. I will speak for you and recommend your talent, but you must supply the proof that you can do this.” He pauses. “You must believe in your own case, Solveig. If you doubt yourself, how can you expect your father to do any different? Do you believe?”

  I look up. “I want to believe.”

  “That will have to suffice for now.”

  For the next few hours, we discuss potential tales. Some I have never heard before, and Alric tells them quickly, touching on the important details. But then we turn to the events of my father’s own life, stories already told of him, again and again, so that I already know them by heart.

  “Isn’t there something tha
t hasn’t been told before?” I ask.

  “Perhaps …” Alric taps his chin. “Perhaps it is time to …”

  “Time to what?”

  He looks at me with a sly smile. “In fact, it might be the perfect time.”

  “Perfect time for what?”

  “A tale of your father before he was king. Do you know how he became the king he is today?”

  My father has been king for as long as I or even Asa have lived. I have never known him as anything else, and when I try to think of him as something less, my thoughts fail. But he was once a warrior like Per. I have heard the story of how he fought for another king who died in battle, and even as his fellow warriors fled, my father charged and defeated the enemy chieftain in single combat, claiming both crowns as his own. “Tell me,” I say.

  “Your father was not of noble birth. He was the son of a fisherman, but he left to become a warrior. It is said that as a young man he was vain and filled with dragon fire. This was in the days before he mastered his temper and became the man you know. There was a time when he would fight any and all at the slightest insult. He left no challenge unmet, and let no injury to his pride pass unpunished. He was wild, and feared.”

  I think of my father, so silent and immovable. How can a stone be wild?

  “And then one day, your father was walking down a road in a fine new cloak he had won in a bet. A rider galloped by him and splattered him with mud. Your father became enraged and shouted a challenge after the man. The rider turned and trotted back.

  “ ‘Peace, son,’ the rider said. ‘Let me buy you a new cloak.’

  “But your father would not hear him. He demanded single combat, and the rider obliged. But when the rider dismounted and removed his cloak, your father saw an old man covered in battle scars. He wore no armor —”

  “A berserker?” I ask.

  “Yes. When your father saw his opponent’s age, he smirked, thinking this would be an easy victory. But when they began to fight, with spears and swords and axes, your father realized that this old man still had strength in his bones. Their bodies and boots carved ruts in the road. Their battle lasted a day and a night, until dawn came, and shocked and exhausted, your father fell at last. But the berserker did not kill him.