Icefall

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “Gunnlaug thinks he should sleep with those of his household,” says our former thrall.

  “What about Asa?” I ask. But then I see Gunnlaug leading her away, back to the bedcloset. I panic. “Where is he taking her?”

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” Ole says. “Asa will have the bedcloset to herself. She is to be his queen, and a queen can’t sleep among her husband’s men.”

  “It seems that things have turned out well for you, old man,” Alric says.

  Ole rubs his wrist. “They can for you as well, skald. And for your apprentice, as long as she stops acting the fool.”

  “She will,” Alric says.

  Ole walks away.

  “Come,” Alric says. “Let us find a quiet corner. We can all sleep near one another.”

  Everyone but Asa. I don’t care what Ole says. I saw the way Gunnlaug looked at her, and I wish I could sleep in the bedcloset with her.

  “We need to sleep near Hake,” Bera says. “So I can watch him during the night.”

  Before long, we’re all situated on benches and on the floor around our berserker captain. Bera changes out the cloaks over him for blankets. I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but Hake seems to be resting more peacefully now. I nestle down next to Harald, wanting to put my arms around him, my nose in his hair, but I don’t dare.

  “What will happen to us?” Harald asks me.

  “I don’t know. But try not to worry.” I lean in and whisper, “Father will save us.”

  “Yes. Father,” Harald says.

  Such a little story to tell him. I close my eyes, wishing I believed it.

  But I don’t sleep. Not fully. I stand at a crossing on the dreamroads, as sounds barely heard from the waking hall are half-shaped by the darkness. The sleeping men massed around me twist into trolls. Whispered conversations become the low murmurs of the dead and undead. And then I hear a scratching and see black nails carving fell shapes into a runestone.

  “What’s that scratching?” someone asks.

  “It’s at the door,” comes a reply.

  “What’s at the door?”

  “Open it.”

  The metal hinges squeal, opening my eyes.

  “It’s a raven,” someone says.

  I sit up.

  “A raven?” another asks.

  “It just came through the door.”

  Now Alric is up, and Harald. Across the room, a little black shape hops and flaps across the floor, over the men lying all around.

  “Muninn!” I call.

  My raven caws. He makes his way toward me, and men stir beneath his little talons. Some bat him away, still dozing. Some sit up, blank-eyed, and watch him pass.

  Muninn reaches us, and takes his place on my shoulder. I laugh and I cry. I stroke his head, his back, his bent wing, his night-feathers.

  “Hello, bird of Odin,” I say. “Hello, my memory. You came back to me.”

  “What is this?” Gunnlaug shouts, stomping over his men toward me.

  The chieftain’s voice startles Muninn from my shoulder. The raven leaps and flutters up onto Hake’s table. I jump to my feet, and as Gunnlaug reaches me, we both find Muninn perched on the sleeping berserker’s chest, where he caws, shifting from foot to foot.

  The sight brings Gunnlaug up sharply. He stares, dumbfounded.

  Alric glides toward us. “Berserkers are Odin’s men, after all. I wonder what the Allfather’s messenger brings on its wings?”

  Gunnlaug points at me. “You called it Muninn.”

  “That is his name. Hake gave him to me.”

  “He sits on her shoulder,” Alric says. “And whispers stories to her. Have you ever heard of such a skald?”

  A crease of doubt forms in Gunnlaug’s brow. I do not think he knows what to do. One of his men offers to remove Muninn from the hall. But Gunnlaug shakes his head.

  “The skald is right. Odin’s man. Odin’s bird. The raven stays as long as it wants to.” Gunnlaug turns away. “Back to sleep, all of you.”

  I stare at the chieftain’s back and smile. Gunnlaug, it appears, is a man of superstition. He bends to lore and fears the gods.

  Stories have power over him.

  CHAPTER 19

  PER

  I wake feeling more joy than should be possible, given all that has happened. But I have my Muninn. He stands on my knee, and I feed him from my own bowl, just as I did yesterday morning. It seems that he has been gone much longer than a day, that more time has passed since Gunnlaug came wolf-snarling into the fjord.

  I help Bera and Raudi clean up after the day meal, which takes up so much time that as soon as we’ve finished, Bera has to start preparing the night meal.

  Bera grinds her teeth and mutters to herself. “All I know is they had better find someone else to wash their clothes.”

  Raudi leans into me. “I think Alric is wrong. You should be honest, even if that means taking a side. What good is a story if it’s a lie?”

  “You think I should only tell stories that really happened?”

  “Not that kind of lie. A lie about yourself, and what you believe in.”

  “I think Alric would say that a story isn’t about the storyteller.”

  “I think that sounds like someone trying to make themselves feel better about saving their own skin.”

  I smile. “Maybe you’re right. Alric is the bench-ornament, isn’t he? Not you. Especially after you offered to stay and fight with the others.”

  He looks away.

  “I have to tell you, Raudi. I’m glad Hake didn’t let you fight. But you were so brave in the face of death.”

  “But I’m not afraid to die.” His voice is sharp.

  It takes a moment for the meaning of his words to reach me. “What?”

  He sighs, and it sounds like he’s been holding it in for a long time. “I’m not a coward because I’m afraid to die. I’m a coward because I’m afraid to kill another man.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “It was so hard when my brother died,” he says. “My mother wept for days. I wept. It’s never been the same since.” He turns to me. “How can I do that to someone else? Every warrior has a family waiting back home. Even the enemy.”

  After all the years I’ve known him, I realize how little I understand Raudi. The goodness in him is inspiring. I put my arm around his shoulder. “That’s what you were crying about that day in the practice yard?”

  He nods. “But for you,” he says, “and for my mother, I would have stayed to fight.”

  “Raudi,” I say. “You’re the bravest warrior I’ve ever known.”

  He blushes, and a moment later I pull my arm away. Then his mother calls him, and I decide to check on Hake. His fever has come down, his breathing is more even, and some color has returned to his face. Bera checks his wounds and changes the poultices and bandages. Hake’s leg looks horrible, but Bera says it should heal with time.

  “Though I’ve begun to wonder what I’m healing him for.” She removes one of his blankets. “To be a thrall to Gunnlaug, more than likely.”

  I bite my lip. Perhaps it was wrong of me to save him, after all. What was it Hake said about the berserker he banished? To serve as a thrall would be worse than death? After what happened last night, I am certain Gunnlaug would take great plea sure in bringing Hake low.

  “When do you think he’ll wake up?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Even without injuries and blood loss, the berserkergang can leave a warrior unconscious for days after the battle. But it is Hake, and he is not like other men.”

  “I wish he were awake now.”

  Bera looks on me kindly. “I do, too, though it’s a selfish wish. Asleep, he is unaware.”

  I touch Hake’s cheek and go to find Alric, leaving Muninn among the rafters. With my raven come back to me, and after seeing Gunnlaug’s weakness, I feel more confident about telling a story tonight, though I do not know what story I will tell. The thought of singing Gunnlaug’s praises knots m
y chest into a mass of anger and disgust.

  The skald is not in the hall, so he must be out in the yard. Gunnlaug has been somewhat lax with us, allowing us the freedom of the steading. The mountain pass is still frozen. He knows we can’t leave the fjord except by ship, and the vessels are kept under constant guard. I find Alric talking to some of Gunnlaug’s men. He is laughing with them.

  When he sees me, he bids them farewell and comes over. “I’ve been learning a few things about Gunnlaug. For tonight. Let us go where we might have some privacy and compose.”

  I nod, and we move away from the hall, back to the garden patch and the stacks of chopped wood. I sit on a stump scarred by axe blows, and Alric paces around me. He lists several accomplishments from Gunnlaug’s early life: the killing of a great stag, the besting of a rival for Gunnlaug’s first wife, his rise to power following the death of his father.

  “The chieftain will be pleased to hear you mention these things,” he says.

  I nod.

  “And now” — Alric takes a deep breath — “we must discuss his defeat of your father.”

  I open my mouth.

  But Alric holds up his hand. “I know what is in your heart. This will be a final test of your quality as a skald. Can you put aside your own anger and hatred? Can you praise Gunnlaug’s cleverness, his strategy? Can you sing of his love for your sister, and the injustice in your father’s refusal of Gunnlaug’s bride-price? Because that is what a skald must do, and what you must do to prove to Gunnlaug that you are a skald’s apprentice.”

  I clench my jaw. “I can only try.”

  “True enough. But if you do not succeed, Gunnlaug will kill me for my deception. And possibly Ole as well. Our lives depend on you.”

  My resolve falters. I had not thought about what it will mean for Alric if I fail, or even Ole, who is a traitor.

  “And if I am not mistaken,” Alric says, “you were the one who said you wanted to be a skald.”

  A heaviness greater than the deepest snowfall has settled on me, and I feel like I’m suffocating. I whisper under the weight of it. “I did not think this is what it meant to be a skald.” In spite of what I feel, if Alric’s life depends on me, I can do nothing but honor Gunnlaug.

  Alric sits down on the stump next to me. “This is the shadow-side of what it means to be a skald. A side I had hoped you would never have to see. I had thought you might replace me in your father’s hall. Serve him comfortably, and then your brother when he becomes king.”

  His words stop me. “But … what about you?”

  “I would find a new king. Or a chieftain. They are easy enough to come by.”

  I don’t know what to say. “Thank you, Alric.” In spite of my anger toward him, I am touched by his willingness to sacrifice his position for me. “But I could never truly take your place. You are a better skald than I will ever be.”

  “I am not.” He slaps his thighs and stands. “Let’s begin.”

  We work for several hours. We talk about the words, the language, the high moments of greatest importance, and the quiet moments to pause. I work hard to remember what Alric tells me, what we practice, though the story tastes of decay and corruption. I feel soiled while it remains in my mouth, and anticipate the relief I will feel in spitting it out and ridding myself of its taint.

  “I think that is enough for now,” Alric says. “Take some time, rehearse it. Prepare yourself. We should go over it again together, before the night meal.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll leave you to it.” Alric walks away toward the yard.

  I sit on the stump for several moments longer and look up at the sky. Clouds tower over the hall, mountain-scraped and ponderous.

  Their folds shift before my eyes, kneaded by the wind, changing their shape and drawing me in. After a few moments of gazing, I feel myself falling upward, spinning, dizzy. And then in the white, a long tooth takes shape. Then teeth, a maw, a bristling neck. I recoil from a wolf’s head made of cloud, high in the air, as big as the fjord, large enough to swallow our hall. It is what I saw in my dream.

  First the longships, and now the wolf. The burning of the hall will come next. And after that, the ice. Our destruction.

  I run.

  There is no escaping it. The wolf is every where over me, watching, overwhelming in its immensity. I must hide from it, but it is the sky. How do you hide from the sky? I fly across the field, wishing I were a tiny mole, able to scurry underground. To my left I see the copse of trees where Per took us, and I scramble there, to the clearing, to the trapdoor over the old larder. Someone has closed it, and I dig and kick through the wet snow until I find it. I heave it open and rush down the stairs without shutting the door behind me, down under the sheltering earth.

  My breath is ragged, my thoughts and emotions frayed. I feel as though I have been pushed to the edge of a perilous cliff, and I am close, so close to falling down into the crashing sea.

  “Solveig?”

  I scream and jump. And then there is a hand over my mouth. I can’t breathe. I thrash and kick. I strain against a blackness that suffocates me, but it is too strong.

  “Solveig!” a familiar voice says. “Stop, it’s me, Per.”

  I cease fighting. I open my eyes. He takes his hand from my mouth.

  “Per?”

  He releases me and steps back, but I fall toward him and wrap my arms around him. And then I am sobbing and pounding on him as my whole body shakes. All the grief and fear and rage of the last few days come rushing out of me. Per holds me until I am spent, and I pull away from him, wiping my nose and my eyes. He is changed from when I last saw him. His eyes are red with exhaustion and the wild fear of the hounded. Long strands of his hair have pulled free of their braid and hang in his face. He looks smaller.

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  He nods. “Well enough. Hungry. Did Gunnlaug bring food?”

  “He did, but I don’t have anything with me.”

  He nods, staring at the floor.

  “Is this where you’ve been hiding?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Gunnlaug has been hunting for you.”

  “He doesn’t know about this place. Hake killed the three who found it. The ones who found you.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I watched him do it.”

  “You were there?”

  He nods.

  Then why didn’t you help us? I want to ask.

  “It all happened so fast,” he says, as though he heard my question. “I didn’t know what to do. And then Alric was there and you all ran off with him.” Per begins to pace, ploughing his fingers through his hair. “What could I have done? Fight Hake? He would have killed me, and then he would have killed Asa. And Harald and you. I did the only thing I could do, the best thing to do. I stayed hidden. I knew that Alric would see you to safety.” His words have the quality of a well-worn path he’s been down many times before.

  But I cannot follow him there. “There was nowhere safe for Alric to take us.”

  He acts as though he hasn’t heard me. “How is Asa?”

  “Gunnlaug is going to marry her.”

  He stops pacing. To himself, he says, “I knew it.”

  “Knew what?” His words remind me of what Gunnlaug and Ole said. About his part. “What did you know?”

  He turns away from me and crouches in the darkness, beyond the curtain of light falling through the opening above.

  “Per, what did you do?”

  “You should go back, Solveig.”

  “Per, I need you to tell me.”

  He sighs. “Forget you found me. Just go.”

  “Not before you tell me —”

  “Go!”

  I step back, surprised. And then I grow angry. “What about you, Per? How long will you hide down here? What about Asa? What about all of us? You swore you would protect us!”

  “I’m sorry. There is nothing I can do.”

  “
But my sister. I thought you loved her.”

  He is silent a long time, and then I hear a halting gasp. “I do love her. Everything I have done has been for her. But I am powerless.”

  Everything about him, the slack in his voice, the slope of his shoulders, the bend in his neck, all of it speaks of defeat, and the part of me that had placed my hope in him dies. My sadness and disappointment are as raw and torn as the earth around a fresh grave. But I know how it feels to be powerless, and even in this moment I am able to find pity for him.

  I turn to leave. “I will try to bring you some food.”

  He coughs. “I would not have you put yourself in any danger for me.”

  “Please, don’t.” I mount the stairs. “The time for such honor has passed.” I reach the top, step out into the open, and close the trapdoor. I do my best to cover it with snow and leave Per buried.

  I trudge back to the hall utterly vanquished. We are lost. There is no one who can save us. Hake lies wounded. Alric will never turn on his audience. I would not want Bera and Raudi to risk themselves. Harald is a child. And Per — Per hides.

  To my relief, the wolf-cloud has broken up and run away in pieces over the sea. I am reminded of the wolf I saw from the steading wall those months ago. The wolf-king, ember-eyed and covered in frost as he turned and vanished into the trees. So powerful. So right with his world and himself. It makes me wonder how it is that wolves have come to be thought of as evil. There was nothing wicked in the creature I glimpsed, stunning in his mortality, noble in himself.

  I stop walking. If there is nothing inherently evil in a wolf, then why have I so feared one? Why have I seen Gunnlaug as the wolf-cloud? There is nothing noble in the chieftain, and in my dream, I realize it was not the wolf that destroyed us, but the fire and ice that came after. Perhaps the wolf is something else. Someone else yet to come.

  “Siv!” Alric stands waving by the hall.

  I quicken my pace, cross the field, and enter the garden patch.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Hake is awake. I thought you would want to know.”

  I inhale. “How is he?”