Icefall

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “He was talking with Bera. He said nothing to me.”

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  “Where have you been?” Alric looks beyond me, toward the trees.

  “Nowhere,” I say. “Just wandering, thinking things through.”

  He nods, but lifts an eyebrow.

  I slide past him. “I would like to see Hake.”

  “Go, go,” he says, and shoos me on.

  I scamper down the length of the hall and hurry through the doors. Someone has moved Hake to a pallet on the floor. He reclines, propped up on his good arm and shoulder. He sees me, but his face is blank. He doesn’t call me over or wave to me. He looks away.

  I force myself to approach him. “Hake?”

  He grunts.

  “Hake, how do you feel?”

  “Broken.”

  That one word confirms what I had begun to fear. That he would rather have died. I keep my eyes down and turn to leave him.

  “Wait,” he says. “Come back.”

  Without lifting my eyes, I face him.

  “Bera told me what happened. What you did.”

  I drop down beside him. “Hake, I didn’t mean —”

  “I am not angry with you.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Well, I am angry you took such a risk. And I’m angry that Alric let you do it. But I also honor your bravery. Not one man in one hundred would have dared enter that shield-ring.” He reaches out with his wounded arm, wincing, and takes my chin between his thick thumb and first finger. “But I am not angry with you for saving me.”

  “But do you wish I hadn’t?”

  “I failed to protect you, your brother and sister.” He eases his hand away and looks at his wounded leg. “I fail even now. For this, I deserve to be a thrall to Gunnlaug. I do not deserve to be counted among my men. I do not deserve to have died honorably with them in battle.”

  I put my hand on his and feel the toughness of his skin. “Your men did not deserve to die. Not one of them. And you do not deserve to be a thrall. Not you. Not you, Hake. You are the only one left who has any honor. You are the only one who has always been honest and true with me.”

  He turns his hand over and grips mine. “I have spoken with Alric about you.” Then he rolls onto his back and shuts his eyes. “You must be honest and true with yourself.”

  “You think I am not?”

  “I think that after all that has happened, you are still afraid….”

  “Afraid of what?”

  He is falling asleep.

  “Hake, what do you think I’m afraid of?”

  “Trying.” He opens his eyes. “Sometimes, when we want something so badly, we fear failure more than we fear being without that thing.” He sighs. “Above all, be right with yourself.”

  I sit back. I stare at Hake’s closed eyes, already sleep-sliding. His words echo my thoughts of the wolf-king and leave me bare and trembling. Alric has said I don’t know the strength that is inside of me. That I am afraid of it.

  Several moments pass. Hake’s chest rises and falls, a slow rhythm.

  Perhaps I am afraid of testing that strength for fear I won’t be strong enough. Do I hold myself back, fettered? Could I be the very thing that I have feared, the cloud looming over the hall?

  No. The wolf cannot be me. I am only Solveig.

  I pull the blanket up over Hake. “Rest, now.” I stand and notice Bera watching me from the mealfire, and I go to her.

  “He is recovering faster than I expected,” she says.

  “He is Hake.”

  “Indeed, he is.” She crumbles some thyme into the meat she’s cooking. “He cares for you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “He loves my father.”

  She nods. “True enough. But it’s not just that. You’ve touched him somehow through that thick berserker pelt.”

  I like to think that maybe Hake does care for me, because I have come to care for him. Not as friend, or a father, but something in between. I watch him sleep for a few moments more.

  Gunnlaug has stripped away our berserker’s weapons and placed his mighty war hammer near the hearthfire for all to see. A trophy. Hake will never wield it again, and I know what that means to him. He’ll be given a hoe instead, his fieldwork no longer in battle, but in the sowing and harvesting of grain. The cowshed and pigsty will be his glory.

  I hurt for him.

  But I fight back my tears and help Bera finish preparing the night meal. Within hours, I will tell a story for Gunnlaug, praising a man who does deserve to die for what he has done. To our men. To Hake. To my family.

  It feels impossible.

  CHAPTER 20

  FETTERS

  The meal begins as it did the night before. Gunnlaug calls Harald and Asa to his table. He again serves their food and places it before them, but before they can eat, he addresses my brother.

  “You may take that and go eat with those of your household.”

  Harald holds his spoon and knife, confused. Asa grabs his arm.

  “Leave my table,” Gunnlaug says.

  Harald stands with his bowl and steps away, Asa’s fingers trailing after him. My brother’s face turns red as he crosses the hall, passing among Gunnlaug’s men. But he keeps his back straight, his eyes up. Pride in the face of an insult.

  “This is a calculated slight,” Alric whispers. “Harald is noble and should eat at the chieftain’s side.”

  “Gunnlaug is still waging a war,” Hake says.

  Harald reaches us and sits down beside me, then waits for all of us to be served before he eats. He is silent at first, but before long he is beaming at each bite our berserker captain takes, telling everyone that he knew Hake would live. I think it embarrasses Hake to have Harald watching him while he chews his food, but I am glad to have my brother close to me. I wish that Asa were here as well, but she is still up there, poking at her food while Gunnlaug drinks, and laughs, and slides up against her.

  It pushes me to an edge I didn’t know was there. And peering over it, a desperation begins to seize me.

  “Why did he send Harald away and not my sister?” I ask.

  “He’s cutting her off from her reinforcements,” Hake says. “He wants her to think she’s all alone. Outnumbered. So she’ll surrender.”

  “She won’t,” I say.

  But I see the doubt on Hake’s face. And Bera’s. And Alric’s. They think the war is already lost.

  I can only manage to eat a little. Muninn enjoys my food, but the nervous rattling in my stomach and chest has left me without appetite. My time is approaching, and I cannot fail.

  But it is hard to think about telling a story when I look at Gunnlaug next to my sister. Words evade me, like trying to catch dust in the air. The fear, the anger, and the apprehension scatter my mind, and my thoughts crumble even as I try to build them. I feel as I did when I first began to stand before the hall, unable to remember the story I had planned to tell. The story I rehearsed with Alric. Tonight, the story praising Gunnlaug.

  Gunnlaug. Across the room, he lifts his arm and drapes it around Asa’s neck.

  Everyone sees it. Some, like Alric, pretend not to. Hake balls his fists and stares at his leg. Bera and Raudi shake their heads. None of them can stop the chieftain. No one will save my sister. No one will save us.

  “Siv!” Gunnlaug bellows. “Stand up.”

  I rise to my feet.

  “Come forward.”

  I drift toward him, Muninn on my shoulder, until I stand before his table.

  Gunnlaug points at me. “I have given you more time than I should have to prepare. The time has come. Speak your tale.”

  Next to him, Asa is crying. She tries not to show it, but tears leak from her eyes when she blinks. Gunnlaug’s arm is a flesh-chain around her neck, binding her. She doesn’t even pull away. She accepts the fetter, staring at me, not helpless, but hopeless. She has surrendered, just as Hake said.

  I must save her. But how?

  A s
tory is not a weapon. If it were, I would thrust my spear-words straight into Gunnlaug’s heart. I would slice his throat with the blade of my voice and let the river of his blood pour freely on the ground.

  “I am waiting,” Gunnlaug says. “Or has your voice already failed you?”

  The men around me snicker.

  “It has not failed me,” I whisper.

  “What’s that?”

  “It has not failed me.”

  “I think it has.” Without taking his eyes from me, he slowly strokes my sister’s cheek with the back of his finger. At his touch, she looks up to the ceiling, or to someplace beyond it. “I see your anger,” Gunnlaug whispers to me. “Come. We both know who you are, Solveig.”

  No.

  At his words, the fog rolls away from my mind. This man may know my name, but he does not know who I am. He does not know what is inside me. I feel a swelling there, a rising strength and power. A howling in the wind that strains against the doubt and fear that bind me.

  The chieftain leans forward. “Shall we end this now?”

  I let go of the fetters. Muninn stretches his wings at my side.

  “We shall end it,” I say. “But not how you would see it finished.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is. You come here as a thief.”

  Angry murmurs begin to stew around me.

  But Gunnlaug waves his men to silence. “A thief, you say?”

  “Yes. But others have come to this place before. Like you, they sought to satisfy their greed and lust. My raven whispers to me of their fate, a fate that you will share.”

  There is a moment of silence in which I realize that everyone is watching me, and I am surprised that it does not bother me now, for I know it means they are all listening to me. A weapon-tale is forming in my mind. A sword-story. The truest tale I have ever told. The earlier doubt I glimpsed in Gunnlaug has returned to his brow. He pulls away from Asa and leans back, arms folded across his chest.

  The inspiration for one of Alric’s stories rises in my mind. “There is a runestone down among the trees near the shore. Its rock-voice tells of a warrior felled by the treachery of one who sought his lands and his wife. Have you seen this stone?”

  Gunnlaug shakes his head.

  “It is but a short distance from where you sit now. A restless place. Would you have me tell you what is inscribed upon it?”

  It takes a very long moment for Gunnlaug to nod.

  I raise my voice. “Many generations have passed since the glacier first sounded its cry of retreat and crawled back up the mountains to brook and moan. When the fields were rich and ripe, a warrior brought his wife here and built a hall. Her beauty surpassed the sea’s, and even the mountains and the sky waged war to prove which could better please her.”

  I look directly at Asa. And as I do, so does Gunnlaug, as though he is seeing her for the first time. I continue.

  “The world all knew of her as they knew of the sun, by her warmth and the light with which she shone. But there was an enemy who harbored a secret hatred in his heart-fjord, a man who desired the woman for his own.”

  I stare at Gunnlaug.

  “He came with treachery to the warrior’s hall, with an army to swear a false allegiance, and once inside the steading walls, the enemy let loose their swords and raised their spears. They murdered the warrior and all of his men, spreading the yard with slaughter-dew.”

  I wonder if Gunnlaug is aware of what I am doing. But it does not matter if he is. Men are often aware of the axe-blow in the moment before it lands. I continue.

  “The enemy buried the warrior down by the waterside, in the ground, without a barrow for his bones or a stone to speak the story of his life. And then he went up to the hall to claim the woman as his wife. He ate and drank the spoils of the warrior’s death late into the night, as wolf-howls sounded in the silent wood.”

  Here, I look directly into Gunnlaug’s eyes. He tips his head to one side and stares back at me, perhaps not aware after all. He shall be soon.

  “And then a distant roar broke upon the hall, a sound of rage and hunger, and a groan filled every ear with ice, and every warrior shook with growing fear. The wailing drew nearer, up from the waterside, advancing as a storm-rise out at sea. The enemy ordered every man to arms, and marched out with them into the moonlit night. They shivered as the shrieking voice, now closer, called the woman’s name.”

  I pause and look around.

  “And then over the hill he came, a haugbui. The corpse-giant of the fallen warrior, risen from its grave death-corrupted, rot-blackened, hate-swollen, and mountain-strong.”

  I pause to let the hall sit in its silence and the haunted groaning of the glacier. Gunnlaug’s eyes are open wide, his face pale. There is now a space between him and my sister. I have frightened him. Me.

  “The sight,” I say, “drove the enemy soldiers mad. Some cowards tried to flee before the beast, but the dead warrior snatched them up and snapped their necks like twigs. Those few with any honor fought to hold their ground, but no axe, nor spear, nor sword could kill what was already dead, and all were felled until their leader stood alone to face the dead warrior.”

  Gunnlaug leans toward me, following my flashing lure-words like a fish.

  “They clashed, and though the enemy was strong, the haugbui was stronger. It broke and sundered the enemy’s body, then stood amidst the wreckage of its wrath. In pain it called the woman’s name again, and hearing him, she came out from her hiding in the hall. She took his bloody, trembling hand and towed the black ship of his body back down to the shore, down to the earth-sea from which he had arisen. She guided him back into his grave, and having given her love and loyalty, she lay down by his side, with her arms around him, to sleep the last sleep.”

  Asa is crying. I wish I could tell her that her warrior is also under the ground. But I can’t, for I know she would, too, go to him.

  I continue. “And her handmaidens came forth to cover them, to bury them, and mourn their love, both winter-deep and legend-strong.”

  The tale is finished, but I do not bow my head. Muninn caws beside me. Gunnlaug is silent, as still as the runestone I have just spoken of.

  “The warrior is still here,” I say. “He sleeps under the hall. Can you not feel him watching you?”

  Around me, Gunnlaug’s men shift on their benches, a haugbui over each of their shoulders.

  I reach up and stroke Muninn. “He still protects the women of his fjord.”

  Gunnlaug says nothing. I remain poised, waiting. And still he says nothing. He says nothing until my confidence begins to weaken, like a creaking in the ice beneath my feet, and I swallow. In that moment the chieftain stands and sidles, very subtly, away from Asa. Perhaps no one else notices it, but I do, and I know what I have done.

  At least, for now, I have saved my sister.

  “I am convinced,” Gunnlaug says. “You are a skald.”

  I am windblown by disbelief, and a rush of relief lowers my tense shoulders.

  Gunnlaug bends over the table into the hall, propped up on his fists. “I perceive the truth of your tale. But it is a tale no skald would have dared tell. Not to me. Unless that skald was also of noble blood.”

  It takes a moment to know that I have heard him. And then I become frantic.

  “You are Solveig,” he says.

  “Sir, I —”

  “Silence!” Gunnlaug pounds the table, knocking a goblet off its foot. “I will not be lied to! You will only make it worse for them.” He points in the direction of Hake, Bera, Raudi, and Alric. “Do you understand me?”

  I nod. My vision is collapsing, my thoughts are thinning.

  Gunnlaug tosses something to one of his men. “Take this and lock those deceivers out in the larder.”

  “No,” I say.

  Men marshal around me, all leather clothes and scuffing boots. They take hold of Bera, Alric, and Raudi. They force Hake to his feet. Bera argues with them about the cold, pleading for he
r son, while Raudi shouts to defend his mother. Alric calls to me, while Hake sways next to him. I watch Gunnlaug’s men drag them all from the hall, and I feel as able to stop it as I do the waves and the tides. What power I felt inside me, whatever I thought I was, is gone. I am not the wolf.

  I round on Gunnlaug. “Please don’t do this.”

  He frowns at me. “Solveig the Skald. You and your sister will share the bedcloset tonight.” Then he turns his back on both of us and goes to the middle of the room. “Where is that traitor, Ole?”

  I look for him, but do not see him in the hall.

  “He is gone,” says one of Gunnlaug’s men.

  “No, he isn’t.” The chieftain looks through the open door. “He is out there. And tomorrow, we’ll find him and that coward, Per. Their bodies shall join this haugbui in the ground.”

  This is not what I thought would happen. But then what did I think? How could I have thought to save us with a story? How could I have ever believed in myself? The others are in greater peril now than before.

  And it is my fault.

  The bedcloset is as cold and hollow as an iron cauldron left outside in the snow. I wanted to bring Harald in with us, but Gunnlaug insisted my brother sleep among his men. Muninn seemed reluctant to enter, so I left him among the rafters, praying that superstition keeps him safe.

  Asa and I lie apart from each other. She is crying, and her sniffing and heaving infuriate me. Why did she submit to him? How could she surrender to Gunnlaug? If she had been stronger, I might not have been so reckless with my tale. I might have instead recited what Alric and I had planned, and the others would still be in the hall instead of freezing out in the larder.

  “Solveig?”

  I snap inside. “What?”

  She inches closer to me. “Thank you.”

  I ignore her.

  “You saved me.”

  I roll away, but she reaches out and takes my arm.

  “You were so brave,” she says. “You stood up to him —”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Why didn’t you stand up to him?”

  She lets me go, and in disgust I move to the edge of the closet, as far from her as I can.

  “I’m not strong like you,” she says.