The Hills of Home (The Song of the Ash Tree Book 2)

by T L Greylock

  Raef had cut down two men before the raiders began to fight back, their surprise turned to ferocity, but there was no chance for them to form a coherent defense for Raef’s warriors pressed from both sides, pinning them into a narrow channel where every man had to fight for himself. Raef seized on his next target, his sword slashing down as he aimed for the warrior’s shoulder. The man raised his shield in time to stop the blade from biting his flesh and Raef’s sword caught firm in the wood. Without hesitating, Raef released his grip on the sword and whipped his axe from his belt with his right hand, chopping into the warrior’s left side with a single swift motion. The axe went deep and the warrior lurched and arched his neck, a howl of pain forming on his lips. He was silenced with an arrow to the throat and Raef retrieved both axe and sword from the body, his sights already set on his next kill.

  Three more men fell to his blades before the spray of blood caught Raef in the face, blinding him to the crush of battle. Raef raised his arm to wipe away the hot, sticky blood with his sleeve, but before he could see clearly, a small knife tore open the side of his thigh, thrown from a distance by a practiced hand. Raef roared against the pain and, dropping his axe, put his hand to the wound, whirling at the same time to raise his sword against the oncoming charge of an enemy warrior. Blade met blade and the force of the charge cost Raef his balance, sending him sliding through the slushy snow covering the beach. Yanking a knife from his belt, Raef thrust it into his opponent’s neck just as they toppled into the icy waters of the fjord.

  Raef sunk, the heavy weight of the dying warrior pinning him into the shallow water. The sudden cold had elicited a sharp indrawn breath and his mouth and nose flooded. Shoving the dead weight away, Raef surged to the surface, choking, gasping, and spluttering all at once. In vain, Raef’s fingers searched the rocky bottom for his sword and he blinked away the water from his eyes only to see a figure leap from the nearest of the longships, sword poised to drive into Raef’s chest. Throwing himself into deeper water, Raef eluded the death blow, and then both men were on their feet, submerged to the thigh and unarmed, for the impact against the water had cost the warrior his grip on his sword.

  “Death to Skallagrim,” his opponent screamed, then launched himself at Raef, sending them both under the water once more. Raef twisted and lashed out with his feet, one boot missing and the other making contact with something that felt like a skull. Hands grabbed at Raef’s clothing, scratching, clawing, seizing him around his waist until they were tangled together, a mass of thrashing limbs. They tumbled for a moment and Raef felt his lungs begin to burn. They surfaced together, in shallower water now, and then Raef found the bottom with his feet. Planting one leg, he brought his other knee to the warrior’s chest, felt the ribs crack, felt the breath burst from him in a sudden painful gust, and the warrior went limp just long enough for Raef to grab him by the neck with both hands. Raef kneed him again and then plunged him under the water. Tightening his grip, Raef pushed down until the warrior was on the bottom. The warrior kicked and lashed out with his arms, but already his strength was fading, throttled from him by Raef’s hands.

  When he was quiet, when the thrashing had stopped and the bubbles had vanished, Raef held on for a moment longer, then released the drowned man. The body floated up, the face frozen in agony, the dead hands reaching for Raef. Raef recognized that face. It was not one he knew well, not one he could put a name to, but it belonged to Vannheim, to his father, to him. And now that man had died cursing the name of Skallagrim.

  Raef dragged the body from the water and let it fall on the shore, retrieved his sword from the shallows, then headed back into the killing ground. Bodies littered the snow, their dead limbs choking the living into a confined space. There was no more beauty, no more skill, only desperate bloodletting.

  A voice sounded over the din of battle. “Skallagrim!”

  Raef searched the melee while the voice roared twice more, and at last he knew who had brought death to the Vestrhall. Snorren Thoken had the broken shaft of an arrow protruding from his shoulder and his shield was a splintered ruin, but somehow he and a small circle of warriors held their ground, defying the efforts of Raef’s men to draw them out from the safety of their comrades.

  But the moment Raef’s eyes locked with Snorren’s, the dark-bearded warrior broke from the circle and began to close the distance between them, heedless of the danger around him. Raef took a deep breath and glanced quickly at the wound in his thigh where the knife had ripped open his flesh. The cold water and the battle-fire had numbed the pain but did nothing to slow the flow of blood. Tearing a piece of cloth from a dead man, Raef wrapped it around his thigh and tied a hasty knot, all while Snorren bore down on him with eyes blind to everything but Raef. The cloth would help, but it was a poor bandage and would not long stem the loss of blood. Raef needed to end this fight, and soon.

  Raef adjusted his grip on his sword, wishing he had time to recover his axe from where it lay further up the beach in the snow, and plucked a shield from the ground as Snorren broke into a run, a snarl fixed on his blood-streaked face. They were but ten paces apart when a figure stepped from the shadows, sword raised in defiance of Snorren’s charge, face obscured by the night. Snorren did not slow, but the unknown warrior did not shy away and he threw his shield, catching Snorren in the chest and throwing the bigger man off balance. Spinning away, Snorren kept his feet, but his eyes were on the new challenger now. His steps were quick and sure, his sword a dull gleam in the starlight as he charged the unknown warrior, who did not move. Raef could not understand why, and then, just as Snorren was in striking distance, the warrior took a single, limping, lurching step to the side, a feeble attempt to avoid the oncoming sword, and Raef knew.

  He heard himself shout, felt the shield drop from his hand, felt his legs begin to churn beneath him, but he was too late. Snorren’s sword stabbed into the man’s belly and he dropped as a stone does to a river bottom. Raef was upon Snorren the next instant and he shoved his blade into Snorren’s back and up through his shoulders until the tip protruded out of his chest, tickling his chin. Snorren writhed, his mouth working furiously but no sound came out.

  Raef leaned in close to the dying man’s ear and said, “My father waits for you in Valhalla, usurper, and will kill you a thousand times again.”

  Shoving Snorren off his sword, Raef dropped to his knees next to the warrior who had taken Snorren’s blade for him. Blood poured from the wound, black like the night sky above, and though Raef put his hands to the ruptured flesh, he knew it was hopeless. The warrior looked up at him, a feeble but content smile on his pale, sweaty face.

  “Why, Gudrik?” Raef’s voice tumbled out of him, ragged and broken.

  “Do not be angry with me, Raef.” Gudrik spoke quietly but his voice was as calm and fluid as ever.

  “Never. But why would you throw your life away like this?”

  Gudrik’s breath caught and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. “What is my life worth if I cannot defend my friend?” Raef began to protest, but Gudrik persisted. “I made this choice, Raef. Now I may go to my fathers in Valhalla and know I am worthy of a place there.”

  If words could heal Gudrik’s fatal wound, if words could make the poet see Raef’s grief, see that there was no shame in living a life of music and words, crippled as Gudrik might be, he would have poured them out of his heart. But he would not tarnish Gudrik’s final act. With a shaky, bloody hand, Raef touched Gudrik’s cheek.

  “Then go in peace, friend. Look for my coming.” It was a lie. Raef knew he would never join Gudrik in Valhalla, but he kept that to himself.

  Gudrik tried to smile again, but it turned to a grimace and the poet coughed, his body wracked with the grip of death. Seizing Raef’s hand, Gudrik squeezed, his eyes going wide as he stared into Raef’s face. His body gave two tiny jerks and then Raef saw the spark of life slip from Gudrik’s eyes and the hand that gripped Raef’s went limp.

  A violent, angry roar filled Raef�
�s ears and he realized it was his own howl of grief as he tipped his head back and screamed to the stars.

  Around him, the battle was ended and his men were victorious. To a man, the raiders had been slaughtered, though the cost to Raef’s men was high. Only half of his warriors were on their feet. The other half lay in the snow with the dead.

  “Lord.” A warrior looked down on Raef, who was not yet ready to let go of Gudrik. “What should we do with the bodies of the enemy?”

  Raef was weary of death. “Burn them. Give them the honor they might have earned, had Snorren not turned their ears and hearts against me.”

  “All?”

  Raef’s gaze slid to the corpse of Snorren Thoken. “Take his head. Put it above the gate. Let Snorren’s skull serve as a warning.”

  “And the body?”

  “Throw it in the fjord. The fish can fight over his flesh.”

  “It shall be done, lord.”

  With the fire of battle burned out and Raef’s soaked clothes freezing in the air, the cold had begun to sink into Raef, and yet still he knelt beside Gudrik, the tears he felt in his heart remaining unshed.

  One by one the bodies were carried through the village and out the gates, then laid to rest in a heap, awaiting the flames. With the help of the villagers, Raef’s men worked through the night, felling trees, erecting five pyres, and dividing the bodies among them. Raef placed Gudrik’s body on one, and, as the sky began to lighten in the east, set the torch to the oil. The other four pyres were lit as one and the hot blazes brought a different kind of dawn to Vannheim. By then, even children had come to witness the funeral. The villagers, solemn faces reflecting the flames, stood in silence and Raef knew they were watching friends, brothers, and sons burn. Above it all, Snorren’s head sat atop a spear, his dead eyes rolled up, staring toward the breaking day.

  Raef watched the fires burn until the smoke made his eyes sting, his clothes half frozen from the fjord, half dried by the heat of the pyre. But as he turned to the gates, intent on shutting himself in his chamber and drinking mead until he no longer saw Gudrik’s face, he saw movement to the east, horses breaking out of the trees and rounding a curve in the fjord’s shoreline, Vannheim’s banner streaming in the wind. They grew closer and Raef saw Finnolf Horsebreaker at their head and Dvalarr the Crow just behind.

  Finnolf pulled his horse up hard in front of Raef, his eyes reflecting the fires and then looking up to the top of the gate to rest on Snorren’s head. Raef did not need to tell him what had happened. Finnolf jumped to the ground and took a knee at Raef’s feet.

  “Lord, forgive me. They slipped through our noose and vanished. We rode through the night in the hopes of catching them.”

  Raef felt anger bubble up inside him, though his mind told him Finnolf could not be blamed. “Did you think to look to the sea?”

  Finnolf’s face fell and he closed his eyes. “Ships,” he said, almost to himself.

  “We would all be dead if not for a stroke of luck.”

  Finnolf lowered his head. “I have failed.”

  Raef wanted to rage at the captain, but he bit back his words and turned away. It was only then that he saw Siv and Vakre, their faces two among the many that had returned with Finnolf. He slowed only a step, his relief at seeing them unharmed overwhelmed by his sudden anger at their disappearance and failure to bring Snorren down, then brushed past the onlookers and returned to his hall. He spent the day in solitude with only a cask of mead for company. Three times there was knocking on his door and three times Raef did not even give the disturbance a flicker of thought as he sat in his chamber before the empty hearth, ensconced behind the walls of his own mind.

  Only at twilight did he emerge from the darkness of his chamber and allow Aldrif the healer to clean and stitch the wound in his thigh. When she had finished, he wiped the dried blood from his face and hands and left the hall without a word to any who saw him. In the village, Raef sought out an old woman who had lived in a tiny hut near the gate for as long as anyone could remember. She had a name but to every man, woman, and child in the village, she was simply known as Grandmother.

  She was at home, as Raef expected, bent over a cooking pot, her white hair falling over her shoulder in a thin braid. For a moment, he thought of Siv, and wondered if her red-gold braid would look like this when she was old. Grandmother turned at Raef’s entrance, a ladle in her hand, and she blew on the soup and tasted it twice before acknowledging his presence.

  “Best I ever made,” she said with a wink as she returned the ladle to the pot.

  The smell of the soup cooking and the warmth of the fire seeped into Raef’s senses and he felt himself relax for the first time since listening to Gudrik tell the story of Eileif the night before. Exhaustion set in, taking the place of some of the anger that festered in him, and for a long moment, Raef was content to stand by her hearth and Grandmother let him do so as though having the lord of Vannheim staring into her fire were a nightly occurrence.

  She hummed as she went about her business, the sound so light and faint that Raef could not pick up the tune, but the sound of her voice was welcome. Only when she had ladled soup into two bowls and poured ale for them both did she speak again.

  “Eat. Before it gets cold.” Her face creased in a gentle smile and Raef did as she instructed. The first spoonful burned his tongue but it awoke his hunger and he began to eat with abandon, slurping and swallowing until his bowl was empty. She refilled it and by the time Raef had emptied it again, her own bowl was still half full. She smiled again. “And now you will wait,” she said, and Raef felt himself a child, admonished for eating too quickly and forced into patience as penitence. The thought brought a hint of a smile to his face, no doubt as she had intended, and Raef knew he had been right to seek her out.

  When Grandmother finished, she set down her spoon with precision and drank the last sip of her ale. Then, folding her hands in front of her, she looked at Raef, her eyes still kind, but with new vigor in the blue depths. “Now,” she said, “what would you like?”

  Raef inhaled and spoke. “Therein lies the problem, Grandmother. I do not know. And yet I feel I want to do this, to mark this day in some manner.”

  She nodded. “Tell me, then, what your heart feels.”

  Raef was unsure where to begin, but the words began to fall from his lips. “I am not the man I once was. That man was a warrior, a sea-farer, strong and skilled. He was a son, young and content with the world.”

  “And what are you now?”

  “I have tasted bitter sorrow and burning pain. I have a promise of vengeance in my bones. I have flown with the wind in my face and the sun in my heart. I have walked in barren Jötunheim and lived to tell of it. I have looked into the eyes of a Valkyrie and the Allfather himself has shown me the stars.”

  She did not seem disconcerted by Raef’s revelations. “But what are you?”

  Raef was quiet for a moment. “I am a named king. I am a lord. I am surrounded. And yet I am alone.”

  The old woman smiled, but her gaze was lowered and the smile was for herself, it seemed. “I know what to do. But why now, young king? Why this day when you have never come to me before?”

  “I lost a friend last night. Not the first, and likely not the last. His was a brave death, a sacrifice, and yet a senseless waste. He had words and music to make remembrances. I do not.”

  She nodded. “Then let us begin.” They cleared the table and Raef watched as the old woman collected her tools. Then he stripped from the waist up. She ran a hand up his shoulder blade. “Here. So grief, joy, and memory are always looking over your shoulder.” Raef nodded and stretched out on the table, propping up his upper body on his elbows.

  She went to work, wielding the ink and fine bone needles with precision, the gentle tune again murmuring through her lips. The work went on for hours. Raef drifted in and out of something akin to sleep, but always he was aware of the old woman’s tune and the tiny pricks of the needles into his skin. The dawn
was approaching when she sat back and returned her tools to the table. Her thin, delicate hands were smeared with ink and she smiled to herself again.

  “It is finished.”

  Raef twisted his neck and peered over his shoulder to see what she had created. The wolf rendered into his skin, climbing up his shoulder blade as though readying to leap over his shoulder, was snarling back at him, and yet if he hunched his shoulder a different way, the ferocity was replaced by sorrow. It seemed a perfect reflection of himself.

  “Thank you, Grandmother.”

  She smiled, pleased with the work she had done. “It is time you slept.”

  Raef cocked his head. “And you?”

  “Sleep is for the young.”

  Raef thanked her again and returned to the hall, the stillness of the sleeping village a welcome peace that Raef felt he could breathe in. When he reached his chamber, he sprawled on his bed, careful to keep off the fresh tattoo. Sleep overcame him in an instant.

  TWENTY-TWO

  When Raef awoke, it was a slow extraction from the depths of sleep, the sunlight pulling, pulling at the edges of his eyes until at last he opened them. Even then Raef kept still, content to breathe. He knew now that the death of Gudrik had entwined in his heart with his father’s death. Raef remembered Einarr’s death as though he had been a watcher from afar. He had stood at the funeral pyre, he had done his duty as a son, but he had raced straight from shock to vengeance and never truly had a chance to grieve as the land erupted in war. But with Gudrik there had been no distance, it was all glittering sharpness and pain, dampened not at all by Raef’s swift retaliation against Snorren Thoken. But it seemed some of that sharpness and pain had been eaten by the wolf that now prowled Raef’s skin and it was with a clear mind that Raef rose from his bed.

  The hour was late. Past mid-day. His chamber was cold, having been deprived of fire for two days and Raef padded across the floor to crouch before his hearth. A fire was born in moments, sending tongues of warmth snaking out to touch Raef’s skin. He had Aldrif change his bandage and inspect her stitches, then called for bread and meat, hard cheese and winter apples, and a fresh cup of ale, and ate on the small ledge outside his window.