Winter by Winter

by Jordan Stratford

  “You can’t stay here,” Ragnar says. “They may wheel back to escape us, or Fro may send for more ships.”

  “Fro?” I’ve never heard the name.

  “King of Uppsala,” says the counsellor. “His armies have killed your people and your king, Sivard. Ragnar has come to avenge him.” I haven’t heard any of this. Not a rumour.

  “Do you have somewhere to go?” asks Ragnar. “Kaupang?”

  “Kaupang?” I ask. “We are farmers. Fishers. We have no business in Kaupang. There’s barely three hundred of us left. The market would swallow us whole.”

  “You would be safe,” he replies.

  “We wouldn’t be anything,” I answer. “No stories. No village. No names. We’d be undone.”

  “Somewhere else, then,” says Ragnar’s companion, the rich one. “Somewhere safe. Together.”

  “This man,” says the advisor, “is Jarl Rorik, from Aalborg.”

  “A Jutlander,” I say.

  He nods. “Give me your name,” he says. His voice is soft, the only softness I’ve seen in a lifetime, this new lifetime that began in the night.

  “Hladgertha.” I give him my proper name.

  “I am sorry, Hladgertha,” says the Jarl, “for what has happened to your people. And I would shelter them if I could. But Ragnar is right. It’s not safe for you to remain here. You could go inland, or well north—but even then, the coast is not safe until Fro is dead.”

  “His head will hang from my boat,” says Ragnar. But I’ve heard this before, men puffed up with the talk of war. All the boys with scruff-beards spoke like this all the time, until their lives were cut from them in the night. I try not to think of their bodies smouldering and cooling in the air, not a hundred famnr from this place.

  “What boat?” I ask.

  “We have a dozen skeid,” Ragnar tells me. “You know boats?”

  “My father… our father, is… was… a boatbuilder. Knarr, mostly. We sold them.” I’m a thousand years old on this beach, I’m thinking. Remembering that other life, the life from last night, presses me into the sand.

  “Do not set out in boats,” warns Rorik. “Even if you have them.” Which we don’t—the rowers took everything seaworthy, towing them or setting them on fire—so it’s a warning wasted.

  “The Gaular,” says Rota. “Our uncle has a lodge in the Gaular valley.” I look at her, remembering. Summer’s end, years ago. A journey, but not a deadly one. A run of salmon and my uncle’s hall. A waterfall and a green forest soft with moss.

  My uncle is here among the ashes of the dead. I don’t think he’ll mind.

  Rorik looks to me. “The Gaular, then,” he says.

  I nod, thinking. “It will take a day for us to round up the goats. Some sheep, cattle, whatever’s left.”

  “In the morning, then,” says Rorik. “But do not mourn your dead until you are safe. Tonight, they drink from Odinn’s own cup.” These are meant to be kind words, but they fall to the beach before they can reach me.

  Again, I nod. I thank Skathi for Rota’s strength when I realize my hand has been on her shoulder, steadying myself, my other hand clutching both the brooch and the sword handle.

  I turn, forgetting the king for a moment, and turn back to him. Ragnar.

  “Your breeches,” I begin. “Why would a king from the Jutland wear goatskin?”

  It’s an odd question, but he laughs. A story he’s used to telling. “To keep adders away,” he says.

  “But,” I reply, “we don’t have adders in this part of the Nordvegr.”

  His blue eyes sparkle. “Then the breeches must be working.”

  Brushing Kara’s hair calms us both—maybe she’s too calm. In shock. Far off, as though she sailed away from the slave-pen on the beach, and the tide has yet to bring her back. She’s clean, impossibly clean in her yellow dress with the blue apron, large oval brooches in copper like the unblinking eyes of some weird creature.

  We haven’t put up a shelter, as the sun has warmed these stones a little, and the moss is soft. Rota approaches, solid, and strong. She’s changed out of her dress and into breeches, and found a rust-coloured woolen cloak from somewhere. I force myself to not scan the thing for blood stains.

  Rota brings us steaming broth in a bowl for sharing. I thank her for this, but Kara says nothing.

  “Do we have a number?” I ask Rota. She’s been on task, and I doubt a drop of this soup has touched her lips.

  “Two hundred seventy,” she tells me. “No one alive between sixteen and fifty.”

  I nod. What else is there to do? We’re now two tribes divided by a lifetime, the too young and the too old.

  “The men have called a Thing,” she tells me. “Sunset.”

  “Sunset is too late,” I say. “Decisions need to be made now.”

  “You need to address them, Ladda,” Rota says. “Tell them what the king told you.”

  “Why would they listen to me?”

  “They’re saying the gods have chosen you. When you lured that rower to his death.” She sounds excited about this, and it should sicken me. But it doesn’t.

  “I got so many of us killed,” I say. “It was reckless.”

  “We were all dead anyway. Dead or in thrall, all of us. We’d be in iron collars now if not for you.” She sees my discomfort at this. “It’s what they’re whispering,” she says, “and I know it’s true.”

  Kara’s voice is small. “It is my fault,” she says. I hand her the wooden bowl which she takes with numb fingers.

  “How? Shush now,” I tell her. “You didn’t bring Fro’s men to us. Ragnar did that. Or some working of war, anyway. Jarls and kings. But not you.”

  “I dreamt it. All of it,” she says, as though reciting something. Stumbling to remember. “The killing. The dying. The pen. The beach.” Finally, she looks at me, after hours of dreamlike distance. “You.”

  “Just a dream,” I say.

  Rota speaks up. “If the gods give you a dream, they should tell you what to do with it,” she tells our little sister. “It’s their fault.”

  “I should have said,” she answers.

  “And we would have done what?” I ask, trying to hide my frustration. “Post guards? Uproot the village? It’s already on us, and no one is guarding. No one is even packing.” I play with a string of dry grass, tying a knot to make a wish, though I forget to before the knot is complete. I let it fall.

  “Some of the boys have gone to get the goats, bring the sheep in,” says Rota. And yes, if we listen, we can hear the bleat of them getting closer, though we can’t see them from where we sit. We can see smoke, though, and don’t speak of it.

  There’s movement behind the stones to the south. For all of us, our hearts hammer blood into our fingers, our faces suddenly cold. An indrawn breath of panic, shared between the three of us.

  Comically, a long snout emerges, grey and with loose tufts of fur, and a black button of a nose. A great elkhound, with no small amount of wolf in his ancestry, looking for its master.

  “He’s dead, shaggy one,” I call out. “They’re all dead. Seek your master in Valhalla.”

  His eyes seem to understand.

  “I’m sorry,” says Kara quietly, holding out her palm.

  Tamely, the dog trots towards us, three sisters in the pale sun.

  The Thing is underway in what’s left of the large pen behind the ruins of the barn. There’s still the sweet-sour stench of dung. I’ve never had reason to attend a Thing before, and why would I? My life before today was attending to children. Working the loom and mending nets. Spearing fish. Gossiping with friends.

  They stop talking as I approach, with every eye on me. I search their looks for blame, and see only fatigue, and fear, and sorrow. They’re all in winter cloaks scavenged from the ruins of huts, hunched over a fire as if there was snow on the ground instead of spring grass. It smells like old men in here. Out here, I guess, with most of the walls gone.

  “I’ve spoken with Ragnar, the
king,” I say, as clearly as I can.

  “We know of no Ragnar,” says one of the uncles, though no blood of mine. “Siward is the king of the Vestfold.”

  “Siward is dead,” I say. “By Fro, a king from the east. Siward’s son, Ragnar, wages war to avenge him.” I’m speaking formally, and it’s like having a stone in my mouth. A smooth stone, but still.

  There’s a murmur among them, and I don’t know how to read this or any other sign. I continue.

  “Ragnar has told us to move the village away from the coast. Fro’s men may return. They may be coming now. We must leave.”

  “Ladda,” says another fellow, not unkindly. “We cannot leave. We must attend to the dead. Our fields are good here. There is fish. These are our homes. Now leave us, child, for there is much to discuss.”

  “Bestefar,” I cut him off. “There is nothing to discuss. We are leaving. All of us. Together. And now.”

  They are not used to such a tone from a girl, but it has been an unusual day. What would be met with laughter or anger still simmers, a fluttering of insult too tired to find a voice.

  “The king,” I say, holding out my sword, “has given me this as a symbol of this order. And even if he didn’t, it’s common sense. We’re leaving.”

  None have seen anything like the sword before, or if so, not for many years. Holding it now, it is a fine thing, beautiful and singular in purpose. In the light and for the first time, I make out the markings on the blade: +VLFBERHT+, though I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean.

  “My mother’s brother has a fishing lodge in the Gaular,” I explain. “It is not far, or not too far. There’s salmon and forest for clearing with honest timber. Still time to get a crop in the ground, but only if we’re alive to plough it. And that means we leave at dawn.”

  There are sounds of consideration. I continue. “The boys have brought the goats in. Some sheep, too, and cattle. We take only what we can’t replace before the harvest.”

  “There is nothing, child, as you can see,” says a third man, this one with a white beard and only one ear. “Only ash. And the dead.”

  “Pins,” I answer. “Pots. Tools. Anything forged or wrought we can salvage. The rest we’ll have to make do.” This is too fresh a wound, the fact that we don’t have a blacksmith. It takes the breath out of them. There’s no fight and no objection, but there’s no action in them either.

  “We leave the dead,” I continue, “and we remember them. But if we stay, we die, and then there is no one to remember them. The rowers could only kill them,” I say, “but by staying—if we stay—we erase them.”

  They’re ashamed, these men. I’ve gone too far.

  “You have always had a temper, Hladgertha,” comes a familiar voice. Brandr, a friend of my father’s. He does not look at my face when he speaks, the shame of his own survival upon him. He should be among the dead, he thinks. I can tell.

  “This isn’t temper,” I tell him. “This is… this is snow. Snow falls. You can take shelter, or you can freeze. But I tell you, the snow will fall. And we will leave for Gaular with the dawn.”

  There is a moment of silence.

  “I will stay,” says one.

  “As will we,” says another. “We must bury the dead, and say the words.”

  I tighten my grip on my sword. “Then you’ll starve. At dawn my sisters are leaving for Gaular. And we’ll leave you without a pick or wagon or cloak-pin.”

  “How dare you?” says the first of the remaining, more hurt than angry. “You do not speak to your elders so, child.”

  I’m angry now, exhausted from rolling this rock in the mud. “How many times must you face death in a day, Onkel? You were spared at dawn, unlike the others. You were spared on the beach. And now I’m trying to spare you from the rower’s return or from starvation. You go to your gods a ready man, or a thinner one.”

  I sigh, the weight of the day upon me.

  “Come to the Gaular,” I say, turning from them. “I have no desire to forget any of you.”

  Forty-six stay behind, Rota tells me. I count them among the dead. Two hundred and twenty-four of us head east, keeping the Dalfjord on our right.

  Before dawn, and with only a single candle, Rota and I picked out fragments of our old life. Pins. Pots. Clasps. Anything quick, and light, that survived the fire. Wool and flax can be spun later. Hinges and locks, fire grates and tripods, these have been hauled to wagons. A snap underfoot reveals a bone comb, once beautiful, now trampled to shards.

  The sun rises.

  Everyone over six years carries a shield, if nothing else. Some of the shields are familiar stories, mothers and fathers. Others shields are alien and taken as a scrap of victory. But survival and memory are the only real victories open to us.

  Before leaving, Kara disappears and again there’s the hammering of panic in my fingers. But she returns from the forest’s edge with a small bundle in wool, wrapped in twine. She shakes her head. “A secret,” she says.

  “No secrets,” I insist. “Not today. Tell me.”

  Kara looks around for others, something she usually doesn’t need to do. She’s always just… known things. Now, she’s being extra cautious.

  “Alright. Come on.” And she takes my hand into the forest, off the path into bracken that seems like nothing has passed there, not a deer or vole and certainly not a girl. But as she steps sideways, I can see it’ is its own path, slender and wandering, into the stone of the hillside.

  There’s a little crack there, in the stone. Lichen grows on little shelves in the rock, and spider-webs still hold the dew. Kara turns to me, a finger on her lips, and slips into the cave.

  Not a cave, more of a chimney. Like some giant bore an untidy hole from above. There is barely enough room for the two of us to stand, but light comes in from above and some from the narrow entrance.

  “This is our mother’s place,” Kara says. “She always said it’s the voice of our grandmother.”

  I’m hurt, just as I’m in awe. “How didn’t I know this? Why didn’t she ever tell me? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “She was waiting until you saw her,” she says. I’m confused. “And I saw her when I was very small. So, she asked me not to tell.”

  “Who’s ‘her?” I don’t think my head can take too much more of how little I know of things.

  “Mama said that her uncle was the skald of her people, but when he was killed our grandmother kept his stories, and kept these, because there was no one else to keep them.”

  “These?”

  Her pale hand reaches out and touches the walls of this secret space. And that’s when I see them.

  Runes.

  Each letter a name, a sound, a story.

  But I’ve seen runes before. I can read, of course, but there’s a whole game to them I don’t know. Even then, every spindle and pot has them, a little mark of who made this or that thing or who it belonged to.

  “They’re just runes,” I say.

  “Different,” Kara says. “These runes are older, and closer to Odinn, who gave them to our mother’s people.”

  “We’re our mother’s people,” I say. Meaning all of us. The village.

  She shakes her head. “From before.” And she means the stories that are our grandmother’s roots which stretch north and east, to the Finnmark, or perhaps even farther. Stranger.

  “Show me,” I tell her. “We’re leaving this place, so we’ll have to take them with us.”

  Kara smiles and taps her head. They’re in there.

  “No,” I say. “Seriously. Show me. This is too important to lose.”

  My sister is still smiling, her strange, broad smile on such a tiny, narrow face. She takes my hand and places it flat against the cool stone wall. Beneath it, carved, is a stick with two shorter staves reaching out, like tree limbs, or like a figure offering something to the sky.

  “Fee,” she begins, “wealth, and trade.”

  In the forest. It’s so loud. The clanking of
metal and the bleat of goats. Wheels digging ruts, the creak of ropes, and the whole village moving east and inland. Most of the hen cages were smashed to tinder, so we have the chickens on leashes of braided leather. It’s funny to see them like this.

  And suddenly, with the breath out of me, I understand Lars is dead.

  Lars who, when I was a girl, I would watch herd the chickens to their pens, Lars whose laugh was the first to put a stone in my chest. The first hands I ever dreamt of. And now those hands touch only the cold earth, the same earth that nests my mother, my father. But their deaths haven’t caught up to me yet, as Lars’ does now. Perhaps their passing is waiting for me, each mil another name, or face, waiting to tug the air from my lungs and place a pang in my heart.

  A mil. The length a man can walk his fields in two hours, or an hour’s rowing. We are lucky to make two in a day, this caravan of children and ammas, of old men who have shed their walking sticks for spears. The children cry or sleep on the wagons, and sometimes they drag their shields in the dirt or trip over them, while the men let murmured prayers escape from white beards.

  We rack the spears in the wagons, to form short fences on the sides. The youngest and the oldest rest their backs against them, while the cattle drag us through the narrow forest path. Mercifully, there is plentiful water rushing down to the fjord, and rabbits that some of the quicker children have caught.

  All of two horses have been restored to us in the night, having bolted in battle and returning to find their kin taken in ships, just as we were meant to. For some reason, the elders keep asking me to ride, though I don’t want to. We need to save the horses for the lame, so I walk with my sisters.

  “We should walk along the cliffs,” offers one of the uncles. “We’ll make better time.”

  “We have shelter from the wind here,” answers Rota, “and we’d be spotted by any rowers coming up the fjord. If they’re coming back for us, I’d rather not give them our exact pace.” Rota turns to me as she says this, and I nod. I love that I have to explain nothing to her.

  Kara follows a cart, to which she has pinned some weaving. A belt, or trim. A chase of serpents in white and red. I wonder if this is the bundle she rescued from her hiding place at the edge of the village? But no, this is domestic enough, and no sense in hiding it. I can tell each loop and knot is perfect, like she was doing this beside a bright fire and not trudging behind a cart in near-twilight. The Norns, the witch-goddesses who weave orleg into our lives, are not as nimble-fingered. Kara is magic.