Winter by Winter

by Jordan Stratford

  After a moment, Brandr begins to laugh. A chuckle at first, but then a deep roaring, and I punch his arm to stop, but this he finds even funnier and he bellows laughter until tears come from his eyes.

  “The barefoot jarl,” he gasps for breath between howls. “Eater of wildling girls!”

  I punch him again, but I’m smiling for the first time in days.

  Hour by hour, the hills fall away down to the water, and the fjord becomes a river edged by forest. Here, finally, is the moss-covered stone, even bigger than I remembered. Rota looks to me, and we nod together, finding girlhood’s path to our uncle’s land. Our land.

  We’ve exhausted whatever pity the rain had for us, a reminder that the gods owe us nothing. We’re all soaked in minutes. I fear each cough is a grave, although whatever rest is in store for us lies not too far upriver.

  At each stop, we count. We’ve lost only one so far, a tippoldemor, great-grandmother, and her missing likely not to a wolf or outlaw or illness, but to the forest itself. There, and gone. Half a day and better than a mil before anyone noticed the green had swallowed her. A turned ankle, perhaps, or just a surrender. I do not know what I would do, with all taken from me and so few summers to get anything back, anything at all. I ask this as much for myself as for the lost woman.

  All night I rehearsed this plan, this pronouncement, one I must deliver with finality and without hesitation or question.

  Rota has counted some twenty-eight households. I don’t know if any of the buildings on the land are still standing, so I can’t account for these. Whatever fields, fallow and overgrown as we may find them, will be held in common. That’s the first rule. They won’t like it, but I can’t give them a choice.

  I don’t have any choices myself.

  I’ll get Brandr to pace out eighty famn in squares, and then each house will draw lots as to what to clear and where to build. They can haggle amongst themselves after that. There are to be common paths held alongside, and kept by the householders so there will always be a free path to the river and its salmon.

  All past debts, all feuds forgiven and forbidden to speak of. What few tools we have will be in common like the fields, and those who lose or break them will repay from their harvest, whatever it may be.

  The harvest will be thin, and the livestock kept for breeding. No slaughter this year. We’ll forage, and fish, and perhaps any boats we build can return to the sea for seal in the autumn. This should see at least half of us through to next spring. Perhaps half.

  There are a few law-speakers left among us, and I believe they’ll see this as fair. Gods, I hope so.

  It’s smoke that greets us. A thin grey line against a thin grey sky.

  I look to Kara and she smiles, and I don’t know now if she’s become simple from grief or if it’s that her trust in the gods is greater than my own. But even in that smile is a certainty, yes, we’re here on our uncle’s land.

  One fire. Not enough for a camp of rowers, then. The family of wolves-heads? The girl from yesterday? If they’ve kept up the land, we can grant them rights and a share, as is the law.

  Kara’s hound folds his ears back against his head, catches the smoke on the wind.

  I know Brandr’s eyes are on me, so I turn to him and nod. He hefts his spear, rolls his shoulders. Rota too is shield and spear, hunched forward, hips low to the ground and quickening pace. Stern, she peels away from the caravan and takes a deer trail to the left, to scout. The aunts hush the younger children, though one continues to cry in the rain, which will mask our rattle and wail somewhat. Still. They must know we are coming, have known for some time.

  Nothing to do but what we have done. Trudge forward, a column of weariness in wet wool and thin leather, of hunger and loss and blisters. The wagons slow in the mud, each rock one more shock to the spines of the fragile within.

  Rota returns in less than half an hour. She shakes her head. I know this means she has circled the land to one side and seen no movement. Inexhaustible, she takes a path to the right.

  The road, such as it is, opens a little. I move my shield to my left arm and draw my sword from its loops on my belt, just to tell the gods I am ready.

  I’m lying, but it can’t be such a wicked thing to lie to the gods. They lie to us all the time.

  Once-cleared land waist-high in bracken, with spring-berries beginning to show. Birds taking shelter from rain, so that a quick bow will see to supper tonight before they learn. Deer scat, so that, too, is comforting. Bear scat there, so that less so.

  The land is a bowl, between a short rocky hill and a small fall off to a ditch that has diverted the river, a small dam upstream that has apparently withstood the seasons. There is the barn, its roof intact, and there the round hall, its roof not as fortunate.

  Some of the men, despite their years, have formed a wall of shields, mostly out of tradition, and march to the barn. They’ll fight for that first, if it comes to it. But it’s obvious even from here that their battle will consist of chasing out spiders and rats, and the aunts are already organizing the children into tasks, fetching wood and preparing to sweep out. Some have begun picking berries as we pass them.

  It’s good.

  The wagons, livestock, and drivers wheel to the barn, the smaller children in tow. The house-heads, Brandr, Kara, and myself, head for the hall. By the time we arrive, Rota stands at the open door, her spear’s butt beside her ankle, its point at the sky.

  We enter.

  Someone has been living here. The scent of life, of food. Warm coals in the hearth, made here in the shape of a boat, not the long rectangular stone box of our old village. Rain spits in from where this arc of the roof has fallen, but it won’t be too much work to restore it. New thresh for the dirt floor will have to wait, but we can use ferns in the meantime, and there will be sawdust soon enough with everything we have to build. The hall here, now that I take it in as a woman and not a child, is not much smaller than what we had there, by the sea. And fewer to fill it.

  And that’s the thing done. My task. I did it.

  Some weeks away from sixteen full years, I brought the fraying remnants of my people here, and my life now is divided in two. A childhood there, by the sea, ending in death, and my life here, which begins under a sagging roof, and maybe death will leave us alone for a moon or two. Or more.

  I should mourn, now. Weep for my mother and father. Weep for Lars who’s the first boy I wanted to kiss, was going to kiss, was going to wake in his arms and smell his hair, but now there is nothing but the smell of wet earth and the cooling hearth. I’m still too numb, too tired, to grieve. Maybe my chance has passed.

  Kara takes my hand, her braid white-blonde in the half-light, and I rise. There is a chair, the only chair, on the other side of the hearth, and she sets me there. Brandr comes around and lays his shield down, propped up against the chair’s side.

  And one of the tanter, a blood aunt of mine, or aunt’s cousin at least, approaches sternly. Formally. She’s carrying the wolf-skin, the same wolf I took with my fear and panic and anger and blade only two (was it two?) nights ago. She has scraped the hide, cleaned and cut it properly, laying it about my shoulders and pressing the brooch firmly into my chest. My mother’s brooch. Kara nods.

  “Jarl Hladgertha,” says Brandr.

  And I don’t know what to say.

  We’ve slept.

  All of us, our tribe, either in the hall or the barn or in shelters in the field. We have slept and dreamt and snored, farted, cried, and turned in the night like one large, wounded animal.

  Some kept watch, and those now sleep as we send out tentative feelers into the forest, upriver, along the ridge of the stone hill above the clearing.

  I have declared my plan, for the lots. Some nod, resigned, others look steely-eyed to Brandr for his approval, those who find discomfort in accepting a girl as Jarl, even of such a modest household in which I find myself. A delicate moment. At least none look to the law-speakers for clarification. No one challenges me
.

  Yet.

  There is some grumbling once the lots are called, and a small side market emerges for trades and easements and deals: a tree here, a path there. Goats or chickens trade hands, promises for future harvests made for various concessions. This is all fair enough and dull enough and I wish to the gods it was none of my concern, but of course now it is all that concerns me. I have led, and now must lead, mostly by sitting in the one chair in all the new village while all this takes place around me.

  But then like the buzzing of insects, a disturbance or flurry outside. Heads raise from fingers drawing lines in the dirt floor, plans for barns, sheds, houses, paths. The children run in first, to herald her.

  She is covered in blood, the old woman. The ancient woman. The dead woman. Alive and standing among us.

  The great-grandmother lost to the forest on the journey. She drags herself along with a branch, stripped smooth and bound with leather scraps, the bones of small forest-things; birds, mice. One tattered crow wing laced to her walking staff by a thong.

  The deer skin, newly sliced, still bleeds on her shoulders and forehead. She’s pulled it over her head to shield her from the thin rain, which has only watered the blood down so her face is stained with it, every wrinkle.

  None speak. None dare.

  Who would? What is there to say? What words for this woman, pulled to the wild by her fate and restored to us so transformed?

  “Hladgertha,” she says to me, her eyes adjusting to the hall.

  The others look to me, and I nod out of respect. I don’t know her name, or I would answer with it.

  “I will take the hilltop,” she says. “Though nothing will grow there. Build me a house and I will keep it, for one twentieth a share of every house’s crop.”

  Now eyes dart to each other, the numbers and fractions and values calculated instinctively. For each person here, that might mean an extra two hungry weeks each year.

  “I will take three of the orphan children to be my eyes,” she says, “and the bell from the old village. We will sound it for fire or rowers. I should see well north from there, and west to the forest, south to the river and the fjord.”

  An uncle clears his throat, or means to, and stops himself. The bell is our largest share of ready bronze, and some have it in mind for picks and ploughs. But these are things for warding off death slowly, whereas the great-grandmother proposes to ward it off quickly. And she most recently familiar with death, her advice seems well-heeded.

  “Tippoldemor,” I say respectfully mimicking the tone of a law-speaker, “the hilltop is not my land to give, but if you will keep it, then I will give you a twentieth of my share if nineteen join me, or a tenth if nine join me. I see the wisdom in your proposal.”

  Brandr places his hand on my shoulder in approval, though I wish he had not. I cannot be seen to be wanting it.

  The crone grunts, turns, and trudges painfully from the hall. Each of us breaths more deeply, unaware that we have been holding back our lungs, out of instinct for those touched by the gods so.

  The next day, and I ride.

  Gods, to ride! Just to be myself, not the barefoot jarl but just Ladda, the boatbuilder’s daughter, on a horse, alone. Everyone else seen to: Kara to her weaving and Rota to roam farther and farther from the village in search of threat. In the morning as Rota gets ready to leave, each time Kara’s dog trots along beside her, and each time is sent back. Rota wants the dog with me, and here he is, horse-smart to keep his distance but still alongside.

  The land is beautiful to me suddenly. It’s a promise kept, and for the first time, I can see more than half of us alive a year from today. I breathe in all the way, the tide of my chest no longer catching on the jagged edges of my heart.

  Here, there are straight trees I see with my father’s eye and the boat-beams within them. The rain has gone, and the cool spring sun looks on the village taking shape.

  Every tree smaller than the width of an arm has been cut down, stripped of branches and stacked. Stones dragged into lines and squares where walls will be. Homes. Little shrines on lot-corners or at the forest edge, here a stone with a hammer drawn in charcoal, or bind-runes of protection. A browning spatter of blood in offering. In thanks for our arrival here in the Gaulardale.

  I should find a shrine to pray to. Skathi, Goddess of tide, probably can’t hear me here so far from the sea. Var, then, as my mother’s people did, protector of promises. Or Bragi, the Beautiful, who shines beauty on this place on this one spring day. I cluck at the horse, a dappled mare young and clever, and head for the hall.

  Brandr is waiting, but I see his face mercifully has no news. He just waits for me.

  “You should be building a house,” I tell him.

  “I thought you might need me,” he says.

  “Not yet,” I say. “There are problems to solve, yes, but nothing I don’t know about. Yet.”

  “One,” he says. “The war.”

  “The war is far away,” I say, handing him my reins as I dismount. “That was the whole point of moving here.” Do I believe this when I say it? I’m starting to doubt it.

  “A war like this, it’s like a bell,” Brandr says. “Once struck, it rings for a long time.”

  I brush the horse’s nose, wishing I had some sweet grass to feed him. But I’m empty-handed.

  “We’ve been pushed inland by the tide of war,” I agree. “But I can’t see us being dragged out with it. We don’t have any warriors. We can barely defend ourselves. There’s no profit in this war for us,” I say finally. “We’ll sit it out. Stay alive.”

  “Ladda,” says Brandr. “There is much profit in war. And the gods have chosen you–”

  I want to silence him, and he knows it. But he continues.

  “No, it’s true. I believe it. And this tide is upon us. So I believe that you will figure out a way for us to get in this war. And with it, the silver to build something here, something that will endure. So far, we’ve only been thinking of survival, but soon enough, we’ll have to prosper here.”

  “We do need silver,” I say, seeing where he is going with this, but not really believing my words. “We need a blacksmith. And it’ll be years before we replace all the livestock. But how?”

  “I don’t know,” he says after a moment. “I just know you’ll find a way.”

  But then I do know.

  I’ve always known, since that moment with Ragnar on the beach, speaking of skeith, and my father the boat-builder. And seeing the trees straight and tall on the land…

  “Ladda,” Brandr tries again, a different way. “What is it you want? Just tell us. Tell me, and I’ll tell the others. We’ll make it happen.”

  “If I ask this now, they’ll resent me,” I confess. “They’ll want the year to build houses, clear the land, get a harvest in. Stock for winter. I can’t ask them–”

  “You can, though, Ladda,” he says. “You can. Ask us.”

  “Ships, Brandr,” I say. “I want us to build ships. That’s how we go to war without leaving the village. That’s how we bring in silver and tools. That’s how we survive. That’s our prosperity.”

  Each night the hall thins out by a dozen or so, as forest-shelters take shape into homes and hearths of their own.

  I take my horn, the water cooling my lips as the fire is overwarm, and seek out Kara at her knot-perfect weaving.

  “Tell me a story, Kara.”

  I’ve heard whatever she’s going to say a hundred times, but in Kara’s voice is the echo of our mother’s. The legend is of my mother’s people, from her great-grandmother’s time or before, from the Finnmark, and that is as close to Alfheim as Midgard can get, so my mother was teased as a child for having elf-blood.

  I know in my bones Kara has some elf in her. It’s in her perfect hands braiding my hair. It’s in her voice that sounds like a waterfall half-remembered. Even when she was a baby she was so still, so strange. Did she cry? She must have, but neither I nor Rota remember her doing it.


  But this is why our mother gave her the runes first, because they spoke to her. And the runes kept her people alive, just as they will become part of our story here, and keep the rest of us alive.

  “Ithunn,” Kara begins, “was the most beautiful in Asgard, and flowers bloomed when she passed, and fruit ripened as she reached for it. So, the giants were jealous of her beauty and her growing.”

  Just the rhythm of story brings others from their tasks, children edge closer to the hearth.

  “The giant Thiazi, who was Skathi’s father, conspired to lure Ithunn away from Asgard, so that he could taste Ithunn’s apples. For in each fruit was the power to remain young and beautiful forever.”

  She’s speaking to the children now, her story rising with the words of giants, and falling into whisper with each mention of trickery or magic.

  “So Thiazi asked Loki for help, and he, god of all trouble and mischief and cunning, did tell Ithunn of a garden, just outside the gates of Asgard, where the apples waited for her, and should she reach for them, their fruit would be the sweetest ever tasted.

  “Ithunn left Asgard and sought the garden, but instead she found the giant Thiazi, who turned himself into a great eagle, and plucked up poor Ithunn, carrying her away to Jotunheim, and the hall of giants.”

  Old women clucked at this misfortune, and children gasped at the wonder and horror of it. The men found in it some humour of their own province, and whispered or chuckled.

  “Without the apples of Ithunn, all in Asgard became weary, and then they grew old and grey.” Her fingers make a beard, which wiggles, and reaches out to tickle the children in front.

  “But it was Freya who knew that Ithunn’s disappearance was due to trickery, and the source of all trickery was Loki. So Freya set about Loki, striking him even though she was now weak and old, and demanding from him the truth of what happened.” Kara wields an invisible stick and is beating the children with it, who giggle.

  “Oh, but Loki confesses to his crime. He said he had captured an ox and was cooking it, but no matter how hot the oven became, the meat would not cook. And when he looked to see what was happening, he saw a giant eagle, Thiazi, who had cast a magic upon it. Thiazi said Loki would always be hungry until he delivered Ithunn to the great eagle.”