Mother of Kings Page 8

  She had wondered if the doom was hers. Could the thwarted lust of the wizards bring it, though that was not their will? A sickness, a shipwreck—She had learned how untrustworthy spellcraft was, how easily it could miscarry or turn on the one who wielded it. Not for nothing did most Norsemen call rather on Thor than on uncanny Odin.

  But she scorned such thoughts and thrust them off. They did not become a woman of her blood. Nor was it given that any mishap would fall on her.

  “You’ll surely soon quell whatever it is.” She made a smile. “Let’s not be woeful today. Let’s bid the springtime welcome.”

  Vuokko snatched after cheer. “That’s right. Yes, we’ll seek for something tasty to roast.”

  Aimo frowned. “I wish you would not go a-walking meanwhile,” he said. She went down to the fjord whenever she could—out of the stifling gamma, away from the shamans and their murky lore, to be with the water, the wildfowl, the steep island beyond, and the sea behind it.

  “Why, you’ve cast spells against wolves and bears,” she said.

  “There are worse dangers. Do not give me need to avenge you.”

  “Men?” scoffed Vuokko. “Who’ll come by this early in the year?”

  “I’ll not wander off today.” Gunnhild yawned. “I’m weary. I may go back to bed.”

  “Then we’ll leave you in peace,” said Vuokko.

  They busked themselves. Belike they were right about game being scant. Well, Gunnhild thought, when she next wanted to be rid of them, she could again talk them into a hunt; and every day gave them time to search longer.

  After they were gone, she stood awhile, being starved for light. A raven’s hoarse cry broke through. It was as if Odin’s great black bird recalled to her that if she was to do what she had in mind, she had better not linger. She shivered, doffed the encumbering cloak, folded it under her arm, and opened the outer door. How she hated shuffling through the entry, crouched like a thrall about to be whipped. Once she had shut the inner door behind her and straightened, she must wait till her eyes widened to the banked, smoky fire and the dull glow through the hole in the roof. How she hated everything here.

  Most of all being forever meek toward a brace of Finns. Yes, what they had taught her should be of help. But nothing, not even her wish to know more, nothing would keep her in this hovel once Aalf had landed. And that those two dared dream of lying with her recalled that day of the outlaws and raised a killing rage in her throat.

  She swallowed it. She had shuddered beneath her clothes when owl hoot, cormorant flight, cloud shapes, or the scuttering arpa foreshadowed harm, which the wizards could not read more deeply. But she would not quail. Maybe she, however unskilled, had it in her to see what they were blind to; they often spoke of her inborn witchiness, and she herself had always believed that the norn at her cradle sang no everyday weird over her.

  Quickly she lit two lamps with an ember, took them behind her curtain, and set them on a chest. Thereupon she started soaking some dried mushrooms from the wizards’ box. They ought not to mark that any were missing. She had already brought in a length of thin, hard hempen rope, telling them she wanted to work on tying hex-knots in this as well as in leather cords, and—she’d laughed—she would rather not have them witness her awkwardness. She looped it on the floor at her bedside, the knotted strands an inch or so apart.

  Opening her other chest, she reached under a layer of garb to find a small bundle of feathers. She had gathered them below a swallow’s nest when she lately went by herself to the fjord and brought them back tucked between her breasts.

  Holding them, she felt a sudden rush of fear. Heart thudded; sweat trickled and stank. Was she indeed ready to send forth her soul? Vuokko and Aimo said they would soon lead her. Should aught go wrong—the World Beyond was altogether strange, a haunt of flint-stern gods and prowling fiends—they would be there to shield her.

  Gunnhild stamped on the dread. That they should behold her naked soul was fouler than if they looked on her unclad body—which surely they often did in their minds, and grew hard in their dirty breeks. Today she could try to wrap herself in a seeming.

  She might come to grief. More likely, at worst, she would only fail. Seija had groped her way to doing it. True, in the end she had gotten the help of her brother. But Gunnhild now knew more than she did. Nor would Gunnhild go on such a quest as hers, merely a flit across the land nearby. She grinned. What would the wizards say when they found this maidenhead was no longer theirs to take?

  Well, their hold on her would be much weakened, threats to cut her schooling short gone hollow. She’d calm them.

  They had shown her how to make a shaping, though they had not let her keep any stuff for it. In this dim light, her fingers were wiser than her eyes. She sang the needful song as she tied the feathers into a rough bird form with a string also out of the chest. Gripping it in her left hand, she spread her arms and danced where she was, treading the earth, reaching for the sky. A second song-spell keened. She must keep her thoughts on it, wholly on it, following its rise and fall until she left herself behind.

  When it told her to, she drew up her skirts, knelt on the rope, and ate the mushrooms. There she stayed, swaying and singing.

  She was leery of striking the drum, as the noai’de did. She had not yet fathomed its full powers. But Seija had had no drum either. Instead, she used pain to break the grip of the world upon her. Gunnhild wanted no firebrand mark for them to wonder at, marring her skin for life. Though slower, this should hurt enough.

  The strands bit into her weight. She attended to the pangs, let them grow and grow, joining the song and the movement and the troll-food until they were everything that really was, she and the house no more than the shadow of a dream.

  The hum of untellably many huge bees filled her head. She whirled down a maelstrom.

  She was in the wind and of the wind. It shrilled, driving her through heaven. Its iciness tore at her to rive her asunder like one of the clouds among which she blew. Far, far below, unseen in the hasty mists, resounded the grinding of a mighty quern and the song of the giantesses who turned it.

  Not herself, but that which she had gotten into her bones, took hold. She reached out, caught shreds of fog, hauled them from the wind, wrapped them tightly around her. She made them into wings, body, beak, feet. The swallow sheered earthward.

  Below the clouds, sight became almost unbearably keen. It scanned woodlands, mountains, islands, a wrinkled gray sea that ringed them all in. She rode the wind and searched for she knew not what.

  Something showed on the worldrim. She swooped toward it.

  Four lean ships bore southward. The hindmost was battered and faded, maybe taken from a foe, the rest bright, stems and sterns curving haughtily upward, a dragon head at the prow of the leader. Sails strained; hulls plunged; rigging quivered. It was as if she could hear strakes creak and taste the spindrift off white-maned billows.

  Closer she drew. Men saw her. They stared, agape. One, taller than most, stood by the mast of the dragon. He had shoved back the hood of his cloak. Hair fluttered tawny about a narrow head and cleanly carved face. He did not shout and point like the rest; his look upon her was as steady as a snake’s.

  Across a span of nine years she knew him.

  And somehow, amidst the sprawl of land and sea, she knew he was nearing the Streamfjord.

  The swallow tilted on the wind and slanted south. Streamfjord, she called in her dream, put in at Streamfjord; your luck awaits you there.

  The ships dropped from sight. Something screamed behind her. She fled from it.

  She woke. Lamp flames guttered; darknesses shifted to and fro. Nightmare clutched her.

  She struggled free and rose painfully to her feet. Never again would she do this skin-turning so lightly, nor often at all.

  Yet she had done it, and more too, more than she had ever foreseen. Hopefulness flashed like unsheathed steel.

  She laid it aside. Need was to think, now while she was yet alone,
think hard on what to do if that should happen for which she yearned.

  XVI

  The ships entered the narrows at Whale Sound. Their crews struck sails, laid masts and spars in the brackets, and took to the oars. Winds had become too tricky. Moreover, few of them had ever been here, and none knew these waters at all well. Rocks and riptides might lurk anywhere. That night they dropped anchor in the lee of a small island at Sandness Sound and slept as best they could in the hulls, as if this were a deep-sea crossing.

  In the morning they reached the east end of the Streamfjord and turned west. Tide raced between an islet ahead and Whale Island to starboard, so they hugged the mainland, which they had meant to anyway. Here also the going was rough. Whitecaps surged and hissed. Ships bucked; oars groaned in their ports; men swore. On either side the land was low, with leafless boughs stark against evergreens; ahead, it rose steeply to heights hooded in snow. Flaws of wind hit like clubs. Haze dulled the sun. Aft whence they had come, a wall of dark cloud was lifting over straits and peaks.

  Thorolf squinted yonder. “I mislike that sky,” he said. “It’s wrong for this time of year.”

  He and Eirik stood on the foredeck of their ship. The dragon head rose as tall as them, snarling at whatever foes or fiends might lair hereabouts. The other craft trailed, well apart lest two of them run into the same sudden trouble. The men easily braced themselves against roll and pitch, but their eyes were never at rest.

  “We’ll halt well ahead of the weather,” said Eirik.

  “Where?”

  “I know not quite, nor does anyone with us. But some Norse sometimes trade with the Finns somewhere nearby. Özur Dapplebeard and others have spoken of it.” After telling them to make for the Streamfjord, Eirik had been asking around among the sailors. Thorolf had mainly kept to himself, thinking his own thoughts.

  The Icelander shrugged. “Well, if that’s the most you know.” Given the friendship between them, he could talk freely. “But I still say this is a risky thing you do.”

  “And I say that bird the other day was a sign.”

  “For good or ill? Who ever heard of a swallow on the wing when the sun stands barely at equinox? As kittle as this sky.”

  Eirik sighed. “And as for Streamfjord, I tell you once more that the name flew into my head even as the bird went past. Why else should I remember it, and feel glad about it? Besides, the swallow was bound hitherward.”

  “It seemed to be,” Thorolf said.

  Eirik gave him a hard squint. “I can’t believe you, of all men, are afraid.”

  Thorolf flushed. “No. But if this is a snare, it’s surely set for you. I’d not see you go blindly forward.”

  “Then what would you do? For I’m bound I’ll look into this.”

  “I’ve been thinking on that. Let me take a few men and scout.” Eirik frowned. Thorolf raised a hand. “We need you with the ships. If I wanted to strike at you, by spellcraft or otherwise, I’d go after them. Stranded, we’d not likely ever see home again. And too many in the crews are too uneasy about these things.”

  Eirik nodded. He had seen enough faces sullen or tightly locked, enough charms fingered; he had overheard mutterings. A glance down the hull showed him no better.

  “I call none of them cowards,” Thorolf went on. “But if something worse than a mere onslaught should come against us, they might break and scatter. You can hearten them to stand fast.”

  Again Eirik nodded. He knew how fear could sweep through a battle array and send warriors running like hares. “A wise rede, yes.”

  “My band will return this evening, or tomorrow at latest, and tell you what we found. If we don’t, you’ll know that bird was no friend.”

  Eirik’s laugh barked. “And if you find nothing, why, then maybe it did not have us in mind at all.” He peered landward and pointed. “That looks like a good spot to begin.”

  “I see no mark of traders.”

  “Since you’re being wary, wouldn’t you rather camp elsewhere than they do?”

  Thorolf’s dourness cracked in a smile. Headlong Eirik was, but also shrewd. Shouted orders rang to and fro.

  Tide was ebbing; the ships could safely ground. Keels grated on the bottom. Sailors jumped overside, made fast, and brought their stuff ashore. They were less noisy than was their wont. Eyes kept straying toward the shadowy depths beyond, or aloft to the mewing gulls. Yet when Thorolf called for followers, most of the men crowded around. Nobody wished to seem daunted. He chose three, Arni, Brand, and Halldor, whom he knew to be seasoned woodsmen. He himself was mainly a seafarer. They gulped some food, gathered their gear, and set off.

  Long did they search, at first almost haphazardly. Though they never got more than a few miles inland, the wilderness reached huge. Brush crackled; rotted leaves, duff, moss squelched underfoot; snow slumped in the shade; the heavens hung leaden. That overall gloom deepened as the sun wheeled from east to west and behind the spreading storm clouds. They towered ever higher, the hue of bruises. Wind blew dank and chill. Otherwise silence brooded, seldom split by a caw or a croak. Arni said at length that, while he found spoor of small game, there was none of bear or wolf. “Strange,” he mumbled. “The bears should be awake, and not all the wolves would follow the hoofed herds south for the winter. It’s as if they were banned.”

  “We are in Finnmörk, and a ghost has led us,” said Brand harshly.

  Halldor made the sign of the Cross. He had been baptized in England, together with fellow vikings who, cut off by a shire-levy, had thus saved their lives. Arni lowered at him and said, “That god is a long way off.”

  “You know I offer to Thor,” answered Halldor, “but in this witch-land, what harm in calling on Christ as well?”

  Thorolf touched the sword hilt at his left shoulder. His voice clanged. “I trust this the most. Trollcraft and priestcraft alike have never helped much against it.”

  The rest plucked up boldness and kept on with their hunt. After a while more they began to find traces of man, which they read for their leader—a tuft of dyed wool snagged on a bush, bits of charcoal, a broken arrowshaft, bones scarred by knives, at last footprints not yet blurred away. The tracks brought them to a clearing. There stood a big gamma with its outhouse and three njalla sheds.

  They stopped and stared around. Nothing stirred but evergreens soughing in the wind and thin rags from the smokehole. “Hoy, we must have come on the shelter for Finns when their fishers and traders seek salt water,” breathed Arni.

  Halldor chuckled without much mirth. “If so, we could have done it faster and easier. See, yonder’s a path going northward. It must end at the fjord.”

  “We may have done well not to use it,” said Thorolf. He drew blade, though he left his shield hung on his back. “We’ll have a look within.”

  He went first. The outer door was unbarred. He squatted down and waddled through the entry passage. Light drained past him to pick out the inner latchstring. He pulled it, flung that door wide, and sprang to the floor. At once he bounded aside to let the next man by, then took his fighting stance.

  The sword sank. He gasped.

  A woman stood by the hearth. As the sight of her brightened in his eyes, he knew that never had he seen any this fair. Not Finnish garb nor grime nor youth—sixteen winters, he would learn—lessened the loveliness and the queenliness of her.

  She was of middling height but seemed taller, as straight as she held herself. Slimness swelled in hips and high breasts. Her hair fell unbound to her waist in maiden wise, shining raven’s-wing black against milk-white skin. Round head, strong cheekbones, and snub nose might tell of a little Finnish blood, but already he knew her for Norse. A full mouth curved above a firm small chin. Beneath arched brows her eyes were big, wide-set, thick-lashed, and—he found when he saw her in better light—a changeable gray-green.

  She smiled at the four who had burst in on her; flawless teeth gleamed. Her voice was soft, somewhat husky. “Welcome,” she said in their tongue, with the Northland bu
rr. “I had hopes of your coming.”

  “Who, who are you?” stammered Thorolf.

  “I hight Gunnhild, daughter to the hersir Özur Dapplebeard. And you, I think, are men of Eirik, son to King Harald.”

  Slowly, Thorolf sheathed his sword. His followers, still dumbstricken, lowered their own weapons. “That’s right.” He named himself. Halldor drew the Cross again. Thorolf thought they might not like a witch to hear their names, and did not utter them as yet. For his part he would not behave other than fearlessly. “How do you know this?”

  “That’s a long tale, which I must tell quickly.” She moved forward, lynx-lithe, to lay a cool hand in his for a few heartbeats. Steadily holding his gaze, she said, “I wish I could give you drink and then a feast. I will, too, if we live. But today time is short. Will you hear me out, Thorolf Skallagrimsson, and believe me, and do as I ask?”

  He thought of what had already happened. His heartbeat thundered. “We hearken.”

  She drew breath. Her words never faltered. “I am here to learn spellcraft from two Finns who’re the greatest and most knowing warlocks in the whole of Finnmörk. They’re now out hunting. They both want me. They’re so cunning that they follow spoor like hounds, whether the ground be frozen or thawed, and on ski they’re so swift that nothing can outrun them. Whatsoever they shoot at, they hit. They’ve made an end of everyone who’s come near. When they’re angry, the earth itself turns away from their eyes and everything alive falls dead before that look. You must not get in their way. But I will hide you here in the gamma.”

  Even Thorolf’s henchmen bristled at this. He waited for her to go on.

  “Then we’ll see whether we can kill them,” said Gunnhild.

  XVII

  She had told more of Vuokko and Aimo than she knew to be true, and a few things she knew were not. But she wanted these warriors eager to attack, yet not reckless. Given a chance, the shamans could indeed freeze them with a glare, then raise a sight from which the doughtiest of men would shrink. They might not kill, but if they spared Thorolf, he must withdraw and tell Eirik the booty here was not worth the cost. Sure it was that they would never willingly let him take her away. When Aalf came, they could say they had forbidden her leaving for her own sake, because they descried that bad luck sailed in those ships. And maybe it would. Maybe, horn-mad, they did have the might to call up a storm that wrecked him.