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A faint, delicious drift of summer flowers brushed my nose. Arn, ever interested in anything given strength through fermentation, leaned over my shoulder; her blue woad-stripe was dry and crackingupon her cheek. “It smells good.” Laughter still bubbled in her voice. “See if it will clear your head, weirdling.”
I had my doubts any draught could ease the pain in my backside, but I brought the flask’s mouth to mine. A single swallow—it burned, but not unpleasantly, and a golden glow filled my head as if I had downed one of Idra’s many nasty-thick potions to strengthenseidhr-gifts or ward off illness. It hit behind my breastbone and spread; I all but staggered, the liquid sloshing. Arn steadied me, all levity gone and her hand tightening upon her spear. I coughed, loosely recapping the flask, and leaned into her.
If she was occupied with my support, she could not loose a sharp challenge at a man who might have wished to drug or poison her charge. “’Tis strong,” I managed, my throat coated with a sweetness I could not define. There was no ill in the drink, or I was novolva. “Will you have a swallow, Arn? I think you’ll like it.”
Eol looked as if he might protest, but at home Arn and I shared all. She took the flask, eyeing the Northern man balefully, and took a healthy draught. Her eyes closed, and though I could tell she was struggling to keep from coughing, nobody else could. Or so I hoped.
“Very strong indeed,” she said huskily, capping the flask with a quick twist of her muscle-padded wrist. “My thanks, Northerner.”
He accepted both his property and her thanks with a nod and moved away, the tiny glass thing vanishing. I caught sight of one black-clad man elbowing another; they found this amusing.
As weregild I could not be openly insulted, but any group—even a smaller family within a greatfarm’s kinhold—has hundreds of ways to make a stranger feel unwelcome, or even merely bothersome. I rested my head upon Arn’s shoulder, lightly enough not to drive iron rings or scale into my temple or her flesh. The Northern youth finished his visiting of every horse, perhaps listening to their ills or expressing his own, and I could not help but wonder who had trained him in horsebreaking.
Could this Aeredh light a bonfire, or hold one? Could he make the clouds thicken, draw darts of light from the glitter upon a river’s back, or make a pebble twitch-dance? Certainly not, and neithercould his fellows. They were warriors, and I was otherwise. All branches ofseidhrwere available to me, though I could touch metal only lightly; perhaps he was forge-wise? Frestis was a cloudshaper, and Idra could whisper to water in all its forms. The rest of Dun Rithell’s weirdlings were not of their strength, though they had the cunning that lies within allseidhr, no matter the particular affinity.
Even among them I was different. Idra had been forced to teach me according to rede and lore, hoping the gods and spirits would provide what instruction she lacked.You will know when you meet another, she always said.
I hoped it was true, but if I am to speak with bare honesty, I ever felt some pride in lonely uniqueness.
In short order the rest halt was finished, and Arn did not have to help me mount. She did anyway, to avoid one of the men thinking he should perform the duty, and swung into her own saddle with no sign of stiffness. Thesithevielburned inside me, a steady flame, and strength spread from its glow.
Learningthatrecipe would be a worthy deed. I kept my eyes half-closed as the Northerners rode, attempting to follow each taste in the drink to its source, to discern the edges of whatever word or other act made for its potency. Aeredh began to sing in the Old Tongue, a soft naming of plants both healing and harmful I listened to while seeking thesitheviel’s secrets; the others passed infrequent, half-heard conversation while the sun rose to its highest and the fog drew away on every side. Arneior hummed part of the saga of Harald the Skald, a listing of the names of particularvalkyraand the dead heroes they selected from a battlefield’s fallen.
I held my peace. To be avolvais to listen, as Idra often said.
Great boulders brushed with damp rosy lichen squatting heavily on an orangish field, stubble-bracken and other slight grasses clinging to thin dirt—I did not recognize this place. After a short while there was no track anymore, even for cart-wheels, and it was a good thing I was so occupied with tasting the ghost of a foreign drink or I might even have felt some outright fear. Each step took us farther away from anything familiar, and as weregild I could no longer breathe or speak freely.
And it was only the first day.
At Any Age
The Enemy hates the Elder, for they would not serve him. Yet he reserves the deepest wells of hatred for the Secondborn, for it galls him bitterly that even such weak and perishable beings have defied him as well.
—The Saga of Redcloak
The Northerners returned to grim silence as the sun fell earthward from nooning. At home Astrid would be at the looms or her needle, singing amid women likewise employed. Bjorn would be with other warriors, lending their strength to a neighbor’s need for something repaired, lifted, or thumped. My parents would be hearing legal cases in the greathall, one or two of Dun Rithell’s otherseidhrattending to give weight to judgments or to find the hidden truth of certain complicated matters.
Were we home, Arneior would be at her daily practice, spilling other warriors of my father’s hall onto hard-packed dirt with impatient flickers of her spearblade’s flat or whirling through the complicated forms taught to girls the Wingéd Ones breathe upon. Most days I would be watching her from the sidelines, well-wrapped against winter, or in the stillroom concocting medicines. Today, however, my duty should have been in the greathall, listening or lending my own weight to certain judgments.
But Arn and I were with a group of quiet black-clad foreigners,wending east and northward, instead. This year the added respect and binding of a fullvolva’s presence would have stood behind Dun Rithell. It occurred to me—more than once as we rode—that when I returned from the North I would no longer be a familiar, known quantity. The travel would change me; even those of my home would regard me with deeper caution, perhaps even verging upon mistrust.
’Twas nothing new. There is more than one meaning in “seidhr”; loneliness makes its home in the word as well.
The Northerners halted just before twilight. A circle of great grey stones appeared amid thickening fog and slender firs oddly distorted by a low wind’s almost-constant scraping. It had burned here a few years ago, if the winter-struck underbrush and youth of the trees was any indication.
The stones were not kin to those standing at the east edge of Dun Rithell’s safe pasturage, nor were they the kind native to our riverside and Tarnarya’s flanks. There was no accumulation of power—other than that of slow time—lingering in their hunched forms. Many a beast or creature had obviously decided such a grouping seemed fair protection for a short rest; we were no different.
The Northerners set about making camp as Arn steadied my dismounting, and after a day spent upon one of their tall pale steeds my legs would not quite do as they were told. My shieldmaid’s mouth was set, whether a result of dislike or some stiffness in her own limbs I could not tell. “I need to fight someone,” she muttered, and I could not hold back a weary laugh.
“My lady Solveig?” Aeredh approached, his sky-blue eyes dancing with a strange, merry gleam. Fog-droplets caught in his dark hair, and he moved with marked grace. Of course, he was used to days spent a-saddle. “I thought you might offer us some aid.”
How did you travel without me, then?But I had to be mannerly all through new winter and spring, then summer and harvest-homeward-wending to boot. A weregild does as they are bid, unless the request be criminal. “In what form?”
“Come.” He beckoned, not quite peremptorily, and Arneior bristled.
I knew she was a short breath or two from a sharp word, and that was an ill enough way to begin our first night with strangers. “If Imay help, I will. Though I know not what a group of Northern warriors needs from me.”
Of course, I could not halt the latter slipping from my tongue. I may even have sounded bitter as my mother, and to a youth as well. He looked even younger than Bjorn, for all he carried himself with such dignity.
