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“No.” A battle would not cease because I was tired, or had been wrung dry. “Again.”
She shook her ruddy head. Her spear lifted slightly, considering the prospect before rising fully, its blunt end coming to rest upon the floor. “Save your strength. That’s enough for today.” My frustration must have been evident, for she laughed again.
An uncharacteristic wave of ill-feeling swept through me. “You’re of more fishgutting use to the Northerners than I am. One more round, Arn.”
“Ah.” Her nose wrinkled, and she glanced at the doorway behind me, ever mindful of our surroundings. “So it’s useful you want to be, hm? In that case, you should be practicing with that little ball of theirs.”
“I would rather bathe in sheepshit.” There was no use in wheedling, so I folded down to the floor, enjoying its steady coolth. Outside the wind would snap-freeze a breath as soon as it was exhaled, but I was sweating and overheated here, glad of hill-heart’s even chill. “I hate this. I long to be home.”
“Mh. Tedious legal arguments, your brother behaving badly, everyone in sight asking you for a blessing—”
She had a point, but so did I. “At least there are noorukhar.”
“Fair. But for how long?” She sobered, leaning upon her spear, and regarded me closely.
“I know.” It rankled to admit the Northerners still had advantage despite all my maneuvering. I suspected we would do as Aeredh and Eol wished, sallying forth for this Hidden City, and deep it irked me indeed. “Where do you think we should go?”
“I think myvolvaknows, but she has not been in a stillroom to mix concoctions or rambling along the riverbank to hear the Vanyr speak.” Her boots creaked slightly as she shifted. The storeroom was bare and smelled of stonedust now, two breathing creatures disturbing its long slumber. “Difficult to find free air in this warren.”
She was right, as usual. The deepwinter after solstice year-turn is a time of rest, for huddling in the hall near good fires, telling sagas and riddles. This year at Dun Rithell others would have to sing the histories, and the story of Bjorn’s strike and my leaving would be set in verse as well. It would make my father glower, of course, but once a song escapes its maker’s mouth there is nothing to be done.
If Eril the Battle-Mad had known the Northerners’ true purpose, what might have happened? As it stood, he could take some pride in his mighty son felling a two-shaped man with one blow—if he ever realized that was what had happened. I could not decide how to feel aboutthat, either, especially with the murdered man’s brother so willing to hold an Elder to account for calling me a witch.
Yet Eol would not even accept avolva’s healing after a battle, and he did not mention the curse upon him I was perhaps supposed to mend. There was a deeper tangle than life-debt between me and the eldest son of Naras, and I did not like the feeling.
Snarled thread is nothing to the mess the Three Kindly Ones,those weaving sisters of Fate, make in mortal lives. ’Tis said they even use Elder lives upon their loom, treating them just as cruelly as mortals when the mood strikes.
It was enough to make me wish the fishgutting Northerners had never come to Dun Rithell, had passed our small world upon the riverbank by. Perhaps the Enemy might have been satisfied warring with the Elder and left us in peace—except by all accounts the first son of the Allmother behaves much as a petty warlord for all his might, and those rarely have the sense to halt when they reach the limit of reasonable conquest. There are men for whom nothing is enough, ever, and the word for them bears a distinct resemblance to some of the Old Tongue’s euphemisms describing the lord of the Black Land.
For all their silences, their grimness, and their levering me from my home, the Northerners did not seem… well,bad. Idra might even have liked them, and my mother held them in honor. Lady Hajithe and her son were somewhat forbidding, but also scrupulously just.
I had not been prepared to find the Elder of song, saga, story, and myth so grudging in certain aspects, though. A deep sigh worked up from my belly as I stretched upon the stone, taking comfort in its solidity. It remembereddvergershaping, but only distantly.
Redhill was delved very long ago indeed, even as the Elder count such things.
Arn, attending to her own stretching, peered at me. She was bent double, letting her legs speak of any soreness, her spear braced to provide readiness even at rest. Her hornbraids, their leather-wrapped dependents dangling, made her entire attitude into an inquisitive goatling’s, and I laughed.
Her dark eyes gleamed. “Finally you are merry again. You look strange, too, my weirdling.”
“Here we are, deep in a dverger hill with no sauna.” Still, there was hot water for bathing, and that was luxury enough. “Perhaps we are in a comical tale after all.”
“Unlikely.” But her grin matched mine. “I am glad, though; soon my spear will have a name. I knew you were meant for great things, Solveig.”
Of course a shieldmaid would consider this a grand adventure—atleast, while there was notrulbefore us, or no ash-pale howlingorukhar, I could even admit some part of me still felt the same. The rest longed to be home before a fire, with all this safely in the past and a lapful of sewing to attend to. I had not held a needle for some time save to repair our mantles; there is little better for hard thinking than pulling thread through fabric, making something new from flat panes of cloth. I could be listening to the thump-clack of Astrid’s loom while she and Ulfrica told riddles, or the whirr of my mother’s spinning wheel as she hummed the formless tune all her children know as well as their own breath.
I did not have further time to be homesick, for Mehem the dverger appeared in the storeroom’s arched door. It was time to follow him through the passageways to our quarters and water-room. We readied ourselves early each day as if for travel, waiting for the weather to break.
Soon we would leave Redhill.
Venture into Winter
What might the world have been, if the Enemy had not marred it? Even Lokji’s twisting serves the Allmother’s end, for though he is a contrary child, he cannot bear to foul her work beyond redemption. The Blessed are silent upon this matter, even the Trickster himself. Once he fought at the Enemy’s side; now he hates his eldest brother more than do those who never were misled…
—Naecil Nin-jaren of lost Gaeliquenden,Saga of the Making
In a few full moons spring would bring thaw, if the gods pleased, and the Allmother’s warmth breathe through the sun even unto the far reaches of the North. The season of the treecrack cold was almost over; we could not wait for the season of false ice, when any drift’s surface or frozen skin over a stream may be hollowed from the bottom and break under an unwary foot.
Though there was no true melt yet, the killing cold was fractionally less.
