Icefall (7 page)

Ole looks at the cage, and then goes back to the rope in his hands.

The rest of the afternoon and evening pass uneventfully. We eat our night meal. Alric recites a few stories to make us feel something bigger than the hall we’re trapped in, and then it is time for bed.

I am standing at the cliff, and it all happens as before. The
drekars
, bearing evil. The berserker corpses, open-eyed and pale. The wolf-cloud, snarling destruction. The burning hall and our doom under the glacier’s heel. There is nothing I can do to stop it. I wake with a gasp and lie panting in the darkness. I have had the dream twice now, which means it must be a portent. And then I think of Hake’s suspicions about a spy, watching me from the woods.

Something is coming. The enemy will find us, and maybe already has. I hug myself, feel my own heart beating in my chest, and find it hard to fall back asleep.

I
t takes me a few weeks more to tell anyone about my dream. When I finally decide to, I go to Alric. We sit in a corner of the hall away from the others, and I whisper my fears to him. As I say it, I sound foolish even to myself, and I expect Alric to dismiss it all as a childish nightmare. But he doesn’t. He nods his head gravely and leans toward me, listening.

“So who is the wolf?” he asks when I’m finished.

“I don’t know.”

“And how deep was the snow in your dream?”

“The snow?” I ask. Why would that matter?

“Yes, in your dream, how deep was the snow?”

I stop to think. I remember the bodies of the berserkers lying on the ground. “Not as deep as it is now. The snow was melting.”

“So it was near the end of winter. Months from now.”

“I suppose it was. Why? Do you think it will come true?”

Alric shrugs. “I don’t know. But it’s best to be aware, isn’t it? We have some time, at any rate, before the ground begins to thaw and we meet our doom.”

He gets up and walks away, leaving me alone, counting days. Months from now seems no time at all before the coming of the wolf when the berserkers fall dead and the hall burns to the ground.

Raudi comes around one of the columns and stands next to me. Then he sits on his hands and looks at the ground near my feet.

“I heard what you told Alric,” he says.

I don’t mind that he was listening. It’s hard to avoid overhearing things in the winter-hall.

“Why would I think it’s your fault that we’re here?” he asks.

“I don’t really think that, Raudi. It was just a dream.”

“But I don’t feel that way, and I would never say it.” He looks up at me. “So I don’t think your dream can come true. You see?”

“At least not that part of it,” I say.

He nods once, as if satisfied that he has said what he meant to say, and rises to his feet.

“Wait,” I say.

He pauses.

“If you don’t feel that way,” I say, “why have you been so angry with me?”

“I’m not angry with you.”

“Raudi.”

He rubs his chin as though he wears a beard, like a man would do, even though his face is still smooth. “I’m just frustrated that we’re here. All of us. I’m supposed to be fighting alongside the other men. But they didn’t think I was ready.”

I don’t like to think about the fighting back home, and I’m glad that Raudi is here instead of there. But I don’t tell him that. “Just because you’re here doesn’t mean you’re not ready.”

“How so?”

“Well, the berserkers are here. It seems my father has only sent those whom he trusts the most. That includes you.”

“I guess that’s true.”

I lean forward and punch him lightly on the arm.

“What was that for?”

“For being so cross with me this whole time.”

He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and I can tell there is something he has left unsaid. “I better go help Mum.”

“All right.”

He walks away, and after he is gone, I turn my attention to Muninn in his cage near my bedcloset. I wish, like Odin, I could send him flying back to my father’s hall, or to the battlefield. I wish Muninn could return and tell me what he has seen.

The next morning, I help dish up skyr for Harald’s day meal. Our two cows can’t keep the whole steading in fresh milk, but they produce enough that we don’t feel so far away from home. I’ll miss the skyr and curd when we have to butcher the cows for meat, and judging by our stores of pork and dried fish, that isn’t too far off.

After I’ve served Harald, I dish some up from the crock for Asa and myself, and I sit to eat it. But before I’ve taken my first bite, I look up at those sitting around me, those eating something other than skyr.

Bera always insists the sour milk and curds go to Harald, Asa, or me before she offers what’s left to any of the men. And there’s an order there as well. Per is first to receive a portion, then Hake, then Per’s men, then the berserkers. Poor Ole is last because he is a thrall, so he never gets any. Bera doesn’t take any for herself, but I am sure she lets Raudi eat some occasionally. I hope she does.

Harald scoops his into his mouth until his bowl is empty. Everyone watches him and he grins.

I pause before eating mine, and stare into the bowl. Then I get up from my bench and cross the room to where Ole and Raudi are sitting next to each other.

“Would you two like to share this?” I ask.

They look up at me and then at each other.

“Thank you,” Raudi says, and takes the bowl from my hands.

Ole sucks on one of his cheeks like he’s puzzling something over. “That’s yours,” he says.

“I want you to have some. We should all have a share.” I look at Raudi. “Eat.”

But he has refrained. He looks back and forth between us as if Ole’s words have made him unsure of what he should do.

Ole looks at the bowl in Raudi’s lap. “If you insist.”

“I do,” I say. Before he can summon any further protest, I turn and walk away.

This place has done strange things to the people I know. Before coming here, Ole was always a friend to me, but he seems to resent me now. And he is not the only one who has changed. Bera no longer hums while she cooks at the hearth. Harald seems even more impatient and impulsive than he usually is. Asa’s beauty used to have a rich glow, like a golden summer evening when the setting sun seems to light the fields on fire as it touches them. Now her beauty has become a winter wood, stark and frosted and still. It makes me wonder how I have changed.

I catch Bera’s eye as I return to my bench, and she seems pleased at what I have done. From across the room I watch Ole and Raudi enjoy the skyr. Moments later, Ole licks his lips and lifts the empty bowl in salute to me.

After the day meal, Bera sends me to milk the cows. I do so, missing Hilda, but as I haul the sloshing bucket across the yard, there is a sudden break in the gray sky above, as though
a giant has pulled away a fistful of clouds, and I am awash in sunshine. True sunshine. Not warm, but bright, and I smile.

After handing the milk off to Bera, I pick up Muninn’s cage and carry it outside. I set it on a snowbank and sit down next to it, my arm draped over the top. Muninn grows still, looking around, the sun threading his feathers with glints of silver shine. I close my eyes and tilt my face up toward the light, and we sit together enjoying it for some time.

Then a shadow falls across me, and at first I think it’s a cloud, but when I open my eyes I see Hake standing over me.

“May I sit next to you?” he asks.

His request startles me, but I am not as uneasy in his presence as I used to be. “Of course.”

He lowers himself onto the snowbank beside me, emitting a low grunt. He looks around me at Muninn, smiles, and squints up at the sun. Moments pass. The silence between us feels awkward to me, but I don’t think it bothers him at all.

“Thank you again for my raven,” I say.

“You’re welcome.”

More silence, and thoughts from his conversation with Harald come to my mind.

“Hake?” I say, feeling bold.

“Yes?”

“Do you ever wish you had a family?”

He doesn’t answer, and I fear I may have angered him. But then he sighs. “If I had a daughter, I think she would be about your age.”

He says it plainly, but I think I hear the same hint of pain and regret underneath it. I mourn for him, though it’s for the loss of something he never had.

That evening, Alric pulls me aside. We sit on two stools facing each other. He doesn’t say anything at first. He just stares at me, sometimes tipping his head as if trying to see me from every angle, and I feel exposed and uncomfortable beneath his scrutiny.

“I’m convinced,” he finally says.

“Of what?” I ask.

“You could be a skald. If you wanted to.”

“Whether I want to doesn’t matter. I doubt my father would allow it.”

He waves that off with his hand, like clearing smoke. “Don’t worry about that yet.” He leans forward. “First, suppose your father did allow it. Is that something you would want?”

I pause before answering. “I think so.”

“Then let’s give it a try, shall we?”

“Give what a try?”

“I am going to teach you. Perhaps if you learn well, we could demonstrate your skill for your father when we return to his hall. To help convince him.”

“I would hate to waste your time,” I say.

“It’s not a waste.”

“And I doubt I have the skill,” I say.

“That remains to be seen.”

I say nothing.

“Good.” Alric slaps his thigh. “We’ll begin tomorrow.”

I open my mouth before I’ve found any words to say and close it. Then the hall doors open, and a flurry of snow rushes in ahead of a wide-eyed warrior. He scans the hall and then hurries to Hake. They speak with each other in low voices, heads leaned together, and then Hake rises. He motions for Per, and the two of them follow the warrior outside.

Everyone has noticed their departure, and when they’re gone, the conversation in the room begins to boil like a kettle over the coals. Alric and I are still sitting together, and my expression must appear to be asking a question because the skald shrugs as though he doesn’t know the answer. We wait for several minutes. Long minutes.

Then Hake returns and stands in the doorway. “There is nothing to worry about,” he says. He turns to my brother. “Harald, come and see.”

My brother jumps up and follows the berserker out of the hall. My curiosity lures me to my feet and out into the night after them. I hear Alric following me. We cross the yard, large flakes of snow floating all around us, the moon a silver brooch peering out between folds in the velvet clouds. Several guards stand at the top of the earthen wall with torches, looking into the woods. We climb up to join them.

Hake points Harald’s gaze into the forest, and I lean forward.

At first I see nothing. Just the black trees and the dark spaces between them. Then I catch movement. Something gray, low to the ground, and fast. A blur. A ghost. I see another, and another, and I hear a panted breath. They are every where, flying through the forest.

“A large pack,” Alric says beside me.

Wolves. Odin’s bane, shadow made flesh.

“They’re just passing through,” Hake says. “South to find prey.”

For a moment, I imagine myself out there in the woods, cold and defenseless. A shiver takes me, and I turn to go inside. But then I notice two glowing eyes, two pinpricks of reflected torchlight. I stare back at them, and a wolf emerges from the trees.

He is the most magnificent creature I have ever seen, enormous, of a bearing I have only met in the powerful chieftains that come to my father’s hall. The wolf’s coat shimmers with frost, his neck is thick, and his long legs plant him in the snow like a monument to all that is free and untamed in the world. He is not afraid of us at all.

At the sight of him, the berserkers go quiet.

“Now there’s a trophy,” one of them whispers.

But I doubt that he or any man would have the strength to bring down this wolf-king.

“We’re not here to hunt,” Hake says, with a note of regret in his voice. “Everyone stays inside these walls.”

“Perhaps,” Alric says, “this will be an opportunity for your men to learn that there are other ways of appreciating an impressive creature than killing it.”

“Or perhaps a time for you to be of use,” Hake says. “When we go back inside, why don’t you tell us of Fenrir? Satisfy our thirst in other ways.”

“I’d be honored,” Alric says.

I haven’t taken my eyes from the wolf. And he doesn’t seem to have taken his eyes from me. His gaze is intense, full of confidence, without any hostility. He is not the wolf of my dream. He
knows
his place in the world and where he belongs. I wish I could know the same.

Eventually, and for no other reason than his own, the wolf turns away from us and vanishes into the woods.

After that, no one speaks. We file down from the wall and back into the hall. There is some discussion between the men who saw the wolf-king and those who didn’t. Boasting by those who claim to have killed one larger. I am cold from being outside and take a place near the fire, rubbing my hands together over the coals.

Before long, Alric rises up, extinguishing the noises of the hall. He looks up into the rafters and begins.

“Far to the east, deep in the Ironwood, a giantess bore children by the god Loki. One of them was the giant wolf, Fenrir, who prowled astride the mountains, chasing the moon, feared even by the gods. For they knew that when he was fully grown,
he would be too powerful for them to defeat. So they devised a plan, and had a fetter fashioned by the dwarves in their underground realm, a chain as soft as silk but strong enough to muzzle Fenrir until the breaking of the world.”