B007IIXYQY EBOK (13 page)

After a time Auriane could not help but notice Hertha. Her masses of dove-gray hair collected about her then unfurled like some flag of surrender as she began walking with grave, measured steps toward the blazing hall. Her face was rigid with purpose.

Auriane realized she meant to walk into the flames.

The sight thrust Auriane back into the world. She leapt up. “No!” Her
cry was a long, forlorn howl.

Auriane ran until she was abreast of her grandmother. She thought the raging heat would melt the features from her face. She could not bear another death.

She seized Hertha’s arm, but her grandmother recoiled and fought her off savagely. Hertha’s hair lashed Auriane across the face.

“Your touch fouls!” Hertha cried out. “Shadow-walker, stand off from me!”

“Grandmother…despise me if you will, but stay with us. Our kin have lost too much already on this day.”

Auriane was ashamed of her quavering voice, but she struggled on. “There is no greater sign of ill omen than the death of a mother. In doing this, you harm Baldemar grievously and give aid to Wido. At least, think of your son!”

Hertha looked at her, those sallow eyes nearly emptied of life. Gusts of heated wind filled her linen dress and caused it to dance lightly like some frolicksome ghost. Her lips were parched; that voice was the hissing sigh of a bellows. “You know nothing of life and death and harm. The gods have fled from this hall, ignorant child, or these calamities could not have come to pass. I do not wish to live on without honor.”

To her amazement, Auriane found her fear of her grandmother suddenly vanished. It was as though this single day drove her from childhood, and she saw Hertha as she truly was: not august and terrifying, but a brittle, bitter girl grown old, to whom life was a series of punishments alleviated only by occasional opportunities to inflict punishment on others.

“Grandmother, you desert us all. Your answer to our weakness is to weaken us more,” Auriane cried angrily over the roar of the flames, dimly astonished at her own presumption. “It is wicked of you, and cowardly. Honor can be reclaimed. You know Baldemar will avenge this, swiftly as thunderclap follows lightning. They murdered his son! They outraged his wife! He will lay waste to their whole country.”

A lethal light flashed in Hertha’s eyes. “And who will avenge
him,
when he dies by a kinswoman’s hand?”

“What are you saying? Who has said these things? What
kinswoman?”

“Arnwulf’s murder can be avenged, but no one in all this Middle-world will be able to avenge Baldemar’s. For who can take vengeance on their own? It is the greatest evil that can be laid on a clan, for vengeance cannot cleanse it. What passed today is the first sign of this curse.”

Auriane sensed the beast that had tracked her all her life was poised to spring.

Hertha went on with triumph in her eyes, “He will die by
your
hand,
Auriane, and so it has been foretold.”

“I cannot believe such loathsome words come from your mouth! Do you not see how I love him? Athelinda does not love him more!”

But her grandmother was sealed once more in her tower of silence. Hertha wrestled free of Auriane and resumed her processional walk toward the burning hall. Auriane followed for a time, vigorously shaking her head, her voice a shriek.

“Grandmother, no!”
she repeated until she thought the heat would boil her blood. Hertha never slowed. Her step seemed almost eager, as though she joined a fiery lover. She was a demoness whose will was stronger than fire.

At the last she was a wriggling black thing against molten gold, more worm than human, and to Auriane it seemed she danced in delight. A sense of doom settled over her as she watched Hertha’s form swaying, thinning, thickening in the blast of heat, rippling like an eel under water.

Auriane felt her chest collapse. A savage guilt battered her heart, as if she pushed Hertha into the fire herself.
So that is why she despised me always,
Auriane thought. But why is she so certain
I will commit a crime too wretched to name that she walks into flames?

Auriane retreated from the heat and returned to the place where her mother’s blood stained the ground. She felt herself tied to the tail of a dragon, lashed first one way, then the other—first her mother, then Arnwulf, and now this—and with this last blow she felt all the struggle run out of her. The sun seemed to wane in grief as she fell among the potsherds, tumbling into lurid dreams where elves and giants danced on the corpse of her family, a world where only fire and the sword were real.

CHAPTER IV

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING, WHILE THE HILLSIDES
still smoked from the raiders’ fires, Witgern and twenty of Baldemar’s Companions galloped noisily into the yard. Where the hall of Baldemar once stood was a charred and glowing midden, hotter than a forge; here and there a living flame still stirred, seeming to taunt them. The young Companions rode round it, staring in dazed disbelief.

The Hermundures have gone mad, Witgern thought. How had those slinking foxes summoned the mettle to maul a mighty aurochs? Surely they know that when Baldemar punishes them he will be a scythe leveling ripe wheat.

One of the young Companions, fearing the fiery hall was a sign from the gods that all who served Baldemar were cursed, stole off alone into the wood and used his bridle reins to hang himself from a pine.

Finally Witgern saw Auriane. The sight tripped his heart. She lay curled on her side, asleep or dead in the shadow of a watering trough for kine. The others saw her, too, but they kept a discreet distance so that Witgern could approach her alone.

Witgern was tall and strongly made, with thick red-gold hair that settled at his shoulders, and morose blue eyes in an earnest face that was clean shaven. It was the face of one who might compose songs when he was alone, a countenance that made it difficult to believe he had performed the bloody deeds attributed to him. But they were true enough. Though Witgern had seen only twenty-four summers, he alone vied with Sigwulf, a seasoned warrior, for the coveted position at Baldemar’s right hand in the charge. His wolfskin cloak was fastened with the tusk of a boar that had fatally gored four warriors before Witgern brought it down alone. His horse’s bridle was adorned with the bronze medallions of two Roman cavalry Centurions he slew in a single foray—a feat Baldemar himself had not matched. But Witgern was shrouded in a stubborn melancholy that mystified his fellows, for it seemed there was no gift of the Fates he missed: His father’s herds were second in size to Baldemar’s, and his mother’s fields were nearly as vast as Hertha’s. He knew a different tale for every day of the moon; he could down nine horns of mead and still stand upright, and rarely did he lose a spear-casting contest; he even somehow managed to win consistently at dice. And beyond this, Baldemar intended to grant him the greatest gift he could give—his only daughter.

Two spotted dogs edged close to him, fangs bared. Witgern beat them back with a barrel stave and knelt down beside Auriane.

His first thought embarrassed him because it did not seem it should be his first:
Cover her!
They should not see my wife-to-be in this state, bare of her fine ornaments, and her clothes shredded by dogs. Is my great prize still alive? How Sigwulf would rejoice if my one chance of a kin-tie to Baldemar were torn from me.

He put a hesitant hand to her throat to feel for her pulse.
She lives.
He felt a wild rush of relief, followed by a giddiness he was certain was love.

That summery innocence. No wonder Wido wanted her in his family more than he wanted a thousand rings of silver. But this wonder belonged solely to him.

He tore a bit of cloth from his own tunic, dipped it into the water of the trough, and gently wiped the blood from her face.

Look away, you rogues, and do not despise me for having the great good fortune to
love
the woman to whom I am to be married. Do not think I don’t hear your thoughts: Witgern carries on like some coddled prince who drinks wine from fountains. Love’s a luxury only the pampered peoples of the south can afford.

He quickly determined that Auriane was bruised and exhausted, but had no great wounds of the flesh. As she opened her eyes and withdrew from him in the instinctive way of maltreated beasts,
then
he saw her wound—a mauled soul that would never again trust the world to be gentle and fair. He forgot himself for a moment and felt a sharp sadness for her. There was in her look that haunted grief he saw often in the faces of those who outlived all their children, watching every one fall victim to the Roman plague. The Fates shredded everyone’s peace soon enough, but they had gotten to her so young.

She struggled to sit up, but she did not crawl close to him for comfort as he wished. She was sealed in wary solitude, as if she stood alone on a citadel. While staring at the fire, she told him in a few toneless words of Hertha’s suicide, Arnwulf’s death and the outrage suffered by her mother.

Witgern knew then just how great a catastrophe this was. Many of the tribespeople and even some of his fellow Companions would see this as a sign Baldemar was no longer fit to lead them in battle; they might desert him for a younger man. A chief’s growing weakness was like the rotting center beam of a house—a thing to be anxiously watched. The plundering Hermundures might have given Wido his fondest wish—to lead the army alone. And Witgern was not certain even the sacred rite of vengeance could cleanse the stain of that blackest of curses, the voluntary death of a mother. The Holy Ones would doubtless require a lavish gift of appeasement from Baldemar, to be paid to Wodan through his priest.

Witgern even feared for his own life. Baldemar in his great grief might hold
him
partly accountable, simply because he had come too late. Such things happened among them—misfortune’s cause was sometimes held to be the curse of those who were near.

Witgern realized Auriane watched him gravely, readying herself to speak difficult words. “Witgern, look at me,” she said urgently. “Your mind is far off to the south.”

“You are easy enough to look upon!” Witgern smiled, anxious to tease her down from her citadel. Her solemnity made him feel something was required of him that he did not know how to give. He took her hand. “You are beauteous beyond sun and moon, even when you’ve rolled all day in the mud!”

“No pretty words on this day, Witgern. Please, I cannot bear it.”

Witgern suddenly felt uncomfortable. Now what problem was
she
going to present to him?

The soft gray eyes held him fast. “Witgern, I dare not wait—I must tell it now. I cannot marry you.”

At first Witgern felt nothing. “What is this?”
he said softly. He looked round hurriedly once, fearful the others overheard, then dropped his voice to a taut whisper. “What monstrous thing are you saying?” Slowly, a creeping coldness came into his stomach. That will of hers, that rogue will, immovable as a standing stone—what could stand against it? It was Baldemar’s will, born again.

“What have I done that you should cast me off?” He released her hand. But he sensed Auriane felt his discomfort, and he knew remorse was undermining her.
Very good. I’ll appeal to that kindliness.

“Nothing.” She looked restively down. “It…it is not my wish to be cruel. Please, I beg you, do not think ill of me.”

“How could I think ill of you?” he whispered, while inside, suddenly he hated her. Two fellow Companions heard sharp whispered words and turned to look at them. Witgern warned them away with a scowl.

“As the gods live, if I
could
marry, I would marry you.”

“Just tell me what I’ve done!”

“Witgern, it has nothing to do with you. It is because of my mother.”

“Curses on Hel. I thought Athelinda liked me.”

“Not that.” She turned away, her face flushed scarlet in the heat, her eyes glistening. “My mother married and was happy. She thought she could raise children in…in a slaughtering pen. And look what became of her and her children…over there, you can still see what is left of her loom. Witgern, hear me please! I cannot farm and bear children on a battlefield. I can’t stay here trussed like kine, never knowing the day of slaughter. I…I must go to the gate and
meet
the slaughterer—”

“Poor child. Of course you think so now—”

“You know me little, Witgern. If you will not heed my heart, perhaps you’ll listen to the judgment of the gods. As the raid began, I fell into my fate.” She recounted the tale of the Ash Grove slaying, finding it easier to tell than she expected—all fear of Hylda’s oracle had been burned away in the fire. “I am meant to be ‘a living shield’….What is that but a shield maiden, consecrated to unmarried life in the service of the god? What I will, Witgern, is what the gods intend. So it was said, too, of Baldemar in his youth. The sign of a shield maiden, all say, is that she cannot sleep on settled land. It is the truth, Witgern…. There is a fatal restiveness in the heart….”