By the Mountain Bound (17 page)

I blinked the sharp tears back again, sniffling. Thorra’s blankets rustled.

And then there was Strifbjorn, whom we had followed since
we came from the sea, and who stood half a step away from open rebellion of the goddess we awaited for centuries. And I loved him, with a love that grew rather than fading, as if each brushstroke of our recent history limned his mettle brighter.

But it was not love that drew me to him, for what I felt for him could never be requited. He had nothing for me except the quiet reserve he offered all my sisters. His heart was given, and he was true.

And Strifbjorn was right, and Heythe was wrong.

The water began to boil.

“Bright one?” Thorra asked, hesitantly, solicitously—as if she could not for another instant bear my sniffling.

“It’s all right, Thorra. Rest; you have a feast to prepare tomorrow.” The flyting—a contest of wit and insult—would begin at sunset, and I suspected that Strifbjorn had no hope of winning. Quickness of tongue had never been his strength. Rather he led with a powerful arm, a fine quiet understanding and an unspoken devotion to each of us.

Our whispers had awakened one or two of the others; bright eyes peeped from blankets as I broke birch twigs and crumbled mint into a deep wooden bowl. I lifted the kettle from the hook without benefit of a rag. Thorra hissed and glanced away, but the heat could not harm me, even when I judged the brew steeped enough by its scent and strained the twigs out with my fingers.

The wet wood made aromatic steam when I cast it in the fire.

I winked at Thorra and carried the infusion out. Snowflakes melted in the steam while I wrested the postern door open.

Strifbjorn stood over my book, and did not notice my return. I stepped back into the shadows by the door, closing it
silent as I could. He touched a spot on the manuscript with one weapon-callused fingertip, raised it to his lips as if to taste. Difficult to judge, at that distance, but I thought he closed his eyes.

My breath shallow enough to hurt, I held my bowl carefully in both hands while he read, painstakingly, the lines of poetry. A smile touched lips as he did so—not cruel, or mocking, but thoughtful.

Then he looked up and saw me standing by the door. The expression fell off his face, replaced by a neutral mask, and he nodded once, politely, and turned and melted away.

I could not run after him, with so many of my brethren in the hall. So I leaned against the rough-hewn logs in the darkness and drank my tea, casting sidelong glances at Heythe’s empty chair. The Banner behind it ruffled in the drafts that came through the turf-chinked walls.

Did I think she might be lying?

She was no waelcyrge. She felt the cold; she needed rest. She might lie. But the Raven Banner should not.

I finished the infusion, set the bowl beside the kitchen door for a thrall to collect, and—picking up a pen, ink and a scrap of writing-cloth in passing—I went in pursuit of Strifbjorn.

And as simply as that chose rebellion.

With warlock words thou didst work

Witchcraft in womanish ways

          
—Lokasenna

The Wolf

I
bide dawn and morning in the icy waste, breathing cold air and solitude. The snow catches me at midday: colder here, and the ice has taken most of its water so the flakes are more like pellets. The heat of my skin still melts them, though.

At sunset I walk into the blue-lit shadows of the glacier and through the long, cold passage beyond. I pause in the dark folds of our blue-and-silver banner, furled behind the Cynge’s chair. Fire has been kindled in the trench, the broad trestles scrubbed to shining and set along both sides of the hall. My brethren file in.

And Strifbjorn?

Strifbjorn slumps on the steps below me, elbows on his knees, staring at his hands. I watch the rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathes. The braid I plaited shines in the light of hundreds of torches and candles, catching red highlights off the sunset through high windows still unshuttered against the night.

I breathe the icy air of the shadowed road, and step into
the light. He doesn’t notice me until I sink beside him, my hand on his arm. “Brother.” I try to put enough warmth into my voice to bridge the ragged gap between us.

He looks up. “Brother,” he says. “You’ll stand with me?”

“I could not stand against,” I say, squeezing his shoulder lightly. “Strifbjorn . . .”

He looks up at me, starlight pooling in the backs of his eyes, shimmering there like unshed tears. “Aye?”

I lean close into his ear. “Thou art my true and only family. I vow I will never do thee harm.”

The relief in his eyes is terrible to see. Can he have doubted me so deeply, when he holds me in his heart?

We’ve kissed. He
knows
me.

And thus, if he doubts me, his doubt is justified.

But by the same token, I know his strength, his love. His faith. I solace myself with that knowledge, the knowledge of what he has risked for my sake, the fidelity of his love.

Cold comfort, but comfort.

“Brother,” he begins—but whatever he might say is interrupted as Menglad wanders close. Limping, he finishes, “It is good to have you with me.”

The broad doors swing open and Skeold enters. She crosses the hall and dips a curtsey before Strifbjorn, self-consciously. “War-leader, the Lady sends that she is ready.”

My glove slides from his sleeve as Strifbjorn stands, a picture of fluid strength. He towers over both Skeold and myself. “Thank you,” he says.

She lays a deft hand on his arm, where mine rested. “Strifbjorn?”

“Aye, sister?”

She takes a breath. “I look forward to the end of this argument, brother, when we can stand once more together against whatever enemies may come.”

She spins on her heel, shattering dry pine boughs, and strides away. I rise from my crouch. “Art ready?”

“I’d better be,” he answers. “Order the feast served, Mingan, if you will?”

He walks away before I can answer.

T
he feast is laid with ceremony. When full dark has fallen, we take our seats except for Heythe. Custom demands her late arrival. Even Skeold and Sigrdrifa are at their places on the cross-bench. Strifbjorn does not eat, although he idly sticks the point of his knife into the food on our shared trencher.

I can do naught to comfort him.

Instead I count heads. Count what I am coming to think of as
our side
—Yrenbend, Brynhilde, Bergdis, Muire. Menglad, Arngeir, Herewys . . . Perhaps three hundred and fifty out of ten hundred or a little less, and not even all the hundred-odd who look to our own mead-hall are with us.

It will not be an easy challenge.

I want to leap up when Heythe enters through a wide-flung door, but instead I slide my knife into the butter and feign blindness. She is robed in silver, a creamy blue kirtle peeking from underneath her surcote. Her necklace shines on the white column of her throat, and a spray of diamonds adorns her brow, glittering in the firelight like ice festooning birch twigs.

Strifbjorn leans over and whispers in my ear. “This is going to be fun.” I don’t need our bond to hear the fury in his tone.

“See that you win it.”

He draws back. The chill shine in his eyes tells me he has no intention of cutting any deals with her—now, or ever. “I’ll see that I do.”

He raises his eyes at last, as the Lady sweeps to a halt before us. She draws a single breath in deep and seems to dismiss Strifbjorn with a look, although he does not honor her by rising. Instead she surveys the room, imperious, addressing her words to the einherjar and waelcyrge and not our war-leader.

“Heythe they call me, and Gullveig also:

Burned and reborn, traveling roads most fell

Across wide waters, through windswept darkness,

And yet I am spurned, by the lord of this hall?

“Promised I was, prophesied coming

To stand in the shelter of the Ulfenfell.

And yet this Strifbjorn my counsel refuses?

Refuses me further the loaf and the ale?”

She turns to Strifbjorn, raising an accusing finger. The edge of her gaze catches mine. I am reminded of the needle point of the unicorn’s horn. I
see
it, burned before me in the air. I must blink to drive it away.

Visions. She has the power of raising memories.

Strifbjorn pales under her gaze, so I wonder what spook she has called into him. Her smile curves in mockery as he
stands. But he faces her unflinching and declaims, making my heart fierce and glad.

“Guest you cannot be,

Lady or stranger—

One claims a kin’s right;

The other’s a liar.”

A gasp runs the length of the table. Heythe rocks a half step on her heels. My breath hisses between my teeth: a blunt attack. I would have saved such for the end.

He smiles, leaning forward, and presses the momentary advantage.

“Nor your honor may

Surely we ken—

Secrets and shadows

You weave at your whim.”

Nicely done, to call her on her witchery. That’s a splinter under a nail, I wot.

But Heythe laughs, low and seductive, and with a long arm sweeps the room.

“Weak I am and woman; witchery besuits me—

What warrants war-leader, to womanish ways?”

I am a fool to knock the bench back and jump up. I slap one hand on Svanvitr’s hilt in the sudden breathless silence of the hall. The word she used was
nithling
.
Faggot.

But Strifbjorn . . . never looks away from the Lady. He smiles and tips his head as if to praise. His hand on my shoulder is gentle, urging me into my seat.

I sit. A silent snarl bares my teeth.

“Weak I am not, and warrior; whom I bed besuits me:

That my duty lies undone, no one in truth can say.”

I slide down in my seat. Oh, aye. Whom
he
beds. And who beds him, does that matter?

But his hand lies light on my shoulder, and after shocked silence the hall is laughing—
howling
—as he picks up her meter and turns her direst insult back on her. And little Muire, head thrown back, laughs violently, Menglad leaning on her in a weakness of glee.

The witches.
That’s
who ghost-wrote Strifbjorn’s verse. But those final lines must be his own voice. His skill has shocked his helpmeets.

He is more than any of us suspected. More than we
granted
.

I am shamed.

Heythe searches the room for welcoming faces, startled by the laughter and the sanction it implies. I think she is bewildered by Strifbjorn’s sudden and public acknowledgment.
They knew already.

I must laugh myself at all the stealth and despair. But a chill settles into my throat a moment later, choking the mirth at its source.

But they don’t know about the kiss. Does Heythe?

I must sit straight and proud under Strifbjorn’s hand, though I be cold with dread.

But Strifbjorn’s grin is feral. He leans forward, mastery in his grasp, riding the laughter of our peers. Heythe swings from side to side, but finds only mockery.
Is that the best you can do?

Near the cross-bench, Sigrdrifa is on her feet—Herfjotur and Skeold drag her skirts to restrain her.

And Strifbjorn smirks and shakes his head, raising his voice so his scorn can be heard over the merriment. I close my eyes and down my drink.

“Heythe. You promise us an enemy. I see no evidence, unless she be thee. The Raven could warn of thy arrival as easily as the advance of any revenant giant.”

He leans back, as if to sit down beside me and finish his drink. “What you counsel is the true abomination, and I will not have it in my hall.”

The laughter peaks. Heythe staggers, steps back. Half a breath fills my chest, but I choke it back, unwilling to count on victory.

And Heythe turns away.

I touch Strifbjorn’s thigh beneath the table. He settles back—

And then we are both on out feet, along with half the hall, pulled up by a crash and the sound of tearing cloth as Sigrdrifa kicks over the trestle in front of the cross-bench. She strides through the ruin of the feast. Torn skirts drag in gravy and aspic. She snatches Heythe’s arm and yanks her back, but she snarls at Strifbjorn.