By the Mountain Bound (34 page)

The stallion breathed into my hair.

Kasimir
, he said.

My thigh hurt less, but it had not healed as it should have. I scrambled up, limping, turning, seeking the danger as Nathr, uplifted, flared blue-white.

There was nothing but the snow, white as a waelcyrge’s gown, and the sky, enamel-blue as Heythe’s eyes. In the night, the storm had passed over.

Kasimir
, the stallion said patiently.

Only a valraven’s rider may hear his name.

I let my blade fall. “I am not worthy,” I said. “But I will still wait with you.”

Live.

“I cannot—”

But the sword in my hand seared, and did not flicker. “Maybe I can.”

The Dweller Within never came to our aid
, the stallion said, tossing his mane.
The Serpent lies dying. That is why there is no Light for you to call on. No Light but your own.

“Oh.” There
was
something I could do. Although the answer might be terrible. “I could ask for a miracle. I don’t even know if it will work, if the Serpent is dying. But I could ask.”

Ask
, he said.

I
t was not as it had been. No presence surrounded me. Rather, what I called came from within, a pale frail thing entirely.

I could not heal him. But perhaps I could change him.

The earth quivered and ruptured, throwing me from my feet. The snow at the crevice melted instantly, the torn brown soil laid bare. Bone shredding his hide, the valraven fought for his feet. He did not shy. He did not cringe.

But as red metal crawled from the ground, he screamed, and would not stop screaming.

I had been a smith. I had been waelcyrge. But the forge-heat drove me back, made me flinch as the stallion would not do. I smelled scorching meat, heard it sizzle. He shrieked, but he did not struggle, and I know not how, but he stood.

Over the awful crying I heard the nauseating crack of twisted bones healing, of bent limbs straightening. The white-hot metal burned through him, reworked him inside and out, made him more than alive, something alien, something
other
. . . . And yet he endured. He lived on.

I looked down at my hands. The Light had left them.

Conscious, impassive now, he straightened slowly. Both heads on their long necks turned to regard me, white rings already fading around living brown eyes in sculptured faces. He fanned glittering wings pinioned with razors, and blade rasped on blade. Steam hissed under pressure as he stepped forward. His breath came forth like a whistle.

He shook out his mane, and it rattled like wire.

The snow sublimated under his hooves. He nuzzled me. My clothes smoked. Where I touched his cheek, my hand seared and stung.

I heard my own voice as the voice of another. “What
are
you?”

Kasimir
, he answered, as if in my ear.
Metal and meat. Sorcery and steel.

“What are you?” I asked again.

I am War.

“No,” I said, and couldn’t find the words to ask. Everything had changed, and he had changed with it, and I was afraid to know what it meant. “What have you become?” I reached for him, but his heat defeated me, and I scrubbed my hand against my thigh. “You are the future.”

The gaze he turned on me was solemn as a lion’s.
I am the world, what the world will need and what the world will be.

I looked away. “Why did you tell me your name?” I knew the answer. “I am not worthy of you.”

I would not choose one unworthy.

“I fled. I fled the sdadown, and the tarnished, and I hid while our brethren died. I am a coward. I will bring you pain.”

What pain could equal the pain of creation?
The antlered head ducked down. He made himself small and shy, nudging the snow about his hooves with his muzzle so it hissed and vanished into steam.

“Kasimir.” Surely, I could forgive myself for saying it, just once. “You said it yourself. The Dweller Within is no more. The Light has failed.”

The Dweller Within still lingers. We are the Light that remains
, he replied.

“No,” I said. “Oh, no. . . .” With the last of my strength, I stepped away.

Behind me I heard the hiss of steam, the clatter of steel feathers.
You will come back to me. I am Kasimir. I am the new Age of the World.

When you name me, I shall come.

I did not turn to watch him leap into the sky. His feathers did not brush me as he passed.

They would have cut me to the bone.

I
stood on that battlefield a long time before I came back to myself. The snow returned. It fell all that night and into the morning, and the next dawn was recognizable chiefly by a lightening of the gloom. The cold and wind hurt. I hoped they might kill me. But in the end, the simple passage of time returned me to my senses.

I had no way to bury the bodies in the frozen ground and no fuel to raise a pyre. I labored in silence, piling up course upon course of stones there at the edge of the cliff over the ocean where we had turned at bay. When I could not reach the top
I packed snow into a ramp, up which I toiled until I had built a wall eight feet tall and a bowshot long. The wound in my arm healed, a white scar. I learned cold, then. I learned hunger. I had already known—and quailed at—fear.

When I fell into a snowdrift and could not lift myself, I rested. I chewed snow from the battlefield for water—for thirst began to haunt me—and sometimes that snow was frozen solid with blood.

When the wall was built I stacked the bodies in its lee, course upon course. I thought I might die of these new pains: cold, weariness, famine. There was nothing to eat.
I am becoming mortal
, I thought.
Perhaps there’s a death in it for me yet.

But the suffering did not kill me.

I found ways to move the bodies of the valraven to lie among those of their masters, though I will not speak of what I did. I buried the tarnished as well as the waelcyrge and the einherjar: we were brothers again, in death.

I left the sdadown where they fell. Their swords I returned to the sea. From whence they came.

It snowed and I was thankful for the snow, because I did not wish to look up and see the stars. I did not find the Grey Wolf. And no trace of his Lady.

I walled the bodies around, stone upon stone, and then I levered up the slabs for the barrow’s roof and laid them over. As day piled upon day like stone upon stone, I grew thin. My first strength waned and then began to grow again, although I was not so hale as I had been.

In the end it was complete, and the snow stopped falling, and the clouds broke, and I stood over the grave and watched the sunrise paint the gray granite boulders with lichens of
blood and time. I hoisted Nathr to my shoulder. I had thought of leaving her there, to mark the barrow, but . . .

Instead, I plunged a tattered standard of midnight-blue into a crevice, and the torn Raven Banner beside it, wings draggled in defeat.

The sun flamed, breathtaking, crimson and incarnadine and vermilion and hellebore and scarlet. I gasped as it rose over the sea. I breathed the light and air with all my strength, coughing when the cold air struck my lungs.

It was new, all new, and I hated every shiver and chilblain and cracked lip and droplet of snot.

I could step into that sunrise from the top of the barrow. I pictured my fall, tumbling, and the wreck of my body on the boulders below. I imagined the brief sensation of flight, and I closed my eyes.

I spread my arms wide, the bitter sea breeze tugging at me, almost lifting me up, and I took a deep and singing breath. This time, I did not choke on it.

I stepped forward.

Live.

I’m no good to anyone and no one will grieve for me and Strifbjorn is dead anyway and who cares, who cares, who cares?

Silence. Long, still, empty silence. And then his voice, or the memory of his voice: I was too far gone in hunger and grief and exhaustion to know which.

Live,
it said. And the moment passed.

I opened my eyes. The sunrise was over: splinters of gold danced on the dark water far out to sea, and that was all. It looked like a path.

I turned around and headed south.

May ravens tear thy wretched heart.

—“The Second Lay of Gudrun”

The Wolf

T
he mead-hall stands empty of even the thralls.

I know where their strength went, and who dined on it. I do not find their bodies, but I do not search.
Kenaz. Kenaz. Kenaz.

The old pine logs that make up the walls are massive and dry.

It burns like a funeral barge, and even the weight of snow on the sod roof does not damp the flames. Somewhere north of the Ulfenfell, I imagine, my brethren are dying, and a new, darker world will follow on their loss. In a little while, I will go and try to kill a goddess, and perish in the attempt.

For now, I stand and watch flames leap while the snow settles on my shoulders and my hair.

I stand at the edge of the cliff and draw Svanvitr, weighing the black crystal blade in my hand. Not a trace of Light gleams within her. I cannot even fool myself with the glimmer of reflections.

I raise my eyes at last to the sea. “I renounce her,” I whisper. Silence and darkness greet me.

Under my skin, the Suneater laughs.
It is not because of her you are condemned. It is because of what you alone have done, and will continue to do.

And I answer,
I know
.

The sword is dark, but I raise her over my head like a beacon. Nothing shines in her, as nothing shines in me.
What faith have you kept? You have betrayed Strifbjorn. You have betrayed Heythe. You have betrayed the Imogen, and the pack. And last and most truly, you have betrayed the Light. And worst, you have changed nothing in so doing.

It is true; it is true; it is true.

It is not the snow that stings my eyes and blinds me.

The sword makes a long, slow, glittering arc through the falling snow into the sea. I turn away before it strikes the waves, and leave its sheath lying in the drifts near the burning building.

You should have fallen on that blade.

My footsteps lead me down by the waterside, along the border of the sea.

If I did not love Strifbjorn enough for that
, I tell the Suneater,
how then shall I love you?

I shall never be bound again, be it by love, vows or duty.

No more chains.

It is almost sunset. Strifbjorn must be dead by now.

Still the snow hisses into the ocean. Still the waves hiss on the sand.

The town of Northerholm lies empty as well, deserted as a stage when the actors have gone home. They, too, fed Heythe’s army, the hunger she trained us to until her coaxing sorceries darkened every blade that served her.
Kenaz. Kenaz.
The town
burns behind the pier, and the pier burns to the waterline.
Kenaz.
I leave a path of pyres.

South I walk, aimlessly now. Soon the coast will curve west, and then northwest, and the inner curve of the peninsula will bring me to what was Arngeir’s hall.

I will burn that, too, when I get there.

I do not expect, and then I do not know why I did not expect, to watch her rainbows coil down the sky and then see Heythe ride her good red mare onto the beach, still clad in blood-streaked armor. She kicks the mare lightly and canters toward me, stopping twice my height away.

“Mingan.” Her voice is musical and light.

My hand drops to the hilt of the sword that is not on my hip. “Have you come to kill me?”

She laughs. “Come back to me.”

I close the distance, catch the mare’s reins. “I planned killing you.”

That laughter again, musical, as if I have said the wittiest thing in the world. “I know. But I’d rather have you. You don’t have to be alone.”

I taste that for a moment. “What if I
wish
to be alone?”

She reaches out and lets long fingers trail down the angle of my cheek. “You forget, Master Wolf. I’ve got a little splinter of your soul in me, too. From Strifbjorn, even though you and I have never kissed that way.”

I tilt my head to feel the caress against my face. “Are they all dead?”

“The children and tarnished? Yes. All. They would not flee, and so they fell.”

“And the Bearer of Burdens?”

She makes a little dismissive gesture with her hand, raising it from my face to float in the wind as if shaping the snow. “It will take some centuries, but I played a clever trick on it. And with you by my side, I can wait. Watch.”