The Lost Sun (31 page)

“Tell me where your captain is, so that I may take his blood for justice.”

“Peace!” he says, his hands out. There is no smile now.

I slam my fist into the door. Pain slices up my wrist as my knuckles break open and blood smears. “Not until you answer me!”

“The girls are unharmed. One is in the orchard, the other I don’t know where.”

I curl one hand around the metal bar and lean back with all my weight.

“I don’t know!” he insists.

The door creaks and I shudder with it. It doesn’t break. Yet.

“Stop!”

“Let me out. Take me to your captain. Now.”

The berserker slips closer. “I can’t. But I will tell him what you say.”

“Tell him he is not a man at heart.”

His eyes widen. The fluorescent lights glare back at me
from inside them. “It was no unjust murder, but in the line of our duty. Holmgang is too much blood price!”

“The line of
duty
?” I shake the door again.

“Yes! We are Idun’s Bears, we obey her, and she told us: Kill the golden one and lead the seether into the orchard.”

“You killed him because she told you to?” My voice cracks. I shake my head and feel tears tearing at my eyes again. A useless sob shoves through my teeth. “I will call holmgang on her, too,” I cry. I don’t care if she is Idun; it doesn’t matter who she is if she caused Baldur’s death.

“You loved him,” the berserker says.

I suck air in through my teeth. “What is your name?” I wish to know it so that when I kill him, I will do so with the proper words on my tongue.

The berserker lowers his hands. He knows exactly why I’m asking, and draws himself up. His tattoo is just like mine, but stands out harshly against his paler skin. “I am Henry Halson of the Lone Star Henrys. I’ve known of you for years, Soren Bearskin. I admire this sword of yours, despite your father’s stain.” His eyes lower to where I guess my sword leans against the wall outside my cell. My palm itches for the soft sharkskin grip.

“You know who I am,” I say, forcing out the words. “But do you know who it was your warlord killed?”

“My lady’s enemy,” he says calmly, softly. I read sorrow but not regret in the curve of his frown.

I will make him regret it. I return his frown with a smile, a
teeth-baring sneer as horrible as I can force it. “You murdered Baldur the Beautiful.”

“No.” Disbelief etches lines around his mouth.

“Yes.
Yes
. Recall the sun on his face, recall the reflection of the sky in his eyes.” Tears fall from my own eyes, each one hot with frenzy. “That was Baldur the Beautiful, the god of light, who we were bringing here to receive an apple from Idun.”

My heart is breaking against the prison door, and it’s all I can do to grip the bars and hold myself on my feet. “You know he was at large in the world.”

Henry Halson presses himself into the wall across from my door. He doesn’t want to trust me, but he must know I would not invent such a lie. I see the hardened skin under his iron collar, where it’s rubbed and rubbed for all his years in the war band. The skin shines in the fluorescent light, standing out as he grows pale. “She ordered us to kill him,” he whispers.

“Let me out.” I will go after Alwulf, and then find Idun herself and cut her down beneath my sword. Sweat trickles along my brow as I think of my weapon in hand, as the fever embraces me again. The chip of starlight under my heart is burning and hot. I am ready. I want it now; I want to destroy everything around me.

But the berserker Henry Halson is gone.

Closing my eyes, I lean my forehead against the cold bars. I am glad it’s dark outside. Any hint of sunlight would burn.

He died without remembering who he was.

I failed so completely.

Turning my back to the door, I slide down to huddle against
it, arms tucked to my chest, knees up. Here is my battle-rage, here is my power, and it is useless to me.

I must get to Astrid. I need to get to her, alone in the orchard, alone with her nightmares. Her grief must be explosive.

Like my fever, which is so near the surface, roaring in my blood. It dances over my skin like candle flames.

I don’t know how time passes, as I crouch and shake with the power I no longer wish to hold tight inside. I would rather it rip me apart and escape, tearing down everything in its path. There are no innocents here; there are no people in this valley who are not culpable.

Because Baldur is dead.

Someone asks quietly through the door, “Is it true, Bearskin?”

“Yes,” I say, the word practically a growl.

“Baldur—”

“Yes.”
I pound on the door and hear the thump of running boots.

My hand throbs anew. I cradle it, welcoming the pain as an echo of my heartbeat.

Outside the barracks, light flares. Firelight. I hear a yell, but it isn’t angry. More like a summons. They believe me.

I need to see him, to close his eyes and touch the wound in his heart. I want to wrap him in armor and set him onto the pyre. There’s no telling what will happen to him now. He died forever once, and it took the entire world weeping to bring him back.

The scrape of the lock brings me to my feet. I peer out through the tiny barred window, but see nothing. Backing away, I tense and wait.

After a moment—too long for a key—the door slowly creaks open.

It’s Vider.

In two bounds she’s crossed the space and launched into my arms. I catch her, holding her dangling off the ground. Her hands clutch at me and her breath is hot on my neck. There are tears, too, smearing between us. She smells like smoke and hay and cow poop, and I guess she hid in their little barn, probably in the rafters. I hug her until she groans, and when I put her down she draws a huge breath but doesn’t let go of my wrists. Her eyes are pale green moons, round in her narrow face, and all her hair floats around her head. I step back and eye her up and down. She appears whole and well.

“They didn’t hurt you?” she whispers.

“No.” I touch the bruise on her cheek left over from her night with the trolls.

Vider ducks her head. “I ran, when they—when they killed him. I’m no good to fight, and they were taking Astrid to the gate. I slipped out between two of them and heard their captain yell not to chase me. That I didn’t matter.” She thrusts up her chin. “Don’t matter? Well.” Her hand reaches out and she twists her fingers into my T-shirt. “This’ll show them.”

I put my hand over hers. “It will. You did the right thing. Your strength is in”—I glance at the open door—“sneaking.”

“They’re all gathered in the field now, arguing about something. Astrid hasn’t left the orchard gate, though she’s on the other side of it. I could pick that lock, too, but they’d see.”

“No. They’ll let me in to her.” I take Vider’s hand and exit my prison. The fluorescent light tightens my eyes, but I see my sword leaning against the wall. I swing the sheath over my shoulder, but free the sword. The runes etched into the crossguard shine, and Sleipnir seems to wink at me.

“How, Soren?” Vider asks as she trails me. “How do you know?”

“Because they’re berserkers, and I’m a berserker. And I know how to make them.”

We leave the barracks unseen, which is easy because Idun’s Bears are gathered in a circle of torches between the village and the iron gate. I stop beside the feast hall and count all nine figures moving through the darkness and flames.

And there is Baldur laid out nearby.

They’ve given him a white blanket to lie upon and a clean shirt to wear. The blood has been washed from him, his golden hair braided, and the spear that killed him laid beside his hand. I stare at his shape, wishing to convince myself he only sleeps because the sun shines on the other face of the planet. But his chest does not rise or fall, and no nightmares turn beneath his eyelids.

I look at Alwulf, their captain, who threw the fatal spear.
He will die by my hand. I curl my fingers tighter around the grip of my sword.

“Vider,” I whisper.

She leans in.

“I’m going to kill him.”

“I will hold your shields,” she answers immediately, her fist pressing between her breasts.

“No.”

Her quick look of betrayal and surprise has me taking her elbow. “Stay hidden, and no matter what happens to me, you keep yourself free of them so you can tell the world.”

Her fingers pinch into my arm. “Let me help you.”

“Help me by staying hidden. Promise me.”

Her lips purse as if she’s sucked sour candy.

“Promise.” I bend so that our eyes are level. I hold out my arm to her, hand open to shake.

Her eyelids flutter and there’s a glint of tears, but Vider clasps my wrist and shakes once. “I promise, Soren. Take this.”

A round, hard stone is suddenly between our hands. I uncurl my fingers and the troll’s eyeball is there. In the dark, Vider’s silver hair is ghostly, and I think about how brave she was to walk into the troll house alone. And now the prize she claimed is a charm she offers to me to take into battle. “I will spill his blood onto this,” I say.

Quick as lightning, Vider kisses me. Her lips press mine, and then she flits away. I cannot see her path through the darkness.

Sword in hand, I walk with measured pace toward the gathered berserkers. Some still wear their uniforms, but most have changed into casual clothes, likely believing their part was complete. I scan their faces and hair for the red-gold gleam of Henry Halson. He’s there across from his captain, fidgeting with the end of one braid. I’m pleased to see the upset pinching his face.

And there is the man Alwulf, who killed Baldur.

I stand in the darkness at the edge of the torch circle, and stare at him. He glowers around at his men, and I know from a place deep inside me, even farther down than the home of my frenzy, that this choice is irreversible.

If I challenge him to holmgang, berserker to berserker, I will die or I will kill him, and in doing so become everything Odin could want. Berserkers are meant to fight and kill and die.

It doesn’t matter anymore that I won’t have a chance to ask a boon of Odin, because we failed to deliver his son. After this, I couldn’t ask for the frenzy to be taken away. It will be mine. With this act I am about to perform, I will ground it into everything that I am. I’ll become the bear, to avenge my fallen lord, and to accept what Astrid has always told me: my power is a dance. I am its partner, not its slave.

Just then Alwulf says in a hard voice, “It doesn’t matter who or why, but only that we obeyed our lady.”

I want to yell how much it mattered. I want to drive my sword through his chest right now.

Instead I plant my feet and yell his name: “Alwulf Robertson!”

The band turns to me as one, surprise and wariness marking their postures.

“Well,” Alwulf says, striding toward me. “You’re free, Styrrson, and your sword hungry for blood.”

“I want Astrid, now.”

“She’s there, boy.” He swings his hand out, gesturing through and behind the warrior band.

The iron gate slashes in black streaks between me and the silver-green apple orchard. All is gray and shadowed, but I see her standing. Her white hands curl around two bars and she watches me from eyes like gaping holes. Her hair spills free and she’s lost her cardigan, shivering cold in only a pale violet sundress. Surrounded by apples.

“Let her out.”

There’s a rumble from the warriors around me because I order their leader, but thanks I am sure to my news of Baldur’s death, they don’t immediately stand behind him.

Alwulf laughs, and his gray braids tremble with it. “You are a fool. She’s where she belongs, delivered into the orchard as our lady commands.” To his warriors he says, “Take him back to his cell.”

Several move to obey, and I lift my father’s sword. Calm settles over my shoulders. I aim the point of the sword at Alwulf and say, “You are not a man’s equal, and not a man at heart.”

Silence falls.

Even Alwulf is taken aback. His cragged face slides into
surprise, but it only takes a second for him to snap out the response: “I am as much a man as you.”

I push the words out from deep within me: “Meet me, then, Alwulf Robertson, for my right to blood price for my fallen lord.”