Daughter of the Wind Read online

  Gauk’s father had been lost in a storm at sea three summers past. Sometimes Gauk wondered what his father would advise him at a time like this. Go back, he would no doubt counsel his son, and let some other father’s son lose his life.

  Gauk hoped that Astrid would be watching on the shore when he and Snorri rowed the still waters of the fjord, with a huge snowy pelt in the prow of the boat. Astrid was as pretty as Hallgerd, the jarl’s daughter, but more likely to laugh at a young hunter’s joke, or walk with him to the edge of the sheep meadow. Gauk had woven her a bracelet of straw during the long winter darkness, a cunning piece of work. Astrid had blushed with pleasure on receiving it from his hand.

  “Is he on his way?” Snorri was asking.

  No seemed too final.

  “Not yet,” said Gauk. “I’m sure he liked my singing very well, but yours—”

  Snorri gave a quiet, disappointed laugh. The young hunter used his sleeve as a strop, whetting his iron spearhead. Whale-Biter had been found by Snorri’s mother in a whalebone washed up in the fjord. Hego, the villages master at putting an edge on iron, had taken special care, honing the storied spear. Gauk’s own spear was a good enough weapon, but without a name. Only soul-stirring events or an intriguing history could make a weapon, or any object, name-worthy.

  Gauk put a finger to his lips, and Snorri crouched expectantly.

  Gauk separated from his friend and took several strides, climbing a high mound. He shaded his eyes against the afternoon sun. A gust of wind made him blink, tears blurring his vision.

  Nothing moving.

  Nothing there.

  And yet Gauk told himself to look with his entire body, with his memory and his love of life. To see what was there, even if his eyes could not yet make it out.

  Gauk blinked twice, just to be sure.

  He gave a low, sharp whistle. “He’s bigger than I thought,” he said. Much bigger than the creature whose hide hangs in the jarl’s house, he could not add in his excitement. “And he’s on his way here.”

  “How far away?” asked Snorri.

  He was closer than Gauk expected, and coming on much too quickly.

  Then, without warning, the bear vanished.

  It was an old hunter’s adage: When a bear goes to ground, keeping his black snout behind the ridges, he becomes invisible.

  Gauk said, “He’s stalking us.” His pulse hammered.

  And before the young hunter could add anything more, the ice groaned again, making a noise like a mare in heat, like a whole herd of randy steeds. The spine of snow under his feet shifted, forcing him to sink to one knee. With slow thunder, a long abyss worked its way across the ice, exhaling cold.

  When the ice fell silent, a crevasse separated the two friends.

  Snorri tiptoed to the edge, a daring demonstration of how close he could get, crumbs of ice crust tumbling into the darkness. He shook the net at his hip. He acted it out, the throw, the hauling, Gauk rejoining his friend on the north side of the crevasse.

  Could the net, and Snorri’s strength, support Gauk’s weight?

  Gauk was broad-shouldered and tall, but surely his friend would have little trouble. Very little trouble. And yet the young man’s habitual caution flickered to life. A better plan was to walk along the abyss, searching for an ice bridge. Such cracks did not run forever.

  The void was a source of wind, now, and it would be hard to make himself heard over the breathy echo, the depths still resounding with the rupture in the floe.

  And as the echo subsided, there was another sound.

  A quiet sound, growing louder, closer. Gauk realized too late what this new disquiet was, this ponderous chuff, chuff growing more distinct across the wind-carved snow.

  The beast was closing fast.

  And Snorri did not see him.

  Three

  Gauk did not have to cry out a warning.

  Even at this distance his friend read it in his eyes.

  Snorri spun, and danced away from the crevasse. He half-crouched, his spear poised, and skipped backward, nimble and well balanced. The bear was traveling with too much momentum to alter his course, and for an instant Gauk had a vision of the great animal tumbling into the abyss.

  Each bound the bear made cast a ripple of yellow-white fur in a wave over his body and caused a burst of air to escape his nostrils. He struggled to brake his course, his paws skidding over the gleaming surface. Snorri scampered up a ridge of ice and turned to face the bear as the animal altered his approach, explosions of white vapor where he had been an instant before.

  Gauk cried out.

  The bear slowed, gathering himself. He swung his paws, sluggish, weighed down with his expanse of seal-stained fur. Neither blow struck Snorri, who fell to his knees.

  The bear is bluffing, Gauk tried to reassure himself. He’s got a belly full of seal, and will soon tire of the two of us. And Snorri is clever. Gauk ran along the crevasse to keep what was happening in full sight as his friend Snorri fell, rolled into a ball, and did not move.

  Gauk began to leap along the edge of the crevasse, and lifted his shaking voice in a song, a village battle cry, “Let not your breath touch my shipmate.” The bear turned, his small, iron eyes picking out Gauk where the young hunter danced at the far edge of the chasm.

  Snorri rose and brandished his spear, whether to reassure Gauk that he was still alive, or to implore the powers of the sky, Gauk could not tell. His friend had been injured, after all, a rill of blood coursing down his face. But it was not a mortal wound, Gauk fought to believe. It was the sort of injury a man will live to brag about, running a finger along an old scar.

  The massive bear turned and sniffed the air in Snorri’s direction, as though he had trouble seeing the hunter. Then he drew close to Snorri, enveloping him in shadow.

  “Now!” Gauk cried out. Or perhaps he prayed the words silently, sent them like Odin’s sacred ravens to his friend’s soul, Now.

  Into his heart with the spear.

  Gauk did not see the bear strike another blow. Or perhaps he saw it and his mind would not believe what it perceived. In an instant Snorri was not standing. He was stretched out on the ice.

  The bear knelt over Snorri in a posture nearly maternal, protective, seeking the wound, licking, lapping, reaching down with his ever-reddening muzzle and working at Snorri. The creature shook his head back and forth. Bones broke, a subtle, heartrending whisper. Even at this distance Snorri’s breath came out loud but wordlessly, and then all Gauk could see of his friend was a hand, extended from its sleeve, whipping back and forth across the widening red puddle on the snow.

  Gauk leaped across the chasm. He plunged the spear into the ice, his caribou-fur mittens digging, finding a grip on the frozen ledge. But as he levered his body upward the spear tumbled, vanishing into the abyss, echoes rising up out of the cold. Gauk was weaponless.

  He clung, his fingers slipping. He was bellowing, calling with all his power to distract the bear, to wake the beast from his intent, meditative occupation, like a pensive weaver worrying a knot.

  Gauk flung one leg over the edge of the ice, slipped, and fought forward, onto the opposite side. He swung to his feet and crouched like a wrestler, poised, challenging. He beckoned to the bear. The animal turned from his work, and his tiny eyes took in the sight of the young hunter, looked away, and then looked back again.

  The bear had an old walrus tusk wound on one shoulder, a hairless crescent. His teeth were amber yellow, his claws dark, paws bloodstained. The bear rounded away dismissively, bending over what had been Snorri.

  Gauk had heard of fighting folk going down under the tide of an enemy with a song on their lips, and he had never quite believed it. Saga lore was woven of such imaginative touches. But now Gauk knew that there was such a chant—the one he was calling now, rich with grief for his friend, and freed from any hope for his own safety.

  “Take me!” Gauk was crying, if any words could be shaped from such a wail. “Kill me, and leave my friend
alone,” he sang out.

  Snorri’s spear had spun far from the lake of blood. Gauk calculated quickly how many strides it would take to reach the weapon and, before he let himself entertain any further doubt, he leaped scrambling, reaching out for Whale-Biter.

  The great creature made a rippling, hulking leap. The bear knocked Gauk down with the onrushing course of his attack, a lunge so powerful that the beast overshot the young hunter. Gauk had time to climb to his knees, but he was too badly shaken to stand.

  The bear gathered himself and circled, his lower jaw hanging, wet and dark. The great animal hulked over Gauk, forcing the hunter down with his huge, square head, his breath smelling of ripe seal and fish and something else—the warm, kettle-broth odor of blood.

  Gauk struck the beast with his bare fist, hard, on the snout.

  The bear leaned back on his haunches, seeming to smile with his black lips, his gray tongue protruding.

  “Me!” Gauk heard his voice cry.

  “Kill me instead.”

  The bear lowered his snout, and Gauk gripped the bear’s fur just below the animal’s tiny ears. Gauk’s hands, although big enough to gather ells of woven wool, and strong enough to wrestle a full-grown ram, were puny on either side of the wet-spiked head.

  “Odin, hear me,” sang Gauk in a half-whisper.

  The bear exhaled, a long, moist wind.

  And it seemed to Gauk a voice within his soul spoke, a bear’s growl.

  Pronouncing his name.

  Four

  Hego heard footsteps.

  They woke him.

  He lay there awake, listening to the gentle lap-lap of water in the fjord, and the silence of his beloved village of Spjothof.

  Even the deepest water rises and falls gently, with a quiet more beautiful than perfect silence. No ship could steal along the fjord without disturbing the water, and waking the village long before the keel touched the gravel bottom. No intruder could approach along the beach without even his tiptoed progress crunching loudly in the pebbly ridges along the water. The land approach to the village was all high mountain, and no one but supernatural beings dwelled up so high, in the snowfields that never melted.

  So, Hego reasoned, he was mistaken.

  And yet.

  He heard them again. Just two footsteps, out where feet did not belong, on the high sheep meadows uphill from the village. One footstep, treading with a man’s full weight. And then another just afterward, hurried, kicking a spray of field grass. Two different men.

  Hego sat up. What would wanderers be doing so high above the village in the short summer darkness? Hego groaned as he fumbled for the water scoop. Earlier that summer he had fallen on his face, and the injury had prevented him from traveling on the newly launched Raven when the ship had voyaged for the west-land with the two other famous ships, Landwaster and Crane.

  Even now, the three ships having come home in triumph, and then voyaging forth again to purchase flocks and barley up and down the coast, Hego had not been asked to join in. The young man was treated with affection, but no one considered him the equal of experienced warriors.

  Hego drank cold water from the bucket beside his bedding, the water pleasingly flavored by the birch wood slats of the container. It was not enough. He was as thirsty as a man who had sweated three hours in a bathhouse, as thirsty as a man who had dined on an entire basket of salt cod. He climbed up from his pallet in the straw-littered corner of his cottage. His shop bench was a crowd of blades village folk had left for him to sharpen, scythes and fodder knives.

  As he rose Hego was careful not to wake up Jofridr, the serving woman who boiled his pork and whose thimble was kept busy mending his homespun.

  Jofridr’s snores stopped as he took a step, the dried rushes on the floor whispering.

  “Rurik?” she inquired sleepily.

  “I’m getting a drink of well water,” said Hego gently.

  Rurik was a helmsman lost in an ice storm many long winters ago, after less than a year of marriage to Jofridr.

  Her deep, steady breathing started in again. She had served Hego’s family for many years. When Hego’s parents had died, not many winters ago, she had mourned them almost as deeply as Hego.

  The young man took his battle-ax from the corner. Head-Splitter was a weapon equal to any in the village. At least, that was its reputation. Hego had never hurt anyone with it.

  He stepped out under the night sky.

  A mare heard his step and nickered, and Hego made a comforting, horse-like sound right back at her. He made out the grunt of Inga’s flatulent breeding boar, and Old Gizzur Quickhand’s deep, ponderous snoring, even though the skilled sheepshearer lived all the way at the edge of the village. Something about the night troubled Hego. He could not keep from wishing that hale Ulf were here, and lively Lidsmod, fighters with strong arms and good cheer, who could meet any foe.

  Hego’s head throbbed. Jofridr’s ale was thick and powerful, unlike the weak stuff brewed by other housekeepers. Ale drinking was a serious undertaking in Spjothof. A strong man was expected to be able to drink deeply and tell proud stories—how many seal skins he had brought back last summer, which comely woman was round with child because of his prowess behind the ale hall. Hego could drink more fermented beverage than any man, winning every kappdrykkfa—drinking contest—during which horns of ale or rare mead were drunk without restraint. While the young man was a drinker of legend, to his shame he had no great reputation as a storyteller.

  Hego listened hard, and he heard no more footsteps.

  And then he did, once more, and the creak of leather. Heavy billy goat leather, or even ox leather, the sort men used for armor.

  But this wasn’t possible. Most of Spjothof’s fighting men had sailed off again, and even old Hrof, a legendary, gray-haired fighter fond of wandering around in full-leather armor, would not be walking around in the mountain passes at night.

  Hego was slow, in both mind and body. He knew this, hated himself for it, and sought to think faster at every opportunity. If some young men could grow more fleet of foot through practice running from the well to the shipyard, then Hego could learn to think more quickly.

  It would take practice.

  Not that Hego was utterly without skill. Children brought him their first knives, the short blades fathers gave their sons so they could learn the art of carving, a prized craft in the village. A good edge was highly honored in the village. Old men whittled mustached sea lords from the leg bones of deer, and children made their own, crude figures out of driftwood. It was an industry Spjothof was renowned for, carving elk antlers into spoons, cow bones into combs. Travelers docked here every summer to collect the fine reindeer-bone thread-spindles and whalebone sword pommels.

  Now there was something wrong. The mare shook her mane, and scuffed the earth with one hoof. Some intruding presence was disturbing the livestock, there could be no question.

  Hego sometimes walked out to the stone-lined water source just to listen to the wind make a whole, round song as it blew over the round opening in the earth. Now he lowered the bucket carefully. It did not have to descend far, the earth so full of water that Njord the helmsman had bet Hego the well would overflow before Raven and its companion ships came home.

  Another step.

  Creeping, but distinct, and the chink of expensive metal armor.

  Hego heard them clearly now, many men, far off across the snowmelt-sodden pasture. He counted them, as every Spjotman had been taught, numbering his unseen foe. Leather belts and booted feet, far off. And whispering voices. He could almost make out the words.

  Hego walked out into the field grass and made a clicking sound with his tongue, the sort of quiet noise the hawk owl makes to its young. It was the traditional signal Spjotfolk gave to one other in the dark.

  There was no response.

  Hego smiled, despite his unease. This was when he would win his glory, fighting off an army of dwarves, the squat, earth-dwelling creatures who populated ever
y song but never approached human dwellings. Now he would have a story. Head-Splitter and I strode out under the stars, he would say—

  He stopped.

  He heard the whirring sound, and a mutter of human speech, guessed who this enemy was as Head-Splitter—a breath-keen weapon that had never touched a scalp—roused, like a living thing.

  These were not dwarves.

  These were Danes!

  Danes were legendary in Spjothof as wealthy and well armored, but fastidious in battle, preferring sling stones and arrows to hand-to-hand combat. A Danish voice whispered again, and another stone hummed through the air.

  As yet another stone hissed past, and another, Hego readied his warning cry. Perhaps he would sing out, The Danes have crept out of the mountain, or, even better, I’m killing Danes at the edge of the sheep meadow!

  He would say something grand, words villagers would repeat in ale halls up and down the coast, long after his bones were green earth.

  But before Hego could make a single sound, a stone sang off the side of his skull.

  And he knew nothing.

  Five

  The fire started in the hours before dawn.

  Hallgerd heard it in her sleep, the sputter of far-off flames, and the airy roar as the timbers of the great hall began to blaze. In her half-dream the jarl’s daughter thought it was the sound of wind, or a rough surf.

  She woke.

  The ruddy gleam of distant firelight worked under the cracks of the shuttered window. For an instant she thought the village fighting men must have all returned from voyaging, having loaded freight ships with grain and horses. They were all dancing around a great fire, her beloved Lidsmod among them.

  She flung open her shutters. Her father’s house was one of the few in the village with windows, three of them. As noble leader of the town, a jarl’s dwelling was often distinctive. Hallgerd was proud of these openings in the timbered walls, and always hoped that her neighbors would observe her leaning out and enjoying the view. Now, as the predawn chill breathed into the house, she was certain she heard the crackling of fire overhead, too, on the roof of her family dwelling.