Chapter Six
SIV’S FEET BARELY touched the ground as she glided down the road after Hilda. Siv knew not to underestimate the warnings of the skald’s daughter. Einer held Hilda in high esteem, so Siv took Hilda seriously, as her son would have.
‘They attacked Horn-hill?’ she asked.
Hilda smiled, seeing Siv following her. ‘The whole northern part of Horn-hill’s woods reeked of corpses and smoke,’ she answered.
Side by side, Hilda and Siv walked past the Christian church, out towards the forest. There was chaos out on the fields. Thralls were running to shelter. Siv was about to set off, the carving knife from her belt already drawn, but Hilda stopped her. ‘It’s just Einer’s bear,’ she said.
Siv took a whiff of the southern air, and caught the scent of the bear’s hunger and the honey on its paws. In her focus, she even heard the bear’s grunts and the buzz of bees. There was something else out there; the scent of a long-lived, like her.
She had smelled the scent before. All summer a long-lived had lurked at the edge of Ash-hill, but had never approached.
As they walked, Siv searched the fields beyond the beehives and the farmhouses and forest for southerners; sharpening her hearing to be sensitive to every snap of a branch, but there were too many fields to search and the forest was too vast for her to find any.
Hilda brought Siv into the edge of the forest. The solid fence Einer had built for his cub had splintered. The gate stood open, and there, nearby, was a southerner, tied to a birch tree, exactly as Hilda had said he would be.
He stared at them. His eye was swollen and his entire face was smeared with blood. He was crying too, sobbing even, at the sight of them.
Hilda took a proud stance at the southerner’s side. ‘I saw four more like him. All armoured. Heard more people out in the woods, hundreds of voices.’
Siv crouched down in front of the scared southerner, stroked a finger across his bloody cheek. Her touch made him tremble, and she sensed his fear, his anger, and a foreign something she could not place.
‘How many more of you are there?’ she asked the man, although she knew it would make no difference. He would not tell them anything, nor could he, when they did not speak the same tongue, but she did not ask to gain an answer, she asked only because Hilda expected her to ask.
Siv rubbed the southerner’s blood between her fingers and asked again. ‘How many southerners are coming?’
She closed her eyes and focused on the southerner’s breathing and on his heartbeat. His blood was different from that of the Jutes, and her nose and ears sharpened at the close proximity of the unsteady pump of his heart.
Through these woods that she knew so well, she searched for more like him, with greater focus this time. Past the spirits in their gravemounds, past the animals of the forest, the squirrels, the birds, the deer and pigs, the roaming sheep and grassing goats, and there, beyond it all, beyond the water creek where frogs were bathing, and beyond the rye fields, Siv sensed foreigners. They had that same strange air as this man; minds that she could neither comprehend nor influence.
Hilda was right. There were more out there; many more. Now that Siv was outside of the town’s barricade and away from the crowd, she could feel the southerners’ presence. They were not far north of Horn-hill, but there were many of them; many loud thoughts and many heartbeats. Had Hilda not brought her attention to it, Siv might not have noticed it until it was too late.
‘He won’t tell us anything,’ Siv said, and brought forth her little carving blade, quick to put it against the man’s throat.
Hilda stopped her with a hand on the wrist. ‘I’ll do it.’
Siv stepped back and stuffed her small knife into her apron belt. The southerner was yelling for his life and screaming, but Siv stared at him, and reached for his weak mind to silence it. His screams and sobs halted and the southerner stared up at Siv, recognising, as no short-lived was supposed to do, that it was her silencing him.
Hilda prepared to deal the fatal blow. From the grassy ground, she picked up a southern sword with a bloody tip. She placed the sword at the man’s neck, held it in both her hands and tested her swing. Again, she placed it at his neck and retraced the swing of the sword, until she stood with the blade raised, staring down at the man with a fierce anger in her eyes.
‘He is your first,’ Siv observed.
‘My first,’ Hilda repeated. ‘But he won’t be my last.’ With those words, she swung the sword into the man’s throat. His eyes popped open, and his tongue hung out of his mouth. His loud foreign thoughts stopped, and then, so did the pulse of his heart. Blood spilled out of his throat. His head snapped to one side, but Hilda was not yet done.
She grabbed some locks of his dark hair to hold up his head, and with the sword she chopped through his neck. The sword clonked against the bones in his neck, but Hilda persisted, lifted up his head a little further so she could see into the wound, and look for the best way to carve through it.
The first was never easy, and with the southerners’ arrival, Siv suspected that many would make their first kills tonight. Women and men who had only ever slaughtered cattle would be forced into battle. Hilda was lucky to have had a calm moment to go through her first kill. Trained warriors too often struggled with their first.
It took Hilda five good chops to cut through the southerner’s neck-bones. Her sword cut into the birch tree and the southerner’s head rolled off.
They both stared down at the head and knew that this was something Hilda had needed to do before the battle to prove to herself that killing a person was no different from killing a pig.
With her bloody left hand, Hilda grabbed the dark greasy hair of the southerner and lifted the head. She was calm at the sight of it, and gave Siv a short nod for them to go back up to town.
‘What now?’ Hilda asked without looking up.
Siv took a moment to consider as they walked out of the forest. ‘You said you saw four in armour. And heard voices of hundreds more,’ she said, so Hilda would not question the nature of Siv’s knowledge. There were many of them out there, more than Siv could count and distinguish, but there were things that Siv knew she could not share for fear of revealing her blood-line.
Hilda nodded and awaited Siv’s instructions.
‘We gather everyone,’ Siv said. ‘We tell them what happened and then we prepare for the attack: light the warning pyres, warn the nearby farmhouses, and gather the children to send them off to the winter campsite with food and furs and riches.’ Siv listed the steps aloud, to ensure that she had not forgotten anything. ‘We gather everyone, every farmer and thrall to fight. We close the gates. We keep watch. We hold Ash-hill’s last feast, and then we wait.’
‘What do you need me to do?’ Hilda asked. As long as Hilda had trained to be in a battle, this was not the sort she had trained for. Like other hopeful raiders, she had hoped to fight abroad, not at home at the peril of losing everyone and everything she loved. As a warrior, she knew how to combat it, to face it straight on, by focusing on one small task and achievement at a time. She needed clear instructions to help her focus.
‘Assign eight villagers to keep watch from the barricade, and enough riders to warn the outlying farmhouses. Then go get your armour, and ride up to the warning pyre,’ Siv said. ‘Set it ablaze, and call the guards home.’
Hilda nodded in answer.
They started up the wooden road towards Ash-hill, past Tormod’s farmhouse and the Christian church. Hilda’s sword scraped against the wooden road as they marched. The head dangled at her side, back and forth along with her arm movements, and the, dripping blood was thrown all around the street. Hilda’s green dress was dark with blood stains, and with every step, her gaze hardened as she prepared for what was to come.
Laughter rang out from the inner circle where women and children were still gathered around the old ash, oblivious to the happenings in the forest. Siv smiled at the sight of the sunlight hitting the ash-tree’s dark leaves. She would protect this place at any cost. Among the hundreds of places where she had lived in her long life, Ash-hill had been the warmest. A village worth protecting.
The women and children in the inner circle stopped their doings when they saw Hilda in the bloody dress with the head dangling at her side.
Hilda walked past them all, without glancing at them. She stopped inside the Ting ring. Then, she let go. The head dropped to the ground and splashed mud on the near-standing women. Blood and mud stained the man’s face. The hair on the head was darker than the mud, and his dark brown eyes stared blankly at the villagers.
‘Is it...?’ someone muttered.
‘The southerner,’ Hilda completed. She turned and walked away, out of the Ting ring and out of the circle, on a mission to complete the tasks Siv had given her.
Siv walked past the southerner’s head, stepped onto her husband’s Ting stone and reached up into the ash-tree for the ox horn that hung from one of the low branches. Hundreds of eyes were on her, as she brought the horn to her mouth and blew it.
The sad ring echoed out over Ash-hill’s fields and lands. Three times she blew it.
Villagers darted across the fields and up the streets and burst out of their homes to join everyone else in the inner circle by the ash where Old Ragnar had passed on at Midsummer. Hundreds of curious faces peered up at Siv. Most of them would no doubt die tonight.
‘There are southerners out in the woods,’ Siv announced when the villagers had gathered. ‘They have attacked Horn-hill. If they wanted to attack us during the day, they would have been here already. They’re waiting until night-fall.’
She sensed a small part of an army’s presence in the animals stirring in the forest, and occasionally she could also smell them in the breeze. They were massing their forces. Together they would attack Ash-hill, as they must have attacked every larger town in Jutland to reach this far north. They had come not to conquer land, but to burn it. All of Jutland was already burning. Now that she searched for it, Siv could smell the smoke of fields and houses in the southerly breeze.
The crowd stirred and protested, but Siv spoke through it. ‘We need to send the children off to the winter campsite. Gather enough food and furs for them to be warm and fed no matter what happens. Then I want you to go home, get into comfortable clothes, and take whatever armour and weapons you have at home that you won’t use yourself and bring it up here. Shields are a priority. We also need to finish cooking so we can eat before tonight.’
‘Are you telling us to stay and fight?’ a young man finally asked. ‘Shouldn’t we pack up and leave while we can?’
‘Our husbands and wives and children are off fighting abroad. They count on us to keep Ash-hill safe while they’re away. A sacred promise pledged between them and us. We will honour it,’ Siv answered. ‘If the southerners think they can come here and scare us away from our home and lands, and everything we hold dear, they are wrong, and they will meet our wrath. We might not be warriors, but we protect our home, whatever the cost. We make the gods proud so we can stand tall when we meet them in the afterlife.’
‘How do we even know there are southerners?’ asked a sceptic old farmer.
Siv pointed to the evidence at her feet; the severed head of the southerner Hilda had captured and killed.
‘How do we know there are more? How do we know they’ll come here?’
‘You’re asking us to believe the impossible,’ another villager chimed in. More scared farmers voiced their worries.
‘I’m not asking you to believe anything,’ Siv answered in a loud, clear voice that shut them all up. ‘I’m telling you what to do. As the chief’s wife, I’m in charge of Ash-hill, and I’m giving you very clear instructions. You will do what I ask of you.’
No one argued with her after that.
Siv continued to give commands. ‘First, we need all the children to gather. And Aegil.’ She found his bald head in the crowd. ‘You need to leave with the children too. They’re going to need a lawspeaker.’
‘My daughter, Dagny, is fifteen winters old,’ Aegil answered, and gestured to the young woman at his side. Dagny had long outgrown her father: she was almost as tall as Siv and easily glanced over the heads of the villagers. ‘She knows the law better than me, even the clauses I sometimes forget.’ No one laughed at Aegil’s attempt at a joke, although yesterday they might have. ‘She will be their lawspeaker.’
With a nod, Siv accepted Aegil’s sacrifice.
‘The grown thralls shall be given a choice to stay or leave with the children,’ Siv announced.
‘If we stay…?’ asked a brave thrall, his bare ears were red from the cool breeze.
‘If you stay you will most probably die like the rest of us.’ Hiding the brutal truth was of no need, even with the children listening. It was better they knew. ‘But if you fight and kill an enemy, your courage will be rewarded with freedom, both yours and that of your children.’
The prospect of freeing their children made the thralls chatter among themselves, reconsidering their chances and discussing the choice.
‘We need at least four of you to go with the children,’ Siv added to reassure the servants that leaving Ash-hill with the young ones was not a cowardly deed. ‘It’s brave to choose to fight,’ Siv said, as she had once told a young son, hundreds of summers ago. ‘But it’s just as brave to protect the young ones who can’t protect themselves. Don’t forget that.’ Her words calmed the nervous herd.
Siv had expected protests from the crowd of freemen, but there were none.
‘Before the fight, I suggest you take a drink for courage, but we need everyone at their best, so know your limit. As Odin warned: “One knows less the more one drinks.”’
It was funny to think she was the only one who knew Odin’s voice and could hear him say those words. No one else in the village had ever met the Alfather, although many of them soon would.
At her final signal, everyone dispersed with their respective tasks; the farmers went off to release their farm animals to find fodder for themselves, and the thralls Siv designated went off to gather food and furs for the children, while everyone else gathered every weapon and armour they owned. Arm-rings were exchanged and passed on, so the children would have wealth to survive on if the village fell. The young ones clenched onto the furs and food their parents prepared for them.
THE SUN WAS already half-way on its descend towards the hills when the villagers began to gather again. Some of the children had decided to stay with their parents’ approval, and they walked around the ash-tree with their families and friends to find armour and weapons that fit their size. There were many choices of weapons, more shields and chopping axes than anything else, and Siv did not see much armour.
Women wore tunics and trousers and bound up their hair to look like men. Siv too had changed into Einer’s old trousers and tunic, put on her own weapon belt and helmet, and she carried a chieftain’s broad shield at her back.
The children readied to leave. Left in the village would be half a dozen children, two hundred farmers and a handful retired warriors. All of them had been armed, although even with weapons, most were not warriors. They would all fight, and they would all die with pride.
The voice of a young girl caught Siv’s ears. ‘I won’t go. Even Ingrid’s staying,’ Tyra said, and when Siv turned her head towards the north road she saw Jarn’s chestnut hair bump up and down and then the rest of his family emerged too; Gunna and all four of their girls.
‘Tyra, you have to leave,’ Gunna said as the family entered the far edge of the inner circle.
‘I’m not a child anymore,’ said Tyra. ‘I’ve made my choice. I’m staying.’
Siv glided through the crowd towards Jarn’s family, listening to their talk as she approached.
‘You didn’t choose to learn fighting to die a week later,’ Gunna said.
‘Nej, but I didn’t choose blindly either, I knew what it meant when I picked the seax, and I haven’t changed my mind,’ Tyra insisted. ‘I’m staying.’
‘But—’
‘I won’t let you all leave for Valhalla without me.’ Tyra’s words shut up her parents. With determined steps the girl shuffled through the crowd, straight past Siv. Her hair was braided away from her face, her tunic looked large and big on her, and in her arms she hugged five axes. Behind her, Siv saw Tyra’s parents and sisters exchange concerned looks before they moved after Tyra.
‘Jarn,’ Siv called as she reached them. ‘I need a moment.’
‘Walk with me,’ Jarn said. In his arms he carried two pieces of heavy chainmail armour. On a different day, they would have sold for a fortune.
The crowd was thick, but still parted for them.
‘I want you to lead the defence,’ Siv told him.
She could see him hesitate, and knew he would ask why she would not do it herself, when she too had fought in battles. ‘I’ve never played a tactical part,’ she said before he asked. ‘Not like you.’
Besides, she did not trust herself to keep her lineage hidden throughout the battle. If she led the defence, those who survived would shun her as a result. ‘This is not a time to be modest, Jarn,’ she said. ‘You’re the most qualified person we have and we need you.’
He mused on her words. ‘Do we know how many are out there?’
Siv attempted to feel it with her mind, but she had trouble to distinguish the southerners from each other. She shook her head. ‘Nej, but we must assume there are more than us.’
‘And they’re better trained too,’ Jarn said. He pushed through the last of the crowd. Siv helped him put the chainmail down by the roots of the ash tree. Almost as soon as she let go, the amour was taken from her hands by farmers without proper armour of their own.
‘The southerners are not so different from us,’ Jarn said, and stared straight ahead.
They stood in the shadows of the great ash looking out over the thick crowd of villagers busily shouting to each other and rushing up and down the streets with armour and weapons and food.
‘If we can take down their leader, we can probably split them up,’ he reasoned.
‘You think they’ll make it through the gates?’ she had not thought that far ahead.
‘They will. It’s only a question of how soon,’ Jarn said and rolled up his sleeves as he talked. He was ready to lead them into battle. ‘If they’re in Horn-hill, they will probably attack from the south. I want you in charge of the villagers furthest west. Gunna and I will take the centre, and Tormod will lead the eastern wing.’
Siv nodded. She was ready to give her long life, if it meant saving these short-lived. Despite her lineage, she belonged in Ash-hill, and always would.
‘I have a favour to ask of you,’ Jarn said after they had stood blankly staring at the crowd for a while. ‘Your reputation assures me you’re as good a warrior as Gunna and me.’ He gulped and looked up to the sky. ‘I know my daughters. They’ll insist on joining Gunna and me on the front lines.’ He bit his upper lip and his voice was nothing more than a whisper. ‘They all stayed home this summer because of Tyra’s choice.’ He took a slight pause and Siv could see him strain to surmount the calm to say any more. ‘I don’t want Tyra to see us all disappear to our deaths.’ The tip of his nose became red as he said it, his eyes glistened with tears that he held back, and Siv could feel his blood boil in a mixture of mourning and anger. She attempted to soothe his feelings with her mind, but Jarn was a determined man and it did not work as successfully as she would have liked. His lips quivered, ever so slightly. Had it not been for Siv’s blood, she might not have noticed, but she did.
‘It would be an honour to fight alongside Tyra,’ Siv said, knowing what he would ask. ‘I’ll do everything in my power to keep her safe.’ They were big words, but she intended to keep them. It was the least she could do for the sacrifice Jarn and his family would give to protect Ash-hill.
A slim smile crossed Jarn’s lips, and then it broadened. ‘At the very least, teach her some good insults to yell after those bloody southerners.’ He looked at her then, his eyes lightly tainted red. ‘I’ll take care of our defence.’ With his usual broad smile, he disappeared into the busy crowd.
Siv allowed the magnitude of her promise to dwell on her. Tyra was her responsibility now. The young girl did not stand a chance in battle; Tyra was inexperienced and too young, but a promise as the one Siv had given to Jarn could not lightly be broken. Even if she had to reveal her true lineage, she would keep her word and make certain Tyra survived.