Chapter Seventeen
THE RUNES GUIDED Hilda across fields of the south.
A passage deep rests in the hill, whispered the wind.
In the middle of a field to Hilda’s right rose a hill that hadn’t been used for harvest. The grasses were both high and wild, as if no one had touched them for a hundred winters.
Hilda stumbled through the soft earth to the hill and its wild grass, and up. South forged will be an offering to please, the Runes reminded her as she hiked up.
The cloudy night made it difficult to see far. On the top of the hill was another smaller hill: A grave with a dark, stone-lined hole leading inside.
Hilda walked towards the passage grave. Her feet scraped across the first stone, right outside the grave. She groped the edges of the passageway, and stopped by the grave opening. Being so close to an ancient grave reminded her of the draugar she had seen on the heath. Her palms were sweaty and her heart beat all the way up in her throat. She took a deep breath, her hands flat against the entrance, then ducked to enter and smelled the grave’s moist rocks.
Hilda’s eyes adjusted to the dark of the jotun passage grave. A large stone blocked the end of the passage. A dead end. ‘Just a grave,’ she hissed to the wind, but all the same, she stepped inside.
The Runes still hadn’t told her where they were leading her. Maybe the smith from whom she was to buy the weapon to appease the gods was dead. Maybe he was a draugar, dead within this grave.
Hilda shivered at the thought. She crouched down to keep her head from knocking against the stone ceiling. The Runes were eager to talk. Even inside the passage grave, wind blew around her. Passages open for noble blood, the Runes whispered.
She touched the big stone at the end of the passage. It was smooth in the middle, as if it had been polished.
Passages open for noble blood.
Following the whispers in the wind, Hilda reached for her dagger and sliced into her little finger. Just a little. The blade came away bloody. She smeared her blood onto the rock, and it all—the dark, the smell of blood, the weapon in her hand, all of it—reminded her of the battle at Ash-hill. Yrsa trampled to death by the warriors, Ingrid left behind, Jarn and Astrid pushed out of the crowd, out of sight. The screams in the night.
The passage grave rumbled. Hilda kept her bleeding hand flat on the rock that blocked her way.
Keep your eyes clear of Muspel’s furnace. A constant fire burns within, the Runes mysteriously warned. Cover their sight as you leave. Never before had they talked as much.
Rocks clattered around her, and for a moment the burrow seemed to be crumbling. Then, under her palm, the stone rolled aside. Hilda reached into the widening gap. The passageway continued inside. She walked through the opening. The first stone her feet reached was lower than where she stood; the next, lower again. The rocks were steps, leading down into the grave.
Keep your eyes clear of Muspel’s furnace, the Runes instructed again. Their voices echoed down the steps. Cover their sight as you leave.
Hilda walked down three steps before the rock had finished rolling away from the end of the passage grave, and reached above her. Her fingers didn’t reach the ceiling, so she rose to stand up with a straightened her back.
Keep your eyes clear of Muspel’s constant fire. Cover their sight as you leave, the Runes repeated. Cover their sight as you leave.
‘I’ll close the furnace,’ Hilda agreed, to end the Runes’ constant plea. They never whispered so much; this had to be important.
The ground shook again, and the stone rolled back into place. Blocked out any light so there was only darkness. The wind stopped, and with it, the whisper of the Runes died. The rock sealed tightly behind her Hilda was trapped in the dark passage way.
No wind played with her dress or hair anymore. If the Runes hadn’t spoken to her, Hilda might never have noticed the lack of wind, but now it was all she could think about. For the first time, she felt naked and alone. All her life the whispers in the wind had been with her, no matter how faint, but now, for the first time, she was alone. In the dark.
Her heart raced as she took a blind step down. Her steps rang out as she walked into the depths of the grave. It was deep. She trod carefully, afraid the draugar who lived inside this ancient grave would hear her and wake.
For a long time Hilda walked, until she no longer had the strength. Then she curled up on a step in the dark to sleep. As she sank into sleep, she whispered to the Runes, hoping they might hear her, but no response came. Whispering her questions, she fell asleep, and soon she woke and began to move down the steps again.
‘The stupid man stays awake all night, and worries about everything,’ Hilda recited as she began to move again. ‘Come the morning he’s worn out, and everything is as bad as it was.’
The smallest of things reminded her of her father and what he had taught her. He had kept her away from the raids for so many summers. She had thought she wouldn’t miss him much after he passed on, but she did.
An unexpected ache gripped her chest when she thought of him and how he had looked in the end. She had dreamed about him when she had slept, and the reality that he had passed on—that all the farmers in Ash-hill were dead—was hard to grasp. There was just the warriors and the children left. She hoped they were all still alive.
To keep the hunger away, she munched on a root. It had been long since she had eaten a proper meal. Her legs were sore from how she had been on the move since the battle in Ash-hill four nights ago. During these past days, she had walked so far that the leather at her soles had become thin like linen and blisters had begun to form on her feet.
Hilda stumbled on a step. Navigating down the bumpy stone steps in complete darkness took courage and patience, the latter of which Hilda had never possessed. She kept a hand on the left wall to keep her steady. The cold of the grave made her shiver as she continued to descend.
Her fingers felt frozen. She removed her hand from the wall, and wished she had more furs to wrap herself in. They said graves were cold and the dead were too, but she had never thought a grave would be this cold. She huffed in and out, to feel a bit of warmth on the top of her lips. Her nose was runny and she was certain it wouldn’t be long before her snot turned to ice.
Hilda staggered, and caught herself with a hand on the wall to her right. Unexpectedly, the air became heavier, and warmer. Her head was dizzy and she was prickly all over, as if a thousand needles jabbed her skin. Her frosty nose heated up and ran freely again. The right wall was warm.
The left side of the passageway was cold like a winter night, but the right was hot like an oven.
Hilda continued down the stone steps, walking in the middle this time. It felt strange to be frozen on one side and hot on the other. Her right hand was wet with sweat and her left felt as though it had turned to ice. Her fingers were numb. Sweat dripped down from her right eyebrow, stung when it fell onto her eyelashes and dripped into her eye. Her head hurt from both heat and cold.
The sound of her footsteps rang down the never-ending stairway and her breathing was loud and exhausted. Twice she stopped for food, although she didn’t have much. She couldn’t tell for how long she had walked: two rests or an entire day? After every step, there was another.
Her left eyelashes felt like they were frozen onto her skin. She blinked the right one to avoid getting sweat into it and peered ahead. Then she noticed it: feeble light, glimmering through a few gaps at the edge of a large stone down the way. She had reached the end of the passage.
Had she seen the light sooner, she might have sped up, but the frost and warmth had slowed her, and she didn’t have more strength left than what would barely get her there.
When Hilda was so close that she could see the smooth texture of the rock, she turned around to warm the frozen side of her face, and cool the other. Her head spun, as if she had eaten dream caps. She wanted nothing more than to lie down in a comfortable room, neither too warm nor too cold, but whatever lay on the other side of the passageway, she was certain that wasn’t it.
‘Before you advance through the door,’ Hilda recited to herself. ‘You must look about, and peer around, because you cannot know for sure where enemies will sit in the hall.’ Her father had made sure she knew the great Alfather’s sayings as well as a skald.
This was a grave, she reminded herself, and graves meant draugar. Her hand was ready at her weapon belt. She reached for her dagger and sliced into her little finger and let her blood drip onto the rock, like she had done at the top of the steps.
The ground shook again, like before, and the rock rolled away.
After spending so long in the dark, the light was blinding. Hilda walked into the room beyond the dark steps. For several heartbeats, she blinked, before muddy shapes began to take form.
The room was a forge. Behind a sturdy wooden table with a single leg was a big closed furnace and a wide empty floor. Water surrounded the round forge, as if it were an island. Across from the entrance was a waterfall that created foam and bubbles in the water.
To the left, beyond the forge and the water that surrounded it, was ice. It sparkled in all shades of blue. Every shard of ice Hilda looked at shone a different shade. Shades she had never seen before, and colours she had never known. Closer to the forge, red light gleamed in the ice, reflected from the right side of the room, where glowing red embers flowed like water. Sometimes dark and almost black on the surface.
Fire-licked embers dripped from somewhere above too, and when Hilda looked up there was no change in the scenery. Frost to the left, fire to the right. As far up as her eyes could see, embers filled one side and icicles the other.
Hilda settled her eyes back on the furnace. The one the Runes had warned her about. Her hand was tight on her dagger. Her heart raced at the thought of seeing another draugar.
Something rummaged behind the one-legged table.
Someone was standing there, staring at her.