— PART III —

I wake in my bed with no sign of my husband. There are a few candidates for whose bed I might find him in, but I don’t care to look for him. It’s an insult, and it’s likely meant to be.

The winter has been the easiest of my life. I have no chores, no worry. There’s always meat, and bread. There are hands to tend the fires and hands to pour Rorik wine. Always more wine. And sometimes his own hand reaches out to those who welcome the touch of a gold-ringed hand.

Wife. I taste the word with my tongue, roll it around in my mouth.

I’ve shared my bed with two men; a king and a jarl. The king was always a thing of hunger, boy-like in the way boys throw themselves naked off the dock in summer. Joyous and wild, then ravenous, always laughing. But sometimes impatient, ungentle. With Ragnar it was the strength of his arms and his legs, the desperation in his mouth, like swimming. Like drowning.

But my husband, Rorik–he’s an articulate lover. Fingertips, lips, the hair brushed gently from my face, his kisses on my throat, between my breasts, down my belly. A tongue-tip skillfully flicked on a hip-bone. An attention artful, cultivated. But it’s been months without, and I sleep alone or for warmth in a pile of the girls who braid my hair.

Caldr returned not long after Ragnar left with his queen to his halls in Heithabyr. Throughout these months Rorik’s table has been haunted by Caldr and his grumbling, an unprofitable war in the north against lands once loyal to Fro. I can tell him that many of the villages he’s raided had never heard of their supposed king, or of his war against Siward and Ragnar, but no word of mine has any weight at all in his ears, and increasingly I’m waved away by the man I married, the man whose fate my own is now tied by troth. By contract.

As the month of Thorri fades into Goi, ice recedes from the harbour, and the men speak more of war. And Rorik speaks of war as though the ships frozen to the dock for another month or so are not mine, their crews promised to me as bride-price.

Months since word from the Gaular. The voice of Brandr echoed in the messenger, sailing south, who tells me the garrison is established, as is trade with the village upriver Ragnar and I discovered. Rota and Kara are well, Kara unchallenged in her role as jarl in my place. And this is all I know of what I’ve left behind.

Safe, in a single word. If only this were enough to allow me to breathe all the way in and all the way out, just once. I thought it would be. I thought it should be.

I have spent the months of Ylir and Morsugur shaking off my attendants, with their combs and trenches, and training with my crew in the snow. My shoulder healed, it’s supple again, and stronger now with a spear. My sword however is wrapped in goatskin and tucked away in a box near my bed, and I fear picking it up; I fear what it cost me, fear that I’ve shamed it by what I’ve become.

And what is that? Kept and ignored? Surely that’s not all I am. I’ve made good on my word so that the Gaular would not fall to wolf or winter. So that’s something. The rest is merely the idleness of the first snow I’ve never been required to brave in search of firewood or rabbits. Is there guilt in that? Some, if I’m honest with myself.

I can see why Rorik finds solace in Frankish wine and admiring girls. He tries to erase the cost of sitting on a fur-piled throne, cup in hand, while others work and freeze. It’s too much to face entirely sober.

Mercifully, few expect sons to begin issuing from me like eggs from a hen this year. Not yet. Of course, I’d need my husband to share my bed for this to happen, and then with more blood than wine in his veins.

I think he’s a different man in summer months. The Rorik I know–kind, clever, knowledgeable about the world–will return with the sun. But each night Caldr is there at the table like a storm cloud, blocking out any hint of sunrise.

I shake my head of the whole thing. Rising, the girls who attend me today fetch cloak and basin. I nod for my wolf skin, still a collar due to my mother’s brooch. I no longer bow my head to allow them to slip it on, as I expect them to manage. They can get a box, if they have to.

I should learn their names. But I’m afraid that every face, every meal, every morning tethers me to this place and not to my own home, my own people, where I’m jarl in my own right.

I want the cold air on my face. Winter is honest, at least. It promises nothing other than that which it brings. Mud and dung from the pens are smoothed over, ripe scents stifled, sound turned to whispers. The creak of the ice is that of the pines in the wind.

So I stand just outside the door of my house until my cheeks hurt, and my eyes slit against the sun on the snow.

Eindr slides the white game piece across the board, smiling.

When we play he insists always that I am to be red—outnumbered and surrounded, avoiding capture. I have enough of that away from the board.

I always thought tafl was a game for old men, but Eindr says it’s designed to teach strategy. So in each game we pretend the king-piece is me ashore, surrounded by my crew and cut off from our boats. The enemy is white, in the forest, four separate forces trying to coordinate and pen us in before we can reach the river, which is the table’s edge. We feint, plan, fall back, counter.

I have my own weapons at my disposal, despite the fact that the king-piece cannot capture enemy forces.

If my eyes catch his, he looks away, swallowing, and his hands unsteady after. When it’s my move I look off for a moment, play with my hair or adjust the rings on my fingers until I feel him watching me. He doesn’t let me win, but I can distract him, evade.

And so we pass the hours, and with each dawn the crack of ice sloughing off the harbour is a day closer to my escape.

“I plan on leaving, you know,” I tell him, as though it were nothing. I move a game piece, closing ranks.

“I know,” he admits.

“And?”

“And what?” he says, almost laughing.

“What does my husband think of this?”

“Jarl Rorik’s thoughts are his own, Jarl Hladgertha.” I never know when he’s teasing me with my title and formal name.

“Eindr, you know him better than anyone,” I press.

“I don’t believe that’s true,” he says, sliding a white piece across the board. An obvious move.

“Regardless, what do you think he thinks?” I could crack open my friend’s skull sometimes, he’s so elusive.

Eindr’s response is careful.

“You own the fleet, but not the crew. Jarl Rorik can’t allow you to leave Aalborg without ships, and there’s no profit in allowing some three hundred warriors to leave with you simply because you wish to visit your family.”

“So?” I had assumed as much. I slide a counter piece, making slow progress.

“So whatever you offer to pay them to leave, he will pay them more to stay.” His fingers hover above a game piece, contemplating.

“A bidding war,” I say.

“One you can’t win. Ships without crew are wood, crew without ships are farmers. And little profit is found in trading the axe for the plough.”

“A draw, then,” I suggest.

“Certainly a position with which to begin negotiations,” he says, pretending that this is all theory.

“So, in this scenario, what should I negotiate for?”

He moves before speaking. Then: “A single ship, to Hjorring.”

“And why Hjorring?” I ask, though I think I know.

“Early spring trade, gather news. Harald is still out there, somewhere, and you can rule out the north as a scout. No open ocean, easy to beach if a storm hits on the way. No risk, and a chance of reward if you hear of anything. Many here have family there, and will even pay for the passage. Offset your cost.”

“And from there…” I say, sliding a red piece in defense.

“Well, at that point you are a day’s sail south of the Nordvegr, with a paid crew under your command, and Jarl Rorik nowhere in sight. Where you sail after that is entirely your concern.”

His last white move falls short of my defences, and I slide my king piece to a corner. Escape.

Victory.

“Something suitable then,” I say. “The drakkar.”

The dragon-headed boat of war. My prize.

When the storm hits, it’s at least predictable. I’m getting bored of cursing myself.

Hjorring was uneventful. Business was conducted, families reunited, there were gifts of courtesy and diplomacy. Rorik has a trade-house there, to store whatever balance or profit is left over from such dealings, and I mean to gather it all on the return journey.

If we survive.

The storm is leaden and growls like an animal. A sea black with white teeth.

We row, all of us, every hand, and I lend my back to the oars, pulling just so we can stay in place, to be hammered again and again by the freezing rain. The alternative is to be dragged west, out to sea, our only hope then to snag some island—if there is one—before being swamped and drowned.

Lightning catches the ring on my finger. A purple glass bead set in silver, and a line in Arabic I can’t read. Eindr gave it to me when I left, as it was mine anyway, he said. Rorik had no interest in the thing.

“What does it say?” I had asked Eindr.

“It is the name of the Arabic god,” he explained.

“Just the one?”

“Their god is vast. It contains all the qualities of all the gods.”

“So much,” I said in awe. And I thought how our gods are in turn temperamental, foolish, selfish, yet intimately loving. Human, though grander and more fickle. So in this way, we’re their children. A god with so many faces, all at once, seems a cold and distant being, and I can’t pretend to understand it.

It’s Thor now who tests us. Not some distant god of all but a presence here, now, sudden and violent, throwing light and fire at us. The Skagerrak Sea at the end of winter is still a dice cup, and we’ll see what comes out of it. We row until we’re nearly dead.

But nearly dead is still alive, and to cease rowing is to cease breathing air.

Hour, and an hour, and an hour, hands blistered, backs burning, eyes blinded by salt and wind, each beam and rivet aching for release like a bowstring pulled back and back and back.

But the dragon-head is fearsome itself, and we’re not so easily swept aside by the whim of a god. Our boat gains distance, oar-stroke by oar-stroke, one cursed breath at a time, until the storm subsides into a spitting thing the colour of wet wool, spent of malice, still rich in misery.

And so, a fire is set in the tripod, and we warm frozen fingers and dig out layers unsodden from the thwarts. Some are lucky enough to find something dry.

Two lost. Two men whose name I never knew are simply gone from a crew of forty. Somehow plucked away from those sitting next to them without noticing. Words and prayers are uttered, and mead is poured overboard in memory. Some will mourn later. Most will forget. But there is meat, and fire, and rest for now, even some shelter beneath leather tents.

Every wound I ever took is howling now: a broken finger, my ribs, my shoulder, even the crack in my cheek which has yet to heal all the way and may never, all a chorus of throbbing reminders. We’re all held together with scars, and that barely.

The tide is pulling us east now, the sails down as the wind from the north does us no favours. Hopefully not so far east as to land us in the Svear, but we’ll see.

Thor has let us go, and Skathi, lady of tides, has us now.

The stone in the water nearly makes me burst into tears.

A large, round stone in the midst of the river, which is at least full as the snow has given the first hint of melting.

I’m thinking of the last time I saw it, with Rota beside me, remembering the summers we spent as naked and swimming children, trying to catch salmon with our bare hands and failing, laughing. And then seeing it as a signpost of my uncle’s lodge, our journey from massacre and captivity to some kind of weary hope, my wolf skin new and raw over my shoulders.

I could have taken the longer route, past the fjord and inland from the river to the north. The route Ragnar came to claim me. But whether it was impatience or faith in the draw of my boat, we took the shorter path, though the oars scrape the river bed here in parts.

What I was expecting was… not this. What I left, maybe, only stronger. More huts with grass roofs. A new barn or granary. But not this.

The river’s been dredged here to make way for a port the size of Aalborg, with three docks jutting out into the river in a curve, and these are ringed by a stone wall. There’s a girl with a crown of winter-flowers in her hair and a good woolen cloak who sees us and runs; she’s the bearer of news. But I can hear the town, the lowing of cattle, a blacksmith’s hammer somewhere. And all this behind the fleet of my dreams.

Gods, there must be thirty ships here.

By the time we reach the dock there are horns sounded, and bells, and cheering. I make out familiar faces in what seems like a sea of unfamiliar ones. There’s no sign of Rota. No sign of Kara.

But there is Brandr, standing proudly, if leaning a bit on his spear.

As we dock and lines are thrown, I can see into the new boats. Wet from winter, but the wood still new and golden, curves unworn from hand or storm or battle. Each a field of snow without so much as a single footprint.

Hands reach out to me, generous smiles, horns of ale thrust at me and a thousand questions of war, trade, weather, families. It’s a beautiful madness. A boy scurries past, chased laughing by others. Villi, the boy I saved from the wolf, grown a head taller by a single winter.

And then I come to Brandr, who smiles to the point of a tear on his cheek, and he embraces me near to smothering. I hold him as though all the scents of home could be pressed into my heart like this, and there is the memory of the fragrance of my father, sweat and smoke.

He lets go, though his hands never leave my shoulders.

“Jarl Hladgertha, welcome home.”

“Gods, Brandr, what have you done?” I ask in astonishment, looking past his shoulder at the village.

“What you have done. What your silver has brought us. Walk with me, and I’ll take you to your sister.”

I have smiles and thanks to return to the crowd, which seems reluctant to make room for our progress to the hall.

Brandr continues. “Ragnar’s troops gave us a good start, but it was Rorik’s people who got us ahead of the winter. We had a good harvest, with plentiful fish. Everything else we traded with Vikoryi.”

“The town upriver,” I nod, putting it together, though I’ve never heard the name.

“Yes, they turned out to be excellent neighbours once they realized we were fortified and convinced we would neither attack nor leave. There are some families which have homesteaded half-way, and they’ve done well enough. But come. How was the journey?”

“We lost two,” I tell him. “A storm in the Skagerrak.”

“A terrible thing,” he says gravely.

The path from the docks to the hall is paved with flat stones, quarried from somewhere not conveniently near. There is the constant scratch of sweeping. So many houses, and not just dug into the earth but erected with great beams and clad in planks. Cooking smells I don’t recognize.

I enter a hall, and it takes a moment to realize that it is in fact my hall. The floor now boarded and covered in hide. The old boat-shaped hearth still there, but further towards the back a great trench of stone with split wood stacked all around. And behind that, a chair I’d never seen before, piled with furs, and upon them, my little slip of a sister, pale and beautiful.

“Kara!” and I rush to her, nearly pulling her off the chair as her arms are around me as when we were girls, when I’d carry her over brambles or carry her back to my mother after a scraped knee or bee sting. Her hair smells like smoke, but also like honey and some flower I can’t identify. I press her into the Kara-shaped hole in my heart, and am amazed she still fits. After everything.

“Hladgertha,” she says. “I knew you were coming today.”

“Who told you?” I ask, teasing. “Elves or gods?”

“Runes.”

“Of course,” I say. I pull her away. “Let me look at you, Jarl Kara.”

“I’m not the jarl,” she says. “You are.” She’s grown. Taller and more beautiful, a hint of our mother about her that’s stronger now. But there’s also a confidence, and a presence in the world—this world—that’s new.

“This chair suits you,” I tell her.

“I missed you, Ladda,” she says, a child again. “I missed you so much.”

“Where is Rota?” I ask.

“Rota kept your promise,” Kara says. “A harvest and a winter. And now is off to war.”

“To war? What war?” And my heart is suddenly pounding at the prospect that I’ve left my people in danger.

“Raiding. Some of the warriors are raiding the villages that supported Fro last year.” I think of Caldr’s unsuccessful raids against the Svear, and wonder if Rota is mixed up in all that somehow.

“And what do the runes say about Rota?” I ask, not really believing.

“Rota is dead, I think,” Kara tells me. It’s as though she is discussing the weather.

The air is out of me. There is nothing I can say to this, and no breath to say it with. This can’t be right. It can’t be.

“No. What?”

“I haven’t heard anything, I just think so,” Kara says. I breathe deeply, like being deep underwater and then breaking to the surface.

“Well then, let’s keep Rota among the living until the runes or the elves tell you otherwise, all right?” and she nods at this in agreement, seeming somewhat relieved.

“You’ve seen her,” Kara says definitively, and I know at once what she means.

The goddess.

“Yes. In…in a dream. And once as a swan, I think.”

She just nods. It’s all she wanted. “You’re married now,” she continues. “We heard.”

“Jarl Rorik, yes.” There’s an edge to my voice I haven’t intended.

“Do you love him?” she asks. A simple question a girl asks of an older sister, though I look around before I answer.

“He’s a good man,” I say, the answer to a different question.

“Is he?” And this, a third question.

“I hope so.”

“But you’re not happy,” she says. “Not like Brown-eyes.”

“What?” I ask, though I know. I just don’t know how she knows.

“Brown-eyes. He makes you happy.”

“He does,” I say, and tears are coming to my eyes though I don’t know why. “But he’s my friend.”

“Your husband will kill your friend,” warns Kara, suddenly from a distance, “but only if he knows.”

I take both of Kara’s hands in mine.

“I wish that I could take this off you, all the things you know.” I let go of a hand and wipe my cheeks, sniff in a way my mother would have scolded me for.

“Here. I brought you gifts,” I say, remembering. “They’re on the ship. Dresses and beads. Things for the house.”

“I don’t care about that stuff,” says Kara. “I’m just glad you’re back for good.”

“Am I?” I ask, honestly.

“Aren’t you?”

“I hope so, Kara. I hope so.”

There’s less business than I thought. Kara wanted a blot before any councils were held, but I overruled her. The gods have taken enough of a price from me. Let some goat bleat for another day.

Kara’s judgments were both rare and just, Brandr’s council wise and in the interest of peace. That the people of Vikoryi would trade rather than simply take speaks well of the land, and the choice we made coming here. The hungry are rarely so agreeable.

But still, I lean heavily on Brandr for advice, and wish to all the gods that I had persuaded Rorik to allow me to bring Eindr. This, now that I think of it, is the first time in days I’ve remembered my husband at all, but Eindr, my friend and tafl-opponent, is rarely out of my head. And there’s a weight on my chest when I think about him… it’s best not to think about him.

There have been feuds. Not between villages, but among Ragnar’s warriors. There were blows, and suit was brought to Kara. Brandr says he felt that sides were being divided, so once he had the promise that peace would be kept by both arguing parties, he speared one through the back in the hall. As some drew weapons in outrage, he persuaded all there of the wisdom of his actions, and that seemed to be the end of it.

In the early days after I left there were disputes and agreements that led to some householders owning three-fifths of a cow, but this became something of a running joke. A family from Vikoryi sought to contract one ten-year-old girl from the Gaular in troth to their son, but Kara forbade it, at least for five years, and this too was taken well and with patience. So, too, was her decision, despite the protests of some farmers, that a particular stone of elvish interest was not to be moved, and in the end, they ploughed around it.

So, with the security of food and person assured, the entire village threw itself into what they understood was my wish—boatbuilding. Almost all have had their first sea trials within the last few weeks, with the river at last clear of all ice, and the more experienced of Ragnar’s crew have been recruiting and training the bored and aspiring sons of Vikoryi. So there’s almost, but not quite, enough hands to crew the fleet here.

Contracts have to be made to secure enough iron for rivets and shield bosses, which I have learned is different from the iron used in pots and hinges. There’s a source, but the traders want some kind of long-term interest in the land, which I’ll have to think about. Still, there are forty shields needed for each boat, and currently a hole in the center of each shield. The blacksmith, Brandr assures me, can work the iron once it arrives, after a deal is made.

I have brought not only gifts for Kara (and Rota, which will have to wait) but also adornments from Hjorring, so that doorways and the end caps of tables can be chased with silver and bronze beasts, in knotwork. A year ago, I would have thought of this as a waste of metal, but now I see that it adds stability to a place, and is a kind of blessing.

There are those here who now seek to return south, their service to Ragnar having been completed, and will need boats for that. Some will stay, and that too is a blessing. When Brandr asks of my plans, I think only of sleep, so later as I climb into bed with Kara as we did when we were small, and she my wild and tiny sister-thing with the whistling snores of a barn cat, I think I should miss Rota more.

Though the eyes I think of as I fall asleep are not Rota’s, but Eindr’s.

Weeks of this, and it’s dreamlike.

Snows recede like all the storms were some bad dream, the aches in me from fetching wood or helping my mother in the kitchen. But the mornings I wake up cold, barely breathing, the faces of pain and fear filling my vision. Men whose death I brought. There’s a bruise inside me, or a gutting, that doesn’t show, though sometimes I see a similar wound in the eyes of others before we both look away.

Nights, Kara tells me the stories of the runes, to see as she sees. Not just sounds scratched in wood, but more like the stories of ancient families, with conflict and love, of friction and ease. About how the first sound in a line can recall an entire saga, just by placing it ever so slightly towards or away from the next. Still, to me, most of these are coded references to stories I’ve never heard.

“You need to teach others,” I say. “This is too important.”

She just shakes her head.

I’m no skald, no story-keeper. I never will be. I’m grateful to learn this as best as I’m able, but it’s almost like my heart is too small to bear a secret this big.

No, it’s not that. My heart is large enough. It’s just that the stories themselves don’t wish to live there. I can feel them tapping on the inside of my chest, like we’re doing something wrong. Though not when Kara tells them. It fits for her.

I don’t know.

For the most part, as flowers return and some sense of normalcy asserts itself, it’s easy to forget, even for an hour at a time. Those returning south were making plans, packing, set on delivering those boats Ragnar had already paid for.

“So much livestock,” I mention to Brandr, noticing the rattle and bleat of them as Brandr and I walk the path to the docks.

“We agreed,” he says. “No slaughter last year. The meat we bought from Vikoryi, and we went sealing in the fall.”

“Still, the numbers.” I’m impressed.

“Oh, these are ours,” he says smiling. “Shortly after you left I sent a party of Ragnar’s men to the coast, to the old village site. They came back a week later with cows, sheep, goats. Even horses.”

I’m stunned at this.

“How?”

“During the raid,” Brandr tells me, “most just opened the pens. The raiders took most of the horses, yes, but the livestock scattered to the hills, and we didn’t get the chance to collect many of them. Over time they drifted back to the village.”

“And what of the remainders?” I remember that I had declared they would be left with nothing.

“There were a few, they said. Perhaps a dozen living in the ruins. Some complained, but Ragnar’s men were armed, on horseback. They were told they could return with the men to the Gaulardale, or they could stay and catch fish all winter.”

“But none returned.”

“None, Ladda.”

Mine were always a stubborn people. They had expected to die there, that night, and their extra months of life were more burden than boon.

Brandr and I often stroll now as we discuss the business of the town. How to get goods to the markets of Kaupang without paying Vikoryi as a go-between, how much silver we’re likely to get from Ragnar for the other boats, or if there is a market for them which doesn’t require crossing the Skagerrak. I realize now that I’ve spent more time in this village—the one with stone walls and its bustling dock—than I did the one I left behind, the village of refugees staring into a distant yet menacing winter. I’m glad of it.

And then the bell robs me of all gladness.

Instinct has me reaching for shield and spear I’m not carrying; that I’m nowhere near. I stride toward the hall with more fire in my veins than the ice which first cascaded through them.

I see Kara there and shoot her a look.

“No warning from your elf friends?” I fire at her, but she is in some kind of shock, and I feel bad for saying it.

In a linden-wood box by my bed is my sword. Someone brings me a shield and a spear.

By the time I leave the hall’s threshold, perhaps a hundred heartbeats since I entered it, my fear has calmed somewhat. A corridor of warriors, fifty a side, greet me with shield and helm, spearpoints glinting in the spring sun. There are twenty men on horseback, the horses pacing backwards with their blood up.

Wolf’s-heads. Or the upriver town of Vikoryi, come to take whatever they wish. Raiders from what remains of Fro’s forces after the war looking for retribution for their defeat. Whichever, we stand armed.

Trained. Experienced.

Ready.

“Horses,” I say, and those mounted bolt into the forest path in the north, the same path where I met Ragnar a year ago.

A year ago, when I was barely sixteen and had only killed two men and a wolf.

I won’t go with the horses, but will stay and fight in the shield wall if it comes to it. We wait for a rider to return, and will set up positions once we know what we’re fighting.

Brandr remains with me, even though I’ve dismissed him and told him to go with the guards who’ve taken Kara to a boat for safety.

“I would not want you to die today, Brandr,” I tell him.

“I’m reluctant to do so myself,” he says. “Let’s see what news from the rider, eh? Maybe I’ll die tomorrow.”

And we wait for an hour.

None dare put down their shields, though five pounds of wood and iron seems like fifty after a few minutes. The butts of spears begin to rest in the earth. The bell has stopped, and each ear strains for the sound of tack and horse, or the snap and crunch of a marching horde. Nothing but the breeze and songbirds. For an hour.

A mistake, the bell, I think. We’re all thinking it. No smoke for fire. Perhaps some child who—

And then the unmistakable cadence of hoofbeats. A rider at last.

“It’s the king!” shouts the man, rasping from the ride and sending spittle in his beard. “It’s Ragnar!”

What has Hel coughed up on my apron? Ragnar?

Sighs of relief, even stifled cheers, emerge from my forces. There is some laughter as the tension fades and the pounding of comrades’ shoulders.

Ragnar.

Here he comes, with all my riders in tow and commingled with his own. Horns passed horse to horse, all brothers reunited.

I could cheerfully spear the lot of them.

“I’m all out of dogs for you to kill, Goat Pants,” I call to him, displeased.

Smiling, he rides right up to me, saying nothing before he dismounts.

“Is that any way to greet an old friend?” he grins. The light catches in the blonde of his beard.

“You are looking old,” I tell him. “Marriage disagrees with you.”

“Winter was unkind,” he says. “To me at least. You, however, look as beautiful as the day I met you.”

“Flatterer,” I say. “I looked like a mess the day you met me.”

“I’m thirsty, Ladda. Find us a drink, a place to speak.”

I look around at the bustle of the town, intrigued by new faces, new stories, new flirtations.

“It looks like a feast is happening regardless,” I say. “Well, come on in then.” I turn to the hall without seeing if Ragnar will follow.

I cross the hall and take my chair, even though custom says I should yield it to him. He seems untroubled by this and drags a stool over.

“I missed you at Aalborg,” he says.

“When were you at Aalborg?”

“No, I mean I arrived just after you left. Are you really reluctant to see me?” He seems hurt.

“No, of course not. It’s just… I don’t know. Like I’ve been living a kind of fantasy here. A dream.” The hall is coming to life, with casks creaking open and wooden trenchers clacking on the tables. Firewood clatters beside the hearth as boys argue about how to stoke the fire.

“And I woke you.” His blue eyes are flashing in the light.

“You’re trouble,” I agree, half-smiling.

“That’s why you like me.”

“Who says I like you?”

“You have to like me. You’re my best friend.” And I look at the blue of his eyes and the scars on his hands, remember how happy he was at his wedding feast and how his happiness moved my own, and yes, I suppose I am his best friend.

There’s a crackle of cedar on the hearth, and the scent of it reminds me of fires past, and hours with the man in front me. which brings me to the moment.

“All right, but what about Thora?” I ask. “Where is she?”

“She is my wife. She’s where she’s supposed to be, in my hall at Heithabyr.”

“Being queen,” I add.

“Being queen,” he agrees.

“So you are here because?” A woman hands us both cups of water, with an assurance of wine or ale coming, and then disappears.

“Because you are not where you are supposed to be,” says Ragnar, “but here instead. So here I am as well.”

“You’re as cryptic as my sister’s elves,” I tell him. “You want something.”

“Need,” he says, taking a bite of an apple handed to him.

“You need boats? We were about to deliver them.”

“I heard! And more, too, I hear.”

“We’ve been busy,” I say.

“Ladda,” Ragnar says, suddenly serious, or at least serious for Ragnar, “Harald is back.”

“He survived the battle at Aalborg,” I conclude.

“He did. And he barely let the ice melt before making trouble. He wintered in Sjeland, where they have no love for him. But now he’s back in Jutland, and he has rallied the towns between Heithabyr and Aalborg. Even Viborg will side with him in this war.”

I’m shocked by this.

“How could Viborg fall so easily?”

“It hasn’t. Not yet. But he’s paying families to stand aside, and I think they might.”

“What about loyalty?” I’m furious. After what I’ve fought for, I have a right to be.

“Oh, many will fight for me, when it comes to it. I’m hoping it won’t.”

I sip before speaking.

“I can’t help, Ragnar. I lost two men just getting here. And when your garrison leaves with you, it will be a month at least before troops arrive from Aalborg.” There is a long pause while I listen to him chew. “I’m sorry.”

“Rorik says you abandoned his bed,” Ragnar says carefully.

I almost snort. “I’m surprised he could find his bed, with so much wine in him.”

“I went there looking for you, as I said. Aalborg, not his bed.” He grins at this last bit. “He says if you will not be wife to him, he will not send a garrison.”

“You’re just saying that. I don’t believe you.” I can’t let myself.

“He says he’s bound to let you keep the ships, in name only, but there is no law which compels him to defend the Nordvegr, particularly when there’s no war here and nothing to defend it from.” Again, a bite of the apple. “No profit in it, he says.”

“He gave me his word,” I say, seething.

“You should have had a contract,” he says reluctantly. “Eindr is good at this sort of thing. You should use him.”

“I did. We have a contract,” I snap. “Is the word of my husband worth nothing?” I’m beyond angry. Shaking. “This is Caldr’s doing.”

He nods, agreeing. “Likely. Caldr’s a pig. But if you would return to Aalborg, Rorik would have no choice but to honour your agreement.”

I have nowhere to go with all this breath I’m holding. A sigh will have to do.

“Clearly you didn’t come all this way to tell me this, Ragnar.”

“I need your help, I told you.” He chews with his mouth open, but tries to cover this with his fingers, like a little boy.

“But I can’t…” I protest.

“We both know what you are going to do,” he says.

“Oh, we do, do we?” I’m too tired to pursue this now.

“Your runes,” he says. “The runes here. They are different, yes?”

I pause. How much does he know? How much should he know? I’ve shared it with him, but it seems like a lifetime ago, and I’ve learned so much more since then.

“Yes,” I answer finally.

“So, you have come back, to this place, to protect them,” he concludes.

“They’re not just sounds to us. They’re stories. Old stories. They’re part of why we have to survive. Why we fled here in the first place, though I didn’t realize it at the time.”

“So you would see them survive,” he says.

“Yes,” I repeat.

“Then they can survive here, in this little valley, tucked away in the Nordvegr, or your stories, your runes, can take root in the wider world. More skalds, out there,” he says, waving generally toward the door. “Find them. Teach them.”

I have to think on this, and my face shows it.

“And that,” Ragnar says, “is how we know what you’ll do next.”

“You said that.” I’m smiling again. He’s teasing me, at first, but then his tone is serious, or as serious as Ragnar gets.

“You are who you are. Rorik is not a man of his word, but you are a woman of yours. So you’re going to come with me to Aalborg, and you’ll force Rorik to garrison your town here. Then, because you are very, very good at what you do, you will come with me and we will kill Harald.” One last bite of the apple.

“Together.”

The goat did not bleat for long. The arrival and swift departure of a king demanded more sacrifice, and the black earth was glad of it. Or so Kara says.

“I will return as soon as I can,” I tell Kara, near-smothering her into my cloak.

“Almost,” she says.

“What does that mean?”

“Almost as soon as you can.” She seems untroubled by this, but it makes no sense to me.

I kiss her forehead, and tuck her hair behind her ears. I have nothing to carry as I mount my horse. We leave by the northern path, almost a road now, to the river and Ragnar’s ships. The Gualar-fleet of near thirty will meet us at the mouth of the fjord, though some will have to be towed.

I miss Rota, miss that strength, in a way that makes my bones ache. In another life, my life of a year ago, I would be near-sobbing in Brandr’s arms begging him to take care of everything, but now a year is past and I no longer need to beg. I never did, I know now.

Still, Kara is too young to be jarl in her own right and Brandr too old, even if he were willing. So I remain the jarl of the Gaular, even as I abandon it again in the first days of the month of Harpa.

To the south then. To war.

We meet the fleet, Ragnar’s fleet, I suppose–they’re his boats after all–timbers so new they’re practically green, just north of the Sognefjord, where the islands are broken and jagged. So many of my people lie here, their breath taken by the sea and their bones shattered on the rocks. I pray to Skathi for protection. I pray to the drowned, because they’re my grandfathers, and they know the price the Skagerrak Sea may demand.

Even though these are the first stirrings of summer, there’s north wind that seeks out the back of our necks. It fills the sails, but tightens the shoulders for rowing.

Still the gods are either with us, or not against us, and in this as in other things, it’s enough. We cross in a day.

It’s not joyless, though it is hard going. As the sea falls away from the coast, the swells are a relentless drumbeat, an animal, so each has to be addressed, steered into, rowed through. The wind shifts the width of a palm and the fixtures rattle, ropes creak, the spray makes a rare dry spot damp again, robbing heat. Though there is music, jokes and laughter, gossip. There is a cook who is a master at setting and lifting a pot lid in between waves, a kind of dance to his step of lift, add, stir, taste, set the lid, stoke the coals, lash the pot if necessary. The sky is clear, which makes for an easier crossing but a colder night. The stars are sharp against the carved dragon’s head of my own boat.

We don’t anchor, but sail through, taking advantage of a hole in the weather. This isn’t taxing; the rowers work in shifts, so others sleep in a line along the hull’s length, bundled in cloaks and under cow-hide tents.

Dawn wakes me, and I look back to see what we’ve set loose upon the world. A massive fleet of some ninety ships, though most of these on skeleton crews, the smaller ships unmanned and towed behind. Still, this is nearly the forest of masts of my vision, and it is beautiful as the morning sun burns the mist off the water. No sign of land yet, but the colour of the sea has changed, and we are through the danger of it.

But there is land, the northern tip of the Jutland, and a cheer to greet it. A boat approaches from behind us: Ragnar’s skeith.

Our oars are up to allow the boat to come alongside, and Ragnar’s long legs clear the gunwales in a smooth lope. He is smiling.

“Good morning, Goat Pants,” I say. Someone hands me a bowl of hot broth, and I extend it to him. He shakes his head. “Do we make for Hjorring?” I ask.

“Do we need to?” he asks in reply.

“I don’t think so. We’re well-provisioned. We could make Aalborg tonight, gather the rest of the ships, take on crew there.”

He says nothing for a moment, but cocks his head to the side, as though he’d want us to go for a discreet walk. Those around us take the hint and simply withdraw a pace or two.

“What do you think,” he begins, pausing carefully, “Rorik will do when we arrive?”

“What do you mean?” I’m honestly puzzled. The ship creaks and rattles and slaps around us, unhurried.

“So, you expect to sail to your hall and have your ships waiting for you?” Ragnar asks.

“Yes,” I have to stop and think for a moment. “Yes, I do.”

He nods and shrugs a little, assured.

“You have doubts,” I say.

“It was curious that the last time we sailed south together, you and I, that Jarl Rorik was not with us.”

“He landed to the north of the fjord, he said,” I explained. “He made it to the hall after we did.”

“And yet, he was not in the battle.” He’s stating the obvious, watering the seeds of doubt I’ve had for months.

“He had meetings with the families north of the town,” I explain. Or try to. “He paid them in silver to leave Harald’s garrison unsupported.”

“This is what he told me as well,” says Ragnar.

“You don’t believe him,” I state.

“I think your husband is very good at counting. And Harald has a great deal of silver for him to count.”

“You’re suggesting Harald paid Rorik to stay out of the fight?” I should be affecting outrage. This is my husband who’s being called a traitor. A coward.

“It’s convenient he showed up once he knew how it was all going to turn out,” Ragnar says.

I can’t deny this.

“So what I’m saying is,” Ragnar whispers, “that I will see you in your boats. Even if we have to fight for them.”

“Will it come to that?” I honestly wonder.

Again, his typical shrug.

“How would you feel about that, if it does?” he asks.

“About waging war on my husband, you mean? It was your idea that I marry him!”

“Not my best idea,” he admits. I expect a smile, but there is none.

“How did you come to know him?” I ask Ragnar. We’re sitting on the gunwales now, and I scooch closer to him.

“He owed my father a great deal in taxes,” Ragnar explains. “I forgave him that debt when he joined me in killing Fro.”

“Makes sense,” I say.

“Also, Rorik knows things. He is… cultured. Like the Franks. My world was very small, growing up. Like yours, I guess. But Rorik, Rorik has maps. He can read. He is smart, like a merchant. Their world is larger than ours.”

“A world that runs on silver,” I say.

“And slaves. There is a river, in the Finnmark, that leads to the center of the world. There is great profit to be made in taking slaves from Anglia and selling them at the rivermouth.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” I decide.

“No, but controlling the mouth of such a river, taxing it. It is interesting to me.”

“And to Rorik, no doubt.”

“So we had that in common. But if he thinks Harald can get him there faster than me…” He trails off.

“I understand,” I say, and I do. Though I wish I didn’t.

“And speaking of slaves,” Ragnar says, lightening the mood, “you wear his ring.”

I look at the flash of purple glass set in silver on my finger.

“Eindr? No, he says he found it in Rorik’s stores, and that it was mine by right.”

“It was in Rorik’s stores, yes. I was there when he found it, inventorying it. He thought it was fascinating, but it’s just glass. Rorik gave it to him.”

“The ring was Eindr’s?” I ask.

“I think it was the only thing he owned,” Ragnar says. “I told you he was in love with you.”

As we sail up the Limfjord in the darkness, we leave most of the fleet behind—they sail west and south, well clear of any scouts from the shore. My drakkar is at the head of only a dozen of the ships from the Gaular, just as we are expected to be.

Just in case anything happens.

Ragnar is aboard, at the oars, and cloaked. Not hiding, just not overly visible. I’m the one at the prow, beneath the great carved dragon’s head and its snarl, and I’m suddenly aware of the king in my boat. Of the wolf skin around my shoulders. My mother’s brooch, the sword at my belt. And the glass ring on my finger bearing the name of an alien god.

Every breath of wind might bring an arrow. I have them light torches to better guide their way. This is my hall by right, by law, and there, ahead of me, the docks and my fleet by troth. No arrow comes.

There are warriors on the dock, wearing leather helms, holding their shields in the night. They don’t move to help us with the lines, but they don’t murder us either. I begin to wonder why not.

And there in a tunic down to his feet, a silver brocade from throat to hem is Eindr, his eyes downcast.

“Jarl Hladgertha,” he says, “welcome home.”

Everywhere I go now, everyone says that. How many times can it be true?

It is all my heart can do not to reach out to him, to touch his face. I struggle to find my voice.

“Eindr,” I say, with some cobbled-together confidence, “where’s Rorik?”

“Jarl Rorik has business, Jarl Hladgertha,” he says. “He left this afternoon with some four hundred men on horseback.”

“He rides to war?”

“No, Jarl Hladgertha. He merely rides.”

“Rides. With a four hundred men.”

“As you say, Jarl Hladgertha.” His language is stiff. So public. I want to shake him and get my friend back.

“Is it not strange that, Eindr, with enough notice of my return, that he should take off like this? With a small army?” I need to be seen by others saying this.

“Perhaps,” he says, “you would like to return to your hall. And we can billet your crew.”

I nod, and he smiles and takes a step back before turning.

“Eindr?”

“Jarl Hladgertha?”

“Ragnar is with me. Make preparations for your king.”

The girls wake me early. Eindr is waiting outside my house. It is scarcely past dawn and the knots from the voyage have yet to leave my shoulders. But I’m dressed, combed, braided, appointed. Kohl is under my eyes and berries stain my lips, the stain transferring to the thin wooden cup as I sip birch tea.

I go to greet Eindr, who paces to warm himself in the early sun.

“Eindr?” We walk a little for privacy’s sake.

“They return, Ladda. Jarl Rorik and his men.”

“Thank you, Eindr. Are they here yet?”

“No, but soon. From the east.”

I have to think about this for a second. No, I don’t, but I should. In the end, I say what I wanted to say since I got here.

“Have my chair brought to the field behind the hall. Set up a pavilion there and bring some wine.”

“And chairs for Jarl Rorik and King Ragnar?” he asks.

“My chair and mine alone.”

At this, I think he’ll just leave. It’s difficult to see him, because I don’t know where to rest my eyes. Not in the curls of his hair, or the lines of his cheek, the bronze of his hands…

“Ladda? If I may…”

“Of course, Eindr,” I answer, grateful for the distraction. Grateful for the break in the uncomfortable silence.

“I have… the timing is odd, but I have something for you. A gift. A welcome-home.” And he hands me a fist of green silk, placing it into my waiting palms. “Please be careful, it’s sharp.”

A spearhead in iron, though the lightest and most silver iron I have ever seen. While made of one piece it seems like a tangle of wires woven together, the work so intricate. As we knot beasts and birds and serpents into our work—yet there are no heads here, no faces. Just a delicate writhing of line and beauty, fragile-seeming yet unbreakable, like something forged by Kara’s elves.

“It is Arabic?” I wonder.

“It is. Scripture. A saying. The words make up the spearhead itself.”

“Let me guess, you discovered it in inventory and thought it was mine anyway.” I’m teasing him. He doesn’t know I know about the ring.

Eindr looks left and right, leaning towards me. “Something like that,” he says, smiling.

“Thank you, Eindr, it’s beautiful.” Without thinking I dart forward and kiss him on the cheek. His smile cracks my heart open and I’m amazed to have found it closed so tight.

“I would ask one further gift from you, if you would.”

“Anything.”

“The truth, then. Did Rorik accept payment from Harald to hold back from retaking Aalborg?”

Eindr says nothing, but in his eyes I can see that he is wounded to have disappointed me. His complete lack of reaction and surprise is all the truth I need from him. I can all but see an iron collar around his throat. I place my hand on his arm.

“Thank you, my friend.” I say.

Before the hour’s over, I sit attended under a canopy of linen, on the great wooden chair piled high with furs. I can feel the hoofbeats through the grass before I hear them. Ragnar is at the west end of the field, leaning against the back of the hall. I’ll say this about my friend: he is beautiful when he leans.

The first riders clear the forest and seem confused. They’re not expecting this, me, practically alone in the field at the head of their road. They fan out, allowing Rorik to trot up the center. He looks nervous; his eyes sweep the field. Because I don’t rise to greet him, he canters over to me and dismounts.

His feet under him, he dons his most charming smile, and I am reminded how good he is at this. Politics. Business.

“My love,” he says, his arms spread wide. “When did you get back?”

“When you saw my ships enter the fjord,” I say without emotion. “When you fled.”

“We had some business inland,” he says. “But what is this?” He gestures to the shade, and the small table set with meats and fruit. And no chair for him. I do not answer. He tries again.

“It is my joy to see you, Ladda. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

“I have some idea,” I say, rising.

I do this:

I look at the field where I left a small piece of my ear, the place where I fell in battle from a spear that nearly took my life.

I smell the sweat of horses.

I turn my cheek for a kiss.

I note the green velvet of my husband’s Frankish tunic.

I drive the spearpoint in my hand up under his jaw to the small pad of flesh there, pushing again as it crunches against the palette, feel the hot gush of blood staining my hands as he drops gagging and bubbling to his knees at my feet. Dying.

I draw my sword, a thing made for drawing in the sun, so that it whispers itself into my slick hand, and I strike down to his neck, the flecks of blood suddenly raising up my dress to my collarbone, my throat, my face.

I level my sword at four hundred men, still mounted, who are shocked at the murder of their lord by a girl. And there at the centre of all of them is Caldr’s scowl.

“Listen to me, all of you,” I say. “I have slain the traitor Rorik, in accordance with the law. I and I alone am Jarl of Aalborg. Follow me, and swear me your feal, and I will make you rich. But betray me, or conspire against me again, and you will meet the same fate as this corpse here.”

The men look amongst themselves but I try not to notice. One of them could spear me, spear Ragnar, and that would be the end of the war. So simple, really.

None move.

“And you, Caldr,” I yell out. “You are free to do one thing and that is ride to Harald, if he will have you. I will not. From this moment you are a wolf’s-head in the Jutland, and anyone can kill you if they wish without penalty of law.”

A hundred heads turn to Ragnar, unarmed, who continues to lean against the back of the building. He shrugs, but in a comical way, his palms upturned to the heavens. The men laugh, many dismounting to kneel before their Jarl.

Caldr glares at me, but he knows he’s done. A single pace towards me and he’ll not live another breath. He sneers, as only a man with so much practice at sneering can do, and turns his horse back to the forest. Two men follow, silently, whether to accept him as master or quarry I don’t know and don’t care.

“Jarl Ladda!” cries one of the kneeling warriors. He calls me by my family name, simpler, and it speaks to kinship.

“Jarl Ladda!” cries another. And this they chant. The serving girls laugh, not knowing if they would share my fate had things gone differently, and now all that nervousness lost to laughter and the pouring of wine. Casks of ale are rolled uphill and bashed open, the men plunging drinking-horns and already singing. The horses, overwhelmed by all the sudden noise, defecate steadily on the grass, and at this the men laugh louder, like children.

Two men come to move Rorik’s body.

“No, leave him there,” I command. “He will not enter Valhalla.”

It’s a quiet curse, but a lasting one—there’s no way to take back such a thing. The men are horrified. I regret it at once, but can’t show it.

“Eindr!” I shout, though it seems he is right behind me. Of course he is.

“Ladda?” He’d dig out that spearhead from Rorik’s throat and throw himself on it if I asked him to.

“It’s in my power to free you, now,” I say. I’m guessing, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.

“Free me?” He doesn’t understand, at first.

“From thrall. You’re not a slave, anymore, Eindr. You’re whatever you want to be.”

He swallows. “There’s only one thing I want to be,” he says.

“Then be that.”

And so I kiss him, the blood from my hand in his hair, but we don’t care and all the world is watching and his mouth is on mine and he’s strong, so much stronger in his arms than I thought it would be, and there’s only him and the scent of him and the pounding of my heart. There is cheering because a heartbeat ago there was uncertainty and now there is not. Now there is only their Ladda and her consort Eindr and that is a simple enough thing for anyone to understand. Something even my heart can understand.

I take my lover’s hand and practically march to my house, by the hall.

“And where are you going, Jarl Ladda?” asks Ragnar as we pass. He hasn’t moved from his spot, but his happiness for me, the smile on his face, is priceless.

“Mind your own business, Goat Pants,” I say, not stopping.

I allow myself two days.

Two days.

All business can fall to Ragnar. Eindr and I don’t leave our bed. We have food, water, wine brought to us. All there is of us is love. Skin. Hunger. Sleep. The days are for love, and for drifting in and out of dreams. Nights are for sharing, for whispering to one another. Childhood stories. Secrets. Incidents written into our flesh by fine scars. He kisses my ragged ear. I kiss his neck where there are marks from an iron collar in his boyhood.

He thinks I’m the goddess Thorgertha. He worships me like one, in an instant, then teases me in the next. We’re drunk on one another and the places we inhabit in each other’s hearts.

No one interrupts us. I just know, on waking on the third dawn, that it is time.

He’s still asleep when I steal from our bed, and I leave the curtained dormer and rouse the two dressing-girls. They tend to the fire and the kettle, and my hair is unbraided, combed, and oiled, rebraided.

Eindr stands naked by the curtain, watching me dress. He wants to ask me to come back. I want him to ask me. But I can’t, so he’ll say nothing. He knows, too. He gets dressed.

We hold hands as we walk down to the docks together, the morning wind in the rigging of a hundred and twenty ships. A fleet like the sea has never known.

Ragnar has been busy. Many have been sleeping aboard, and the docks are piled high with barrels, bundles, weapons, casks, great jars sealed with wax. It’s a market-smell of dried fish and copper, though it’s not a market we sail to.

“It’s all right,” Eindr says, “I know we’ll have to sail soon. Today, if you like.”

My throat is a bottle found in a barn, empty and hollow and dusty.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asks. “Everything will be perfect so long as we’re together.”

“Eindr,” I say, holding both his hands in mine. “You can’t come with me.”

“Of course I can.”

“You can’t. I need you not to.”

He still doesn’t believe me.

“It will be fine, Ladda,” he says.

“It will. But not like this. I need you to go.” This is impossible for me. I am breaking my own heart.

“Go? Go where? I’m not leaving your side,” he insists.

“Stop. Just stop, please? Listen?” I kiss his fingers, because if he wipes the tears from my cheeks I won’t be able to do this. “I’m sending you to the Nordvegr. To be the jarl of the Gaular.”

He tries to interrupt, but a simple “please” silences him. I continue.

“You’re the only one I trust. I’m giving you the Gaular. It’s mine, and I’m giving it to you because I believe in you, in your strength and your learning. You can make something of the place, something important. And you’ll have Kara and Brandr…”

“I don’t need Kara and Brandr,” he says. “I need you.”

“You have me. Oh my gods, you have me. And we’ll be together, I swear it. But I need to know that the Gaular is safe, that my sister is safe and that my people won’t just fade away if…”

“Don’t speak like that. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Still. I need you there. They need you. You need to speak with Kara, have her teach you the runes she taught me. You need to figure out how we can teach them to others. Skalds, I mean. Our runes, they’re… special. Different. Your learning… just… figure it out.” I’m babbling. “Please, Eindr. For me. Go and build something.”

He knows it’s decided and that all of him wants to fight me. I want him to fight me. I want him to win, to ignore me and stay by my side every second.

But we both know it can’t be like that.

“I’m sending you north with seven ships,” I tell him. “With blacksmiths and quarrymen, and enough iron to build a fortress. You’ll find a garrison, not just warriors but families, who will settle and fight for the Gaulardale.”

“That’s three hundred people, Ladda,” he says. “Dozens of families. Think of what that will do to Aalborg. That’s your responsibility, too.”

“Take some from Aalborg, some from Hjorring. Villages in between, or just offer,” I tell him. “Take livestock, cattle, sheep, horses, anything you might need. Tools and weapons. Make it strong. Make it beautiful. Build stone halls. And then I’ll come and stay with you. Forever. I promise.”

A dockside gift from Ragnar—I don’t know how or when he conceived of this or managed to make it all happen.

“There are privileges to being king,” he says when I ask. “You’d like it.”

And on every mast a banner in red with a swan emblazoned in white. The Swanfleet of my dream, real, and here bobbing in the harbour. I don’t know how many hours, how much thread, how many beats of the loom this must have taken. The banners glint with fine silver wire woven into the design to catch the light, over and over, flashing with the breeze.

The priests here wanted a blot, a sacrifice of some dozen swans. I forbade it. Let them kill something we can eat, I tell them. So, what would be blasphemy is credited to practicality.

The wind comes off the land as the tide goes out, and we cruise through the Limfjord to the west with spacing our largest issue: wind and water want us all to collide in a clump, and the rocks here too unforgiving for such closeness. Half the ships are loosely cabled together on long lines, so that those closest to shore can be given a few extra backs for maneuvering as needed.

Once clear of the shore, we’re greeted by almost a dozen ships belonging to those loyal to Ragnar. Set out from Heithabyr and following the coastline, there’s been no sign of Harald between the isle of Fyn and the Jutland. He is somewhere out in the Kattegat. There is some debate whether to return to the fjord, past Aalborg, and so take the eastern passage to the sea.

Hearing this nearly kills me. There’s no way I can turn around and sail past Aalborg, past Eindr. There’s no way I can say goodbye again, no way not to stop and either throw my arms around him or throw myself into the waves. I can have war. But I can’t bear the thought of this.

But Ragnar decides, and mercifully we are to take the long way around. So for us it’s north, around the northernmost spits, and then south to the straits between Fyn and Sjeland. From there we can resupply at Roskilde, and cross to Lund if necessary. All these names, shapes of islands drawn in the dust. We have to know these waters, understand them, or die.

If Harald is running, we give him an advantage with our numbers, being so easy to spot from shore. But if he stands and fights, it’s a navy we kill him with.

The journey north is hard, as the wind is fickle and we are oars against the tide. But our backs are fresh, and there’s no rain, and this is the part of war that has every boy looking as joyous as serious. No enemy in sight, but the world of spear and shield, and new songs, and bawdy jokes, camaraderie and abundant fresh water for thirst. The new boys haven’t heard the stories a hundred times, have never seen their brothers bleed out whimpering on their laps.

Not yet.

Ashore, for a Thing with the captains. There are so many of us it takes nearly an hour for the ships to move out of the way to allow the rowboats to beach. Here, there are great cooking fires, debts settled, gear hauled out and repaired, traded.

I don’t see Rota so much as know. I just… know. And I turn and Rota is there, under a stiff leather cap and broad in shoulder, a rower’s shoulders.

“Rota!” I cry, and my arms are around the scent of the sea, the scent of war. Sweat, leather, copper rivets. Smoke and salt and dried fish.

“Ladda,” Rota says, voice muffled by the kissing of cheeks and my barrage of affection, and I’m half-lifted off the ground.

“Kara told me you were dead,” I say, still trying to catch my breath.

“Almost,” Rota says. “Probably close enough for the gods to say so. And you?”

“Almost.” There’s a respectful beat of silence between us, even though we’re still tangled in each other’s arms. “Let me look at you.”

There is the conspirator of my childhood there still, somewhere under the sun-baked skin and ragged hair. The eyes are older, decades older, but there is the familiar solidity, the strength. Conviction. A confidence in fate which I lack.

“Did you take a wife, as Gudrun said?” I ask.

“A wife! We’re not all as old as you, Ladda. Of course, I know you’re a legend now.”

“I’ve gotten pretty good at shutting people up,” I tease.

“Apparently not. They say you’re either Alfhild the Pirate Queen, thrown out of Hel and the sea, or the goddess Thorgertha herself. You can turn yourself into a swan.”

“How much ale went into reaching that conclusion?” I ask.

Rota grins. “Word from the Gaular?”

“Fine. Better than fine. There is a new jarl, Eindr, you might remember him. He is…” I break off.

“You’re in love with him,” Rota says.

“That was… yes. How did you know?”

“The way you said his name,” and this followed by laughter, “I thought you married that fop from Aalborg?”

“He died,” I answer sternly.

“I’m sorry,” Rota says.

“I helped. A little.”

Rota laughs louder, pounds me on the shoulder, which makes me wince with pain I’d forgotten. “So, not sorry then! Come, let’s find some ale.”

“No time,” I sigh. “I have to attend the Thing.”

Rota mocks me with a bow. “Certainly, Jarl Hladgertha.” And with that, as Rota turns, I feel a sharp smack on my bum.

“Brat!” I shout, laughing.

Gods. When you are not hauling fate and love around as though they were toys, what must you do?

We’re just sailing.

How many mils under the hulls of boats have I known in my seventeen years? And all together with my crew, the Swanfleet? Back to the dawn of the gods. Back to Ginungagap.

There’s a voice rising in the back of my throat. Maybe my mother’s voice. Maybe Kara’s. Maybe my own. But it rings out to the crew.

“It sates itself on the life-blood of fated men, paints the homes of the gods crimson with blood, and the sun’s beams grow black. All the summers that follow become winter. Do you still seek to know?”

And there are cheers, or nods, at the old story. The Darkening of the Gods.

“Brothers will fight and slay one another, and sister’s children will deny kinship. A harshness in the world, of axes and swords and shields riven. An age of wind and wolf, before the world goes headlong without mercy.”

“Yggdrasil the Tree of All Worlds shudders, and Jormungaddr, the Serpent Under the World, roils and thrashes, with great waves across all the seas. The giants of Jotunheim walk again, their dwarf-servants opening the doors to Asgard. Odinn himself falls before the jaws of the great wolf, Fenrir. But Vidthar, Odinn’s son, takes revenge and splits the jaws of the wolf open, even as Thor falls in battle over the slain serpent. The age of the gods is over, and the sea covers all Midgard, with every fire from every hearth hissing into the air.”

In my mind I draw the runes upon them. R for raiding and riding and reigning, the spokes of a chariot wheel. A is the ash-tree, Yggdrasil itself, upon whose branches all worlds hang. G the gift, or that which is given, granted. N for need. An A again, returning to the tree and back to R for symmetry. But then O for owning, for owing, and finally K for kindling, the burning brand of fire and fear and finality, charring all that remains.

Ragnarok.

The crew are grim. As the words are meant to make them. Forge them. Sharpen them.

“And this fate, this orleg, we bring to Harald!” I’m shouting now, the growl of the audience rising as their blood comes up.

“His false kingdom is that of the black sun and dying powers. His jaws crack open and hang limp as Vidthar’s spears shall make them!”

They’re roaring now, men and women and boys, banging fists against shields, boots agains the hull, and the sea is a reverberation.

A warning to the dead, and those who will soon join them.

At first, it’s an island. And then it isn’t.

Some thirty, forty ships, lashed tightly together in the middle of the Kattegat Sea. Harald’s kingdom, then, with no land beneath him. He’s made his own.

Ragnar’s ship doesn’t signal, it just rows like Hel eastward into the midst of it, and the rest are expected to follow. I’m not so sure.

I signal to my flank to break away. There’s little wind, but such as it is it would take us south, so sails are lowered and we row hard north. I want to see this thing before we attack it.

We can make out the crew, and there are fifteen hundred warriors at once, on any flank we choose to attack. Clever. The first boat to attack would be overwhelmed. And the second. Ragnar and those immediately behind him run headlong. The sea begins to be peppered with the arrows of the impatient.

But to the south, another flotilla. Faster, smaller ships. Not the busse which make up the bulk of the island but skeiths with a rigging I’ve never seen before.

Not rigging. Some kind of device. Twenty? No, thirty of them. Half Harald’s fleet, looking to trap us between the device-ships and the floating island.

And now I see the reason of it. The timbers from the smaller ships, all with their sails down, seem to explode in action of beam and rope and fire. Great arcs of flaming balls reach out almost lazily to Ragnar’s ships, hissing and choking in the ocean.

Greek fire.

Should even one of these missiles strike a target, each boat is lost, and forty rowers clad in mail will be dragged to the green of the Kattegat Sea.

Ragnar has stopped short. He’s matching Harald’s tactics of lashing boats together, so that a boarding party might have not forty warriors but a hundred. But this slows them down, and each second brings them an oar stroke closer to the reach of Harald’s fire-ships.

The first screams of those felled by arrows. Fire-arrows lance out from Harald’s island, though none are returned. Ragnar means to board, and there is nothing to be gained from boarding a burning ship, let alone thirty.

We’re already out of range of the fire ships, so our only course is south and east, to come around behind the island and open a second flank.

The sky itself seems to catch fire. The boats in behind Ragnar’s train are hit, and crews try desperately to chop away flaming boards just as they’re drenched with seawater. The rowboats in tow are dragged in, the more experienced already thinking of an escape from the flames that doesn’t involve drowning.

But another erupts, and another.

The wind takes barked commands and the screams of the burning to our ears.

“Hold!” I yell. “Oars up!”

The crew obeys, but they’re confused. It looks like hesitation. Like fear, maybe, and I can’t deny the fear that claws at my gut and makes my throat ache to retching. But I wait.

“Harald,” I address the great raft quietly, “Pretender. Unclean thing reviled by the gods, I come for you. Like fish guts left for gulls, I shall leave you. From every wind in Midgard, I curse you.”

In the air I trace the runes for need, for hail. Cursing chaos against the foe.

Ragnar has some six or seven ships lashed together, and this ungainly creature is rowing one side only to get a boarding angle onto Harald’s ships. The wooden island lurches as hundreds of waiting warriors scramble ship to ship to form a disciplined shield wall: archers, shields and axes, spears at the back.

“Harald,” I chant, louder this time. “Fro has fallen before my curses, and so I curse you. No hall shall welcome you. The drowned call to you. Your spear shaft breaks and your manhood withers. Your shield shatters as you piss down your leg in fear. I curse you. I curse you. I curse you!”

I throw something, out of intuition, some invisible ball of malice and spite and hatred, borne by wind and my own need, my own hunger, to see Harald’s men fall.

“Now!” I cry and our archers can just barely take out a few of their spears from behind. We’re only a few lengths away from the enemy, and their lines are starting to form against us. But still, there is confusion. They expected us to either surround them first, or to bet everything on a single front. Not a concentrated attack on two fronts.

Closer and closer. The ships groan. The blades of the oars in the water, and I think of my father carving such oars, almost idly, lost in the scent of the wood and its beauty, the shavings curling away from the tool-blade making little spiraling waves of their own.

A loud chunk shakes me from this, brings me back to the present. A throwing axe, well below its target, which I realize was me. I don’t bother to pluck it from my shield.

I hold up my fist. This signals half the rowers to reverse, pulling my drakkar alongside, so close their spear tips are over our gunwales. But none move until I give the order. A few spears are teased by the longer of our axes.

And then they board us.

They roar and howl and curse and leap; their shield wall pushes against our own as they clamber over the sides, blinded by their own hunger for our deaths.

What they don’t do is think.

Another signal, and our oars push us off, trapping some twenty of their warriors aboard, suddenly outnumbered, as another dozen of their fellows are dragged into the gap between boats, already racing to the sea-floor, still alive but simply waiting in their horror to drown.

My warriors cut down the panicking enemy first, those who look back or dart around for a way to escape. There is none. Those who remain are determined to die killing as many as possible, and the solution is patience, restraint, withdrawal.

We have none of this, so the whole thing is a gory mess of a fight, fists and axes and shield-rims crashing and crunching and butchering. But the thing is over, and I signal and scream over the sounds of battle to return to the oars. We go again.

There are no arrows at all from them now, all their archers at the west end of the battle, keeping Ragnar at bay. My fist up, our oars up, and again we wait until they board, we push off, their men once more encircled and trapped, the clumsy falling into the ravenous, insatiable sea. And we slaughter them.

I look up, and one of Harald’s own fireships is itself engulfed in glorious flame, whatever cursed fuel the thing needs having exploded and devouring crew and hull and sky. The fire rumbles like an avalanche, and I see a giant in the flames. A thing from Muspelheim, the eldjotnr; the fire giants. Only at Ragnarok, at the end of all worlds, are such things meant to walk in Midgard. Yet here they are.

And they are marching upon us.

The fire-boat, adrift, meanders towards us with each bob of what’s left of its hull.

“Prepare to board!” I yell, and I don’t know who can hear me over all of this, but a single raised sword seems to do the trick. Bows are stowed under seats, long boarding axes grabbed, shields up, oars down, and may the gods be with us, or blind to us.

Half Harald’s men are in panic either due to the oncoming fire-giants or to the collapsing shield wall under Ragnar’s attack. And we are coming, two hundred of us, near-tripping over the churning platform of boats right behind their line. My shield fowls on the rigging of the next boat, and I drop it, not taking my eyes off the battle. I don’t care. I think we’ll all die when the eldjotnr come for us, and I have work to do yet.

My sword is its own thing now, made only for this. Exposed backs, and the backs of necks, the soft hollow of the knee. The joint of a wrist so soon gone from an arm, and a weapon with it. And as their line turns to us, now in the thick of it their spearmen are targets for Ragnar’s own spears, so we hammer them between us, every slice and spatter and gasp bringing us closer not to victory but to the immolation that waits for us.

And then everyone is gone.

Simply gone.

I’m alone, on a tightly-bound island of close-woven ships. Not a blood-drop for all my efforts. No enemy, no crew, no soul in all of Midgard. The fire ship seems to have halted in its progress but not in its burning. The light, I realize, is strangely beautiful.

A shadow flashes over my face—a single white swan flying between me and the sun. I watch her arc slowly, elegantly, with minimal effort, around and to the south, where her wings begin to beat steadily, carrying her towards Sjeland.

In the boat-lengths between the raft and the fire-ship, she stands on the sea-foam.

“Do you expect me to kneel?” I call to the goddess.

“Never,” says Skathi.

She steps toward the flames, reaches out to touch them gently, like flowers. They are almost solid to her, tangible as rushing water, and they do not burn her. Her hand reaches along the keel lovingly—yes, that makes sense, I think, the tide goddess must feel the kiss of every keel on the ocean—and pushes it up, so that the whole ship arches up and back, its stern taking on water in a thundering hiss of steam.

“Just remember: I am the tide. I give you this gift,” she gestures to the drowning ship, “and I take. I always take. It is what I am.”

“What are you taking from me? Am I dying?”

“You’re not drowning. That much I know.”

“So what are you taking from me?” I repeat in frustration, and fear.

“I already have him.”

Eindr.

I know it’s Eindr. And something else, too, something I can’t see in the rush of my rage and grief.

“What? Why? Why would you drown Eindr? How has he… how have I ever done anything that you didn’t ask of me?”

“It’s I who have done what you asked, Ladda. I’m still doing it,” says the goddess.

She turns to me.

“Ladda?” she says, and then there are thousands of us, dying, killing, wounded and wounding, on a wooden island that seems almost silly now, the weight of us pushing the boats down, down into the sea, the water merely a palm’s width beneath the sides.

Reflexively I parry an axe with my sword, step back and swipe at a nose that comes off almost accidentally. A warrior steps back into me and we both stumble and fall, his weight knocking the wind from me and I’m gasping, the small of my back into something hard, bruising, cold. I try to yell at him to get off me, but I have no voice in my lungs and besides the man is dead with not much skull remaining to hear me with.

I try to untwist my left arm from beneath me, but the shoulder is either broken or the nerve severed; it won’t move. I notice the corpse’s mail, and it is unusually fine. A treasure, in fact, I could claim if I can ever get the damn weight off me. And beneath the mail a tunic, not the coarse wool of a rower, but a thing of linen and silk. A tunic for a king, or a pretender king.

Harald. Dead here across my gasping chest. He weighs the same as a barn, pinning me to the deck, immobile.

It’s all I can do to turn my head and watch the fire ship slip backwards into the Kattegat Sea, harmless and well clear of us.

The killing lasts another hour. No one gets around to killing me.

The pain in my shoulder is trying to, however. And I need to pee. This fact would get me laughing if I had the air for it, but it’s all I can do to gasp enough to stay alive.

I’m found, or rather, Harald is found, and the woman with the gore-choked axe is as delighted by her prize as she is startled to find me alive under it. Every other warrior joins in the finding, until Harald’s name is an echo that hangs snagged in the columns of masts.

I am hauled to my feet, an act that nearly causes me to black out. The woman who finds me is practical enough to know that I’ll vouch for her discovery, the reward hers by right, and she sees to my shoulder by moving me away from the shield boss on which I’ve been lying, placing me on the flat deck, and putting her foot in my armpit. She pulls my wrist with strength and certainty, and on releasing it my arm is once again in its socket, though it sings a little song of crunching flesh that the day has found popular and got stuck in its head.

I scream and nearly vomit. I’m not sure why I don’t.

She takes my belt, a fine thing of Kara’s weaving, and binds my wrist between my breasts. Another quick sash under my elbow and the weight of the arm is off altogether. I’m too dizzy, too much in shock to thank her when she hands me my sword.

“Jarl Ladda,” she nods, and turns to drag Harald’s body in Ragnar’s direction.

On Ragnar’s confirmation, there is a cheer almost as loud as the roaring of fire giants. He seeks me out.

“Are you all right?” His face is elation.

“I’ve been lying under your friend there for an hour,” I tell him. “And I need to pee.”

He laughs. “I’ll find you a bucket.”

“Over the gunwales for me,” I say sickly. “I am the boatbuilder’s daughter.”

“Ladda,” says Ragnar, serious now, “I could not have taken this without you.”

“I know, Goat Pants,” I answer. “I know.”

Ashore at Sjeland, there is a familiar knowing, here among the joyous, the arguing, the trading. Among the dead.

Rota.

Rota’s leather cap is still atop ragged hair, now red, now brown and matted with blood in the sun. Freckles I used to count each summer, contrasted against a skin the green-grey of fish. Of the drowned.

Of Eindr’s, too, I remember.

“You went off to war, as you said you would,” I tell Rota’s body. I would cry, but there is nothing in me. Nothing at all. I want to fall to my knees in rage and mourning, but instead I kneel beside the corpse purposefully, slowly.

“And you took Skathi for your bride, just as Gudrun said you would take a wife. Young as you are.”

Were, part of me corrected. She warned she would take you.

Where in Hel are the Valkyries? I want them here, demand them. Not in fever-dream, but real, their wings beating the fading blue of the sky. I want to hear them singing as they carry my kin to the halls of our ancestors. I’m in no mood for poetry. I want the meat of these flying women before me. Something real I can touch, or weep upon, or strike out in rage.

They owe me enough to be real.

My right hand wants to move, to touch the cold face, to brush the salt-wet hair. But I don’t move. I’m not sad. Not angry. I’m just hollow at the sight of Rota.

Blank. Accepting. Like that day on the beach.

All done.

All done.

Except for the singing.

It comes from a great distance, muffled by the wind, so that I can’t place the tune, though it’s familiar. Increasingly and hauntingly so. Something my mother used to sing, in a language I only half know.

A song in my own voice.

And the song gives my hand movement, so that I can close Rota’s mouth and feel the cool skin against my fingertips; so that I can lean down and kiss the forehead, which stops the song for just an instant, but it resumes as I come up and set the body just so.

And by sunset I am still singing this song, though now I stand on a hilltop on an island well south of any home I have claim to, as warriors light pyres to a sky growing dark pink in the west.

“Wait,” I whisper, and it’s enough for the honour guard to hear me. “Wait.”

I step closer to Rota, laying across the stout beams, strong as the arms that protected me, shielded me, even when I was the older sister. I draw my sword, beautiful and lithe, and place it lengthwise along the unbreathing chest. And I want Eindr here with me, even though he’s down there in the sea watching us in in the grey-green light and not holding my hand, and I want to kiss Kara’s forehead and tell her everything will be all right forever now, that we will survive and our people will not fade and our runes will last and no winter can erase us now.

Because we’re strong, and we’ve paid every price, and we’ve won everything now. And we have nowhere to go, not even to our deaths anymore. We can’t be forgotten, because all of forgetting is full and will not take us. So, we stay. Survive. Endure.

Remembered.

I step back, and nod, and watch until the sparks from the fire become the glints of stars, and the song is no longer in my throat.

“To the Galaurdale, then?” asks Ragnar.

We’re sharing a rock on this beach, as the tents are hammered around us, and weary rowers attend ropes, wounds. Rowboats scrape ashore against tumbled rocks, and the wind’s come up. The beach is a chorus of fires in the night, stretching along the shore in both directions around the bay.

I don’t answer for a moment, so he continues. He’s just filling up space, but he’s not saying he’ll miss me. Which he will.

“You’re very rich now, you know,” he says. “Richer than you realize. Eindr can tell you. You have enough silver to turn your village into Hjorring. Into Aalborg.”

“Eindr is dead,” I say calmly.

“I’m sorry,” Ragnar says. “How do you know?”

“My sister would say a swan turned into a goddess and told me before sinking Harald’s fire-ships.”

He nods. “That is a lot to know.” Again, he kicks the pebbles on the beach.

“I am divorcing Thora,” he adds.

“What? Why?” This makes no sense to me. “She’s a good queen.”

Again, he nods at the fact of it. “It’s true. But she wants me in the south, in the hall. To be king.”

“And you don’t want that?”

He shrugs. “I want to be with you. Out here. Simple.”

“This is not so simple, Ragnar,” I tell him.

“She can stay where she is as jarl. I’ll pay her to keep the city. All of Harald’s lands are mine now. Silver, too. Contracts. She’ll be rich. Richer than she is now. Her family will like that. There’s no loss to her.”

“But she loves you.”

“No, but we trust each other. And I’ll take care of her. She won’t mind.”

“So that’s your plan? Now that you’re the king of the Nordvegr and Jutland and Sjeland and all the Kattegat Sea? Divorce?”

“That’s my plan, yes,” he says.

“And the Swanfleet?” I ask. “What is to become of it?” I pick up a pebble from the beach, toss it in my palm, and arc it high into the water.

“What do you want? You won’t need a hundred ships in the Gaular. The war is over.”

He bends to the shore to find a stone for himself. So we talk like children, and not of fortunes.

“A hundred and twenty,” I say. “A hundred and fifty, perhaps, once Harald’s ships are repaired.” Plonk. A fragment of earth, returned to the tide.

“Midgard has never seen such a fleet,” he says, approvingly. His arm is strong and his stone sails high and far, so far the sound of its falling is muted.

“Let’s say a hundred and fifty ships, then. Five thousand warriors,” I say.

“Faster than any army in the world. Up river, deep inland, down the coast, across the sea. Anywhere,” he agrees.

“You could take the mouth of the Finnmark,” I tell him, the toe of my boot idly searching for another rock.

“Or the entire coast of Anglia.” He’s thinking. Raids of Christian gold like the times of our grandfathers.

“Or the Seax, to the south, who would never harry the Jutland again,” I remember, hearing this from Eindr.

“Or you could just go home,” he says. He smiles a little at this. Daring me.

“I could. I will, in fact.” And there’s some stubbornness in my voice, challenging him to push me further.

“Good. Good,” Ragnar nods. “You should do that.”

“I will,” I say, tossing the stone in the palm of my one unbound arm, feeling the salt rub on my skin.

“Good,” he repeats. “Go home.”

When he leans in to kiss me, my mouth is already open for him, my hand on his strong jaw and his hands in my hair, the taste of the salt air on his lips and woodsmoke on his skin, and my chest expands in breath and heartbeats until I could moor the entire fleet in there. And just as quickly, he stops, though he takes my hand.

“And the Frankish capitol?” I ask. “How far is that? From here?”

“Paris? The richest place in all the world. Where they spend gold as we spend copper,” he says. “Three days?” He thinks for a moment, nodding. “Three days.”

“Three days,” I say, tossing the stone. Plonk.

“Interesting.”

And we both smile in the night’s breeze, knowing.

FIN