Dísa left Hrafnhaugr in the cold hours before dawn.
The night before had not been one of merriment. No songs were sung under the eaves of Gautheimr, no lies embroidered upon by drunken Geats, no calls for tests of strength or of wits. The men who drank did so in deadly earnest, silent and brooding.
Hreðel took himself off, his shame almost too much to bear. Some of his sworn men remained loyal to him and followed—Askr and Hrútr among them. The Daughters remained in the great hall, attending the needs of the Hooded One even as they gave Dísa a wide berth. Grimnir sat atop the high seat, watching. Only Berkano—gentle, mad Berkano—dared approach him. Her sister, Laufeya, waited a short distance off as Berkano sat at the foot of the seat and offered him a horn of her herb-infused mead. He sniffed it, nodded, and raised his mask a fraction. He drained the horn in three gulps. Grimnir smacked his lips and passed it back to her.
“Aye,” he said, “you Otter-Geats know how to brew mead!”
“You knew our people?” Berkano said, glancing back at her sister.
Grimnir leaned back in the seat; his gaze shifted from Berkano to stern-faced Laufeya. “I hunted the Norse who burned out your folk,” he said. He hitched at his belt and drew the scalps around. One he plucked from the others and held it up for the sisters to see—a red-gold mane with strips of shriveled skin still attached by the roots. “This was their chief, a black-toothed braggart who called himself Örm of the Axe.”
“I remember him.” Berkano shivered … and recalled the screams; they echoed across the years, the sound of steel cleaving flesh, pleas of mercy; and at the center of it all, the merciless laughter of the man who led them. He was an ogre—blood-slimed and coarse-handed, and he stank of sweat, gore, and feces. She felt, once more, the wet slime of his tongue; the laughter as he violated her, then passed her to the next man. She did not fight. She did not cry out, for if she made no noise she was sure these iron men and their ogre lord would go away. They would never hurt her, her mother, or her sisters again … “I remember.”
Grimnir unlaced the scalp from the string and offered it to Berkano. Hesitantly, she extended her hand. Grimnir laid the scalp in her palm. Berkano cradled the mane and petted it like it was an animal. “I still dream of him … of what he did.” Berkano closed her eyes and sobbed. Laufeya started toward her, but Grimnir warned her off with an upraised hand.
He leaned over Berkano and spoke in a harsh whisper Dísa strained to overhear. “Nár, girl. His bones molder on the banks of the Otrgjöld River. His shriveled soul howls from the fences of Hel’s realm. I sent him there. By Ymir, let him trouble you no more.”
Berkano looked up and met Grimnir’s smoldering gaze without flinching. She smiled, wiped her eyes. “I will dream of that, instead,” she said. Grimnir nodded and leaned back; taking that as a sign, Laufeya came and collected her sister, who showed her the scalp the same way a child would show off a prized toy.
Dísa spent the balance of the night mulling over that exchange. By every measure she knew and understood, Grimnir hated the sons of Men. He only tolerated the likes of her because there was something in it for him—in the case of the Daughters of the Raven, someone to bring him offerings of meat and of mead and, rarely, of silver. By having only one point of contact, he preserved his way of life and enriched himself in the process.
Why, then, had he shown such unaccustomed kindness to Berkano? Or to me?
The night wore on. Bjorn Svarti stoked the hearth, fed the glowing heart of the fire, and settled into his sleeping furs. The lads of the Jarl’s sworn men who remained drew lots to see who would stand the first watch at the gate. The loser they bundled off with an extra cloak and an iron pot of embers while the rest followed Svarti’s lead and sought their beds.
Sigrún dispersed the Daughters of the Raven to their homes—some still dwelled under their fathers’ roofs, while older Daughters had their own houses among the folk of the first terrace. Soon, only Sigrún, Geira, and Auða remained.
Dísa came and sat next to the high seat.
Grimnir glanced down at her. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping, maybe dreaming up a hare-brained plan to find this lad of yours?”
Dísa shrugged but said nothing.
Grimnir’s eye narrowed. “What?”
“Do you hate my kind?”
“You have to ask?”
“You were ready to kill me, just a short month ago; ready to kill Auða and the lads today. But then, you do something like that business earlier with Berkano.” Dísa nodded to where the two Otter-Geat sisters lay curled together near a brazier; Berkano still clutched the Norse scalp, and a ghost of a smile played about her lips as she slept. “It makes me wonder, is all. Wonder if your hate is real.”
Grimnir was silent for a time. Then: “There was this one time, out East, beyond the lands of the Kievan Rús, when me and Gífr ran afoul of a pack of wolves. Huge, shaggy beasts, like Odin’s own lap dogs. Now, Gífr hated wolves. Even though the blood of mighty Fenrir flows in our veins, he never let pass the opportunity to kill one.
“It was a hard winter, that year. Enough to make this one look like a mild spring. So they were hungry, these wolves. Bastards herded us like we were sheep. Gífr let his hate build, and when he’d finally had enough, we turned and lit into them. Ha! That was a fight, little bird! Gífr’s bow sang, and the blade of my seax smoked with wolf blood. Killed all but one, a giant female. Wounded her bad. Aye, she had two of Gífr’s arrows in her and I’d nearly taken off one of her forelegs at the haunch. Still, she ran. We tracked her over the snow, across a frozen river and into the hills.
“We caught up with the bitch at the mouth of a hollow. Then she turned and lit into us—nearly got old Gífr, too. I dragged her off him and split her heart with my blade.” Grimnir nodded, recalling the heat of the wolf’s blood as it sprayed over his knuckles. “Well, the old git was just lying there, trying to get his breath back, when we heard it … a cry coming from the hollow. Soft, it was. Gífr rolled over and spied a litter of wolf pups watching us. And they’d seen us kill their mother.
“Right then, Gífr decided we would ride out the winter there. Made a shelter, hunted, found water. And the old git raised those pups. He endured their bites, put up with their rage, and taught them to fend for themselves. He meant for us to take off at the spring thaw, but we had become their pack. Those mangy curs followed us back into the lands of the Kievan Rús. We raided with them, and they killed alongside us. And one by one, they died—one of old age, the rest in battle.
“Gífr sang their death-songs. The old git even wept over the grave of the last one, an old crone of a wolf. But three days after she had gone on to whatever Valhöll awaits them, Gífr put an arrow through the eye of one of her cousins, a great brute that tried to pinch a kill from us. He still hated wolves, you see, but some he hated less than others.”
Grimnir raised his mask so she could see the silhouette of his face. “I hate your kind, little bird. I’d gladly set fire to the world if it meant an end to the sons of Man. But some of you I just hate less than others.”
Dísa left her shield and helmet behind; she filled a small shoulder bag with whatever supplies she could find: flint and steel, a coil of braided rope, needles and twine, dried herbs and a small jar of rendered fat; she took from the Jarl’s larder some hard bread, smoked fish, strips of jerky, a cloth-wrapped half-wheel of cheese, a bag of dried dates, and a flask of water. She wore a wolf-skin cloak over her mail; her sheathed seax rode her left hip, a Frankish axe her right, and she carried her short spear. When she left Hrafnhaugr, only Grimnir and the guard at the gate were conscious of her departure.
And neither said a word.
Dísa made good time. From Hrafnhaugr, she headed south toward the Horn—that broad inlet shaped like a cow’s horn, where the Hveðrungr River tumbled through a rocky gorge to drain into Lake Vänern. An old bridge at the throat of the Horn marked the limits of her people’s territory. Beyond the bridge, an overgrown trail eventually joined a rutted road leading farther south to Eiðar, the nearest outpost of the Swedes. Dísa reckoned she’d pick up Flóki’s trail somewhere along the way.
She maintained the pace she’d learned from her morning runs with Grimnir, a long, loping stride that ate up the miles. At midday Dísa paused to drink from a freshet of water and wolf down a bit of bread and smoked fish. A cold wind blew from the north; on it, she caught the scent of ice and snow. It was nearing the end of the month called Skerpla, the Oak Month, and still there was no sign of an impending thaw. She thought of the prophecy, of Fimbulvetr and the ending of the world. And she wondered how long her people had until the breaking of Miðgarðr …
On, she ran; the day waned, and by the hour of the gloaming she caught the gleam of last light on the waters of the Horn. She pushed on until she broke through the trees and came out on a rocky beach. Only then did she stop to rest. By her estimation, she had strayed too far to the east, enough that she stood now near the mouth of the Horn. Lake Vänern was off on her left; right, the Horn curved north and narrowed, its banks rising, until the inlet became a tree-shrouded gorge. In that direction, across the glistening water, Dísa spied a curious glow—like hundreds of fires lending a ruddy tinge to the low clouds. Was Eiðar ablaze? Had Norse raiders struck over their border for plunder and slaves? The glow made Dísa vaguely uneasy, so she disdained a fire of her own, ate a cold meal, and curled up in a makeshift shelter formed of tree roots and boulders.
As her exhaustion caught up with her, Dísa fancied she could hear the roots humming to her …
SHE WAKES TO SMOKE AND to ash and to the heat of crackling flames. It is familiar, if not comforting. The mail she wears is still in tatters, but her limbs are no longer heavy with exhaustion. Her dark hair is sweat-damp; her silver beads and bone fetishes clicking as she turns her head to gaze at her surroundings.
Hrafnhaugr burns around her. She stands near the ruined gates, broken and tilting crazily on their hinges. The dead still lie in their heaps: pale and bloody-limbed Geats intertwine with bearded Danes and dark-eyed Swedes, their ragged surcoats emblazoned with the Nailed God’s cross. The young woman walks from those cracked portals, down streets she had known since she was a child.
She knows the path she’s on will lead to her destruction. This, she has seen before: the crazed man who flays his own flesh from his bones, the Hooded One with his wagon of severed heads, the Dragon. It is a path she is no longer beholden to walk. She turns and chooses a new direction.
The flames die; the sky overhead glows with the green lights of the North. By that emerald glow, she descends a flight of rough steps cut into an embankment and finds herself at the water’s edge. A rocky beach stretches before her; surf rolls in, combers breaking in long frothy curls, crashing and hissing against the shore. Ahead, a figure waits. It bears the shape of a man, though hunched and as twisted as the staff he leans upon; he is clad in a voluminous cloak with a slouch hat pulled low. A single malevolent eye gleams from beneath the brim.
She knows him. The Grey Wanderer, he is; the Raven-God; Lord of the Gallows; the shield-worshipped kinsman of the Æsir. She knows him. She, who springs from the loins of Dagrún Spear-breaker; she, who is a Daughter of the Raven, bearer of the rune Dagaz; she, who is the Day-strider, chosen of the Gods. She, who is skjaldmær, shieldmaiden. She knows him, and she is not afraid.
“Niðing,” the stranger says in a voice deeper than a tolling bell. “Useless whelp of a useless race! What you choose in this moment, now, will determine if your people survive what is to come.”
“What must I choose?” she says.
The sky ripples and burns with green fire.
“To serve me.” The stranger raises his head to look at the eerie lights of heaven. “Bring me the skrælingr’s head, and what your heart desires most will be granted. Serve me, and I will spare your people,” he says. The stranger turns and walks away. “Serve me…”
And with a sound like the rattle of immense bones, the stranger’s cloak is borne up as by a hot breath of wind. There is only darkness beneath. And that darkness grows and spreads, becoming monstrous wings that blot out the northern lights. The darkness crawls like a serpent toward her home, toward Hrafnhaugr. It will rob the air of its breath; it will slay the living with a pestilence that rots the blood in their veins. It will crush and destroy all she holds dear.
She makes to follow, but realizes something has wrapped itself around her ankle. She glances down to see a pale and wriggling root.
It hums.
It pulls at her, gently.
“No, child,” it says in a voice she recognizes. “He deceives.”
“But my people,” she says, struggling against the root. She looks up and sees an empty beach. Her shoulders slump. “I’ve doomed them.”
“No.” The root tugs her back; it pulls her into the embrace of more of its kind, all softly humming a lullaby of the earth. “We are all already doomed.”
“Halla?”
“HALLA!”
Dísa woke with the troll-woman’s name on her lips. Daylight had come, though thick clouds still obscured the face of the sun, and fat flakes of snow swirled on the cold wind. Dísa had wormed her way deeper into her bolt-hole; surrounded by roots, swathed in wolf fur, she felt warm and snug enough that she dreaded crawling forth. But crawl forth she did. Already, images from her dream were fading, leaving only longing and a sense of unease. She had to find Flóki and get back. The young woman stretched, cracking the tendons in her neck, and went to relieve herself before making a quick breakfast of bread and cheese.
As she surmised the night before, she was too far east. She’d follow the shore of the Horn, keeping to the trees, and before midday she should reach the bridge over the Hveðrungr River. She would look for some sign that Flóki and the others had passed that way—the remains of a camp, footprints, something. Nodding to herself, Dísa bolted the rest of her food, drank her fill, and set off.
An hour passed and the day brightened but did not warm. Her breath yet steamed in the chill air. But for the moaning wind, the forest along the north shore of the Horn was eerily silent. Dísa slowed her pace and moved as quietly as she could—each crackling leaf and crunching footfall like a tocsin of alarm. The wind shifted, and her nostrils caught the faint stench of a great burning.
Dísa stopped. She stood on a rocky ridgeline, the remains of an old cart road running east to west underfoot. Thickets of birch and willow stretched away north, while on the south side of the road the forest thinned as it ran to the crumbling edge of a bluff about ten feet above the shoreline. Dísa listened to the oppressive silence, bereft of the natural sounds of squirrels and birds; she snuffled the air as she’d seen Grimnir do so many times. A tree limb creaked. Dísa brought up her spear, its iron head poised to strike. Movement caught her eye.
A willow seemed to twist on the wind; in the silence, she heard a low hum. Farther off the track, another tree branch clacked—another willow, seeming to move of its own volition. Dísa recalled her dream, the gentle humming and the tree roots seeking to shield her from harm. “Halla?” she muttered, her voice profane in the absolute silence.
Dísa’s gut told her she could trust the signs; on that authority, she followed the sounds of willow branches. Even so, she went warily. She carried her spear at the ready. The trees guided her to the mouth of a ravine that cut through the forest, a steaming trickle of foul-smelling water at its bottom—a hot spring. Even more than sulphur, the place reeked of death. Dísa set her jaw, teeth clenched, and as she stepped foot in that gloomy chasm, the oppressive silence suddenly lifted.
A gigantic raven screamed at her and took wing, its flight stirring the stench of putrefaction. Fear ran down Dísa’s spine; she nearly backed away and ran, but the humming of the trees around her bolstered her courage—they lent her the strength of root and bole, and gave her assurances that she was not alone. Forward, she went. Cat-footed, settled into a fighting crouch. Ahead of her, in a cone of thin gray light, she saw a body. It was sitting with its back against the ravine wall, tilted to one side, its eyeless face looking up as though it sought succor from the cloud-racked sky.
An arrow stood out from beneath its left breast.
Dísa crept closer, afraid she would recognize the corpse as Flóki. While it was not Hreðel’s son, she nevertheless knew that long straw-colored hair, the thin beard, even the slack face ravaged by ravens and crows. It was Eirik Viðarrson.
He’d been dead two days, perhaps three. Dísa could see that his legs were broken. She squatted on her haunches an arm’s length from the corpse and glanced up. In her mind’s eye, she could see him running through the forest, away from the Horn. Alone, most likely, for neither Flóki nor Eirik’s brother would have left him. So, he’s running, she reckoned. He’s wounded—an arrow in his ribs. He’s wheezing blood. He’s afraid. And he makes a misstep and falls into this ravine, breaking both legs. He lives long enough to drag himself to the side of the wall. He calls for help … and none comes.
Dísa took hold of the white fletchings of the arrow. Placing the blade of her spear flat against Eirik’s chest—to provide a counterweight—she drew the arrow from the wound with a moist sucking sound. Grimacing at the stench, Dísa rinsed it in the fetid stream and studied the head. It had a long, narrow bodkin point, good for piercing mail, with a crude cross scratched into the socket. A war arrow. But whose? Was it Swedish? Norse? Some Danish hymn-singer?
“Who were you running from, Eirik?” she muttered. “And where’s Flóki?”
Near her head, the roots of an ancient ash tree hummed and rustled. Dísa looked sharply at them, and then cocked her head to one side. In the sudden silence, she heard it: crunching footsteps coming toward the ravine. She scuttled across the stream and past the corpse, pressing herself into a hollow in the far wall under an overhang of roots.
Dísa dared not breathe. Above, she heard the heavy tread come to a stop. She heard a man grunt, heard him murmur: “Whew! There you are, you bastard.” His footsteps receded as he followed the ravine down to its entrance.
Dísa moved. Quickly and silently, she came out of her hiding place and sidled deeper into the ravine, away from the entrance. Here, the walls widened even as the top of the ravine grew more narrow and choked with tangled roots and debris. It was warm and dark, and it stank.
She stopped, fading into the shadows as the newcomer reached the ravine’s mouth. Dísa saw a man of average size, with a golden-brown beard and hair short at the temples but long down the scalp, braided and gathered at his nape by a leather cord. He crouched and peered into the depths of the ravine.
He wore a black gambeson under a white surcoat embroidered in black with the Nailed God’s symbol—a cross with flaring arms—belted around the waist. A horn with bronze fittings hung from a baldric over his shoulder. He had a falchion sheathed on his left hip; on his right, she saw a sheaf of bright cloth strips.
He rose and entered the ravine, eyes sweeping the walls, the floor. Without warning, he stopped. His eyes narrowed. From the small of his back, he drew a long-bladed knife. Dísa knew he’d spotted her footprints; he’d seen the arrow lying where she’d dropped it. No fool, he knew he wasn’t alone.
“I found him like that,” Dísa said suddenly, making her voice small and fearful.
He looked up, toward the back of the ravine. “Show yourself,” he said, speaking Geatish with the harsh accent of the Danes. “Nice and slow.”
Leaving her spear in the shadows, Dísa stepped forward, into a shaft of gray light.
The man grunted, taking in her feral appearance, her mail and seax. “What the devil? You’re one of them, aren’t you? One of those heathen Geats we’ve come to bring into the light of our lord, Jesus Christ.”
The roots around her shivered; Dísa sensed their distress. The Nailed God’s name was a poison to them, to the remaining landvættir, the land spirits.
“Aye,” she said. “I am a Geat, of the Raven tribe. What are you?”
The man crouched beside Eirik’s corpse and retrieved the arrow, tucking it into his belt. His hands went swiftly over the body, searching. “I am the bearer of glad tidings and salvation, girl. That’s all you need to know.”
“Don’t touch him!” Dísa snapped.
The man sat back on his haunches and stared at her. “Or what? You’ll dice me up with that onion slicer of yours?” He snorted. “I have fought the Saracen and the Moor, the Princes of the East. I have seen Greek fire burn the ships of Crusader kings in the straits of the Golden Horn, off Constantinople. You’ll forgive me if I’m not put off by the bravado of a heathen girl.”
“What are you doing here?” Dísa nodded to the strips of cloth, red and yellow, obviously torn from an old tunic.
He glanced down at them. “Surveying the trees. Marking the ones my lord will need to bridge the river, back yonder.” He inclined his head in the direction of the Horn’s throat.
“It has a bridge.”
“Aye, it does.” He shifted his weight. “But some of your folk decided to try and burn it down ere Lord Konraðr’s vanguard arrived. This idiot,” he nodded to Eirik’s corpse, “was among them. Well, it was God’s own luck that the scouts had already crossed. These dogs thought themselves safe—until they weren’t. Killed one, captured two, and we’d thought this cur had escaped. Guess not, eh?”
“Who is this Konraðr and what business does he have with my people?”
“That’s Lord Konraðr to you, bitch,” the man snarled. “He’s the lord of Skara, across Lake Vänern, and his business is the business of God Almighty. The Pope has commanded an end to northern heresy, and we’ve come to see it done!”
“A crusade.” Dísa spat. “And what will happen to them, the two you captured?”
“They’ll be given the same chance I’m going to give you.”
“Me?”
“Aye, girl. I’m taking you back with me. Lord Konraðr’s going to want to question you, himself.”
“And you’ll give me a chance, you say? To do what?”
The man stood. “Kiss the Cross, or hang from it.” He gestured with his knife. “Drop that onion slicer, girl. Shimmy out of that mail. Come quiet and demure-like and my lord might show mercy and give you over to Father Nikulas. He could always use a good nun.”
Dísa stood, staring at the man, at this Dane who’d trespassed onto the lands of the Raven-Geats. Not trespassed, she corrected herself. No, this one had come for war—just as the prophecy predicted. She answered him:
“The blood-reek wafts | like dragon breath
And hides the pallid face of Sól.”
“Blast your pagan gibberish! Don’t test me, girl,” he said. “If I have to drag you out of there it’s going to go hard on you.”
Slowly, deliberately, Dísa drew her seax. The tight confines of the ravine amplified the sound of steel rasping on leather. It sounded like a dozen serpents, hissing in a cold rage. “I am a Daughter of the Raven,” she said. “Bearer of the rune Dagaz, the Day-strider, chosen of the Norns. I am a servant of the Hooded One, immortal herald of the Tangled God. My mother was Dagrún Spear-breaker, who was skjaldmær, shieldmaiden of Hrafnhaugr in the land of the Raven-Geats. How are you called?”
The man ducked his head and spat. “I am He-Who-Will-Break-You if you don’t quit this foolishness and come out of there.”
“What is your name?”
“Why does it matter to you?” He shifted, eyes narrowed, the knife in his blade hand held loose at his side.
“I want to know the name of the first man I kill.” She raised her seax, forcing his gaze to follow that rune-etched blade.
Around them, the roots hummed.
The man’s face grew grim. “You think this is a game, bitch? Oh, no. The time for games is over!” He stepped toward her. “Drop—”
Dísa’s free hand snapped out. Unseen, she had drawn her Frankish axe; now, she slung it side-armed. It struck the ravine wall next to the man’s head, rebounding and showering him with dirt and splinters of loose scree. “God’s teeth!” he swore, flinching back and protecting his eyes. “You stupid little cun—”
In that moment of distraction, when his attention was bent more upon himself than on her, Dísa struck. She struck hard and fast, as her grandmother taught her. And, as she’d learned from Grimnir, she struck to kill.
She sprang as he recovered. Her breath hissed through clenched teeth, steaming in the rancid air of the ravine. She swept her seax up—the power of her blade hand steadied by her off hand on the pommel—and felt the first four finger-lengths of the blade crunch through the bone of his chin. The blow cleft his jawbone, shattered his teeth, tore through the roots of his tongue, and wedged in his palate. He staggered, screaming through a bloody froth as he clawed at the span of steel violating his face.
The man fell to his knees, his knife forgotten. Dísa loomed over him. Her eyes were harder than iron. She watched him thrash, drowning in the blood that pumped down his throat and into his lungs. He clutched at the wall.
Of her own first kill, Auða had told her how she felt fear, remorse; she’d admitted to being sick when she realized she had taken a child’s father from them, a woman’s husband, a mother’s son. That awesome weight of being responsible for another human’s death had struck her to her knees. The second came easier, and the third, and all the killings after. But that first …
And yet, Dísa felt nothing. No fear, no remorse. She did not care that this nameless bastard might have had brats, or a wife, or a heartsick old mother. He had chosen to come here. He had chosen to step foot in the land of her people, bearing a message of hate none of them wanted any part of. He knew the risks—and he had underestimated her. She stared into his eyes, saw his desperation for the gift of life, and felt savage triumph.
She was ready to kill the next hymn-singing son of a bitch who crossed her path.
Snarling, Dísa seized the back of the man’s head and leaned her weight into the pommel of her seax. The blade slid through the ruin of his skull and into the stem of his brain. Dísa saw the light fade from his eyes. He slumped back, fell sideways, and bled his last in that foul sulphurous trickle cutting through the floor of the ravine. The roots of the trees hummed, and then fell silent.
“Bear witness, Eirik Viðarrson,” Dísa said. “Do not haunt this place. Take this soul with you and begone. Let his punishment be to serve you in the next world.” She rocked the hilt of her seax back and forth, grunting as she tugged the blade free from the wreckage of the man’s face. She crouched and was wiping her seax on his surcoat when a thought occurred to her. She would need to prove her kill. Prove it to Grimnir, to her grandmother. She needed a trophy. But what? An ear? A thumb? His shriveled manhood?
A slow smile spread across Dísa’s face. She took up the man’s own knife, got a feel for its weight, and went to work …
When Dísa Dagrúnsdottir left that ravine, intent on following the nameless man’s trail back to his camp, she’d added a gruesome trophy to her gear: a golden-brown scalp, still damp with blood.
DÍSA CREPT LIKE A SHADOW through the woods, aided by overcast skies and a drifting fog that rolled down from the hill country west of the Horn. The man she’d killed had not come far from his camp. It lay less than a mile from the ravine. And as the sun reached its zenith, the forest came alive with the dull thump of axes, the thud of hammers, and the hiss of saws. Men shouted and called out commands as they snaked logs to the banks of the Hveðrungr River and set about repairing the half-burnt bridge.
Dísa gave them a wide berth. She slunk around the center of all the activity and came upon the banks of the Hveðrungr from the west. From her vantage, she could see the bridge was largely intact, though the end that rested on Geatish soil was charred and missing timbers. Peering across to the far bank, she suddenly apprehended the source of the lights she’d seen reflected in the clouds, last night.
An army was camped across the Hveðrungr River.
To Dísa’s untutored eye, it looked like a riot of tents—hundreds of them, from canvas sheets hanging from a tripod of spears to elaborate pavilions needing ropes, poles, and pitons to stay erect. Fires burned, their smokes adding to the haze of fog. Dísa could see scores of men going about their daily routines: making food, fetching water, tending weapons and harness; grooming, repairing, praying and cursing. And upon every banner, sewn onto every surcoat and gambeson, painted on the face of every shield, she saw a black cross, the hateful symbol of the Nailed God.
Fear twisted in her gut, more for Flóki than for herself. To imagine him at the hymn-singers’ mercy made her sick at her stomach. Obviously, at some point he and his lads had encountered the vanguard of the crusading army. Outnumbered, perhaps aware of why they’d come into the borderland between Geatland and Swedish territory, the four young Raven-Geats had faded back to try and hold the bridge over the river. But why hadn’t they sent word back to Hrafnhaugr? Was it pride? Was this how Flóki meant to make his war-name? Now, he was either dead or captive. And Dísa could not simply run until she found out; either way, she meant to bring him home.
Since there was not yet any thaw, the Hveðrungr was not in spate. This worked to Dísa’s advantage as she prowled farther west, away from the camp. A few hundred yards down the bank, she discovered a spot where boulders broke the river’s surface, forming a cataract that boiled and hissed on its way to Lake Vänern. Taking a deep breath, she scotched across these, cloak flaring behind her, and faded into the undergrowth. She listened for sounds of alarm. But when no hue and cry arose, she crept nearer to the encampment, intent on working out where these hymn-singers might keep their captives.
So focused was she that Dísa almost blundered into a sentry.
It was a groan that warned her—the cracking tendons of a man stretching, moving to relieve the numbing boredom of piquet duty. Dísa froze. She sank into the shadows and peered through the foliage. Not three spear-lengths from her she spotted an older man who had the look of a Norseman about him. His hair and beard were the color of pale gold, his face scarred and weather-seamed. Beneath a cloak trimmed in fur, he wore a hauberk of dull gray mail. A watchman’s horn hung from a strap over his shoulder. He turned slightly as another man came up from the camp—younger, his hair and sparse beard a reddish-brown, but also clad in war-rags and sporting a spear and shield.
The old sentry frowned. “You’re early,” he muttered.
“Nay,” the newcomer replied. “I’m not your relief. Lord Konraðr’s ordered the watch doubled. One of the surveyors has gone missing.”
“Which one?”
“Haakon, I think. The lord says it’s the same lot who tried to burn the bridge. We got two of theirs, so they’re going to get a few of ours. Maybe use them to try and barter an exchange.”
The old sentry shook his head. “Haakon’s a good man. I will pray God keeps him safe among those damnable heathens.”
“Amen.”
Moving with agonizing slowness, Dísa inched back in the direction she’d come. She cursed under her breath, frustrated by this wall of men who fortified the camp. Dísa knew she could distract them, but to what end? She needed to infiltrate, to enter without their knowledge so she might be free to seek the hymn-singers’ gaol. She studied the overcast sky, sniffed the chill air.
Night would soon fall. She could use the coming darkness to slip through cracks in the sentry wall, use it to disguise her identity once she was inside the camp. With the patience of a hunter, Dísa crept into a covert between two sentry points and waited for darkness to descend.