Though Hrafnhaugr was only a little more than two miles distant, across the dark waters of Skærvík, Dísa had neither wings nor a boat. She followed the shoreline of the bay, along game trails and through tangled copses of spruce and birch. It was a six-mile journey that should have taken her only a couple of hours despite the rocky and forested terrain; instead, it took the better part of the day.
Excitement had given way to a bone-aching weariness. She stopped by a small stream to clean the blood from her face and to drink handfuls of water—the Mjöð Grimnir forced into her had left her throat raw; she stopped again as spasms of overexertion racked her limbs. Dísa found a thicket near the trail where deer bedded down, the bracken underfoot warm and dry despite the rain. She limped into the nest. And with the cloak Halla had given her wrapped around her like a swaddling cloth, Dísa drifted off to sleep …
… 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.
“Niðing,” the stranger says in a voice deeper than Vänern’s heart. “I am coming. Tell your folk to choose, and choose well. No man can serve two masters.”
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 burning sky …
Dísa woke with a gasp. Her seax was in her hand, its trembling blade leveled at nothing. Outside, the day had waned into late afternoon. Water dripped from leaves, and she could hear the soft splash of waves striking the rocky shore of Skærvík. No darkness loomed over her; no figure in a slouch hat with a single burning eye. Slowly, Dísa relaxed. Prophetic dreams were not unheard of among the Daughters of the Raven, and some—like Kolgríma—even sought out herbs and barks that, when burned, would bring on such a state. For Dísa, though, the experience was unique. She wondered what it meant. Was it truly as dire a warning as it seemed? Or did it owe something to the influence of the Hooded One? With more questions than answers, she sheathed her seax and made ready to leave.
Dísa clambered out of her warm nest. The rain had given way to a fine mist, like a drifting fog, and the air was even colder than it had been. Cursing, she caught up her basket and trudged on her way. Before the hour was up, she knew she was nearing home. She passed a handful of outlying steadings—solitary longhouses surrounded by fallow fields and wattle hurdles woven from hazel branches that served as fences for livestock. Smoke drifted from chimney holes to join the icy mist. Dísa walked on, an unaccountable sense of unease stealing over her …
… in the wreckage of Hrafnhaugr, pale and bloody-limbed Geats intertwine with bearded Danes and dark-eyed Swedes, their ragged surcoats emblazoned with the Nailed God’s cross.
Dísa lengthened her stride, suddenly desperate. The game trails she followed fed into a rutted track that was the only road to Hrafnhaugr, wide enough to accommodate log wains though overgrown now, and rarely traveled. As far as Dísa knew no prince or king laid claim to this corner of Geatland, or if they did they left it well enough alone. A few Norsemen had tried, of course, as had a handful of enterprising Swedes over the years. One even made it as far as the inlet called the Horn, at the mouth of the Hveðrungr River, where he laid the foundations for a fortified town. Since the Geats claimed the Horn as their southern border this incursion could not stand. Flóki told the tale best, for he was quick-witted and blessed with a skald’s sense of the dramatic. He would act out the parts of the aggrieved Geats, led by an old chief called Hugleikr, who rose up, burned the Swede’s ill-fated ring-fort to the ground, and sent its master back in pieces. That—according to Flóki—was the Hooded One’s doing. “Though the Norse and their Dane allies still raid into Geatland and prey upon our folk,” he would say, nodding respectfully to Sigrún and Dísa in remembrance of the latter’s mother, “no cursed Swede has dared step foot over the Horn since.”
And Dísa hoped that would hold true for many years to come.
Approaching from its landward side, one came upon Hrafnhaugr almost without warning. The road plunged into a thickly tangled belt of ash and willow, and emerged at the lip of that deep ravine, the Scar—hewn through the ages by the endless struggle of the landvættir against the vatnavættir who lived in its depths, the spirits of the earth against the spirits of the water. Twenty yards at its widest, the Scar made an island of Hrafnhaugr. A bridge of thick ropes and planks traversed the Scar; at its edge, Dísa touched the base of a spirit pole her ancestors had erected, its upper carvings cracked and weathered, its lower carvings worn smooth from countless hands. The echo of water surging and lapping in the Scar’s lightless deeps sounded like ghostly laughter—Kolgríma’s laughter, she was sure—as she crossed the bridge. But on the far side the ground underfoot grew steep, the trees vanished, and there it was—limned against a cloud-racked sky: a rocky bluff of shale and black limestone that commanded the throat of Skærvík, crowned by a fortress with earthen walls reinforced by a timber palisade.
Thrice the road zigzagged before reaching the gates of Hrafnhaugr, heavy oaken timbers banded in rust-spotted iron set between a pair of thirty-foot-high square wooden towers. Dísa could not recall a day or night when the Jarl had ordered the gates closed, and this evening was no exception. They stood open a dozen feet, wide enough to allow a wagon to pass; above them, on the parapet that ran between the thatch-roofed towers, a single sentry leaned on his spear, wrapped in a thick sealskin cloak with its hood pulled forward so that only the beaked nose of his helmet and his bushy beard showed. He watched her, his weight shifting as he moved his spear from off hand to blade hand. At first Dísa thought it might be Hrútr, her cousin’s bedmate, but in the twilight she could barely discern the silver in his beard—she knew, then, that it was Askr, Hrútr’s kinsman.
Dísa drew her hood back and raised a hand in greeting.
“God’s teeth, girl!” he bellowed in reply, leaning out over the serrated wooden bulwark. “We thought you were done for!”
“I will be if I don’t get out of this blasted weather,” she replied. “Do you have your horn, Askr?” The man nodded, holding up a silver-bound horn on a fine leather baldric. “Wake them up, then. It is time to send Kolgríma on her way. She’s lingered in this world for too long.”
Dísa passed beneath the gate as Askr sounded the horn. Its deep-throated roar echoed among the scores of buildings. Hrafnhaugr spread upward across three shallow terraces. The first, level with the gates, held the clustered houses and workshops of the hundred-odd families who called the village home. All had wooden walls on foundations of local stone with steeply pitched roofs of thatch or shingle; deep carvings decorated their corner posts, and the beams that crossed to form the peaks of their roofs bore snarling wolves, dragons, sharp-beaked ravens, and trolls—every manner of beast from the legends of their folk.
Dísa threaded between the houses on streets cobbled with smooth lake stone and ascended the rock-cut steps that led to the second terrace. Here, the ground was open, dominated by an ancient upright stone—the Raven Stone, black and glossy and carved with age-worn runes. A pyre lay prepared before the Raven Stone, topped by a linen-swaddled corpse. Kolgríma. Dísa did not know much about her duties, but she knew this: only a priestess of the Hooded One could light the fire that would consume her predecessor’s mortal remains.
Beyond, the longhouse called Gautheimr, the Geat-home, occupied the smaller third terrace. Though larger than the houses below, it followed the same pattern, with a steep-pitched roof of age-darkened thatch and corner posts that curled like dragons; beyond its intricately carved doors, countless thegns and skjaldmeyjar had passed their days, plotting and scheming, drinking and brawling. Light spilled out now, as the doors burst open. A second blast from Askr’s horn brought two-score men and women out onto the terrace, all armed and hastily armored. Dísa saw Jarl Hreðel flanked by his rawboned son, Flóki; the two Bjorns were there—Bjorn Hvítr, the White, whose hair and beard were like snow despite him being in his prime, and Bjorn Svarti, the Black, whose face and hair were as saturnine as Grimnir’s—as well as the Manx-Geat, Íomhar, and Kjartan Sigurdsson—snake-eyed Kjartan—who spent more time among the Norse reavers than among his own people. She saw the gentle face of Berkano, who claimed kinship with the birch and the rowan; beside her, her younger sister, Laufeya, stern of mouth and quiet—both sisters had fled the land of the Otter-Geats after the Norse razed their village. The Daughters of the Raven came last, twenty-three in number, led by Auða and Sigrún, her eyes burning with a fey light.
Upon seeing Dísa beside the Raven Stone, the assembled men and women fell silent. Others joined them from the houses of the first terrace, until it seemed every last man, woman, and child was jammed cheek by jowl around the black stone. Someone kindled torches, and by their orange light shadows danced. Dísa heard her name muttered time and again. Finally, Jarl Hreðel raised a hand for silence before directing his gaze to Sigrún.
“Dísa Dagrúnsdottir!” she said after a moment. “The Fates sent you forth from us. They charged you with finding your rightful place in the shadow of the Hooded One. Do you return to us now, in favor or in disgrace?”
Dísa put the basket down, straightened, and squared her shoulders—a hint of defiance in her stance. “I return in favor,” she replied. “And I claim what is mine by right, as chosen priestess of the Hooded One.”
“Let the Gods bear witness.” Sigrún nodded to Auða, who fetched the torch that Bjorn Hvítr held aloft and carried it to Dísa. The older woman crinkled her brow at the state of Dísa’s face as she handed the flaming brand over. In answer to her cousin’s unspoken question, Dísa gave a barely perceptible shrug. She turned to face the pyre, its oil-soaked logs beaded with moisture; the body that lay atop it looked so small, almost childlike. “Kolgríma Guðrúnardottir!” she said. “What was yours in life, I, Dísa Dagrúnsdottir, now claim as my own! What debts you owed are now my own! What was owed to you now is owed to me!” The torch guttered as she held it aloft. “Hear me, Tangled One, O cunning-wise Loki! Bear witness, O Ymir, sire of giants and lord of the frost! I free Kolgríma Guðrúnardottir from the prison of her flesh and send her unto you! She is Daughter of the Raven, priestess of the Hooded One … let her name be spoken from the walls of Ásgarðr to the fences of Helheimr!”
Dísa thrust her torch into the heart of the pyre. The wood, though saturated with oil, was slow to light. It crackled and popped, blue flames dancing in its depths. Dísa glanced about, unsure of what to do. Auða came to her rescue. She snatched a torch from one of the onlookers and carried it to the pyre. “Kolgríma Guðrúnardottir!” she said, adding more flame to the pyre.
Still it guttered and spat.
It was Flóki who fetched more torches, and who passed them to the Daughters of the Raven, while Black Bjorn brought forth a brazier of coals from Gautheimr. Then, one by one, the women with their raven tattoos stepped forward, kindled their torches in the coals, and carried them to the pyre. Each one added her voice to the growing conflagration. “Kolgríma Guðrúnardottir!”
Sigrún came last.
The pyre was a proper blaze now, as flames greedily consumed the wood and its earthly burden. Smoke rose into the nighted sky. Sigrún kindled her torch. She walked slowly to the edge of the inferno. Jags of light reflected off the pommel of her sword, off the silver wire of its hilt and the silver chasings adorning its scabbard, off the dull rings of the mail she wore; the silver beads woven through her gray locks gave back the fire’s ruddy glow as she stepped up and tossed her torch into the heart of the pyre.
“Kolgríma Guðrúnardottir,” she said, her voice pitched low and full of grief. “I will see you soon, my sister.” Sigrún spoke something else, then, too low for others to catch. Even Dísa, who stood close at hand, could not be certain what it was she said, as the words were lost to an explosion of crackling resin. But when she looked up again, Sigrún transfixed Dísa with her dark and feral stare—a gaze known to make even the most seasoned warriors tremble. Dísa felt her scorn, though she knew not where it came from; she felt her rage, her jealousy, and her disgust. And Dísa knew for certain, then, something she had always guessed: given the opportunity, Sigrún would go back to the hour of her birth and plunge the mewling thing from her daughter’s womb into a bucket of water until it ceased to move.
But Dísa Dagrúnsdottir was no longer a mewling thing. She was no longer a motherless orphan; no longer a spare mouth to feed. The Gods had singled her out. The cloak of the Hooded One’s favor stoked the fire in her belly. And the weight of the seax he had given her lent steel to her spine. She met Sigrún’s gaze, her blue eyes as bright and hard as ice.
“Tell me,” Dísa said as Sigrún leaned close to her. “Tell me, woman to woman, why do you hate me so?”
Sigrún’s smile was the smile of a predator. She clasped her granddaughter’s hand hard enough to crush bone and peered into the bruised depths of her eyes. Dísa did not flinch; instead, she conjured Grimnir’s snarl and curled her lips in the same manner.
“You are no woman,” Sigrún replied. “Not yet. Still a foolish child. Enjoy this night, for it was well-earned, and your words well-spoken. Tomorrow, your real trial begins.” The old woman pulled Dísa into an embrace that was without warmth; as the village looked on, she kissed her granddaughter’s cheek.
“Let none say I did not offer you a chance,” Dísa hissed. “I see you for what you are, hag, and rest assured he sees you, too.”
Sigrún broke their embrace, her face an unreadable mask. “I hope he does,” she replied. “After all I’ve done for him, all I’ve sacrificed for him … I hope the Hooded One sees me as clearly as his master, the Tangled God, does.”
And with that, Sigrún turned and walked away. Dísa lost sight of her grandmother as a swell of villagers converged on the Raven Stone, leaving the young woman to puzzle over the meaning behind her words.
THE BALANCE OF THE EVENING passed in a blur. There were songs and toasts, words of congratulations and questions. Dísa recalled being raised on the broad shoulders of Bjorn Hvítr, so she might place the jar Halla had given her in its niche atop the Raven Stone; she remembered handing over the bundle of parchments to Jarl Hreðel, who was already deep in his cups. The sharp pain of Auða setting her broken nose contrasted with the mellow, numbing taste of Berkano’s bark-infused mead. Exhaustion left her snappish, though even she grew silent as a long-simmering argument between Jarl Hreðel and Flóki erupted into blows. The two Bjorns hauled father and son apart; Hreðel went back to drinking among his sworn men while Flóki left with Eirik Viðarrson and his brother, Ulff.
“What was that about?” Dísa said. She sat with Auða and Hrútr, watching as sure-handed Askr tattooed the kenaz rune on the shoulder of his daughter, Káta, who would take her rightful place among the Daughters of the Raven, bringing their number back up to twenty-four. She cursed and drank horn after horn of mead, despite being a year younger than Dísa. “I’ve never heard Hreðel or Flóki say a cross word to the other.”
It was Hrútr who answered. He took a long draught of ale, wiped the foam from his mustache with the forearm of his tunic. “Boy’s itching to go off and earn his beard,” he said. “And who can blame him? He’s old enough, by Ymir.”
Askr paused, wiping blood from the ivory needle he was using to prick the design in his daughter’s skin before smearing it with a paste of black ash, verdigris, and oak gall.
“Soon, it will not matter,” he said, adding to his daughter: “Sit still, girl. It’s almost done.”
Dísa frowned. “Why not?”
“Fimbulvetr.”
“Here he goes,” Hrútr said, shaking his head. Auða smiled.
Fimbulvetr, Dísa knew, was the endless winter that would herald the coming of Ragnarök and the breaking of the world. “You think this is the Great Winter?”
Askr paused; he gestured with the point of his ink-stained needle. “Laugh all you want, brother, but this is the third year with no spring thaw. The end is coming, I tell you! A time of fire and blood! The Wolf-age, the poets called it—brothers shall fight and fell each other, ere the world ends.” Even Káta looked askance at her father.
Hrútr and Auða glanced at one another, and both shrugged. “Does it matter?” Auða said. “The Norns, those weird sisters who weave the fates of all, have measured and cut our lives. Every good or ill the Gods saddle us with, the Norns draw these things upon the loom at our birth. Why worry? If it is our fate to witness the Twilight of the Gods, no hand-wringing or hymn-singing can change it.”
“Besides,” Hrútr said. “She’d know, wouldn’t she?”
Dísa glanced up; saw all four of them looking at her. “Would I?”
“Surely the Hooded One would reveal such a thing to you,” Auða said.
Dísa frowned. Something Halla had said bubbled up from the soup of her memory, something that fit with a deeper recollection—that of a hard voice, crooning softly …
The endless winter is drawing to a close. The Wolf whose name is Mockery nips at the heels of Sól, who guides the Chariot of the Sun! Soon, the Serpent will writhe! The Dragon—
Dísa closed her eyes.
“Hard blows Gjallarhorn | over Miðgarðr’s shores,
And Jörmungandr | twists in mighty wrath;
Yggðrasil trembles | to its Fate-washed roots;
The dread Wolf howls | and slips its chains.
“Now from the East, | over the sea-waves,
Naglfari comes, | the Ship of the Dead;
And from the South, | the jötunn are loosed;
On their swords shimmer | the lights of slaughter.
“Vígríðr is the field | where the enemies meet;
Wolf and Serpent against | the sons of Ásgarðr;
The rock-crags crash; | the fiends are reeling;
Heroes tread the Hel-road; | Miðgarðr is cloven.
“The sun turns black, | earth sinks in the sea;
The hot stars down | from heaven are whirled;
Fierce grows the steam | and the life-feeding flame,
Till fire leaps high | about Yggðrasil itself.
“From below the dragon | dark comes forth,
Niðhöggr crawling | from the roots of the Ash;
Against the East-king, | thorn-crowned savior,
The doom of mankind | in his jaws he bears.”
A cold wind swirled through Gautheimr; the fire in the broad pit flickered, as though some cruel and cunning jötunn crept past on an errand known only to the Gods. Dísa opened her eyes and saw dozens of faces staring back at her with a mix of awe and fear.
Askr grunted and nudged his brother in the ribs. “Told you, didn’t I?”
Auða leaned forward. “Did you return with the gift of prophecy, cousin? Is what Askr speaks of true? Is this Fimbulvetr?”
The younger woman went scarlet to the ears. She waved Auða away. “That was just a bit of doggerel,” she stammered. “Something Kolgríma used to sing is all. It’s nothing.”
“I never heard her sing such a thing,” Auða said, frowning.
“Nor me,” Hrútr added.
“That wasn’t Kolgríma,” Sigrún said from across the room. “I sang that to you, and your mother before you, though I’m surprised you remember it. Those are the words of the Iðunnarkvitha Bragadottonar, the Lay of Iðunn the Daughter of Bragi, who was the first of our line.” Sigrún took a pull from her mead horn; with it, she gestured at the sisters, Berkano and Laufeya. “We were like them, in Iðunn’s day: outcasts from a dozen different Geatish clans, driven from our homes by war, by pestilence, by crimes that called out for a blood-price—a weregild. That was how the Hooded One found us, witches and outlaws and broken men, living in squalor like rats. He likely would have killed us all had Iðunn not prevailed upon him. She begged his mercy, and in exchange she pledged herself and her daughters to his service. Thus was our compact forged—one priestess, chosen at random from the descendants of Iðunn, would serve him until death. He permitted no others to cast their eyes upon him. He granted us this land, and from the Raven Stone Iðunn named our people. We became the Raven-Geats of Hrafnhaugr.”
Sigrún drank again, more deeply this time. “But time makes us forget. It’s been years since the Hooded One has lit the war beacons. When my mother was a girl, she told me the Raven-Geats would fare forth every season—bound for the borders of our lands to repel invaders from the lands of the Swedes or from the Norse. How long since we’ve seen the wolf-cloaked figure in his mask of bone, prowling the edges of our shield walls?”
“Do you doubt he exists?” Dísa said. She felt Sigrún’s eyes on her, as hot and sharp as an auger; she glanced over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of her grandmother’s sharp cheekbones with their faded tattoo and her narrowed black eyes. The room held their collective breath, waiting for an explosion of ale-fueled temper.
“I know he exists, child,” Sigrún said, after a moment. “I have seen him, a shadow lurking in the trees, a night-skulker under our walls. No, the Hooded One exists. I doubt that he cares, anymore, about what becomes of us.”
“He cares,” Dísa replied quietly, more to convince herself of this than others. “In his own way, after the fashion of his own kind, he cares.”
Sigrún’s eyebrow arched. “Are we not his kind?”
The younger woman felt herself skirting at the edges of Grimnir’s long-held secrets. “He is the Tangled God’s immortal herald—and that is no embroidery; it is telling no tales to remind you he is not like us. We are not his kind.”
Sigrún shrugged, but kept her own counsel.
“So what does it mean?” Auða chimed in. “This song?”
“Just what you heard. Iðunn did have the gift of prophecy, and she foresaw a time when the world would end. She saw Ragnarök.”
“See?” Askr hissed. Auða’s reply was a thunderous scowl.
The sudden silence stretched on, as crisp and fragile as a skin of ice on the surface of a puddle. A moment longer … and then, Hreðel swore. “Ymir’s blood! You witches and your prophecies! Give us a song of mead and whores, or get your pox-ridden arses out of my hall!”
His outburst prompted a peal of laughter. Berkano staggered upright—gentle Berkano, her face ruddy from the combination of the fire and mead. She clapped her hands. “I know a few songs,” she slurred. “Give a listen, you wretched Geats!” And before long-suffering Laufeya could intervene Berkano snatched up a lyre and managed to strum out a tune as she sang in a voice as strident as a cat in heat:
“I dreamt a dream last night,
of silk and fine fur…”
But whether by accident or by design, the effect was the same. The cloak of doom was stripped away; slowly, conversation resumed, as did the gusty laughter of the thegns and the calls for more ale and mead. “Like I said, it’s nothing,” Dísa repeated, for Auða’s benefit as much as for her own. Hrútr glanced away; Askr sucked his teeth and returned to his handiwork, leaning over Káta’s shoulder as he wielded needle and paste. Káta pulled her father’s horn cup to her and drained it, wincing with every prick of the ivory. Dísa shook herself and yawned. “I’m weary, cousin. I’m for bed.”
Though Auða yet watched her with a jaundiced gaze, she nodded. “Aye, you need it. You look like day-old shit.”
Dísa smiled. “Can I stay with you?”
“You have a place to stay already.”
But the thought of trying to sleep under the same roof as her grandmother rankled. She wanted to curse and rail about how the old hag wanted her dead, and that dawn would find one or the other laid out on a bier with a belly full of cold steel, but Auða couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see it. Dísa’s lips thinned, flattening so they would not betray a tremble of frustration. Since their kinship ran through the blood of Dísa’s father, twelve years in the grave, Auða never saw the secret face of Sigrún. She never witnessed the fury, the scorn, the callous neglect. Even if she did, Auða would likely admire it. The world is an anvil, she would say, and you are virgin steel. Your grandmother is the hammer, sent by the Gods to mold you … and it takes a strong arm to forge a sword.
But Auða must have heard something in her silence—some echo of melancholy. Softly, she nudged Dísa in the ribs with one sharp elbow. “Did you forget? You laid claim to all old Kolgríma possessed … would not such a claim also include that rat-hole she called a house?”
A smile twitched at the corners of Dísa’s mouth. “It would, wouldn’t it?”
“Go on, then,” Auða said. “Me, I’m going to try and get this great hairy heathen,” she nudged Hrútr, “to show me his sword. What say you, warrior? Care to show a lady your goods?”
Hrútr glanced around, a smile tugging at the corners of his bearded mouth. “There’s ladies about?”
“I’ve never had a lady,” his brother, Askr, said.
“And you’ll not have this one, either! You think I’m one of your trollops from Frankia?”
Still smiling, Dísa rose and went her way. She left Gautheimr with far less fanfare than when she entered. A few folk shouted their good nights before returning to their cups; Jarl Hreðel made a halfhearted wave and then went back to trying to convince Laufeya she needed a man like his son—stubborn wretch though he was—to protect her. Her grandmother marked her departure with a scowl. Dísa shivered at the malice in Sigrún’s gaze, hiding the gesture as she made to straighten her cloak. She hitched reassuringly at the seax in her belt and stepped out into the night.
A cold wind blew fat flakes of snow down from the North. It was well after midnight, and flickering green lights illuminated the clouds as unseen jötnar struggled and strove between the worlds. Dísa averted her eyes. There was not much in this world she feared, but those weird shimmering curtains that illuminated the northern sky filled her with an unreasoning terror.
The young woman made for the first terrace; thence to an alley near the gates. Wedged into a space behind Kjartan Sigurdsson’s house and smithy—its forge cold and dark more often than not—Kolgríma’s ancient hovel had the look of a huntsman’s shack to it, with animal skulls and antlers nailed to the roof timbers and half-rotted skins draped across a fence out front. Though Dísa saw a similarity between this moldering heap of timber and straw and the Hooded One’s longhouse.
As she crossed the fence and approached the door, Dísa wasn’t sure what to expect. Here was the Niflhel of her childhood, the misty abode of trolls and witches; it was to Kolgríma’s lair that the women of Hrafnhaugr pointed when they sought to cow their unruly sprats. And Kolgríma played the part, gimlet-eyed and twisted, clad always in black, with gray locks that knew nothing of the comb or the braid. More than once, she threatened to hang Dísa from the rafters like a Yule boar and drain the blood from her.
“How long till I’m the same, a twisted old crone that brats taunt and their mothers use to keep them in line?” Dísa muttered.
“What?” came a soft voice at her back. Dísa whirled, her hand falling to the hilt of her seax. A familiar figure stepped from the shelter of the porch where Kjartan had his anvil.
“Flóki, you bastard,” she said. “What are you doing lurking about?”
“Waiting for you,” replied Flóki. At eighteen, he was taller than his father and possessed the lean frame and fine features of his mother’s people. She had died bringing him forth into the world; rather than souring Hreðel’s feeling toward him, the price he paid to have a son and heir caused the old Jarl to hold Flóki close. He remained clean-shaven, the mark of a youth untested in battle. “Tell me what you said, just now.”
Dísa waved him off. “It was nothing. Do … Do you want to come in?”
“Are you sure?”
“Who knows how many dead children I’ll have to move to sit down? You’ve a strong back.”
Flóki smiled at this.
Exhaling, she braced herself and opened the door. Eerie green light flickered in, revealing nothing. Dísa stepped over the threshold. Near the door, she found flint and steel and an oil lamp. She struck a light …
It was not what she expected. No throat-slit children hung from the rafters, no carpet of bones obscured the floor, no fathomless sigils chalked the walls. It was … neat. Almost tidy: a cold stone hearth with its next fire set out, a bedstead covered in reindeer pelts, a chest for clothes, an old birch-wood loom, a cluttered table and chair. By the lamp’s warm glow, she saw details of an otherwise quiet life; a life spent mediating between a folk who did not appreciate her and the beast who ruled them from the shadows. Suddenly, Dísa understood. This was Kolgríma’s refuge. This was where she escaped to when Grimnir’s presence became too much to bear—and it was a reflection of Kolgríma’s own dream for herself, a young girl’s desire for a life of peace.
And Dísa found she did not feel like an interloper. She felt welcomed, encouraged by the resonance of humanity she discovered. I survived decades like this, Kolgríma’s spirit said to her, and so can you.
Behind her, she heard Flóki’s grunt of surprise. “Not what I expected.”
“No,” Dísa replied. She placed the lamp on the table, alongside scavenged bits that were like pieces of a puzzle. A broken spindle in need of mending, an old cracked scabbard with a broken chape, bundled herbs and oak galls that awaited the grinding pestle. “But it will do.”
Dísa turned. She drew the sheathed seax from her belt, tossed it on the bed, and discovered Flóki staring hard at her from the threshold, brows drawn together. “What happened out there?”
“You first. And, you should know, your father is after Laufeya to warm your bed.”
“That old sot can hang,” Flóki snapped with more heat in his voice than Dísa had ever heard from him.
“Hrútr said you’re itching to be out from under Hreðel’s thumb. Is this true?”
Flóki rubbed his bare chin. “It’s high time, damn him! He grooms me to take over from him when he’s old and gray, but he’s forgotten that I must make my own name ere the Raven-Geats see me their Jarl. I asked for his blessing, to go with Eirik Viðarrson and his brother, Ulff, to raid down past the Horn. Perhaps even journey down to Eiðar and take ship with the Danes. He refused to give it. I’ve given him eighteen years, Dísa. It’s time I go my own way.”
“Then go,” she replied. “Make your own name, and come back to Hrafnhaugr bearing Irish gold and tales of sea-demons. Unless he marries you off to Laufeya, I’ll be needing a bedmate.”
“Do you command me, as the Hooded One’s priestess?”
“As your friend, you daft bastard.”
Flóki fell silent, his dark eyes reflecting the eerie lights in the heavens as he glanced out the door. “Maybe you’re right. Now, your turn. What happened?”
Dísa clenched her fist, felt the ache of bruised knuckles; thrice she did this, her attention focused on the play of muscle and sinew, on the abrasions left by her struggle with Grimnir. She rubbed at a fleck of black blood trapped by a fold of skin between her middle finger and her ring finger. “I went to him,” Dísa said at length. “I went to the Hooded One with anger in my heart, ready to die rather than live on in the shame of slavery. I provoked him. And when he came for my head, I did not back down. Can you believe that?”
“You were always like your mother,” Flóki said, leaning against the doorjamb.
“I wish I had more of a memory of her.” Dísa sat on the edge of the bedstead. She dragged the seax over to her and drew the blade half from its scabbard. “He gave this to me, the Hooded One did, after he nearly cracked my skull. He said, ‘Every bird needs a talon.’ This is mine. This is how my fame will spread.” Metal rang as she thrust the blade back into its scabbard. “But I must play my part.”
“You do not sound sure.”
Dísa looked up. “No, I am sure. It’s just…” She searched for the words to explain how she felt without betraying her oath. Finally, she gestured about, encompassing Kolgríma’s hidden refuge. “Why do you think Kolgríma fashioned this place in secret? Why did she want none of us to see past her grim countenance, to see that there was a woman of flesh and blood behind the black guise of a witch?”
“For effect,” Flóki said. “Her name was built upon whispers of sorcery.”
“But there was more to her,” Dísa agreed. She looked up. “What if there’s nothing more to me? What if I am like this scabbard, empty and useless unless filled with iron and the drippings of battle?”
But Flóki only chuckled. He took two steps into the single-room house, caught Dísa’s head in his hands, and kissed her with the passion of a man who had seen his way laid out before him. A man who had far to go, but someone to wait for him by the hearth. “And you call me daft,” he said, retreating to the door. “You beggar belief. Hand you the thing you’ve dreamed of since you were in swaddling clothes and you will find a way to suffer over it. As for me, I’m for Eiðar, Ireland, or Valhöll. When you see me again, it will be atop a ship made of gold!”
Dísa shed no tears. She smiled. “I just want to see you with a beard, you daft bastard.”
Flóki cast an eye to the heavens. The eerie lights had faded, leaving nothing but scudding shoals of cloud and a bright gibbous moon. He winked, and then closed the door.
Dísa heard his footsteps recede into the night, losing them as he passed the silent forge of Kjartan Sigurdsson. She sat at the edge of the bed. Her face ached. Her vision blurred; she yawned, looked at the cold hearth, with its logs and kindling awaiting only the spark of flint on steel. She knew she should rise and see to the fire, but exhaustion had its claws in her so deep she could barely move. Dísa managed to kick her shoes off. She managed to burrow under the furs covering the bedstead—furs that smelled faintly of old herbs and dust. And as she slipped into a dreamless slumber, she managed to catch the hilt of her seax and pull it into a lover’s embrace.
After that, Dísa Dagrúnsdottir knew no more.