Asa dragged her own mattress to her mother’s side that night, determined to keep one watchful eye on her and the other on Jorgen. From where she lay she could just see the two rumpled mounds formed by his blanketed feet, and she wordlessly focused her bitterness in his direction. She suspected it was Rune he wanted to kill—he was the oldest of the three horses—and her teeth ground together until she was forced to unclench her jaw and look toward the rafters. If she hadn’t been needed here, Asa knew she’d be passing the night in the byre—that night and all the nights that followed, protecting the animals from Jorgen’s demonic hunger.
Somewhere on the other side of the fire Ketil mumbled and sighed. Beyond Asa’s head Gunnvor crooned to little Engli to soothe his sick whimpers. The flames burned lower and lower, and sleep gradually settled over the others; the coughing quieted, the sniffling eased. On any other night it would be easy enough for her to fall asleep, but Asa held herself rigidly awake. She turned and gazed long and hard into the rippling crown of orange flames without seeing them, but all the while nurturing their burn inside of her. Only when an ashy branch fell apart with a pop and a hiss did she startle back to the present, uncertain how much time had passed. In the room’s silence she had a sudden, clear sense that Jorgen was lying awake too. Thinking about her.
That made the hairs on her skin lift up. Not wanting to—and scolding herself against it even as she pushed onto one elbow—she peeked across the flames.
Surprise gave way to alarm and abhorrence as she caught him peeking across the fire at her. Flushed with humiliation, she flattened herself on her mattress. She knew he lay down too. Again her chest heaved. What had he been doing?
The double quick thudding of her heart measured the night’s progress after that. Like a hawk she pinned her eyes on Jorgen’s blanketed feet, watching them shift restlessly, slanting east and then west and much, much later, collapsing to one side and falling still. Untrusting, she kept watch. The longer the blanket remained motionless, though, the steadier her heart beat until, finally, she allowed herself to stretch a little and roll onto her back.
She sighed, acknowledging her exhaustion. So much had happened in one short day. Her thoughts tumbled over the events like water rushing over stones. She mused about the Sea Dragon’s departure (and optimistically mouthed a blessing for its safe return); she thought about her ride on Rune and where she’d go tomorrow to scout for more rockweed; she pondered the raven and the strange person she might have seen. Whenever she felt the warm haze of sleep attempt to creep across her, she turned her head toward the skald and reignited her determination to protect both her mother and the horses.
Odd, wasn’t it, the way he’d deliberately incited the clan to sacrifice a horse, then pulled them away from the idea, saying they’d have to wait like insects. She sniffed. There in the middle of the night, though, with the damp cold hovering over her body, she began to feel like one, like an insect burrowed deep within the black earth, waiting for the warmth of summer. But did summer always come for such creatures? Or did they die waiting?
It was awfully quiet now—no rain, no wind. The longhouse seemed to take the form of a living thing huddled in the dark, holding its breath to listen for something coming out of the night. Curious, she held her own breath and listened. Nothing unusual. A muffled rustling as Gunnvor shifted on her mattress. The pinging drip-drip of water from a leak in the roof. The annoyingly whiny whistle of Jorgen’s snore. At least he was asleep.
But then she heard something else: an indistinct sound, far, far away in the skies. She wished she were outside so she could hear better. She held her breath again, lifted up, and listened. There it came: a faint, teasing cry. As heady as the fragrance of crushed tansy came the steady honking of grey geese announcing their return. Summer! Summer was finally coming!
Curling happily onto her side, she snugged the blanket to her chin and smiled. Warmer days lay ahead for certain, and with them green grasses, watercress, milk, and butter. In her mind the seas calmed and the fish began swimming in silvery schools back up into the fjord. The deer and elk picked their way down from the mountains. Across the hillsides yellow ladyslippers sprouted with abandon, nodding in the sun. She pictured her father’s ship sailing up a friendly fjord to the greetings of a welcoming people. As the boat’s hull scraped the shore a draft of cold air brushed her cheek, nudging her awake.
The room was still dark and mostly quiet, save for the monotonous drip-drip behind her. The fire had gone to coals. She let her sleepy gaze wander the shadows, identifying the baskets, the barrels, the bundled fishing net and coiled ropes, the legs of the bench, the sleeping forms of the others on their mattresses. She couldn’t see Jorgen’s feet and rose on her elbow to check his mattress. Empty.
That shot her upright. She scanned every corner of the room. He was gone. All the while her mind was backtracking over the sounds she’d heard in her dreams and identifying them differently, not as the boat hull scraping, but as the door opening and closing. He’d gone to the byre!
Scrambling to her feet, she searched for a weapon. The knife Astrid had used to chop the onion lay on the bench and she tiptoed over and around the sleeping clan to retrieve it. As quietly as she could then, her heart trying to tug her along faster, she slipped through the door and into the night.
The air was freshly cleansed, crackly with cold, and filled with the sound of rushing water. Streams, cataracts, rivers, and waterfalls echoed their frothy thunder through the mountains. Moonlight etched ripples across the glistening expanse of the fjord. She looked toward the byre. The muddy path glistened with a frosty sheen but the black footprints led to the smaller, empty byre where the clan had laid the dead bodies awaiting a summer burial. With her skin prickling—from the cold she told herself, not fear—she hurried up the path.
The door to the small byre hung ajar and for a breath she wondered if living hands had done that or if a draugr, one of the walking dead, had shoved it open. She thought of Bjor, ill-tempered enough when he was alive, always shouting coarse names at her for galloping away from his advances; she’d hate to meet up with him now, when his groping hands would no doubt be swollen to twice their size and strength. The skim of frost crunched ever so slightly beneath her feet and only too readily she slowed her approach. When she laid a hand on the door at last, her heart was climbing her throat. Swallowing hard, she peeked inside.
A rotting stench assaulted her nose as her eyes adjusted to the darkened interior. Jorgen was there, all right, on his knees, though she couldn’t tell what he was doing. Praying over the shrouded bodies? As the darkness solidified into various shapes and silhouettes, she watched him flatten and sweep his hands along the ground. Some sort of magic ritual? No, that wasn’t it; he seemed to be looking for something. Nose almost to shrouded nose, he reached under the crossed timbers that lifted the bodies clear of the ground and dragged out a cloth-wrapped bundle. With a childlike gurgle of pleasure he sat back on his haunches, hastily unwrapped it, and lifted it to his face. He was eating it! A morsel fell to the floor, and with the quickness of a cat he pounced on it and stuffed it into his mouth.
Surely pressing a fist to her stomach hadn’t made a noise, but he suddenly stiffened, as an animal does when it realizes it’s being watched. He glanced toward the door. Seeing her, he climbed to his feet. His height seemed to exceed his usual stature.
“There’s enough to share.” It was an eerily pleasant invitation.
“Then let’s share it with everyone.”
He chuckled. “There’s not that much. But I do have something for you.” As he walked toward her a rich, moldy odor preceded him. She clutched a fold of her cloak, prepared to run. The moonlight that spilled over him at the byre’s entry cast his face in sharp relief. The wart on his nose bulged larger, the bristling hairs in his nostrils glistened with icicles of frozen snot. His thin lips had a peculiarly rosy color, as if he’d been sucking hard on something cold. What most grabbed her attention, though, was the crumbling chunk of pale cheese he offered on his palm. Her mouth flooded with anticipation.
“Take it,” he said. “No one needs to know.”
Her stomach joined her mouth in clamoring for a taste of the nearly-forgotten treat. Just a bite. No one needs to know.
But Jorgen would know. And that would tie them together in a way she couldn’t endure. Gazing hungrily at the chunk, she shook her head. She swallowed her saliva, ignored her panging stomach, and demanded, “How could you hoard this food for yourself? The children are starving!”
“It’s not that much,” he argued. “A bit of cheese, some hazelnuts. I had a couple of eggs at one time but something got to them and ate them before I could. And there was some cod I’d dried myself.” His own pride was hanging him.
“Then let’s get it to them now. Let’s wake them up.”
His fingers closed over the cheese. “No. I warned all of you this would be a bad winter, including your father. Didn’t I warn you? At least I prepared for it.”
She remembered no such warning, though she did recall Tora counting and recounting the cheese rounds one day in the storeroom and, upon finding young Helgi and Thidrick playing a hiding game there, charging them with the loss of one whole cheese. Though they’d pleaded their innocence in tears, her father had punished the boys by making them haul enough water from the stream to fill every barrel in the longhouse.
Sensing a hesitation, Jorgen teasingly lifted the cheese toward her nose again.
“Bastard!” She pushed his hand away, accidentally revealing the knife she carried.
“Ah, so it’s meat you’re wanting. Well, I can serve that up for you as well.” But in the same instant that he stuffed the cheese chunk into his mouth he grabbed her wrist—hard—and wrenched the knife free. With a brutal shove that sent her tumbling, he fled the byre. She scrambled to her feet and ran after him.
He was going for the horses! She had no idea his lurching gait could carry him so fast. Already he was inside the livestock byre and the horses were thudding about and whinnying with fear. The cow bellowed in dismay. Without hesitating at the door, Asa plunged through and leaped onto Jorgen’s back. Her head brushed the shaggy turf ceiling as she pounded his shoulders with her fists. The assault sent him staggering. For a few dizzying steps she thought they were both going to topple but he managed to regain his balance. Grunting like a diseased animal, he swayed left then jerked right. She felt her grip loosen. Grabbing the woven neck of his tunic, she kept up her pummeling even as she slipped. He repeated the move, jerking even harder and this time she fell, slamming into the ground with a breath-choking thud. Pain bored through her skull; her head exploded in a blinding display of flashing lights.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe at all! Her mind scrambled through its haze, trying vainly to put order to things while her chest was caving in, flatter and flatter, emptied of air. The blackness began engulfing her and she went slipping and spinning deep within herself. From that echoing distance she was somehow aware of hooves smashing the dirt just inches from her head before lifting away. And horse sweat—the thick, sour kind that comes from sudden panic—filled her nostrils. Then Rune’s scream pierced the gloom. She knew it was Rune, not one of the other horses, and his distress brought her charging back to consciousness.
She sucked in a great gulp of air and dug her fingers into the dirt. She blinked, breathed, and pushed herself up in time to see a dark gash rip Rune’s tawny neck. His eyes rolled to white. Trying vainly to scramble backward, he was losing his balance—and the knife came arcing down again, fast and true, like a wicked bolt of lightning.
Not even fully conscious yet, she targeted the skald. She drove off the dirt and rammed him at the knees. He buckled like a stand of barley beneath the scythe. The two of them fell together in a chaotic heap of tangled boots, elbows, and flailing fists. The horses careered around them, snorting and squealing. One of them leaped right over them as they tumbled.
Asa loosed all her fury; she scratched his greasy, pitted face and battered his chest and slammed a fist into his ragged teeth. Blood darkened his beard. He tried to block her blows, but they fell as relentlessly as hail. When he finally managed to catch her forearm and stop it midair, he gave it a vicious twist downward, roughly yanking her off him. The move tore a fire-hot pain through her shoulder and a cry from her lips. The cry hardened into a scream of determination, and the skald got only as far as his knees before she knocked him flat again. This time his chin hit the dirt at an awkward angle, and she saw the shock in his eyes as his arm flopped uselessly and the knife came free.
She buried one knee between his lumpy shoulders and braced the other against the ground. Both of them eyed the knife; its handle lay tantalizingly close. The skald wriggled beneath her. He stretched his arm longer and longer, using his fingers to pull himself through the dirt. It took all her strength to keep him pinned while trying to reach over and past him.
She was almost there. He squirmed with surprising strength, and his middle finger scraped the handle. Alarmed, she made a desperate lunge. That teetered her off balance, and he seized the opportunity to heave himself upward and toss her off.
His fingers closed around the knife’s handle. He was breathing hard, and for a moment she thought he was going to lie there, but with a rasping snarl he turned on her. His arm drew back and—as if she were watching it happen to someone else—she saw the point of the knife come stabbing through the air straight at her.
Instinct jerked her aside, and the knife seemed to bury its blade in her tangled hair, though another fire seared her neck. He lifted the knife again. She rolled to safety, calling for Rune.
She couldn’t see him but she knew he’d come. And just as she pulled an arm across her face, her world became a storm of stamping hooves and sickening thuds. There was another scream—a man’s scream this time—and she found her feet and stumbled away. From the other side of the byre she watched in queasy horror as the dun horse savaged the skald. He reared all the way to the ceiling and brought his sharp hooves down on the cowering man. Jorgen hugged the wall but Rune turned and delivered a barrage of kicks. The skald managed to twist out of the way and take a few running steps, but Rune chased after him, his teeth clacking like iron on iron. He trapped the skald in the corner.
Jorgen turned to face the furious animal. Panting, and cradling his ribs, he yet managed to lift the knife high and charge at Rune. The knife slashed across the horse’s chest.
Every pore of Asa’s skin felt Rune’s pain, and she screamed with him. To her bewilderment, Rune didn’t retreat. He lifted onto his hind legs again, an effort that spattered blood across the skald’s face and arms. The hoof that glanced off the man’s shoulder crumpled him, but as he fell Jorgen kept stabbing the knife at the horse’s legs.
She had to get Rune out of here; the horse was going to kill himself trying to protect her. She ran up the earthen ramp to push the byre door all the way open. The red stallion nearly knocked her down rushing through it; the bay followed on his heels.
“Rune!” He flicked an ear but reared up again, striking relentlessly at the skald. She’d never seen him in such a rage. “Rune! Here!” He turned his head then, giving the skald a free opportunity to deliver the death blow. “Here!” she yelled at the top of her voice, and the horse lunged toward her as the knife swept the empty air. She raced ahead of him through the doorway and darted aside, crouching slightly. The moment he shot through, she leaped for his mane and pulled herself across his back. Barely holding on, she urged him toward the black shore.
The skald’s anguished howl echoed in their wake.