Mörsugur
The Bone Month
December
Smyain brought one of the torches hanging on the keep walls. He shone the light down as I felt along the surface of the trapdoor for a handle or a lock. My fingers slid into a narrow keyhole.
“Search them,” I said, pointing to the two corpses with my axe. “One of them will have a key.”
The crew turned the bodies over and began rummaging through their clothing. I knelt beside the door again and pressed my lips to the keyhole. “Yarra? Are you in there? Can you hear me?”
I could hear something moving in the space below. But no voices answered me. What would I say to Yarra when I saw her again? She probably thought I was dead, or that I’d abandoned her long ago.
Smyain rushed to my side. He triumphantly brandished a little bronze key, sticky with congealed blood. “It was on the first one,” he said.
I took the key and fit it into the lock. I didn’t know what to expect. If the children had been confined and alone under the keep for more than six months, they would be scared and malnourished. What we would do if they were too sick to travel? While Honor met the soldiers in the meadows, we were supposed to get the children to the safety of the mountains before the battle moved into the town.
I yanked open the hatch. The smell of excrement hit me immediately. I covered my mouth and nose with my tunic. How could anyone keep children in a place like this? A set of wooden stairs led down from the trapdoor. There was no light coming from the space. I grabbed the torch from Smyain and descended the stairs.
A group of small, dirty figures huddled in the corner farthest from the steps. I walked toward them, holding the torch to light the way. My men started to climb down behind me. One of the children whimpered.
“Stop,” I said. “Stay up there. None of them will know you.”
At the sound of my voice, one of the figures broke away from the group. He was a boy of six or seven. I recognized his freckles and ginger hair, though I couldn’t recall his name. He had been one of Lief’s more regular playmates. I’d seen him countless times with my brother, skipping stones, singing, carrying buckets for Uncle Bjorn’s forge. The clothes he wore were torn and filthy. His face had lost its roundness. His eyes looked impossibly large in his gaunt face. I crouched, and he approached me.
“Ragna?” he asked. One of his tiny hands reached out to touch my cheek. I felt suddenly ashamed that I didn’t know his name or who his parents had been. I hadn’t paid enough attention to Lief when he was alive, or I would have known more about his friends.
The rest of the group unfurled like petals. There were only a handful of them—all younger than ten, all dirt and skin and bones. I had expected more children. How many houses had the raiders burned before they reached my family that night?
Where was Yarra? I scanned the torchlight over them, praying. But in my heart, I already knew that if Yarra had been there, she would have thrown herself at me.
I licked my dry lips. “Where is my cousin?”
Lief’s playmate shook his head. “She’s never been down here.”
“Are there any others still alive?” I hesitated and my voice nearly broke. “Did you see… bodies?”
The boy studied his feet. “They made us watch when they burned the bodies. Yarra wasn’t there either. And when they rounded up all the horses, Mjolnir was gone too.”
Mjolnir would not have gone anywhere without Yarra. He was entirely dedicated to one little girl. Yarra would have died before she left that horse behind. I had spent the last few months justifying every action with concern for my cousin. Was it possible that she had never needed me to rescue her at all? Yarra had always been the toughest of us. But she was still only a child. Even if she had managed to escape amidst the chaos that night, how long could she survive on her own, in winter?
“Ragna?” Torstein called from above. His face appeared through the hatch. “We need to get them out of here. If the unlikely happens, and Honor loses, we need to be far away.”
“We’re coming,” I shouted.
Once we hid these children in the mountains, I would go in search of my cousin. Whatever had happened to her, she was beyond the reach of Haakon’s men.
* * *
The fort was surrounded. When I opened the front gate, chaos had broken out in the town. Jarl Honor’s warriors pushed the enemy through the streets toward the harbor. The sounds of clashing iron and men’s cries were everywhere. Bodies littered the streets; blood and mud churned together forming pools. Most of Haakon’s men had stopped fighting and were running toward the three drekkar ships stationed at the town docks. I couldn’t make out Aslaug or Honor in the fray.
Torstein grabbed the nearest child and hoisted her onto his back. The others followed his lead, each lifting a child. Our way to the farmhouse was blocked by two warriors circling one another with swords in hand. One of them still wore Haakon’s colors. I sized up the distance between us, then threw my axe. It embedded in the back of the enemy’s skull. He dropped to his knees, dazed, and Honor’s thegn lopped his head from his shoulders.
“Get away from the water!” someone screamed.
I turned to the beach. The enemy warriors were wading into the ocean, scrambling for their ships. But as they ran through the waves, something pulled them under. A turquoise-scaled hand reached out from the water to grab an enemy’s ankle. He fell into onto the rocks and was dragged into the ocean. A cloud of blood bloomed in the sea, followed by a flash of lilac. Something like hope made my chest flutter.
“Take them to safety,” I said to Torstein. “I will meet you at the boats when this is over.”
“That wasn’t the plan,” he argued. “We’re supposed to get back. You’re supposed to come with us. The jarl has this won. I’m not leaving you here.”
“We did our part. The Sleipnir is gone.” I pointed to the ocean and smiled, as another enemy vanished beneath the red waves. “She came back.”
He shielded his eyes with his hand and squinted toward the water. A red-finned merman with black skin breached the water and tackled an enemy. Torstein sighed. “Trygve is going to panic if we come back without you.”
“I’ll be fine.” I clapped him on the back. “And if I’m not, you get what you always wanted.”
“I haven’t wanted that in a while,” Torstein grumbled. He hoisted the girl he was carrying higher onto his back. “We’ll see you soon.”
I nodded, then turned to the beach. The remaining enemy soldiers were clustered at the docks, caught between Honor’s arrows and the merfolk waiting to drown them. Only a handful remained. I watched the water for Ersel.
Jarl Honor pushed past her front line of soldiers. Her armor was covered in blood-splatter and mud. She wrenched off her helmet and thrust it into Aslaug’s waiting hands. Her black hair had been braided into an efficient knot at the back of her head. She had a small cut beneath her eye, but otherwise looked unharmed.
I closed my eyes with relief. They were both alive and would return to Djalsfor to forge whatever future they chose together. The húskarl walked a step behind the jarl. They angled their shield so that it covered Honor’s torso rather than their own. Together they approached the enemy.
“Kneel,” Honor commanded the remaining fighters.
In the ocean, the merclan treaded water and listened. Ersel floated beside Havamal and a green-scaled mermaid wearing a diadem of sea pearls and white shells. The water around the merclan was murky with blood. Corpses floated on the shallow waves.
When Ersel saw me, she smiled and waved her webbed fingers. Hesitantly, I smiled too. She’d come back for me, yet a niggling voice in my head insisted things wouldn’t be the same as before she had left. My hand drifted to the pouch at my belt; her stolen sea pearls were tucked inside. I needed to apologize to her.
“Will you give us your word to spare us? We demand your promise,” shouted one of the enemies. He was slim and drenched with sweat. He held a bow and pointed an arrow at Honor. Aslaug stepped between them.
“I don’t like your tone,” the jarl snapped. “I will not spare you, but if the others yield now, their lives will be spared.”
The other enemy warriors were on their knees in an instant. The archer looked around wildly, then ran at the jarl. Aslaug stepped in front of her. In a single, fast stroke, they severed the archer’s head. I’d never considered decapitation a romantic gesture, but Honor’s cheeks flushed. She smiled shyly at her húskarl.
A cheer went up from Honor’s tired soldiers.
I approached them, wiping sweat from my face.
When she saw me, Honor’s jaw tightened. “Is it done?” she asked. “Where are your men? Is the creature still alive?”
A murmur of panic whispered through the thegns around us.
“It’s gone.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Gone but not dead?”
“It won’t be coming back to bother us,” I said. “Not unless I renege on my side of the bargain.”
“And what are the terms of that bargain?”
“You know what they’re after.” I glanced at the warriors around us and dropped my voice. “I have to find it. Loki wants their true voice freed.”
The jarl sighed. “I thought it might come to that. Once, I thought I might ask you to find it for me, but I realized on our journey that you’d never agree to that.” She gestured to the charred buildings behind the beach. “As long as it exists, none of you are ever going to be safe. You may take the ship I gave you. I will nominate another steward to govern here until your return.”
The jarl’s thegns marched chained prisoners past us. They shuffled in the heavy manacles and kept their gazes trained on the bloody ground.
“What will you do with the prisoners?” I asked.
“We will use them to negotiate. Even now that Haakon is dead, thegns from his provinces still raid my borderlands. These men are the sons and brothers of some of those thegns.”
“So they won’t be punished at all.” Petulance seeped into my voice.
“Building peace is sometimes more important than retribution—something you’re going to have to learn as governor here.” Honor said. “I’m going to send settlers to help you.”
“What?”
“You saw Skjordal. There are entire towns in my province with nothing left, soil that doesn’t yield. I’m going to send those people here. They’re hardworking and they won’t cause trouble. You can’t rebuild this town with only children and a few sailors.”
I would be governor of a real town, responsible not only for a group of children, but for farmers, craftsmen… people’s whole lives. When I’d made my proposal to Honor, part of me hadn’t grasped what being a governor would entail. The town was in ruins. All those people would need homes and food we didn’t have. I could lead us to fresh water, to deer and wild boar. But a few deer weren’t going to feed an entire town through the coming winter. Even with settlers, I wasn’t sure we had a chance. My shoulders sagged.
“It will be fine,” said the jarl, noticing my expression. “These people know their trades. They will be a help to you.”
“Halvag.” An old weaver might not be very useful, but he had claimed me as his kin. I had a duty to him now. “I want my kinsman with me.”
“And your cousin?” Honor asked hesitantly. “You haven’t mentioned her. Is she… well?”
“She’s missing, but alive. The other children say that she was never taken at all.” Yarra would be alive. She had to be.
Torstein must have alerted Vaskr’s handler to the battle’s outcome, because he stood a few paces away. Hands shaking, he led the pony around the bodies that littered the streets. Vaskr paid no more heed to the corpses than he would to stones in his path. He stepped nimbly around them and nickered at me. The handler thrust Vaskr’s reins into my hand, turned aside, and vomited. One of the thegns led the jarl’s stallion forward.
“Honestly, Walden.” Aslaug shook their head at the handler. They held fast to the stallion’s bridle while Honor vaulted astride. “Why did you volunteer to come? Someone else could have looked after the jarl’s horses here.”
The handler flushed. He wiped his mouth, then lifted his chin to glare at Aslaug. “The jarl’s horses are my duty.”
“He manages them like no one else.” Honor gave the handler a fond smile. She pulled a red cloak from the stallion’s saddlebag and slung it over her shoulders. It fell elegantly over her horse’s rump.
I mounted, and we trotted together to the town outskirts. Aslaug jogged beside the jarl’s horse, still holding their bronze shield. Even now, when the battle was won and the enemies our prisoners, the húskarl wouldn’t take chances with Honor’s safety.
We stopped at the edge of the moor that framed Kjorseyrr’s eastern edge. To my surprise, a flock of shaggy, long-tailed sheep still grazed there, oblivious to the fate of their owners. They bleated as we approached and circled around the horses. A bolder ewe nudged my foot, looking for grain.
“Your future citizens,” Honor said solemnly.
We all burst out laughing. The jarl leaned over in her saddle and hugged me. The unexpected gesture made a sob rise in my throat. I coughed to banish it. “You’re home,” she whispered, solid arms holding me tight.
“If you see Ersel, tell her I’ll be back soon,” I sniffled. “And thank you.”