Shieldmaid’s Rage
Do not name your weapon
Until the mighty deed is done.
—The First Saga, attributed to the hanging Odynn
She killed one while I stared, my mouth a dry cavern and pressure mounting behind my burning eyes—a lateral strike, spearblade a bright blur as it opened the throat of an orukhar, unerringly finding the weakness in its armor. She stamped at the moment of impact, driving through, and then she was among them, leather-wrapped hornbraids flying, a low deadly whistle as steel cut air.
Sing, she said. Fear clawed at my vitals. They were many and she was one, straight and slim and so vulnerable, avoiding a swordstrike by leaning aside so far she looked almost boneless, one booted foot flashing out to crash into an orukhar’s mailed knee. It gave with a crack like well-seasoned wood, and the creature howled.
I sucked in a smoke-freighted lungful. The thing in my arms quivered; had I been the same girl who left home as weregild several moonturns before, I might have frozen in terror, useless again.
After all, every other battle I had witnessed so far produced that reaction in me.
Yet I was no longer that Solveig. And just that morn I had infused laboring rowers with strength, as is a volva’s duty. Mortals with seidhr may not touch physical weapons, aye—but we are not helpless.
We merely do battle in a different way.
Another song burst from me in a gliding wave, weirding the color of bright-spilt blood. I tasted copper as it burst past my lips, and was dreamily surprised at the words and also at the voice, for it was not mine although it used me, nor was it the deep sonorous bell-thrum of divinity.
It came from some other realm, I know not where. Neither did I care.
Of shieldmaids I sang, a recitation of names from sagas and drinking-songs. First named was Astranna, wounded grievously after she took up her husband’s spear to protect hall and children from the rampaging monster that had killed him, carried away by the Black-Wingéd when her battle was done. Of Greselint the Cruel, who killed thirteen treacherous warlords at her charge’s own table after they broke the sacred law of hospitality and afterward dared any man to judge her; then came the traditional mention of Erlitha One-Eye, the first outright taken by the valkyra at birth, marked by miracles and battle all her days.
My voice flashed across paving, scattered a widening pool of oddly dark, exhausted blood spreading from Arn’s first kill who had hardly touched earth, and jolted into my shieldmaid’s back. Seidhr leapt between us, a flash like lightning amid clouds on a hot summer evening.
Arn whirled, avoiding another strike, her lips drawn back in a feral grin of effort. Her teeth gleamed fanglike, and the sound from her throat was not a battle-cry but a blood-trill, high sawing laughter as her spear flicked lizardtongue-quick to open an orukhar’s belly. A grey slither of intestines spilled forth, and such was the force of her strike that the creature’s helmet was knocked free as well, ringing an oddly musical note upon the stones some distance away.
The silver flicker of a flung knife, but she twisted from its path with hipshot grace. I swayed too, her motion echoed in my own flesh, and felt the slice along her arm as a flag-tipped blade reached through the defense of her speed, glancing off mail and kissing just below the elbow.
Of Haskenior I sang, the defender of Aen Jaeran’s lady Gwenhargra; they were not merely shieldmaid and charge but lovers, and when the latter died of old age the former climbed upon her pyre, making not a sound as the flames took them both to Odynn’s halls. Brynhild the Fairest, Oestrelia Quickhand, Mecia the Bearded, Lette Darkling who could strike from shadow and vanish—their names and deeds rolled from my tongue as Arn’s spear cleaved another orukhar from life.
She retreated a few steps, spear held loose as a lover’s tender hand, its tip making tiny precise circles. The leader and two of his war-band were left, spreading out to flank her, but my small one was not deceived.
The smaller pair of orukhar—both broad-shouldered, taller than even Aeredh—attacked from either side. Arn leapt, one boot smashing a filthy ash-pale face while her spear’s blunt end cracked against the other’s helm so hard blackened blood sprayed from the creature’s mashed nose and contorted mouth. The skullsplit one was dead before his knees met stone, and Arn landed catfoot, spearblade singing as it batted aside the leader’s heavy, ugly, kwiseirh-whistling sword.
Aino the Lonely, I sang, who visited steadings in deepwinter to grant justice; Tiril Shipwright, who pretended dishonor for seventeen years to lull her charge’s murderer before tearing his lungs out and murdering all his blood-brothers in a single night. Of Sithir and Yalna I chanted, the words dropping from my lips like rain; I sang of shieldmaids both famous and obscure, and those of whom only the ghost of a celebrated name remains.
A shadow darted alongside the battle, but I had no time, breath, or attention to spare. Arn pressed forward, the crested orukhar seeking to bring his greater weight to bear. His only remaining helper sought to attack from the side, but her spear’s blunt end struck the sword from that creature’s hand almost contemptuously. She stamped as she lunged, but the crested one staggered back, saving himself just in time, and his companion darted in with a knife.
My shieldmaid leapt sideways like a fish dragged from the river, landing light as a leaf. My voice throbbed; I sucked in another starving breath, my eyes falling half-closed.
Her spear whirled in a semicircle, the blade flicking forward to bury itself in the smaller one’s eye. The crested one saw his chance and lunged, but I shrieked of Rekhilde the Cold who fought with her bare breasts woad-painted and of Caes the Maiden, taken by the Wingéd though she had been born shaped as a son, charged with protecting Gwenhaelm the Small who spoke to the dead during the Years of Grieving.
Arneior tore her spear free. Her face was blank-shining with trust and effort both, her woad-stripe a lick of blue flame along the underside of a dry log. Her spear’s blunt end struck the ground, she crouched, and such was her swiftness that she was braced when the final orukhar spitted himself on the blade. Then she drove forward once more, defiance in her high silverthroat laugh; her spear pierced iron armor, dug deep, and found his heart.
I gasped, swaying again. A rancid draft reached me; there were only three paces between my toes and my shieldmaid’s back heel. The crested creature’s breath wheezed forth, a hot noisome draft, and that was what I smelled, along with the metallic, ordure-thick reek of battledeath.
Arn surged upward. Sideways her final opponent toppled, his sword hitting before he did. He landed upon his own blade, breaking the metal with a terrible sound, and she ripped her weapon free of flesh and armor both. The strange blackened, brackish fluid serving the creatures for blood splattered from shining steel, and her spear’s haft bore but a few pale scratches. Seidhr died away inside me, a bubbling spring vanishing into sand. My ribs heaved; so did hers, like the small summerbirds whose wings blur with the speed of their hovering flight.
I could not speak, I could not think. I could only stand, and marvel that we were not dead.
But Arn was moving again. Her boots thudded as she bolted, and I realized my song was no longer hiding a high desperate sound.
It was Naciel’s shrieking as Maedroth dragged her. He had struck his cousin, dazed her, and now hauled her along the road by her bright golden hair.
My shieldmaid ran, her weapon held high by one bent arm. A twisting, massive effort, silent as the dead bodies twitching in her wake, and she loosed almost before my stunned eyes could focus enough to understand what they beheld.
Her aim was true.
Naciel screamed afresh as the blade sank deep into Maedroth’s back. Speared like a wolf was he; shieldmaids often hunt those creatures when they prey overmuch upon a steading’s flocks. Tainted with orukhar ichor, the steel forged in Dun Rithell made a heavy sound as it sheared ribs and punched through the Watchful’s chest, protruded dripping from his front.
And Arneior was close behind, the fury of the Wingéd Ones hard upon her. No man may treat a woman so while a shieldmaid is nearby.
Her hands closed about the haft; Arn dug her heels in and ripped the weapon aside with a coughing cat-growl of effort. Bone cracked, gold-tinged scarlet spray-splattered, and Maedroth the son of Alaessia made a nightmarish sound somewhere between a scream and a gurgle. Naciel scrambled aside, a confusion of silvergreen cloth, strands of hair torn from her head still caught between his clawing fingers. The silver ring upon his hand flashed, a dart of sickening light wrung free and splashing unheeded against Laeliquaende’s stone.
Arneior had her balance now, the rage upon her sure and deadly as that upon my father who they named, in awe, the Battle-Mad. She kicked at the back of his left knee; Maedroth staggered, still vital despite the horrific wound. Her spear-butt dropped, jabbed forward, and hit his lower back—a horrible sound, accompanied by more bone creak-snapping, and he was flung like a doll, landing upon his face.
Tiny flakes of ash began to descend, black snow. Much of Laeliquaende was burning, and those small weightless feathers had once been beautiful things, whether cloth, wood, stone… or flesh. I reeled past fallen orukhar, bile whipping the back of my throat—she had told me to stay, but the battle was over—and had to hold up the shadow-cloak’s hem with one sweating hand. I reached Naciel’s side and dropped to my knees with a jolt that clicked my teeth painfully together as Arn stood over the fallen Watchful.
She lifted her spear and struck, but not with the blade this time. No, she meted out a punishment due to violators, whether of hospitality or innocence, and bludgeoned the rest of the Elder’s immortal life from him with her spear’s blunt end. The pounding did not stop until his skull was cracked like a flung egg, and now I know the look of Elder brain when it is dashed from that strong, attractive casing.
The ruins of his head she hacked free with a flick of her spearblade, and lifted it by black, blood-matted hair. The golden tinge to his crimson ichor made strange patterns along dry stone, and she dropped the ruined thing upon his buttocks, so that when he met Hel in the afterworld that goddess would know by his condition what he had done.
Of course the Elder go somewhere different after their physical bodies are irretrievably broken, but we were mortal, my shieldmaid and I, and she meted out the vengeance due by our laws.
Naciel did not protest. And much later, when we learned just how the shining city of Taeron had been betrayed, the punishment was held to be fitting—not that it was ever mentioned in Arneior’s presence.
Or in mine.
The ash-fall was thickening, a tide of whirling grey and black speckles. I helped Naciel upright as best I could, and she leaned upon me. Clutching each other, the iron coffer tucked in the crook of my left arm like a swaddled babe, we approached my shieldmaid.
Arneior stood for a few moments, looking at what she had done, and when she turned to us the blood upon her, both orukhar and Elder, glowed no less than the woad.
“We must move,” she said hoarsely.