Chapter 22 Bjorn
I wasted the balance of the day away but as the sun set, I found myself on Hrafnheim’s walls. I leaned my elbows on the edge of the battlements and watched the drawbridges slowly lift skyward for the night, the chains rattling loudly. When I’d been a boy, Harald had filled my ears with stories about his adventures in the south. Of cities so large that they sprawled farther than the eye could see, towers touching the sky, and bridges spanning massive rivers. Palaces with great domed ceilings made of copper and castles with layers of ring walls that had never been breached. But I’d always held a fascination for the drawbridges. The mechanisms in the guard towers that raised and lowered them, as well as the sheets of paper with the designs drawn upon them that he’d used to replicate the structures. They had writing on them in strange foreign tongues, many of which Harald spoke. He told me that the southerners wrote everything down and that they had buildings full of bound pieces of paper that held all that had ever been.
It seemed strange to me to put that which could be told with speech onto paper and lock it in a room, but I still wished to see the places from his stories. To discover more about those who lived in lands of endless summer, their languages, and their customs. To walk in the domain of different gods and see the different magics. When I’d held Freya in my arms next to the hot springs in Skaland and everything had felt possible, I’d dreamed of taking her to the places in the stories. She’d never been given the chance to travel, and it had seemed a gift she’d value more than jewels and gold.
It made me want to scream that I’d chosen to linger that night. That I hadn’t immediately found a merchant ship and sailed out of reach. Built a life for her away from prophecy and violence in a world where I’d heard all people were masters of their own futures.
But it seemed that not even the Unfated could outrun destiny.
The drawbridges thudded into place, and with a last glance at the setting sun, I headed down the steps in the direction of the music. Hrafnheim never fell dark in the way other places did, lanterns hanging from posts on every intersection. Laughter and chatter spilled out of the homes, some making ready for bed while more still headed toward the great hall for revels.
Harald loved revels, and I knew he’d be sitting and watching his people sing and laugh and dance, all drunk on mead that he never allowed to run dry. He didn’t like to be alone and always wanted a press of people, though often he only watched them from his throne on the dais. I’d found it overwhelming when I’d first come to Nordeland, used to the isolation that my mother preferred, and I’d asked why he invited the noise night after night. “That is how I understand them,” he’d said. “Like the drawbridge mechanism: I had to understand it before I could make it work.”
It had made little sense to me then, but now I knew that the key to the strength of his rule was that Harald understood people. Their hopes and dreams and desires.
Their fears.
I’d once admired it, for it had made him so very good at getting people to do as he wished, but I hated watching Freya succumb to his charm. Hated how she was beginning to see him as the one who’d help her to change her fate.
The great hall doors were flung wide, the heat of the hearth and what had to be at least a hundred people rolling over me. It smelled of smoke and meat. Sweat and mead. And the noise of drums and pipes and stomping feet was deafening.
Someone shoved a horn of mead into my hand, but I only took a small sip as I searched the crowd. Harald sat on his throne with one booted heel on the opposite knee, holding a delicate glass from one of his travels that was filled with wine I suspected also to be of foreign origin. Someone threw more wood on the hearth and sparks exploded into the air, floating up to the rafters and turning to ash before disappearing out the smoke hole in the ceiling. It reminded me of how Freya had scaled the rafters in the hall in Halsar when Gnut had attacked. How she’d escaped out the smoke hole and then leaped onto the neighboring building, falling through the roof into a pigpen.
Blinking, my eyes filled with a vision of her scowling at the angry pigs, her hair covered in shit. Unwilling to run then as she was now. Half my size but possessed of twice my bravery.
Gods but I loved her.
It was Tora who I spotted first, for she towered over men and women alike. Yet as the crowd shifted, it revealed Freya standing next to her. She wore a red dress with gold embroidery on the neckline and cuffs, the color like blood against her pale skin, the garment fitted to the lean length of her body and accentuating her breasts. Her long hair hung in loose waves to her waist, a blond so pale that in some lights it appeared almost white. She held a cup but did not drink, instead surveying those around her as though she did not quite wish to believe what she was seeing, her brow furrowed in a crease. Her eyes were mercifully amber, light from hearth and torch turning them into molten suns.
So beautiful. So painfully beautiful that I’d never had a hope.
“Quiet! Quiet!” Harald’s voice cut through the noise, and everyone fell still. Steinunn rose onto the dais next to him, her golden-brown hair woven into a coronet around her head.
“Nordeland’s most beautiful skald has returned home after too long away,” Harald shouted. “But tonight, she will grace us with the song of our victorious return and the battle that greeted us upon arrival. Lift your cups!”
“ Skol! ” the crowd shouted, cups clacking together and mead spilling to join the puddles already pooling on the floor.
I set aside my mead, half expecting Freya to leave the hall given she had no fondness for Steinunn’s magic. Instead, her chest moved as though she were taking a steadying breath, and she sat on one of the benches.
Harald stepped off the dais, watching as Steinunn lifted her drum and began to pound a beat, her voice rising in wordless song. Deep and resonant tones that seemed to draw from the earth itself, vibrating with the raw power of the magic of her blood, and stirring something deep and primal in my veins.
Like I was being called to war.
When her voice turned to words, visions of stormy seas exploded across my eyes. The taste of the surf and the violent echo of thunder, as though the gods themselves sought to keep us from Nordeland’s shores. Drawing in a deep breath, I focused on the beat of my own heart until the visions faded.
All around me, the people of Hrafnheim stared with rapt wonder at visions I could no longer see, Steinunn’s magic transporting them into the story she told so that it was as though they were there. Gasps tore from their lips, women clutching their skirts from fear and excitement, and a few of the men instinctively reached for the weapons at their belts. Freya listened with her head down, the muscles of her jaw standing out against her skin, and I knew that she was watching herself.
I listened only to my own heart, not allowing Steinunn’s magic any hold.
Which was why I saw Harald slowly slip away from the dais and out through the great hall doors.
Confirming that Tora remained on guard at Freya’s side, I eased between those watching the performance, knowing they saw nothing but the visions created by Steinunn’s song. The night air was cool after the stifling heat of the hall, smelling of pine and the wind coming off the glacier between the Skjoldfjell’s peaks. I caught a flash of Harald disappearing around a corner. Knowing that it would be easy to lose him in the tangled web of paths and streets forming Hrafnheim, I broke into a trot.
The fortress had grown quieter, everyone either asleep or at the revel in the great hall to see Steinunn’s performance. Every impact of my boots against the ground seemed to echo between the walls of the buildings and though I had no reason to hide my presence, I softened my step. In my periphery, the runes on the towering walls surrounding Hrafnheim occasionally flared. Vanquishing disease that had found its way in during the day, most likely, though they did the same thing when the waters of the Rimstrom rose too high, every etching in the stone designed to protect those who lived here.
I ignored them, listening to the sound of Harald’s steps and drawing to a swift stop when he fell silent. Glancing around to ensure no eyes watched me, I peered around the corner to find Harald with Skade, their heads close together. The wind howled through the streets and obscured their words, but Skade was nodding as though receiving instruction. My palms prickled, the intensity of their expressions telling me this was no idle conversation, and then the wind ceased its gusting.
“Double the guard on the battlements,” Harald said. “No harm must come to Freya, am I understood? She is precious to me and if you allow your petty jealousy to allow her to come to harm—”
“I won’t,” Skade interrupted. “I swear it on Ullr’s name that I will allow no harm to come to her.”
Harald’s face softened, and he bent to kiss her forehead. “I trust you, my sweet Skade. Now go.”
She touched the silver armband above her elbow and smiled up at him once before breaking into a run toward the wall.
Stepping around the corner, I walked toward Harald. He appeared deep in thought, his eyes fixed on the night sky, so I was nearly upon him before he noticed my presence.
He started in surprise and took a quick step away from me as though to flee an attack before regaining his composure. “Bjorn! What are you doing out here?”
“I have no patience for Steinunn’s caterwauling,” I said.
“You should be kinder to her.” He frowned at me. “I know she came into our family after you left for Skaland, but she’s a good woman who has suffered much.”
I crossed my arms. “She spied on me.”
“On my orders, so if you wish to be angry at anyone, be angry at me.” He tilted his head. “Though perhaps you are. I have noticed a gulf between us, my son, and I don’t think it can be blamed on our time apart.”
Instead of answering his silent question, I asked, “Why are you skulking around in the dark?”
Harald was silent, his eyes again on the stars overhead. Then he sighed. “Your mother’s vision has me more concerned than I allowed myself to reveal before Freya. For long years, we have fought to prevent your mother’s foretelling from coming to pass. Yet for all our efforts, your sire is now king of Skaland and his eyes are set upon us, all the jarls at his back. I fear we will not be able to stop him and that thousands of innocents will fall in his pursuit of his destiny. I’ve posted more guards tonight, but in truth, there is nothing I can do to stop him. The only person capable of saving us is the one woman who can just as easily destroy us all.”
His voice seethed with uncharacteristic frustration and helplessness.
“You have the greatest gathering of the Unfated in the north, Father,” I said. “Each with the capacity to change the Norns’ plans. Do not place the weight of this solely on Freya’s shoulders.”
“But your mother—”
“You put too much weight on her words,” I interrupted. “When I was small, she told me time and again that one should not live life with the weight of prophecy guiding one’s every step. It was not until she came to Nordeland and you took her every word as certain truth that she stopped saying that.”
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t just disrespect your mother, Bjorn. You disrespect Odin. Not wise given you dream of Valhalla.”
I’d once dreamed of Valhalla. About the glory of fighting for the Allfather during the end of days. Now I dreamed of something else entirely. “I don’t disrespect them.I—”
My tongue froze as a flash of light exploded overhead. Then another and another. Flaming arrows exploded against the net of protection cast by Hrafnheim’s wards, the symbols carved on the walls flaring as the defenses were tested.
Hrafnheim was under attack.