Chapter 43 Bjorn
It was hard to tell the passage of time in the darkness beneath Grindill. Minutes felt like hours. Hours like days. Days, I had no doubt, would feel like years despite them being very much numbered.
I’d told Kaja all that I could about Harald’s duplicity, and while I had no doubt she’d relay it back to Guthrum, what he’d chosen to do with the revelation was unknown to me. I’d pleaded that he liberate Freya from her island prison, but it was not lost on me how much time had passed. That Freya would not only have had to endure cold and hunger, but that Skade might well have already reached her. How long could she defend herself in such a state against Skade’s arrow?
Sleep was the only release I had from the sickening sense of helplessness I felt, though it was sleep plagued by fitful dreams. It was from one such dream that I was dragged awake by shouts of alarm coming from the fortress above.
Tora rose from where she sat guard near my cell, then went a few paces down the hall. My heart thundered with anticipation that something was happening to our benefit. That Harald’s schemes had been discovered, and that even now, everyone was turning against him. Hopes that faded along with the commotion.
“Must have just been drunks.” Tora came back to my cell and leaned against it. “They were feasting tonight in the great hall. I’d go up to check, but I have to keep you in my sights.”
She sat down again, head resting against the bars, and the thought of escape rose to the forefront of my mind. Except to do so would require killing Tora. Would require killing the woman who was more family to me than my own blood for the sake of saving Freya. It would be one thing if Tora was like Skade and had chosen to support Harald’s deception, but she was as much a prisoner in this situation as I was.
“Just do it,” Tora whispered, seeming to sense my thoughts. “I’ll fight to stop you, but I know you can kill me, Bjorn. You’ve always been the better warrior.”
Rage and hate burned sour in my stomach, because there was a reason Harald had set her to this role rather than his Nameless. He had known that it would come to this and that freedom would demand a piece of my soul. This was all a game to him—an amusement to discover how far I’d go to save Freya.
You’re out of time.
There is no other choice.
My hands were encased with chains that kept them compressed into fists, so I wasn’t even sure I could call my axe. Wasn’t sure whether it would force its way into my palm and crush my fingers against the steel chains. Whether I could endure the pain long enough to melt through the metal. And even if I could stomach the agony, how well would I be able to fight with my hands broken and burned?
Do it, I snarled at myself. Don’t be a fucking coward.
I drew in a breath to whisper Tyr’s name, but the soft pat of shoes filled the air, and the moment was lost.
Steinunn approached, and though Tora eyed the skald she said nothing as Steinunn stopped before the bars of my cell.
“Why are you here, skald? Don’t you know that I’ve no interest in giving fuel for your caterwauling?” Spitting on the floor between us, I added, “Your duty is to create stories of truth to spread through the generations, but you only give truths that benefit you and, in doing so, spin lies. You’re a traitor to your birthright.”
Steinunn ignored my taunts and rested her hands against the bars. “Freya was here tonight. That was the cause of the commotion. She has raised all the Skalander warriors she cursed to Helheim as undead, including her own brother.”
I straightened, shock driving my anger. “Freya is alive? She’s free?”
“Yes.” Steinunn wrapped her red cloak more tightly around her body, and I noticed that she was shaking. “Which was already known. Skade saw Freya and her army when she hunted down Ragnar.”
My teeth clenched, a flash of guilt filling me that Ragnar had fallen to Skade’s arrow. “Where is she now?”
“Gone.” Steinunn kept well back of the bars. “She came to me thinking that the truth about Harald’s identity and his deceptions would turn me to her cause, but in doing so, revealed to me that I finally had my vengeance against Snorri. The man who killed my family is dead by your hand, and though he has kept it from me, it was Harald who ensured I had justice. When Freya asked me to turn on him, I revealed her presence, though she and Geir were able to escape. He’s undead—adraug raised by her magic, is my guess.”
Anger burned hot in my veins and, ignoring the pain in my body, I got to my feet. The chains binding me rattled as I stepped close to the bars. “You bitch. Is your revenge worth so much? Snorri is dead! What more do you hope to gain by furthering Harald’s deceptions?”
“Harald delivered me from the worst moment of my life,” Steinunn said softly. “Without him to give me a reason to live, I would have surely died of grief. Trickster or not, he has given me everything he promised.”
“So because he’s given you everything you wanted, you are willing to turn a blind eye to everything he’s taken from everyone else?”
“Weren’t you willing to do the same?” Steinunn’s head tilted. “You knew he was not a good man, not really, and yet you ignored all the signs because he offered you the chance to avenge what had been done to your mother. That it was a fabrication doesn’t matter, because you still trod over innocents without mercy in pursuit of your vengeance. We are the same, Bjorn. And perhaps if you had not betrayed your loyalty to Harald for Freya’s sake, you and I would yet still be on the same side of the bars.”
“He betrayed me. I swore loyalty to a lie.” The muscles in my arms flexed as I strained against the chains. “He wore Snorri’s face when he attacked Saga, and all because he couldn’t bear her rejection. It cost my mother her life, and eventually cost my father his as well.”
Both dead at my hands.
“I know your story, Bjorn. I know the stories of everyone in Harald’s cabal of Unfated.” She sighed. “Do any of you know mine?”
“I don’t fucking care about your story, Steinunn,” I snarled. “I don’t want to hear your justification for all that you have done.”
Silence stretched, and Steinunn was the one to breakit.
“I have always told myself that no one cared to hear my story when the truth has always been that I am too afraid to tell it,” she whispered. “And so I sing the songs of others but never the song of myself. But the words have always been composed in my heart.”
Her tragedy did not justify her actions and I didn’t want to hear it. “I know enough.”
Then Tora reached through the bars and took hold of my shoulder. The tension in her face told me that she could not speak the thought in her mind, her tongue bound by Harald’s magic, but not every truth was told with words.
“Fine.” I rattled my chains, then sat back down. “Sing. It isn’t as though I have anywhere else to be.”
Steinunn sat on the floor, a small drum in her lap. The rhythm she beat upon it was soft, and as she began to sing, it was not just my ears that filled with the skald’s story but my eyes. And though I wished otherwise, my heart.
A story of a hard youth, liberty won through the love of a good man, and a year later, came a child. A boy with red curls and a large smile, blue eyes beaming at me. A ghost’s eyes, because death came and though death carried the colors of Skaland, Steinunn’s magic revealed the true villain’s face. He destroyed all that he touched, laughing as he did, and as the last lines of song poured from Steinunn’s lips, the child’s blue eyes were glassy and still.
A tear ran down my face. “Harald killed your family. Not Snorri. Harald and his Nameless. Harald wearing Snorri’s face.”
Steinunn’s face was dry. As though she’d already wept every tear she would ever have. “I’d long refused to join Harald’s service because I wished to remain with my husband and child. He killed them so that he could make me part of his cabal. So that he could use me in his machinations. He created my tragedy and then allowed me to weep on his shoulder and name him my savior. And because I was too much of a coward to sing of my own loss as it would mean watching them die, I did not know the truth until now.”
Tora reached into her pocket and pulled out balls of wool. “I cannot speak of plans that I have not heard,” she said, then shoved the wool into her ears and turned her back on us. Doing all that she could to aid us within the boundaries of the oath she’d sworn.
“I know the stories of everyone in the cabal.” Steinunn gripped the bars of my cell. “And I think it long past time I composed a song to honor our king. Our father. Our savior. But there is one more tale I must learn in order to ensure the song is complete. Will you help me, Bjorn Firehand?”
We would never be friends, this woman and me. There was too much ugliness, too much betrayal, between us. But in what might be the final hours of my life, Steinunn and I would be allies.