Chapter 47 Bjorn
“Turn around,” Tora ordered me, and I obeyed. The hinges on the cell groaned as she opened the door, but I offered no resistance as she took hold of my chained wrists. One of the Nameless gagged me, and then they led me out of the cell and up into the fortress where Troels waited.
“I’d kill you myself for what you and the Hel-child intended to do to our people,” my friend whispered. “But death at my hands would be too quick.”
I wanted to shout that Harald’s words were lies. That my friend was deceived, but with a gag in my mouth, there was nothing I could do but lower my head and pray that Troels would understand once he knew the truth.
The streets of Grindill were packed with people, mostly Skalanders, and it took a dozen of the Nameless to carve a path toward the square. People screamed and jeered at me, throwing rotten vegetables and shit at me as I passed, but I kept my head down and ignored them as best I could as Tora and Troels dragged me onward.
We reached the square, which was set up with a dais, much as it had been when Steinunn had performed her song about the taking of Grindill. Torches burned around the perimeter, and the crowd was pressed so tight that it was a wonder the people could breathe. Harald-as-Snorri stood with Ylva and Leif on the dais, along with his cabal of Unfated. Nearly three dozen men and women with the blood of gods in their veins, and while only some were warriors, all were loyal to Harald. He was their king.
Their savior.
Their father.
I wondered if any of them questioned why the man himself was absent for this moment.
Troels dragged me onto the dais and unfastened my wrists, the Nameless shoving my fists into heavy steel gauntlets fixed to wooden posts that had been set into the platform we stood upon. As I looked up, my eyes skipped past the screaming crowd to the bird perched on one of the buildings. Whether Guthrum had helped Freya, I did not know, but he was watching now.
The crowd screamed and taunted me, naming me traitor and worse until Snorri held up his hand for silence. “We will have justice today,” he proclaimed. “This man betrayed all of Skaland for the sake of lust for a monster. Our brothers and sisters perished upon the strait at his command and now endure the worst sort of torture as undead slaves to his mistress. Unless she surrenders, we will take her lover’s heart as punishment, and tomorrow we will hunt her down and do worse to her!”
The crowd cried for Freya’s blood.
Gyda approached and handed Snorri a knife. “A gift from my liege, your ally,” she said. “It burns like acid as it cuts, ensuring the traitor will scream for mercy and be turned aside at the gates of Valhalla for cowardice.”
The smith cast a dark glare of hatred at me as she stepped aside, leaving Snorri to gaze upon the knife. Then he held it out, hilt first, to Tora. “It was not just Skaland he betrayed. He aimed to put Nordelander warriors in Helheim as well. I would have you do the honors in Harald’s name.”
Gods, but he was cruel to the last.
Tora reluctantly took the knife, but as she stepped behind me, Ylva said, “My love, Steinunn told me that she has prepared a song. A story to remind all who listen of why justice must be done today.”
Snorri’s eyes narrowed in a way that wholly belonged to Harald, and I wondered how many other flaws in his performance that I’d failed to notice over the years. Or noticed, and disregarded. “She honors us.”
Steinunn stepped onto the dais with her drum, striking it with a heavy beat. Drawing every eye down upon her as she huffed breaths of air in a rhythm that cast her spell, drawing all of us into the story she told. Instead of tuning her out, as I always did, I allowed her magic to wash over me as she sang the tale of Harald the Savior.
She began at the beginning, the story she’d overheard while hiding near my cell beneath Grindill, and visions of a young Harald appeared before me, weeping on his knees before a man-shape of white wax and glowing eyes. “They’ll know,” young Harald sobbed. “Gyda will know it isn’t me!”
“People believe what their eyes tell them,” the wax creature whispered. “And I will be a better version of you, so none will have cause to question whether the face they see is false.”
“Stop, Steinunn!” Harald-as-Snorri shrieked, but his voice was drowned out by the screams of young Harald as the wax creature tore off his face, its maw slick with crimson as it gulped it down. The wax creature melted, and slowly, it re-formed wearing young Harald’s face, lips still stained with red.
The crowd screamed in horror, many shouting, “Child of Loki!,” the powers granted to the trickster’s children well-known lore.
I tried to rip myself from the vision so that I might see what was happening around me, but Steinunn’s magic held me in thrall like it never had before, and all I could see was the story she sang.
The child of Loki wearing young Harald’s face appeared before me, and he embraced a far younger Gyda. “I missed you terribly, my dearest friend,” he said to her. “But oh the adventures I have to share with you. My greatest regret is that you were not there to experience them with me.” Young Gyda embraced him tightly even as the Gyda who watched on cried in dismay.
I could not wrench myself free of the skald’s magic though I heard tumult near me. Heard Harald-as-Snorri screaming at his Nameless to make Steinunn stop, but no one could intervene. No one could break free of the story that the skald told, her magic holding all of us in thrall.
A young Guthrum appeared before me, skipping down a path with a large hound at his heels. Laughing and happy, only to return home to find his mother on her knees, weeping.
“Father, what is happening here?” he demanded, because it was not Harald he saw but his own father terrorizing his mother. Yet Steinunn’s vision showed the truth—it was the child of Loki.
“You will give Guthrum over to serve the jarl,” the child of Loki shouted. “In the jarl’s service, our son will reclaim his honor.”
“No,” Guthrum’s mother answered. “I will not. He belongs here with me, in the wilds. I will not send him to Hrafnheim.”
The child of Loki beat her with heavy blows while young Guthrum screamed and cried, “Father, stop! Please stop!”
Around me, I heard gasps of outrage from the Unfated, because Guthrum’s story was well known. Everyone believed that it had been his father who had beaten his mother, and Guthrum’s hound had killed him out of vengeance.
But we all watched in silence as Guthrum prowled through the trees at the heels of his dog, following the child of Loki’s trail until they came upon their prey. The man on the ground was disoriented and bleeding, and I saw that his wrists were marred with scrapes, as though he’d been kept bound for some time.
“Guthrum, help me,” the man pleaded. “I’ve been kept prisoner.”
“You hurt her!” Guthrum screamed. “I hate you!”
“I haven’t hurt anyone!” his father pleaded. “Help me!”
But young Guthrum only turned to his hound. “Kill him.”
The hound hesitated, but young Guthrum only howled, “He hurt my mother! Kill him!” and the hound obeyed, screams filling my ears as it tore an innocent man to shreds while he begged and pleaded for his life.
A scene orchestrated by the child of Loki to gain loyalty from one of the Unfated, as Harald swept in to play the savior, young Guthrum weeping at his knees as he promised a lifetime of allegiance.
A younger version of Troels came next in Steinunn’s tale. My friend was laughing and calling out his brother’s name, but as he raced around a corner, it was to fall into a pit lined with stakes.
“Help me,” he screamed, legs punctured in three places. “Aksel, help me!”
He looked up out of the pit at the child of Loki, who was laughing. “Aksel, brother, please help me!”
But the child of Loki only said, “Why do you need my help, brother? You are unfated. Help yourself.” Then walked away, leaving Troels to scream and scream until Harald appeared, pulling him out of the pit and seeing him healed.
And the real Aksel, begging innocence, was hung from a tree until he could plead no more, all while Troels pledged allegiance to the one who had masterminded the worst moment of his life.
The stories unspooled, visions rising for each of the Unfated in Harald’s cabal, and it was clear as day that the child of Loki had orchestrated every tragedy by taking on the faces of friends and family and turning them into villains that Harald could rescue the victim from. Except the only thing Harald saved anyone from was himself.
Tears ran down my face as my own story unfolded, Harald pretending to be Snorri as he savaged my mother. Myself as a child bursting from my hiding place to call Tyr’s flame, the cabin turning into an inferno as my mother screamed, then Harald, dressed in my mother’s clothes, carrying me away from the smoke and flame.
Vaguely I heard Harald-as-Snorri shrieking and thrashing, trying to escape Steinunn’s magic so that he could hunt her down and silence her, but then the skald’s village filled my eyes. People ran in terror from warriors dressed like Skalanders bearing Snorri’s banners, yet as one opened his mouth to scream, the brand of Harald’s Nameless was clearly visible on his tongue. The child of Loki led them, laughing as he cut down Steinunn’s husband and then set the blade to her young son.
It was not Snorri who had murdered them.
It was Harald, or whatever his true name might be. The child of Loki wearing Snorri’s face.
The trickster.
Even though Steinunn had shown me these visions in my cell, her grief in this moment was thick and choking as smoke. Making me desperate to be free of her thrall.
But Steinunn had not yet finished her song.