FORTY ELVAR

FORTY

ELVAR

E lvar sat in Ulfrir's high-arched, wolf-carved chair, her scabbarded sword wrapped in her baldric and resting across her lap, her fingers tapping on the wire-wrapped hilt. The chair was too big for her, but she was not going to allow Ulfrir to sit in the high seat of this wolf hall. That was her place now. Instead, she had told him to stand at her shoulder, Berak the other side, while her advisers stood before her and tried to work out how they were going to kill a dragon.

Gytha had been talking of tactics, of shield walls and boar-snouts, and now Silrie was talking of Galdur-magic, of rune-spells and the power of god-relics and bones.

"She must come to us," Ulfrir said, interrupting Silrie.

"Come to us?" Silrie said, frowning. "And how do you get a dragon to do what you want it to do?"

"By using me as bait," Ulfrir said. "Lik-Rifa hates me, and fears me, too. But she knows the longer I live, the more dangerous I become. She is fresh from her destruction of Orna, she will want to find me and fall upon me, as she did my wife."

A shudder rippled through Skuld's wings.

"Be careful, my friend," Hrung said to Ulfrir, "or you may end up just a head, sitting upon a pedestal next to me, or hanging from a wall like some hunted trophy."

"It will be Lik-Rifa who has her head ripped from her slithering neck," Ulfrir snarled.

"And you think she will come at you here, in your home?" Uspa asked him.

"Lik-Rifa fled to Nastrandir when she was weak," Ulfrir said. "She will think that is why I have come here, to recover. She will think that I am weak."

"And if we did manage to lure Lik-Rifa here, how would we slay her?" Silrie asked.

" I will slay her," Ulfrir said. "Your part is to slay her war-host, which I would suspect is formidable. Her dragon-born, her vaesen, many of the Tainted."

Elvar wanted to interrupt. A thought had been worming its way into her head, an idea, faint as a half-remembered dream. Something that felt important, but was just frustratingly out of reach.

I cannot think straight, since … since …

"Ach," she snarled and stood from her chair, looked at all about her and strode away without a word, all of them staring at her. Berak hurried to walk at her shoulder, and Sighvat lumbered to her other side.

"Where are you going, Jarl Elvar?" Silrie called out after her.

"I have something I need to do," Elvar called back.

She strode through Ulfrir's great hall, as awestruck by it now as she had been when she first followed Ulfrir through its open gates, two days gone. At the centre of the hall grew a tree, thick-trunked as a mead hall, the bark moss-covered. It shimmered with some ethereal light, emanating from dense clumps of fungus that grew large as shields upon its trunk. Elvar looked up, her eyes tracing the tree by the fungus-glow into the high-vaulted roof of the hall, where, perhaps by some strange Seier-magic, light broke through the dome of the hill the hall was built beneath in fractured seams. She walked around the tree and passed between thick wolf-carved pillars that disappeared into shadowed murk, past torches that had burst to life at Ulfrir's word, sending stretching shadows as she strode beneath them.

Much had been done in the two days since they had arrived. The exploration of Ulfrir's den had to come first, of which this great hall was only a small part. Ulfrir had told her that tunnels spread from this chamber like threads from a spider's web, carving beneath the river and spreading wide to exits and entrances throughout the Iron Wood. The first task she had set had been sending scouts into every tunnel, to secure those entrances. Once that was done, time had been given to organising her forces, where they would sleep, cook, eat, train.

But there is still so much more to do, and, for all I know, Lik-Rifa is only heartbeats away. I need eyes upon her, I need information, so that I can plan. But for that, I need a clear head.

She left the great hall and strode into a torch-lit corridor, high and wide enough for Ulfrir to travel through in his wolf-form.

"Sighvat, you do not need to shadow me everywhere I go," Elvar said.

"You are my chief," Sighvat said.

"I know, but I have Berserkir that guard me."

"They guard you because they are thralled to you, forced to guard you," Sighvat said. "I guard you because you are my deep-cunning chief. I guard you because I choose to. It is better than a thrall-guard." He glanced at Berak. "I am loyal, as are all the Battle-Grim. One of us will always guard you, wherever you go," he said.

"I know you are loyal," Elvar said, something about Sighvat's words warming her.

"I would guard you through choice, even were I not wearing your thrall-collar," Berak growled, glancing at Sighvat. "Because you go to war to save my son."

"Huh," Sighvat grunted, conceding the point.

Elvar turned into another corridor that sloped downwards, the walls damp, water dripping and echoing. She walked until she saw a figure standing beneath torchlight. Another one of her Berserkir , Thorguna Storm-Cloud, on account of her permanent heavy-browed frown.

"My jarl," Thorguna said as Elvar reached her.

"Open the door," Elvar said, and Thorguna took a big iron key from her belt and put it into the lock on the door she guarded, turned it and pulled open the door, light leaking out. She made to step into the room.

"No," Elvar said, "I will go alone", and she stepped through the doorway. Sighvat followed her and she stopped.

"I said alone," Elvar said to him.

"But I didn't think that meant me," Sighvat frowned.

"Alone," she said again, gesturing outside.

"But—"

"Out," Elvar said, stepped further into the room and pushed the door closed on creaking hinges behind her. Then she turned and looked at Grend.

He was seated on a cot, his hands still bound, the leather leash that Silrie had led him into these halls with still buckled at his thrall-collar and tied to an iron ring set into the rock of the wall.

She looked at him a long moment, and he returned her gaze. Elvar felt a flare of sadness, and of anger.

"You have made me appear weak, a fool ," she snarled at him. "There are whisperings that I should kill you, hang you from a gallows-branch, or put you in a cage to rot. It is what my father would advise, and he would be right. You have caused my jarls to doubt me, to lose their respect for me."

Grend nodded.

"I am sorry," he said.

"Sorry does not change anything," she snapped. Scowled at him, blew out a long sigh.

"Why?" she asked him. "Why did you not tell me? Why did you deceive me all these years?"

He looked down at his bound hands, his brows knotting in a frown, then looked back at her.

"I swore an oath," he said.

"You swore an oath to me ," she snarled.

"I swore this oath first, and it was about you," he answered.

"What?" Elvar said. "What oath? Who did you swear it to?"

"I swore an oath to your mother, soon after you were born. That I would always protect you. How could I protect you if I had a thrall-collar about my neck and owed allegiance to your father?"

"Did my mother know that you are Tainted?"

"Yes."

Elvar thought about that, let that seep in.

"Please, Grend," she said, "tell me."

He looked up at the pain and questions in her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. "I was born to a thrall in the household of your mother's father," he said, slowly, as if the words were shackled somewhere deep within him. "He was a petty jarl of Jarl St?rr, as you know. I grew up as a thrall-servant in his household, working the kitchens, the farm, the forge. Your mother and I were of a similar age. We became … friends. Once she saw me being beaten by one of her father's drengrs , and afterwards she came with a bowl of hot water and bandages, cleaned my cuts." A ripple of a smile crossed his mouth, disappeared almost instantly, like the moon behind scudding clouds. "She was always kind to me. One day, when I had eleven, maybe twelve winters on my back, I was one of many beaters on one of your grandfather's hunts. It was her first hunt and she got lost in the forest. Her father sent all out searching for her. But I was Tainted, though I did not know it, then. Hundur the hound was in my veins, and I knew her scent. I tracked her deep into the forest, and then I heard her crying out, ran through the forest and found her. Three nieing outlaws had her. Had torn her from her horse, ripped her clothes from her. They were trying to … use her. I picked up a fallen branch and …" He spread his hands. "We killed them. I put two in the ground, but the last one, he was Tainted, had Hundur in his blood, like me, and he smelled it on me as we fought, as I bled. He shouted it out, told me to join him. I froze a moment, and he made to skewer me with his seax. Your mother cut his throat." He shrugged. "We were bound from that moment. Had saved each other's lives. She swore never to tell of my secret, and when I took her back to her father, she told him of how I had saved her. Her father rewarded me by giving me my freedom, allowed me to enter his household as a freedman. I took to the spear and sword and axe and rose to become a drengr in his household." He was silent a while, lost in his memories. "They were good days. But then Jarl St?rr came visiting and saw your mother. She was beautiful, of course, but also St?rr wanted your grandfather's allegiance, and so he took her for his wife. When she had been at Snakavik a while she sent to her father, asking for me. He gave me a choice: stay and become captain of his household drengrs , or go to Snakavik and your mother." He looked up at Elvar and smiled. "That was no choice at all." He raised his bound hands and scratched at a scabbed cut on his face. "You were born, and soon after your father began to … mistreat your mother. She asked me to swear a blood oath that I would always look after you." He turned his hand and showed her a pale-ridged scar, and Elvar remembered running her fingers across a similar scar on the back of her mother's hand. "And that is what I have tried to do."

"Am … am I your daughter?" Elvar breathed.

Grend looked up at her and gave a sad smile. "No," he shook his head. "Though I wish you were." He looked at her, an intensity in his gaze. "You are not your father's daughter. You are nothing like Jarl St?rr. In all else but blood I do consider you to be my daughter." A tear spilled down his cheek and he lowered his gaze. "It grieves me to bring shame upon you."

I am not my father's daughter. Or am I? My greatest fear is to become him, and I can feel it happening.

She stood there staring at him, eventually moved, drawing the axe that Grend had given her from her belt. With a short chop she cut the bonds that bound his wrists, slipped the axe back into her belt and unbuckled the leash that bound him to the iron ring. Then without a word she turned, opened the door and left.