Chapter Twenty-One: Elvar

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ELVAR

Elvar stared through the rain and mist towards the fortress of Snakavik. It was hidden from view, wrapped in murk and rain-soaked clouds, but she knew it was there. She was sat on her sea-chest, her oar banked and stowed, the Wave-Jarl gliding across the green-black of a wide fjord on a half-crew of oarsmen. Grey, mist-shrouded cliffs rose either side of them, thick with nesting gulls, shrieking their hunger. It was a constant chorus in spring that Elvar had once grown deaf to, but now she was back it was all that she could hear.

Ahead, a shadow appeared in the mist, tall and wide as a mountain, taking shape as if it were breaking through the clouds.

Bjarn hissed, the boy sitting close to Elvar, holding his mother’s hand.

A snout and fangs longer than trees emerged from the mist high above them, eye sockets deep and dark, the mottled skull of a huge serpent taking shape.

“Mama,” Bjarn breathed, a tremor in his voice.

“It’s all right,” Uspa said, squeezing Bjarn’s hand. “It’s dead. That is Snaka’s skull, and the days of his dark deeds are long finished, though he has left his mark upon the land.”

Snakavik loomed out of the mist before them. Elvar craned her neck to look up at its heights. The western extremity of the Boneback Mountains began here, sharp slopes and mist-wreathed peaks disappearing into the distance. Out of that slope protruded the upper half of an immense, bleached skull of a serpent, long fangs bared, eye sockets empty holes: Snaka’s skull, its size impossible to comprehend unless you stood before it. Here it was that dread Snaka had fallen, oldest, father of the gods, slain on the day of Guðfalla, shattering the world in his ruin and remaking it. Snaka’s fall had smashed the ground beneath him, allowing the sea to surge in and create the fjord they were now rowing upon. Earth had been hurled into the air and settled around his corpse, forming a mountain range that cut across the whole continent of Vigrið. The dead god’s flesh had long rotted away beneath heaped earth and rock, but the serpent’s skull, spine and ribs remained, a colossal and ever-present reminder of the legacy of the gods.

At least Snakavik is safe from vaesen, so we will be able to sleep at night without worry of being strangled by night-wyrms.

The bones of the gods were a shield against the vaesen, though Elvar was not sure why. Some latent power residing in the knit of bone and marrow. Whatever the reason, vaesen avoided any remnant or relic of the gods.

The sight of Snakavik made Elvar feel insignificant, like a rivet-nail tossed into a bucket of nails, and that was a feeling she’d fled Snakavik to escape. She sucked in a breath, trying to contain a swarm of memories long buried that were released by the sight of home, her eyes flickering to Grend. This had been his home, too, for more years than she had drawn breath, but if the sight of Snaka’s skull stirred anything inside the old warrior, his face did not betray it.

At the skull’s peak a fortress was built high upon a plateau of granite that the head emerged from, a mead hall and gate towers looking like horns and scales upon the snake-god’s brow.

Within, below and around the skull and surrounding slopes a fortress and harbour had been built, over many decades a town spilling out around it. Elvar could just make out the timber towers and ramparts that wound around the skull, dark lines against the bleached bone, small as veins from her distance. The glow of a thousand torches from the town within the serpent’s skull lit the eye sockets and open jaws as if ancient Snaka flickered with unholy fire.

The crew were silent as they rowed into the harbour of Snakavik, passing between the curved arches of fangs that burst from the water. The lower jaw of the dead serpent rested deep below the water line on the fjord’s bed, but the tips of his lower fangs reared out of the water like the bleached bones of a dead whale, the space between them wide enough for twenty drakkars to row side by side.

Sound changed as they rowed into the cavernous skull, echoing and swirling, loud yet strangely muted. Ahead of the Wave-Jarl the harbour and town sprawled upon a slope that reared into the heights of Snaka’s skull, bustling and teeming with life, more drakkars, knarrs, snekkes and fisher boats than Elvar could count moored to a snarl of piers and jetties. Behind her Agnar bellowed orders from the steering oar and guided them towards a pier with a free mooring space on it, Elvar seeing a fine-clothed harbour official striding down the pier towards them, a handful of well-armed guards at her back.

Jarl Störr’s officials are as keen-eyed as ever for their coin.

“OARS!” Sighvat yelled and the rowers raised and banked their oars, the Wave-Jarl gliding towards the space on the pier. Warriors of the Battle-Grim leaped over the top-rail on to the pier, mooring ropes slung across to them and tied off, and then the strakes of the Wave-Jarl were grating against timber. Agnar climbed on to the pier and spoke to the harbour official, a woman wrapped in red wool edged with pine marten fur, a wool and fur hat on her head, rings of silver thick on her arms and around her neck. Her mail-clad guards stood close, eyeing Agnar and the crew of the Battle-Grim as bored warriors do, appraising. There was little trouble in Snakavik, at least not when Elvar had lived here. Jarl Störr was a stern master, and though his realm thrived, trade and wealth flowing, he was not a tolerant or forbearing man. Elvar’s eyes flickered to a row of posts as tall as masts set along the dockside, metal cages hanging from them, creaking on rusted hinges. Skeletons were wedged within them, bones picked clean by ravens and crows. In one of the cages a half-decomposed body was visible, male or female, it was impossible to tell. A half-gnawed arm flopped through the iron bars, tattered strips of a tunic flapping in the breeze.

A pouch of coin passed from Agnar to the harbour official, paying the Wave-Jarl’s harbour dues. The official handed Agnar a block of rune-carved wood, then she was walking away, her guards following.

Agnar called out a half-dozen names, a handful of warriors ordered to remain with the Wave-Jarl to guard the ship, and everyone else climbed over the top-rail on to the pier.

Elvar was already dressed in her brynja, her weapons belt buckled and looped at her waist, a brown woollen hood draped across her head and shoulders, holding off the rain. Out of habit she lifted her sword in its scabbard then let it slide back down. Her shield she had left wedged on the top-rail by her sea-chest, and her spear was still on the racks in the Wave-Jarl’s deck. Sighvat clambered on to the pier, chains rattling as he led their prize, the Berserkir, Berak. His wife and child followed behind them. Biórr and Thrud were their guards, Thrud still limping from the arrow he had taken in his calf back on the island of Iskalt. He was lean and knotted as walrus rope, his face scarred and pitted, his cheeks and bones all sharp angles. Finally, Kráka, the Tainted Seiðr-witch, and the Hundur-thrall stepped on to the pier and walked to Agnar.

Elvar stood quietly with Grend, her hand rising to close around the troll tusk that hung around her neck. She liked the feel of it in her fist, smooth and cold like walrus ivory. Grend wore his brynja, axe and seax on his weapons belt, a woollen hood pulled up over his black braided hair. Then Agnar was calling out and they set off along the pier, marching into the harbour town of Snakavik. They passed the creaking cages of criminals, each post with a rune-carved sign nailed to it. The one closest to Elvar read, “Worshipper of a dead god’. They passed through the docks, fish-houses and a score of taverns reeking of stale mead and urine. Elvar scowled at the narrow streets and walls, as if she could warn off the stench of fish, brine and humanity with a glare. By the looks of it Grend was trying the same tactic, but it wasn’t working for either of them.

Even though the sun was still in the sky, the harbour town of Snakavik existed in a permanent state of dusk or darkness, the serpent’s skull only leaking light in through its open jaw, eye sockets and a few score cracked fissures that ran through its thick bone. Because of that, torches burned everywhere, smoke from whale and seal oil thick in the air, adding to the cloying sense of pressure all around. Elvar started to feel her skin crawl, realising how much she loved the open seas and life with the Battle-Grim.

Living a life where I could have died many times over is far more preferable to living one more day in this stinking turd of a town.

The road steepened, buildings rearing and leaning, crowds of people thick as flies: fishermen, warriors, merchants, traders, whores leaning in the entrances to alleys, sometimes the glint of iron deeper within the shadows, cut-throats waiting to relieve a whore’s client of their coin or life.

They came to a crossroad and Agnar stopped.

“Find us a tavern with room enough for the Battle-Grim, one that sells good ale and mead,” Agnar said to limping Thrud and gave him a bag of coin. Thrud grunted and shuffled off to the right, Biórr telling the prisoners to follow him.

“Sighvat, Huld, Sólín: with me,” Agnar said, then strode on up the steep hill, Kráka and the Hundur-thrall accompanying them.

Elvar blew out a long breath, partly relieved, partly disappointed not to have been chosen. The rest of the Battle-Grim walked after Thrud and Biórr, Elvar standing there a moment then following after them.

“Elvar,” a voice called. It was Sighvat, who was standing and looking back at her. “This way, with us, you halfwit.”

Elvar shared a look with Grend and changed direction, following after Agnar and Sighvat and the others.

They climbed ever higher, winding through the streets of the town-in-the-skull, until Sighvat was red and blowing, sweat soaking him. They passed a tavern where a dozen or so warriors were stood outside, talking, leaning on a wall, drinking from horns. All of them were dressed well, in good war kit: mail and leather and wool, a few with swords at their hips, always the sign of a good gold-giving chief. Elvar noticed that each one of them had a black raven’s feather tied into their hair. Some had shields slung across their backs or resting against the tavern wall. They were painted grey, black wings unfurled around the boss.

The Raven-Feeders. Elvar knew them. A crew with a ruthless reputation, led by Ilska Raven-Feeder, or Ilska the Cruel, some called her.

The warriors eyed Agnar and his companions as they walked past the tavern. Agnar was well known, a man of high battle-fame and reputation, and Huld and Sólín had their red shields with painted spear and axe over their backs, the known sigil of the Battle-Grim.

One of the Raven-Feeders, a fair-haired warrior with a beard patched with red and gold, leered at Elvar, smiling at her.

“Come join us,” he said to her, gesturing with a horn of mead. He looked at fat-bellied Sighvat and grey-haired Grend. “I promise you a better time than you’ll get from these old timers.” He blew her a kiss, silver thick around his neck and arms.

Grend slowed, giving the man a dark look.

“Got something to say, old man?” the blond warrior said.

Elvar stepped between them, pushing Grend on, and looked the blond warrior up and down.

“I’d rather hump old Svin the dead boar,” Elvar said, then turned and walked on.

A few laughs rippled among the blond warrior’s companions, as well as a stream of insults that followed them up the street. Sighvat growled at Huld to ignore the taunts as she turned her head to glower at them.

They turned a corner and left the tavern and the Raven-Feeders behind them.

Checkpoints came and went, each time Agnar stopping to talk to guards at gate towers, showing the mooring rights the harbour official had given him, handing over more coin for a speedier passage to the fortress. Eventually they came to a levelled peak on the slope, and from here they began to climb the winding stair, built of timber thicker than masts, wide enough for a dozen to walk abreast. It hugged the back of Snaka’s skull, spiralling high above the town, and then disappeared into one of the gaping fissures through the serpent’s bone.

Elvar paused to look down over the thick railing posts, and saw the town spilling down the slope like too much porridge boiling over from a pot. Lights flickered through the smoke-smear, and her eyes picked out the Wave-Jarl, bobbing in the harbour, small as a rivet-nail from this height. Then Grend was grunting at her and she turned and walked into the bone tunnel, moisture dripping, the timber steps slick, smoke from oil braziers thick around her.

Elvar counted off the steps, as she had when she was a child.

“Two hundred and twelve,” she breathed as she broke into daylight, the party emerging on to the crown of the skull like maggots from a wound. Cold wind scoured them, a fine rain swirling like mist. Elvar sucked in clean air, feeling its chill crackle in her lungs. The sun was sinking into the western horizon, spreading a diffuse glow through rain-bloated clouds.

A road of timber planks led eastwards across the skull towards a plateau of granite, upon which the fortress of Snakavik stood. Thick timber walls and a strong gatehouse were touched by the last light of day, the roofs of buildings visible within, a mead hall at the heart of the fortress. Even from here Elvar could see the curling, snake-carved beams of the mead hall’s roof, the hall larger than some towns Elvar had seen on her travels. Behind the hall reared a Galdur tower, where Galdurmen learned their rune-dark ways.

Without a word they strode along the road, Grend ahead of her, his hood up, head down, shoulders hunched against the wind and rain. The gates were open, a dozen guards standing either side, more helmed warriors looking down on them from the gate tower’s ramparts. They wore fine mail and held yellow shields with a knotted serpent coiled around the iron boss, jaws gaping. A woman stepped out to meet them, a captain judging by her war gear. A helm with dark eye sockets and etched with bronze was buckled on her head, and her hand rested on the pommel of a scabbarded sword.

Elvar stood at the back of their group and waited quietly as Agnar spoke to the captain, going through the same process as he had a dozen times already, showing her the harbour rights, handing her some coin, pointing to Berak.

She looked at the chained man, then nodded. She barked an order to one of her warriors, a young lad holding a spear, who turned and led them into the fortress.

They passed through wide streets rowed either side with longhouses, some of the garrison homes for Jarl Störr’s hird, his oathsworn retinue of drengrs, then turned into another street where blacksmiths’ forges belched smoke and the pounding of hammers rang in their ears. A courtyard opened wide before them: the mead hall of Snakavik, with wide steps and wooden pillars leading up to its deeply carved doors. A row of stables lined one edge of the courtyard, horses whinnying. Warriors stood at the top of the steps, before the doors, gleaming in polished brynjas and helms, bright spears in their fists.

The lad leading them hurried up the stairs and spoke to the warriors, one of them disappearing through the doors.

“You will wait here,” the lad instructed Agnar as he climbed the steps and they all stuttered to a halt. Elvar looked around and saw the warriors regarding them with cool stares, most eyes drawn to Berak, who stood with his head down, long hair wet and hanging, casting his face in shadows.

Elvar’s woollen hood sagged as the mist-like rain soaked into it, the courtyard shifting into darkness. Torches and braziers were lit, whipped by the wind.

The doors creaked and a warrior gestured for them to follow.

Agnar led them up the steps and into Jarl Störr’s mead hall. Elvar passed beneath the archway and entered a high-vaulted chamber, crows roosting in the shadowed rafters. Long rows of tables and benches led towards the far end of the hall where Jarl Störr’s high table was set. Behind that there was a dais, a single chair sitting upon it, and set a little behind that, what looked like a marble-carved head, huge as a boulder, tall as any man. The image of a man was carved upon it, with a high forehead, a broad, wide nose and thick lips. Its eyes were closed, dark veins running through the marble, which seemed to glow in the torchlight.

Agnar and his crew followed an escort of warriors, other warriors falling in around them, more warriors stationed around the periphery, where torches flickered on walls. Hearth fires burned down the centre of the hall, thralls turning carcasses of boar and deer on iron spits, fat dripping and sizzling in the flames as the evening’s meal for Jarl Störr’s freedmen and oathsworn was prepared.

A door at the far end of the hall opened and figures entered the room. A tall man led them, slim, clothed in a tunic of dark-blue wool, tablet weave around the neck and hems, a silver-buckled belt about his waist, a fine-wrought seax suspended upon it. A silver chain hung around his neck, a serpent’s fang hanging from it, and a thick silver arm ring was coiled around his bicep, a serpent eating its tail. His hair was dark, touches of silver in it, pulled tight and tied at his neck, his beard neat, one braid running through it, bound at its tip with a silver ring. Heavy brows hung lidded over his eyes, shadowing them, his nose thin and sharp.

Jarl Störr.

He sat in the chair on the dais, other figures spilling through the door behind him, settling around him. Men and women, twelve, fourteen, all tall and broad, their necks and shoulders bunched with muscle beneath their tunics, thick-browed and glowering. Their hair was braided with gold and silver wire, the men’s beards groomed and gleaming with oil. All of them wore pendants on thick chains around their necks, bear claws of iron hanging from them. Axes hung from their belts.

And all of them wore a thrall-collar.

They settled around Jarl Störr like hounds, some sitting at his feet, others stepping off the dais to prowl the space between the dais and high table, others leaning against walls, slipping into the shadows.

Three others stepped through the doorway on to the dais: two younger men and a woman. The men were both dark-haired and thick-browed, making dark shadows of their eyes, their noses thin, marking them out as close kin of Jarl Störr.

The woman was blonde-haired, tall and proud, older than the two men. A necklace of bones draped around her neck, tattoos of runes thick upon the backs of her hands and disappearing into the sleeves of her yellow wool tunic.

The three of them stood at Jarl Störr’s shoulder.

The warriors leading Agnar drew to a halt as they reached the space between the mead benches and the high table, stepping aside to let Agnar face the jarl.

“Welcome, Agnar Broksson, chief of the Battle-Grim,” Jarl Störr said. His eyes flickered over those behind Agnar, touching upon Elvar and passing over her, resting upon the bowed head of Berak, then returning to Agnar.

“Well met, Jarl Störr.” Agnar bowed his head.

“I am told you have goods for sale, goods of interest to me,” Jarl Störr said.

“Aye, my lord,” Agnar said. Elvar was not used to hearing her chief talk so deferentially to another person. She didn’t like it.

“I bring to you Berak Bjornasson,” Agnar continued. “He is Tainted, Berserkir, wanted by three jarls for murder, blood-debt and weregild. I bring him first to you out of respect, and because I know your tastes.”

Agnar signalled to Sighvat, who grunted an order and pulled on the chain in his fist. Berak took a stumbling step forwards, slowly raised his head and glowered at Jarl Störr.

A series of growls rippled through the Berserkirs ranged around Jarl Störr, a sudden tension in the air, like a gathering storm.

“You bring him first to me because you think I will pay the highest price,” Jarl Störr snorted, waving a hand. He looked at Berak, silent a while. “And if what you say is true, then you are right. I will pay you well. I value Berserkirs.”

“It is true,” Agnar said. “My Hundur-thrall tracked him by scent, and my Seiðr-witch has confirmed his lineage.”

“Hmm,” Jarl Störr murmured, fingers drumming on the arm of his chair. “If only this were a world where I could trust in the truth of any man’s word.” He looked to the woman standing beside him. “Silrið,” he said with a gesture of his hand.

The blonde woman stepped from the dais and walked towards them. She wore a tunic and breeches, winnigas wrapping her lower legs, leather cords criss-crossing them, a seax at her belt. It was shorter than most, not made for the shield wall. She drew it as she reached Berak, the steel blade glinting, and held it loosely. Berak towered over her, glared down at her.

“I need some of your blood,” Silrið said. “Give it willingly, I advise.”

Elvar saw Berak tense, the muscles in his back and legs abruptly taut. There was a long, drawn-out moment, and then he blew out a breath and raised an arm, pulling up the sleeve of his tunic to reveal a thick-muscled, hairy forearm.

Agnar had warned him what would happen to his child and wife if he caused any trouble.

“Good,” Silrið murmured as she drew her seax across Berak’s arm, a dark line of blood welling. She turned on her heel and strode back to Jarl Störr and walked past him to the statue of the head on the dais. She stood before it, the head taller than her.

“Wake up, Hrung,” she said.

The statue was perfectly still.

Silrið kicked the statue’s chin and a shuddering ripple passed through the head, like touching the still waters of a pond. Its mouth twitched.

“Hrung, vaknaðu,” Silrið barked and the eyes snapped open. They were opaque and mist-like, pale as pearls and swirling sluggishly. Slowly they drew into focus and fixed on Silrið. The statue’s lips moved.

“I was dreaming,” the giant head said, his voice reverberating in the hall, Elvar feeling it pass through her body, like distant thunder.

“You can tell me of that later, ancient Hrung. But now, your jarl needs your service.”

The cloudy eyes moved, looking at Jarl Störr in his chair, then back to Silrið.

“What would you have of me?” Hrung said.

“Some blood to taste. Tell us what you can,” Silrið said, raising her blood-smeared seax.

Hrung sniffed, seeming to Elvar like he was drawing all of the air within the hall into his nostrils, then opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, wide and fat and pale. Silrið placed the seax on to it and gently wiped the blood off, taking care not to cut the giant.

Hrung closed his mouth and his eyes then was silent a moment as Elvar saw his tongue moving, pressing into the sides of his cheeks. Then he opened his eyes and spat, a glob of red-smeared phlegm splattering on to the dais.

“Berser’s blood, or I am a dwarf,” the head said.

Jarl Störr smiled.

“Take him,” he said, and Silrið walked back towards Berak, two of the hulking thralls at Jarl Störr’s feet accompanying her, as well as a trio of warriors. Berak stood waiting.

Silrið held her hand out to Sighvat for the chain, but he just stared back at her.

“We have not discussed his price,” Agnar said.

“Twice what you would have received anywhere else,” Jarl Störr said. “I appreciate your business acumen, and, this way, if you find any more Tainted…”

Agnar dipped his head. “Your generosity is much appreciated, my lord, and my loyalty to you is guaranteed,” he said, then nodded to Sighvat.

Your loyalty to Jarl Störr’s coin, you mean, Elvar thought, unable to stop her lip curling.

Silrið took the chain and led Berak away, the two Berserkirs with her pushing close to Berak, snuffling and snorting.

“Well met, brother,” one of them growled. Berak ignored them and followed Silrið with his head down, feet shuffling.

“Silrið will bring you your payment,” Jarl Störr said. It was clearly a dismissal. Agnar dipped his head and turned, walking away, Elvar and his small crew following him.

“Hold.” A voice rang out in the hall, vibrating through Elvar’s body. The giant head Hrung’s eyes were wide, nose twitching and sniffing. He stuck his tongue out, licked the air as if tasting it, then closed his mouth and smacked his lips.

“Elvar,” he said into the hall.

Jarl Störr stared at Hrung, the two men at his shoulder taking a step forward.

“You must be mistaken,” Jarl Störr said.

“Elvar is here,” Hrung said, his bass voice filling the room.

Elvar stopped with a sigh and turned, dimly aware that Grend was turning beside her, Agnar’s crew coming to a halt.

Elvar put her hands to her hood and pulled it back.

“Hello, Father,” she said.