Chapter Nine: Elvar

CHAPTER NINE

ELVAR

Elvar woke shivering, muted light glimmering in her eyes. Her back ached, stones from the beach felt through her cloak and mail. The rhythmic ebb and flow of wave over shingle was the first sound she heard. Above her an awning rigged with spear-shaft posts was heavy with last night’s snowfall, a spare sail used to provide some kind of protection against the weather. She rolled and crawled out from under it.

The sun was rising behind her, molten bronze gilding the hills and mountain that dominated this island, and to the west, over the sea beyond the rise and creak of the moored Wave-Jarl, the sky was a pale, cold blue, the wind off the bay feeling like shards of ice scraping across her skin. The sea moved sluggishly, patches of ice that the spring thaw had broken free from the Frost-Isles further north floating thick and churning on its surface. In the distance she saw the silhouettes of other islands, like the humped backs of submerged giants. White-flecked waves lapped the shore.

I hate the north. She stood and stretched, the sealskin cloak she had used as a blanket falling open as she rolled her shoulders, adjusting the weight of her brynja. They were still on the beach at Iskalt, and though the villagers were subdued and kept under guard until they left, she felt safer in her coat of mail.

Other shapes still slept beneath the awning. She saw Biórr’s long boots poking out, that others laughed at. Higher up the beach she saw Grend was crouched beside a fire, ladling porridge from an iron pot into wooden bowls. He saw her and strode over, shingle crunching beneath his boots.

“Snow’s passed,” he said, handing Elvar the porridge. She wrapped her hands around the bowl, heat seeping through her nålbinding mittens.

“You were supposed to wake me for last watch,” she said with a scowl. Her body was grateful for Grend’s kindness, after the fight with the troll and hard climb into and out of the hills, but she had not risen to her position in the Battle-Grim through avoiding duties. She was the one who always did more, and now she had earned her place in the front row of the shield wall.

Kindness makes you soft, her father’s words whispered.

She blew on her porridge and spooned some into her mouth, enjoying the warmth.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he shrugged. The black circles around his eyes betrayed him for a liar. He was no young warrior any more, the winters laying heavy upon his back, though he could most likely still put any one of the Battle-Grim on their arse, even Sighvat. Elvar had seen him do it, when the mead was flowing around a hearth fire and the warriors were bragging, hurling their challenges like spears. Grend never bragged. He did not need to. Just looking into his eyes was enough.

There was a rumble, like distant thunder, but Elvar felt it rise up through her boots, a tremor in her bones, stones on the beach shifting like sand through fingers. In the distance the slopes of the fire mountain heaved, trees rippling, banks of snow falling and the red veins of molten fire flared bright. Elvar felt a rush of fear, the world seeming to pause as all on the beach stopped what they were doing and stared at the mountain.

And then the world returned to normal, the rumble fading like a distant storm.

“Lik-Rifa chafes at her chains,” Grend muttered.

“The dragon-god is long dead, if she ever lived,” Elvar replied.

Grend looked at her as if she were moon-touched. “All know she did not die on the day of Guðfalla with the other gods,” Grend grunted. “She was trapped by deep-cunning in a chamber beneath Oskutreð, the Ash Tree, and so could not stand beside her father, Snaka.”

Elvar shrugged. “And what would a dragon find to eat for nearly three hundred years in a chamber of stone and root and soil?” Elvar snorted. “If she ever lived, she is surely dead of starvation.”

“She tears at the souls of warriors as they pass through her chamber on the soul road,” Grend said, “all know this. This is why we must die with a weapon in our fists, to fight her as we pass through Vergelmir, her dark chamber. It is the warriors’ last test.”

“A faery tale to make children behave,” Elvar said, remembering the stories her father had told her and her brothers of Lik-Rifa, and how she would eat children who strayed from their homes at night.

“Then how do you explain that?” Grend said, nodding at the red-veined mountain. “Did you not feel the earth move?”

“Because I do not know the reason for a thing, does not mean that a dragon-god did it,” Elvar said.

“This is why you have no friends,” Grend huffed and shook his head.

“Huh,” Elvar grunted and went back to her porridge.

As she ate, she searched the beach and saw warriors from the Battle-Grim emerging from village huts, many rolling barrels of pickled fish and brine-salted shark meat down to the pier and the Wave-Jarl. Two men carried a rope-tied bundle of walrus ivory. Others hefted rolled furs on their shoulders, pelts of bear and reindeer and arctic fox. Two warriors herded a half-dozen bleating goats down the beach to the pier. Agnar appeared in his black bearskin cloak, Sighvat behind him, leading the Hundur-thrall and the new captive, Berak, by chains, a dozen Battle-Grim warriors following them. Other warriors appeared, escorting Berak’s wife and child on to the beach.

Agnar saw Elvar and changed his course, striding towards her as Sighvat put a horn to his lips and blew, the sound loud and melancholy, echoing along the beach. All who were still clinging to sleep beneath the Wave-Jarl’s spare sail were awake now, crawling out on to the shingle and grumbling at the cold. Spear shafts were taken down and the sail rolled. Elvar saw Biórr rise to his feet, bleary-eyed, black hair a tangle. He saw her and dipped his head, gave her a smile.

“I don’t like him,” Grend growled.

“You don’t like anyone who likes me,” Elvar replied.

Grend shrugged, not disputing that fact.

Agnar stopped before Elvar and Grend. He reached inside his cloak and pulled something out, opened his palm. It was one of the troll’s tusks, long as a knife, a hole bored in one end with a leather thong threaded through it. He lifted it over Elvar’s head and placed it about her neck.

“You did well,” Agnar said, then walked on. Sighvat followed, the Hundur-thrall walking with head bowed and shoulders slumped. Berak, the new prisoner, had his eyes fixed on his wife and child, who were being led towards the pier. The iron collars around his neck and wrists had rubbed his skin raw.

Elvar grinned at Grend, feeling her chest swell with pride as she lifted the tusk and looked at it. A troll’s tusk was worth more than its weight in gold, but Elvar did not care about that. It was the honour Agnar gave her, the battle-fame she had earned that set a fire in her chest. All around her the Battle-Grim were looking and nodding. They all wore some kind of trophy from a kill, a bone or tooth, a tusk, a nail, all gifted to them by Agnar when he thought they had earned it.

Little more than three years I have sailed with the Battle-Grim, and climbed high as any in that time.

“You struck the killing blow,” Grend said, a smile even touching the corners of his mouth, the glint of teeth within his grey-streaked beard. “It is only just.”

Elvar gave Grend her empty bowl and walked to the makeshift tent where the sail had already been rolled, retrieving her shield and spear. Grend strode past her, squatted in the foam and washed the bowls out. At the end of the pier warriors were boarding the Wave-Jarl, loading barrels and pelts. Elvar saw the captive woman and child sitting and waiting at the pier’s edge, the boy dangling his legs over the shingle and foam.

Biórr approached them with two bowls of steaming porridge and offered them to the woman and child. Cautiously the woman took a bowl and said something to her son. Biórr crouched and gave him his porridge.

Then Agnar was bellowing orders and everything became a whirl of activity, warriors boarding the Wave-Jarl, stepping from the pier’s boards over the top-rail and on to the ship’s decks. Elvar strode from the beach to the pier, past a rack where the butchered troll’s skin had been scraped of fat. Beside the rack sat a sack piled with the troll’s skeleton, its flesh boiled from its bones. There were barrels packed with the valued parts of the creature, its skin rolled, teeth in a clay jar, the testicles in brine, heart and liver in a barrel hard packed with ice. Toenails for grinding into powder. All of it would fetch a good price.

Elvar stepped lightly from the pier on to the ship’s deck, shuffled around the goats that were being herded to the rear of the ship and penned beneath an awning of spare sail. She stacked her spear in the racks amidships, exchanging them for her oar, and then made for her chest. In the curve of the bow, beneath the drakkar’s prow, Kráka the Tainted thrall was curled in sleep.

Elvar reached her chest and wedged her shield into the rack pinned along the top-rail’s rim, tugged off her mittens, unbuckled her weapons belt, wrapped it around her sword, axe and seax, then opened her chest and lay them inside. She took off her other belt, which held her pouch of kindling and medicine pouch and also helped to take the weight of her mail, and placed that in the chest too. Bending over she wriggled out of her brynja like a snake shedding its skin and wrapped the mail coat in sheepskin. Then she was closing the lid, pinning her sealskin cloak about her with an iron brooch and tugging her mittens back on.

All those around her were going through the same process, warriors stacking and storing provisions, loading their chests, storing their weapons and mail. Sighvat was at the rear of the deck, securing the two collared thralls with iron rings and pins hammered into the top-rail. The woman and child were pushed under the awning to sit with the goats.

Something drew Elvar’s eye, in the water off the starboard side of the drakkar. Lumps of ice moved there, and one lifted against the swell of the outgoing tide. A splash, a ripple and a wake of white foam.

“WARE THE WATER!” Elvar yelled.

A moment’s silence passed as heads turned to her, even as she was leaping from her sea-chest and running for her spear. Then there was an explosion of ice and sea spray as a shape burst from the water, a serpentine body, its scaled head as big as one of the huts on the beach, mouth gaping with rows of razored teeth, soft flesh inside its mouth a deep, blood-flushed red.

“SJÁVARORM!” Agnar bellowed as the sea serpent’s head struck at the awning where the goats were bleating. Blood and screams as the jaws clamped tight, the head rearing with a mouthful of bloodstained sail and half a shredded goat dangling. The other goats leaped away, the captive woman and boy hurled in different directions.

Spears flew at the serpent, some piercing its sinuous, grey-green hide, dark blood oozing. Its head reared high, jaws opening as it swallowed the half-goat into its throat, then its head and part of its body crashed down on the deck, the top-rail splintering, ship pitching wildly, voices screaming. Sighvat stomped forwards and swung a hand-axe that crunched into the serpent’s body, just below the base of the skull. The serpent thrashed, slamming into Sighvat and sending him flying from his feet, then slithered the other way and connected with the captive boy, who was trying to reach his mother. He was hurled into the air and flew over the ship’s side into the sea.

Berak the Berserkir roared and leaped after his son, the chains around his neck and wrist yanking him back. He thrashed and screamed, but the chains held tight.

Without thinking Elvar found herself leaping on to the top-rail, searching for any sign of the child. A shadow beneath the waves, sinking, then she was dropping her spear, sucking in a deep breath and leaping into the sea.

She heard Grend’s voice, shouting her name.

Ice water, so cold it felt like a vice, crushed her chest. She saw the child, looking up, eyes bulging, arms reaching, and she kicked her feet, clawing her way towards him. Fingertips touched, then with another kick of her feet she had his wrist; she turned in the water and swam for the surface. The body of the serpent was close by, thick as a tree, descending into watery murk. Then she was breaking water, gasping cold air into her lungs as the serpent reared back from the Wave-Jarl’s deck and crashed back into the water, a wave that sent her and the child surging away from the ship.

A figure leaped from the ship’s deck; there was a splash as Grend hit the water, taking powerful strokes as he swam towards her.

The boy had his head above water, was shouting, calling for his mother or father, Elvar thought, and thrashing in the water like a speared seal.

The serpent heard, its head snapping round, black eyes focusing on them. With an undulating ripple through its body it was speeding towards them, its muzzle cutting through water like a drakkar’s prow, a wake lifting Grend high. He bellowed, swam harder, but Elvar knew he was not going to reach her before the serpent. He changed course, veered in towards the sea creature, crashed into its body and dragged a knife from his belt, stabbing frantically. The sea frothed red, but the serpent took no notice.

Elvar reached for a weapon, found nothing, then remembered she’d packed her weapon’s belt into her sea-chest.

I’m going to die.

Fear swept through her, the serpent’s jaws opening, water dripping from rowed fangs.

She gritted her teeth, cursed the serpent as it sped at her, sucked in a breath as she prepared to dive beneath the waves with a foolish hope of evading the serpent’s jaws.

A ripple ran through the creature’s body, and a new sound filtered over the waves, a high-pitched, keening song. The serpent’s head turned, rising from the water, its body slowing as it looked back at the ship.

A figure stood on the top-rail, a woman, and she was singing.

The serpent’s head hovered above the water, its body coming to a standstill, just floating on the sea swell. Then it let out a stuttering hiss and dived beneath the sea, the bulk of its body rising and then sinking, a spray of water from its tail, and in heartbeats the sea was calm, as if the serpent had never been.

Grend reached her, wrapped an arm around her and dragged them towards the ship. A rope was thrown down for them, arms reaching, pulling them up on to the deck, where Elvar flopped like a fish, gasping and shivering.

The boy’s mother ceased her singing and ran to her son, prising him from Elvar’s arms, hugging him tight, the boy sobbing.

“Fool,” Grend muttered as he fell over the top-rail and lay beside Elvar, then he sat and looked at her. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she said, “though I can’t feel my toes.”

“I hope the fish have chewed them off and taught you a lesson. Fool.”

“You followed me. What does that make you?” Elvar said, grinning.

“An even greater fool,” Grend muttered.

A hand touched Elvar’s cheek: the boy’s mother.

“Thank you,” the woman breathed.

Elvar nodded, looking into the woman’s eyes. Pale, grey-blue like the sea on a wind-calm day. Her hair was fair, face pale; a glimpse of blue tattoos spiralled beneath the tunic and cloak pulled tight around her neck.

“What did you throw into the molten pool?” Elvar asked her, her voice quiet and low.

The woman blinked, her lips hardening, and she stared back at her.

Agnar appeared over them, looking at the boy’s mother.

“So, you are a Seiðr-witch, with Snaka’s blood in your veins,” he said, a smile splitting his face. “If the gods were not all dead, I would think they were smiling on me.”

The woman said nothing.

Agnar’s eyes narrowed. “Use your powers on my crew and there will be nothing left of your son to feed a serpent,” he said.

The woman held his gaze and gave a curt nod.

Agnar smiled.

“Dry clothes for them,” he called out, then he turned and strode along the deck, past pools of blood and water as warriors set about clearing pieces of goat from the deck and checking the hull’s strakes where the serpent had crashed into the ship. Agnar approached the Wave-Jarl’s prow, a rune-carved dragon glaring out at the sea, where Kráka the thrall sat, staring up at Agnar.

He pulled an arm back and slapped her face.

“Your task is to protect my ship and crew from sea vaesen,” he growled.

“I am sorry, lord,” Kráka said, blood leaking from her lip. “I was not prepared, was asleep.” She shook her head. “I have sung a protection all the long way here.” Her face was grey as an ash tree, with deep-sunken lines as if her face was melted wax.

The Seiðr-song takes its toll.

Agnar lifted his hand to strike Kráka again, but paused and lowered his arm.

“Perhaps I have asked too much of you.” He dropped one of the troll’s antlers into her lap, her long, bony hands stroking the soft, velvet-covered prongs.

“Some power for you,” he said. “For the journey home.”

“Thank you, lord,” she breathed.

“See us through these waters,” Agnar said, touching his fingers to the iron chain that bound her, “and keep the serpents from our hull.”

She looked up at him.

“Hlýða og fá verðlaun,” he grated in the Galdur-tongue, veins of red tracing the cold iron, a map of fire around Kráka’s throat.

“Yes, lord,” she said, nodding.

Agnar turned and strode back to the tiller, the ship cleared now, the surviving goats penned, and men and women sat at their sea-chests, waiting.

Elvar stripped out of her wet clothes and pulled on wool breeches and tunic, then made her way back to her sea-chest, sat and drew in a deep breath. Her blood was still speeding through her veins, the thrill of standing in death’s shadow, the elation at cheating death, a flood of her senses, the joy of being alive. Grend sat in front of her and gave her one final dark look.

“OARS!” Sighvat cried and Elvar swivelled the oar-plug that covered the oar-hole, threaded her oar through it and sat on her chest, holding the oar hovering above the swell and slap of the waves.

The mooring rope was loosed, and spears pushed them away from the pier, the outgoing tide tugging them into deeper water.

“OARS!” Sighvat bellowed and fifty oars bit into the cold sea.

“PULL!” and Elvar was moving, back and shoulders put to the heave and roll as Sighvat found a knotted line of rope and beat time on an old shield. The drakkar moved sluggishly at first, pulling out into the bay, then picking up speed, cutting a white wound through the green-black waters, an ice-wind from the north carving tears from Elvar’s eyes, though her body was warm in fifty heartbeats, and soon after sweat was steaming on her brow.

They passed through the curling arms of black-granite rock that formed the bay, the seals and puffins still there. And then they were pulling out into open sea, the wind slamming into the starboard, waves abruptly higher. Elvar spied movement in the water, the swell and slither of things beneath the waves as Agnar wrestled the tiller, then the prow turned southwards and Kráka began her serpent-song. It cut through the hiss of the wind and roar of the sea, spreading like a net, and the hint of things beneath the waves faded.

“MAST!” Sighvat yelled, and a dozen warriors shipped their oars and jumped to the deck, slotting the mast into its hole amidships, wedges hammered into place to hold it steady, while others tugged on the halyard rope and raised the yardarm, the Wave-Jarl’s white sail unfurled, hanging limp like an empty mead skin for a few heartbeats as the rigging was tied off, then catching the north-westerly that was ripping through this channel among the islands, and the drakkar leaped southwards like a sea stallion.

“OARS!” Sighvat bellowed, and Elvar lifted her oar from the water, pulling it back in, water dripping, and set it amidships. She sat on her bench and sucked in deep breaths, feeling the burn in her back and shoulders slowly fade.

A figure sat next to her and she looked up to see Agnar. He was grinning, as he always was when they were at sea. Sighvat stood by the tiller and rudder, steering them southwards.

“You are either very brave, or very crazy, maybe even moon-touched,” he said, shaking his head, “leaping into a serpent-infested sea.”

Elvar shrugged, not sure which one it was. Courage or madness.

Maybe madness. I do not take the time to think about it. Can that still be courage?

Agnar took a gold ring from his arm and slipped it around Elvar’s upper arm, squeezing it tight.

“My thanks, lord,” she breathed.

“Courage and madness in the face of vaesen-serpents are both admirable qualities, and deserve rewarding,” Agnar said.

His smile faded.

“You should know, I am planning on taking our prize to Snakavik. Jarl Störr is famed for his Berserkir thrall-guard, and I am thinking he will give us the best price.”

Elvar stared at Agnar. She felt like a stone had just been dropped into the pit of her stomach, dousing the joy she had felt at Agnar’s ring-giving.

Agnar shrugged. “Best you know now. Will this be a problem to you?”

“No,” Elvar said when she found her tongue, though the churning in her belly told her different.

“Good,” Agnar said, standing. “You have climbed high in the Battle-Grim,” he said. “Think of this as another battle, but one you fight with your wits and cunning, not the edge of your blade.”

Elvar nodded and Agnar walked away.

Grend turned on his sea-chest and just stared at her.

“We are going home then,” she said.