Daughters Of The Storm (37 page)

When she woke later, she was confused. It was daylight, but not morning. Dusk. It took her a moment to remember where she was and why she was sleeping in the day. Then the sound that had woken her repeated itself.

Somebody was trying the door.

‘Bluebell!' she whispered harshly, sitting up and shaking her sister, who was asleep next to her.

Bluebell was awake and on her feet in half a moment. Rose sat up, bleary. ‘What's going on?'

Bluebell held her finger to her lips and approached the door silently. She reached for the latch.

Ash's heart stuttered. Something was about to happen ...

She formed Bluebell's name with her lips, to tell her to stop, not let the future in.

Then the door was open and Bluebell was hauling in a small, thin man with one sharp brown eye and one useless one. Her hand went to her sword. ‘You've been following us,' she spat.

‘Stop!' Ash cried. ‘Don't hurt him!'

Bluebell's head snapped up. ‘You know him?'

The man looked at Ash. A thrill of light and heat passed through her and, impossibly, his name formed in her head:
Unweder.
‘No,' she said, ‘I've never seen him before.' But she was absolutely certain she had been waiting for him her whole life.

Wylm wore the contents of Eni's stomach more than once on the crossing from Thyrsland to Hrafnsey. The four-day journey was plagued by ill tides and rain, so that the boy had no hope of keeping any food down. He sat miserable, damp-chinned, pressed against Wylm for most of the journey. Wylm's exhaustion started in his marrow, and extended out to his toes and fingertips. He needed a hot bath, a sleep in a comfortable bed, some space from the child. What he faced, though, on arrival at Hrafnsey, was nothing so certain or comfortable.

They sighted land in the early morning as Wylm was rousing from a sitting doze. The sky was a blue-pink flush, diligent stars still twinkling dimly between clouds. Figures moved about in the grainy light, dropping the sails, taking up the oars. Cold shivered across his chest and he pulled the rough blanket up higher. The fresh smell of morning was spoiled by the sour smell of stale vomit. The water slapped against the side of the boat rhythmically, as he tried to recapture sleep ahead of their landing.

Eni woke as the flat hull skidded over gravel and came to rest. His fingers were hard on Wylm's upper arm and Wylm opened his eyes. The sun was low, but shining warm. Seabirds cried as they
skated overhead. Wylm gently put Eni's hand aside and crawled from under the storage area to look around.

The island was covered in birdshit; gulls and gannets had nested in the jutting outcrops that flanked the gravel beach and the dark grey rock was white with it. A pervasive smell of seaweed and rain trapped in rocks greeted him as he stole a glance up the beach and across the long waving grass. He could make out the gable finishings of a wooden hall, carved as the wings of a bird: Hakon's hall. The rhythm of his heart picked up. He stood, and reached down for Eni's limp hand.

One of the raiders ran ahead, no doubt to prepare Hakon for their arrival. The others, who had barely spoken a dozen words directly to him the whole journey, were now full of orders and warnings. They both had to have their hands tied — Eni resisted this violently, but unsuccessfully — they had to walk close, they had to keep their eyes down. Wylm watched his own feet crunch over gravel and mud and feathers, listening to the soft mumbling whine Eni made when he was anxious.

‘Hush, boy,' Wylm said, with a stolen sideways glance. ‘You'll be fine.'

Eni wouldn't quieten though, and Ragnar shouted at Wylm to be quiet and keep his head down.

They trudged up a hill and onto rolling grass. No shadows of trees or rocks. The bitter ocean wind from the north surged freely over the land. The hall sat in a natural hollow, scarcely protected from the wind, and surrounded by rock huts with turf roofs. Wylm felt a hard hand on the back of his neck pushing his head down again; he fixed his eyes on the birdshit-speckled rocks and rotten boardwalk that his own feet trod up to the Crow King's hall.

The heavy doors slammed shut behind them, closing out the bracing sea air and forcing his lungs to fill with smoke from a low-burning hearthpit.

‘Sit here,' one of the raiders ordered, shoving him to the ground. He dropped his head and closed his eyes a moment, catching his breath. The remembered waves still swelled and ebbed beneath him.

The raiders were more gentle with Eni, whom they helped to sit on the rough wooden floorboards. Eni immediately wriggled very close to Wylm. The smell of ale-soaked wood and peat smoke enveloped them. Wylm heard the departing footsteps of his captors, the thudding of the door again. Then nothing.

Slowly, Wylm opened his eyes and raised his head.

A man sat on a wooden riser in a deep, carved wooden chair with high arms, looking at him. ‘Yes,' Hakon said. ‘Here I am.'

Wylm had expected a much older man, but Hakon was probably not yet forty. His hair was white-blond, his beard in two neat plaits. But his face was something from a nightmare. A ragged hole in his cheek, the edges little more than scarred flaps, allowed a glimpse through to his teeth and cheekbone. One of his eyes was missing, leaving a sunken sallow pit.

‘They say you can speak our tongue,' Hakon said, having distinct difficulties with some of his consonants because of the strange, constrained movements of his mouth and jaw.

‘I can,' Wylm said.

‘They say you sought me out, deliberately.' Hakon gave a grin, which arrived on his deformed face as a nightmarish expression.

‘I did.'

Hakon stood. He was impossibly tall, perhaps six and a half feet, with a lithe, muscular body and gigantic feet in stained leather shoes. As much as his face was ruined by battle, his body was clearly strong and fit. He circled them once, then stopped and crouched down in front of Eni. ‘Tell me about the blind boy,' he said.

‘Show him your ring, Eni,' Wylm said.

At mention of the ring, Eni tucked his hands under his armpits. Hakon gently but relentlessly withdrew them with his own long, large hands and held the ring finger close to his face to inspect it.

‘Bluebell,' Eni said, his voice little more than an anxious whisper.

Hakon dropped Eni's hand and turned to Wylm. ‘Bluebell.'

‘I found the child on her lover's farm,' Wylm said. ‘The ring proves beyond doubt that the child is hers.'

Hakon stood and stared down at Wylm with cold, pale eyes. ‘You see a death's head before you,' he said, long fingers touching his own cheek. ‘Your sister is responsible for that.'

‘Stepsister,' Wylm said quickly, concerned he was to be punished for Bluebell's blows.

The edge of a cruel smile. ‘I had your
step
father at the point of my blade. I was a half a breath away from spilling his blood. She saved him.' Hakon spat the words. ‘She threw an axe from a mile's distance. It found its mark in the side of my face.'

Wylm didn't show his scepticism.

‘She tried to deliver me to my brother's hands, to face charges of murder and treason. They underestimated me, even your sister, even with all her strength and fury.' He shook his head. ‘She has some dark, secret hands helping her, no doubt. It has long been said that she is unkillable. But lately,
we
on Hrafnsey have started to say something different.'

The door opened slowly then, and Wylm turned his eyes to watch as a stooped old man with only fluff for hair entered the hall. His clothes were sewn over with long feathers, and a band around his head sprouted feathers at the back that hung down his shoulders and spine. As he walked towards them, Wylm caught a scent of sweet burning herbs and fish oil.

‘Ah, here is my something different now,' Hakon said. ‘Welcome, old man.'

The man's eyes were pale grey, with pupils so small the irises were like mirrors. He made his way forwards by leaning on a rattling stick and came to a halt beside Wylm and Eni.

‘Look you,' Hakon said to him. ‘Bluebell's stepbrother.'

‘Stepbrother?' the man said.

‘This is my randrman. His name is Eirik,' Hakon said, as politely as he might if they were sitting down to break bread together. ‘Eirik, Wylm has brought us a boy he says is Bluebell's son.'

The randrman leaned hard on his stick, bending into a crouch behind Eni and taking a long sniff of his hair. ‘
Kyndrepa
,' he said, in a cold, guttural voice. But Wylm did not understand the word.

‘Not unkillable,' Hakon continued. ‘Bluebell can be killed only by her own kin. My randrman dreamed it, not twenty nights ago. And now ... here you are.'

‘The three-toed drake,' Eirik said, bursting suddenly into life. ‘It clawed her to pieces. All that was left were crushed petals and blood.' He extended his hand to indicate both Wylm and Eni. ‘But which of you will it be? The boy? Or the brother? Who will wield the trollblade? Who will cut open her breast with
Griðbani
?'

Another untranslatable word. Wylm's heartbeat flickered hotly in his throat. A sense of destiny was upon him, and it smelled like the strange burnt herbs that clung to the randrman.

Hakon, however, didn't feel the import of the moment. ‘It's hardly going to be the blind child who kills his mother,' he said with a snort. ‘Give the blade to the brother.'

‘Stepbrother,' Wylm said again, softly, not sure why he was saying it.

‘You have travelled far,' the randrman said to Wylm. ‘You must rest, for at week's end, when the moon fills, we must spill your blood in the forge.'

Wylm shuddered, but the randrman smiled and tapped him on the heart with a crooked finger.

‘You need no courage,' the randrman said. ‘You need only
Griðbani.'

Hakon, meanwhile, had drawn Eni close to him and knelt in front of him smoothing his hair. ‘Is it not a joke,' he said, ‘that Bluebell's son should be a dullard?'

‘A fit punishment,' Wylm said. Then, hesitantly. ‘Will you hurt the boy?'

‘What do you think I should do?' Hakon's eyes were cold, fixed on Wylm's face. Was the question a challenge?

Wylm showed none of his fear. ‘I think he is of more value to us alive.'

‘If I sent him to her in pieces, would it not kill her with grief and wrath?'

Wylm's stomach clenched. He cursed himself for being weak, for having developed a protective sympathy for Eni. ‘This is Bluebell we speak of. The woman has no heart.'

‘Or at least no room to love anyone but her father,' Hakon said, stroking his plaited beard thoughtfully. ‘Yes, more value in him being alive. Oh, ho. I have it!' The nightmare grin split his face again. ‘I will take him to apprentice. I will raise him as my own. Now
that
will torture her.' He leaned close to Eni, and his booming voice was remarkably warm. ‘You're mine now, little boy.'

Eni's head moved from side to side. He didn't seem anxious. Perhaps puzzled.

‘Leave him with me,' Hakon said, standing and stretching at his full height. ‘Eirik will take you somewhere you can eat and wash.'

‘This way,
kyndrepa
,' the randrman said, and Wylm climbed to his feet to follow him out into the thin morning sunshine.

Eirik the randrman fed him and left him alone in one of the stone and earth huts. The wind howled over the turf roof, but the hut
was warm and smoky from a low fire. Dark except for firelight. The walls were carved with rough, shallow shelves, and Wylm presumed from their contents that this must be the randrman's own home. Shells and feathers and dried fish skeletons. Runic inscriptions peppered the walls, seemingly at random. The room had the same smell as the old magic-man himself: that acrid and sweet and slightly fishy aroma, as though he had spent many hours by the fire inhaling the smoke from the herbs that gave him visions. Wylm stripped to the waist, washed his face and upper body in a tub of cold, cloudy water, then sat on the bed. A poorly angled piece of straw pierced up through the blankets and poked his thigh. The water air-dried on his skin, coaxing goosebumps out of him. He crossed his forearms and rubbed his hands over his arms and shoulders to warm them, feeling his own lean musculature. As a child, he had been a skinny streak of pale flesh just like Eni. Wylm pulled on a clean tunic that Eirik had left out for him, which was too loose and gaped open at the front, revealing his hairless chest. He laced it as well as he could, pinned on a cloak and went to the door of the hut to let in the daylight.

Wylm had to trudge out of the hollow to see the rest of the island. Standing on a high ridge, he could turn in a slow circle and see the cold sea stretching off in all directions. Down at the rocky beach, between a dragon-head ship with bare masts buffeted by the wind and a collection of small round fishing boats, Wylm could see a group of five men practising axe throwing. The sound of the waves on the rocks carried up to him with the call of seabirds, and the occasional thundering grunt as a raider threw an axe with all his might — such strenuous effort that Wylm wondered their shoulders didn't dislocate. The axe would land in the sand, the raider would fetch it, then it would be the next man's turn.