Raven Speak (9781442402492) (17 page)

Alarm yanked every fiber in his body. Someone had been
here
! This was the site of the intrusion! Cautiously he slipped inside.

How still he held himself, not even breathing, waiting for his eyes to adjust. While he waited, something pale congealed from the darkness: a long narrow form stretched on the ground. That woman! The chieftain's arrogant wife! His skin contracted, forcing the hairs on his arms to stand erect. Someone had unwrapped
her … or she'd unwrapped herself … and fish—where had that come from?—filled her greedy hands. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe and he couldn't think. His plans were crumbling!

No, they aren't,
he scolded himself. He was letting his imagination run too freely.
Steady, now; take a deep breath. Exhale. Look at the truths and figure this out.

So he studied her. The waxen face, that same emotionless visage he'd watched across the fire these many days, now smiled in grim triumph. But how? How had she done this? What powers did she possess that she could, in the grip of death, lift food to her mouth? His mind scrambled for a plausible answer. It was all in his imagination. It was some sort of deception. It was … No, it was none of these things. Sucking on his lip, he reached for the fantastic and considered it: Was she a
draugr
?

And just as he thought it, her eyelid twitched—didn't it? He swallowed hard and shifted his weight onto his toes. It couldn't be. His mind had to be playing tricks. Admittedly, during childhood his father had often spoken to him of
draugrs
and Valkyrie and sorcerers. Magical people. And in his childhood, perhaps, he'd believed. But not now.
Draugrs
didn't exist.

Or did they? Did she walk with the other dead? Did they all rise and walk the village while the clan slept, slaughtering young animals and depositing their carcasses with abandon?

And what was that over there? Footprints on the byre floor, smaller than his own. A woman's prints. His mind urged him to
flee. He tried to regain control, but his palms dampened in fear, and his tightening ribs crushed his breathing.

If the woman could rise, would she come for him? He remembered her last wheezy morning and the feel of his fingers pinching her nose, his hand clamping over her mouth. Of course she would.

What would she do to him?

In his haste to back out of the byre, he tripped on his cloak and nearly fell but regained his balance enough to flail away from that horrible grin.

Blood pumped through Asa's arms. The ocean winds—astringent, cleansing—filled her chest. She recognized fear, yes, but also calm. It came clear to her that she'd been running from him in one way or another almost every day of her life. Now, oddly enough, that running seemed to have taken her full circle, sending her headlong toward him. She was ready.

Surf smashed against the rocks far below, and somewhere a seabird cried. Jorgen was an evil man. He'd tricked her father and the other men and sent them sailing into their graves. He'd tried to kill Rune. Who knew how many others he'd killed or betrayed in his own greedy quest to be clan leader? With her mother dead, only she, the chieftain's daughter, could rightfully stand in his way. Most in her clan would say she was too young—how easily she envisioned Tora's sneer—but she knew to the very marrow of her bones that she had to defy him. Her palms tingled. She would battle him if needed, with knife or sword or whatever weapon presented itself, to keep him from stealing the chieftain's role.

“Get a bridle on him,” Wenda said, indicating Rune. He and the two other horses huddled together, effectively penned by the circling ravens.

“I don't have—,” Asa began, but Wenda proffered a beautifully braided one from her satchel.

Rune nickered as Asa neared. The white hairs sprinkled along his cheekbones revealed his many winters, but the brown eyes gazing into her own sparkled with an impish spirit. He sensed the imminent adventure. She thumbed the deep hollows above his eyes and thought for a moment about all that they'd shared, about the innate trust they had in each other. Then she fitted the bridle around his head.

“Bring him close,” Wenda said, motioning. She'd ignited the torch and held it above her head as if to light their way, though the morning was now crisp and clear, the sky a cloudless blue.

Distrust held Asa in place. “What are you going to do?”

“Prepare you,” Wenda replied. She motioned again, eager.

“What does that mean?” Asa demanded, pulling Rune's head close and preparing to swing onto him in a flash.

The torch lowered. Wenda's pale eye seemed to vibrate with caged anger. “Why? Why do you continue to aggravate me? I've told you you're too young to ask so many questions!”

“If you want me to help you”—Asa was getting it now; Wenda
needed
her for some reason, she needed her help—“then you're going to have to tell me what you have planned.” She
stared calmly straight into the ice blue eye. It wasn't nearly as intimidating as it had once been. “If it has to do with my clan or with Jorgen, then you have to tell me.”

Was that a shadow of a smile on her pursed lips? If so, it was immediately replaced by a scowl. Rune butted her shoulder, impatient, and she laid a calming hand on his neck.

Sliding her gaze to Rune, Wenda said, “Jorgen is more than he appears. And less. Though most are blind to that.”

Curious but cautious, Asa led Rune a little closer and let the woman continue.

“I gave his father everything he needed, yet they both wanted something more, always something more. It seems to be that way with men.”

Asa's mind galloped to catch up. Wenda spoke as if she'd known Jorgen all along, but how could that be?

She'd not be receiving any immediate answer because the old woman seemed to be spinning herself into a storm. Her breath came faster and faster and her mouth parted slightly in an animal's pant. Her tongue pulsed over ragged teeth. Her eye darted from the forest to the sky to the horses to Asa and back to the sky. Was it happenstance that a bank of billowy gray clouds suddenly disguised the sun? That the surf hushed? In the pressing quiet that settled over the bluff Asa could hear her own breathing.

“Where,” Wenda finally commanded, “have you seen the cloak you're wearing?”

Asa looked down at the blue garment.

“Where?”
The challenge skipped across the windy clearing. “You saw it in your mind, didn't you? This beautiful blue cloak with ‘the same shadowed hue as a swallow's feathers'?”

And a hem that sparkled with blue glass and clear crystal beads created in a far-off land.
Asa could hear Jorgen's hypnotic voice weaving the familiar words. She gazed at the cloak's embellishments.

“I wore it,” the old woman exclaimed. “I wore it when I appeared to Jorgen's father. I heard his cries and I came to him and loved him and nurtured him.” The air seemed to go out of her and her shoulders slumped. She concluded sadly, “But in the end it wasn't enough.”

“I thought that was just a story. Jorgen said he'd learned the tale from his father.”

“Jorgen, no doubt, learned many things from his father, but greed wasn't one of them. That was his own doing. He took what was not his own.”

A chill skittered along Asa's spine.

“Now you're going to take back what is rightfully yours.” Wenda brandished the torch. “Bring him—Rune, isn't it?—bring him here.”

Feeling as if she was being pulled into some age-old story, feeling as if the cloak she wore was its own noose, Asa moved forward. Rune, of course, obediently walked beside her. She heard her father's horses following.

Unexpectedly, Wenda lunged and swiped the torch along the ends of Rune's heavy mane. He jumped sideways as Asa tried to blunt the attack, but the hairs had already caught fire.

“What—?” Asa slapped the coiling flames away. “What are you doing?” She shoved between the old woman and Rune, warily eyeing the torch.

“He has to be ready for battle; you both do. You saw the picture-stone.”

The warrior girl. Her horse's mane had been cut short. Again that chill of blood rushing through her arms set her palms tingling. Other drawings flashed through her mind—though she couldn't remember where she'd seen them—of warriors' horses, all with their manes cut short, upright, defiant.

But none of her clan's horses had had their thick manes shortened. Her clan had always lived peacefully. The occasional wanderer who shared a meal with them told of marauders elsewhere—maybe that's how she knew—but her clan had never lifted a sword.

“Time you stopped running, Asa Coppermane.”

Asa squared her shoulders.

“Time you defended what is near to your heart.”

Fastening her piercing blue eye on her, Wenda boldly swiped the torch beneath Rune's mane. Hairs fizzed orange and smoked. Instantly she patted out the flames, then swiped the torch again.

Rune pranced and tried to shake his head free, but Asa, seemingly in thrall to the woman's magic, held him in place. An
awful stench clouded them as handfuls of hair were singed out of existence. Freed of the weight, the remaining root hairs stood upright, and the black hairs at the center rose just past the silver ones in dramatic contrast. The years, too, fell away from the old horse.

Wenda stood back to admire her work. She pursed her lips and nodded tentative approval, then proceeded to dig through her satchel. The hand she withdrew had one index finger coated a bright, sticky blue, and pushing aside Rune's heavy forelock, she painted a colorful circle around each of his eyes. “To see the target,” she pronounced.

Rune shook his head and the shortened mane rippled like wind-whipped grasses. He snorted and rubbed his face against a foreleg—slightly smudging one circle—and when he lifted it to trumpet a whinny to the world, he looked every inch the valiant battle horse. He arched his neck and made the reins vibrate with his prancing, and Asa's heart squeezed.

Even Wenda chuckled at his antics before warning, “Don't you get too full of yourselves. There's more to winning a battle than appearance, though people will see what they want to see.”

He felt their eyes upon him as he lifted the bowl. The brownish liquid smelled awful, and at first sip the broth soured his tongue and deposited bits of grit that drifted irritatingly between his teeth and sore gums. He spat the mouthful onto the floor. “Are you cooking with dirt now, Tora?”

Thidrick and Helgi giggled and doubled over. He shot them a glare. They'd pay for their insolence.

“What about that calf I just gave you?”

Tora snatched the wooden bowl from him and dumped its contents back into the cauldron. “It's not ready. You'll have to wait along with the others. And while you're waiting you can go find our missing cow.” She flung the emptied bowl at him.

“Maybe he can find some cheese, too,” Ketil muttered. “He's always smelling of it.”

Coward that he was, the cripple didn't dare deliver his comments eye to eye.

So the chickens were ruffling their feathers. Ever since Asa had galloped away, they'd given him a wide berth, watched him with suspicion. Well, they didn't deserve his guidance, his generosity. Here
he'd supplied them with meat and received only scorn. With surging blood, he rose to his feet. “You charcoal-chewers can rot in your own pus!” Feeling for the sword at his waist, he cast a menacing glare around the room and saw his wavering power yet evidenced in their hunched shoulders and averted eyes. “I want a proper stew—with meat—ready when I return.” And he stalked out the door.

Fog still eddied around the settlement's structures, and he peered through it. Where was that cow? He needed to find it, needed to know that the bloodied calf carcass deposited on the door-slab had a reasonable explanation. But a niggling suspicion whispered otherwise. Someone … or something … was taunting him. That woman? A
draugr
? Well, he'd not play the fool any longer. He'd put an end to this game.

A sudden pain in his chest caught him up short and he clutched the sword's knob, wincing and gulping for air. That made his head throb even more than it had that morning, and his fomenting anger turned his knuckles white. How dare they? How dare anyone try to thwart him? They'd not take this from him. They couldn't. By Thor, he'd
kill
the next creature that crossed his path!

For some time he stood there, his chest heaving, each forceful breath a whoosh of vapor that swirled and disappeared. The wet fog gradually slicked his hair to his forehead. It beaded on his brow and ran down his nose, cooling him. When at last the pain had eased, he sought the shelter of the forest and followed the stream uphill.

From habit, he supposed, his feet carried him off the path before he reached the nearer of the outfields, and with each step
his anger dulled. How many pleasure-filled days had he passed here just watching her? That brought an echo of chest pain, and he paused for a few deep breaths before continuing. Up and over the boulders he clambered, then pushed through the tangled undergrowth beside the stream. He knew he didn't need to. Secrecy was no longer necessary. She was gone. Dead.

It still troubled him that her stiff body lay unprotected, somewhere … somewhere, somewhere! The harrowing images tormented him nightly. He pushed aside the low-hanging pine bough, crawled beneath it, settled on the hidden rock—its cold seeped through his buttocks—and slipped his feet into the two well-worn depressions on the exposed tree root. From this viewpoint he could observe the mud-soaked outfield and all who passed through it, though on this drab day nothing ventured forth. Only a few thin, green blades, choked by the muck, clustered in moldy patches. They were a teasing hint of summer, but would the season ever come? And would any of them see it? Already their dead outnumbered their living. And the dead, it seemed, walked about even more than the living. And ate their fill.