Runes and Red Sails (Queenmaker Book 1)(82)

But he did not seem to be. He hooked his spear shaft behind her twirling foot and sent her sprawling.

“Leave the flourishes for the skalds and their stories. Never show your back to a foe.”

Slamming against the hard soil drove the breath from her lungs.

“Do you remember when I told Vidar that only a fool feels no fear?” There was no anger in his voice. He appeared as unfazed by her eavesdropping as he had been by her ambush.

“No,” she lied. She pulled herself onto one knee.

“I would set my warriors against any challenge, any enemy, and be sure of victory. There are none finer. Each one has a heart as true as any of the heroes of old.”

He swung again as she stood, and she reeled backwards to block the blow.

“But they fear. They doubt. You think Sigurd never had one moment of weakness?”

They circled.

The anger was still there, simmering in her breast. But she knew there was truth to those words. That she had built the Thrym into something more than they were. That they could not be everything she needed, and it was wrong to blame them for failings not of their own making.

But the expression Eyvind wore was too close to a smirk, and she would be thrice-cursed if she was going to admit fault to that face. She rolled forward and swung high. He blocked, but she drove her staff into the back of his left knee. He sagged but stayed upright, and their weapons locked once more.

Face to face now, he asked another question.

“What is your vote?”

“You know what it is!” She strained to push him off-balance.

“Why?”

There was no shifting him, so she leapt back out of reach.

“What do you mean why?”

“Do you go on just because your mistress tells you to, or is there something else?”

Revenge was the first word that popped into her mind. Or to obey Fate, or to spite the Gods, or to see the storied lands of her ancestors. To see justice done. Any would have made a fine answer, and all rang true to some extent. But she chose a simpler reply.

“I need to know that I can.”

He leaned against his spear and stared back at her.

“So do we go?” she asked.

He drew a deep breath. “Yes.” And exhaled. “We go.”

“Now be on guard.” Hefting his weapon, he said, “I will not hold back this time.”

And they fought on.





45

One late afternoon found Aelfhild pressed against a lichen-stained rock face, fingers and toes probing for holds. A rope was tied around her waist, trailing down to the outcrop below where Eyvind and Ceolwen stood fretting.

The fjords of the northern coast, beautiful though they were to look upon, had been a great hindrance on the journey to Aettirheim. A few were shallow and ran only a short distance inland, making for an easy crossing over soft, grassy ground. Many, though, were less welcoming—these were yawning rifts, carved deep into the earth by vengeful glaciers, with sheer rock walls plummeting into the black churn of waves. Entire days the crew spent following these chasms west in hopes of finding a suitable crossing, only then to make the painstaking climb down the rocks to pass over a half-submerged sandbar in water cold enough to numb the legs and freeze the toes.

Just a stone’s throw to her left and slightly below, Kolbrun pulled herself up onto a ledge. The servant and the shield-maiden had turned out to be natural climbers—or at any rate more natural than the rest. Their nimble feet and strong fingers gave them the dubious honor of being first up, bearing ropes to fasten once they reached the top.

Heights were not something Aelfhild was particularly keen on.

The higher she climbed, the more she regretted this newfound talent.

You wanted to pull your weight, a voice within her head chided as she wedged her toes into the next crevice, and here you are.

Her left hand sent some loose rock and gravel raining down on the onlookers, and she could hear in the swift intake of breath below. But her hold did not falter.

Only one more ledge to go.

With bruised fingers, Aelfhild dragged herself up onto the upper lip of the bluff, then rolled over to give Kolbrun a hand. They emerged onto a wide stone shelf, polished smooth by the elements and bare of vegetation save for specks of moss in a few sheltered cracks. Forgetting the ropes around their waists momentarily, the two women turned to absorb the view.

The ocean stretched out in endless aquamarine to the east. With the sun at their backs, their shadows danced in stark black relief atop the swells. To the south the pale crescents of the twin moons cleared the horizon side by side, and beneath the heavenly orbs stretched the jagged coast, the hills through which the Thrym and Earnfoldings had toiled for days.

Aelfhild turned north to see what was still to come.

A lump rose in her throat at the sight, and she recalled words Eyvind had spoken weeks before: a harbor filled with sharp rocks, like teeth. Stretching out before them was an oval bay nestled within a deep basin between the ridges that dominated the coastline to the north and south. The mouth of the bay was filled with dozens of jutting boulders and narrow skerries, some bare but some sporting thickets of greenery. The surf erupted in foaming towers around the spits of rock and fell back in whirling eddies.

Aelfhild could see where some of the rocks been shattered into jagged pieces, and others worn down by the sea to lie hidden just below the tides. How any boat could sail through that sieve without foundering she could not even fathom.