Runes and Red Sails (Queenmaker Book 1)(86)
“Can you read it? What does it say?” Eyvind was asking, but Onund shook his head.
“A warding stone, to drive off enemies and wild beasts,” the old man said, pointing to a few indistinct lines. He frowned. “I cannot make most of it out, but it means there must be something here worth guarding.”
With greater care they pressed on into the hills. Beyond the first ridge the grass grew thicker and greener with each step. Sea breeze rippled along the feathered blades. At the base of the hill beyond, the remains of a wall ran in a long half circle, disappearing into a gully to the west and ending abruptly to the east where a chunk of land had tumbled down into the ocean below.
The stone blocks had been laid by skilled hands, clearly, for the joining was close and even. Lichen and vine rose up to choke the structure and little by little undo the work, but the masonry had lasted for generations without upkeep. Grass sprouted in a few spots where the mortar had cracked, the probing roots a herald of slow but inevitable decay.
It seemed a paltry sort of defense, Aelfhild thought, for at the tallest point the stones rose only as high as her nose; feet flat on the ground, she could look over the top. Thinking back to Jarlstad, though, she realized that this was only the foundation of the outer bastion, which would have been built with a stockade overtop—logs sharpened to points, lashed together, and coated with pitch.
There were gaps between the stones in a few places, smaller ones evidence simply of the weight of time, while the more sizable holes hinted at assault by ancient foe. What would have been the southern gate was long cast down, but in her mind’s eye Aelfhild could see it clearly.
She shouldered past farmers driving their longhorns to market and fishermen carrying the day’s catch. Women with baskets at their hip or slung over their backs pulled along horses burdened down with shorn wool. The ironclad gates stood open under the watchful guard of the Jarls’ spearmen, and the folk thronged at the entrance as they waited to enter the city. All the sounds and smells were the same ones she could recall from a trip through Cynestead on market day.
But the vision faded, and now Eyvind led them through empty and silent streets, long overgrown and lost to time.
Here and there bare rock gave hint to settlement, the occasional hearthstone or in one spot a little chimney that Rolf guessed to be the ruin of a blacksmith’s forge. But it was hardly different from any other glade they had walked through on the journey.
Ceolwen and Aelfhild stood side by side atop the hill, quiet and deep in thought.
The land beneath what had once been Aettirheim rose upwards from the sea in a series of rolling hills and dales leading into rougher scarps beyond. In the glen below the Earnfoldings there was an overgrown jumble of stones amidst the grass and a few clumps of scraggly shrubs, but little else of note.
“Is there nothing left?” Ceolwen asked of no one, and there was no answer.
Did you truly believe it would all still be here?
Bitterly and silently, Aelfhild chided her mistress, her companions, and herself most of all for allowing themselves to be swept up into chasing the fancies of an old man.
Harald stirred our hearts with fair words and sent us to the far end of the world to chase ghosts. But in cursing him, she cursed her own gullibility. The excitement of the morning, born from tall tales and childish wonder, had begun to sour, and she could see it on the others’ faces, too.
“Forward. Keep searching,” Rolf barked, falling back on his natural skill at calling layabouts back to work.
Aelfhild had to admire the steadfast greybeard. She thought back to the previous night’s conversation. How right Rolf had been to temper that half-crazed hope, which so often in this world was followed close behind by disappointment.
As they wandered on, she again drifted off into imagining how the faded city would have looked. The pile of stones became a temple, built with highest reverence to honor gods and ancestors and enduring long after the builders had gone. Aelfhild pictured nobles in their finest threads bringing white ewes and geese to the priests for sacrifice, trying to win favor with the Four for their own petty causes.
Chickens pecked in the streets, dogs barked, and children ran about with stick and stone, locked in boisterous battles. Treading the same ground as the Aettir of old did strike a chord deep within, a rightness that tugged at long-buried, ancestral memory.
Not far away, Embla began to bark. She burrowed into a patch of loose dirt, flinging mulch out behind her, and the crew converged on the growls.
At the bottom of the pit Embla had scraped there was a smooth, greyish circle etched with cracks, the top of something larger. Eyvind stooped to brush away the dirt as the others looked on expectantly. Slowly, delicately, he unearthed more of the object, and Aelfhild felt her gut tighten as it took shape.
Even before the hollow arc of the eye socket emerged, they had all guessed what was buried there. Standing and brushing the earth from his hands, Eyvind pushed dirt back over the skull with his foot.
Onund was first to break the silence. “Not all of the Aettir fled when the Thurse came. Some stayed to fight and hold the enemy back”—he grimaced into his silver whiskers—“and others could not make the journey.”
“May they find peace,” Jarngrim said before turning away.
The Thrym repeated his words, while Ceolwen and Aelfhild said the same in the southern tongue, and left the bones to rest.
A less pleasant image played in Aelfhild’s eyes now of warriors putting up a bloody final defense of falling walls, while the old and feeble and infirm sat helpless outside an empty shrine that would offer them scant protection. Smoke and blood hung heavy in the air. Clenching her eyelids tight, she shook her head to drive away the vision.