The Wizard

Chapter 7. Hela And Heimir

“Sumpin’ worryin’ ya, sar?” Uns was struggling to turn poles and a tarred canvas from Bymir’s barn into the semblance of a pavilion, assisted by Blind Berthold.

“A thousand things,” I told him.

Gerda looked up from her cooking. “We’re in your way, ain’t we, sir?”

I shook my head. “No. Not at all.”

“If you’d want to ride ahead tomorrow, sir, and tell us where to meet up with you...?”

I shook my head again.

“Org ain’t hit, sar? Ya worried how Sir Svon might be takin’ care a’ him. So’m I, sar. Org ain’t bad like they say. On’y he ain’t good, neither,’n do take handlin’.”

“No,” I said. “Can I give you and Berthold some help?”

Uns looked shocked. “Us got hit, sar, ‘less ya think us ain’t doin’ right.”

“You’re doing better than I would, I know.” I seated myself on the ground and stared into the flames. Gylf lay down beside me.

“‘Tis the boy.” Gerda’s tone was that of one who knows. “Young Toug. I’m worried ‘bout him too, sir.”

“You don’t have to listen to this,” I said. “You have work to do, all of you. I realize that. I have work to do, too, and I’ve been trying to do it. Thinking, not worrying. We thought very little in Skai, or at least I didn’t think much. The Valfather, the Lady, and Thunor were very wise, and that was enough for us. We served them whenever we could, and ate and drank and jousted and sang when we couldn’t. Now there’s nobody to think except me, and one of the things I’ve got to think hard about is whether the Valfather foresaw it.”

I picked up a stick, snapped it, and tossed it on the fire. “I’m sure he must have. The real question is whether it affected the restraints he laid on me when he let me come. And if it did—I think that it must have—how.”

“Too much thinkin’ leads to drinkin’,” Gerda warned me.

“Too much worry, you mean. Too much circular thinking in which the mind turns around and around, shaking the bars again and again. Yes, it does, but I try not to think like that. I try to think as the sea flows. I miss it, by the way, though I doubt the rest of you do.”

Gylf laid a paw in my lap.

“I’ll tell you what I was thinking about in a moment, it’s no secret. Let’s dispose of Sir Svon and Toug first.”

Bold Berthold, having finished staking the poles of the makeshift pavilion, came to sit beside Gylf, feeling his way with a peeled stick.

“You’re concerned that the Angrborn may kill them, and so am I. But if I’d stayed, Toug would have remained my captive and Sir Svon would have remained my squire. Those outcomes were certain, not problematic. Once, long ago... Though it is not long ago to you. Once Sir Garvaon told me I was a hero, the sort of knight men sing about.”

Berthold said, “Aye.”

“That’s the sort of knight Sir Svon longs to be, and Sir Svon’s right, because it’s the only sort who should be called a knight at all. I don’t mean that songs must be sung about every brave knight. There’ll always be many whose greatest deeds no one knows. Before I made him Sir Svon, Svon charged a score of bandits, sword in hand. He killed some, and the rest beat him senseless and left him for dead. No song will be made about the bruised and bleeding lad who woke and saw Sir Ravd’s body torn by wolves, who routed the wolves with Ravd’s broken lance and buried Ravd alone in the forest. Yet he deserves a song, and I’m giving him a chance to earn one. A chance to feel pride in himself, not just in his ancestors.

“Toug’s a peasant who wants to become a knight, and will become a knight if he’s given room to grow. Uns, you know him better than Berthold or Gerda do. Am I wrong?”

“Dunno, sar.” Uns, who had been straightening a pole the ropes had pulled out of line, paused. “Dere’s Pouk ta, ain’t dere? Dat was wit you at da farm?”

I nodded. “The Angrborn have him.”

“You was dead set on gettin’ him free.”

“I was. I am. He was my servant, and a good one. I’ve sent him rescuers, and I feel they’ll succeed.”

Gerda said, “That’s not what was worryin’ you, sir?”

“No.” I looked up from the fire. “First and always, I was thinking about Queen Disiri, as I always do. When the Valfather’s mead had washed me clean of every other memory, I still recalled her name. She won’t come to me. Therefore I must go to Aelfrice to seek her, as soon as I can.”

“‘N me wit ya,” Uns declared.

“Perhaps, but I doubt it. Time runs more slowly there. Have I told you?”

Berthold said, “My brother did, sir. He’d been took, or thought he had, and when he come back I was old, though I had my eyes. Dizzied sometimes, like now. But him! He wasn’t but a lad like when he was took, though he did talk high.”

“Why was he taken, Bold Berthold? Do you recall that?”

“To talk for Aelfrice up here’s what he said. ‘Cept he never did.”

“I’ve wondered about that.”

“You know ’em, sir,” Gerda ventured. “There was that one come to you when we was under the tree, me and Bert. I said you shouldn’t trust her, but you said you had already.”

“Uri.”

“That was her, sir. You knew her.”

“Yes. I know her and Baki fairly well, I’d say. I used to think I knew Garsecg, too, and better than either of them. But I know better now, and know Garsecg’s no Aelf.”

Gylf said, “Wow!,” but they thought it a mere bark.

“He’s a demon,” I explained, “a dragon in human form.”

“Ya goin’ ta kill him, sar?”

I shook my head. “No, Uns. Not unless I must. But we’re drifting away from the riddle of Berthold’s brother, and that riddle’s one of the things I’ve been considering. Do you still want to hear about those?”

Berthold said, “I do, sir, if my brother’s in it.”

“Of course. Your brother couldn’t recall anything that happened to him in Aelfrice.”

“No, sir.”

“Then we have three mysteries. First, why could he not remember? Second, why was he taught fair speech? And third, why has he not spoken?”

Gerda asked, “Don’t you know the answers, sir?”

“Not all of them. The second we can all guess easily, I believe. He was taught to speak well so he could deliver the message he had been given effectively. Uns, you’ve a sound head. Can you enlighten us as to the other mysteries?”

“Wy he coont remember, sar? Dint ya say dat first? Dey magicked him. Dey’s handy wit spells, all dem Aelfs.”

I nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. But why do it?”

“Somebody give him a message,” Berthold muttered.

“Yes.”

“He never said who ‘twas,’cause he didn’t know.”

I nodded again. “I think you must be right. The sender wished to keep his identity secret, and his message as well.”

Gerda pushed one of the forked sticks that would support her cooking pot into the ground. “Then he hasn’t said what they told him. He’s forgot it.”

Berthold’s groping hand found my arm. “Somebody here.”

I looked down at Gylf, who raised his head, sniffed, and seemed puzzled. “You heard him?” I asked Berthold.

“Aye, sir. I do.”

“There’s a breeze.” I rose, my hand on Eterne. “He must be coming upwind. That’s why Gylf hasn’t caught his scent.” I stalked away, downwind, with Gylf at my heels.

Berthold and Uns were sleeping soundly when we returned, but Gerda had stayed awake and sat warming her hands. “It’s good for somebody to keep watch,” I said as I sat down, “but you can go to sleep now. I’m going to sit up, and Gylf wakes at the least sound.”

“You didn’t find him?”

I shook my head.

“I kept listening, sir. I thought if you killed him he’d cry out, most like. My ears ain’t what they was, and I worried you’d do it so quick there wouldn’t be no noise.”

“I never saw him,” I confessed.

“Somebody out there, though, wasn’t there?”

I nodded.

“One of them giants?”

I shook my head. Gylf, who had seen him, had described him to me.

“A boy like that Toug?”

“No, a big man. As I said, I never saw him, but I heard him run away. A big man can move very quietly as long as he doesn’t have to run, but when he runs there’s not much he can do to silence the noise his feet make.”

“Your dog couldn’t run him down?”

“I’m sure he could have, but I wouldn’t let him. Do you remember when he caught you in the hedgerow?”

“Won’t never forget it.”

“Uns wanted to know what was troubling me. I said there were a thousand things, I believe.” I smiled. “That was a slight exaggeration, but one of them was the memory of Gylf’s catching you. I saw your chain, and there was a moan in my mind. Almost a scream.”

“I’m used to it, sir.”

“We’ll have it off as soon as we can find a blacksmith, I promise you, though that may be a long time. But the thing that has been troubling me tonight wasn’t your chain but that moan.” After a moment I added, “It wasn’t me who moaned. I feel sure of that.”

“If it was in your head, sir...”

“It had to be me? No. It didn’t, and it wasn’t. So who was it?”

“I don’t know, sir. I didn’t hear it.”

“I was recalling it as well as I could and trying to decide whose voice it might have been. I had just about settled on my answer when it struck me that it could have been Berthold who Gylf found. Had you thought of that?”

Gerda stirred the fire.

“Berthold’s past his prime, and blind, but still strong for a man his age. And no man I know is less liable to give way to fear. He’d have fought, and Gylf would have killed him. The man who ran from us was younger and much stronger.”

Gerda did not speak.

“There are men who should be killed. There are many more who must be killed, because they will try to kill us. But I’m not sure the man who ran from us—this very large young man I did not see—belongs to either group.”

“You think he’s mine, sir. You think it’s my Heimir.”

“I don’t think anything. It struck me it might be.”

“I don’t know, sir. Really I don’t.” She wiped away a tear. “I feel like it is, like he’s come back to me, or I’ve come to get him, sir, or however a body might say it. But I don’t know, sir, it’s all in my heart. I ain’t seen him nor heard him nor nothing.”

“We’ll let him come closer next time, if there is one.”

“That’s good of you, sir. Sir?”

“What is it?”

“If it is... You wouldn’t hurt him?”

“Of course not. Would he hurt me?”

Gerda hesitated. “He might, sir, if I wasn’t with you. I can’t say. He’s hungered, most like.”

“So are we. There’s not much game here.”

“Farther south, sir, south of the mountains—”

I shook my head. “I must take my stand at a mountain pass. We won’t go south of the mountains for a long time.”

She smiled. “I know you won’t let us starve, sir. Not even if he’s with us.”

Someone big lay on a bed of fern in a low cave; for a fraction of a second, I felt his hunger and his loneliness. I looked up. Cloud was watching me, her head and dark eye scarcely visible. Hoping she could see it, I nodded.

“You said you’d decided about the moan, sir. The moan when you first seen me. What was that?”

“It was when I saw you were chained.” Smoke drifted into my face; I fanned it away and moved a little to my left. “You probably think I imagined it.”

She shook her head. “Not if you say you didn’t.”

“I didn’t. I know the flavor of my thoughts, and that wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t you either, and it wasn’t Gylf. I can’t say how I know, but I do. There was someone else there, someone I couldn’t see. I’d been shadowed by the Aelf, and I thought it most likely that it was Garsecg.” I paused. “Garsecg is not an Aelf, but he had pretended to be. I’ll tell you more about Garsecg some other time, perhaps.”

Gerda nodded. “Now you’ve changed your mind, sir?”

“I have. You said you saw an old woman with me.”

Gerda’s nod was timid.

“I think that was Mani’s mistress. You must have seen Mani. A large black cat.”

“A witch’s cat, sir, if you ask me.”

“Yes, though he’s Lady Idnn’s cat now. The witch is dead but still earthbound. When Baki writhed in the hayloft, his old mistress’s ghost told Mani to bring help to her.”

“You think she’s haunting us, sir?”

“I doubt it. I’d guess that she went to Utgard with Mani, though I don’t know. Lie down. Try to sleep.”

“If that’s all that was troubling you, sir. I was hoping there was more I could help with.”

I laughed. “I doubt it, Gerda. Some Aelf were going to sacrifice a beautiful woman in the griffin’s grotto. Who was she and what became of her?”

“Ler! I don’t know, sir.”

“Very tall. Milk-white skin and black hair.” My hands shaped the figure of an invisible woman. “If you don’t know who she was or where she went—”

“I swear I don’t, sir.”

“I believe you. In that case, tell me this. Why would the Aelf offer one of our women to Grengarm?”

“Why, I’ve no notion, sir. Do you?”

“Maybe. Grengarm was a creature very like Garsecg, yet Grengarm seemed real here in Mythgarthr. Remember Toug? He was from Glennidam, a village where they worship the Aelf.”

“That not right, sir. Nobody ought to do that.”

“None of us should, at least. I don’t think it would be terribly difficult to explain why the people of Glennidam do, though it’s wrong just as you say. A better question, one I thought of much too late, is why the Aelf let them.”

Gerda’s face showed plainly that she did not understand.

“You mentioned Ler, mother. Suppose that Ler, with the Valfather and Lothur, were to appear before us, sacrifice to you, and offer you their prayers. What would you do?”

“I—” Gerda looked baffled. “Why—why I’d say there was some mistake or maybe they were making a joke.”

“Exactly. But the Aelf, who should say the same, do not.” I watched the moon rise above the empty landscape.

At last Gerda said, “I guess they like it, sir.”

“Lie down,” I told her. “Go to sleep.”

When the moon had risen high enough for me to make out the mountains, I got up and saw to the tethers of our mounts. Those of Berthold’s horse, and Gerda’s, were still tight, as was that of Uns’ placid brown mule. Cloud’s had never been tight, and I removed it. Already bedded down, Cloud nuzzled my face and brought to my mind the image of a wild boar, huge and savage, rooting on the other side of the little river.

I nodded, slung my quiver behind my back and strung my bow. Parka’s string sang softly beneath my fingers, the songs of men reaping and the songs women sing to children with heavy eyes, songs of war and songs roared in taverns, songs of worship sung at altars when blazing logs consumed whole oxen and Overcyns with horned helmets and hair like fine-spun gold appeared in the smoke—all these and many more blending into a single anthem of humanity, to which certain birds piped an accompaniment.

“Good pig!” Gylf licked his lips. “Want him?”

I said I did.

“Long way. I’ll drive him.”

Before I had taken two strides, Gylf was out of sight. In the blind dark under the trees, I reflected on the few, poor remarks I had directed to Uns, Berthold, and Gerda, and their questions and comments. Then, for a hundred cautious steps or so I whispered Disiri’s name.

Gylf had located the boar; his snarls and the angry grunts of the boar rode the soft night wind.

Jotunland, I thought. This’s Jotunland. Empty and cold and a little too dry.

Bold Berthold had spoken of digging deep wells, wells whose fearful construction required months, wells that failed even so in dry years, of carrying bucket after weary bucket into the fields, and of vicious fights between Angrborn over access to wandering brooks that never reached the sea.

So that was another puzzle. Large and strong as the Angrborn were, they might have lived anywhere. Why did they choose to live here?

Had the gods of Skai indeed driven the Giants of Winter and Old Night from the sun? Or had those Giants chosen their abode? Knights like Svon and Garvaon and Woddet had never driven the Angrborn north of the mountains, surely.

The snarling hound and the angry boar were nearer now, and I had reached a strip of moonlit water. Somewhere along here, Gylf would drive the boar into the shallows, then out again onto the other bank, if the boar still lived.

If Gylf had dodged the boar’s slashing tusks up to that point. An arrow here might end the hunt, or as good as end it. I nocked a shaft and relaxed for a second or two to look up at the moon. It was beginning to snow, even while the moon still shone, so that the silver light seemed wrapped in mist, beautiful and threatening. We had traveled slowly, and would travel slower still tomorrow; and though we had not been comfortable, we would be less comfortable still. Who would want to live here?

The boar, obviously. But I knew the boar must die.

There would be meat tomorrow. Meat not only for Gylf and me, but for Bold Berthold, Gerda, and Uns. Meat even for the hulking young man who had crept so near our camp. The young man (call him by his name, I told myself, he has one) his suffering mother had named Heimir in the hope endearing him to the Angrborn, the young man who lay starving in his cave in the hills.

A man of his size, a man who might weigh half as much as Cloud, would require a lot of food, food difficult to find in this barren land. True Angrborn were even larger and could eat only because slaves worked their farms.

Dog and boar were nearer now; I heard saplings break, an angry pop-pop-pop my ears accepted as a single sound.

Quite suddenly it came to me that King Arnthor would have been wiser to send the Angrborn bread and cheese. Then that Lord Beel’s embassy was doomed, that the Angrborn could never stop raiding the south for slaves because the Angrborn would starve without slaves—that no Angrborn could grow or kill enough for himself, a wife, and a child or two. They were too big and needed too much.

One never saw their wives anyway.

The boar broke cover and the arrow went back to my ear and sped away. The boar, black as tar in the moonlight, snapped at its shoulder, splashed through the shallows to midchannel, turned to defy Gylf, fell to its knees, and rolled on its side.

The water carried its body a step or two from the point at which it had died, but no farther.

Gylf emerged from dark undergrowth. “Good shot!”

“Thanks.” I unstrung my bow and slung it behind me. “Did he hurt you?”

“Never touched me.” Gylf waded into the water to drink.

Skinning and gutting the boar took an hour or so. I cut off the head and forelegs (one of which Gylf claimed) and got the rest up on my shoulder. Our return was slower than our departure had been, but the distance was not great.

“Talking.” In order to speak, Gylf had let the foreleg fall. Instinctively, he put a paw on it. “Hear ’em?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t know her.” He picked up the foreleg and trotted forward.

She rose as Gylf approached the fire, and for a moment I felt she would never stop rising—tousled blond hair that hung to her shoulders, a lean face that seemed all jaw and eyes, a neck as thick as my thigh, wide sloped shoulders and high breasts half hidden by a scrap of hide. Arms thick and freckled, fingers tipped with claws. Long waist, broad hips under a ragged skirt, and massive legs with knees so skinned and bony that I noticed them even by firelight.

“Hello,” she said in a voice deeper than a man’s. “Are you Sir Able? Hello. I’m Hela, her girl. She said it would be all right. Is that food?”

Gerda stood too, her head below her daughter’s waist. “You’re not mad are you, sir? I—I shouldn’t of, I know. Only she—she’s still...”

“Your child.”

“Yes. Yes, sir. My baby, sir.” This last was said without a hint of irony.

Uns sat up and goggled at Hela.

Berthold had clambered to his feet and was groping with both hands. “Hela? Hela?”

Hela took a step backward, although she was a full three heads the taller.

“Bert won’t harm a hair of you,” Gerda told her softly.

“Hela.” A groping hand found her. “I’m your father, Hela. Your foster father. Didn’t Gerda never speak of me? Bold Berthold?”

I laid the boar’s body on the ground beside the fire.

“You were gone ‘fore I got to Bymir’s, and Bold Berthold that was, was gone too. Blind Berthold now. It’s what they did. But the same that was, Hela. The same as loved your ma long ago.”

She crouched and embraced him.

“Ah, Hela,” Berthold said softly. “Ah! Ah, Hela!” There was no tune to these words, yet they were music.

“Maught us cook a bit a’ dat, sar?” Uns was at my side, holding green sticks.

“I’d think you’d want to go back to sleep.”

“I’se main hungert, sar.” When I hesitated, he added, “Won’t take but wat ya let me.”

“Take all you want. Will you cook some for Berthold?”

“Yessar. Glad ta. Fer her, ta, sar,’n she’ll want a sight a’ feedin’.”

“She will, I’m sure. But she can cook it for herself. If she is to eat with us she must work with us, and it will be better if we make that clear from the start.”

“Fer ya, ter, sar. Be a honor fer me, sar.”

“If Hela can cook her own meat, so can I.” I unslung my bow, sat down before the fire, and accepted a stick. “Cut me some of that pork, will you?”

“Yessar. Ain’t slept, has ya, sar?”

“No, and I should. I will when I’ve eaten something.”

Yet when Uns, Berthold, and Gerda slept once more, and even Gylf slept, lying upon his side and snoring, and of all those with me only new-come Hela remained awake, squatting at the fire with a piece of pork twice the size of my fist on her stick, I sat up with her, questioning her now and again, and often falling silent to consider her replies.

“I’m not a maid of my tongue,” she said, “to prattle pretty words and please men’s ears. If I were, I’d soon be snug in a house, with hags and slaves like this fresh father to wait on me, and an ox for supper when I wished it.” She laughed, and I saw that her teeth were twice the size of mine. “But I’m as you see. As you hear, sir knight. What Frost Giant would be hot to take me to wife? They like their own, stealing into their beds from Jotunhome. Else southern maids of poppet size, with clever little hands and honeyed lips. ‘Oh, oh, you are so great! Ravish me!’ So I sought men my size in the Mountains of the Mice, and found them, too, served as maid serves man, and was paid in blows.”

“Did they drive you out?” I asked her.

“Hunted me, rather. You noted my knife?”

I nodded.

“He did not.” Hela laughed loud and deep. “In the south, they say, there are some called men who pale at sight of naked steel. Fops and fools! ‘Tis not that knife that takes life.”

“How old are you, Hela?”

“Sage enough to know a cat from a catamite. Are you troubled that I’ve come running to Mother, sir knight?” She took her meat off the stick, sampled it, wiped her mouth on her arm, and licked her fingers.

“No. You were hungry. No doubt I’d do the same if I had a mother to run to.”

“We watch the War Way, Heimir and I.” Hela returned her stick and the gobbet of meat it held again back to the fire. “Some give us something, sometimes.”

“You did not beg of me, when I came up it.”

“Didn’t see you, sir. How many horses?”

“Pack horses, you mean? I had none.”

“What would you have given us, sir knight?” She smiled; although it was not a pleasant smile, I sensed that it was as pleasant as she could make it. “Not even beggars work for nothing.”

“Nothing is what I would have given you. Would you have robbed me?”

“A knight? With horse and sword?” She laughed again. “No, not I! Nor Heimir. Small stomach he’d have for such a fight! It’s reavers returning we like best, sir knight, with sulking slaves tied tight as sausages, and heifers and horses to drive before them.” Hela’s voice rose to a whine. “Bless you, true Angrborn all! Blessed be Angr, true mother who bore you! Many a smile you’d have from your mother, for many a morsel you’ve won down the War Way. One morsel for me from you, great men? A bit for my brother? No more than you’d lose in a tooth, my masters.” High already, her voice rose again. “Morsel for me! Bread for my brother! Charity for children’s the kindness of heroes! So we bawl, and follow to steal if they let us.” She shook her head.

I said, “That’s no life for a girl. Not even for one as big as you are, though there are hundreds of beggar maids in Kingsdoom from what I’ve been told. What are you going to do now, once you’ve eaten?”

“Follow you, sir knight, as long as you’ll feed Momma and me. Dig for my dinner, if it’s digging you want.”

She shook her head again, more vehemently, and I turned mine to look behind me. Gylf woke with a low growl.

“I can milk and butcher and churn,” she said quickly, “and bear more than your mule. Try me. And if—you’ve no wench with you? Don’t you shiver, sleeping?”

Thanks to Cloud, my inner eye glimpsed a shadowy figure larger than a man—with a rope between its hands.

From the night surrounding our little clearing, Uri’s laughter showered us with steel bells. “Here is a hot wench if he wants one, one who will not take the whole blanket.”

“What’s this!” Hela stared into the darkness.

“Your victim’s slave.” Uri stepped into the firelight. “Lord, there is a great lout behind you—”

“With a rope, thinking to strangle me.” I nodded. “His sister’s been my protector twice.”

Hela turned from Uri to stare at me. “You knew he was there? By Ymir!”

“So did Gylf. I doubt that he’d have gotten his rope around my neck.”

“Nay, nor wished to. What’s this?”

“An Aelfmaiden.”

“Are they all red?”

Uri said, “None but the best, and we like it better than pink with brown blotches.”

“Call your brother,” I told Hela. “He’s probably as hungry as you were.”

She rose and held up her stick, with its gobbet of pork smoking and sizzling. “Heimir! This’s for you!”

He was larger even than she, with shoulders that made me think of Org, and so thin every rib showed. His massive jaw, broad nose, and owl eyes promised brutal stupidity.

I motioned for him to sit. “Eat something. Gerda will be glad to see you.” Hela offered her stick. He took it, stared at the meat, and at last pulled it off and ate.

“You told me why you left the mountains,” I said to Hela, “but not why your brother did.”

“He’d left our old home with me, sir knight. He left our new one to be with me. You think him thick.”

I said nothing.

“It’s solemn truth he’s slow of speech. Slower than I, though I’m slow enough for two most times.”

Uri said, “I would call you a babbler, rather.”

“You’re the knight’s slave? Slaves need a smoother tongue, or soon come to grief.”

Uri turned to me. “Have you ever had to feed me?”

“No,” I said.

“Or pay me?”

“No.”

“Yet we have served you faithfully? Baki and I?”

“You’re wondering how much she told me. Very little.”

“Is she dead?”

“No,” I said again.

“What happened?”

“We talked about you.” I measured my words. “Why you hadn’t told me her back was broken and asked me to help her.”

Hela giggled, a sound like a small avalanche. “That silenced her, sir knight. Black thoughts to raze her red face. Tell me true, are they underground? It’s what Momma’s gossips told me.”

“They’re from the world under ours. I wouldn’t call it underground.”

“Why doesn’t she go there?”

“Would you,” Uri asked, “if you could mount to Elysion?”

Hela’s hard face looked troubled. “What’s that?”

“Where the Most High God reigns.” Uri rose. “You want me to retire to Aelfrice. Very well, I will go. But Lord, if you must feed this gross slattern—”

“I want you to go, too,” I said to Uri, “but not back to Aelfrice. I want you to go to Utgard. Toug should be there by now, and so should your sister. Bring me word of them.”

“I will try.” Uri shot Hela a parting glance. “She and the lout will beggar you in a week.”

“I hope to beggar myself. Go.”

Uri vanished into the night.

I took the meat from my own stick and began to eat it. Hela asked if she might have another piece, and I nodded.

When she had finished cutting it, she said, “You’re going to the mountains?”

“Yes. To take my stand at a pass. It’s the sentence Duke Marder passed on me, and I must do it before seeking the woman I love.”

“They love us not, that live there.”

I swallowed the last bite of pork and lay down, wrapping my cloak around me. “They don’t like me either. We’ll face them together, if you’re willing.” For the first time Heimir spoke, addressing his sister. “Sleep. I watch.”