Page 48 of A Curse Carved in Bone
“Run,” he said softly. “Leave all of this behind. That is my solution.”
“Except it is no solution.” My hands balled into fists. “Whether I am here or not, war is coming in myname.Running will not stop it. Falling on my ownfuckingsword will not stop it. And I refuse to leave thousands to die just to save my own skin.”
“It may not come to that,” he said between clenched teeth. “Nordeland and Skaland have always warred. Just as both have always warredwith Islund, and with the nations beyond. The northwars.Nothing you do will change that.”
“Not wars like your mother has foreseen.” I felt sick, my own imagination supplying visions of the carnage. “You heard her. Unless you do not believe visions gifted by Odin to a seer who is your own mother, you have to know the threat is greater than ever before.”
Bjorn looked away, jaw tight.
“It was not so very long ago that my days were spent gutting fish,” I said quietly, an ache forming in my chest. “I knew everything about keeping a home and living a quiet life. Knew the gossip of Selvegr and the stories of our people. Then in a single moment, I was cast into circumstances I had not prepared for. Surrounded by others with more skill and knowledge, all of whom desired to use the magic in my blood to achieve their own ambitions. I know my limitations, Bjorn. I know that I’m out of my depth. But I amtryingto do the right thing.”
My voice broke and I took a steadying breath, knowing I was on the verge of tears. “All my life I dreamed of being a warrior. Of sailing on a jarl’s drakkar and making a reputation for myself. Now I’ve seen what such a life brings. The stink of open bowels and beaches full of flies crawling on corpses. Sacks of bloodstained gold and rings cut from dead men’s beards. Children with empty eyes, their whole worlds torn away from them in a moment. Who dreams of being the cause of such things? Why did I dream of it?” Tears started to pour down my cheeks no matter how rapidly I blinked. “I don’t care if the whole world calls me naive. An idiot. A fool. At least I know in my heart that I am doing all that I can to prevent that nightmare from becoming an even worse reality.”
“Freya—”
I held up a hand to silence him. “You say you will fight at my side through all of this. Yet the truth is that I am surrounded by warriors who will do the same. Unfated such as Skade and Tora, who are just as deadly as you. Yet the one thing you can do to ensure my victory and see this nightmare averted is the one thing you refuse to do. So who is the real fool here?”
Wiping tears from my cheeks, I walked away from him and sat down blindly at the table full of Harald’s cabal.
A few glanced my way, but most carried on in their conversations, eating and drinking from the excesses piled on the tables. Only Steinunn sat apart, sipping from a cup and listening, just as she had in Snorri’s hall. She had not quite belonged in Halsar, and did not belong here, either. She’d come into Harald’s service only after the death of her family, and in fairly short order had traveled to Skaland to aid in the efforts of findingme.
“How is your sword treating you?”
I twitched, then realized that I’d sat next to the smith, Gyda. “Very well. I killed a huldra with it.”
“Oh ho!” She slammed her hand down on the table with a laugh, and all the others turned their heads. “A huldra! Lured by our Bjorn, no doubt.” Resting her elbow on the table, she leaned closer and said in a loud whisper, “That is the third time they’ve tried to take him. I told him to grow a proper beard to hide his good looks, but he’s either too vain or too stupid to listen.”
I wiped at my cheeks, remembering how he’d resisted the creature’s power.I only want her. Only Freya.
A sudden wave of guilt caused me to look over my shoulder, but Bjorn had left the great hall. Sighing, I broke off a piece of bread from a loaf on the table, eating more for something to keep my mouth busy than out of hunger. “How long have you known Harald?”
“Since we were children,” Gyda answered around a mouth of stew. “His father was jarl. He and Harald never saw eye to eye, and the old man had a heavy hand that he used often and regularly. I suspect it was because of him that Harald abandoned Nordeland to travel in the south for many years. He’d become a man by the time he returned and challenged his father. Killed him in the square and, with his face splattered with his father’s blood, swore to rule in a different way.”
“Has he?”
Gyda shrugged. “Mostly.”
“So he didn’t save you?”
She made a face, then refilled her cup from a large pitcher. “I was a woman grown when he became jarl, and I had no need of saving. Harald pays me, and whenever I threaten to take my skills elsewhere, he bends and pays me more. You want to hear of salvation, talk to the young pups surrounding you.”
I scanned the Unfated seated at the table and saw what she meant about young. None appeared older than thirty and a handful were years younger than I was. “Why does he save them if not for power?”
A question I’d intended for myself, but Gyda shrugged. “Perhaps because no one saved him.” Then she pounded the table again. “Shut your gobs, the lot of you. Freya here wishes to hear how you all came to serve Harald so that she might judge his worth.”
Then she winked at me. “That is the reason, isn’t it?”
My cheeks burned. “Yes.”
“Fair enough.” She slammed the table one more time. “Troels, you go first. Tell Freya about what your brother Aksel did to you. Steinunn, pay attention, because these stories would be much more entertaining as a song.”
I wasted the balance of the day away but as the sun set, I found myself on Hrafnheim’s walls. I leaned my elbows on the edge of the battlements and watched the drawbridges slowly lift skyward for the night, the chains rattling loudly. When I’d been a boy, Harald had filled my ears with stories about his adventures in the south. Of cities so large that they sprawled farther than the eye could see, towers touching the sky, and bridges spanning massive rivers. Palaces with great domed ceilings made of copper and castles with layers of ring walls that had never been breached. But I’d always held a fascination for the drawbridges. The mechanisms in the guard towers that raised and lowered them, as well as the sheets of paper with the designs drawn upon them that he’d used to replicate the structures. They had writing on them in strange foreign tongues, many of which Harald spoke. He told me that the southerners wrote everything down and that they had buildings full of bound pieces of paper that held all that had ever been.
It seemed strange to me to put that which could be told with speech onto paper and lock it in a room, but I still wished to see the placesfrom his stories. To discover more about those who lived in lands of endless summer, their languages, and their customs. To walk in the domain of different gods and see the different magics. When I’d held Freya in my arms next to the hot springs in Skaland and everything had felt possible, I’d dreamed of taking her to the places in the stories. She’d never been given the chance to travel, and it had seemed a gift she’d value more than jewels and gold.
It made me want to scream that I’d chosen to linger that night. That I hadn’t immediately found a merchant ship and sailed out of reach. Built a life for her away from prophecy and violence in a world where I’d heard all people were masters of their own futures.
But it seemed that not even the Unfated could outrun destiny.
