scour of ice that shrieked like frustrated Valkyries.
We unhitched the ponies and dragged and pushed them down the V-shaped balka, taller than three men and so steep that most of us went down it on our arses. Those too slow were moaning in agony at the barbs of flying ice; horses screamed, flanks bloodied by it. We huddled, people and beasts together, while the world screamed in white fury.
Light danced like laughter on the water, the sea creamed round the skerries and d drakkar bustled with life on the edge of a curve of beach. I watched the boy stand in the lee of the ship, up to his calves in cold water, clutching a bundle and his uncertainty tight to himself, his shoes round his neck.
Someone leaned from the boat, yelled angrily at him. Someone else thrust out a helping hand and he took it, was pulled aboard. The drakkar oars came out, dipped and sparkled; the dragon walked down the fjord.
Me. It was me, leaving Bjornshafen with Einar the Black and the Oathsworn on board the Fjord Elk. I was young. .
'Fifteen,' said the one-eyed man. He was tall and under the blue, night-dark cloak he exuded a strength that spoke of challenges mastered. Little of his body showed, other than a hand, gloved and clutching a staff.
His single eye, peering like a rat from the smoked curl of hair framing his face, shaded by the brim of the broad hat he wore, was blue as a cloudless sky and piercing. I knew him.
'All Father,' I said and he chuckled. One Eye, Greybeard, the Destroyer, The Furious One. Frenzy.
Odin.
'Part of him and all of that,' he answered. He nodded at the scene, which wavered and swirled as if the sudden wind ruffled it, like the reflection in a pool.
'The White Christ priest with Gudleif,' he said and I saw the head on a pole, a head which had once been Gudleif, the man who had raised me as a fostri. Caomh, the Irisher thrall who had once been a priest — always a priest, he used to say — stood beside the horror Einar had created and watched us row away.
'Bjornshafen was woven together after Gudleirs sons died and the White Christ priest did it, so that they are all. followers of the One God now.'
He said it bitterly, this Father of the Aesir. Why did he permit this White Christ, this Jesus from the soft south? He was Odin, after all. .?
'We wear what the Norns weave, even gods,' he answered. 'The old Sisters grow weary, want to lay down their loom, perhaps, and can only do that when the line of the Yngling kings is ended.'
It was a long line. Crowbone, great-grandson for Harald Fairhair, was part of it. Did the Norns seek to kill him, too?
One-Eye said nothing, which annoyed me. You would think a god would know something about such matters, about such a rival as the Christ.
He grunted with annoyance. 'I know enough to know that enough is not yet enough. I know enough to know what I may not do and that is true wisdom.'
Something rumbled, thunder deep and a grey wedge pushedforwardfrom shadows. Amber in stone, the eyes looked me over and the steam from its grey muzzle flickered as the wolf licked the god's gloved hand.
'See, Freki,' said One Eye, 'she is coming back.'
In the wind, a shredded blackness fought forward, descending in starts andjumps until it thumped on his shoulder. The black, unwinking eye regarded me briefly, then it bent and nibbled One Eye's ear, while he nodded.
Munin, who flies the world and remembers everything inside that tiny feathered skull, returning to the ear of All Father Odin with a beak like a carving of ebony, whispering of slights and wrongs and warriors for Valholl still unslain. Ifelt no fear, which was strange enough to make me realize this was the dreamworld of the Other.
'So it is,' answered One Eye, as if I had spoken. 'Andyou want to know what will happen. That, of course, is in the hands of the Norns.'
'Silver,' I said and, though there was a whole babble of words, of questions that should have come from me, that seemed to be enough and he nodded.
'Silver,' he replied. 'They can weave even that, the Sisters, but they weave blind and in the dark, which helps me. The silver has to be cursed, of course, otherwise it will not work for this weaving.'
I understood nothing.
'Ask this, Orm Gunnarsson — what is silver worth?' rumbled the voice.
Farms and ships, warriors and women. . everything.
'More,' agreed One Eye. 'And that Volsung hoard, the one they gave to Atil is a king's gift. A cursed gift. My gift.'
And what does the god want in return? What could a god possibly want that did not already have? Warriors for the final battle? If so, all he had to do was kill us.
One Eye chuckled. 'There are more wars than you know and the battles in them last a long time. This one I have been fighting since before the days of Hild's mother's grandmother's grandmother, back to the first one of that line. Remember this, when all seems darkest, Orm Trader — the gift I give is the one I get. What you are, I am also.'
I did not understand that and did not need to say so — but he had spoken of Hild. The one eye glittered as he looked at me, amused and knowing.
'The first of her line was the spear thrown over the head of the White Christ priests to tell them a fight was on,' he said and left me none the wiser. He chuckled, a turning millwheel in his throat, and added: 'You have to hang nine nights on the World Tree for wisdom, boy.'
The raven, Munin, spread tattered wings and launched itself into the air. We watched it go, then One Eye grunted, as if his back bothered him, or he needed his supper.
'He goes to find his white brother and bring him home — Fimbulwinter is not on us yet and he has shaken enough pin feathers.'
The blue eye turned to the amber of a wolf even as I watched it and I felt no fear at it, only curiosity to see All Father shapechange, for that was his nature, to be neither one thing nor the other and never to be trusted fully because of it.
'That is one knowing you take from this place back to the world,' he rumbled, his voice deepening. 'The second is that One Eye will force a sacrifice from you and it will be something you hold dear.'
The wind shrieked and the snow drove in like white oblivion, stinging my eyes and driving me to my knees. But I was not afraid, for this was not Fimbulwinter. .
'That's a fucking comfort right enough, Trader,' said the voice in my ear, 'but not to those still buried to their oxters in snow.'
Hands hauled me upright, shook me until my eyes rattled and opened. Light streamed in. Light and the sear of cold air, as if I had stopped breathing entirely. Onund Hnufa, a great lumbering walrus, peered into my face from his iced-over tangle of moustache and gave a satisfied grunt.
'Good. You will live — now help the others and stop babbling about Fimbulwinter.'
We kicked and dug them out. Snow mounds shifted and broke apart; people growled and gasped their way back into the living light of day.
Fifteen were dead, ten of them thralls, among them Hekja. Thorgunna and Thordis, pinch-faced and blue, clung to each other and made sure the tears did not freeze their eyes shut.
Three of the druzhina were also dead and two of Klerkon's men, which left one alive, the large snub-nosed Smallander Kveldulf, Night Wolf, dark and feral under a dusting of ice. He and Crowbone
