Elvar stood and just looked at Agnar.
“I heard her,” Elvar said. “I heard what Uspa told you.” A heartbeat after those words had left her lips the thought crossed her mind that she should have kept them to herself.
Agnar’s face shifted, a flat look filling his eyes, reinforcing that thought. He does not trust me, she realised.
“Come in,” he said.
Elvar stepped into the room, Grend making to follow her, but Sighvat stepped in front of him.
“Him, too,” Agnar said and Sighvat moved to the side, allowing Grend in.
It was a small room, one window and door, the table Agnar was sat at surrounded by clay ovens and a hearth fire with an iron pot hanging over it. A few dozen barrels of ale and various foods were stacked against the walls, jugs of mead on shelves, and there was a long bench with chopping boards, knives and cleavers, and two straw mattresses laid out on cots.
“You heard?” Agnar said.
Elvar nodded. She opened her mouth to say the name, but Agnar held a hand up.
“Are you staying, or are you going?” he asked her.
Elvar frowned, confused.
“Your father’s offer, of a warband if you return to his side. Are you staying with me, or are you going to join him? I told you to tell me when you are ready, but this…” He waved a hand at Uspa. “This changes things.”
There was a tension in the room, Agnar staring at her intently, and she heard Sighvat’s feet shuffle behind her.
Elvar sucked in a breath. She had forgotten all about her father’s offer with the events of the day.
“I am staying with you. With the Battle-Grim,” she said.
A silence fell, all of them staring at her. She felt Grend’s eyes boring into her back.
“You are certain? If you are to be a part of this conversation, then there is no going back from it,” Agnar said. “No leaving me to tell all that you learn here to your father.”
“I am certain,” she said. “A wolf cannot become a lamb.” She looked at Grend as she said those words. They were Hrung’s last words to her. She had pondered it in her thought-cage all through the night, and was certain she had the right of it. Her father had never been trustworthy, not with her. All her life he had tricked her with clever words and half-truths. Even though his offer seemed all she had ever dreamed of, there must be more to it. He would not just give her all she asked for. It was not in his nature, and the wolf could not become a lamb.
Agnar held her gaze, the silence lengthening, and then he nodded.
“Then sit down,” he said, gesturing to a chair.
Uspa was looking down at her hands.
“Oskutree,” Agnar said to her, “is a myth, a fair-fame tale that warriors like me tell around a hearth fire, to fill our dreams with gold.”
“It is real,” Uspa said, her head snapping up, a twist of her lips. “Look at this world around you, filled with Berserkir and úlfhéenar. Look at where we are: sat in a town and fortress built within and upon a serpent’s skull. Of course Oskutree is real.”
Agnar looked at Kráka.
“All the Tainted know Oskutree to be true,” Kráka said. “The great tree was at the heart of the gods-fall where our ancestors fell; the Guefalla is like a song in our blood.”
Agnar looked between the two Seier-witches.
“The tales tell of it being beyond the vaesen pit, beyond the Isbrún Bridge, beyond Dark-of-Moon Hills,” Elvar said.
“That is a truth,” Uspa nodded. “It is no tale.”
“And if it is a truth, how is it that you know the way?” Agnar asked her. “Two hundred and ninety-seven years are said to have passed since that day when the gods fell, and yet none have ever found it, despite the tales of relics and riches and power.”
“The Graskinna,” Uspa said. “The Grey Skin, a Galdrabok full of dark magic. It tells the way, for those with understanding.”
“Those with understanding?” Agnar questioned.
“Galdurmen, Seier-witches,” Uspa said. “Those who understand the old ways, those who can bend the world with rune and spell.”
“And where is this Graskinna, then?” Agnar said. “Kráka could look at it, confirm to me whether you are telling me the truth, or just some tempting lies to get your son back.”
Kráka nodded. Elvar saw the woman tense, a tremor in her flesh.
She is excited.
“Kráka cannot look at it. No one can,” Uspa said. “I destroyed it.”