I hate the north. She stood and stretched, the sealskin cloak she had used as a blanket falling open as she rolled her shoulders, adjusting the weight of her brynja. They were still on the beach at Iskalt, and though the villagers were subdued and kept under guard until they left, she felt safer in her coat of mail.
Other shapes still slept beneath the awning. She saw Biórr’s long boots poking out, that others laughed at. Higher up the beach she saw Grend was crouched beside a fire, ladling porridge from an iron pot into wooden bowls. He saw her and strode over, shingle crunching beneath his boots.
“Snow’s passed,” he said, handing Elvar the porridge. She wrapped her hands around the bowl, heat seeping through her n?lbinding mittens.
“You were supposed to wake me for last watch,” she said with a scowl. Her body was grateful for Grend’s kindness, after the fight with the troll and hard climb into and out of the hills, but she had not risen to her position in the Battle-Grim through avoiding duties. She was the one who always did more, and now she had earned her place in the front row of the shield wall.
Kindness makes you soft, her father’s words whispered.
She blew on her porridge and spooned some into her mouth, enjoying the warmth.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he shrugged. The black circles around his eyes betrayed him for a liar. He was no young warrior any more, the winters laying heavy upon his back, though he could most likely still put any one of the Battle-Grim on their arse, even Sighvat. Elvar had seen him do it, when the mead was flowing around a hearth fire and the warriors were bragging, hurling their challenges like spears. Grend never bragged. He did not need to. Just looking into his eyes was enough.
There was a rumble, like distant thunder, but Elvar felt it rise up through her boots, a tremor in her bones, stones on the beach shifting like sand through fingers. In the distance the slopes of the fire mountain heaved, trees rippling, banks of snow falling and the red veins of molten fire flared bright. Elvar felt a rush of fear, the world seeming to pause as all on the beach stopped what they were doing and stared at the mountain.
And then the world returned to normal, the rumble fading like a distant storm.
“Lik-Rifa chafes at her chains,” Grend muttered.
“The dragon-god is long dead, if she ever lived,” Elvar replied.
Grend looked at her as if she were moon-touched. “All know she did not die on the day of Guefalla with the other gods,” Grend grunted. “She was trapped by deep-cunning in a chamber beneath Oskutree, the Ash Tree, and so could not stand beside her father, Snaka.”
Elvar shrugged. “And what would a dragon find to eat for nearly three hundred years in a chamber of stone and root and soil?” Elvar snorted. “If she ever lived, she is surely dead of starvation.”
“She tears at the souls of warriors as they pass through her chamber on the soul road,” Grend said, “all know this. This is why we must die with a weapon in our fists, to fight her as we pass through Vergelmir, her dark chamber. It is the warriors’ last test.”
“A faery tale to make children behave,” Elvar said, remembering the stories her father had told her and her brothers of Lik-Rifa, and how she would eat children who strayed from their homes at night.
“Then how do you explain that?” Grend said, nodding at the red-veined mountain. “Did you not feel the earth move?”
“Because I do not know the reason for a thing, does not mean that a dragon-god did it,” Elvar said.
“This is why you have no friends,” Grend huffed and shook his head.
“Huh,” Elvar grunted and went back to her porridge.
As she ate, she searched the beach and saw warriors from the Battle-Grim emerging from village huts, many rolling barrels of pickled fish and brine-salted shark meat down to the pier and the Wave-Jarl. Two men carried a rope-tied bundle of walrus ivory. Others hefted rolled furs on their shoulders, pelts of bear and reindeer and arctic fox. Two warriors herded a half-dozen bleating goats down the beach to the pier. Agnar appeared in his black bearskin cloak, Sighvat behind him, leading the Hundur-thrall and the new captive, Berak, by chains, a dozen Battle-Grim warriors following them. Other warriors appeared, escorting Berak’s wife and child on to the beach.
Agnar saw Elvar and changed his course, striding towards her as Sighvat put a horn to his lips and blew, the sound loud and melancholy, echoing along the beach. All who were still clinging to sleep beneath the Wave-Jarl’s spare sail were awake now, crawling out on to the shingle and grumbling at the cold. Spear shafts were taken down and the sail rolled. Elvar saw Biórr rise to his feet, bleary-eyed, black hair a tangle. He saw her and dipped his head, gave her a smile.