Oddny stepped up beside her, looking furious on her behalf.
“Give me that,” Oddny said, and Arinbjorn handed his axe over.
Gunnhild noted the amused looks on the faces around her. Of course the hird didn’t think that tiny Oddny could do any better than Gunnhild had done, but Gunnhild knew better.
Oddny barely looked at the target before she threw.
The axe thudded into the centermost circle.
She turned to the small crowd of shocked faces, shrugged, and said, “Farm girl.”
Utter silence followed this pronouncement.
“Well,” Arinbjorn said at last, “it seems Oddny Coal-brow has quite an arm.”
Svein pumped a fist and said, “Coal-brow!” And the rest of the men joined the chant: “Coal-brow! Coal-brow! Coal-brow!”
Oddny laughed, seeming both nervous and delighted, until Eirik got up—much to the offense of the women doting on him, who shot Oddny dirty looks as they left—and handed her the pitcher he’d been drinking out of, and at the men’s encouragement she took a long draught. They cheered and Eirik clapped her hard on the back, causing her to spill some of the ale.
Gunnhild, not at all offended by Oddny’s showing her up, took this opportunity to steal away to Freyja’s grove, where she could enjoy what remained of her time out of the public eye, and collect the bundle of twigs she’d need for the sacrifice. Queen Gyda had been right about one thing: After the disablot, people would know her face.
Tonight, everything would change.
22
ODDNY LOST GUNNHILD IN the chaos that erupted after her first axe throw. In spite of drinking far too much ale, she managed to best Arinbjorn six out of ten. After, Svein asked if he could put Oddny up on his shoulders for a victory lap, and she allowed herself to be paraded around the estate amid shouts of “Coal-brow!” She didn’t know how the hird had come to learn her nickname, but she didn’t care. The guests, many already drunk by midday, took up the chant as they passed, despite not having the slightest idea what had happened.
When Oddny returned to the workshop near suppertime, she found that Gunnhild had already changed into her ritual gown and was combing her hair, which fell in gentle waves to her waist. The plain linen dress that Oddny had sewn for her was stiff in its newness, sun bleached to a bone white, and soon to be dappled with sacrificial blood.
“How do I look?” Gunnhild asked her for the second time that day.
After a moment’s contemplation, Oddny said, “Like a woman in her underclothes. Who, in a very short time, is going to become someone to fear.”
“That’s the idea,” Gunnhild said with a grin.
As they left the workshop, Oddny could see Hrafnhild and the other kitchen staff filing toward the longhouse, carrying pitchers of ale, while Hrafnhild herself led a healthy-looking bull by a rope. Oddny felt for the poor creature, but knew that it would feel no pain, and its sacrifice would please the disir and nourish all the guests in attendance.
“Well,” said Oddny, “shall we?”
* * *
—
ODDNY HAD NEVER SEEN anywhere else lit so brightly at nighttime. As there were too many guests to fit into the temple, the disablot would occur in the longhouse, and the air was thick with the scents of woodsmoke and sweat and alcohol. Trestle tables and benches had been set up all around the hall, except for the spaces marked out for the sacrifice and for the skalds’ performances later. The gold stamps adorning the posts seemed to glow in the light from the hearth fires, the hanging braziers, and the lamps on each table.
Oddny hovered near the door with Runfrid and Ulla, who were holding lanterns, waiting to aid in the short procession that would follow the ceremony. Oddny had left her belt and knife outside the door, as no weapons were allowed save for the one that would be used to carry out the sacrifice. Like many of the other guests, the two women had stripped down to their linen underlayers so as not to mar their everyday clothing with blood, and Oddny followed suit. She held her wool dress wadded in a ball under one arm, her mother’s statue of Eir tucked under the other, and waited between Runfrid and Ulla, the three of them silent and anxious on Gunnhild’s behalf.
They didn’t have to wait long. A shallow dais had been built at the front of the hall, and atop it stood Gunnhild next to a massive flat stone that had been hauled in to serve as an altar, and to which the stunned bull had been tied. The statues of the gods lurked above and behind her on the lintel.
Once the hall had filled up and gone quiet, Gunnhild began.
She was a sight to behold, the firelight casting her hair in red-gold and turning her eyes to glowing embers. But what Oddny found most arresting was Gunnhild’s confidence, as well as her utter lack of expression, as though she was a woman possessed. The way Gunnhild carried herself reminded Oddny distinctly of the old seeress on that night so long ago, the booming of her voice harking back to Heid’s own as Gunnhild said all the right words: thanking the disir for granting good fortunes this past year, dedicating the bull to them, and asking them to bestow health and prosperity upon everyone present. Then Eirik—dressed similarly to her in a simple linen undertunic and pants—came forward with a plain but wickedly sharp axe and took off the creature’s head with one swing, sending a spray of blood across himself and the people seated nearby.
Oddny always winced at that part, for it could go horribly wrong if the axe wasn’t sharp enough or its wielder wasn’t strong enough, but by and large decapitation was better than other ways of killing, which would prolong the animal’s suffering. Its blood ran down the altar stone and into a large clay bowl etched with runes, but soon the dais was also soaked, a red puddle spreading to where Gunnhild stood, soaking her bare feet and the hem of her underdress bright red.
Eirik set the axe—now dented from where it had hit the stone—against the altar, and returned to his seat. Next to him, King Harald and Thora sat together on a bench, its back and arms carved and painted with knotwork dragons. A few children in the hall started bawling, Hakon included, and Thora held him in her lap, murmuring soothing words. On the king’s other side, Queen Gyda sat in her own carved chair and looked on with cool detachment.
Across the hall, Oddny spotted a woman who could only be Thorbjorg: small, pale haired, clad in all the trappings of her profession, face carefully blank as she observed the spectacle. Beside Thorbjorg sat a tall woman, older, with dark brown hair and an eye patch. She was dressed similarly to Thorbjorg and glared at Gunnhild with such open hatred that Oddny was surprised that her friend hadn’t yet burst into flames from the intensity of her stare.
This was Katla, Oddny realized. She’d watched Gunnhild’s swallow take the eagle’s eye herself.
Gunnhild gave no indication that she noticed the other witches—or anyone else in the hall, focused as she was on her work. And it was not lost on Oddny that the moments Eirik fulfilled his part of the ceremony were the only time he’d taken his eyes off Gunnhild.
When the bowl was full, Gunnhild lifted it over her head. The three hearth fires, along with the flames of every lamp and brazier, suddenly rose in unison—causing the crowd to gasp—and then returned to normal as Gunnhild brought the bowl back down. She extracted a bundle of twigs from her sleeve, dipped them in the blood, dabbed them across her own forehead, then dipped them once more and flung the red droplets out onto the assembly; she did this again and again as she moved around the hall, making sure each person was touched. Many guests held up effigies of the gods from their own homes and altars to be blessed. Oddny raised her mother’s statue of Eir, and next to her, Runfrid did the same with a small figure carved in the likeness of the bow-hunting goddess Skadi.