Big yellow eyes creak open and the troll cries out, pushing away from us, but he’s chained to the floor and can’t go anywhere.
Unferth lowers his sword and says tentatively, “Wrong?”
The troll is at least a meter taller than me, thick and shaped like a giant gorilla. He winces from the light, one wide yellow eye on me. He’s awkward and broken and how can his heart possibly mean anything to the Alfather?
I spin and stalk away, kicking a dusty mead bottle. It skitters across the floor and shatters against the far wall. “It’s not right! I could never sacrifice a half-broken animal or man to my god. What honor could he bring to Odin? What could this heart possibly prove?” I jam the seax back into its sheath. “Rag me.”
The troll groans loudly enough to shake the shards of glass that litter the floor. I have a devastating urge to feed him.
“Here, stop.” Unferth thumps the troll on the chest, and the troll swipes at him with his one good hand. Unferth touches his sword to the troll’s stomach and presses lightly, but enough that the tip cuts in. The troll howls as tiny streaks of violet blood drip down his belly.
“This sword is an unhallowed blade and made to kill the likes of you, so behave,” Unferth says to the troll, then turns his back. The beast leans down onto his haunches, curls his only arm around his belly pathetically.
I stare at Unferth as he limps toward me. “Unhallowed? What does that mean?”
Eyes tight and leaning onto his good leg, Unferth wipes a smear of purple blood off his blade and onto his pants. “Cursed. A blade that has been used for ill. You have an imagination, little raven, use it.”
“How was it cursed?”
Unferth’s mouth opens, but for once he remains silent. There is no sudden mean cut of a smile, no disarming poem. He doesn’t want to tell me.
“How, Truth-Teller?”
His lips tighten. “I killed my brother with it.”
Like a hammer thrown down, the words hit hard.
Kinslayer.
Unferth goes fast, ungracefully, toward the stairs.
Something like anticipation thrills through me, hot and melting. I hug myself and take deep breaths; I turn to the troll. “Red Stripe,” I murmur, naming him for the strip of scarlet lichen. “Do you think it’s not you or me but Ned Unferth who has a heart of stone?”
The troll sings a low note to agree with me.
Unferth stomps back upstairs with a stained and many-times-folded map to lay out our new options for the winter. He says Red Stripe was probably alone only because he was thrashed out of his herd for being puny or for this groaning he does. We need to find safe ground because if this troll knows of the place, so will his mother. Unferth’s refrain is the same as it was at the ruins of Montreaclass="underline" we want to be the hunters, not the hunted. We should leave the troll here and continue up the coast as was the plan. But I can’t shove Red Stripe back out into the harsh wilderness to face his tormentors already missing an arm.
Reluctantly, Unferth says we might find a safe haven among the northern homesteads, except there’s no certainty that other trolls, other herds, wouldn’t find us. We’d have no chance against an entire herd. If I insist on caring for the beast, he thinks it’s better to wait through the coldest, iciest months and go hunting again with the thaw. I’ve already waited this long; what’s four more months?
An eternity.
“You can always change your mind about this one,” Unferth says as he thumps his fist against Red Stripe’s solid belly.
But I know better. This troll’s gentle, needy gaze is too innocent, too simple. He’s nothing like the trolls in the stories, and it’s difficult to imagine him razing a city to the ground. More like he’s a doe-eyed cow or pygmy mammoth to be protected. Some of his groaning sounds like please.
Unferth nods tightly and says, “I spent last winter on an island nearby, where there are few people, an isolated tower for him, with ample practice grounds to continue improving your skills and hunting. They have electricity, running water, fine mead, and best of all they know me already and will trust me well enough when we drag this beast into their midst. We’ll be able to leave him there protected when it thaws if we position it well.”
I wait, expecting he offered such a long list of pros because it must have a rather hefty con.
Unferth smiles. “Jellyfish Cove, on the island of Vinland.”
My stomach twists.
Vinland is the northern territory where the Summerlings moved after I climbed the Tree. My wish-parents, Rome and Jesca, whom I’ve not seen in ten years. Who may hate me or, worse, have forgotten me. “That is not a good idea, Unferth.”
“Because you’re afraid of your family.”
“I’m not afraid of anything, you tick-eating old man.”
“Then give me your reason.” He smiles his challenge, for he knows I don’t have a better one.
Once the recent snow melts enough to drive—it’s early enough in the winter that the sun can still manage that—I wait with Red Stripe while Unferth returns to Toronto for a massive van we can pile the troll into without breaking the shocks. I follow behind in the truck. We make it to a tiny town named Seven Islands in about ten hours of very slow driving, and Unferth rents a ferry. Or rather, Unferth trades the van and two barrels of old wine for the winter’s use of the flat, sturdy boat. With ourselves, our gear, Red Stripe, and the truck all loaded up, we sail the Gulf of Lawrence. Unferth complains constantly but silently, and any time I think of cutting Red Stripe loose I can barely breathe. The beast looks at me as if I’m his herd mother now, and I won’t betray that, even if I should. We finally arrive, seventeen days before Yule, at the northernmost tip of Vinland.
An icy island of alpine tundra and inland mountains, Vinland was home to the oldest settlement of Vikers from Scandia. Gudrid Far-Traveler and her family landed here a thousand years ago, longing for new land to make their own. It was the ruins of her longhouse, found by archaeologists, that led to the National Historic Site the Summerlings currently run. I have vague memories of Rome’s excitement at being asked, Jesca’s worry that it would be too isolated for raising children. Rome thought it would be good for me especially—space enough to run wild if I liked and maybe drag Rathi out into freedom with me. But I never made it here until today.
Brisk wind blows across the ocean, making me think on the cold, deadly hand of destiny.
The island is untamed where we come ashore, no sign of people but for the signal tower. Boulders left by some ancient glacier tumble near the water, and the beaches are stone and pebbles. Cormorants and gulls hover in the salty wind. There are no trees at all, but tufts of dead grass and low, rough bushes cling to the shallow hills, and frozen streams cut through the valleys, shimmering with sunlight like diamond veins. Rathi told me about it last summer when we were together in New Netherland, about the detailed historical reenactments and elaborate theater of the Viker Festival, how he thought I’d adore the drama and poetry. He showed me pictures of the pennants and tents, the cobblestone lanes and whitewashed cottages. But mostly he showed me the wild land and loud ocean, the desperate beauty of everything. Rathi remembered I loved my beauty raw.
Unferth and I anchor the ferry as near the rocky beach as we can, using the butts of the troll-spears to shove chunks of ice out of our way. The bergs glare blue-white like the hottest of flames as they bob gently. We leave a sun-calcified Red Stripe on the ferry and jump into the water to wade to shore with bags held high over our heads.
My legs and hips grow so cold so fast I think they’ll shatter.