Then she’s gone. But I feel my heart beat hard as an earthquake, loud in my ears as if it beats in a cavity as humongous as hers.
The battlefield is quiet.
She was responsible for killing two of the berserkers herself. The third dead berserker is young, maybe twenty, with wide-open eyes. I get up, half-stumbling to him, needing to close his eyes. Another berserker whirls when he hears my boots on the grass and catches me around the waist, pulling me back.
I open my mouth and nothing—nothing!—comes out. My words fail me still, so I push with all my might against this man’s black-clad chest. My fingers squish in the blood-soaked material. He says, “Stop struggling, girl,” then “Balls” as he grabs Unferth’s sword by the blade to keep it away from him.
More arms come around me from behind, gentler but just as strong, and a new voice murmurs, “There, maidling, there.” Jesca sometimes called me that. The fight pours out of me and I let go of everything but the sword. My eyes close and my knees fold. I don’t breathe and there is a pause so long and quiet because my heart stops, too.
All I know is the sword in my hand.
ELEVEN
WE FACE EACH other in a forest of thin white trees. Her eyes, like chunks of aquamarine, loom large. Smoke trails like a curtain around us, dropping flakes of ash into my hair and onto the mother’s great sloping shoulders.
I stare at the crystal flecks of her irises, so human-seeming, but luminous.
She stares back. She shifts her head slightly, studying one of my eyes, and I know she is looking for a rune. Like a Valkyrie would do.
I shove at her cold stone chest and wake with my hands pushed out, flailing off the narrow cot.
Morning light brightens the room, highlighting the hammer of Thor hanging against a peach-colored wall, just beside the door. Crafted from two railroad nails, it’s homemade, with blue yarn wound around the center like the god’s eye. A wallpaper trim of smiling stars and moons and short-handled hammers lines the ceiling. Sunshine courses through the open window, along with a breeze to rattle the billy goat mobile dangling over the empty crib in the corner. The bells on their plastic tails tinkle gently.
As I sit up, gasping for breath, the cot below me creaks. I was brought to this small home on the North Ice military base late last night by a heliplane pilot named Sagan. His wife is called Esma, and she offered their baby daughter’s room immediately, as well as a bath, clean clothes, and sanctuary as long as I need it.
Carefully I stand up. My neck aches, but so does the rest of me. The cracked ribs in my side throb and my shoulder is tight enough it might shatter if I knock into anything. I’m bruised everywhere, though most of my cuts are shallow. A berserker medic glued the worst of them closed last night, but my shower must’ve undone most of that good.
I glance out the curtained window. Everything in this neighborhood is the same taupe color. Row upon row of military housing, with identical front doors and thin walkways. Even the parked cars are all a variation of brown or white or silver. What’s truly strange, though, is the lack of people. Counting backward, I guess today is Thorsday, and so maybe children are in school. But the longer I search for signs of life, the more unnerved I become. There’s not even litter in the gutters to remind me of Odin.
A small pile of clothes waits stacked beside Unferth’s sword. The garnet in the pommel is a dull red this morning, like some life’s gone out of it.
My pulse throbs in my fingertips and I think of her. Your heart.
I put on the clothes left for me: a loose-fitting cotton dress with a sweater to go over it. The collar is so wide it falls off of my shoulder. I make it through most of a normal bathroom routine, aching on the outside, strangely numb and empty in my heart, until just after I spit out my tooth gel and notice my broken fingernails.
Clutching the sink’s edges, I lean into the mirror. There’s so little blood in my cheeks that what’s usually a scatter of freckles across my nose has erupted across my face. A thin cut slices from my left eyebrow back toward my ear, the skin around it alive with a vicious bruise. My hair is a wight’s nest of snarls, as I couldn’t bring myself to unknot all the intricate braids Unferth wove before I collapsed into bed. I hardly recognize my own eyes. A ring of blood stains the white of my left one, brightening the green iris until it nearly glows. Like hers. But no runes dance at the edges of my pupils. And my hair looks so awful I laugh. That laughter shakes up my entire body, punching at my cracked ribs until I have to grip the sink tighter, clench my jaw to keep from puking. Tears spill down my cheeks in two straight lines.
I press my fist against my chest, over my heart. I must keep myself together. The Alfather would expect me to be strong after battle.
But I hear the troll mother’s roar echo in my ears.
She’s still alive. I have to find her, destroy her, chisel her heart from her chest. Not for my riddle but as the blood price for Vinland. For Ned Unferth.
If I am a Valkyrie, it starts here with revenge.
Hands shaking, I dig into my mass of ashy hair to find the little pins Unferth used. One by one I pull them out and drop them into the sink. They ting against the porcelain. Each braid falls, flopping into my face or down my back, around my shoulders. With every gentle tug on my scalp another tear slips past my lashes.
I’ve no idea how long it takes to work out all the knots. My normally straight hair is kinked and ruined, and I wish I had scissors to cut it all off. But I twist it against the base of my skull and take the pins out of the sink. I close my eyes and try to drag up the memory of Ned’s fingers against my scalp, the scratch of pins and the tug as he set them into place. I’ll always have these pins, at least. Laughter pops up again, reflected like panic in my eyes.
I bare my teeth at myself in the mirror, watching for any wisp of this madness escaping through the cracks.
For the slightest moment I see the rune for need spelled out in my freckles.
The kitchen is at the end of the tight, poorly lit hallway. It’s cramped with white cabinets and appliances, with a wooden dining table filling the center so there’s barely any room to maneuver around it. But what it lacks in space it makes up for in friendliness. Creamy wallpaper with tiny yellow and pink flowers cheerfully displays a set of framed butterfly drawings, and the refrigerator is covered in rainbow alphabet magnets. The E and M hold up a Thorist prayer card in which a romantically drawn Thor holds a half-dozen small children in his massive arms.
Esma sits at the head of the table, half her attention on the year-old girl in a cherry-red high chair, the other half on the small muted TV crushed up on the counter between a coffee-maker and standing mixer.
Mother and daughter both have round brown eyes and tight curls that hug their heads. Esma’s skin is darker than the baby’s, glowing smooth and pretty in the warm light.
“Good morning,” I say, but it comes out scratchy, like a horrible radio signal.
The baby slaps her palm against the high-chair tray and Esma turns to me, straightening her shoulders as if grateful for the interruption. “Good morning. Help yourself to cereal or toast, and there’s coffee in the carafe. I’ll finish up in just a moment.”