“Why did you come tonight? Why are you throwing your heaven away now, after everything?”
His eyes drop to my mouth and he sucks air through his teeth. “Because you are glorious. I see in you something I haven’t seen since Valtheow. And I want it more than a thousand years in heaven. I want to be as brave as you. I know I should have warned you on Vinland, and there’s no forgiveness for that. I’m acting now, before it’s too late again. Not because I have anything to gain.” He laughs that one barking laugh. “But because it’s what you would do. Because it is right.”
Because it is right. The same reason I gave Soren.
I wrap my arms around Ned, to give myself something to cling to, to feel his breath on my neck. His hands make fists against my back and he buries his face in my neck.
After a moment of silence, I ask, “Was it truly so horrible?”
“Being dead?” His voice is muffled, warm against my skin.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps it wouldn’t be to everyone, but oh yes, I despised it. I thought there was nothing I would not have agreed to, in order to be free of that killing field.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“For what?”
“All your pain.”
“Odd-eye, don’t be kind to me.” He pushes me away.
I lean back onto my heels. “If you’d had kindness before, none of this would ever have happened.”
“Our gods are not forgiving.”
“Maybe sometimes they’re wrong. You shouldn’t have been punished for hundreds of years, not so long. Not forever. It gave you no chance to grow or change or find redemption.” I put my hand on Unferth’s chest. He’s sharp and hard and surrounded by this bitter pain, but inside he’s a poet. He’s good. I know it. I see it. Truth in his eyes.
“You’ll bore a hole in me with that look,” he mutters.
“I don’t need a hole there to see what you’re made of.”
He lowers his eyes and whispers poetry from The Song of Beowulf: “And, gold-adorned, the queen stepped forth.”
I hold his hand and lean my head on his shoulder for the rest of the drive.
TWENTY-SIX
THE CITY OF the dead spreads out around me, marble glowing like pieces of the moon fallen to earth. I sit cross-legged, facing a woman with black hair in two thick braids down either side of her face, hollow cheeks, a smile carved to hold laughter.
We speak of family and the old television I watched with my mother and father on those rare weekends when they decided satisfaction meant snuggling under blankets just the three of us, when we never got dressed or even brushed our teeth, but only ate sugar toast and the most activity was tickle torture during commercial breaks. I tell the woman those were the times I first felt wild, when I shrieked and cried for relief but begged them not to stop. She says her first encounter with madness was at a wedding, a night made brilliant by bonfires and drums.
I tell her, I’m waiting for you on an island.
And she says, I’m coming.
It’s sunlight that wakes me, warming my face.
Grass tickles my hands and cheek. I sit up. The sun is high. I fell asleep on the scraggly grass mound on the northwest edge of Fort Massadchuset. Salty sea air ruffles the wisps of hair around my face and I wince into the light.
We arrived last night after midnight, under a low, oblong moon, and it was only the UV lights we’d torn off the semi that let us find the long boardwalk reaching out from the narrow island into the sea where we could tie the trawler off. Red Stripe had to climb over the boat and plop into the water. I rode on his shoulder as he struggled up the steep sand bank in the darkness toward the fort. Cold ocean soaked my jeans and I was crusted with pale sand by the time we made it to the brick wall and around to the only entrance to the fort. The berserkers were there, affixing the UV spotlights in ways that gave us light but didn’t bar Red Stripe from the arched doorway. The sally port, Rathi called it, unable to hide his admiration for the construction. All I saw were bricks.
I took Red Stripe through the three-meter brick tunnel into the inner courtyard and trudged back down the long dock to help the rest unload all our supplies. And Ned, of course. Sharkman led him by a slipknot noose around his neck. It pinched my heart to see it, knowing what I knew, but I allowed it to happen and climbed up the narrow turret stairs to the grassy roof of the fort with a spear and handheld light to keep watch in case she was right behind us.
After an hour or so my eyes burned for sleep as I scanned the black waves and shoreline for any oddities, and Soren relieved me. I curled up right there to dream.
Now in the daylight I can see the whole of the fort and island and can’t imagine a more perfect place.
It’s probably three or four kilometers from tip to tip, curved toward the mainland like a young moon, all white sand and rough green grass and inner saltwater bogs. No trees, no tall dunes that a greater mountain troll might use for shelter or shield. We control the fort, the only permanent structure other than the boardwalk connecting the sides of the island and the flat wooden patio with its falling-down picnic tables and old restroom facilities.
The fort itself is a great circle of concrete and brick, sunk down into the ocean floor at the inner edge of the island. Rathi told me on the ship last night it was built to protect the mainland against the Anglish during the War of 1812 but not completed until the rebel army took control during the Thralls’ War. It had thirteen cannons at one point, and you can still count the crumbled mounting platforms. I stand on one of the grass embrasures and could walk the entire perimeter if I wished. Down in the half-circle parade ground the Mad Eagles have set up a large baby-blue tarp on tall poles next to one of the three turret stairs. Soren perches on a folding stool under its shade, sipping coffee and watching the three berserkers work out. The folding chairs lean against a brick furnace with a small hearth and chimney.
Red Stripe shelters below me, under one of the brick archways lining the parade, and Sharkman tied Ned up in a sublevel storage room rather like a cave.
A soft yell draws my attention back to the Mad Eagles. They stand in a line in the center of the grassy parade ground, exercising. As I watch, they cry out again in a single voice, moving in unison through a series of defensive postures. Their swords shine in the sun.
I slide down the steep grass embrasure and land on the brick footpath that runs around the inner circumference of cannon mounts. There’s a more modern metal rail, filthy with salt and rust, to keep tourists from pitching over into the inside.
Even the seven of us should be able to hold this place against the troll mother, especially if we have warning from Red Stripe. But he’s given no indication yet that he’s aware of anything the rest of us aren’t, and so we can’t rely on him. As I go carefully down the dark turret stairs, the sense of my dream rushes back to me. The woman in Valkyrie braids who spoke with a smile of the Alfather’s madness. The sense that we were old friends; the comfort between us had been gentle and warm. And yet, I know in my heart it was a dream of the troll mother. I told her where to find me.
I join Soren under the mess tarp. He silently points to a package of toothbrushes sitting on the plastic folding table, and then to the ten-gallon water jug hanging from one of the poles. He doesn’t take his eyes off the Mad Eagles. “The toilets outside don’t flush, but Thebes and I made a compost on the other side of the building first thing.”