by Maike Claussnitzer
in Issue 94, November 2019
I first saw Orm the Skald again after the hall of Straela-by-the-Sound had burned to the ground, when my lord Ragnar picked his way through smoke and ruin to claim what was his by the sword now. It might have been his by inheritance, had his grandmother not decreed that the longship should go to him, and the hall and its lands to Gunnor, his sister, younger in years, but richer in honor. Yet, as his grandmother had said as well, it is not the honorable who win battles, but those with a sharp blade and a bleak heart. Ragnar did not want for either.
“I suppose you want him for your bed now?” he asked in passing, the tip of his stained sword briefly pointing left, his long stride carrying him towards the tower still brooding on the hilltop as it had for a hundred years.
He was not the first to presume Orm and I had been lovers in our youth. I thought them foolish, for I knew that Orm liked his women flax-haired and fleet-tongued, not dark and dour. But we had not been mere friends, either. Gunnor had been a friend until she had turned her back on me at that Wendish outpost south of Jumne ten years before, just like Halfdan and Thorun and some of those who lay dead among the smoldering beams of the hall now. Orm had been more than a friend to me, and I to him.
We were both born ghostspeakers, you see; such things will force an alliance.
***
Orm had come to Straela one autumn eighteen years ago, lithe and lank and barely having gained a man’s voice, with hair like ripe wheat and laughing eyes. He had been with his teacher Arni then, fabled Arni, who had sung the great Lay of the Battle of Markholt at Jarl Einar’s court and possibly at Queen Grimhild’s, too, though we only had his own protestations to go by.
They stayed for the winter with their songs and tales, weaving webs of words by the fire to make us forget the cold and the storms and lean days. Arni left with the first ship that sailed down the sound when the cranes were flying in spring, but Orm was Lady Hervor’s skald from then on and her granddaughter’s later.
It was that spring that I discovered he could see the ghosts I saw. One evening, his gaze followed a tiny sparrow spook up to the rafters, and I found myself saying: “There are more of them in the stables.”
Orm looked at me then, and while I fancied myself a great warrior already, he must have seen a mere girl, pale in the firelight and tall for her age, though scarcely old enough to have learnt the ways of the sword from Halfdan for the past couple of years. I had my mother’s aptitude for it, Halfdan claimed, but she had died young and left me little else, save for my strange name from the lands of her youth beyond the Western Sea and some wanderlust that would serve me well later.
“I shall visit them,” Orm said, and just like that, we became friends and more, sharing the sparrow ghosts and the nightly weepers and wailers as well as the mad chieftain of days long past who would rant at imaginary foes in the courtyard. His voice was eerily like Orm’s, and perhaps that was why the old ghost would listen to him when he told him sternly not to scare the chickens any longer.
That summer, there were long walks and long talks. Ever so often, our wanderings would take us down to the sound, to a sunny spot near the sea buckthorn bushes where they grew not far from the pine wood. Thence we would watch the birds, the boats on the glittering water, and the cormorant ghosts silently helping their living siblings to find the best fishing grounds.
“Lady Hervor wants me to sing of the carnage at Markholt again,” Orm said one afternoon when we were sitting there, my arms tired from mock battles I had fought with Ragnar earlier that day.
The way he phrased it, as if he thought little of Arni’s lay, made me raise my head. “It is a good song of worthy deeds,” I replied, some strange stirring deep inside me making me want to defend the tune and the grand words that went with it.
“Maybe,” Orm said, “but it ends in blood and death and thralldom, with not a single honorable man left alive.”
“But that is how all good songs end,” I said, laughing, good songs being, in my youthful eyes, those of noble heroes, named swords and numberless fights.
Orm smiled then, a sad smile. “Aye, songs that end well are for fools and children, they say.”
I wanted to argue that there were quite enough songs that ended well, but true enough, those that spread good cheer were either those that told no tale or those that had neither battle-king nor sea-queen, but only merry farmers, clever foxes, or make-belief silliness meant for the youngest indeed.
I had some inkling that Orm would have preferred another sort of song, one fit for the grown and for Lady Hervor’s hall and yet without so dire a doom awaiting. I thought he would never find that sort of tale – not if it should ring true – and, meaning to sound wise, I told him what Hervor had once said: “That is because battles are won by those with sharp blades and bleak hearts.”
“A sharp blade you may have, but not a bleak heart,” Orm said, and on that summer-mild day in the sand beneath the sea buckthorn, he may still have believed it was so.
That day, those who deemed us lovers might almost have been right. Perhaps, I could have turned that hint of longing his words woke in me into a kiss if I had tried very hard. But Halfdan had found our hiding place and was calling for me, and that evening, guests came to Hervor’s hall, a flax-haired girl among them. Orm and I did not go for our walk the following afternoon. Yet the fair stranger did not see a single ghost, and she left Orm’s side again, while I stayed.
Others came and went. Years passed, some good and some bad. I buried my father, who had always told me I deserved better than a skald who preferred to sing for fools and children.
The summer after he had gone to the gods, I earned my second name.
It was all Harald’s fault for going a-viking without need. He was a proud man, Harald, son to Hervor and father to Ragnar and Gunnor, and when he was in his fiftieth year, he chafed more than ever at biding in his mother’s shadow. He had sailed west twice in his youth, but now, he was content to go east a little way, because he had been told that there were rich spoils to be had at that Wendish place upriver from Jumne.
A fast raid, some full chests, a few people slain before the rest fled – that could have been it, and yet, it was not, for those Wends of the tower by the river left behind two prisoners when they ran. At least, that was what they claimed to be, a merchant from Lunde and his half-grown son, taken by Wendish robbers when their boat had run aground. They were in fetters, and there was a deep wound in the father’s leg, so I thought they were not lying. But Harald was doubtful, and Ragnar claimed straightaway that the Wends had saddled us with two of their own to spy on us.
“We should cut their throats and be done with it,” he said.
“That would be ill done,” Gunnor told him. A few others nodded, Orm and Thorun among them, and someone murmured that killing two helpless men under a roof where one meant to rest was bad luck.
“Kill them outside, then,” Ragnar said without pity.
We could have freed the strangers or, failing that, we might have taken them with us to send word to Lunde to find out if they could pay the ransom they had promised.
But Harald took his son’s side, and most in our small warband would not gainsay him. So it was decided, but swords were slow to be drawn, and in the end, he offered the finest silver beaker he had claimed for himself that day to whoever would do the deed.
I saw greed in some eyes, hesitation in others, and it was then that I knew what I had to do.
“I shall see to it,” I declared, and ere my courage could leave me, I grabbed the boy, judging that he would be easier to deal with, and led him to the door.
Orm stood in my way quite deliberately then, but Ragnar laughed and shouldered him aside, and I pushed the trembling lad downhill to the bushes by the riverbank, where I could do what had to be done far from prying eyes.
Back I went, and they stared at me when I entered the tower again, but I would not be deterred and took the father by the arm. It did take me longer to drag him down to the riverside, for he fought me all the way in spite of his bad leg. He cursed me with every step, and then again one last time when my blade bit his skin. He knew some wild and wondrous curses, that one, and I regretted that our acquaintance was necessarily short.
When I returned to the tower with blood on my hands, Gunnor turned away from me, and quite many of the others were whispering among themselves. Harald gave me a grim nod, though, and seemed vaguely pleased with me until the Wends returned in force later that day and planted an arrow in his throat.
Those who escaped to the longship with me called me Meara Bloodhand from then on. Well, to be fair: Orm did not, for he never spoke a word with me again.
Back in Straela, I tried to find him by the sea buckthorn three or four times, for what I had done weighed heavily upon my heart, and I longed to tell him and explain my reasons. But Orm would not be found, and after a while, I gave up trying.
Five months passed, and under the dreary clouds of waning autumn, Lady Hervor died, having lost her daughter-in-law, her son, and her best boar-hunting dog all within a single year. Not quite with her last breath, but close to it, she gave Ragnar the ship and Gunnor the lands, and I turned away from them both. Gunnor would not have me, and I did not wait for Ragnar to ask me to join him.
For years, I was a sellsword instead, traveling far and wide; I even got close to Miklagard once or twice, but never quite there.
I was in Jumne once more when I heard that Ragnar, who had not quite turned into the invincible sea-king he had hoped to become, had set his sights on Straela-by-the-Sound again. I thought it a good time to join his warband, and so I watched burn what had remained of my youth.
***
“Want him?” Ragnar repeated his offer to grant me a thrall for my lonely nights.
I am not prone to needless lies, so I shall not deny that I contemplated accepting his gift. It might have been advisable for more than one reason (and, no, that reason not being that Orm’s outraged snort was the first thing to bring a wry smile to my face that grim day). But I knew him too well to hope that cajoling him into making himself useful straightaway would be easy. So I shook my head, and Ragnar walked on with a shrug.
“Let the slaver from Lunde have all of those fools, then,” he said.
Rumor had it that a merchant had approached Ragnar in Jumne already, offering him a very good price for any prisoners he might wish to get rid of later. Usually, traders of that ilk are tipped off in advance when a raid is afoot, and I knew for a fact that it had been so in this case. Ragnar had been quick to agree, and the merchant’s sluggish knarr was waiting in the sound now, right next to Ragnar’s longship. The thralls and servants of Straela Ragnar would gladly keep, but those faithful to Gunnor, her fighters and her skald, had to go.
“It would not be a great loss to me if you took him, though,” Ragnar said three steps later. “The merchant will only pay half as much for a crippled man, I wager.”
That brought me up short, and I finally chanced a look at the few who remained of those who had drawn steel for Gunnor this night. Strangers were guarding them, a Neustrian spearwoman and a lad from Hedeby, not Ragnar’s swordsiblings from Straela.
There were only four prisoners, chained together in one neat row and made to sit on the soot-covered ground near what was left of the well house. Young Thoralf had grown since I had last seen him – hardly a feat, since he had been a tiny mite of three years by then. Now he was bound between his mother Thorun, who looked sick with fear for him, and Halfdan, who towered over the boy even as he sat half-slumped, meeting my gaze unafraid, but with deep disdain. At the far end of the line, next to Thorun, was Orm, limp and wan.
But what I saw was not quite as bad as what I did not see. For all I knew, there should have been a hand at the end of his left arm. There was none, only a dirty and bloodied tangle of linen rags.
We looked at each other, and beneath all grudges old and new, some measure of common ground remained, the shared knowledge that the ghosts of the freshly slain were around us, gray like fog and too silent for comfort, while Hervor, paler than any of them, haunted her ruined house to take stock of what Ragnar had wrought.
I held Orm’s gaze, and answering was hard, but I forced myself to say very clearly: “Who knows? There might be a pretty song or two in this, and people have been known to pay well for those.”
Orm looked at me blankly, and I turned away to follow Lord Ragnar to the squat tower that was his now.
The room on the ground floor and the storage cellar were barely damaged, and Ragnar, putting away his sword, sank down on the bench where he had last sat to play dice the night before Hervor’s death and called for a slave to bring him beer or wine, if any was to be found.
A frightened old man hurried down the stairs to do as bidden, and there was a lull while Ragnar’s most faithful gathered around him, tired from a night spent sneaking towards Straela on deer trails and troll paths and the long fight afterwards.
Some Frankish wine did appear after a while, plenty to go around and not sour enough to scare us off. A bird was singing outside, uncaring that the world had ended a little. Arngrim, who had grown up with us here, started bragging that he alone had killed three of Gunnor’s warriors before dawn and might have taken that silly skald’s head right after his hand, if Halfdan had not been quick to come to his rescue.
I might have said something I would have regretted then, had Ragnar not looked towards the wooden stairs leading up, remarking: “Speaking of Gunnor, she takes her sweet time dying, does she not?”
For Gunnor was not among the fallen yet. She had taken an arrow to the shoulder when we had first attacked, and her people had carried her to the room above, treating her wound as best they could. Now, two of Ragnar’s men were guarding the door, and Gunnor could have been dead already if he had said the word. He had not, hoping, perhaps, that she would mount the steed to Walhalla without his holding her stirrup.
“That could be hastened along,” one of the Hedeby mercenaries said, eying Ragnar and silently daring him to be the one to finish the conquest himself.
But Arngrim laughed aloud ere Ragnar could answer and, pointing at me, exclaimed: “And I know who to ask!”
Some of those who had been at the tower near Jumne cheered, drunk with wine and blood, and a chill crept into my bones.
I had a mind to refuse and walk out, but before I could open my mouth, Lady Hervor’s ghost was before me, feathery and fierce, and took little heed of the mad chieftain dancing around her, bellowing his rage at foes unseen, as he was wont to do.
She gazed at me out of hollow old eyes and spoke with a voice like cold steel: “What one has done once, one can do again, so get yourself up there! Thrice before last night, I showed myself to Gunnor.” For if need forces their hand, ghosts can make themselves seen and heard by all. “Thrice, I told her it was foolish not to flee. Thrice, she would not heed me. All other ways are barred now, so do what you did by that riverbank, and do it well.”
With that, she was gone, and I found myself swallowing.
The chieftain’s ghost howled and raged, and the first taunts were hurled at me, questioning my loyalty, my strength, and my courage.
Ragnar’s gaze grew a bit too thoughtful as he drank, not even knowing that the wild old chieftain passed through him twice before he lowered his cup again.
He meant to speak, but I was faster. “I shall do it, then,” I said, “but once Gunnor is dead, I want her properly buried.”
“That, I shall grant,” Ragnar said, relieved he did not have to take the matter into his own hands.
“Grant me Orm, too,” I added, a memory from days long gone clearer in my head than anything else. “I have changed my mind; I may have need of him yet.”
“Granted as well,” Ragnar said, leisurely waving his hand, and out I went to get Orm.
When I reached the well house again, Merchant Leif from Lunde had just arrived, two stout men from his ship by his side. He was young yet, ten or twelve years older than Thoralf at most, but broad-shouldered, with a fine dark beard, a cloak of soft wool, and silver bangles at his wrists. He nodded to me, as we had met before, and continued his pleasantries with the Neustrian.
The lad from Hedeby, for his part, was not devoid of all pity: I caught him holding a leather flask to Orm’s lips. It seemed to contain something stronger than water, probably stronger than our Frankish wine as well, and so I snatched it away as fast as I could.
They both stared at me with faint surprise, and the Hedeby boy protested: “What are you doing? This is just to dull the pain …”
“There are others who may have more need of dulling their pain than some thrall,” I replied, taking a sip and finding the mead-laced concoction of herbs serviceable to my ends.
“Some thrall indeed,” Orm said, his eyes speaking the curse he would not voice, the ghosts around us whispering and moaning.
I looked at him, and I may even have smiled, stoppering the flask and tying it to my belt. “I may let you have some of this yet, if you decide to be helpful. Can you wash a dead body with that one hand of yours?”
“What?” Orm asked, thoroughly baffled by my question, for the fallen the thralls had been dragging towards a shallow pit all morning had not been treated with that much care.
“You can,” I announced, beaming at him, and turning to the lad from Hedeby, I added: “Unchain him. I will keep him, after all. But get me a strong rope, just for safety. There should be one in the stables. And draw me a bucket of water, too, will you?”
The boy glanced at me doubtfully, but finally left to look for the rope, and I bent down to Orm with a leer that had him recoil. I would have none of it, but leaned close to his ear, announcing: “And what else I require of you, I shall tell you now, but just between the two of us.”
Leif the merchant laughed aloud at that, and the Neustrian with him, and I whispered into Orm’s ear what I had to say. I had never shared his gift with words, but now, raw need had me find the right phrases, and I finished just before the lad returned with the rope.
Orm went even paler than before as I spoke. When he looked at me again, his face was anguished. “I should have known,” he said tonelessly.
“You might have known indeed,” I replied and stepped back so they could get those chains off Orm and drag him to his feet.
There is no good way to fetter a one-handed man with a rope. The young sellsword from Hedeby did his best, but in the end, I told him not to bother.
“We do not need this now,” I said, grinning wildly at Orm, who looked as if he might be sick any moment, “only later. I do not wish for any unpleasantness to occur when there should only be joy. Come, Orm – we are going.”
I think Thorun may have called me worse names than “Bloodhand” then, at least until the Neustrian whacked her over the head and told her to shut up.
I would not know, for I refused to listen while I stalked back towards the tower, my left hand like a shackle around Orm’s good wrist, my right hand carrying a rope and a bucket sloshing with water for a corpse that still lived.
On the doorstep, Orm straightened, and for a heartbeat or two, he was the confident skald again, not the scared prisoner who lacked a hand and all hope.
“You should mourn Lady Gunnor and curse those who burned her hall. Weep for her loudly, so all can hear you,” he said sternly.
“Be silent,” I hissed at him, as I had to, and he said no more as we hurried onward, past Ragnar’s frozen face and the jibes and jeers of his warriors, up the stairs to the closed door and the two silent guards. I left Orm and the bucket with them and went in alone.
Gunnor was white-faced, her tunic in tatters, but she sat up when I entered, and she did not seem quite as close to death as Ragnar may have hoped.
Quietly, I told her why I had come, and she struggled to her feet, her eyes so incredulous that I found myself grabbing her roughly and shoving her to one of the two tower windows, the one facing the yard and the ruins of the hall.
“Look, and look closely,” I said, my voice harsh even in my own ears, and showed her the merchant who would take those who remained and was haggling with Ragnar himself now.
A strangled laugh escaped Gunnor’s throat, and holding her wounded shoulder, she sank against the wall and met my eyes.
I lifted that flask one last time, gathered my strength and did what had to be done ever so slowly and thoroughly.
I suspect the guards who saw me leave wrapped in my cloak and wave at Orm imperiously to do his work dared not speak with me, knowing that this had been almost too much to ask even of Bloodhand. When Ragnar’s warriors watched me stagger down the stairs on stiff legs, they must have felt the same. Even Ragnar, having returned with his hands full of hack-silver, probably thought it wise not to ask how it had gone. They all could hear Orm’s voice from above, weeping and cursing those who had brought this dire doom upon our home, and I presume they decided to let him work in peace for a while instead of trying to steal a glimpse at Gunnor’s dead body. Again, I would not know.
I walked away from Straela on hidden paths, sneaking downhill like a thief at first, but making haste as soon as I reached the cover of the trees. There were ghosts about, even a troll or two, but I paid them little heed, breaking into a run and leaping over roots and rocks while listening carefully for steps following me.
Noon was close when I made my way to the sound where the ship from Lunde lay waiting. I had known in advance what I would find: Ragnar’s longship silent and unguarded, but Leif keeping watch at shore with one of his men, his recent purchases huddling miserably on the knarr in the spring chill – and myself clambering aboard no more than a few steps ahead of me.
That at least caused the three prisoners to lift their heads, and Thorun’s gaze was oddly hopeful until her eyes went wide. But it was Halfdan who laughed first, a delighted rumble from deep within his chest, and him, too, who nudged Thoralf, while Thorun just gaped and gaped at Gunnor’s red hair that had appeared when she had thrown back my hood before collapsing on the planks.
“But …“ Thoralf said, and perhaps more than that, but his boyish voice vanished under Leif’s when the merchant hailed me merrily and told me we were all set to leave.
“The guards have been taken care of?” I enquired as I splashed through the shallow water.
“Just as we agreed,” Leif assured me, waving towards the place where the sea buckthorn grew, and I knew that Ragnar would find his valiant ship guards bound and gagged if he bothered to look for them later.
Helpful hands dragged me over the side of the knarr, lifting Orm in more gently right behind me. Having been set down, he just lay there, weak like a sick dog and scarcely better off than poor Gunnor.
It is not easy for a man who has lost a hand to climb down from a tower window, not even when there is a strong rope to hold him, more so when he is forced to do so all the while bending a ghost’s will to his own.
I had not misremembered that the mad chieftain who shared his voice would listen to him on occasion, but telling him to mourn Gunnor and curse Ragnar’s warriors had not been enough. Some inner strength must be put in such a request, a kind of magic, if you will, a ghostspeaker’s gift. After the loss of both blood and friends, making himself heard had taken a heavy toll on Orm. Now he was so spent that he did not even get up again to watch Leif’s people set fire to Ragnar’s fine longship ere we cast off.
There was a steady cold wind from the East, a last holdover from winter, and icy like remembered fear, it crept through Gunnor’s ripped and bloodstained clothes that I was wearing. My garments, above all the cloak with its ample hood, had been her shield as she had stumbled down the stairs and towards freedom, the pain-dulling brew I had brought in the flask barely enough to keep her upright and let her seem shaken instead of gravely wounded. With her being me and the chieftain’s ghost standing in for Orm, the two of us had made our way through the second tower window, the one that faced away from the yard and lay unguarded now that Ragnar thought himself the undisputed master of Straela.
All of that would have to be explained to Halfdan, Thorun and Thoralf later, for Leif did not know what had happened up there. He could only tell them the other half of the tale while he relieved them of their chains, the story how I had met him in Jumne after Lady Hervor’s ghost had come to me one night, revealing that her grandson would take fire and sword to Straela and begging me to feign joining Ragnar to save as many as I could of those who would be too foolish or faithful to flee. She had made me swear an oath to do as she asked, and I had sworn gladly, for – old bitterness aside – I did not want any of them dead or enslaved, not even Orm who had thought so ill of me.
I had lain awake until dawn, my thoughts reeling, making and discarding one bad plan after the other. In the end, I had settled upon finding a trader and persuading him to take my soldiering silver to buy as many of my old friends as he could when Straela fell.
I would have taken my chances with any halfway trustworthy merchant, but some curious happenstance or the very will of the Norns had made me cross the path of Leif and his father that day, better and more steadfast allies than any stranger could have been. We had decided that Leif should approach Ragnar to make the offer, for although they had met briefly long ago, the young merchant had changed much since then and was unlikely to be recognized.
Now, on the ship, with cormorant ghosts taking flight all around us and the midday sun gleaming brightly on the vast sound, there were shy glances at first when I ambled over, and later guarded words of thanks.
Halfdan, brave and bold and knowing me best, finally ventured to ask: “But how did you get Orm and Gunnor to go along with this?”
Silent laughter shook me in spite of myself, and I briefly glanced at the two whose wounds were being dressed more thoroughly than back at Straela. “How could anybody trust Meara Bloodhand, you mean? It was all very simple. Orm I told when he finally had no choice but to listen to me, and as for Gunnor … When I showed her the merchant taking you away, she believed me at once.”
“She must have a better eye for faces than this sorry lot,” Leif said, mirth dancing across his youthful features.
“That she has,” I replied, watching the three of them stare at him harder, and perhaps, some faint memory was stirring in Thorun by then.
Her son still looked helplessly confused. “And who is he?”
“Oh, we have not met before, boy,” Leif let him know, stretching out an arm as if to ruffle Thoralf’s hair, but deciding at last to leave the lad’s honor intact. “You have never been to a Wendish tower downriver from Jumne, have you?”
He called for his father then, who had watched from the helm with fell delight. Now he ceded his place to a steel-haired woman and came limping over, more gray in his dark beard than years ago, but his leg never quite healed and his forearm still showing a scar where I had cut him in my haste to remove his bonds and send him after his son to hide in the thicket by the riverbank.
It may have dawned on the worthy warriors of Straela then that he had told the truth that sad day and had always been nothing but an unfortunate merchant from Lunde, but I did not stay to find out how that reunion would go or what curses either side would come up with this time.
Instead, I walked to the stern, and for a while, I stood there, watching Ragnar’s burning ship grow smaller and smaller. The smoke rose high enough by now to be seen from Straela, and if Ragnar did not know that he had been deceived by a ghost and two ghostspeakers in broad daylight, he would find out very soon. But he had no means to catch us now that his ship was gone, and so, I could sit down safely where I was, wondering who of all those from Straela would first want to have a word with me.
It turned out to be Orm.
As soon as the stump of his arm was bandaged neatly and his legs would carry him again, he sought me out. I do not remember much of what he murmured at first, not finding the right words, quite unlike the silver-tongued Orm I knew.
Wearily, I motioned for him to sit down, and he did, his eyes haunted not by what he had seen today, but by what he had refused to see so long ago.
“I failed you badly during Harald’s raid and afterwards,” he said when we looked at each other, and I feared he might cry.
“Don’t you dare to weep like a little boy,” I spat, fearing my own tears would follow his in no time. “It was all your fault and yours alone. It was you who told me of songs that end in bloodshed and death, and you who made me wonder if a bleak heart has to go with a sharp blade indeed.”
“Yes. You would remember that,” he replied, his voice carrying a hint of tenderness that had me muse whether dark and dour were to his taste sometimes, after all.
“And that, in turn, made me ask myself,” I continued, “if those stories end as they do because things needs must go that way, or if we keep doing as they do in songs and tales because we believe what you skalds tell us.”
“If it is so, Gunnor and you cannot have listened very well,” Orm said, “for if this were the great Lay of the Battle of Straela, Gunnor, grim and glorious, would have descended the stairs to take her brother’s head off with your sword and be slain in return, while you would have climbed down alone to bar the doors and burn down the tower so that friend and foe might perish within, above all that faithless skald. Revenge and ruin, most satisfying, and the world as bad as it should be.”
“Had you burned, you could not make a much better song now,” I told him, “only ghost-songs, and I do not like the mournful sound of those.”
Orm gazed at the one hand remaining to him. “I do not know if there is any song left in me, and if there is, it will not be a harp song, that much is certain.”
“I could be your harper,” I offered, and finally, he smiled for the first time that day and even had to bite back laughter.
Though never a flatterer in spite of his clever tongue, he refrained from telling me that it would have to be a simple tune any fool or child could play indeed then.
I might have spoken the words for him; I was well aware that my efforts with the harp had never been as respectable as his with a sword. But my heart was too full, and my lips were too tired. So I was content to rest my head against his shoulder and feel his hand sneak around my waist while the knarr carried us out of the sound and west towards Lunde.
©November 2019 Maike Claussnitzer
Maike Claussnitzer has been previously published her native German in the anthology Valkyren, die Töchter Odins. This is her first published work in English.