“I am Ciara,” I said, surprised she had already heard of me. Word spread fast through these northern lands.
“Rúna is my aunt,” Leif said with a fond smile, “my father’s only sister and a jarl in her own right.”
“And where is my brother?” Rúna asked with a smile. “Or does my arrival not warrant a greeting from the jarl?”
Leif touched her shoulder. “I was told upon my own arrival that his condition has worsened to the point that he can rarely leave his bed, Aunt, but he may join us in our feast tonight.”
Her smile faded. “It pains me to hear that. I will go to him, then. But first: What is the plan? How many others will respond to the summons?”
Leif gestured for us to follow him back toward the longhouse. “I can count on Jarl Thorsten and Inghard to bring more men, but neither will be able to bring as many as you. They should arrive by tomorrow, and then we will sail to Skien.”
When we entered the longhouse, the three of us sat around the fire pit in the main hall, and a servant brought us mead to drink from horns capped with gold.
“You plan to attack from the fjord?” Rúna asked Leif.
“Yes.”
“Hm,” she said. “Do you have a map?”
He paused, considering. “You think it would be better to attack from behind the city?”
“So they won’t see us coming,” I said, understanding dawning. The Viking longships were fast, but the fjords were narrow. They would be seen before they could make landfall, and giving the j?tnar the chance to transform was a death sentence. “They will be anticipating an attack—the sea serpent showed us that.”
Leif nodded. “They’ll be expecting us.”
“Sea serpent?” Rúna asked, confusion knitting her brows together.
“There was a j?tnar spy in Dubhlinn who sent word to Fenris of our movements,” he clarified for her. “Fenris in turn sent an ormr to deal with us, but”—he glanced at me with a smile—“Ciara dealt with it easily.”
I laughed. “I don’t know about ‘easily’ . . .”
“Either way,” Leif said, “it’s dead and we’re alive.” He stood and squeezed my shoulder gently. “I’ll go get a map of Skien.”
I turned my attention back to Rúna, who was watching me over the flames of the fire.
“You are beautiful,” Rúna said appraisingly as I took a sip of the mead. “I can see why he keeps you by his side.”
“And you are as bluntly outspoken as Leif,” I said. “It’s no wonder you’re related.”
She smiled. “It must be in the blood. It’s been too long since I’ve seen him.” She took a sip of her own mead thoughtfully. “The last time was when his sister, Finna, was still alive. Two winters have passed since then. And now my brother has taken ill. Have you seen him? Is his condition truly that bad?”
I shook my head. “He has been too ill to leave his bed, but I hope to make his acquaintance tonight at the feast.”
“Worse than I thought,” she said quietly. A shadow of sadness crossed over her fierce face. “It’s mostly because of my niece that I’m here. She was a kind and lighthearted girl, one who would have made the best of mothers. What happened to her was a fate that should never befall anyone, let alone someone like her.”
I thought of my own sister, and my hands tightened into fists. “We’ll stop them,” I swore.
Her sharp gaze met mine. “Tell me of your army. They say they never sleep nor move around the ships, only stand there as though you had brought statues to life.”
“How have you heard of them?”
“News of them traveled with the summons.”
Silence descended upon us as I contemplated how much to tell her. How to describe the men I had once loved who were now shells of the men they’d once been? “They have only seen one battle, but none fell,” I said. “They strike as fast as vipers and never tire.”
Rúna leaned forward. “But how did you come to have such an army?”
I thought of the two hundred men who had died, including my father, and the walls within me rose. “I paid a very high price.”
Leif returned then, a rolled-up piece of leather tucked under his arm. He dragged a table over by the fire and unrolled the map. As we crowded around it, I examined the whole of his homeland for the first time: a jagged piece of land mostly made up of rivers, fjords, and mountains.
“Most of your land looks uninhabitable,” I said, my finger tracing all the lines that represented water. “It’s impressive you manage to have any farms at all.”
“Was that a compliment?” Leif asked, humor shining in his eyes.
I made a rude sound in the back of my throat. “Don’t make me regret giving it. Let’s plan our strategy.”
Leif grinned but turned back to the task at hand readily enough. His finger traced the lines of rivers leading from his village to Skien. “We could sail the ships up the rivers that end up to the north of Skien. From there, we can approach on foot.”
“That is a much better ambush strategy,” Rúna said. “I doubt they’ll have any sentinels—they believe themselves to be invincible.” She peered closely at the map. “If I’m not mistaken, though, there is a glacier nearby that will only slow our progress.”
“We’ll avoid it. But you’re wrong, they will have watchmen.” He glanced at me. “Now that Fenris knows we’re amassing an army.”
Rúna nodded grimly. “Then we will have to move swiftly.”
As they continued to debate the best rivers to take, a subtle fluttering sound drew my attention to the window.
A great black bird stared back at me from outside the glass. My first thought was that it was the Morrigan, come to offer her own advice, but then I remembered she had told me she could not come to this land. The bird let out a low croak, and I realized it wasn’t a crow, which the Morrigan always appeared as, but a raven instead. Unlike a crow, it had a tuft of feathers just above its beak. I followed the line of its sight and realized it wasn’t looking at me at all.
It was watching Leif.
24
The rest of the day had progressed quickly: deciding strategy, gathering weapons, and welcoming another ally. The raven that had so intensely watched Leif through the window had flown away, though the sensation we were being watched lingered. Fear crept over me as I thought about Leif’s agreement with the Valkyrie. Were they watching to make sure he kept his end of the bargain?
That prickly wariness still had not left me by the evening feast. As we entered the main hall, the din of a room full of voices greeted me. It seemed that the entire village had come to celebrate the return of Leif and his men. The smells of roasting meats, fresh-baked bread, and freely flowing ale and mead scented the air, and many eyes were upon me as I walked beside Leif.
He reached for my hand, and I took it. I had to resist the urge to clutch his hand to ease my worry that I would lose him at the end of this. I pushed such thoughts away before they could drag me under. I refused to live in fear.
Leif led me to one of the two chairs on the dais and clasped my hand again once we were seated. When I glanced at him, I could see that his face was pale.
“Are you all right?” I whispered.
His answering smile was a nervous one, and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. My eyes scanned the people in the hall, searching for Leif’s father in the crowd, but I could not find him. But all who met my gaze greeted me with a welcoming smile. I thought of the reactions of my own clansmen should I place an outsider in such a place of honor and sank down in my chair. I had seen so little of this land so far, and nothing was as I had expected.
Leif stood—reluctantly, it seemed to me—and the hall quieted. “Freemen and women, I’ve brought back a powerful ally as promised.” He turned and held out his hand to me, and I got to my feet beside him. “This is Ciara, Princess of Mide, Queen of Dyflin. She single-handedly brought down a j?tunn and defeated King Sigtrygg. Her prowess is well-known in éirinn, and her abilities rival my own.”