The answer to that was nothing. But Harald had been talking to someone and what I’d heard of the conversation had been damning; plus I’d seen Ylva unable to cross her own wards into the hall.
You never saw her face. The first kernels of doubt filled my chest that perhaps I’d jumped to a conclusion. Except everything I’d seen, everything I’d heard…it pointed to Ylva.
“I accept your allegiance,” Snorri finally said, the tone of his voice suggesting that he wished it were coming from anyone but her.
“My allegiance is to the shield maiden, not you.”
Snorri’s face darkened, but Ylva stepped between them. “She is wed to Snorri, so it amounts to the same.” Meeting her husband’s eyes, she added, “Bodil has long been a friend to me, so her alliance is one we can count on.”
There was nothing Snorri could say, and everyone present knew it. Given he’d said nothing about having convinced any of the other jarls to join him tonight, I doubted he’d been successful. He needed an alliance and couldn’t afford to be particular about where it came from. The muscles in Snorri’s jaw worked back and forth, likely his pride warring with practicality, but he nodded. “Let us drink to first steps down the path the gods have foretold.”
Someone retrieved a jug of mead and Snorri lifted it. “To a united Skaland!” he roared, and everyone shouted “Skal!,” toasting the alliance as the jug was passed around. When it reached me, I took a mouthful and muttered “Skal,” but as I handed it off, the skin over my spine prickled.
Twisting on my heel, I watched Bjorn approach, his expression grim.
“Where were you?” Snorri demanded. “Why did you leave Freya alone?”
“I needed to speak to a seer,” Bjorn said. “I was gone only for a short time, but when I returned, Freya was gone. I searched for her, though I see she is quite fine.”
“Are you mad?” Ylva snarled. “Why would you risk speaking with another jarl’s seer?”
Bjorn shrugged. “Seers always speak the truth for fear of the wrath of the Allfather. I sought guidance.”
I glanced to Bodil to see if her magic scented a lie on his lips, but the jarl’s face held only curiosity.
Snorri’s eyes narrowed. “What did the seer say that was so worth you leaving Freya alone?”
“She told me that an unwatched hearth spits the hottest embers and that an untended hall is formed of the driest kindling.”
My pulse quickened even as Ylva’s eyes widened. “Halsar.”
Bjorn lifted one shoulder. “She offered no clarity.”
“We cannot wait until dawn!” Ylva rounded on Snorri. “We must leave now. Send word down the mountain to Ragnar, so that he might ride ahead and avert whatever disaster this seer has foreseen.”
“It’s a test,” Snorri murmured, his eyes distant. “The gods are testing my commitment. Forcing me to choose between that which I have and that which I might achieve.”
“We left our people undefended,” Ylva shrieked. “Every warrior we have is here or at the base of this cursed mountain. The women and children stand alone.”
Nausea rolled in my guts as I remembered what Bjorn had told me the night Gnut had attacked: that Snorri valued his warriors over innocents and that he’d sacrifice the latter to ensure the strength of the former. Because it was the warriors who would see him to the crown, not helpless children.
Yet those very warriors shifted uneasily, for it was their friends and families we’d left undefended. Several of them looked on the verge of speaking out, but then Snorri lifted his voice over the crowd. “The gods themselves stepped onto the mortal plane tonight to honor the shield maiden who will unite Skaland beneath one king. One army, which we will wield against our enemies with no mercy. Together, we have the might to defeat our enemy when he steps out of the confines of Fjalltindr, but you’d rather race home for fear of a seer’s obscure ramblings?”
It was a struggle not to roll my eyes at his hypocrisy.
Shoulders back, Snorri strode among the warriors. “Don’t you see? This is a test! Not only a test of your faith in the shield maiden, but also of your faith in the gods themselves, for she is their chosen one.”
I felt ill, not wanting to be the reason that these men and women abandoned their families to whatever fate awaited them.
As if hearing my thoughts, Snorri shouted, “The fates of those in Halsar are already woven, whether they live or die in our absence is already known to the gods. But the shield maiden is unfated and all our threads are twisted around hers. Let us stand our ground at the base of the Hammar and bring a reckoning to our greatest enemy, King Harald of Nordeland. Let us have vengeance!”
It twisted my head, the idea that all lives were fated except for the few of us who had a drop of god’s blood in our veins. That somehow, by standing with one foot in the mortal realm and one in the divine, the rules that bound all, including the gods, did not apply. The idea that my actions could catch and tangle the threads of those around me, forcing them into a different pattern than the Norns had intended. And it made me wonder about the reach I possessed. Could I change the fates of those in Halsar?
“Tell me,” Snorri roared, “will you scurry back to those whose fate is already decided, or will you stand in the shield wall with the one favored by the gods? Choose!”
Destroy our enemy or protect our home. I squeezed my hands into fists because the alternative was to squeeze my head. This was all beyond me, the realm of great thinkers, not fishmongers’ wives.
Except I was a fishmonger’s wife no longer.
I was Freya, child of Hlin and lady of Halsar, and it was the latter that drew words up my throat to my tongue, and then out into the ears of all who listened. “What good is vengeance when all we know and love are dead? What glory will we feel in defeating our enemy if it means no hearth fire for us to return to? The Norns may have woven Halsar’s fate, but together we will force them to weave a new pattern, and with the strength of our families and allies, we will turn our eyes north for vengeance!”
Cheers rose from the warriors around us, and my chest tightened at the relief I saw in their eyes. Not only that I had removed the need for them to choose between their honor and their families, but because I had the power to alter what the seer had seen.
I had the power to save Halsar.
Yet not everyone was smiling. Snorri’s jaw was tight, his mouth drawn into a straight line. He cared more about defeating Harald than about the lives of those in Halsar, and I’d stolen the opportunity to have his prize. But almost as much as that, I suspected I’d earned his wrath by making a decision at all. People who were controlled did not make choices—choices were made for them.
He eyed his warriors as they lifted their hands and cheered my words, and he said, “Let Harald scuttle home to Nordeland to hide, for every day he evades us we will grow stronger. When the gods will it, we will strike our blow and vengeance will be ours!”
Men and women shouted their agreement, promising blood, and my own grew hot with anticipation of that moment, whenever it should come.
“Ready yourselves,” Snorri shouted. “We march, and if the gods are with us, we’ll see the bottom of this mountain before dawn.”
All became organized chaos, my clothes—still filthy and stinking—once again on my body, along with my chain mail, and then we were walking to the gates of Fjalltindr, the gothar waiting with our weapons.
As we passed over the threshold, Bjorn’s axe flared to life, lighting our path downward. I wanted to ask him why he’d left the hall. Why he’d gone to speak to a seer when the threat surrounding us was so great.
And most of all, what we should do about what had happened between us.
That question terrified me, because it was driven by the fact that I cared about what had happened. That I cared far, far too much. So instead I asked, “Do you believe we walk toward battle?”
Bjorn was quiet for a long moment, then he said, “My mother once told me that the trouble with foretellings is that you never truly understand them until they come to pass.”