The Waking of Angantyr

by Marie Brennan

Genres: Dark Fantasy; Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

Synopsis

Bondsmaid. Berserker. Bane.

Hervor is no stranger to hardship. Not only is she a reviled bondsmaid, but she’s haunted by the ghosts of dead men. When a berserker fit turns her into a murderer, she has nothing left to lose: fleeing everything she’s known, Hervor goes to find a new future and a way to silence the past.

Her quest will take her from the viking seas to the depths of a witch’s forest, from frozen mountains to a king’s golden hall. But the road ahead is no less bloody than the one behind, and the foul magic Hervor fears most is the only thing that can lay her ghosts to rest.

They say when you seek revenge, you should dig two graves, but Hervor might be able to get away with one. Because the voices of the dead are getting stronger . . . and her greatest enemy may be herself.

 

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Release date: November 14, 2023

Publisher: Book View Cafe

Print pages: 415

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

Whispers from the Well

Dead men had whispered to Hervor in her sleep for so long she’d almost gotten used to it.

As a child she’d been foolish enough to say what she heard; later she grew smarter, but by then it was too late. The other bondsmaids shunned her, told tales about her over the cooking-fire. A breech birth, they said, came out of her mother wrong end first and killed her in the coming, and you know what that means. Ill-omened, ill-starred. No wonder she claimed to hear ghosts.

But over time, the fear’s sharp edge dulled. Life went on in its daily routine, much as it always had, and there was a new herdsman who despite the tales kept looking at Hervor with an interested eye, until she truly began to forget it wasn’t normal to hear voices that spoke always of murder and betrayal, ravens and blood.

Until the day came when they beat the drum to summon everyone to the garth in front of the hall, and Hervor put down her bucket and ran with the others to stand in a ragged line. Men on one side, maids on the other, and then they waited, and waited; the boy who’d been assigned to keep a lookout ran much faster than a cart moved, and a long time passed before the new arrivals crested the ridge in front of Rognjeld.

At last a small cloud of dust rose above the ridge – it had been another dry spring, sparking fearful whispers of drought returning – and a cart lumbered into view. As if by magic, Gannveig appeared, and the bondsmaids fell silent. They’d all catch it, if the jarl’s wife got angry. Feigald was with her, their son Ungaut at their heels, and together the jarl and his kin waited for the carts to pass through the outer fence.

Hervor studied the procession with a jaundiced eye. She was supposed to be burningly excited about the young woman who sat on the front seat of the lead cart, for Anfinna was to marry Ungaut and carry the keys to the holding on her belt. The cart’s bed was piled high with her dowry, cloth and tapestries and fleeces and more, and behind that one came a second cart similarly loaded. Anfinna was quite a prize.

The people with her interested Hervor more, simply because they were new. Rognjeld didn’t get many visitors. Anfinna’s father, Storleik Geirriksson, was far more powerful and wealthy a jarl than Feigald; the disdainful sweep of his gaze around the holding seemed to question why he was sending even a fourth daughter off to a place like this. Half a dozen armed housemen rode at his heels – half a dozen! When Feigald’s only followers were freeborn farmers and herders, permitted weapons by law, but hardly well-trained warriors. One houseman even carried a sword at his hip, instead of the more common axe. Hervor didn’t like the way his attention snagged on her, the appraising look in his eye. She squared her shoulders and looked away. Behind him…

One of Storleik’s servants was helping an old woman down from the second cart. She had a face like weathered stone, seamed and stained with age, but her wits didn’t seem to have wandered any. She was looking at Hervor, too, with the unblinking, predatory focus of a hawk.

An old woman couldn’t cause the same trouble for Hervor as a sword-bearing houseman. This time Hervor stared back, not caring if Gannveig thumped her for it.

Then someone touched the old woman’s shoulder, and like a soap bubble popping, the intensity was gone. She hobbled to join Anfinna and the others, and Hervor fought the urge to scrub at her arms. Why stare at her like that? True, she was the tallest of the bondsmaids by a good handspan, and broader in the shoulders than some men, but that didn’t justify such a stare.

Feigald was droning through a thunderously dull speech welcoming Anfinna to Rognjeld. By the time he was done, Hervor’s unease had given way to yawning boredom. She almost welcomed it when the bondsmaids were dismissed with a look from Gannveig that said they’d better not think of lingering to gape at the new arrivals.

Hervor retrieved her bucket and joined the others in line at the well to draw water for the guests’ baths. They were chattering on and on about Anfinna, of course, how lovely she was, how rosy her skin, how long her braids, until Hervor could no longer stand it. “Who’d want to be a soft flower like that?” she asked scornfully, interrupting the other bondsmaids. “She’s from the south. Come winter, she’ll be huddled indoors by the fire, crying for home.”

“You’re just jealous,” Isrun said. “You won’t be anywhere near the fire, and you know it.”

“I don’t need the fire,” Hervor boasted, tossing her own braids back. They might not be so long as Anfinna’s, but they were more blonde; let Anfinna be jealous of that. “I’ve got ice in my blood. Come winter, I’ll dance naked in the snow.”

Isrun rolled her eyes. “We can only hope you’ll catch sick and die. Try it, Hervor.”

“I will!” Hervor shouted as the others walked away, leaving her alone at the well. “I will.” This she repeated in a quieter voice as she knelt to tie her bucket to the rope and lower it until it hit the water with a splash. She placed both hands on the low stone edge and leaned forward, putting her head right into the shaft to hear the echoes. “I will!” 

Her voice rang against the stones, but when it came back it was no longer hers.

MURDER

traitors

blood bright on the sand

ravens feast

rending our flesh

For one dizzying moment, Hervor thought she would pitch head first down the well. Her hands scrabbled at the stones, trying to catch hold, and then she managed to shove herself backwards, onto the trampled grass.

She sat there, panting, and stared at the well in horror.

Nothing rose out of it. She cast a quick glance around, but nobody was nearby. No one to see her act like a fool – but no one to whisper those words at her, either. Reluctantly, Hervor shifted to her knees and peered over the well’s edge.

Nothing but stone, water, and her bucket on the rope.

She squeezed her eyes shut and growled a curse that would have spurred Gannveig to beat some manners into her. Of course there was nothing. She knew those voices. They’d been with her since childhood.

But they’d never spoken during the day.

“That’s not fair,” she whispered, opening her eyes again. It didn’t matter if someone came up to the well and saw her talking to the stones; they all thought she was mad, anyway. “Bad enough that you talk to me when I’m asleep; I’ve gotten used to that. But it’s broad daylight!” Her voice rose, but this time the echoes that came back were her own. “You’re not supposed to be talking to me now!”

The voices weren’t supposed to be talking to her at all, whoever they were. They were supposed to go down to Slavinn with the rest of the dead, not torment a bondsmaid who didn’t even know their names.

Hervor dug her fingers into the stones and glared into the well as if the dead men who spoke to her lay under it. “You’d better not play with me like that again.

Gannveig already loathes me; I don’t need to give her an excuse to put me outside the fence. Stay in my dreams, where you belong.”

As if she could stop them, should they decide to wander into her waking thoughts as well. But Hervor hoped that speaking firmly might have some effect. Maybe ghosts were like children, and needed a stern hand.

Or maybe she was going even madder than she already was.

Hervor hauled her bucket out of the well and went back to work before Gannveig could find her dawdling.

***

The hall of Rognjeld was decked out in its finest for Ungaut’s wedding feast. He and Anfinna had spent the afternoon closeted with the priest – not Eyulf, but some old man Storleik had brought with him – having rune-staves of good fortune painted on their skin and being lectured on their new roles as husband and wife. That part, fortunately, nobody else had to suffer through. But between the lecturing and the bedding came the feasting, and that was for everyone, from jarls like Feigald and Storleik down to the lowest bonders.

And when the mead flowed freely and laughter rose into the smoky, shadowed upper reaches of the hall, people tended to loosen up and forget certain things, like shunning the local madwoman. So Hervor wolfed down her share of the meat – maybe more; bonders so rarely got meat that everybody was fighting for as much as they could grab – and laughed along with the others, and for a little while it was as if there weren’t any big difference between her and them. Whispers from the well notwithstanding.

But much of the talk was of Anfinna’s lovely clothing, her jewellery, her fine hand with embroidery, and even with enough mead inside her to float a longship, Hervor still found that dull beyond bearing. So after a while she nudged Melbjorg and nodded up at the high table, where the housemen and the priests sat with the two families. Melbjorg had helped prepare Anfinna for the session with the priest; she might know things. “Who’s the shrivelled old dug up there, anyway?" 

Melbjorg followed Hervor’s nod and saw the old woman from the cart. “Anfinna’s nurse. Saeunn. I get the feeling she’s useless, but she came along because Anfinna dotes on her.”

“She looks half-mad.”

“Bondsmaid calling the bondsman dirty, aren’t you?” But Melbjorg’s gibe was amused rather than cruel. “Half-mad’s better than half-shrew, like Gannveig.”

Hervor wasn’t so sure about that. Any time Anfinna’s attention was on the old woman, Saeunn seemed like a doddering sweetheart. But when nobody was looking her way, her manner sharpened into a measuring regard Hervor didn’t understand – and didn’t like in the slightest.

A platter went by, and Hervor lunged across Melbjorg to snag a piece of meat before it passed out of her reach. The piece turned out to be a sheep’s shank that had already been gnawed mostly clean, but Hervor stuck it in her mouth anyway, scraping off the last few shreds.

“She keeps staring at me,” she told Melbjorg around the bone. “Ever since she got here.”

“Everybody stares at you.”

“Not till they get to know me,” Hervor said cheerfully. “I look normal enough. No limp, no cast eye.”

“Normal, hah,” Melbjorg muttered. “You’re as big as an ox. Dress you up in armour, and you’d be a man.”

“Give me armour any day, over this shite.” Hervor tugged at her frayed overdress with greasy fingers. “I heard that where Anfinna comes from, they dress their sheep better than this.”

“That’s because their sheep are prettier than you!”

Isrun had overheard the conversation. Hervor glared at her, while all around them the others began to giggle. The smug expression on Isrun’s face was simply too much; Hervor snarled and threw the leg-bone at her. Isrun ducked, and the bone landed among the rushes, where three dogs leapt on it.

“Might want to get that before they finish it off,” Hervor said in a

sticky-sweet voice. “You could use a bit more flesh on your bones, Isrun. Yesterday I heard Bardnor saying you looked like an underfed dog.”

Isrun spat a curse at her, but Hervor was already leaving; she’d long since learned to withdraw while she had the upper hand. With a half-hearted nod to the high table – Gannveig caught it, and looked angry – Hervor went through the snow-room and out into the cool night air.

The bite of the wind against her cheeks enlivened her, but something – maybe Isrun’s sniping; maybe just a bit of bad meat – had started Hervor’s stomach churning. She crossed the garth, hoping that the fresh air would help, but in the shadow of the pig-shed she fell to her knees and puked.

“Damn,” Hervor muttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Good food gone to waste.”

She spat a few times to clear her mouth, but a nasty sourness remained. Drinking something would help. She didn’t want to go back into the hall just yet, though, so that ruled out more mead.

Hervor turned reluctantly and looked at the well, its low circle of pale stones gleaming in the moonlight.

The thought of water made her desperately thirsty, which only made the taste in her mouth worse. Still, Hervor remained frozen by the pig-shed. The well, a familiar, everyday sight, was suddenly sinister. What if the voices of the dead waited for her there?

She slammed one fist onto the ground, pushing herself to her feet. “Fuck that,” she muttered, both to herself and to the well. “I’m not afraid of any damned ghosts. Puke on them, I will.”

A hide cover had been thrown over the well when the day’s chores were done. Hervor pulled it off and stared down into the darkness, hands half-formed into fists, as if something might jump out. But nothing stirred in the blackness, and after a moment she picked up a bucket from the ground and tied it to the rope.

The water came up normal; she drank it in gulps, after spitting the first few mouthfuls onto the grass. Thirst sated, she tugged the hide cover back onto the stones, put the bucket down, and sank onto the well’s rim with a 

weary sigh.

It had been a long day, and the days to come wouldn’t get any shorter. And not just because they weren’t yet to the summer solstice. Anfinna, sitting at the high table in the hall, now had keys on her belt. Which meant that come tomorrow she’d be there alongside Gannveig, sending bondsmaids running to every corner of the garth and hall, fetching this, disposing of that, carrying out the thousand tasks that kept the holding on its feet. And because she’d want to impress Gannveig, Anfinna would run them ragged.

Hervor rolled her head around, cracking her neck in three separate places, and looked up at the stars to gauge the time. The Hart had nearly set; later than she’d thought, then. Hervor shoved herself to her feet again. Back into the hall for the last scraps of food, before they were all gone.

Halfway across the garth, the voices drove her to her knees.

BLOOD

arrows like wasps

screaming pain, screaming crows, screaming blood

MURDER

we lie betrayed

MURDER

lie unmourned

MURDER

lie and ROT

“No, no, no!” Hervor buried both hands in her hair, pulling hard enough to rip strands from her scalp. “Don’t do this to me! Once was bad enough—”

“Hervor?”

For a moment she thought the ghosts knew her name now, too. But it came from outside her skull, and had a resonance the whispers lacked. Hervor looked up and saw a looming silhouette in the light spilling from the hall. Then the figure knelt, and the light reached the edge of his face, and Hervor recognised him as the person she least wanted to see.

“Are you all right?” 

Rannvar asked.

Hervor swallowed down curses. Why Rannvar? Why not Melbjorg, or even Isrun? Shite, why not Gannveig? At the moment, Hervor would have preferred to be thrown out of Rognjeld than humiliated in front of the one man still new enough to the holding not to shun her.

Saying she was fine would be a blatant lie. Hervor managed a twisted grin. “My stomach isn’t. I threw up once already—” She gestured in the general direction of the pig-shed. “Something I ate. Or maybe just Isrun’s ugly face. But it was such a good feast; I’d rather not lose it all to the ground.”

She was proud of that excuse. It even accounted for what she’d been saying – as if she’d been talking to her stomach, and not dead men. Not particularly sane either way, but better this than the alternative.

Rannvar grimaced in understanding. “I think some of that mead was off.” His teeth flashed in the moonlight, a quick grin. “Or maybe it was Isrun. Her talk’s enough to turn anyone’s stomach.”

He helped her to her feet. Melbjorg might say Hervor was as big as a man, but Rannvar was bigger; he stood a good half-head above any of the other bondsmen, and even a bit above Feigald. He must have been fed well wherever he’d lived, before Feigald bought his bond.

Hervor brushed dust off her knees as Rannvar went on. “Better watch out, coming out here alone.”

“Huh?” She stared at him. “Why? You think Isrun’s going to attack me?”

“No, that swordsman. Well, not attack. More like…”

Hervor saw where he was aiming and snorted. “More like bed. He’s been staring at me,

hasn’t he?”

“Like you’re a sheep he’s thinking about buying.”

“Let him go fuck a sheep, then. I’m not for sale.” The words came out harsher than Hervor meant them to, and Rannvar looked taken aback. She fumbled for words to reassure him. “It’s just – the way I get treated, here – I’m a bondsmaid, not a thrall. Not that I think Gannveig can tell the difference. She’s got less honour than the pigs.”

Rannvar grimaced. “I wouldn’t go saying that too loudly, if I were you.”

His concern warmed Hervor. She didn’t give a damn about Gannveig, but that Rannvar cared… “It’s all a part of my plan,” she said with an impudent smile. “Haven’t you guessed?”

“Plan?”

She leaned towards him with a conspiratorial air. “I’ve got Gannveig fooled. She thinks I’m mad, you see. But it’s all an act.”

Rannvar eyed her askance. “Dangerous act. Everybody says she’d like to put you outside the fence.”

“But that’s just it! Don’t you see? Gannveig will shave her own head bald before she’ll admit I’ve worked off my bond. So if I want to get out of here…” Hervor spread her hands and grinned with all the bravado she could muster. “I have to make her throw me out.”

She startled a laugh from him. “You are mad. What will you do, when your plan succeeds? Wander around as a beggar? You won’t be a freeholder; you’ll have no land, no money—”

Hervor dismissed this with a wave of her hand, as if it were less important than last year’s shearing. “Don’t you ever listen to tales? I’ll be an adventurer. I’ll go kill bears in the Ice Knives. I’ll waylay bandits on the roads. Sail the high seas like Enjarik Enjakilsson, hunt monsters in the dark forests of the south—”

“With no weapon?”

“Barrows’re full of swords. I’ll take one of those.”

The humour began to drain off Rannvar’s face. “You’ll steal from the dead?”

“Why not? What can they do to me?” Hervor said it boldly, but the words put ice in her

stomach. What could they do to her? Dead men were all talk.

But talk could be bad enough.

She looked into the distance, where the light seeping from the hall didn’t reach. The fence around the garth was invisible in the darkness. She liked it that way; with the fence hidden in shadows, she could pretend it wasn’t there, pretend that nothing stood between her and the world. Pretend she could just walk off now, tonight, and never come back.

Rannvar touched her arm. “You dream about this a lot, don’t you.”

Something – the mead; the late hour – made Hervor indiscreet. “All the time,” she said grimly. “What else can I do? But it’s more than just a dream, Rannvar. I will do it. I’m damned if I’ll rot out the rest of my life here at Rognjeld, never going anywhere, never doing anything but what Gannveig and Anfinna tell me. That’s no kind of life.”

“I agree,” he said quietly. “But you don’t want to end up an outcast, alone, not belonging any place. Do you?”

His tone wasn’t condescending, but Hervor bristled anyway. She pulled away from his touch. “You think I belong here?” she demanded, glaring up at him. “Beggar’s better than thrall, and belonging no place is better than being trapped in a pen.”

He held up his hands defensively. Then a burst of noise from the hall made them both turn. The moment was gone; Rannvar sighed. “We should get back inside.”

Hervor shrugged, looking at the ground, until he sighed again and went back without her. She waited several minutes, so no one would think they were coming in together, then steeled herself and followed him.

In the hall, she squinted against the sudden light of the fires that ran the length of the hall, down the centre of the room. The din of voices made her flinch, and she realised she was still on edge. Still afraid that the other voices, the dead ones, were going to speak again.

How did she know they wouldn’t? They’d done so twice today. She didn’t know what had started it, and so she had no idea if it would end.

The thought of it not ending made her gut twist in fear.

Hervor had been standing too long by the door to the snow-room; she would draw attention. Already had, in fact: Saeunn, at the far end of the hall, was watching her again. And when Hervor met her gaze, the old woman's

thin lips parted in a silent laugh.

Years of a pattern Hervor knew and could live with. Then today, with no warning, it shifted. There had to be a reason. And what had changed today?

New people showed up. Like a creepy old crone who acted as if she knew something other people didn’t.

Hervor tensed. For a heartbeat, with the mead heating her blood and the echoes of the voices still ringing in her ears, she wanted to fling herself down the centre of the hall, leaping the fires as she went, vault over the high table, and shake the truth from the old woman. Was she somehow responsible for this? Had she made Hervor’s curse even more unbearable?

Would have done it, too – would have wrung the old woman’s wrinkled neck until answers came out of it – were it not for Storleik. Anfinna’s bear-like father rose to his feet at the high table, roaring out words that sounded like gibberish through the pounding in Hervor’s ears, and suddenly everyone in the hall was standing. Through the crowd Hervor saw Anfinna being drawn up from her seat, her face alternately red and pale beneath the rune-stave painted on her forehead. Wolf-whistles and bawdy shouts rang out in the high reaches of the hall as the new husband and bride climbed the ladder-like staircase to the loft where the family slept.

With so many people in the way, Hervor lost sight of Saeunn, and the broken contact brought her back to her senses. She couldn’t attack Anfinna’s beloved nurse, no matter what kind of evil look the old woman had just given her. Not when Anfinna was right there, and Storleik, and the entire family of Rognjeld besides.

But if Saeunn was responsible for this new torment, then Hervor vowed the hag would suffer for it.

 

CHAPTER TWO

The Fire Within

In the days that followed, Hervor’s dislike of Anfinna blossomed into near hate. The only thing that kept it from being hate was that Anfinna wasn’t entirely to blame; the other bondsmaids were half the problem. They were the ones who kept pointing out that Anfinna’s father Storleik had sworn his oaths to the Blessed King himself, and wasn’t it wonderful to have such an important father, so rich and powerful, such a noble warrior – on and on, until Hervor wanted to scream.

Anfinna bore her share of the blame, though. Whether it was a desire to impress Gannveig or just the girl’s native habit, Hervor didn’t know and didn’t care. All she knew was that Anfinna made constant demands on the bondsmaids’ time, so that they all had twice as much work to do as before. Of course Hervor got the brunt of it, because she was stronger than the others and less well-liked, and she didn’t fall down to lick Anfinna’s embroidered slippers the way the rest did. So it was “Hervor, fetch this,” and “Hervor, carry that” – when Anfinna bothered to remember her name at all, and didn’t just call her “breech-born”. Who’d spread the tale of Hervor’s birth to her, Hervor dearly wanted to know.

Four days after her arrival at Rognjeld, Anfinna decided to set up her loom. Summer didn’t last long here in the north, and her weaving was fine-work, not the homespun that could be made indoors, during the winter, in the poor light of the hall’s fires. If she was to get anything done, she must start right away.

Isrun and the others who’d gained Anfinna’s favour were given skeins of thread to carry, but Hervor, as usual, had to carry the pieces of the loom itself. She knew better than to complain; instead she picked up the heavy beams and amused herself by turning so the ends just barely missed clubbing Isrun in the stomach. Then she took them out of the snow-room, where they’d been stowed that first day, and into the sunny brightness of the garth.

Naturally Anfinna could not be expected to work too close by the stench of the pig-shed, nor the noise of the smithy. She could have chosen a spot for her loom before Hervor picked up the beams, but she hadn’t, and Hervor bit back several short-tempered comments as she waited for the girl to settle on a location.

They found one at last, near the back end of the hall, but not so near as to subject Anfinna’s delicate nose to the smell of the kitchens. Hervor put the beams down in relief and with Melbjorg’s silent help began assembling them, smacking the wooden pegs into place with a small hammer. They went in faster when she imagined Anfinna’s face on the ends.

That thought was a little too satisfying. As she gave the final peg one last whack, the head of the hammer flew off and rolled across the grass.

Titters followed her as she went to pick it up. “Stupid sow,” said Hrodis, one of Isrun’s cronies.

“She looks like one, doesn’t she?” said Anfinna, and Hervor’s hand clenched around the heavy iron lump as she picked it up and faced the others once more.

Isrun laughed, sounding

 like a horse with the wheeze. “That’s because her mother was one!”

Fury boiled in Hervor’s veins, and her fingers curled over the smooth surface of the hammer head. Its weight tempted her. One throw, and Isrun’s face would be reduced to red pulp.

But a prickling on the back of her neck made her turn, and she saw Gannveig watching. The ever-present threat of outcasting couldn’t make Hervor’s fingers relax, but it kept the hammer in her hand.

“Not her mother,” Gannveig said to Anfinna, coming closer with brisk, hard strides. “Her father’s where the blame lies.” She gave Hervor a look that did nothing to ease the anger tightening her muscles. “Blood will tell. Her mother was a bondsmaid who bedded a born thrall, the pig-keeper on my cousin’s holding. You can see the result for yourself. There’s nothing worse than mixing like that. Better to be an ordinary thrall-born child than a horror like she is.”

“Sired by a thrall?” Anfinna said, flinching back in disgust. “I heard only that she was breech-born – and that was bad enough! At Kalstað, we would have put her outside the fence as a babe.”

“She’s strong,” Gannveig said. Her bony fingers darted out and dug into Hervor’s arm, and Hervor came within a hair of tearing free and smashing her hammer-weighted fist into Gannveig’s face. “Trouble too, for sure, but we’re thrifty. I bought her bond from my cousin, when he would have put her out to die. No sense wasting a strong body, no matter how rotten its core.” She turned her cold eyes on Anfinna and smiled. “If you find her trying, beat her. She understands the lash as well as any animal.”

Hervor’s jaw creaked from holding in what she wanted to say. Her mother might have been so reviled no one even bothered to remember her name, but she was still kin. No one should have to stand by and hear their kin insulted.

Gannveig left then, heading off across the garth to shout at another group of women

who weren’t working fast enough. She was barely out of earshot when Isrun said, “A pig-keeper? A likely story. No, breech-born, I think your father was a pig!”

Isrun was lucky Hervor punched with the hand not holding the iron.

***

Anfinna, it turned out, was too soft-hearted to have Hervor beaten. Instead Hervor was dragged inside and locked into one of the half-height rooms that lined the walls of the hall, sharing the space with various odds and ends that weren’t needed often enough to be kept closer to hand.

Ordinarily Hervor wouldn’t have minded. She might not have enough room to stand or stretch out her legs, but she got to rest, and that was rare in a life like hers. It was a lot better than a beating.

But this time she kicked and fought – silently, for fear she’d draw Gannveig’s attention, but no less fiercely for that – so that it took six of them to stuff her inside and close the door.

She feared what would happen when they did.

The door cut off the light, a barrel scraped into place against it, and she heard the others moving off, chattering among themselves, leaving her alone in the dark.

Hervor waited, hands bunched into fists until the rough stubs of her nails dug into her palms.

Nothing.

The silence should have made her relax. But Hervor couldn’t trust that it would last. The moment she began to believe she’d be left alone, they’d come. Just like she used to think the voices would never speak to her in the day.

And yet they were silent.

“Speak, damn you,” Hervor snarled. “I know you’re there. You’re always fucking there. Speak!”

Still nothing.

Wild hope began to bloom in Hervor’s chest, even as she tried to kill it. Maybe they wouldn’t come. Maybe they weren’t there. Maybe, if she just sat here quietly, and waited to be let out—

She flung herself bodily

at the door before that thought was finished. With one fist she pounded the wood, even though she knew no one would come. “Let me out! Please, I have to get out of here—”

no one comes

no one hears

no one will ever let us out

She felt the choking weight of dirt pressing down on her, the cold of the grave chilling her flesh. Her hands bruised against the hard panels and she started shouting, sometimes at the voices, sometimes at anyone who could hear. “Shut up! Shut your gods-damned dead faces – I’m not trapped! I’m not like you! I’m not mad, I swear it, just let me out of here, don’t keep me in here with them—”

here in the dark

with the dirt

and the worms

and the blood

The sudden flare of light blinded her. Hervor fell forward onto the boards of the hall’s raised floor before she could catch herself. She landed face down, and it took her a moment to realise that someone had opened the door, that she was out of the closet.

She gasped in the sweet, light air of the hall before mustering the will to roll over and see who her saviour was.

The old woman’s shrivelled face swam into focus.

Hervor stared. She remembered the thought she’d had the night of the feast, that Saeunn was somehow responsible for this new torment, and for a moment she thought about leaping up and strangling the old woman, bashing her head in, putting an end to it all right now, while no one was around to stop her.

She might have done it, too, if Saeunn hadn’t spoken first.

“Noisy lot, aren’t they?” she said in a voice that creaked like old wood. “Why don’t we go sit down, you and I, and talk about making them stop.”

***

Saeunn led Hervor down the hall and up the ladder to the loft. Hervor had never been up there before; serving the family in their private rooms was a privilege, one not likely to be given to a bondsmaid as ill-liked as her. The loft was divided into three rooms. In winter the family all slept

in the central one, which shared a wall with the chimney from the bread-oven below; the heat from that kept them warm. The two side rooms were sleeping quarters in the summer, and work rooms all year round.

Saeunn picked up a stick as she entered the left-hand chamber and used it to lift a shutter in the sloping roof, so that a narrow shaft of light stabbed into the murky room. Hervor stood in it and breathed gratefully of the fresh air.

The old woman settled herself onto a low, padded stool in the shadows, outside the beam of light. “Now,” she said in that creaky voice. “Don’t think I’m doing anything out of charity, ...