Chapter One
BLOOD DRIPPED FROM Einer’s fingertips onto the crisp snow.
The sound brought him back to his senses. His sleeves were bloody, his entire coat was, and his trousers too. The left side of his ribs stung. His coat was torn there. The wool flayed in long strips. Einer pressed a hand against his ribs. Fresh blood warmed his fingers.
He must have been attacked, although he did not remember it, or much at all; only that he had set out with the others before midday. He did not remember jumping down from his horse, or tearing off his gloves, or being wounded, or anything much. He did not even know what the last thing he remembered was.
His lips tasted of iron and salt. There was too much blood on his coat and hands for it to have come solely from his wound. Someone else was there, or had been. He must have fought.
A trail of Einer’s own bloody steps disturbed the otherwise white snow. The steps led straight back a few paces, up the bare slope of the dale.
With one hand clenched around his chest not to upset his ribs, Einer forced his legs through the heavy snow, following his own bloody footprints. He searched the forestless mountain for Sigismund and his friends. They would not have left him on his own. Unlike them, he did not know one dale from the other.
Ten strides up lay Einer’s horse at an awkward angle. Its skull was crushed and its stomach exposed, as if a hunter had sliced it open and wrenched out its guts. To the right of the horse lay the hunter; a great white bear with an axe through its skull. The snow was tainted red around the beast. On its hind legs, it had to be twice Einer’s height.
The trail of Einer’s steps led straight to the white bear. The axe in its skull was his.
He tried to dry the blood off his hands onto his trousers, but they were equally smeared with red. Frantically, he washed his bare hands in the snow, and the arms of his coat and his trousers, but the blood had already stained itself into the fur, and wool, and dried into his skin.
He had thought he would not lose control again. The last time had been so long ago.
The sight of the bear, and the thought of it all, made him shake, or perhaps it was the cold, for his freezing hands barely bent to his will.
His eyes swelled with tears at the thought that it had happened again. If his father heard about it, Einer would be sent away again, and if his mother heard about it… He couldn’t imagine what she would do, but he knew that it meant never returning home to Ash-hill. No one could know.
Even as he stared at his axe in the bear’s skull, Einer could not make sense of it.
The berserker inside him was supposed to have been repressed, and yet there he stood, in snow to his knees with blood on his hands and his axe planted into the skull of a great white bear, shaking at the thought of what he must have done. He felt trapped inside his own body.
Einer took a few deep breaths, focused on calming his emotions, and took in the landscape. He imagined that was what his mother would have done, had she been there. She would have calmed him down first, and then assessed what needed to be done.
The winter days were short this far north. Since the sun was still in the sky; he could not have been out for long. He needed to find a way back to the village before sunset. First, he needed warmth.
Einer limped towards his horse, searching for his gloves, or something else to warm his hands. The horse smelled of manure, and the smell was worse than the sight of its exposed intestines and stomach. Einer bent down by its open guts where the heat steamed out. He leant into the steam, let his face thaw, and shook the ice out of his hair and hat. The smell of iron poured out of the horse and filled his nostrils. He reached in past the horse’s ribs to heat up his hands. The warmth seared into his flesh and tore at his bones. His fingers numbed, and when the pain returned, he tried to bend his fingers, again and again, until they listened.
For a moment, he kept his hands in the heat and watched the quiet dale to calm his racing heart and decide on his next move. When the snow fell this far north, it covered everything, not like back home, where there would be trees with patches of earth underneath them. There were not many landmarks to steer by here, and Einer did not recognise the shape of the hills, but the position of the sun told him which way was west, and they had ridden east out of the town in the morning.
The white bear twitched.
It wasn’t dead, not yet.
Determined to finish the deed, Einer pulled his bloody hands out of the horse and approached the bear. The bear kicked out with its hind legs. Before Einer could reach it and retrieve his axe from its skull, the bear rose.
Einer backed away with his eyes locked on the bear. He crouched behind the dead horse to shield himself, fully aware that he would not be able to run with his wounded ribs. Not that running would have given him much of an advantage.
His weapon belt was empty.
The bear was enormous. Even on all fours, it was taller than Einer.
Einer searched around the horse for a weapon, for something to defend himself with, if it came to it. Don’t turn around, don’t turn around, he chanted in his head, hoping the bear would listen.
Before long, the bear would notice Einer. He needed a weapon before then, but moving in to reach his axe was too risky. A quiver was fastened to the back of the horse’s saddle. Einer pulled out the arrows and lay them in the snow besides him. There were only three. His bow lay pressed underneath the horse. Einer dug the snow out to reach. His hands were freezing once again.
The white bear stumbled a few steps forward, and then its eyes caught the horse. Einer slid his hands out from underneath his dead ride. It was too late and he had no bow. He grabbed an arrow in each hand. The bear eyed him, and slowly, as if its large weight barely allowed the bear to move, it stepped towards Einer.
Einer tried not to breathe; perhaps the bear had not seen him yet.
He clenched his hands around the arrows. His hands were numb from the cold. His ribs stung, and still, the bear trod ahead, one heavy step after the other. Its cold eyes were locked on Einer. There was no doubt they had both seen each other.
Einer rose from his crouched position. His chest wound forced him to hunch in over himself. The closer it came, the larger the bear seemed to be.
He braced himself to fight. At the very least, he needed to die with valour, like a warrior, so Odin might choose him and allow him to pass on into Valhalla in the afterlife. Be brave, he told himself, but his limbs were shaking, and his ribs hurt as if he was being stabbed over and over, and he did not feel very brave at all. ‘Be brave,’ he whispered aloud. ‘You’ve already survived one attack.’ The thought did not make him feel brave, only more terrified, because he had never heard any stories about someone surviving a white bear attack twice.
The bear pushed itself up to its hind legs. It cast a long shadow across Einer. Before he could change his mind, Einer yelled and plunged forward with his arrows. He hopped up against the bear’s fur, aimed for the heart, and pushed both arrowheads against its chest. The wood snapped. The arrow tips fell helplessly down into the snow. The bear bumped into Einer, so he fell onto his back. He fumbled for the last arrow, grabbed it with both hands, and wormed backwards. ‘Go away,’ he said, trying to sound threatening, but his voice shook from the cold and did not carry much strength.
The bear roared, tall on its hind legs. Its voice resonated around the dale.
‘Go away!’ Einer bellowed, finding all the courage he possessed. He slashed out at the white bear with the arrow in his hands. ‘Leave me.’ He felt silly for yelling. The bear looked down at him, tilted its head, and then it let itself fall forward. Einer held his breath, ready to be crushed under the bear’s weight. The tip of his last arrow hit the bear’s chest and splintered like the others.