With a thump, the white bear landed in the snow with a great paw on either side of Einer. Its breath smelled of rotten fish and the stench made Einer’s eyes tear up. Or perhaps it was the fact that he could not remember anything. He did not know why the others had left him to ride off alone, or how the white bear had found him, or how he had planted his axe in its skull. He had nearly killed a white bear, and he did not even remember it.
The bear eyed him, and lifted its black lips in a snarl to reveal its sharp yellow teeth. Its face was smeared with blood, and its jaw so wide it could close down over Einer’s head.
Einer felt himself shrink at the bear’s blank stare. ‘Forgive. I… I… I don’t remember,’ he admitted. ‘Forgive me. I wasn’t myself.’
The bear leant closer to him, and Einer rummaged to pull away, but he was trapped between the bear’s large paws. He tightened his grip around the splintered arrow. The white bear bent in close to his face, and just when Einer thought it would bare its teeth and crush his skull, its wet nose touched his. It nudged him, as a mother might nudge its cub. Its breath thawed his face and Einer’s cheeks and ears prickled to life. He lay still, and sniffed to stop the melting snot from running down over his face. ‘Forgive,’ he muttered to the bear, staring into its black eyes.
The wind ruffled the bear’s fur.
‘You should leave,’ Einer said. The beast moaned in response, swayed its heavy head from one side to the other, and as if it understood him, it rose to its hind legs, turned, and slumped down, away from Einer.
One gloomy step after the other, the white bear lumped away, past the dead horse, and up the slope of the dale.
Einer waited until he could no longer see it from where he lay. With the bear out of sight, he let go of the broken arrow in his grip and exhaled loudly. He rubbed his hands together and cupped them around his ears. His heart raced. He pushed himself up to sit, and brushed the snow off his coat.
The bear trampled out over the icy valley, moving fast on all fours. It almost seemed as if Einer had imagined their encounter, or dreamt it. It seemed impossible. The bear had been so much stronger than him.
Far to the right of the dale, where the wind blew in, a rider trotted across the white fields, headed for Einer.
The bear must have smelled someone coming, and decided to leave.
‘I’m here,’ Einer yelled. He waved his hands over his head, and then slumped back down into the snow, waiting for the rider to reach him. Somehow, he needed to keep his berserker craze a secret.
Sigismund and the others would question what had happened, and when his father heard that his berserker craze had returned, Einer would be sent away, no longer fit to be the son of a chief.
The crunch of the horse’s hooves in the snow became louder and louder. Einer pushed himself back up, ignoring how much his hands and ribs hurt.
The rider was Sigismund. It felt strangely discomfiiting to see Sigismund covered in fur and skin jackets when he usually wore colourful clothes full of embroidery. His fur hat hid his blonde curls and his neck-warmer reached up over his chin and hid the thin stubbles of the beard he tried to grow.
A few paces away from the bloody outline of the white bear in the snow, Sigismund slid off his horse and pushed his boots through the knee-high snow. He stared down at the white bear outline, and warily approached. The horse trod nervously at the smell of death.
Einer gulped and rubbed his hands. ‘My hands are freezing,’ he said in a rough voice.
‘Found your gloves,’ Sigismund mumbled. He seemed to have completely forgotten. He shifted his attention away from the patch in the snow, to Einer, and it made Einer feel as if he had interrupted something. Sigismund stumbled ahead, holding Einer’s thick wool gloves.
With a thankful nod, Einer took them. They were stiff from having lain in the snow. He slapped the snow out of them, and when he put them on, clenched his fists to gain some warmth.
‘Thought we’d lost you to the ice,’ Sigismund said. ‘Didn’t think you were… chasing bears..?’
‘It got my axe,’ Einer said. ‘Lucky you arrived and scared it off.’
‘White bears don’t flee…’ Sigis mumbled. ‘Where is your axe?’
‘With the white bear,’ Einer said. ‘Stuck in its skull.’
Sigismund stilled at his answer, and Einer just knew he had said something wrong, again.
The wind seemed colder for the sudden silence and distance between them.
‘It’ll be dead soon, then.’ Sigismund shook his head in disbelief. ‘Fifteen summers old and already a white bear slayer. Three summers younger than any of us,’ he mumbled as if he had just remembered it, again. No one ever quite let go of that fact. ‘How did you do it?’
Einer did not know the answer. Thinking of it made him miss his mother. ‘I’d like to go home,’ he said instead. ‘It’s cold.’
Sigismund agreed with a nod. ‘We need to patch you up,’ he said.
In silence Sigismund bound Einer’s wound. Einer started to feel dizzy from the cool air and the pain in his ribs. The whole day exhausted him, and he just wanted to get home, not only back to the village and warm himself, but to set sail and get home to Jutland and Ash-hill, and Hilda.
Sigismund helped Einer up on the horse and mounted at the front.
Clouds had blown in during the day, and the sun hung low in the sky. It had been dark when they had woken up and prepared to set out. Winter days were so short up north, and Einer missed the warmer weather from back home. After today’s events, he missed it even more, and all he wanted was to sit by the fire while their skald told stories about great heroes.
It seemed like they had ridden for a long time, but when Einer glanced back over his shoulder he could still see the dot of his dead horse and he knew they could not have ridden for that long.
In silence, they set into tölt and left the dale. After the trot with which they had started, the steady tölt was almost soothing, and Einer’s ribs hurt less than before.
Einer knew Sigismund had something to say from the way he rummaged on the horse, searching for the words. Finally, Sigis spoke: ‘Did you really attack…?’
‘I did,’ Einer confirmed. He tried not to mind the way Sigismund hesitated to talk about it as if they hardly knew each other, although they had been friends for half a dozen winters.
Einer starede at the back of his friend’s head and became so acutely aware of how different from each other they were, and perhaps always had been.
The horse heaved and thumped out over the snowy landscape. The clouds tainted yellow.
‘The gods steered your hand.’ Sigismund had selected his words with care.
In silence they rode on for so long that the day turned dark and the lights of the village finally entered into view, in the far distance.
‘The gods didn’t steer me,’ said Einer, having thought about it all this while. ‘They let me go.’
Chapter Two
Nine Winters Later
WHENEVER HILDA LEFT her father’s side, she forgot how drained he looked. How old and wrinkled he had become. How close to death he was.
The sound of Midsummer song was loud outside.
The smoke-heavy house smelled of burnt oak and wet sheep. Smelled like winter, not summer. The fire had been lit for her father to stay warm. The light was dim and barely reached the richly-coloured heroes painted on the walls of their longhouse.