Banruud was wealthy, powerful, and generally feared in Berne and throughout the clans. He would be the next king. It was only a matter of time.
Dagmar dreaded that day. Banruud of Berne, living on Temple Hill in the Palace of Saylok, so close to the son he’d never met, to the boy growing so sturdy and straight inside the temple walls. Word of his strength would spread. It already had in some quarters.
The villagers called Bayr “the Temple Boy.” They’d heard tales of him from the laundress in the village who washed the temple linens, from the cook who worked in the palace kitchens, from the soldiers who guarded the temple walls and made wagers over the feats of strength and agility performed by the small boy. Dagmar had tried to shield the child. He’d tried to keep Bayr’s strength a secret, but it had been impossible. By the time Bayr was three, he was skipping along behind the temple guards, mimicking their movements with both sword and shield. Now, at seven, he scampered up the hills with Dagmar struggling to keep up, he hefted boulders grown men would struggle to move, rocks he couldn’t even get his arms around.
Master Ivo had proclaimed it—proclaimed him—a miracle, a child of Thor, strongest among the gods, and Dagmar had said nothing. He knew to whom Bayr belonged, and it was not the God of Thunder. Bayr’s strength had been prophesied by his mother, and her blood sacrifice had borne fruit.
And that was not all.
In the seven years since Desdemona’s death, not a single female child had been born in Saylok. Not in any clan. The first year, the people of the clans had rejoiced at the birth of so many strong sons and thanked the gods. The second year, they’d talked amongst themselves, amongst the members of other clans, wondering over the odd influx of boys. The third year, they’d begun to worry. The chieftains of all six clans had gone to the king, and the king had gone to the Highest Keeper. Ivo had gathered all the Keepers of Saylok together, and they’d spilled their blood in the earth. They’d drawn runes to coax the goddess Freya to give Saylok daughters. They’d fasted and prayed and sacrificed six male lambs under every harvest moon.
But no daughters were born. Not in the fourth year or the fifth. Not in the sixth. Not a single infant girl in seven years was born to a son of Saylok. And Dagmar had said nothing. He’d bled and carved with his brethren. He’d beseeched the gods, the Norse gods, the Celtic gods, the Christian god, but no daughters resulted from his pleas. In the beginning, his life filled with fatherhood, with the strain of raising an infant in an enclave of men who were as clueless as he, he’d had no time to worry over Desdemona’s runes. But as time had passed, and the daughters of Saylok had failed to produce more daughters, when the years began to loom long and dry, Desdemona’s bitter words had risen in his mind and tortured him every waking moment.
Guilt had gnawed at Dagmar’s belly and grief had riddled his heart, but doubt and fear had kept him silent. Surely a rune could not hold so much power. Surely Desdemona was not the cause of such a scourge. It had to be something else. The girl children would return. Saylok would survive. Desdemona had said Bayr would be their salvation. But how? And when?
“What must I do, Odin? He is only a boy,” Dagmar groaned aloud, his eyes closed in prayer. “And strong though he may be, he cannot shoulder such a weight.” Dagmar went silent, listening, but the world around him was still, the forest deaf to his entreaty, and he scored his scarred palms and pressed them to the trunk of Desdemona’s tree, hoping he would see her intent, that he would understand her final words, but he felt only the hum of life, the passing of time, and eventually he dropped his hands in futility.
Dagmar felt the boy before he heard him. It was always thus. Bayr moved silently, but Dagmar sensed his presence, saw him in his mind’s eye, and hoped the boy had not overheard his prayer.
“Uh,” Bayr grunted, announcing himself. He was trying to say uncle, but he could not connect one syllable to another without great difficulty, and he gave up almost as quickly as he made a sound. Bayr understood everything that was said to him. His mind was quick. But he couldn’t speak without stammering so badly it took him several seconds to say a single word.
Incantations were easier. He joined the keepers in their morning verses, chanting the words he’d been hearing since the day of his birth, but when he was forced to speak on his own, he could hardly talk. It was an odd weakness in a boy so strong, stumbling over language when he stumbled over little else. It gave him cause for great humility and a heavy dose of insecurity. That insecurity kept him teachable—sweet, sensitive—and Dagmar was grateful for it, even though he worried for the boy’s future.
Dagmar thought often about the small gap in the rune of strength Desdemona had drawn and wondered constantly if she’d known exactly what she was doing.
“Yes, Bayr?” Dagmar answered belatedly, turning away from the tree that shadowed his sister’s resting place. He came often. It didn’t surprise him that Bayr had known where to look for him.
“I-I-I-vo,” Bayr stammered, and pointed toward the temple.
“He wants to see me?”
Bayr nodded, avoiding speech. Dagmar was convinced he and Bayr could have a conversation with gazes and shrugs and grimaces, and Bayr would greatly prefer it. He had an expressive face, his pale blue eyes and shaggy black hair giving him the wolfish appearance of his ancestors of Dolphys. Dagmar and Desdemona shared the same coloring. Bayr looked like them, but he had the size and strength of Berne, the Clan of the Bear, his father’s clan, and if Banruud ever laid eyes on him, it wouldn’t be hard to see the resemblance to his own tribe. But Banruud hadn’t laid eyes on him. Very few had beyond the temple walls. Dred, Dagmar’s father, had come looking for his daughter a month after her death, and Dagmar had shown him her grave at the base of the tree where she’d bled, never revealing there was a child who had survived her. Dred had gone, cursing the gods and his fortunes, cursing his dead daughter and his useless son, and Dagmar hadn’t seen him since.
Without prompting, the boy prostrated himself beneath the tree, laying his face against the flat stone placed on the ground, directly above his buried mother’s head, as though he pressed his forehead to hers. It was the way of their people, an acknowledgment of the dead. Dagmar had greeted her thus when he’d arrived to pray.
“M-m-mo-th-ther,” Bayr stuttered, and was up again, turning toward the temple and slipping his hand into Dagmar’s. His sweetness was at odds with his strength, and Dagmar welcomed it, squeezing Bayr’s palm as he stared down into the boy’s face. A savage protectiveness rose in his chest as he looked at his nephew, yet his fears for the boy were not of the typical variety. Bayr was more than capable of facing down physical threats. It was the political and spiritual kind Dagmar most feared.
“Have you been hunting . . . or wrestling?” he asked his nephew. There was an angry scratch on the boy’s forearm, and Bayr eyed it, unconcerned, before meeting Dagmar’s gaze.
“No wild pigs, wolves, or bears?” Dagmar pressed mildly.
The boy shook his head. The first time the boy had come face-to-face with a wild animal—a bear—was two years prior. They’d been in exactly that spot, and Bayr had been five years old. They’d been visiting Desdemona’s grave when to their right a sudden cracking in the underbrush had interrupted their solitude. They’d risen to their feet in alarm, all sound becoming muffled by the fear that rent the air. Dagmar had heard his heart in his ears, his breath in his throat, but he’d been unable to hear the bear, even when it had charged forward, running toward him, running toward Bayr, who stood frozen at his side.