I knew Morgunn had seen the smoke rising from the north. We hadn’t spoken of it, but it was there, a dark thread of fear stretching between us. “Yes,” I replied. “Jarl Meath hired Quicks to hunt the wolf-priests this year, but I’ve never seen them burn so close to our farm. I’ve heard them howl at night. It carries far across the hills, on the high winds.”
Morgunn wrapped her arms around her knees, moved her bare feet closer to the fire. “The Quicks will drive them out. And when the smoke stops, we can go into Trow again and get news.”
The Quicks were skilled archers who roamed the Seven Endless Forests of Vorseland. It was said that they were indifferent to all politics, religion, and law. They were known to be fierce hunters during the day, but genial, carefree rogues at night beside the fire. They despised the wolf-priests for bringing fire and death to their peaceful woods, and they killed the Fremish beasts as swiftly and quietly as they killed deer, quick arrows shot into dark wolf hearts.
I moved closer to my sister. “Aslaug once told me that the Quicks were blessed by the gods and brought luck to any place they roamed. Our farm will be safe, Morgunn. No one will find us.”
My sister nodded and then ate her last piece of cheese slowly, savoring it. We savored all our food now. Our storeroom had been low after the long winter, and now it was near empty.
I wished our mother were still alive.
And Aslaug.
And Viggo.
“You need a quest, Torvi,” he whispered to me once after we lay together in his bed, still shaking with love. “You need to travel, to roam, to see new things, new people. It’s in your blood, in your breath, in your bones. You can’t stay here with me forever.” He looked at me for a long moment, his hands moving across the small of my back. “I’m happy here in these hills. I’m content. But you need to pursue something larger than yourself. I can smell it on you—you smell of risk and adventure. You smell of dark forests, of gloomy caves, of exotic spices, of danger, of battle, of sacrifice, of hard-won victory.”
I wove my fingers into his. “You can’t possibly smell all of this on me, Viggo.”
He kissed my forehead and smiled. “I do. Your skin smells of the open road.” He paused. “You have buried a part of yourself, perhaps from fear, and perhaps from love, but it’s there. You hunger for something more. You’re starving for want of it. And if you refuse to seek it out, it will come to you instead. There’s no hiding from life, just as there is no hiding from death.”
I pushed back the furs and moved into a sitting position. “As a child, I used to say I wanted to be a witch when I grew up, or a warrior like Frey, or a jarl like the Thirteen Crones. Aslaug would laugh and stroke my hair, but my mother would shake her head and tell me I was destined to marry one of the Tather boys.”
I raised my gaze to Viggo’s. “She believes that my sister, Morgunn, has the capacity for greatness, that she has the courage and determination that I lack. Morgunn is a natural leader and true Vorse, and the only thing I’m good for is marrying.”
Viggo put his palm to my cheek and stroked my face with his thumb. “She is wrong, Torvi.”
“She is not a woman who is often wrong,” I said softly. “I am lazy and pleasure-loving. I enjoy peace and quiet and safety. I dislike killing animals. Morgunn has always been more daring, more reckless, more bold. She was killing chickens nearly as soon as she could walk. My mother had a little ax made just for her to cut their necks.”
“You respond to peace and simplicity, Torvi, like all wise, thoughtful people. But this is not all of who you are. You have steel in your blood. Your mother can’t sense it. She can’t smell the glory on you as I can. She is wrong.”
I’ve thought about that night and what Viggo said time and time again since I buried the shepherd back by the rowan trees.
I let my mind drift then to simpler memories, to the way Viggo’s hut felt after a summer thunderstorm—clean, fresh, and cool—to the smell of his sun-warmed skin, to the taste of Vite on his tongue—
“Are you thinking about the shepherd?”
Morgunn was watching me. I realized suddenly that I was smiling. I stopped.
My sister had caught me sneaking out one night last autumn and demanded to know where I was going. I told her, and she kept my secret. I think she enjoyed the recklessness of it.
Thunder roared outside, ripping open the night sky. I felt it pulse inside my chest, echoing my heartbeat.
Morgunn tilted her head back and laughed—thunder always put her in a good mood. She had a cheery laugh, and I often felt the sound of it alone could see me through a lot of darkness.
“Thunder needs mead,” she said a moment later. “Let’s open the last cask in the storeroom, Torvi, and drink until the rain stops.”
Morgunn had inherited our father’s taste for honey-wine and other spirits. One summer’s night a few years past, I’d gone to fetch my sister for supper and spent the next hour searching the Hall and the hills and the barn. I finally found her in the winter storeroom, stumbling drunk in the dark—she’d unearthed a dusty jug of long-forgotten Vite. I took the half-empty jug and put Morgunn to bed, hoping a pounding head the next morning would serve as her punishment. But my sister was lively and hale the next morning, and since then, her thirst seemed to have grown by the day.
“No, Morgunn.” She’d been on me about that cask for some time. “It’s all the mead we have left until I visit Trow.”
Morgunn rubbed the end of her button nose with her palm and sighed. “Something inside me wants the mead, Torvi. All the time. It’s a beast, always hungry, never satisfied.”
My eyes met hers. “I worry about you.”
She shrugged. “And I worry about you as well, and your broken heart. But you can’t stop me from drinking, Torvi, just as I can’t bring a shepherd back to life.”
My sister was blunt, a trait she’d learned from our mother. I admired her for it, even when I disagreed with her.
Morgunn rose to her feet and walked to the front of the Hall. She gave the two main doors a shove, and they opened wide into the dark, wet night. She stood, staring out into the storm, the wind whipping her hair, the rain licking her face.
Lightning flashed—
Morgunn let out a small gasp and stumbled backward. “Look, Torvi.” She pointed into the dark beyond the doors.
“What is it? What did you see?”
“There’s someone outside.”
I grabbed the sharp cheese knife from the nearby table. I went to the doorway and peered out. I could see nothing but darkness, hear nothing but rain.
I drew a cross over my heart with one finger—the Elsh gesture of warning, of all things sinister and ominous.
We waited for the lightning to strike again.
“I keep dreaming that Mother will come back.” Morgunn’s voice was soft, but her fingers were clenched into fists. “She crawls out of her grave and enters my room, covered in mud. She wants to take me back with her, wants me to get down under the dirt with her.” She paused. “Why didn’t you burn her, Torvi?”
“You know why.” I handed Morgunn the cheese knife, then grabbed a hunting dagger from a shelf on the nearby wall. “I buried her as she would have wanted.”