Chapter 2 – The Empty Meadow

CY 579, Readying 23 (Sunday)

She opened her eyes, then blinked in confusion.

Everything was gone.

The clock, the storm, Bjorn, the hunters: even the very night was no more. Instead of the dark and bitter Rhizian night of winter's end, an afternoon sun shone warmly on her face from high above. White clouds drifted in the cerulean blue vault of the sky.

She sat up with a jerk to find to her astonishment that she was half lying atop across a strangely familiar little huddle of painted boards and wooden roof tiles, sprawled among a field of old dried grass stalks and pale new green shoots.

She was in a field or meadow, somewhere, with sprouting grass and wildflowers rising around her. It was not winter here and the air was chilly with a winterly lilt, carrying the scents of early hellebore and honeysuckle and the faintest hint of ozone. From somewhere nearby came the tentative sounds of spring birdsong – jays and blackbirds and she knew not what else – but there was no other noise than her in this empty landscape, save that of the birds, the wind and the soft sussurus of the grass.

Gathering her strength with another grunt, she clambered to her haunches and carefully raised her head over the waist-high greenery. Her muscles felt drained and leaden.

She was indeed in what appeared to be an early fallow field of high grass and weeds. There was more fallow in what she reckoned was east and west, and beyond that open meadows and sparse copses of beech, fir and holly, bounded by greenbelts of tangled bushes and low, wrinkled trees of kinds she did not know. The remnants of a morning ground mist hung in shallow banks here and there, swirled by the breeze.

Cautiously she stood up but there was no hue and cry, no rush of booted feet. She turned a complete circle, looking everywhere, but she was completely alone. There was no one chasing her, no hunting party, and no Bjorn.

She stared for a while, disbelieving. What in Hel had happened? Where was she?

She forced down the ball of nervous panic growing in her stomach and forced herself to think.

She was not where she had been. They had been hunting her, but… now she was elsewhere, and alone, and definitely not in Granrud. This place was warm and alive, not locked in the chains of winter.

Was she dead? Were these the fields outside the Halls of Beltar, or perhaps the Gladsheim the new priests talked of in secret? Or instead, was she alive somewhere else in Midgard? And where?

She looked around. These fields were fallow: that meant there was a time they would no longer be fallow, and their harvest collected, which meant food. Did the dead eat? She was sure they did, in their feasts in Gladsheim or the ivory halls of the Twelve, whichever was so. But she did not feel dead. She did not seem to be a spirit. Or she supposed not; how could she know? Who had ever come back from the lands of the dead to say yea or nay? She pinched her arm, hard enough to hurt; there was pain, but that still proved nothing, really. Warriors would feast in Thor's halls by day and make battle with each other by night, so that they must also be hurt doing so, only to be reborn. But she sensed that she was alive, still. So again, where was this?

The strange platform of wood and tiles shifted beneath her feet and, still a little dazed, she stepped off and studied it. It was a sloped wooden frame covered with painted wooden tiles –

Her jaw fell open. By Thor, it was part of the Hands of Lendor! She touched it in amazement, put her hands under it, prying up the edge: there it was, an upper corner of the face made of precious ivory and sablewood. She picked up a brass arrow like a spade end, from one of the big arms on the clock face. It was wider and longer than her hand and, like everything else, sheared off on its stem. There were a few bits of the clock's machinery, too – pieces of precious toothed wheels and braces – but roof, clock, tiles and stock looked like they'd been shaped or sliced in some strangely curved or rounded angle, the edges of wood and metal smooth as silk as if they had been cut away from the clock tower by some great, impossibly sharp knife.

She stepped back in disbelief and confusion, dropping the brass arm. This – this was not possible. Any of this. What had happened? What was going on? She turned in circles, running her hands through her hair, mad thoughts rocking her mind.

Stop – stop! Think! There must be something, some clue, anything that might tell her what had happened, but all she could see were open spring fields, the wreckage of the clock and the sun high above in a cerulean blue sky.

Then she noticed to her surprise that Liga, the sun – Lyertha, her people called it – was much higher in the sky than it should be, and astonishingly bright for this time of year. She shaded her eyes and looked up. In fact, Lyertha was higher than Askyrkja had ever seen her in winter, making everything around her seem so bright they appeared almost washed out.

That… that was certainly not right. She knew exactly how Lyertha lay on the land over every season, and of course how low it was by winter and how high by summer.

Things slowly began to add together, speeding towards a conclusion she could not avoid. It was only chilly rather than bitterly cold. The sun was closer and higher than it should be. Many of the plants around her were completely unfamiliar. And everything was soggy and cold rather than frozen: there was almost no snow here, though she still felt the chill seeping through her damp clothes despite her heritage.

All these things would make sense… if she was now in some country far to the south.

Instinctively, she knew she was exactly, completely right and a jarring, panicky feeling swept up her spine as the facts swarmed atop her spirit like ravens.

This, wherever it was, was not Rhizia at all.

She staggered, the hammer blows of the past weeks raining on her mind, knees suddenly weak. The light seemed to swell in her vision until she could see nothing except a swirling glare. She took one, two faltering steps, then fell to her knees, gasping.

She looked up again, half hoping she was hallucinating, but everything was as before; the grass rolling under the wind, the long blue sky above, the changed season, the unfamiliar greenery.

She took a long, shaky breath, mind whirring as she tried to find a reason – any reason – to think she was mistaken. But she did not think so.

Where in Midgard was she?

Forcing herself to stay calm and think again, she began to reason.

Some of the plants – she stroked a wildflower weed growing beside her – were still similar, and some of the trees, too. So if she was not in Rhizia, she still could not be so far from home.

And if she was further south, and not in Rhizia… by the gods! Surely she must be on the other side of Grendep Bay! Her stomach dropped into her feet and she bent at the waist, taking great gulps of air again to stave off panic.

She was not in her father's jarldom. She was not even in the North! Calm, she told herself, calm.

Now – if she was on the other side of the Grendep… this must then be the Great Kingdom, or perhaps Ratik. Or the Bone March? She prayed that was not so. The hordes of goblins, Orcs and soldiers of the Bone March would kill her or worse, though at least the human soldiers would not eat her afterwards.

But still, how had she come – 

And then the thought struck her like a resounding hammer: the mage, Felix.

Mages could – what was it called? – Telemark? Telemove? Teleport – that was it. They could instantly move people and things over long distances, by the sheer power of their arcane magics.

She'd been teleported here! It must be so! She touched a hand to her chest, breathing heavy again. And the curvature of the parts of the Hands of Lendor – that had happened because they had been teleported with her! Everything at a little distance around her – like… a sphere, she realized – had been moved by Felix's magics and moved to… wherever here was. That must be how the spell worked. She shuddered at the implications of it: anything that straddled that sphere would be sliced away, just as the clock had been. She doubted it was working now, back in Granrud.

Gods alive! She swayed as the shock threatened to overwhelm her again.

So Felix, at least, had not abandoned her. Or perhaps he had just wanted to prevent her from being made to talk by the jarl's men. Still, would it not have been easier to just kill her, instead? Bjorn had certainly been about to do so. A pang of dejection washed over her at the remembrance and she thrust it away. Not yet, she told herself, eyes stinging. Not yet.

A bolt of alarm shot through her as the meaning of the perfectly severed sphere struck home: she frantically checked her hands, her feet and head, but she seemed to be completely intact. Nothing had been sheared off her, at least. Then she lifted her cloak and shivered a little where she saw that its lefthand corner had been cleanly and neatly sliced away; another few inches, probably, and she would have lost her foot. She shivered, then noticed that her nose itched; there was blood on her upper lip. She checked her face frantically but there were no lesions, no cuts. She must have banged her head somehow when she'd been teleported – gods alive, that word again. She'd literally been transported by sheer magic to – 

– here. On the other side of Grendep Bay.

The distance slowly settled on her. Orvung had had a great map of the Northlands from Rhizia to Aerdy done in coloured tiles on the floor of his great hall. She'd often thought it was beautiful, though crude and old and probably not very representative. If she was on the other side of the Bay, as she suspected, that meant she was… five or six hundred miles away from home – two hundred leagues! She felt herself start to swoon again and bowed her head, taking deep breaths.

If she truly was somewhere in Ratik – she prayed that was not so – or the North Province of the Aerdy, she would have to explore and to be careful; always Bjorn had drilled those into her. She still had her knife and could make some snare traps. She could put them along the trees and… oh, gods, she remembered every lesson of Bjorn's, every instruction… Bjorn… oh, gods. Her brave, handsome Bjorn. Her heart thudded hard and she sank to her knees in anguish.

Tears filled her eyes and she cuffed at them bitterly before burying her face in her hands and weeping. Why? Why had he done it? Had she not done as she was asked?? Had she not been loyal?? And yet he had turned on her, done her father's bidding – after trying to betray him, too! – and tried to kill her! She wept, cursing the uncaring skies. Damn the tradition of oaths that had bound Bjorn to her father, that had made him betray his love! They had loved each other, had planned their lives together in her head: They would build a hall outside the city. She would be its mistress, and bear his children. They would grow old together. But now all of that was gone! Never again would his burning kisses keep her awake into the nights, entwined together in his wolf-hide cloak. Never again would he tangle his fingers in her hair, pull her to him and –

Through her tears, she could see that there was something lying in the long grass, straight-edged and angular. She squinted and realized that could only be… a sword.

She frowned, distracted with confusion, and wiped her eyes. It wasn't hers. She hadn't had a sword. Her stomach shifted uncomfortably and she felt a strange pang of familiarity as she eased herself forward – then she gasped as she recognized it, for she knew it well; she had seen it a hundred times.

Hjartaleiter! Bjorn's sword!

She stared at it in astonishment. The bluish colour of the steel was there, the wavy edge exactly as she remembered, the narrow Suel guard and the fish-head pommel. She edged forward again, reaching out to pick it up. She held it in her hand, studying it.

It was certainly Hjartaleiter, but the blade, glimmering in the shaded light, looked shorter than it should be and she started to find that it was sheared halfway down its length! It had been a magic thing of power and dread – once she had lain naked upon it to tease and excite Bjorn, the steel cold and tingling on her taut abdomen – but now there was no tingle in her fingertips, no sense of power and danger. Now she felt only a dead length of broken steel, powerless and drained. Even the swirling blue light was gone from its surface. Her fingertips traced over the blade's familiar markings and felt the loss, the emptiness… but how –

She gaped as realization thundered: it must have been caught by the teleport when Felix had magicked her away at the same time she had been! The act of teleportation had broken it; cloven it as it had cloven the Hands, as it had sheared away the edge of her cloak. Such a shame, too. It would have been very useful if it had come through without its owner, and it would have served him right.

A jolt of fright ran through her. She sprang to her feet and turned a tight circle again, the ruined weapon held defensively before her. Where was Bjorn? Was he here? His weapon would not have come through alone. He had to be here somewhere. Her heart thudded in her chest as she scanned the meadow for man or sign.

Then she spotted a human form lying in the grass.

Bjorn.

He was here. He had come through the teleport, too.

Immediately she took a panicked step backwards, clutching Hjartaleiter in both shaking hands, eyes locked on his shape. It was him and no mistake; Bjorn the Hunter was lying on his face in the grass before her, still and silent.

She held the blade before her, legs spread in a fighting stance – as he had taught her – rocking slowly back and forth. He was a better fighter than she by far and could defeat her easily. Would he try to kill her again? Should she wake him? Should she run?

A sudden conviction seized her: she could reason with him. Felix had come through for them both! He had put them out of Orvung's clutches! Whatever Bjorn's oaths to her father, they were of no more concern; the gods would surely forgive him. And he could not now go home, either! They were free at last, to do as they chose, to start a new life here. Bjorn was a skilled warrior and such were always needed. And she – she would make for him a home, a tidy, clean little place with a warm, friendly kitchen, a garden of herbs and flowers – and tidy children's rooms, exactly as they'd always dreamed and wanted. They were in love. She would only need to make him see that again: he loved her, she knew he did, and he'd only made a mistake out of enormous guilt or loyalty.

And was that not the mark of a great heart, a true soul? Truly it was!

She needed only… to wake him up. And that was fine. She could just… wake him up.

She swallowed nervously as another little thrill of terror ran through her. He would see reason; she knew that. Still though, she did not go to him, and she did not drop the broken sword.

Finally summoning her courage, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath and eased forward. 'Bjorn?' she whispered gently. Then 'Bjorn,' she whispered a little louder, but still he did not stir.

She came a little closer and then she smelled it.

Blood. And something more. She took another step closer, pulse thumping in her chest. 'Bjorn?' she whispered. Then she stopped and her heart went cold with horror.

Bjorn's form lay flat, his arms splayed, chest pressed to the earth… and both his lower legs gone below the knees. The grass was stained and mottled with red there, the red earth a deeper ochre. The air was heady with the scent of blood, and death.

Hjartaleiter tumbled from her hands and she clasped her palms to her mouth. 'Gods, no!' she shrieked. 'NO!'

She rushed to him. He drew no breath and his form was cold and still. She could feel no throb of life in his wrist or neck. 'Bjorn! Bjorn!' she shouted, shaking him, but he did not stir.

Bjorn the Hunter was dead.

She sagged across him, head bowed, eyes closed, breathing hard through her mouth as she leaned on his corpse for strength. Bjorn. Oh gods, Bjorn. A pang smote her heart like a hammer and she trembled, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes as the tears grew and absolutely would not stop.

The act of the teleportation had severed him just as it severed the parts from the great clock, just as Hjartaleiter had been broken – by that sphere of magic that Felix had used to move her from Granrud to here. He'd been leaning up onto the clock, about to run his sword into her loyal, beating heart, at the very moment that Felix's spell had arrived. He'd arrived with her and her strange chariot, bled out, and died.

It could not be so, not at this moment! They were free! After everything they'd shared, and done, and promised, after everything, a wizard's well-meaning spell had gone awry and killed him. A spell meant to save her – save them both, even – had indeed saved her… and killed him.

She sucked in three heaving, panicky breaths, then threw her head back and let out a primeval howl of utter dismay, slamming her fist into her thigh again and again, then fell across his body again, abjectly weeping. She could smell his scent, mixed with the smell of death and blood. She huddled there, clinging to his lifeless form, trying to convince herself that when she opened them he would not be there, that this was a delusion born of weeks of stress and fear, but still he lay dead in her arms.

She tucked her legs in tight beside him, listening to the wind rattling the grass and rustling the trees with their scant few budding leaves while the clouds drifted above them both. A pair of ravens circled down to a big oak on the edge of the field, croaking softly.

When night fell she was still there, laying asleep over his back, head resting on his big shoulder as dark, troubled dreams flitted through her mind.

She was in the woods, somewhere; not a threatening one, but one that she knew well. There was a path that her feet were taking, as they had taken a thousand times before, the earth soft but firm under her bare feet. She was bringing water from the well into the house; evening was falling and there was soup to be made, and the children to be managed. Lief and Inga were fighting, Lief having caught his sister stealing from the cookie tun again. Thrice she had punished her eldest daughter for such selfishness – taking from her own family – but still the girl had not learned. There would be the Hels to pay if she persisted, Askyrja thought. Inga was willful, worse than Askyrja had ever been as a child. She would speak to her husband about this, and put the trouble before him. That would set it aright.

She climbed the path to their beautiful cabin and smiled as she stopped to again look on the smooth, well-used timbers and the perfect quaint wooden roof with its colourful slats. A little smoke still puffed out the chimney so that she knew the coals would be easy to manage.

A male voice disturbed her as she admired their house, overlooking the little lake, sheltered among the tall pines and firs: her husband was coming home from the hunt, a doe draped over the back of his horse. He waved a big calloused hand, grinning through his beard as his mount walked towards her, up the little hillock to the house and the porch on which she stood.

She smiled as she looked up, shading her eyes from the light, his great form looming over her on his stallion –

CY 579, Readying 24 (Moonday)

Askyrja woke.

It was daylight and the heat was growing. There was birdsong, as before, and a stillness around her. 

The humors of the night were in her eyes. She rubbed them, then rose, remembering the horrors of the day before, trembling to look down on the corpse of her lover.

She stared a while in numb, bleary-eyed confusion, then took his cold hand and held it. The two ravens were perched in a high tamarack, their beady eyes wathing her. One cocked its head back and let out a series of gravelly croaks.

By and by, gingerly she took hold of Bjorn's shoulder and belt – twinging as she felt the weight of him, remembered his feel, his touch – dug in her feet and pulled. His big form, limp dead weight now, came only with struggle and then rolled loose and heavy onto its back. Askyrja looked down on his pallid corpse.

His cheek was smeared with a little dirt and she wiped it away, stroked her fingertips through his beard, over his rugged chin and jaw. His strong nose had a peculiar little bend where it had been broken by a tussle with a boar. His dark grey gaze was still and filmed with death.

She would never see her mother, brother or sister again and her father had never, ever been hers. Now Bjorn, her lover and one-time protector, was gone. Felix had killed him – accidentally to be sure – at the moment wherein Bjorn had been trying to kill her. Maybe he'd tried to do so because he'd always obeyed Orvung and could scarcely do otherwise. Maybe it had been his life or hers, and he'd thought he would be the most merciful of executioners. Or maybe none of these was true. Had he ever even been a friend to her at all?

Was all this her fault? Oh, gods. No. No, he and Felix had asked for her help. None of this had been her wish; she'd only done the best she could, out of love. She could have done no more.

And now Bjorn was dead, and she was… exiled. Yes, that was the word. Exiled. Tears ran from her eyes again and she knelt helplessly by the body, lost and alone.

She wiped at her cheeks and glanced up at the ravens in the trees. Whatever he had done, she would not leave him for the carrion eaters. She would do at least that much.

She closed his eyes, gave his brow a last kiss and dragged him under a shady tree at the edge of the meadow, then staggered back to search among the wreckage of the clock for something she could use. She found the hand-sized piece of the clock arm; it resembled a spade end, and she took it back with her.

Askyrja knelt, lifted her makeshift shovel up and drove it into the ground with a grunt of effort, prying out a big clump of soil and clay. She shuffled left and repeated the action, then again, and again, carving out a man-length trough in the earth, digging long through the dim early morning. It would not be a funeral pyre – it would not even be a deep grave, but it would be enough to keep him safe and it would have to do. Hunger and thirst she ignored; her people were strong. They endured privations; they were not the slaves of them.

As midday passed, she stood back and wiped her brow. The grave was only three feet deep, which she hoped would be enough, and the spot was a little higher than the fields around it, which she thought he would have liked. He had talked sometimes of building a freehold on the summit of a high hill where he could see for miles. Perhaps he would have brought her there.

He lay in the grave, hands crossed on his chest. At the head of the grave was Hjartaleiter, for lack of any other marker; perhaps it would be whole for him in the afterlife. Her heart gave a little flutter again and she closed her eyes until it stopped.

She looked on the grave for a while, then bowed her head and said a little prayer to Wee Jas, goddess of death among the Suel, and another to the new gods Odin and Hel. She asked for his safe passage though she could not burn any gems in sacrifice for she had no fire hot enough and could not spare the few valuables she'd stolen from her father's hoard. Besides, she was not sure he deserved such a boon now, though she had also made Hel-shoes from triangular pieces cut out of his cloak and bound them to his feet so that his feet would not turn to ice in the frosts of Niflheimr. She did take his money-purse, rationalizing that he would not need it in the afterlife and that, after everything, he owed her at least that much.

Then she took out the bone case with its secret, so-important, gods-cursed letter – the very thing for which everything had been sacrificed, the cause of so much ruin, of the end of her love, and of Bjorn's life. So much suffering and pain for this, itself intended itself to cause more suffering and pain. It was a cursed thing. She wanted to hurl it away, but instead she knelt and pressed the case onto his chest under his big hands: he had wanted it so much, and so now he would guard it for all time.

Then, using her hands she covered him with earth, patted the grave down and smoothed it carefully, using twigs to make a sign of warding that she hoped would protect him from graverobbers and carrion eaters both. A small raised mount marked the last resting place of Bjorn Askyrjasástir: Bjorn the Hunter.

She rose unsteadily. The sun was risen and by its place in the sky she judged it was about noon. The wind was picking up and it spoke as it rippled through the trees, though she could not make out the words. She foraged for roots again and found a fresh pond that she drank from and, for the first time in weeks, took a bath. It was cold but refreshing and she dug out some crayfish and frogs that she cooked over a fire. She made a small shelter in front of the fire from loose tree limbs and boughs of pine.

As night drew down she stared listlessly out over the empty meadows, trying to decide what to do.

Half of her wanted to just lie down with him under the shady tree and wait for the end with him who had broken her heart. Maybe his spirit would come back to her. Maybe he would love her again. She would just lay there until the shadow fell on her too and let her life slip away so she could fly high like a bird to where she could be with him again –

No.

She could not help him that way nor he her and in the end Bjorn – her wonderful hunter – had betrayed her, again the obedient hound of his jarl. What could he possibly say to her in the afterlife now?! What words of his could soothe the wound he had caused? And who would she be if she accepted them? He would love her until the stars go dark… yet had tried to slay her? Had he at least regretted his betrayal, or was she merely a loose end to be trimmed for his plotting, like the Norns clipping short the threads of life?

That night she dreamt of a faraway mountain, lone and towering over a twisted jungle of brush and thickets and a blighted stretch of hills bounded by a wide river. A great silvery plume of steam capped the mountain, suggesting deep volcanic fires within, which drifted southeast and rained down over the tangled thickets there. Every so often it rumbled, shaking loose stones in its crown and sending up a much higher, massive spout of steam, then calmed again until its head fell lower, quescient almost as if waiting.

CY 579, Readying 25 (Godsday)

The sky was a mix of grey that morning, with sunlight peeping through the congealing clouds, threatening rain if she were any judge.

She ate the last of her harvest from the pond and got on the road once more. She was young and very hardy and while her feet weren't sore she found herself missing the horse she'd stolen.

Then she noticed that west of her, guessing by the sun, the land dipped down in what looked like a straight line, parallel to the fields, running north-south. She shaded her eyes and took a long, hard look, squinting in the bright light.

Was that a road?

It was, she was certain: it was too straight to be natural. This then was confirmation: fields, greenbelts, a road. She was indeed in some civilized country, and it was in the lands of the living.

How could she know who had made this road? There were evil nations, she knew; many called the Great Kingdom evil, and perhaps it was. She was alone without food or friend though she supposed she could live off the land for a good while. She did not want other people. What did she need to seek them out for? Why did she need anyone at all?

But in the end an exhausted curiosity tipped her over; what, really, did it matter what she did now anyway? At least she would see where it was she had been sent. Perhaps there would be purpose in that.

Swaying like a willow-wand, she let her feet guide towards the roadway.