We sailed on, then, westward, up a long lake of fresh water leading deep into the great fells. In the lake were many fertile islands, and the shores of it were well wooded and green; and here and there we saw many a houseplace and stead. But most of these were burned and ruined, with only the occasional reek of smoke against the sky showing where someone still lived. Then the islands fell behind us, and the shores steepened, and became bleak. And, as the great hills were all about us and the sea far behind, so the snows came down to meet us, `till the white spread even to the rocks at the water's edge. Ahead, great slopes crouched crowded round the head of the water, so that I had a feeling of being shut in.
- Where is it that we're going, Lochlann?
- Not far now, Kirsten.
I looked at the barren slopes and shivered. At last, when it seemed we must land on the precipitous slope ahead, an arm of water opened up leading northward, through a narrow gorge. It looked even less inviting than what had gone before. We turned in to that, and the hills were so high about us, that the wind, penned in amongst them, followed us round the corner, but fretting and uneasy in its captivity. Then, some mile or so beyond the corner, the slopes on both sides opened out again, and became shallower and gentler, with dense forest showing under the snow. There was no sign that any man had ever been there before us. After a couple of miles more, the lake petered out into reed beds, threaded with creeks. Lochlann lowered the sails, and rowed us slowly into one of these. For some time we went forward through winding ways, crincling through the thin ice, with last summer's reeds whispering and fluttering around us. Then, quite suddenly, we found ourselves in a broader mere, with jetties about it, and fully a dozen craft -- even a small ship -- lying quietly by them, or hauled out on the bank.
And that was the first I came to Dun an Cuil. This hall wasn't here at that time, of course, and the main house place was the old round house by the gate; but otherwise it was just as it is now, so that I won't describe it for you, except in the ways it seemed strange to me then.
There was a young man met us on a horse, that was Kenneth yonder, but of course I did not know him then. And I thought he looked fine and wild in his plaid and his winking brooches -- and his hair, which was a good bit redder then; aye, and a good bit wilder. He sat his pony and made no move to help us make the boat fast. He said something in the Gaelic, and Lochlann said -
- Kirsten does not have the Gaelic. It would help her if you would speak in the Norse.
- Very well. I said that the old woman would see you. Come.
We went ashore, and followed him up to the Dun.
I found that introduction to the Dun very confusing. I was not yet easy again with Lochlann - no, I was not really easy with anything in my life. I had left my family, dead by the fjord, and my home, abandoned beyond the sea, and even Anna, alone with the christwomen, so that there was nothing left of my life that had been but Kep, and you know what use he was. Kep, and Lochlann, who was the stranger. The stranger who I had thought was the god. The stranger who had come into my dreams. The stranger who had stirred hunger in my loins. The stranger who had been strong, and talked of peace. The stranger I had given myself to. More the stranger now that I had seen through a dark window into his past. The riever. The raper. The killer. My only living friend, who had wept in my arms, whose touch could turn me to fire and water.
We had talked little in the two days it had taken us to come from the island of the christwomen. He had not touched me, not kissed me - none of the small intim I was hungry for - but watched me with that strange, haunted look. I needed time with him, and space. I needed to speak with him alone, quietly, to reach out to the truth in him, to the strength, to know that I was indeed safe to lay my trust with him. And in that time of confusion within, we came into the dun, and into the old round house that was full with folk, whose ways were all strange to me and whose language I did not know, and so there was confusion all around me, too. So that all that I remember of that first evening was noise and clamour and, behind all, the withered grim figure of the old woman in her high chair, her hooded eyes boring into mine, and her hands catching and dropping the spindle, catching and dropping, catching and dropping, catching and dropping.
I remember that: and I remember feeling the coldness of the folk. For all the welcome of the old woman - and she did make us welcome, and that courteously, in her harsh way - I could feel that all the folk there felt for us was fear and distrust.
So that I clung closer and closer to Lochlann as the evening went by, waiting for that moment when eating was over, and the business of the hall was done, and we would be shown to a bedplace and we might be alone. Where we might be alone, so that we could talk, so that we might touch, so that I could be reminded of his goodness, and his gentleness, so that I might reassure myself of his love. Where we might be alone so that, at least, if my fear could not be lightened, if our friendship could not be affirmed, at least my body could be eased. For my womb had lain empty since it had tasted his seed in the morning of the year, and now that the year was dying it was hollow and hungry for wanting him. In that time of misery, and loneliness, and confusion, and - yes, and despair - it cried out within me to be filled; and that was one consolation I had not thought would be denied.
Well, you've grown up here and the ways of this place are not strange to you - but when the first night came, and the great bed was made down, and everyone huddled in it together in their day clothes - oh, the emptiness then... I huddled against him in the dark and took what comfort I could from his nearness. Which was not enough.
So that next morning I took Lochlann by the hand before the sun was well risen, and led him up into the oakwoods, swiftly, impatiently, ignoring his questions. I found a place that was high up, where the bare trees grew close around, and little snow had filtered through to the frosted grass. I let go his hand, threw down my mantle, and tore myself out of my clothes. I laid myself on the frost and snow. Lochlann looked down at me surprised - even, I thought, frightened. He laid his hand on his belt buckle, and then stopped, his face all question.
- Please hurry, Lochlann -
I said -
- I'm very cold.
He started to undress, slowly...
- I'm cold, Lochlann...
When he pulled off his breeks I saw that his cock could hear the calling of my womb, even if his mind could not. And my heart rose, and I realised that I had feared he would not rise for me.
Ahhh, the cold of the snow under my bare arse. Ahhh, the heat of his cock nuzzling blindly into my hungry cunt...
Again though, as before, he was gentle, careful, and where before that gentleness was sweet to me, now it was unfilling, unsatisfying, so that when at last his seed sprang in me and he was done, my belly still cried within me of its hunger. And there was distance between us.
Later in that day, I found myself a place apart, and touched myself to ease the hunger as I had so often through the long months we'd been apart. But now, where before my mind had formed pictures of Lochlann, and sunlit meadows, now was a picture of the raider who had killed my father. More than a picture. The unwashed stench of him, and the sharp stink of new blood. The heat of the burning thatch (in my mind, it burned). The bruising grip of his hands on my arms, pushing me down into the mud of the yard. The sharp pain of his teeth at my tit, and the tickle of blood running. And...
And the battering, pounding thrust of his great, filthy cock in me. And when the fire came in me, my juices boiled so that I was wet down my legs, and stank, and must needs find water - freezing water - to clean myself. And then I was frightened. And all that night I held myself close to Lochlann as a man who is drowning.
There are things that happened in those first weeks I spent here that are important, and part of this story, so I'll finish this bit quickly. I see now that Lochlann was being gentle, and tentative, because he was afraid of being rejected by me; and in my coolness after we had fucked, he found the rejection he was expecting. Again and again through the cold of that winter, I took Lochlann apart to such private places as I could find. Always I led him, never he led me. And he was gentle and tender, but I was never satisfied. So that the distance between us that I tried to bridge with our bodies, just grew. I didn't any longer touch myself, for I feared the pictures that came. But when the hunger was fiercest in me I would lie at night in his arms, and dream of brutal men, and find in the morning that my thighs were damp and sticky.
And what we could not do with our bodies, we did not do with words. Out in the cold and wet, there was never time for the long, gentle, intimate talking we needed to heal our wound; and in the bustle of the dun there was never privacy for it.
I did not like the dun, then. It's different now; now it's my home. Then it was a place of strangers. It was the way the way of the place then, even more than now, that the men's work and the women's work were separate - not that there is a lot to do in the hind end of autumn, when the crops and the wood are all in for the winter, and the cattle have been culled. But when there was work to do, Lochlann would be working out with the men - or more often by himself. I would work with the women. I was not skilled, then, in the way things were done here; every little task there is, it seemed, there were different customs for here, to what I was used to. Because that I could not speak the gaelic, and no-one would be bothered to take time to show me anything, so I would get the worst of the jobs. And still I would get shouted at. I don't think Lochlann knew of this; no-one shouted at me when he was there. But it all added to the unhappiness of me, so that it felt as tho' it would have been better to have died in the raid.
Then there came a day which was wetter than the rest -- and it is in my memory that all those days were wet -- that I was working cleaning out the old house with some others. It was the first time I had worked in there. I was set to sweeping the floor, which is not something you can easily do wrong. The other women were talking. I could hear by their tone, and from the words I'd begun to understand, that it was me they were talking of, and not kindly. I had nearly reached that place in myself that I would go out and make my own peace with the winter.
The old woman was sitting in her high seat with her spindle, catching and dropping, catching and dropping, catching and dropping. Her face you couldn't read in the gloom; just the points of her eyes following us. She called out sharply in her harsh voice. The other women gathered round her chair. I went on sweeping. She spoke to them for some time; her voice was always harsh, but now it seemed sharp even for her. I swept, head down, watching under my hair. Then four of the women went to fetch the other chair, a huge, heavy, carved thing that matched the old woman's; it took all of them to shift it. They set it beside hers.
The old woman called out again, not so harshly, it seemed. She was looking at me; she beckoned. I went over. She indicated the chair, making welcoming gestures, and saying something which I could not understand, but kindly seeming. I sat down. It seemed that this was right, for she smiled. She spoke again to the women. One went out into the rain -- I shall not tell you who it was, for all these folk are friends now -- while the others went back to their tasks. I made to rise, but the old woman waved me back with her hand. There was no sound in the place but the hush of brushes. Then the woman who had gone out returned. She was carrying a tray with a flask of wine, two drinking cups of fine glass, and a dish of sweet cakes. She presented these to the old lady. The old woman said something to her. She offered the tray to me. The old woman said something sharper. She flushed; then she knelt, and offered the tray to me. I poured wine into one of the glass cups, and offered it to the old woman. She took it graciously. I filled the other cup. The old woman looked at me, and raised her cup to her lips. I drank from mine. The old woman smiled, and indicated the cakes. I picked it up, and offered it to her. She took a cake, and looked at me. I put the dish back on the tray, and took a cake from it.
Now the old woman nodded at the woman who was kneeling with the tray, and she got up and went out. We sat, eating and drinking, smiling at one another. When we had done, she called someone over to take the cups away. She took up he spindle and started to spin again. Again I made to rise, again, she motioned me not to. So I just sat, and watched other folk working, and felt much the better for it.
At the old woman's feet was the bag in which she kept her spinning gear. I could see she was about through the wool on her distaff, so I took combs and some fleece from the bag, and began to card some more for her. After I had done that, I found a spindle in the bag, and -- tho' that it was smaller and lighter than I was used to -- I started to spin myself. So we passed the day, until it was time for the nightmeal.
When the men had come in, and the boards and trestles had been put up, the old woman called Lochlann over. They greeted each other with some affection, as I had seen them do before. After they had spoken for a moment he went and fetched a high stool, so that he could sit by her and still be on a level with us. She spoke to him again, and he turned to me and said -
"The mother bids me say that she is shamed that a guest is so ill used in her house."
"Will you say to her for me that I am grateful for her goodness?"
He spoke to her, and she to him, and he to me. We went on like this through the meal, sitting at the high table and having others serve us, while we spoke through this chain -- not freely, or easily as friends do -- but with great good will. It was then that the place started to change for me.
Over the next weeks, I sat with the old woman often. At first Lochlann was often with us to help with words, but I quickly learned the speech of the folk here, and then I saw less of him, except that each night I would lie with him, as close as we might be there.
During the long evenings of winter, when the light was gone early from the land, folk would tell tales, as is the way everywhere. Kenneth was often the one with the tales, as he still is, for his skill with the harp and his fine voice. Many of the tales were from the matter of Britain, which I did not then know, for they are not told in the north. Now, it still happened that there were times when some of the folk who were here would be hostile to Lochlann or me; and whenever the old woman saw this, that night she would call for a particular tale about the wizard Merddin. This was the tale about how Merddin came to be mad, after he saw the slaughter in a battle that there was. After this he ran naked in the woods for three years. While this tale was being told, the old woman would look hard at whoever had been hostile.
As I got better with the speech, so I came to understand more and more of what went on. So it was that I heard the old woman speaking to -- someone, I shan't say who -- for being cold to Lochlann.
"In the face of god, an Cailliach, why is it that you say we must take this sea-wolf among us?"
"I have told you before, and that many times. We will take him among us because that he has repented. We will take him among us because he has paid the price in blood. We will take him among us, because in the dark time when all our men were dead and scattered, and there was no food in this place, so that we were starving -- you and I were starving -- it was he that fed us. Most of all we will take him among us because my sons are dead, and it is my blood-price for that that he should be a son to me in their place."
"When you agreed that between you, you know that I accepted it just as much as anyone did. But what sort of son has he been to you? He is here, when the winter is cold and there is little work to be done, but when the spring comes into the land, and we go out into the fields, he is gone."
[Settling into the Dun. When the weather is bad, Kirsten works with the women, and listens to their talk - they talk, among other things, of Lochlann and other men.]
[We learn why Lochlann is distrusted by most of the folk. Many of the other men will not willingly work with him, and most of the time he hunts alone.]
I've explained before why things between Lochlann and me were not good just then. I was treating him as a loyal household warrior treats a once great lord grown old and timid: with loyalty in public, anger in private. He treated me as a thick-headed father treats a beloved daughter with the wasting sickness: with an lost, helpless, puzzled tenderness. And so we grew further and further apart.
By this time food was running low in the Dun. The heap of oats in the granary was shrunk that half the floor showed bare. The salted beef was all gone, only four sides of smoked pig still hung in the smoke house, and we were all well sick of smoked salmon.
The deer were not so common in the valley, and the hunting parties were often away over night, and came back empty handed. There came a day when Lochlann came in down the hillside, with a hind and two good hams of a stag on a travois which he was pulling. After they had been butchered, I was carrying jointed meat into the store house while Lochlann spoke with some of the men. I could not hear what was being said, but I did not much like the shapes their bodies made. Suddenly I heard a voice out of the pack -
- We do not need to be told of the ways of our own deer or the folds of our own hills by the likes of you, you murdering northman.
I should say that the word used was `lochlann', that I have spoken as `northman'; but you could hear that it was said as a curse, and not as a name. Lochlann straightened himself slowly, took up his bow and his spears, and began to walk out of the Dun. There was something desperately final about the way he moved. I dropped the joint I was holding and just stood and watched as he trudged across to the gate and out down the track. He did not call, or even look back. I stood and watched the dim figure fade into the falling snow, the shadow of the mantle snapping in the thin, cold wind.
He was gone. The confusion and anger of those last months fell from me in a great wave of loss. I ran to the place in the old house where my gear was. I made a rough pack of the warmest of Rognvald's clothes I still had, hung my father's sword to my belt, and fled. Friendly voices called me back, but I ran out into the cold and gathering dark, chasing footprints the new snow was already filling.
The footprints led across the valley, and up through the steep woods of the other side. My pack was awkward, so I could not run up that slope. The murk of winter's evening grew about. I climbed desperately, so that my sides ached, and my knees grew weak; and at last, long after I thought I could go no further, I saw a figure ahead of me.
- Lochlann... -
I called, like the feeble child he thought me. The figure halted.
- Lochlaannnn....
The figure came back towards me. It was Lochlann. I wanted to throw myself in his arms and cry.
- Why have you come?
- You left me...
- And if I wanted to leave you?
- I will not let you go.
- And if I go to my death?
- I will not let you.
He turned away, and walked on up the path. Having nothing else to do, I followed. We walked on like that for a long time. The darkness grew around. We had come over the top of the hill, and were descending now, still through the thick oakwoods.
I tripped, and fell heavily, hurting my hip and shoulder. I was tired, and lost, not just as to place but in myself. I just lay there, and listened to his footsteps fading away, and wept. I don't know how long I was there. It was very cold, and I had not had time to change from the women's clothes I had worn in the Dun to the warmer clothes I had brought. So that the cold dulled my mind, and it began to wander. But after some time I felt myself lifted in strong arms, and knew that it was Lochlann. And as he carried me I felt his great strength...
This man who I loved and hated was stronger than the monsters of my dream. In my anger I clawed at his face with my free hand. He gripped my arm above the elbow, like the monster in the dream. His grip was stronger, so that I could not struggle against it; but also gentler, so that although my arm was held, it was not hurt or bruised. I wept.
After the flames it was dark. I was being shaken, hard, by the shoulder. There was a voice.
- Wake up, Kirsten. Come on now, wake.
Lochlann's voice. Lochlann's hands, his great strength.
- Lochlann...
- Nightmare again?
Concern in the voice; more than concern.
- Nightmare...
What could I tell him? What could I say? We were wound tight together in our mantles, so that his body was close against mine. The hunger within me cried out for him. I freed a hand, a struggled with my skirt.
- Kirsten...
- Shhh...
I took his hand, and folded his ring finger and his little finger into his palm. I pushed it down between my legs, and laid his fingers where I needed them -
- rub me -
I said, showing him how. And so he touched me; and I coached him at it, and neither of us found that easy. But at last the fire flared in me, and I kissed him then, small kisses, again and again. My breathing gradually slowed. It was dark. It was quiet. We were held close. I thanked him. There was quiet for several minutes.
- Kirsten...
Small voice. unsure.
- Kirsten, what happened?
In the dark, I told him about my dreams. All about them; all I've told you already, and worse, more shaming things, which I won't ever tell anyone but him. I told him, again, of the time I'd lain with Thorsteig, the quick, drunken ugly thumping which left me sore and used and dirty. I told him about the first time we had fucked, and the sweet unexpected joyous revelation of the possibility of gentleness in fucking. I told him of the times since, and my hunger for him, and how my body wasn't roused.
His voice came out the darkness, small, lost.
- Kirsty, I have never done, before, what I'm trying with you. I've never lain with a woman who has come to me freely before you. Never. I don't know what to do, and I know that I am losing you. Kirsty, I'm afraid of losing you, more afraid than I've been before. I'd rather face ten of the greatest warriors in the world than lie naked in the grass with you... For in battle you can only lose your life, and here I am losing a hope of joy that I never expected to have. Teach me, Kirsty: I don't know what to do.
A feeling of despair washed out of him to drown me; and then I thought, this can't be right. Here are we, two strong folk, clever, capable, folk weeping and wailing because we couldn't manage something that every bird in the air and every beast in the forest does without even thinking.
- Look -
I said -
- I don't know what to do, either. I've never lain with someone who loved me before, either. But Freyja knows it can't be hard! We can do it - or if we can't do it, we can wear ourselves out trying... Look - let's start where you said. Let's start naked...
I struggled out from under the pile of furs we were lying under, pulled off my girdle and brooches, and struggled out of my clothes. We were in a small cave, high up. I couldn't believe the cold of it -
- Oh by Freyja's necklace! Winter isn't the time to do this! Let me back in there!
I pulled myself back under the furs, and pressed my length against him, my teeth chattering into his beard. And as dawnlight spilled slowly into the cave, I taught him how to play on my body like a minstrel on his harp, how to touch this part, and how that; what to stroke, and what to knead, and what to rub; where to kiss, and where to nibble, and where to suck. When to be tender, as no other man could ever be tender, and when to be strong. And the strength of him then was so great that I did not take a step that next day without knowing he had been in me; and many of the days that followed, the same.
But indeed I didn't take many steps in those days of winters ending, for the cave was in the side of a little pass, through which the deer came down off the high ground seeking what little food was left in the valley lands; so that half a day's hunting fed us for a week. So there were many days when we did not leave our bed. We would doze together, and that was good. We would lie, together, looking out over the little pass, watching the wild things about their business in the snow, and that was good. We would explore one another's bodies with fingers and lips and teeth, and that was good. We would explore them with our tongues and noses - there being no-one else there, and it being cold besides, we did not wash, I think, for twenty days, so there was much for noses to explore! And though I would have been shamed for anyone else to smell me so, that Lochlann did it, that was good; and when I smelt him, it brought hunger to my womb and juices to my cunt, as the smell of good roast beef brings hunger to the belly and juices to the mouth. And so we would fuck, and that was very good, especially after I had convinced Lochlann that my cries did not mean that he was hurting me, that he should stop. Then we would smell stronger than ever, and so we would start again; so that winter was the right time, after all.
Most of all we talked. We talked of my childhood, and of my mother, what I could remember of her; of my siblings and cousins, my father and uncles and aunts, who were all dead. I mourned them all, then, as I had not had space to do before, so that I would lie on his breast, curled like a child against him, and his arms strong round me, and his beard wet with my tears. We talked of his childhood. Of his mother, a free woman, only wife to his father. Of his father, strong and manly, who kept no other woman for his bed - as was indeed the old way, before the keeping of bedslaves was common. Of the great house at Altborg, where his farther was Jarl, and of the other children of the great house; of the horses, and the hunting dogs, and all the other things of childhood.
We did not talk again of his raiding years, except that we talked again of Sigi, of Sigi as child, of Sigi as friend, of the hope and promise of Sigi, and of loss.
We talked of all these things, and many others. I wanted to know what he liked in women's clothes, and how he would see me wear my hair. He asked me how we should name our children, and where I would see them live. We talked of farming, and fishing, and how our children would be fed; and what they should be taught, and how they should grow up. I wanted to learn to read, and he spent some time teaching me, drawing letters in the dirt with the end of a twig. All this, and much more.
It was during those days also that I learned of things that had happened after he had given his sword to the sea; of the three years he had lived alone in these hills, naked, eating only herbs and roots, and the fungi that the shamans eat, searching on the spirit road where the shamans walk, trying to find a salve to cure the worlds ill. How he had asked healing from every god he had ever heard of: from the allfather, who was god of his family, although that the Aesir have small love of peace; from the Vanir; from dead Baldur, who might have been his best hope; from the white christ; from Ullu, god of Anna's folk; from the wise person of greenstone, who is god in Ch'in; from the forgotten gods of Rome, whose names I can't remember - these, and many more; and none would face him, or answer.
But as he walked the spirit road in the summer, the spirit of the wild goose came to him, saying that the sea-wolves were wading in the water of the westreys; so that he went down to the Twisted Loch, to the old woman of the folk of the Twisted Loch, and bade them hide in the hidden place. And they hid, and the sea wolves passed them by. And again as he walked the spirit road in winter, the spirit of the hart came to him, saying that hunger haunted the hearths of the hidden place. So he went down to the hidden place, to the old woman of the hidden place, and bade her send her hunters with him to the dells where the herds wait for spring.
And at last, when he had walked the spirit roads for three years, the spirit of the raven came to him, saying that the rievers were readying their ships for raiding. Then he had gone down, again, to the Twisted Loch, and borrowed clothing from the old woman. Then he had given his eye to the king of the islands as blood price for his daughters honour. Then he had made a boat, and sailed to the northlands to talk with his father about the truce which he had broken.
I woke one morning, when thin sun was slanting through ragged clouds and striking pink on the birch twigs in the pass, to the sound of voices outside the cave. Looking out, I could see that Rhuaridh was there, talking with Lochlann. They spoke in the speech of the west.
- The old one sent us out that we should look for you...
- Did she so?
- Aye...
Rhuaridh was looking away. You could see that he was shamed. After a moment, Lochlann said -
- There will have been something she was asking that you should say to us.
- There was something...
- Will you be telling me what it was that she was asking that you should say?
I suppose now that I've been speaking nothing but the speech of the west for nigh on half my life, but I can still remember how comic it seemed to me then, when it was still new and awkward to me, how roundabout were the ways folk would phrase things.
- She was saying that there was not hunger in the place when it was you that was leading the hunting, and that it was the ill manners of us that were the reason that you had gone from us. So that if we could not find the meat to fill the bellies of the bairns that were starving, then we should go and find someone who could, and make our peace with him. And indeed it would please us all greatly if you would come back to the dun, for there is little food in all truth and the bairns grow sickly...
So it was that we went back down to the dun and were made much more welcome than before. Things were not good there. There was still salmon in the smoke house, but not much, and some of it not good; the meat and the meal were all gone, all but the seed grain. Before we had started down from the cave we had taken spears down into the pass, so that we brought three good hinds down with us, and that eased the hunger for that night. The next day Lochlann took several of the men out on the hunt, and they all did well, so that after that there was always food.
But even winter comes to an end at last. The white blanket was rolled back further up the slopes each day; it was going threadbare in places, so that the old skin of the earth poked through. When the clouds came, they brought rain, which was cold enough and unwelcome, but not so unwelcome as snow. The becks were running full and fierce, and green things started to show.
There was a day that I saw Lochlann going down the track to the loch. He was gone a while, and I had nothing else to do, so I followed him down. I found he had taken all the gear that belonged to his boat out of the shed where it had been stored for the winter, and was checking it over, piece by piece. I joined him, and we worked together through the better part of the day, rubbing flax oil into spars and ropes, and soaking sails in a brew of tanbark.
The following day we were there again working over the hull of the boat with pitch and gum and turpentine, while other folk were working on the hide boats of the dun with tallow and wool grease, so that the smell down at the boat landing was high. There were days when it rained, and days when there was hunting to be done; but many of the next days were spent down at the boat landing. I guessed that Lochlann was getting ready to go north again, although we didn't speak of it. I guessed he would not want me to go. When the boat was in the water, and the gear was mostly back aboard her, there was a hunting day. When the men were gone I made up Rognvald's clothes into a pack, with my better mantle; and also, I took my father's sword, which I sharpened and greased well against it rusting. I went down to the boat landing and stowed these things in the boat, right up in the bows where unimportant things were stowed, and I thought that Lochlann would not find them.
It was a few days later that he did. We had taken the boat down the loch for a test sail, and had come back in the early dusk. I was sorting out sails, and Lochlann was putting something away below, where it will have been black dark. He came out with something long in his hands, and his voice was hard.
- What is this doing in my boat?
The sword rang from its sheath.
- I thought that it might be useful.
- I know no use for swords but the spilling of blood.
- Well, no. Unless it be staying your own blood from being spilled.
- I have no wish to keep the blood in my body by spilling others.
- By Gungnir in the Tree, you can be a blind and selfish man! You may be sure of your own safety, or you may risk it as you please. But that is my sword, and I didn't pack it for you.
- And where is it that you think you're going, in my boat?
- I go where you go.
Lochlann dropped the sword back into the scabbard and sat down heavily on the thwart, so that the boat curtsied in the water. When he next spoke, his voice was much less harsh -- and much less sure.
- Kirsty, lass... you cannot come...
- I will go where you go.
- Kirsty... Mind you that I was shot last year, as I was coming back to you. There are many in the north who want me dead. And if I am dead, and you are there alone...
- Just so. If you are dead, and I am there alone, then the sword may be useful.
I could not see his face in the dark, so that I could not read it. But the shape of his shoulders against the iron grey water was hunched and round, so that I wanted to go to him and comfort him. But I knew this was one quarrel I must win, and so I stayed myself.
- I won't have a sword in my boat!
- Then you will not go.
Now his head came up!
- And who are you to say whether or not I will go?
- What is the worth of all we have done together, these months, if you will run off by yourself now? Or am I to be just a convenience for your winters?
- You asked me to find you a place where you could be safe, and I have done that for you. That is all that I promised. Now I must go north to do work I am sworn to do. You will not prevent me.
- I'm not trying to prevent you!
- Fine -
he said, pushing the sword at me -
- take this and get rid of it.
I took the sword from him, taking the hilt in my right hand and the scabbard in my left.
- Lochlann, you can take this boat to the northlands or to Hel's kingdom for all I care. But where you go I will go. And where I go this sword will go. And that is an end to it. Do you understand?
There's one thing that happened just before we left the Dun that isn't properly part of this story, but I'll tell it to you anyway. I hope you will learn by it. You will know, for many stories you have heard tell of it, that the Cailliach was one of those who trust in the white christ, like most folk here. Well, one day there came a boat with some christmen in it, and when they came up from the boat they carried something among them on a hurdle. The thing was covered in cloth, but you could see that it was heavy. They went into the old house, where the Cailliach was sitting in her great chair by the fire, as she often did, spinning wool and talking to one or other of the wiser folk of the Dun. The leader of the Christmen said that they had come from one of the great churches of the islands - it was not Saint Columb's isle, for that had been deserted a long time even then, but one of the others, I cannot now remember where. He said that he and his brothers had decided that it was no longer safe to keep the treasure of their church with them, for the wolves from the sea came too often, and they had come to ask her to hold it safe, for it was known that the wolves from the sea did not attack her.
But the Cailliach said to them that she would not keep the treasure. She said that they lived here, untroubled by the sea-wolves, partly because they were hidden, but more because they had nothing that the sea-wolves greatly sought. But gold, she said, gold cries aloud to the Lochlannaich, and they have fine ears on them for the call of the gold, as the throstle has for worms in the ploughland; gold, she said, gold stinks like carrion to the lochlannaich, and they have fine noses on them for it, as the corbie has for corpses. You cannot hide gold from them; and you can hide yourself from them only if you have none.
And when she had said that, and when she had given them food and store for their further traveling - although there was but little food left then, yet she gave well of it - she bade them leave the hidden place, and seek another keeper for their burden.
Copyright © Simon Brooke
1992-1996
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