Many Words

The journey wasn’t as bad as Hrothgar had expected. Alongside the river, the ground was flat, and a bed of evergreen needles kept the undergrowth to a manageable level. To their right, a hedge of shrubs and small trees, feeding off the fertile ground at the river’s edge, hid the river from easy view. Even so, their pace was slow. Almost an hour had passed by the time they drew near to the fort, and the sun was on the cusp of setting.

“We’ll see if we can’t catch someone’s eye,” Alfhilde said, holding up a hand to call them to a halt. She slipped her pack off, undid the cinch at its top, and pulled out the cloak stashed inside. She gave it an experimental wave, then turned toward the hedge.

Before she could go any further, a terrible noise reached his ears: war-cries, ontr by the thousands, their shrieks and howls easily carrying the half-league from the bridge to the place where Hrothgar stood. Men roared in reply, and then there came the confused noises of battle: metal on metal, cries of pain, trumpets, and the odd thunderclap Hrothgar gathered might be magic.

Alfhilde listened for a moment. Hrothgar saw her shoulders stiffen and the set of her jaw grow more determined. “We haven’t a moment to lose,” she said, and turned to push through the hedge toward the river.

Then, all at once, four things happened.

First, a group of ontr appeared over the rise away from the river, small ones, but numerous. The beasts caught sight of them, screeched at each other, and ran toward them.

Second, Sif made a strangled noise; her eyes rolled back into her head, and she slumped to the ground, a puppet with all her strings cut.

Third, an ontling—the largest Hrothgar had ever seen—followed the small ones over the hill. The creature stood three yards tall, if not more, and wore patchwork armor, constructed from bits and pieces of leather and steel: trophies from its past victories, debris from the places it had destroyed, anything it could get its claws on.

At the top of the hill, the ontling paused, sweeping an imperious glare across them. It showed bloodstained tusks in a terrible imitation of a grin, then bellowed at its underlings. They redoubled their charge.

Fourth, and finally, as Hrothgar was putting Jakob down next to Sif and drawing the hatchet at his belt, Falthejn Arnarsson crashed through the hedge a dozen yards upriver, answered the ontr chief with a bellow of his own, and ran at the foe, sword drawn.

At the very top of the bend, just before the headland, an arch of stone crossed the river. If Alfhilde squinted, she could just make out human figures crossing it. “When did they build that?”

Hrothgar frowned, thought for a moment, and said, “Just now.”

“How do you figure?”

“The diviner told us where to go—to go here, to the ford. If he had known of a bridge, he would have led us to it,” Hrothgar replied.

Sif stood and said, “He told me that the army had other magiker, besides diviners. Maybe one of them knows how to make a bridge.”

Alfhilde shrugged. Sif supposed it wasn’t important, given the situation. “Well,” she said, “Our men did too good a job clearing the far bank. Nowhere to to lodge a rope for a crossing.” She looked upriver again. “We’ll have to go on foot. We’ll wave at the fort as we go by. They’ll never hear us over this din,” she continued, the river’s roar underlining her point, “but if fate is on our side, they’ll see us.”

Hrothgar’s customary frown deepened as he surveyed the intervening terrain. “Will we make it in time?”

Alfhilde turned her gaze on Sif. “Can you make a bridge? Are you able to, I mean to say. If you can, don’t.”

Meekly, Sif held up her hands. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Alfhilde nodded. “As I expected. We walk—and we had better get moving now.”

It developed that she had good reason not to. They crested a shallow rise, and suddenly the river lay before them, down the slope a few dozen yards, roaring rapids swirling past. The road ran through a clearing, man-made and surrounded by hedges, then plunged straight into the deluge, not reappearing for another fifty yards.

“This isn’t right,” Alfhilde said. “I’ve been this way before, in the army. By this time of year, the Syderskogflod ought to be a little brook, not… this.” She threw her hand out at it.

Hrothgar shrugged. “What next?”

“I don’t know.”

Sif walked down to the water’s edge, drawn by something in the way it moved. She crouched, stuck her finger in, and watched the water flow around it. “It isn’t natural,” she announced.

Alfhilde turned toward her. “What do you mean?”

Sif looked over her shoulder, brow knitted. “I don’t know.” She frowned more deeply. “I think it’s magic.”

“The water?” Hrothgar said.

Alfhilde tapped her chin. “It would explain the flood.”

Sif looked back toward the water, but something upstream caught her eye. “Why didn’t we take the bridge?” she asked.

“There is no bridge,” Alfhilde replied.

Sif pointed. “Then what’s that?”

Alfhilde hurried down to the water’s edge to join Sif, and followed the line of her arm. Upriver, to the west, the river curved away toward the north in a great arc, before doubling back around a headland to the south and out of sight, a league or so distant. No trees grew on the opposite bank; the men in the fort—Flodsvadgard—probably kept it clear. The fort, wooden walls and a central stone-build fastness, sat on the opposite bank, midway along the great bend, set back from the river’s edge a hundred yards or so.

She sighed, and the real world came back into focus. Alfhilde had only just finished a sentence, and was looking at her curiously. Sif said, “He’s really gone?”

Alfhilde nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you liked him.”

“He has reasons,” Sif replied, but her heart wasn’t in it. “I don’t know what to do now—what to do with myself, and with magic.” Alfhilde raised her eyebrows, but Sif shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.” She looked up at Alfhilde with a quiet pleading in her eyes. “Are we going to make it?”

Alfhilde sat back heavily. Her face turned careworn, more so than Sif had ever seen. “I hope so.”

They kept to a faster pace than they had before. Alfhilde led the way, carrying with her Hrothgar’s axe. Hrothgar followed with Jakob, the hatchet hanging at his belt, and Sif struggled to keep up.

They started as the sun was rising, and didn’t stop once through the whole day. Every noise in the undergrowth sparked its own little moment of panic. Had the ontr caught them? Was Falthejn coming back?

The sun was on its way to the horizon when they first heard the river. “Do you see it?” Sif asked Alfhilde.

Alfhilde stood on her tiptoes and shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Why is it so loud?” Sif asked.

Alfhilde pressed on. “I do not like it.”

Sif sat, shellshocked. Alfhilde kept talking, probably saying something comforting, but Sif remained stuck on the news that Falthejn had just left.

How could he? She had stood up for him when Alfhilde looked down on him. She didn’t want to be wrong about him—she wanted him to be a good man, but she couldn’t be sure that he was, not anymore.

She could see where he might think he was doing the right thing, if his note was true, but it stung. How could he expect to survive better on his own? Alfhilde knew how to fight, and Sif could at least try magic, in a pinch. Maybe he could move faster on his own, but if he was turning back toward the ontr…

And where did it leave her? Particularly high and dry. He had given her a reason to hope for the future, for the first time she could remember. With him gone—if Alfhilde and Hrothgar hadn’t agreed to take her in, she would have had nothing. Even so: her magic would put them in danger, and he’d left her no choice but to hide it. Her only other option put her family in danger.

That thought—her family!—brightened her mood considerably, for a few moments.

She was back to bad choices on that front. Never work magic again? She doubted if she had that kind of willpower. Go to the guilds? It was ten times as long again as the journey they were on, and she doubted Alfhilde and Hrothgar would agree to that. Worse, the guilds would not look generously on a street urchin turning up from nowhere, and they would put her somewhere she didn’t want to go, as like as not. Without Falthejn, without someone to vouch for her, she could not go to the guilds as an equal, only as an unknown, a dangerous, probably-criminal beggar.

“That much is clear already.”

Hrothgar shook his head. “It’s more than that.” Looking back to the paper, he read, “‘Friends, I apologize for my abrupt departure, but I have seen what I have seen. If I do not leave you to distract the ontr, we all will die. If I go now, you may yet live. The Twelve give you speed. I hope to see you again.'” Hrothgar looked up and waved the paper at Alfhilde. “Signed ‘Arnarsson’.”

Alfhilde sat back heavily, and was silent. After a while, she said, “I take it all back.”

“Hmm?”

“He’s no different than the rest of his kind,” Alfhilde replied, hardness edging her voice. “Thinking they know best, not bothering to ask anyone anything. Well, tomorrow we leave this madness with or without him.” Decided, Alfhilde folded her arms across her chest.

“How will we tell the girl?” Hrothgar wondered. “She was fond of him.”

“We’ll cross that bridge in the morning,” Alfhilde replied. “Get some sleep. “I’ll wake you for your watch.”

By morning, Alfhilde had worked herself into a good lather. Arnarsson had to have known that they—Alfhilde in particular—would never have let him leave. Who did he think he was, skipping out in the middle of the night? How little regard did he have for their feelings? A different woman might have let it pass, assuming Arnarsson acted with the best of intent. Alfhilde would not. He should have trusted them enough, considered them near enough to equals, to tell them to their faces. Just like a diviner to dodge a fight.

She munched angrily on a handful of nuts. Beside her, Sif stirred, rolled over, and sat up. She looked around and asked, “Where’s Falthejn?”

Alfhilde sighed. The girl would take it hard, no doubt. “You won’t like it.”

Alfhilde opened her eyes and turned over in her bedroll. It was still dark. To her left, Hrothgar snored away along with Jakob, the baby sprawled on his father’s chest. To her right, Sif curled up, sleeping peacefully.

Alfhilde sat up. The moons were high overhead; it would be her watch soon anyway. The diviner’s bedroll was empty. Alfhilde looked over her shoulder. Arnarsson wasn’t there, either. She shrugged to herself, pulled her bedroll up to the nearest tree, and settled in. After fifteen minutes, she began to worry. He should have been back by now from wherever he had gone, or at least for every place she could imagine him going.

She couldn’t very well call out to him, not with ontr on the prowl. She stood, going over to his bedroll. A scrap of paper rested atop it, two neatly-inked lines of runes covering the front of it. Alfhilde examined it closely, but the treacherous letters refused to arrange themselves into words. She would have to wake Hrothgar.

A few minutes later, Hrothgar rubbed at his eyes, taking the paper form Alfhilde. Careful not to disturb Jakob, who still somehow slept soundly in the bedroll, he looked it over.

“Well?” said Alfhilde.

Hrothgar looked up. “You won’t like it,” he cautioned.

Alfhilde frowned. “What is it?”

“The diviner has left.”

“What if you could, though?” Alfhilde said. Sif raised her eyebrows. “What is it you’re really looking for? A place to belong?” Sif thought for a long few heartbeats, then cautiously nodded, not yet daring to hope. “I understand if you want to be a magiker to help people,” Alfhilde continued. “I joined the king’s army for that very reason. I would only ask that you make the choice, and not the choice you spoke of. If your options are to be a magiker, or to die, you have no choice at all. If you are to decide, decide after you know you will not need to work magic to survive.” Alfhilde paused for breath. “All of this I say to tell you this. I have spoken to Hrothgar, and it is decided. Sif, if you want a place to belong—if you want a family—we will have you. Be our daughter.”

Sif played Alfhilde’s words back in her head until she was sure. She had heard what she thought she had heard. Once again, a tide of emotion washed over her, threatening to sweep her away. This time was different. She was not lost, she was not broken, she was not pulled out to sea by crashing waves of grief. She was found. She felt something she could not recall having felt before: peace, she decided. This was what peace felt like. To feelings like these, she would gladly surrender. Tears welled up, this time tears of joy. She cried, and Alfhilde held her.