Forged in Ice by Ken Hagan

Author:Ken Hagan [Hagan, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-11-11T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

The croft is earthen-walled, small and neat, bare but for rude essentials of life, one old beaten pot, a low fire smoking flameless in the hearth. The only furnishings are four sleeping boards on trestles, pushed against the wall by day to serve as benching. No other space or storeroom but the single narrow hall. Through the opened door, daylight does nothing to cheer the place, merely showing how little they own.

Ma has given over weeping. Her tears, she said, were of joy at seeing me and of pain from hearing what she had feared for Cormac. She sits at my feet in the paltry living space, prayer beads unattended on her lap. A pumice stone, rubbed and worn, shaped like the crossed-hammers of Thor — for Ma, it signifies a holy saint — lies discarded on the floor.

Ma clutches my ankle, as if never to let me out her sight. She is much thinner now, her brow more wrinkled than I remember, but the voice has lost none of its soft lilt. Her hair has the warm glint of red sand that Da loved when he kissed her and called her Audeen.

She looks at me with dark eyes, staring a little, listening intently, taking it all in; hearing how the bodies of my sisters and brother were buried in the sands at Suthyre; how Hethrun claimed her reward from Leif Njelson for nursing his son back to health; how my coming to Osvellir was down to the old woman’s scheming and kindness.

Hvard, to his delight, has found an uncle, one that he had been told was drowned at sea. He sits on my knee, fingering the hornlet around my neck.

‘That charm saved our Kregin’s skin,’ says Ma.

‘What is under the wax, Nana, how does it work?’

‘Ask your uncle, he will explain,’ replies Ma, closing her eyes to secretly relish a memory or ban it from her thoughts.

‘It holds a treasure from the past,’ I whisper in response, ‘something lasting that came from Grandpa. It gave me hope while I was lost and brought me here.’

For the moment, Hvard seems content with that. His head leans trustingly on my chest. My nephew was won over the moment I put him on Srelni, and said how he looked like his father. The sorrel took an instant shine to the boy — maybe because Hvard has been sitting bolt-upright from his first ride, high and proud, without fear. Poor lad, he has had to learn to be brave, barely weaned off the breast when he lost his mother to fever.

‘We lost Jo our second winter at Baerskard,’ says Ma. ‘Einar left the summer after to sail east. Your brother struck up with a merchant at Long-fiord, an easterling who let him work his passage on the ship’s crew.’

‘Why did he leave? He had barely settled in. If he was itching to be off, couldn’t he at least have waited till this place was in better shape?’

‘Wait for what? The croft couldn’t support two men under one roof.

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