Chapter 24
Some time before midnight, Ivar made the trek from the coast to the village to take a small break from his watch. The sails hadn’t moved after appearing, hadn’t changed. No smaller boats had been seen, sending forward an onslaught of the Ør, but word of their arrival had spread quickly. It wouldn’t be long now. Any moment they could come ashore, and there was no further sign of hope coming from Ósa, after Uxi had delivered her note. It had been a long shot, but in such a dark time, he’d wanted to hold on to it.
In the village, there was movement. Surprised, as he’d expected everyone to be locked indoors, on their knees praying to the Goddess for salvation, he quickened his step. There was a man he only vaguely recognized and a woman who must have been his wife, pushing a wooden cart piled with goods through the snow. They started at seeing him, then whispered amongst themselves.
“Where are you off to?” Ivar asked, prickling.
They paused before answering. “You’re not a leader,” the man said at last. “You can’t stop us.”
He didn’t have to explain any more. There was another family with another cart, approaching not far off. They were leaving. They were running away, now that the sails were here. All of these preparations, these words, this talk of the impending attack were easy enough, so long as they remained only that. So long as they stayed in a strange limbo where they never actually came to be. But now that it was here, now that it was time to stand up and fight, they couldn’t face it.
“You can’t leave,” Ivar said, as unthreateningly as he could. He managed to keep his voice deadly calm. “We need everybody we can find.”
“You’re young and alone. You don’t have a family, a wife, a baby.” The man pointed to the bundle in the woman’s arms. “If you did, you wouldn’t sit by and wait to be slaughtered.”
“But you don’t understand,” Ivar pleaded. “Leaving the village won’t save you. They will track you. They will hunt you into the ground and kill you so far from our safety in numbers. We must remain together.”
The man shook his head. “We’d rather take our chances on the road than wait. I can’t look at those damned sails for another minute. I’m doing what I think is best for my family.”
“As am I,” said the second man.
“But I’ve had word from Ósa,” Ivar said, pulling the note from his pocket. “She sent a message saying she’s reached the mountains. She’s there. She’s there getting us help.”
“She may have reached the mountains,” the first man said, “but that doesn’t mean she’s still alive and you know it. Don’t be such a fool. Moreover, some can’t help but wonder if this … scheme of hers was a way to run, much as we are about to now. Disguise her as our saving grace all you want, but we’re here and she’s far away. Now we are leaving. May the Goddess have mercy on your souls.”
Ivar could do nothing as his pulse thundered in his ears, his veins. He just stood helplessly as they continued on down the road and disappeared into the night.
A few metres from his house, he passed a door from which familiar voices wafted. His father and Leiv, their village’s oldest rune singer. Leiv had taught Sigvard, and Sigvard had taught Ivar.
Ivar rapped softly on the door, then pushed it open at a call from within. Smoke and drying fish engulfed his senses as he closed the door behind him. The two men sat at a table, cups and half-eaten food before them. Despite the late hour, sleep wasn’t likely for most of the village. Not after what had appeared on the horizon.
“Come on over, boy,” Leiv said, waving an arm towards their table. “We’re all desperate for friendly faces at this hour, no?”
Ivar nodded and spun a chair around to straddle it, resting his chin on the back. “No changes out there, yet,” he reported, staring at the table. “Villagers are leaving.”
The men leaned forward, suddenly tense. “What do you mean leaving?” Leiv asked.
“A handful of them, they’re on their way to who knows where. Said they can’t wait around for their deaths.”
Leiv and Sigvard made to jump up, but Ivar raised a hand to stop them. “There is no use,” he said. “I tried to convince them to stay. They will have none of it. We can’t keep them prisoner here.”
Sigvard rubbed his eyes. “We don’t need cowards on the battlefield, anyway.”
A moment of silence.
“No change in the sails, you say?” Leiv said. “No doubt they want to give us time to raise chaos and fear amongst our people. Then we’ll be at our weakest.”
“That’s the truth,” Sigvard put in, shaking his head. “We’ve just been speaking about what can be done once the … once the invasion starts.” He cleared his throat and tapped his fist lightly on the table. “Going over what we know from the runes.”
“Aye,” Leiv said, pulling a scroll from the end of the table. It held more curl than most Ivar had seen; it was rarely opened. “We’ve been working to make heads or tails of this one. This was one of the oldest rune findings thus far,” Leiv said. “If not the oldest. It was written just after the Löskans’ arrival on these shores. They were smart, almost desperate to document their story, so they picked a medium that would last the longest. Cave writing. I translated it with my father some twenty years ago now, but the ill-written runes were so hasty and scattered that we never found it to be particularly relevant to our day to daily lives. So we set it aside, and here it is now.”
Ivar stared at it, the words jumping out to him even from upside down. Seeming to notice his attempt to read it, Leiv picked it up.
“You won’t be liking what you find here,” he said softly. “Not with what’s coming.”
“Never mind that, Leiv,” Sigvard said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He’s a grown man now, not my little boy any more. If he’s man enough to face a fight with the Ør, he’s man enough to know what it says.”
“Just tell me what I need to know,” Ivar said, swallowing a lump in his throat.
Leiv laid the document on the table and glanced over it, perhaps skimming for the more suitable bits. This time, Ivar didn’t try to read it. He kept his eyes on the man’s face, bracing himself. After his run-in with the Ør scouts in the woods, he was almost certain that nothing about them could surprise him. Their appearance, their actions, those damned screams during the fight, none of those details had been written about.
Leiv scratched his head and looked away. “There were thousands of people in Löska when it was overrun. No one saw it coming.” He shook his head. “But you already know that. What you might not know was what the unfortunate ones who didn’t escape went through. Sometimes people got lucky; the Ør’s barbarous nature meant many died swiftly, by a blade or a broken neck. But … but not all were dead when the fighting was over, when the brutes came to collect their teeth, their skin. And they didn’t bother killing them before they started.”
Ivar shut his eyes, violent images dancing in his mind. Unthinkable. All of it was unthinkable. What would the villagers do, think, if they heard this? Many of them knew bits and pieces of it, knew about the skins and teeth and the fall of Löska, but no one, to his knowledge, knew of the victims being alive. That was different.
Goddess go with you, Ósa, Ivar thought, silently praying for her to return.
A cry from outside made everyone jump. Ivar flew to his feet, his chair knocking loudly against the table before him, and ran to the door. Only one thought prevailed in his mind: the Ør were coming ashore. The time had at last come.
As the three of them hurried outside, their eyes to the coast, Ivar became immediately aware that the cries were coming from the trees on the edge of the village. Turning, he ran through the streets, following the sounds of the voices as others emerged nervously from their homes.
Two or three people were gathered around a tree, their hands shakily covering their faces as they cried out.
A man dangled from a branch, a rope around his neck. His head tilted unnaturally to the right, broken. He still swung gently, like he’d still been breathing mere minutes ago. Tied to his boot was a note, which Ivar unfolded.
Take your own life before they take it for you.