Hvitserk was not hiding from Ivar. At least was what he told himself. But it was true that he tended to avoid the Great Hall with a persistent unexplainable busy-ness. There was always something for him to be doing other than being at the Hall. One day hunting, another checking the perimeter defenses. He was really scraping the bottom of the barrel when he said he had to make sure that Floki's old house and all his tools were in good order in case he returned from his voyage to his distant paradise. But today he had no excuse. Ivar had declared that everyone must be in attendance because he had some grand announcement. Pulling his fox furs closer about his shoulders against the oncoming cold of the evening he shouldered his way into the very back of the Hall. People were pressed in shoulder to shoulder, filling every inch except the raised dais where Ivar and his new bride, Freydis, were sitting on their decorated thrones of weapons and antlers. The look on his face was Hvitserk needed to feel his heart skip beats, and not in a good way. It was the same look he'd seen in Ivar's eyes just before he'd thrown an axe into Sigurd's chest. Madness, was what it was.
And mad he did have to be. A god? Had Ivar really just declared himself a god, in front of everyone, and expected them to believe it?! Casting his eyes about the Hall, Hvitserk could tell that very few people were on board with this. But they hid it well and Ivar was probably too caught up in his delusions of grandeur to notice. So when everyone started kneeling and Hvitserk, be it from shock or denial, did not, Ivar's gaze of madness fell on his brother, who stood staring.
"Do you not recognize me, brother? Do you not see?" Ivar crowed from his seat.
"I do not recognize you as a god, brother. You are not one." Hvitserk tossed back, going to sit down at one of the tables and pouring himself a horn of ale.
"Like it or not, Hvitserk, I am a god, and everyone, including you will reap the benefits of my favor."
Hvitserk drained the horn. He'd need this horn and many more to bolster the defiance he'd just shown. Brave or stupid to defy Ivar so openly, drink would make it all the same.
"Sure, Ivar. We will see."
If anyone was going to get away with what just happened, Hvitserk could, or so he desperately hoped. He could feel the eyes. Whatever Ivar did next released the crowd from their fearful reverie and noise once again filled the hall. In an effort to grace over the high tension in the room, plates clattered more forcefully, cheers were made louder, and people made a big deal of minding their own, amplified conversations. Hvitserk was sick of it. It wasn't the ale that shortened Hvitserk's patience tonight. Nor is it what made him feel so sleepy. It must have been life, he concluded. Life was making him exhausted. His mind drifted as it often did to fate. Was it really his destiny to sit at the feet of his younger brother forever. Speaking of...
A bulky broad shouldered hunk of muscle and bone, Daggur, approached him and leaned over Hvitserk. He didn't even flinch, Daggur was still limping from a hit Hvitserk had dealt to the back of his knees when Ivar had called for some entertainment when they were walking the English countryside to return to the ships. With Daggur's beard almost acting as a second cloak on his left shoulder, Hvitserk turned to face him.
"The King wants a word with you."
And he doesn't even have the decency to ask me himself. Hvitserk pushed up from the table and brought his plate of food with him, because a plate full of food was not worth wasting, no matter what Ivar wanted. Leaning on the post in front of Ivar he continued to eat, waiting for the King to decide when he wanted to talk.
"Hvitserk."
"Ivar."
"You should not undermine me in front of these people, our people."
"I thought they were your people, Ivar, since you're a god and all." he said between bites of the lamb, which he had to say was well prepared given the short notice on this whole thing.
"They are mine, yes," Ivar grinned, running a finger along the cheek of Freydis, who simpered at his touch, "but they are yours too, and you should do something to help them."
Hvitserk hid a sigh in his chewing. Another order from Ivar, another job to remind Hvitserk and everyone else that Hvitserk was Ivar's loyal dog, doing whatever was asked of him. "And what's that?"
"Things have been going missing from the markets, leather, some food, and one very well made knife." Ivar looked intently at his brother who had care enough to stop eating for a moment.
"A thief? Can your men not handle this? Can the people not handle this?" In Hvitserk's memory, the people of Kattegat seemed to deal with sticky fingers easily enough themselves. He'd seen it plenty of times as a child. Ragnar had told them that a King should not coddle his people the same way a father should not coddle his children. And no one likes a busybody anyway.
"Maybe, but the vegetable seller's wife came wailing to me about the spirit in the woods taking the food. And she's not the only one. I thought that this must be the perfect job for you, given your tendencies towards the spiritual these days."
Ivar wanted him to chase a ghost in the woods. Now that was just insulting. And Hvitserk was about fed up enough to say so when he considered the prospect of combing through the woods alone, "hunting" for the thief. That made him reconsider. He smiled wide and clapped Ivar on the shoulder.
"If it will make you happy, brother, then I will do this for you."
Ivar smiled too, and not entirely maliciously, "I'm glad. And when you find who did it, bring them to me. I want that knife back. I designed it myself and was having it made. I don't like when people take my things."
As much as he wanted to just get out into the trees and wait til sundown and say he found nothing and repeat again the next day, Hvitserk was going to make this look convincing. He wanted to drag it out as long as possible so that Ivar would get off his back about whatever he thought Hvitserk should be doing. With that in mind, he slipped his axe, his sword into his belt, and a knife down each boot. You never know with thieves, after all he laughed to himself. It was wild berry season. Maybe he could find some and take a nap to waste away his afternoon. Maybe the gods would send him a dream of a way to get out of this mess his life was. He made his way to the outer markets, making inquiries about things going missing, or stolen. Most of them were quickly attributed to the usual types of thieves, but there were a fair number who were all spouting the same strange story.
"It wasn't during the day, like most thieves do, a snatch and grab," the vegetable seller explained, leaning over a basket of apples as if they might vanish if he didn't cover them himself. "No, it was quick, like a deer as I was packing to go home I saw it. It leaned down from the roof of my stall, grabbed three apples and by the time I looked over, it was gone."
The leather worker had a similar tale, "I had the skins out to dry, and I turned around to wash the fat off my hands, and when I turned back two small cuts of leather had vanished right off the rack!"
"Did you see who took them?" Hvitserk asked, less out of curiosity and more out of duty.
"Not exactly, but I saw shadow making off in the woods, fast. My boys tried to chase it but it disappeared into the trees, quiet as could be."
It wasn't until he got to the blacksmith that he genuinely became interested. The old man's hands were trembling as Hvitserk asked him for his account of events. "When I told Ivar that his knife had been stolen, I thought I'd be going to Valhalla, hammer in hand right then and there. But I'm an honest man and I know what I saw. Whoever, whatever it was was silent as a snake in the water, but when I came out from my storage room, there it was, holding the knife, turning it over in its hands."
"Hands?"
"It looked like a man alright or a woman I suppose. Human enough. But everything about it was strange. It's clothes sat close against its body, and it had armor unlike anything I've ever seen. It looked like leather but it was strange in its cut. It had a cloak with no fur, but it was short, not even reaching the ground. But the face-" The blacksmith was a hard man, but he paled just a little, "-the face was made of wood, half of it was painted bone white, like the queen's during the sacrifices. But the other half looked like death."
"Hafthor, this doesn't sound like a spirit. It sounds like a person in a mask. There are strange people with strange clothes all over Kattegat these days."
The blacksmith shook his head gravely. "It looks like a person, but it doesn't move like one. It's like it isn't standing on the ground the same way we are. It was touching the ground only. That's the only way it could move so fast."
Hvitserk furrowed his brow. If this thing was as brazen it seemed, it may actually be a problem. But stealing scraps of leather, a few fruits, this was odd for a thief this skilled. Why not take more? All the thieves he'd hunted down today had been caught taking bags, bushels, and boxes full or whatever they stole. But farmers, and other people all over had these unexplained small disappearances. A hatchet here, a bowstring there. It seemed like all lost things in town were being blamed on this spirit.
"Do you remember anything else?"
"The spirit saw that I saw it. I was looking at it full on and it just looked back. I moved to grab my hammer and get Ivar's knife back but the spirit threw its hand at my work table and seconds later a cloud burst out of my table and began spilling over all my tools!"
"A cloud?"
"It was like sea foam, my prince. But it burned and gave off steam like hot soup on a cold day. I tried to get my tools out but it just kept growing." he held his arms about a half meter apart, "grew to about this big on all sides in seconds. Out of nowhere. When I threw a bucket of water at it, it just washed away. All my tools were just fine underneath. Now what human can do magic like that?"
Hvitserk thanked the blacksmith and left, more confused than when he had entered. Magically appearing clouds? Spirits with wooden faces? On his way out and a young child's wooden sword came flying in front of, causing him to flinch back as the boy chased after his blade. To be that young again, and have not a single worry, when father was the greatest man in the world. Hvitserk shook his head. It was no use getting nostalgic. Fate did not come to those who dwell in the past. Hvitserk picked up the sword and with a small smile handed it back to the little boy, who thanked him and stared awestruck at the prince.
"Was the blacksmith telling you about the spirit in the woods?" he asked.
"Yes he was. Have you seen it?" Hvitserk asked, kneeling down.
"No. My friend Ulf saw it, flying. He said it landed on his roof." The little boy's eyes widened as he leaned forward on his toes, to tell Hvitserk a secret. Hvitserk played along and the boy whispered in his ear, "but I heard it. It sings."
Hvitserk played enraptured and looked at the boy carefully, "Does it really? Sing?"
"Papa doesn't let me and my sister go play in the north woods by the waterfall anymore because everyone around here can hear it. It isn't every night, but when the stars and moon are big and bright it's there. Singing in a strange language no one understands. Not even the Saxon traders or the Frankish soldiers or the foreign men with the flat noses and no eyelids."
Hvitserk tousled the boy's hair and sent him on his way. This was becoming more and more intriguing. His next stop was to the Seer.
"Another son of Ragnar Loðbrok, has come to see me." The Seer sat curled next to the embers of a dying fire. Hvitserk lowered himself onto a low stool across the hearth. "What more can the line of Ragnar want from me?"
"Seer, I've come to ask if you have seen this spirit that had started to...appear in Kattegat."
The Seer held out his hand, and Hvitserk extended his tongue to pay the price for the Seer's knowledge.
The Seer inhaled, rasping his nonexistent eyes reflecting in the last nits of light. "The voice on the wind, the reflection on the sea, the shadow in the trees. These things I have seen."
"Do you know why it comes now? Where can I find it? What is it?"
"Too many questions you ask! But I will give you this answer Hvitserk, son of Ragnar. Your fate has been here for some years now, but you were not yet here to greet it." With that the Seer keeled over in pain, laughing and sputtering before laying down and seemingly losing consciousness. Hvitserk blew out of his hut in a fervor. His fate. The Seer made it sound like Hvitserk's fate had not come yet because he had simply not been around, as if fate was like a meeting on the street. Cryptic as always. Night was falling fast, despite the longer days of summer approaching. So much for an afternoon sleeping near wild berry bushes. He would have to continue tomorrow. He lingered out by the beach until the moon was high into the sky. With any luck Ivar would be asleep and expect a report in the morning, by which time the townsfolk would tell him that Hvitserk had already left in the direction of the northern forest.
When the sounds of the town died down for the night, Hvitserk strained his ears, to hear if maybe the little boy and the blacksmith and everyone else weren;t just spinning stories like fish wife gossip. There, hidden slightly by the rush of the waterfall, Hvitserk could swear he heard a voice. The words were muffled by the wind but it and maybe, more than likely, it was just his mind playing tricks on him, but perhaps something out there was indeed singing.