Chapter Forty: Dumbarton Rock
Rúna was pridefully thankful for her own foresight when it came to suggesting they intervene with the trade that would take place in the River Clyde. The trade ships only lasted so long, but the combined companies of The Great Heathen Army and King Olaf's forces made off handsomely with bolts of cloth, casks of wine, iron, silver, and gold ores, and not a few weapons. When word got out that bands of Vikings were lying in wait on the banks, though, the trade soon stopped.
There was, as a consequence, little work for Rúna to do with cataloging and figuring the sums for dividing the bounty—thus far—between King Olaf, Ivar, and Sigurd. It was natural for the work to fall in her lap; figuring sums was considered too close to witchcraft, and therefore women's work. Most Viking men would not touch such work, and King Olaf was no exception. The fact that Ivar and Hvitserk knew better did nothing to stop either of them from smirking while Rúna was given writing materials.
They could figure sums just as well as Rúna, all three having been taught at the massive table in the great hall under Queen Aslaug's close tutelage. But that work was as short-lived as the raiding and wouldn't return until Dumbarton Rock fell.
With the trading gone and the Britons locked away in their rockface stronghold, the camp soon fell into a lackadaisical sense of complacency. She liked the land—the hunting was good and laying laundry on the low-growing purple flowers left all their clothes smelling cloyingly sweet and earthy—but Rúna soon came to the conclusion that starving out an entire castle was rather boring.
Ivar only scoffed when, after several weeks of camp, she told him so. "Have some patience, min dróttning." He chastised, sweeping her hair off her brow. They lay in their camp bed, the tent fabric lightening above them with the dawning day. Pouting, Rúna rolled away from him and onto her back.
"I do not understand how you, of all people, do not grow frustrated with how long this is taking." Ivar rolled, too, coming to loom over her and replacing Rúna's view of the tent top with his own smirking face.
"Because I know the end, Rúna." He kissed her on the forehead, beside the scar she had earned in the earlier fighting on the River Clyde.
"So do I," Rúna reminded him. "Yet I'm no less anxious to be on our way."
She missed Kattegat. That was the true heart of it. There was Floki's boat in her trunk, sure, but nothing of Helga's for her here in this land. Rúna wanted desperately to go back to their seaside cabin, to see the food stores in the homey front room, and Floki's workshop, and her own bedroom. She felt childish for being so homesick for a place that would never be her home again.
"Believe me, nobody wants to see Lagertha fall more than myself," Ivar reassured her, missing the mark in guessing at the source of her impatience. "The time will come soon enough."
Rúna attempted to smile at him, but it fell flat. She kissed Ivar instead before rolling out from under him and out of bed alike. "Then let's start this day and be that much closer, Budlungr."
It was King Olaf's idea to give them the mushrooms. Aslaug had had no need of them, being a volva, and while Rúna knew Floki and Helga sometimes took them and received visions from the gods, she had not been allowed. She was older now, though, and her parents were no longer with her. When King Olaf pulled the little pouch from his belt, Hvitserk's eyes had brightened with excitement.
"Ivar's never opened his mind for the gods," he told the king. "Mother always prohibited it, for him, on account of his legs."
"I don't see your mother around, my young friends," King Olaf said mildly. Ivar had made to strike out toward Hvitserk, but his older brother was long accustomed to his moods and danced out of range on light feet. A small, dried mushroom was placed in each of their hands.
Rúna's stomach flipped at sight of the little shriveled thing in her hand. Both Aslaug and the Seer had revealed part of the gods' intended fate for her life to her. yet neither had prepared her for the heartache she still carried with her over the loss of Helga and Floki. Glimpsing more of the future was not a gamble she was sure she wanted to take.
"The gods are selfish with their time," King Olaf warned Rúna and Ivar. "Be prepared to spend the entire day awaiting their visions."
And so that is how Rúna came to find herself sitting on the grassy floor of her and Ivar's tent, everything tinted reddish from the sunlight streaming through the fabric. She sat cross-legged before Ivar, his own legs out straight before him in their braces. He twisted at the waist, setting the mushrooms on the square cloth between them.
Ivar looked up at her, brow raised in silent question. Heart pounding in her chest, Rúna shrugged. She found her throat had gone rather dry for words when she croaked, "It's a little scary."
"You fear the thoughts of the gods far too much for someone who already knows their fate," Ivar teased her, smiling saucily. He wasn't wrong, though.
"What if other parts aren't so good?" She whispered, raising her hand to worry at her tooth with her thumb nail. Ivar caught her hand before it could complete its ascent, giving her fingers a squeeze.
"It may not even be your fate you see. There is no telling what the gods will reveal until its shown." He was right again and he knew it. At least he has the good graces today not to gloat.
After a beat, Rúna nodded her agreement. Each of them took up a mushroom, knocking their hands together in approximation of a toast. They mirrored one another as the mushrooms were tossed into their mouths. It didn't taste so different from a regular mushroom, Rúna decided. So much so that she was a little dubious about the effect that would be wrought until, very suddenly, her head began to swim. Her vision swam as well.
"Oh," she murmured. When she looked down, it was as if the grass was suddenly growing through her hand to jut out the backside. But when she touched it, she felt only her skin.
"Yes," Ivar agreed. "Oh."
Finding herself in vertigo, with shapes and colors starting to dizzy and bleed, Rúna laid herself down on the grass. She watched a little trail of ants marching passed her face, intrigued with the way they seemed to grow until she thought they should burst only to shrink so small she had to squint to see them.
A very tiny part of her brain knew she was laying on the ground, could recognize the tickle of the grass beneath her cheek. Her body hadn't gotten the message. She felt that she was sliding and grew frustrated when taking handfuls of the grass to hold onto did nothing to ease the feeling. With no little effort, she rolled herself onto her back and reached blindly until she found Ivar's hand.
"I am here," he told her though it didn't sound like he fully believed the words himself. Still, he clung to her as tightly as she did him. The way the tent undulated and shivered above her made Rúna dizzy so that she closed her eyes against it.
That was better. She watched the imprint of light fade beneath her eyelids, whorls of dark overtaking her vision. Despite the solid press of the earth beneath her back and Ivar's fingers tight around her own, Rúna felt as if she were weightless. Floating. Almost like the sensation when the fever spirited her away to skirt the line between life and death. The amorphous shapes took hold in her minds eye, coming together to form the roiling waves of an angered sea. And dotted on those heaving black and gray waves was one small, brown boat occupied by an all too familiar figure.
Floki.
There were crickets chirping beyond the tent by the time Rúna came back to herself. Her body felt oddly constricting, laying in the grass and clinging to Ivar's fingers. She gave those fingers a squeeze, testing the limits of her skin.
"What did you see?" Ivar asked, voice sounding far off despite the mere foot that separated them.
"Floki." She spoke her father's name carefully, the syllables feeling reverent on her tongue. "In the most peculiar land. The earth was black and the sea gray and the fog white. No color, save for Floki, in that shaggy brown cloak of his, remember? The oddest land, but he looked... happy. The gods were with him."
"I saw Kattegat." Rúna's head felt weighed by rocks as she turned it to look at him. She could just make out his profile in the shadows of the tent. "Snow flurries were falling and it was cold. There was a sky full of arrows, but you and I, Rúna... we stood still in the cold field and the arrows fell useless around us. Not one of them touched us."
A shiver ran through her, one that chilled her in her core. She felt as she had after her fever. To walk so close to the gods was a wondrous but terrifying thing. Rúna reached for him, touching his jaw lightly. That was all the prompting Ivar needed; he understood her need to ground herself back in Midgard.
He was kissing her in the next instant, pulling her close and rolling onto his back. Rúna straddled his waist and drew back, looking down at him. The dark clouded the blue skies of his eyes, leaving them as gray as her own. Those eyes were solemn and dark, echoing the need she felt deep in her belly.
Rúna drew back, reaching for the hem of her tunic and pulling it over her head with one smooth motion. She shook out her hair and tossed the shirt behind her, not caring where it landed. Where she was not tanned from the sun-soaked voyages of that summer, she shone a pearly white in the pale moonlight afforded to them through the threadbare tent cloth.
Ivar held her by the hips, skimming his hands upward over bare skin. Around the dip of her waist, up the plane of her back, until he used her as a guidepost to sit up beneath her weight. Rúna slid comfortably into his lap, tipping her head back to kiss him.
By mutual, unspoken agreement, clothes were shed and they had each other there in the grass, neither concerned with the prick of the blades. The only priority was joining together, the feel of the other. Once spent, they lay entwined upon the earth.
"See, Rúna?" Ivar asked, smoothing back her sweat-damp hair to kiss her temple. His heart pounded beneath her cheek. "All is as it should be."
There was plenty of time for training and sparring, and the weather was good for it. Summer was benevolent in this land. Rúna spent many afternoons running races with Hvitserk, wrestling with Tanaruz, riding with Bishop Heahmund. King Olaf and Thorstein joined the practices, especially swordplay with Hvitserk and Heahmund. The former was a berserker in battle, giving himself fully—mind and body—to the fray; the latter possessed such a cruel, graceful accuracy with his sword that one could weep over the dangerous beauty of it.
Rúna still primarily sword trained with Ivar. Sometimes while he sat on a stump, as he used to, legs bound and lashing out with surprising grace for someone limited to one position. Sometimes with his metal braces and crutch. He was slower when standing, still learning the nuances of his body with slightly more mobility.
Either way, even with a dulled sparring sword, Ivar's blows were brutal and unforgiving. He dwarfed her in size and strength, knocking her down time and again with no shred of remorse for having hurt her. After one particularly savage blow that caught Rúna on the knee with the broadside of his sword, Rúna crumpled. She felt the cold, feather-light kiss of the blade at her neck. Rúna glared up at him from the ground.
"You're dead, Rúna," he told her, a malice-filled grin on his face. Ivar did so love winning.
"Thank the gods, that I no longer have to look at your stupid, annoying face," she snapped at him, earning herself a bark of a laugh. The sword was tossed away, and Ivar shifted his weight more solidly against his crutch before extending a hand to help her up. Despite her burning annoyance with him, Rúna took his offer and let him haul her to her feet.
"You're too rough on her, Little Ivar," came Hvitserk's scolding voice. She hadn't realized he was watching them, but now she felt the full weight of his scrutiny as she tested her weight on her knee. It was throbbing; Ivar had definitely bruised her, and deeply. "Surely you know more than anyone else that she could fall with child?"
Ivar laughed again at that. "I would rather be the one roughest with her, knowing I'll never deal her true harm, brother."
Rúna finally found her footing and turned her own attention to Hvitserk. His concern was sweet, and she hoped the smile she gave him conveyed that. "I grew up in a brothel, in case you've forgotten. Surely you know there are ways to avoid that?" She didn't tell him so, but she was currently in the middle of a course. Rúna far preferred the pain of training to the cramps that plagued her during the first few days of her bleeding.
Hvitserk narrowed his eyes at that. "I am afraid I'm not familiar with the methods, but I'm glad you're using them."
"You're familiar with one, whether you know it or not. Margrethe used wine-soaked rags." In another life, when Kattegat was all of the world she knew, Rúna had seen the slave girl preparing the rags amongst her other chores. Queen Aslaug may not have known the significance of them, but Rúna had been no stranger to Margrethe's methods.
Bewilderment took over Hvitserk's face, fading into thoughtful curiosity. "A wine-soaked rag? How…?" Rúna pointed a finger skyward. "Up? Up… there? Huh."
"The rag is a barrier, and the wine kills the seed," Rúna explained helpfully. She could feel Ivar's shoulders shaking with barely contained laughter at his brother's revelation.
"Huh," Hvitserk repeated before his eyes narrowed again. "That's not why you wanted us to raid, is it? To get your hands on wine?"
Ivar did laugh boisterously at that. Rúna drew herself up, giving Hvitserk a long-suffering look. "No. We need goods for trading. Besides, why spend coin on wine when plants grow all around for free? You need only know which ones to use, and I do."
"Well," Hvitserk said, shrugging. His eyes were still clouded by thoughts. Rúna wondered if he was thinking of Ubbe and Sigurd, of the way all three had shared Margrethe's attentions. "I am glad you do. But still, Little Ivar, it's no good for her to train with you if she's walking away more injured than she would from battle."
Hvitserk took leave of them then, presumably to mull over this new knowledge some more. With a rare stroke of kindness, Ivar waited until his brother was out of earshot to mutter 'presumptuous ass' after him. "How insulting," Ivar continued. "To think I would be stupid enough to put you in such a situation when we're plotting for war."
Rúna watched the retreat of Hvitserk's lithe frame, ignoring Ivar's scoffing. "Perhaps he was thinking of Sigurd and Blaeja." They all did, often. All told, they had been away from York for nearly two months. That meant Blaeja was roughly three months gone with her child. "She's playing her own strategy, you know. Blaeja is far from stupid. King Aethelwulf would feel decidedly less inclined to make designs upon York if Sigurd had a half-Saxon heir."
"There's no strategy in you falling with child," Ivar snapped. "Aside from you dying, which I know will not happen, that is the most devastating circumstance I can think of for our current situation."
"I know," Rúna snapped in turn. "I only meant, perhaps Hvitserk was thinking as he always has of you and Sigurd and your annoying, shared habit of being jealous of one another."
Ivar's glare burned on her cheek, but Rúna refused to meet his gaze. She was sore from training and the bruises he had left her with were beginning to throb. What she wouldn't give for a proper bath, with heated water in a tub. She would have to make do with bathing in the cold river where it narrowed a handful of yards from their camp. A close crop of trees that grew on either bank made a nice privacy screen for Rúna and the other shieldmaidens to bathe in privacy.
"I am not jealous of a sniveling coward like Sigurd."
Rúna's only answer came in the form of pressing a kiss to the underside of his jaw, where his pulse fluttered close to his skin. She drew away from him, not wanting to argue but knowing Ivar was unlikely to let either her nor Hvitserk's jabs go until he had cooled down some. The color was high in his cheeks; he was riled from their sparring.
Ivar caught her by the wrist, pulling her back in. He rocked his weight onto his crutch, catching her by the waist with his free arm and crushing her so tightly against him that the cold metal of his braces bit into her own legs. His kiss was hard and branding. By the time he pulled away, Ivar managed to settle his weight on his elbow, so that he might hold her chin firmly in his hand.
"I'm not jealous of Sigurd," he repeated, eyes dark as a sky turning toward storm.
"Of course you aren't," Rúna agreed mildly. She kissed him again, much softer than he had kissed her. "I'm going to find Tanaruz."
She extricated herself from his tight hold. The vision the gods had given him had somehow managed to strengthen Ivar's fire further. Hvitserk hadn't been wrong; Ivar had been rough with her while training. Just as he had been when he thought Rúna would be leaving him behind to raid with Björn in the Mediterranean. Despite the exterior, Rúna knew it for the love it was. He wanted her to be ready, to be safe.
Even the gods did not have Ivar's full trust.
They had nothing to do but fill time.
Rúna couldn't shake thoughts of Floki, not after the gods had revealed glimpses of him to her. What a curious land my father found himself in. She had never seen anything like it, with the rolling black hills and that insidious, low-lying fog that had shrouded Floki. Where the land lay, she couldn't begin to guess.
She knew only that she wanted to see him again. Hvitserk gave her the mushrooms the second time. He did so with a smirk on his face, tauntingly asking if her 'husband' knew what she was doing, to which Rúna retorted that regardless of handfast or full Viking marriage, Ivar wasn't her keeper. Even so, she ate the mushrooms in Tanaruz's tent rather than the one she shared with Ivar.
"They open your mind to your gods?" Tanaruz asked, poking gingerly at the dried pieces in Rúna's palms. "All you must do is eat them?"
"Yes," Rúna confirmed, meeting her sister's dark, curious gaze. "I've already done it once with Ivar."
"I've heard of wisemen, the holy men, from my old village taking things like these… mushrooms." Tanaruz smirked, curling Rúna's fingers closed over the mushrooms. "Another thing forbidden for women in my culture. What is it you need me to do, shaqiqa?"
"Just let me lay on your bed for a few hours," she replied with a laugh. "I'll be fine, otherwise."
Tanaruz seemed dubious, watching Rúna closely as she settled onto the bed and chewed the mushrooms. Knowing what to expect this time, she laid back after swallowing, closing her eyes and waiting for that feeling of her mind, her soul, detaching from her body. Without Ivar there, she twined her own fingers together, resting her hands over her stomach as she waited for the gods' visions.
She could still hear Tanaruz, puttering around the tent, when the swirling miasma of colors behind her eyelids began to take shape. It was not Floki that she saw, as she hoped. Nor was it Helga, though a very private part of herself had wished she might see her mother. No, the first thing Rúna became aware of was her own hands, soaked in blood. She stared down at them, feeling the hot wetness slick on her fingers. It was not her blood, she was certain, for she felt no pain.
Whose, then? But as she raised her eyes, she found herself alone in a rather familiar field. She recognized it as the valley that lay between Kattegat and Tamdrup, a large stretch of land that separated the two kingdoms. The sky was heavy with white and gray clouds. It was snowing, Ivar had said of his own vision.
She was kneeling in the valley. When she pushed herself up, the ground was spongy beneath her hand, more blood welling from the earth as she stood. Rúna paced the valley. Snow began to fall around her, soaking the blood from the ground and staining itself red before the flakes accumulated. Her footsteps were soon crunching as she continued walking. Toward the far edge of the valley, something dark caught her eye.
A metal-work crown sat in the snow drifts. As Rúna plucked it from the snow, she realized the blood on her hands never dried. It smeared and caught in the hatch work at the base of the crown, glimmered macabrely on the points when she ran her thumb over them. It was Lagertha's crown.
"Hmm," she hummed to herself, turning the crown over in her hands. A large, deep scratch slashed through the metal. She wondered idly whose sword stroke would do that, for this was clearly a vision of what was to come. Standing in the falling snow, Rúna used her blood-soaked fingers to draw runes across the face of the crown.
Kenanz. Hagalaz. Nauthiz. Algiz. Tiwaz.
Restoration. Triumph. Growth. Protection. Courage.
The vision ended when Rúna lifted the crown and rested the weight of it on her head.
She came back to herself slowly, eyes fluttering open to find Tanaruz still sitting beside the bed. A length of fabric was pooled in her lap. Tanaruz had been using her time to work on gifts for Blaeja and her baby. With a head that felt heavy and stuffed with wool, Rúna turned toward her sister.
"See what you wanted to, shaqiqa?" Tanaruz asked, flicking her eyes up. A rueful light shined in the dark depths. "You were like a corpse. I put my hand under your nose just to feel your breath and reassure myself you were still breathing."
"Not what I wanted, no," Rúna admitted. She had desperately wanted another glimpse of Floki. Sometimes her whole chest ached with missing him. An idle finger found the cool metal of the arm band encircling her wrist. Rúna traced the carvings of Freya's cats as she spoke. "But what I needed to see, I think."
"That's good," Tanaruz nodded. She didn't ask for further elaborations. One of the things Rúna liked best about her chosen sister was that Tanaruz didn't pry.
A few days later, Rúna sat perched on the very edge of the camp bed she shared with Ivar. The map took up most of the mattress between them. She had drawn Kattegat in minute detail, from memory. Rúna traced the path from Floki's seaside cabin into town.
"I do not want to fight inside Kattegat," she told him. "Even if it makes it more difficult for us. I will not, Ivar. I will not be so pompous as to raze the streets, to leave old men and children dying outside their homes, and call myself a savior." When she raised her eyes to him, the gray was hard as steel. "I will not."
"I know," Ivar answered solemnly. "I will not ask you to."
Rúna sat regarding him for a few beats before nodding. The map had been her work, and this conversation was happening at her insistence. She tapped a finger on the rolling stretch of valley between Kattegat and Tamdrup, the same she had seen in her vision. "Here," she said with another tap. "We will defeat Lagertha here. And the only lives lost will be those freely given."
"You're too kind, giving Lagertha such a pretty field to die in, Rúna." This was not an argument Ivar would win with her, he knew. He was already asking enough from her to embrace the fate foretold for them. Ivar smiled at her across the map. "You're already a better queen than the usurper could ever hope to be."
By the end of summer, Rúna did not feel queenly. She felt sick. On one of the last days of the season, a messenger was sent from Dumbarton Rock. The combined forces of The Great Heathen Army and King Olaf's men had been camped on the far side of the River Clyde for months before the messenger came shambling across the bridge.
Shambling was the only word Rúna could think to describe the disjointed, weak steps the man took. He looked like a wraith cloaked in gray, sagging flesh that hung from his bones. Tanaruz drew up close beside her as they watched his approach, slipping her hand into Rúna's.
Sometimes Rúna forgot that she was still a little girl, only twelve yet.
"He looks like death walking," Rúna whispered to Ivar. He stood beside her on her other side but didn't take his hard gaze from the man. Hvitserk and King Olaf were close by, too, all of them forming a watch party some yards from the bridge.
Halfway across, the man nearly fell. His steps faltered in a frightening way, stilling for so long Rúna feared he had died where he crouched. After several long, anxious minutes, the man pushed himself up and began shuffling forward once more. Tanaruz held her hand so tightly that Rúna wouldn't doubt she would soon be wearing bruises in the shape of her fingers.
"Ivar," she hissed between her teeth. He didn't so much as flicker his eyes toward her. The plan had always been to starve the Britons out of the Rock, but having the evidence of their plan wavering before her had Rúna's stomach twisting in knots. "Ivar, don't make that man walk all the way across."
"He is our enemy in this, Rúna," Ivar hissed back.
"This is exceedingly cruel."
"War is meant to be." Rúna rolled her eyes at that. Cruelty in the form of fighting, she could stomach. That cruelty at least had a semblance of fairness about it. Leaning forward, Rúna looked past Ivar into the equally stoic faces of Hvitserk and King Olaf. The two of them had seen more raiding and fighting than either Rúna or Ivar had. They were likewise unaffected by the sight of the skeletal man before them. Only Bishop Heahmund's face reflected the anger she felt burning in her chest, but she knew better than to entreat the sympathies of the Christian at the moment.
Instead, she ripped her hand from Tanaruz's and sprinted forward before anyone could stop her. She jogged onto the bridge, meeting with the man where he still hovered around the center. He shrank back from her, fear leeching what small bit of color had remained in his sallow face. She caught him when he stumbled, speaking slowly in the Saxon language and hoping he would understand.
"I will not hurt you," she told him. His bony hands clung to her arm as she sunk down into a crouch beside him. "I do not want to hurt you. What have you come here for?"
"Yield." The word was substantial as a ghost. Rúna had to lean forward, her ear close to the man's mouth. His breath smelled rank and sour; he may not be dead yet, but the man was obviously not long for the world. "My people yield."
He shuddered, having used the last of his energy to deliver the message, and stilled under Rúna's hands. His last breath skimmed over her cheek, eyes blankly rolling toward a sky he could no longer see.
The raiding inside the Dumbarton Rock stronghold was somber. Rúna didn't once unsheathe her sword as she walked through opulent halls, Vigrid hounding her heels as if he were her shadow. She was thankful he was the one Ivar commanded to escort her rather than White Hair. Rúna did her best to ignore the gaunt, haunted faces that stared at her while she pointed out the things she thought worth the effort to take to Vigrid.
All the children were the hardest to look at. If she had considered the dead man on the bridge a wraith, the children were barely whisps of spirit. One strong breath and Rúna imagined they would dissipate like so much smoke. They lifted heavy heads on impossibly thin necks to stare at her with eyes gone dark and flat with defeat.
Rúna only made it through two of the white-tiled halls before she couldn't take it anymore. "Vigrid." The large man was at her shoulder immediately. "You've raided before?"
"Yes, of course. Ivar would not have chosen me if I had not." There was a sardonic tilt to his words that she didn't have the energy to acknowledge. Instead, she merely nodded and waved her hand.
"Then you will know what is valuable. Take what you please, and if Ivar is upset over your choices, send him to me."
She promptly vomited over the side of the rock face and rocked back on her heels, staring down the sheer drop. Ivar couldn't make the climb, himself. He had sent her and Hvitserk up the Rock to oversee the raiding, but Rúna couldn't stomach it. Not when she was faced with the truth of what her careful planning had wrought.
She hadn't minded killing and raiding in the Saxon lands. That was for revenge, for King Ragnar. The Britons had never done anything to her or her loved ones. Their only crime was existing and having been savvy enough to literal carve a fortune from a mountain.
"I am no better than Lagertha," she murmured, resting her head on her knees. There was the intense urge to ask forgiveness, but from who? Her gods had surely condoned her actions; the Britons were Christians, too. "Forgive me, Helga," she sobbed into her knees.