Thralls Of Skuld - Chapter 4: A Frayed String In The Web Of Wyrd

Thralls of Skuld - Chapter 4: A Frayed String in the Web of Wyrd

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After too long, Geir finally looked back to her with a deep sigh. “I do not know what I saw, Eira” he said with a finality, settling a debate she had not been privy to.

She blinked again, gaining strength in her eyelids. 

“Some of the others, they are.. There have been many discussions.”. Geir shuffled to sit next to the wooden slab she was placed on, lowering his voice as he continued into her ear, outside the privy of nearby ears. She thought of sitting up to look at him, to understand the look on his face, but it was futile. 

“How did you learn it?” he finally asked.

She wanted to speak, but knew she was not ready. So she simply shook her head.

“It cannot be.” Geir looked towards the pale sky where the sun had still not broken the horizon. His eyes, much the same color as the sky, were shifting as if looking for something. He sighed again.

“You are lucky that not many saw. Magnus, myself, a few other nearby warriors. It hasn’t left our ranks.” he assured her. She nodded in appreciation, lifting a hand to the herbal dressing on her neck. The movement made her wince again, and the stitches underneath the cloth pulled at her skin. It was marvelous that they had not needed to burn the wound.

Magnus sprung into her vision, a bright grin on her face, akin to what she had expected from Geir on her awakening. Unlike Geir, he had combed his short blonde hair back from his face, and dressed in fresh woolen clothes.

“By the Gods Eira, we almost left you!” His voice was like bells, where Geir’s was like drawn out battle horns, signifying impending doom. “That fellow from Harvang - Rorik - he found you still alive when the battle had stilled. I saw you go down. I thought surely you could not survive a blow like that.”. Magnus was emphasising each word enthusiastically, as if he was reciting skaldic tales. He was still young, still excited by everything that happened in battle. “But then -” his eyes fleeted briefly to Geir “something clearly happened, did it not? It was unlike any galdr I have ever seen, I mean, it must have been..” Magnus was immediately shot down with a stern look from Geir. He contained his excitement. 

“How’s your jaw?” he asked instead, with a sheepish smile, and she had opened and closed her mouth demonstratively for him.

The ship glided through the calm waters of the fjord as the morning finally broke and a lazy autumn sun was drawn onto the horizon by Sóls chariot.

When they reached the coast of Selund, her body felt stronger. A large lump of chewed willow bark was burning a hole on the inside of her left cheek, but the bitter juices numbed her sweetly as they flowed through her.

They anchored in Roskilde, a day’s travel from Eiklund. The victorious Danir had already had their feast in Scania on the night the battle finished. Now, most were weary and decided to stay a day in Roskilde, to have their injuries tended to or drink another mug of beer to their victory. Eira had been carried to their hosting hall on a wooden raft. While Geir had regained his jovial composure, there was a weary edge to him. Eira had fought alongside him long enough to know that battle did not have this effect on him. Something else was afoot.

The familiar band of fighters from Jarl Ingmar’s land settled in a large hosting hall for breakfast. Eira was still lying on the raft at the far end of the table as food was brought to her. Everyone had greeted her warmly, praising her escape from death. Most others had only suffered minor damaged, except for Rolf, who had lost two toes and was wobbling around on wooden crutches. Two people Eira knew had died. 

She had finally put a name to the stranger who had watched her when she was drifting in and out of consciousness. Rorik of Harvang, a nearby neighbouring village of Eiklund and from a band of fighters that often fought with the Eiklund warriors. 

She wondered why she had never fought alongside him before. 

“I do think we have.” he protested. 

“I would have remembered that sword” she pointed to the pattern-forged sword at his waist, the hilt sticking out of the sheath decorated intricately. She asked him about it, but he brushed it off saying he had earned it when he had joined the raiding expeditions in the West.

When she saw him in his neat and clean clothes, she also realized where she had seen him before. On the Sviar heath, he had been completely unscathed by the heat of the battle, catching her eye but disappearing quickly as the fighting continued. In much the same way, he had now managed to escape her attention as she looked for him in the hall, wondering why something about him struck her as definitively off.

The conversation in the hall flowed more freely now that the small band of brothers had left the company of the many strangers travelling alongside them from Svidland. She understood now Geir’s reluctance to discuss what had transpired, in front of people he did not trust. Yet even here, he was not the first to broach the subject, having sat several seats away from her. Instead, as they had all recalled the spoils of the battle, putting forth their most formidable attacks and defences, one warrior had mentioned Eira’s unlikely survival, and the room had fallen quiet. 

With a pained exclamation, Eira had fought her way to sit up halfway to look upon the room from her sickbed.

“Don’t hold back. Tell me your thoughts”, she willed her voice to fill the room gaping back at her. She needed them to explain to her what they had seen, for she remembered only the distorted impressions of her senses as her life’s blood flowed from her.

Magnus, unsurprisingly, was the first to speak, his words always working faster than his mind. “Well you must be a long lost daughter of Odinn, or maybe a vølve!” he exclaimed. 

Rolf, now Rolf the Toeless, to his left, interjected: “Vølvur do not wield the power for destruction like that.”

Magnus shrugged unphased and responded that daughters of Odinn also did not wield magick without being taught how. Which beckoned the question that Geir had been first to ask her.

“Who taught you how to do that?” someone asked from the end of the table.

“And how come you never told us?” Magnus supplied, ignoring the obvious fact that a commoner speaking loudly of such skills would certainly face death at the hand of the jarl. 

“I have never been taught anything other than battle galdr. I do not even know what exactly I did.” began Eira, her eyes shifting around to take in the eyes on her, many clearly unconvinced by her words. Geir’s eyes, which she knew the best, were also the most doubting. His grey eyes most often took the warmness and hue of molten ash, but now they were hard like iron.

A small but fierce shieldmaiden, whom everyone aptly called Thyra - shieldbearer - instead of her given name, Thurid, spoke up. “Imagine what we could do if we all held such powers. Eira, you will have to teach us everything you know.”.

Before Eira herself could protest, Geir finally raised his voice. “And risk the death of all of us? Imagine what Ingmar would do, what the King would do, if he found a flock of common karls practicing that kind of magick?” Some heads nodded wearily at this.

“If we all knew that kind of magick, we could overpower the King.” Thyra’s voice was low and hesitant, herself not fully convinced of what she was saying. What she had said was a dangerous statement, and a roar of overlapping arguments ensued - who did she think she was, to challenge the king - but also yells of encouragement “Yes! It is about time we changed the unjust ways of these jarls and kings” and “It is about time we fed them their own poison”. 

In only a few seconds, the hall brimmed with a surge of excitement and anger as discussions broke off between pairs, some yelling over the heads of others to make themselves heard. Several people gestured to Eira, arguing over how it would even be possible for her to learn magick without training, with someone else stating that no one would have any reason to teach a commoner like her. Eira thought of Unn and the vølve, but held her tongue.

Eira’s eyes fell on Rorik of Harvanger - had he been there the entire time? - standing in the back of the room watching her friends seated at the long table. He looked highly amused, a tuck on the sides of his lips as his eyes darted from face to face. He did not engage to let his opinion be known. As the only other observer of the ignited dispute unfolding in front of them, it struck Eira how Rorik, once again, did not look like he belonged here.

Geir’s booming voice cut through the chatter. “In that case, Rolf, we may as well challenge the Gods themselves!” 

“And why not? What even makes the Æsir our Gods? If all that separates us from Odinn is seiðr…” Rolf’s voice faded quickly from a yell to a more controlled volume, when he noticed the commotion around him had stilled. Eira appreciated for a brief moment that the eyes of the hall were no longer on her. Rorik’s amused face had fallen, now staring intently at Rolf too.

“What has possessed you?” Geir demanded, everyone holding their breath for the answer. Rolf averted his eyes, as if struck by the man whom many in the room considered a father figure, sometimes akin to Thor himself. But Rolf’s words had stirred something in Eira, bringing forth a wonder and yearning that she had only named to herself on sleepless nights. Knowing that someone else might share the sentiment helped her find her voice. 

“We all grow up being told we are helpless spiders in the Web of Wyrd. That whatever has been written will be, the grand tale of the inescapable fate.” Her words dripped with more disdain than she had intended. The room clung to her words. “Meanwhile, our lords and rulers are taught something very different. Kings and Jarls are blessed by the Gods with magick, but why them?” Her words hung in the air. She wanted an answer.

“There are ancient works at play, you know that, things beyond our influence. The bloodlines of Odinn and such.” Magnus offered.

“Of course, and it is in their best interest that we all believe that.” Eira scoffed. “The highborne people wield only a fraction of the magick that the Gods do, and still it is enough for us all to be ruled by them. It secures their power over the rest of us. But you know what they say - Odinn granted only the magick to the Jarls in return for their continued favor and devotion. Our rulers use their magick only to hoard their magick. Odinn did not give magick to divine beings with moral codes above the rest of us. They are but men. They’re greedy and power hungry. This means Odinn’s will in Midgard is to uphold a delicate balance of rulers and submissives.”

Somebody shifted in their seat, causing the bench to creak underneath the weight of the many people who were now staring wide-eyed at Eira. But the room remained quiet. She could not stop herself. The endless sleepless nights poured out of her mouth, desperate to be heard. 

“What the Jarls fear the most, what our new King fears most -” she did not mean to spit out the word, but she did “is to be overpowered by those beneath them. Odinn fears the same thing. That is why magick is hoarded by only those indebted to him.”

Finally, someone interrupted her. She was thankful, for she knew what she was about to utter may get her hanged or smited if she continued. It was Rorik, speaking up for the first time with a clear voice cutting through her river of words.

“Do you really not believe that this has all been written before us? We know the end of the world must come, and everything leading to Ragnarok will happen as it is woven by the Norns. Even if it is not just, it is what must happen.”

This ignited something in Eira, swelling into the pit in her stomach that had been carved by the sound of little children’s screams being swallowed by water, and Geir’s wails deep in the winter night two years ago. 

“How can the death of innocent children have any place in the outcome of Ragnarok?” Her voice was shrill now, something she was not proud of in a room full of men who looked at her with furrowed bows. But she looked each one of them in their eyes, and saw that many averted their eyes and nodded solemnly at her words. 

“You all saw what happened in Götaland, a proof that what we thought we knew may not be so. I do not know how it happened, but something changed the fate that was written for me that day. Something shifted, I can feel it. And we must pursue it. There are ways of magick available to us that we have never even imagined..” Eira’s words trailed off, as she steadied herself, trying to hold in what had happened with Unn and the vølve, to not reveal a secret she had sworn to keep.

Geir must have noticed that she had veered into a territory of something that she did not want to share widely. “Eira,” he began, in the same way one would try to steady a frightened horse. “We all wish these things could be helped. Every one of us have felt the senselessness of the Gods' wills at times, but we must trust that there is a meaning to the ways of the world.”

“You might even have changed your own fate, Geir,” Rolf reflected quietly. “You know as well as me that a Jarl's babies never die. Why do you think that is? Odinn has allowed them to avoid death, to challenge the web of fate, while the rest of us lose everything! Why not at least try to see this through? What do we have to lose?” He did not raise his voice like Eira, but there was a pained challenge in Rolf's voice, having known his own unjustifiable loss.

Geir did not answer, his face unreadable.

“That’s enough, Rolf,” Magnus stepped in. “It is not for people like us to concern ourselves with fate and destiny. They’re decided by the Gods for a reason.”

The tension in the room had reached an unbearable crescendo, and burst something fragile, sucking all the energy out of the air. A finality settled around them. Eira watched as Rorik the stranger slipped into the shadows and disappeared, while the rest of them turned their sullen faces back to their breakfast plates. As a subdued hum of chatter slowly resumed to the hall, Eira knew that thoughts had been said aloud which no one else had spoken in their lifetime. Something had been stirred, which would not settle anytime soon.