The Shades of Winter a Novel of Averraine Read online

  The Shades of Winter

  A Novel of the Averraine Cycle

  By Morgan Smith

  Copyright © 2018 Morgan Smith

  Traveling Light Publications

  ISBN: 978-0-9950366-3-5

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover design and artwork by Angel Moon

  Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Nothing in this is remotely based on actual events nor does it take place in any earthbound locale. None of the characters or situations has even a smidgen of reality about them, nor did I write it to get back at my legion of enemies or my arch-nemesis. If you see yourself in one of the characters, you either need a stiff drink, a change in your medication, or a long, hard look in the mirror.

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Appendix - The Sorrow of Thrain Stronghand

  Appendix - The Curse of the Oldrung

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Other Novels of the Averraine Cycle

  The vows of your heart are the blades of trust.

  Yet even swords may be broken.

  -From the Rede of the Kyn

  Chapter 1

  I was tying off the last sheaf of barley at the top of my row when one of the hall kids came bursting out of the trees yelling “Ship!”

  I dropped my scythe and began running toward the path back down to Dyrsholt along with everyone else as if our lives depended on it, because chances were, they did.

  I felt no fear. To be perfectly honest, I was almost happy.

  I hate harvesting barley. I’m not terribly good at it. I’m not terribly bad at it, either. It’s one of those many things that one learns over time to do competently, purely by long hours of repetition. My choices that morning had been limited to this, or a session with Trude and the tally-sticks. I had seen it in her eyes when I went into the cook hall to scrounge a few oatcakes, and was lucky enough to have just been talking to Eydis about the need to get the last of the barley in, so that I had a plan for my day ready on my lips.

  Late summer barley waits for no one.

  But a ship on the horizon meant danger. It was well past the ordinary season, to be sure, and Dyrsholt wasn’t a rich prize or anything like, but raiders on their way home often lack discrimination, especially if the summer’s pickings have been slim. We’d had these sorts of incidents before, but not often.

  And the danger, I liked to think, would be all for any raiders who thought we’d be an easy mark.

  Inside the hall, there was nothing less than chaos. Someone was waiting with my mail shirt and my sword belt, but even as I reached for them, my son came in through the farther doors and called out to me.

  “It’s only the Kyndred.” Gunnr was smiling. “Virk says he’ll stall them as long as he can.”

  Behind me, I heard my daughter-by-marriage shift seamlessly from enumerating quantities of iron rations to be apportioned to which pig should be slaughtered. My mail and my sword belt disappeared, and a hall kid with a basin of water and a wide grin on his face was heading my way.

  We were all smiling now. The arrival of the Kyndred meant a feast, meant news from other holdings, meant old jokes and old stories and a full mead-cup passed around. Instead of a skirmish, we would have a pleasant upset to our humdrum life.

  “How much time have we got?”

  Gunnr shrugged. “Far less than we want. A half a candle-mark, if we’re lucky.”

  I turned to see that Gwennie, my father’s old Camrhyssi thrall, had brought me a clean tunic. I peeled off the ragged one I’d selected as suitable for harvesting. No one even looked my way. Old women’s bodies, well, no one cares about them.

  I don’t, myself, hold with captive thralls, and have never taken any. For a start, their hearts are never in their work, they’ll never give you their best and why anyone should expect it to be different is a mystery. And then, ten to one they’ll spend all their days dismally pining for home, which gets on everyone’s nerves. Even bonded servants are less trouble, and usually more cheerful. They know they can make a life for themselves, sooner or later.

  My mother had freed Gwennie, years ago. We thought she’d be off like an arrow for home - it was, I think, in my mother’s mind to arrange for her passage, as payment for years of service - but Gwennie had just bobbed a little nod of thanks and almost everything had gone on pretty much as it had before. The single thing that she did with this new freedom was to buy some very finely woven blue wool goods and sew a new overgown, which she entrusted to my mother, after extracting a promise that she would see to it that Gwennie went to her afterlife properly attired.

  “You’ll be glad of the company, then,” she said to me, now. She had a note of reproof in her voice, but I ignored it. Almost everything Gwennie said came out like disapproval or doom-saying, depending on the circumstances. I pulled the shirt on over my head, and then caught at my granddaughter’s skirts as she teetered on her toddler’s legs towards the open hearth.

  Aesa immediately fell to howling in rage and adding to the general chaos. I handed her off to a passing man-at-arms, who looked surprised but charmed when she stuffed his warrior-braid into her mouth.

  “Eydis, can you collect my scythe? It should be at the top of the third row.”

  It’s lucky this is my hall and my barley, as well as my scythe. She’d have slapped me, if it weren’t for that. Dropping tools wherever one fancies is not something Eydis tolerates easily. She’s not wrong, of course. Good ironmongery costs you.

  The hall was quieter now, at least. The worst of a sudden raid is the way in which everyone panics, as though we hadn’t been through this a dozen times before. I have never quite understood it. We all knew what to do, and a frenzy of activity wouldn't save us. Only hard steel does that, but that urgency, at least, was past.

  Moments later, my brothers and sisters in arms came through the doors of our hall to find us, not in a jumble of alarmed confusion but in a well-ordered hall, and as a nicely composed family grouping, n
eatly dressed and seemingly at our leisure.

  A pretty good illusion, if I do say so myself.

  Chapter 2

  The Kyndred are good at filling up space. We used to joke that Ingvold alone could take up any two benches by himself, but it was true that our hall felt suddenly crowded and alive in a way that not even the entire household that had been rushing about making siege preparations only a quarter candle before had been able to achieve.

  Sigurd was slapping Gunnr on the shoulders and asking about weapons drill as if Gunnr were yet a stripling lad and not a man grown, and Elke was dumping the contents of a sack of trinkets onto a bench, pawing through and looking for one to amuse Aesa with. I searched the faces.

  “Solveig?” I said, but not to anyone in particular. The voices, the joy, the pleasantry, it all slowly stilled.

  “She’s dying, Tam,” said Raisa, softly. “That fever, last spring…she never really got well.”

  Her eyes said it all. Solveig dying. Likely, she was already dead. My eyes went to Lavran, standing so still, near the door, his face in shadow. I closed my eyes.

  I wanted to go to him. I wanted to ease that pain. But it was Lavran. Solveig had been the only one to ever breach that wall. The rest of us, well, we just took him at his word and let him be.

  Instead, I reached for the easy way out, taking the mead-cup around myself, and swapping the jibes and the mock-punches, as if nothing had ever changed.

  Too few of us left. Time takes its toll, I know, but some deaths were just a waste. Vadik only two summers past, on that stupid raid down into Ilrae. Trygve from the frost-sickness, Britt in a brawl in Raethelingas last Winter’s End, all the others, and now Solveig.

  But what did I expect? The world is made for the young and strong. We weren’t either of those things, anymore.

  Still, we weren’t all dead, yet.

  Trude captured the wandering Aesa, since the hearth continued to hold an overwhelming attraction for her. She settled in to a discussion of childrearing with Oddhi, who had a clutch of nieces and nephews, each with similar desires to launch themselves into unsafe places, while Gunnr made the rounds with mugs of beer and all around us, the servants were organizing tables and cutting thick slices of bread.

  We always have a crowd when the Kyndred turn up. Everyone knows they will be welcome - we turn no one away on nights like these - and the news had spread fast. Nearby farmers and village crafters began drifting in with extra bread, pots of preserved fruit and the occasional newly-snared rabbit to help things along.

  Sometime after the roasted meats had been portioned out, Geiri began to sing. He’d a fine voice and a prodigious memory, and I thought, as I had before, that we were lucky he’d married young and started a family. A small place like this wouldn’t have kept a talent like his for long, otherwise. Many a finer hall would have been glad of someone who could entertain them this well.

  The evening ended much as it always did. Most everyone else had gone to their beds and it was just the nine of us, lounging around the table in various stages of inebriation or somnolence, while Sigurd and Oddhi argued about who had made the better deals on our first trading venture into Fendrais six years ago.

  “Well, all right,” I said. “To what do I owe the honour of a visit this time?”

  “What do you mean? Can we not visit a heart-sister when we will?” That was Elke, sounding uneasy.

  “A visit out of love? A wee bit out of character, don’t you think - all of you at once? Not to mention eight weeks of sailing together every spring is always enough of each other most years, and it will be two moon turns and more before Hrolf expects to see any of us in Raethelingas. By rights you should all be tucked up with your families, annoying them and making them long for winter. So, what has happened to make you go sailing at harvest time?”

  There was a collective sort of a sigh, and Raisa had her “I told you so” look on her face.

  Lavran said, eventually, “The shrine. At Heilaegr. It’s been raided.”

  “Raided? Who would - ?”

  “Istara.”

  I just stared. There was little enough to say.

  Chapter 3

  One might think that, having shared so much else down the centuries, that Raeth and Istara would be, if not united, at least in general harmony. One would be wrong.

  We might spring from the same lines, we might share the same gods, and we might have fought the same evil together in the misty past, but our paths had diverged long ago. In good times, we adhered to an uneasy truce. In bad times - well, Istara wasn’t a place where simple farmers could tease out a decent living. They’d always looked eastward, coveting our fields and forests.

  We’d had long years of what passed for peace, since Njall’s death. Somehow, Hrolf had kept us from outright war, with diplomacy and a judicious marriage into a northern family that had connections to Istara’s stronger chieftains. The raids were less focused, less problematic, although for some of the halls and steadings within easier reach of Istri, that wasn’t quite so true.

  But since that disastrous day at Fraylingsgard, the incursions had been single incidents for personal gain, not political strikes at our heart.

  I’m not especially devout. I honour the All-Father, I respect the All-Mother, I give thanks for good harvests and I never skip the obligations any warrior has to Skeid of the Battles. More than that, though? Let’s just say that the gods help those who help themselves, and that I’ve always assumed they didn’t need my constant attention to be well and happy.

  But Heilaegr is a holy place, there’s no denying it. I’d only visited the once, but I had felt it. And those who were drawn to life there, you could sense how that holiness had rubbed off on them, too. They glowed with that inner light, and it was obvious they had transcended this mortal world in service to the gods. It was in the very air they breathed. Even Istarans frequently stopped there, to make offerings, to ask for luck, or simply to drink in that undeniable Presence. It was something we shared, and while it lay on Raeth soil, it had always been a place of peace, common to us all.

  Until now.

  It was a confused tale, at best, since the news was fresh, and none of them had the whole of it.

  “Every one of them dead,” said Sigurd. “Visitors and wise ones alike. Massacred.”

  “Butchered,” said Elke. “Mutilated, too.”

  “But why?” It seemed unthinkable.

  “Because it’s us.”

  Lavran had been silent, even more silent than usual, since their arrival. We’d garnered one twisted smile out of him, over an old joke about pigs’ snouts that wouldn’t have made any sense to anyone but us, and he’d roused himself enough to try tripping me up when I carried another mead-cup around, but for the most part, he’d simply watched and listened, joyless, when he noticed anything outside himself at all.

  But he now sounded resolved and surprisingly strong, as if some bridge had been crossed.

  “What does Hrolf say?” There are any number of responses a king can give to an unprovoked attack on unarmed innocents. A lot of them aren’t sane.

  At this, there was an uncomfortable silence.

  Raisa said finally, unwillingly, “Well, you know Hrolf.”

  “He wept, apparently,” said Sigurd, coldly. “He wept and then he went up to the queen’s rooms, and didn’t come down to the hall for two days. And that’s the end of it, seemingly.”

  “Oh, but surely…“ I looked around. “What about the Council? Surely they have some plan?”

  “There wasn’t one called. Well, and half of them are at home, seeing to the harvest, anyway.”

  “And then what?” I felt certain that once Hrolf got over the shock, he’d have at least talked to them.

  But it appeared that he had not. He had not raised the subject at all, and when some had tried, he’d hotly denied that there was any evidence to say that Istara was culpable.

  Even when the trader who had been first on the scene had described to all who
would listen the bloody runes defacing the shrine walls, arrogantly shouting to us that we would fall to Istara’s might, he’d shut it all out. Even when the headmen of villages along the northern islands attested to seeing Istaran ships sailing past them, first north, then, two days later, south again, he’d refused to even acknowledge the deed, let alone the obvious perpetrators.

  I got up and went to the little cask of mead set on a side-bench, filled my cup to brimming, and swallowed most of it in a desperate gulp. It felt, for a moment, as if it wouldn’t stay down long, but then the full-blown warmth of it settled, and I was left with an ugly combination of rage and despair.

  There would have been a lot of children there, that day. It’s customary for those who are even a little god-touched to be sent there for training and as early as possible, before their gifts can do any harm. And then, in poorer families, especially in the north, it’s considered a good way to ease the number of mouths to be fed by sending one or two offspring to serve the wise ones, if only for a season or two.

  And Summer’s Turning was considered a propitious time to dedicate yourself to the service of the gods, in any capacity. Istara had chosen their moment deliberately well.

  “Well, mayhap Hrolf is just being cautious,” I said, after a bit. “We don’t know that anyone in Istri itself is involved. I mean, it could be a few malcontents on a spree - it’s not to say that Jolgeir or the jarls had anything to do with it.”

  It sounded stupid, even to my own ears. Three warships, if the headmen spoke true, and one with that familiar dragon banner of the royal house. It would be hard to do all that without Jolgeir and his war leaders at least hearing something about it.

  And if they had heard, and didn’t move to stop it? I couldn’t think what that really meant, it seemed as if that must mean something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Whatever it was, it could not be good for Raeth.

  I turned back towards the table. They were all looking at me, as watchful as cats, and with a kind of reticence, too, as if they were drawn up to a shore, but reluctant to get their feet wet in the shallows.