I felt a pang for the basalt-colored horse. There probably wasn’t a dragon. But if there was a spirit of the volcano, it would want some kind of sacrifice, and if I couldn’t trade with a dragon for eitr to bring my brother and his wife back, maybe I could trade with the whatever-it-was to end the eruption and save the harvest. But one lame horse still probably wouldn’t be enough to fix anything.
…the basalt-colored horse.
I’d been going along for such a while without one that the tickle of an idea surprised me. I heard myself whistle.
The gelding’s ears pricked and he limped a step toward me.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said. “But if you get really lucky, maybe there will be a dragon.”
He took another step… and tripped again. Those feet were a disgrace. Long as a town woman’s pattens, and the pony couldn’t walk any better in them.
I pulled my hook knife from my boot. He looked at me suspiciously. I let him sniff it. He obviously considered it something of a disappointment.
“Sorry, boy. It’s not a weird carrot.” He had to be motivated, to get that fat eating lichen and silage and straw chaff and turnips and wind-dried fish all winter. Ragnar probably would have slaughtered him for horse-meat come the frost.
I bent to lift one foot. He leaned away from me, worried. Ragnar had never been much of a farrier, and I remembered that most of his horses were afraid of having their feet handled. He apparently hadn’t improved.
With the aid of carrots and some rye bread sweet with birch syrup, I got the hooves trimmed anyway. He was easier about the last one than the first one. He was still lame after, but at least he stopped tripping.
The trim made him even more footsore on the basalt. After watching him mince for fifteen or twenty steps, I sighed in disgust, pulled my hook knife out again, and cut a wide strip and a narrow strip off the edge of my oiled leather cloak. He fussed at me while I tied the crude boots around his ankles, but when he stepped out again he seemed surprised and pleased at the improvement.
I fingered the spindle in my pocket. Dammit, Hacksilver. Don’t you go getting attached to your bait.
After several more painful hours of walking, the basalt was replaced by a steep slope of cinders. The air stung my lungs and we both grunted and leaned forward, pushing up the slope, cinders crunching. I started to notice the bones. Not complete skeletons, or scattered limbs. But here the skull of an ox; there the pelvis of a horse. Big bones, with scraps of meat cured on them by the hot, lifeless air.
The horse didn’t like the smell.
Unease pricked through me, sourceless and unsettling.
I was not, as I mentioned, really expecting a dragon. The basalt-colored horse was apparently smarter than me. He stopped halfway up the cindery slope, ears pricked, head craned, neck tense. A steady fellow: he was spooked and snorting, but he stood his ground and inspected the way ahead instead of skittering or trying to bolt.
I stopped also. Strained every sense, as the horse was straining his. The air reeked of brimstone. My eyes teared; wreaths of smoke obscured what vision I retained. But as I held myself still, my bones and the soles of my boots were shaken by a low sound. One that seemed to emanate up from the burnt ground underfoot as much as propagate through the air. It felt like the rumble of a geyser gathering itself to explode.
I pulled the spindle from my pocket and inspected the thread wound around it. Gray, scratchy, thin as wire and as like to cut you. The measure of a kinsman’s life.
I’d spun fine to spin long. Long enough for my purpose, maybe.
It would have been better woven into a net—a net to catch the vision and imagination. But even the long summer days were not long enough for that. So I found a rock about the right height, dusted the ash off it to be certain it wasn’t a desiccated pelvis, and sat down. A silver coin from my pocket had already been clipped and shaved a fair bit in its travels. I used my hook knife to shave it a bit more, dulling the edge but collecting a pinch of silver dust in a fold of my trousers. Silver like mirrors and silver like tongues.
I put those tools down and picked up the spindle, dipped my finger in the silver, drew a loop across my open hand, and gave the spindle a twirl. It dropped, and I rubbed metal dust into the chain-ply of my brother’s life, making the thread into yarn that could be unwound from the spindle without unraveling.
I supposed it didn’t matter, really, if the thread unwound itself—assuming Ragnar was telling the truth and Arnulfr and Bryngertha were dead. A poor omen perhaps for Arnulfr’s legend, but Arnulfr’s legend was the tale of a quiet man quietly damned for a crime by treachery. There are a lot of sagas about lawsuits. There aren’t too many about the losers of lawsuits.
Being born again by dragon venom would be the most songworthy thing that had ever happened to him.
Was Ragnar telling the truth? Well, I had known Ragnar to be sly, to misdirect, like any good warlord. I had not known him to betray his word of honor.
Getting eaten by a dragon was a death worth singing. Maybe that would be enough of a legend to gain me admittance into one of the better heavens. Or maybe the End Storm would blow up while I was plying, and I wouldn’t have to worry about legends or kinsmen anymore.
Having thought of songs, I sang to myself as I worked. As the ash fell around me. Songs for the goddesses who measured every man’s life, and then measured him for his coffin. Songs for the spinners. Warlock songs, seithr songs. Women’s songs, but there was no one to hear me except the basalt-colored gelding, and he was in no position to impugn my masculinity.
At last, I was out of silver dust and all the yarn was plied. Gray, scratchy. Smelling faintly of lanolin and lye. I stretched it between my fingers and let it twirl into a skein. If there had been any sunlight beneath the ash plume, I might have detected a subtle sparkle in the twist.
The basalt-colored horse dozed disconsolately at the end of his lead rope. I’d bored him to sleep.
I hoped it wasn’t a comment on my singing.
I let him sniff the skein, which he did with curiosity but no apparent concern. That was a relief. Some animals will not abide the smell of sorcery.
I started by braiding his mane, working the fate-cord into it as I went. I wound the line around his chest and shoulders like a girl binding her wooden horse with thread to make a play-harness. He stood for it, remarkably still and even-tempered. I braided traces back on themselves without cutting the line and let them trail, then bound the whole thing off just as I ran to the end of the thread.
The horse craned his neck around to watch me, ears alert, eyes bright and expression dubious. I wished I had a walking stick or a long bone from which to make a whiffletree, but it would only drag on the ground. And probably spook even this horse. So I just draped the traces over his rump and tied them in a little bow.
It was, after all, the symbolism that mattered.
“Well, buddy, I hope this works,” I said.
He blew a warm breath over me. We resumed climbing the cone.
The slope leveled as we came close to the top of the volcano. We stopped to drink at a spring that bubbled up from a cluster of stones, clearing some of the ash from our throats. I splashed water on my face. It was lukewarm and fizzed like surf, full of bubbles. It reeked and tasted of brimstone, but at least it wasn’t boiling. The horse drank, snorted to clear the fumes from his nostrils, and gave me a look before drinking again as if to say, “Yeah, I’ve seen worse.”
When I lifted my head, I realized we were nearly to the vent. The horse grew increasingly restive as we came up the final slope, and with a couple furlongs to go he planted his feet in their ridiculous leather bags and refused to walk another step.