Winter Song (6 page)

FOUR
Ragnar

Ragnar cradled the lamb in his arms as he surveyed the long thin valley that was Skorradalur. On the far side the shallow hills were already dusted with early snow, a harbinger of the winter to come. "Sometimes, Grensosa, I wonder about these damned fools."

    He watched Bera leading Loki – or Karl, as the stranger now insisted they call him – across the courtyard to the kitchen, walking close together, but without – as far as Ragnar could see – touching.

    Only two days since Bera had run shrieking from the barn that Loki was awake, and talking. Ragnar scowled at the memory of his first encounter with Allman. He had walked into the barn to find the man staring into space, frowning in evident puzzlement. When he looked up at Ragnar he had recoiled as though someone had waved a shit-stained rag under his nose.

    Ragnar had a long memory, and though the man had pulled himself together quickly and hidden his true feelings, the Isheimuri would neither forgive nor forget that look in a hurry.

    Two days, and the stranger was walking more strongly every day. Ragnar rubbed his hands. He already had Allman helping Bera with the women's work, but the man should be fit enough in time to help move the flocks from the furthest slopes down to the farm.

    Meanwhile Allman and Bera did the lighter work that allowed the women to come and scythe the corn. It grew stunted and feeble, but it was better than nothing, and crucial to their survival. If the Norns would grant them harvesting machines, they could do it in a fraction of the time, but their requests had never yielded a single harvester.

    Orn the Strong emerged from the barn he used to repair their equipment, and Ragnar hastily put the lamb down. He had a reputation for fierceness to maintain, and cuddling a six month-old lamb would soften it, naming it "Green Sauce" or not. When the time came, of course Grensosa was destined for the table – but as mutton, rather than lamb. He wasn't the first farmer to name his future dinner, nor would he be the last.

    Ragnar strolled down to the lake, where he threw skipping stones across the water. He had things to do. More than usual, as he'd lost most of the last month preparing for the Summer Fair, spending the week there dispensing justice, and returning to a mountain of pending claims on his time. He just wasn't ready to face them yet. What was the point of his being Gothi, if he wasn't able to choose when he worked?

    Instead his thoughts kept sliding away: to the Widow Helga, now past childbearing, but still with an appetite to match his, as she'd shown at the fair – but marrying as she'd suggested wasn't something he would consider. His widower status enabled him to play the women around him against one another.

    Thinking of women, his thoughts turned to Bera. But he could feel his blood rising at her betrayal of their reputation, and tried to think of something else, but his thoughts wouldn't settle.

    The stranger, Allman, was the true source of Ragnar's restlessness – or rather the unsettling effect of his arrival on the fragile equilibrium of the farm.

    Strolling around the lake-shore, he allowed Orn's path to cross his. Ragnar's older tenant rubbed his bald head, squinting into the suns, one of which was momentarily obscured by grey clouds as often happened as the day wore on. "We've managed to make a replacement pin for the gun without cannibalising the other one."

    "So we eke out another week, or month, or year of life," Ragnar said. Orn looked shocked, disappointed, and angry in such quick succession that Ragnar almost laughed. Instead he said, "Sorry, didn't mean to mock your efforts. You did well, fixing it without wrecking anything else for the part."

    Orn nodded, mollified. "We do what we can. If it means the difference between the Formers returning to a dead colony or a live one, then it's worth it."

    But they aren't coming back! Ragnar wanted to shout, but bit his tongue. They'd had this argument too many times in the past. It was what marked Ragnar as eccentric, though his fists and his sword meant no one dared call him Ragnar the Mad to his face if they wanted to live.

    No one else believed that the colony had been abandoned. They couldn't without facing the almost unbearable thought that they had to tame an only halffinished world alone but for the Norns and whatever they could scratch out from the soil. Ragnar had kept his counsel as best he could, but still word of his nearheresy had spread.

    Orn seemed to read his mind. "I know, we're wasting our time, trying to drag it out," he said, half-mockingly. "I want to make it work, even if it's just for now."

    "That's my view of life," Ragnar said, almost mocking himself. "Make it work." He was self-aware enough to know that he was the kind of man who believed that his world should fit itself to him, rather than vice versa. "If the colony's been abandoned, then there's no point rationing our limited tech until such times as the others return, but we should instead take apart everything they have to find out how it works –
make
it work, rather than relying on the hand-outs from the Norns. They have their own priorities. Self-repair, stabilise the climate as best they can, then let us have whatever tools they can spare enough nanos to facture." He didn't know that, of course. The nano-factories weren't communicative; they just provided what they chose to, or refused a request.

    "I bet you're the high-roller at backgammon," Orn said. "Not for you the half-kronur housewives' bets."

    "Damn right." Ragnar grinned, and punched Orn's arm, hard enough to make any other man wince, but the farmer hadn't earned his nickname for nothing. "What's on your mind, old friend? You didn't come out here just to tell me they've fixed the gun."

    Orn nodded, looking sheepish. He knew he wasn't the brightest light bulb in the house, but he wouldn't like to think he could be read so easily. "I threw the kids off the Oracle last night," he said. "And went over the readings from the Urdrs." Orn was referring to the automated weather stations seeded across Isheimur. "Those that haven't broken down altogether."

    "Go on."

    "Temperatures are down year on year over the last decade," Orn said, "but the forecast is more worrying. There's a high probability of a hard winter, one that'll come early."

    "How reliable is the data?" Ragnar knew that the stations that were malfunctioning but hadn't completely failed were the biggest problem; their data would skew the readings. There was no point in reopening that old discussion.

    Orn shrugged. "Dunno. But you want to risk it? We're going to have to move in the flocks in a couple of months, anyway. Why not bring the migration forward, start moving them down from the Seterfjell now?"

    What about the harvest?" Ragnar said.

    "Put Bera and the man on harvesting as well. I'll take two of the Thralls, and go with them."

    Ragnar frowned at losing two of the indentured farm hands. "Lose valuable grazing time? Fodder stocks are problematic at best. We lose two months, plus bringing them in means we lose time from the hay-making, so we lose doubly."

    "But we can't risk it, Ragnar!" Orn's fists balled, though Ragnar knew it was frustration.

    Nonetheless, Ragnar gripped Orn's upper arm. "We'll compromise: half the men – including Allman – will start in a month. Agreed?" It was a rhetorical question; they both knew it. Orn knew from experience that to keep arguing when Ragnar had made his decision would only provoke the Gothi, and Orn knew what happened when Ragnar lost his temper.

    So the farmer nodded. "About our… guest…" He wrung his hands, and looked away.

    "What?" They were walking back toward the farms now anyway, so Ragnar decided that he might as well look in on Bera and her surrogate child.

    Orn shook his head. "The others…" His next words came in a rush. "You know that some of Bjarney's kids are a bit superstitious. Some of the others too – as our science fails, so their belief in it starts to fail as well."

    "What do you mean?" Ragnar said. "We've always had nonsense about shapeshifters and wraiths, but no one seriously thinks that 'cause we've named the locals for trolls, and called the lizards 'dragons', that they're from Old Earth. What are you getting at, Orn?"

    Orn looked even more uncomfortable. "You know that the stranger talks to himself?"

    "So? That's common in delirium."

    "His voice changes," Orn said. "It gets deeper, rougher. Some of the kids think that he's possessed. Or that he's a seidr, with the gift of second-sight."

    Ragnar made a great show of laughing. "Possession? What sort of rubbish is that? Next you'll be telling me that the Yule Lads will be calling this winter, and ghosts are rising from the graveyard. Pull yourself together!" Laughing, he clapped Orn on the shoulder, and the big man smiled, looking embarrassed. "I'll look in, see if I can catch him playing us for fools. If he's well enough to act, he's well enough to take on more physical work."

    But as he turned away still laughing loudly, inside he felt chilled. Surely we can't be facing a paradigm change? He'd heard from the Oracle, heard of the myths from before the Long Night, before that back to the Interregnum and to the dawn of the Diaspora, to have heard of paradigm changes – that sometimes enough people believing in something could start to change the way things actually were.

    As Orn went back to his tinkering, Ragnar crossed the courtyard.

    Orn the Small said, "Your friend is following you, Pappi," pointing to Grensosa trailing behind like a little woolly dog.

    Ragnar ruffled the boy's tousled hair, and wondered where the puppy Brynja was, why she wasn't chained to the tap, as he'd had her left. "Animals'll follow you anywhere if you feed 'em."

    "Good morning, Pappi." Thorbjorg's arch voice cut into his good mood. His youngest daughter-in-law was walking across the yard; he could have sworn that her hips swayed a little more as she looked over her shoulder at him and smiled a coy invitation.

    They'd talked many times after a few drinks; how it was in the nature of men to want to spread their seed as widely as possible; how the Oracle said that women naturally wanted to carry the child of the strongest male in any pack. Just chit-chat. He'd only grown angry with her once, when she'd claimed someone unnamed said that Yngi's genes might be defective. He'd shaken her by the shoulders and demanded to know who'd said such a thing. She'd only smiled, and allowed herself to lean against him, and even as he despised her for the cheap quality of the move, he'd felt his own traitorous body responding. He'd wiped the smile off her face with, "Anyway, you didn't seem to be complaining last night, from the noise you were making."

    Sometimes he fantasised about ass-fucking her as a sign of contempt, and to ensure that she didn't get pregnant. Then again, she'd probably enjoy it, or at least pretend to, ensuring that she made as much noise as possible. With Thorbjorg everything was calculated, even – especially – sex.

    He didn't doubt that she would get pregnant if Ragnar took her. She was always pregnant. He'd wondered before if all five kids were Yngi's. If she was prepared to offer herself to Ragnar, who else might she have lain with?

    Much though he loved his youngest son, Ragnar had been amazed when Thorbjorg's father had approached him at the Bride Fair, and suggested an alliance. He'd always believed his son would live a celibate life, so had swallowed his doubts at the Fair, but Ragnar was sure that she'd married Yngi because he was Gothi's son, rather than from any real attraction, though in the dark all looks were moot.

    Had Yngi been anyone else's son, he would probably have been left on the hillside. It wasn't an Icelandic custom, but the Isheimuri had too little time to spare on sentimentality. While they'd never condone eugenics or the actual murder behind the mealy-mouthed phrases, nor could they afford to weaken their gene pool too much; the gods knew that they were finding it hard enough to stop the gradual drift that came with such a small population, and poor diet and limited medicines.

    Ragnar realised that he'd stopped half-way across the courtyard, and was apparently staring into space, doubtless to Thorbjorg's amusement. Might as well play the part, he thought, and struck a pose:

"What do you want with this bag of bones?

    Old wolves do not need warm flesh,

    When old and cold will do as well:

    I'd rather stoke my own hearth."

    Thorbjorg flushed at the implied insult, and fled.

    Chuckling, Ragnar strolled to the byre but as he approached, his good humour evaporated.

    The stable was empty of animals, as they were still out grazing under supervision, and in the corner the stranger lay dozing, while Bera sat, peeling the local turnips, which tasted more like soap.

    In the two days since he had awoken, the man looked worse, as if the effort had drained him. If anything some of his pallor seemed to have eased.

    Bera nodded without looking up at him, and Ragnar allowed his gaze to rest on the starman's face.

    Despite being sick and injured, the man was so inhumanly handsome that he seemed almost god-like to Ragnar. The older realised that he was feeling an unfamiliar emotion – envy.

    "He's slightly better than he was earlier today," Bera said.

    As if he knew that they were talking about him, the alien stirred and tried to nuzzle at her breasts. Blushing furiously, Bera eased him away.

    Ragnar felt his temper rise. "Let him. Might as well get some good from you spreading your legs – he can be your babe in arms."

    Her head bowed, Bera unbuttoned her blouse. As the man's lips found her nipple, she murmured, eyes downcast, "Do you feel better, Ragnar Helgrimsson, by humiliating me? Do you feel more of a man?"

    He stepped forward, knife half-out of its scabbard, but stopped. "You humiliated yourself, girl. Was it one of those travellers who stopped off on the way to Spring Fair? Or is it one of the boys?"