Chapter Text
1.
857 AD
Sigurd presented the small tapestry, still rolled up in his hands, to the chieftain at the throne.
He sat large in his white fox fur, his hair dull and light, like the oats Eivor had eaten for breakfast that morning.
“It is a gift,” Sigurd said, “from me and all of the Raven Clan.”
An advisor in robes received it from Sigurd, taking it to hold it at each end. The tapestry was split down the middle: one side dyed purple, the other blue, the feet of one black raven shape meeting the beak of another in its centre.
“I thank you and your clan for your generous gift.” Chieftain Niðsi’s eyes crinkled when he smiled at Sigurd. He looked down to Eivor. “May the alliance of the Eagles and the Ravens last until the mountains turn to bone once again.” He nodded to Sigurd. “Who is your company?”
Sigurd nodded back, respectful. “She is my sister, Eivor.”
“Hello, Chieftain,” Eivor said, squaring back her shoulders.
Niðsi smiled benignly. “You have the stance of a warrior, Eivor. I did not know Styrbjorn had more children.”
Eivor looked to Sigurd. Styrbjorn had said to practice their diplomatic tact on this short trip to Rygjafylke’s northeast. My parents were axed would not suffice; this would have to be soft as new snow.
“It has not always been so,” Eivor said. “My parents have… left Midgard.”
“Since two winters past, she has been my sister by bond and not by blood,” Sigurd added, palming Eivor’s back, as if to bring her closer to the throne.
“A sister or brother can bring great joy,” Niðsi said.
Eivor felt the twinge of a pinch before Sigurd let go of her back. He nodded sagely at the King then, out of the upwards fire of Eivor’s glare.
“When you return, thank Styrbjorn for sending you,” Niðsi said.
The village of Akkeri, of the Eagle Clan, was smaller than Stavanger and only scattered with people; a merchant shouted of his food and wares nearby, a pair of drengrs stomped around with mud and slush on their faces, children yelled and laughed and picked gooseberries.
Eivor looked to Sigurd as they began to walk back to where they had left their horses. He had a deep furrow in his brow.
“Why are you sulking?” Eivor asked.
“I am not sulking,” Sigurd sulked. “The chieftain said to thank father, as if he sent us here to take us out of his hair.”
The voice said: For a gift, it is a worthy reason as any.
“Not for the son of a King,” Sigurd said. He looked out onto the village around them for a moment before something seemed to catch his eye, and Eivor followed the line of his gaze. “That merchant on horseback is selling brooches,” he said. “Do you see?” He eyed Eivor. “Stay put while I run after him.”
“Don’t you have enough brooches?” Eivor said to his retreating back. She watched him until he disappeared from view, then frowned at the grass. Would she care about brooches as much as Sigurd did if she reached fifteen winters? It was a mystifying thought.
Shifting her stance, she watched the two drengrs, tall and furred, stumble into an alehouse nearby, then turned to the other children by the berry bushes. She was surprised to find the eyes of two girls already on her, one of them giggling and the other stammering, speaking in words Eivor could not hear.
With a push from the other, one of the girls broke away from the pair, pulling at the long blue sleeves of her dress as she began to walk in Eivor’s direction. Eivor tilted her head and looked behind herself, as if there was somebody there the girl was walking to instead.
She stopped a pace away from Eivor. “Hel-” Eivor started, then, all in one moment, the girl took Eivor’s shoulder and suddenly bumped their lips together, brief and strange. The girl’s friend at the gooseberry bushes erupted into cheers and louder giggles, and her brown ringlets were thrown by the wind as she ran back to her.
Eivor followed after the girl, uncertain, though a smile tugged at her lips despite herself. “What was…” She gestured between them, unsure how to finish her sentence.
The girl with the brown curls only seemed exhilarated, now. “Áma told me I could never kiss a boy.” She gestured to the blonde girl beside her. “I had to do it! I can’t let her be right.”
Áma flicked the girl on the arm, and Eivor looked between the two. “I am not a boy,” she said. “I am Eivor.” A pause. “A girl,” she added.
Áma broke the sudden silence with another fit of giggles, nudging the brown-haired girl’s shoulder. “You didn’t kiss a boy after all, troll-tooth!”
Eivor liked when Sigurd shaved her hair and she could run her hands through it, coarse and soft at once. She liked wearing Sigurd’s old clothes from before he had shot up like a celery plant all the sudden, like all the older kids did.
It hadn’t mattered to Eivor three days ago, when a travelling man carrying heavy wares had told her to get out of the way, boy, or last season, when a desperate merchant had tried to sell her beard ornaments for when you are a man, or the ten other times she’d been thought a boy before then.
But this time, she wished to be swallowed up by the earth, and the ocean seemed to gather in her eyelids.
She turned around and ran far away from them, away from the strange girl. She thought of the bump of her lips, of the girls’ laughter, and her vision blurred enough she tripped over a stone and fell on her leg.
She winced at the burn of the scrape and sat in the cold grass, resting her forehead on her knee, wishing she understood why it mattered this time.
What felt like hours later, she heard it: “Eivor! Eivor!” There were footfalls and she soon felt Sigurd’s hand on her shoulder. “Are you hurt?” She kept her head down. “Were you pushed?”
Sounding like words he had spoken seasons ago, Eivor felt two winters younger all the sudden. When she had first gotten the scar and the voice in her thoughts, the children in Fornburg had thought the voice strange: how it bled and blended into her mind and slipped from her tongue when she didn’t wish for it to. He is a coward, it always said. Valhalla is no dwelling-place for cowards.
Sigurd had never looked at her like she was strange.
She lifted her head up and opened her eyes to find Sigurd kneeling beside her. She wiped her face with her sleeve and looked at their boots together in the snow-spotted grass. “I tripped,” she said.
“It’s your leg?” Eivor nodded dully, rolling up her pant leg to her knee. “This scrape?” She nodded again, and Sigurd took a closer look at the spot, which had only just broken the skin beneath the fabric of her breeches. “You have had cuts thrice as deep and have not shed a tear.”
She said nothing, and Sigurd looked at her for a moment before offering his hand. “Come, Eivor. It is time to go home.”