Raven Speak (9781442402492) Read Free Page B

storms finally ceased, the fish, too, had apparently swum away, because time after time the nets were drawn in empty.
    Needles pricked everyone’s stomachs unendingly, and still the winter stretched on. Then, in the darkest days, an awful sickness had begun clawing its way through the clan. The room divided into those who turned their feverish faces toward the cold drafts whistling through the cracks and those who huddled beside the fire, unable to melt the frost that gripped their marrows. Hour after hour, day upon day passed when the clan’s members sat in the dark, too ill to move, chewing on bark or vomiting it up. Movement ceased, and an entire day could go by before anyone noticed that a hand no longer twitched or that eyes stared unblinkingly at the rafters. No one was strong enough to dig a burial chamber; it was all anyone could manage to just roll the stiff body in a length of cloth, lay it on a plank, and carry it out to the smaller byre, the empty one, to wait in a frozen row with the others. Nine so far. Two of the shrouded bundles held Asa’s brothers.
    Was it the deaths of his sons that had driven her father out into a wintry ocean? Or the grumblings? She’d watched as he’d tried desperately to bolster the clan’s spirits with enthusiastic plans forthe coming summer: A new field would be cleared for more hay, a separate cooking house would be built for easier food preparation. Everything would improve. He openly complimented the women on their weavings and urged them to continue. He lapped up the soup that was served to him and pronounced it delicious even though everyone, including herself, could look into their bowls and see it was nothing but dregs.
    But his smiles and optimism weren’t enough. The cuckoo didn’t come; the rains didn’t cease; and the wool gave out. And hands couldn’t weave hope out of nothing. The grumblings began that this was the chieftain’s fault. He hadn’t done enough—wasn’t doing enough—to feed his clan.
    So, thinner and sad-looking at last, he’d taken what few men were well enough and set out under stormy skies to find food or better land or possibly another friendly clan that had foodstuffs to share, though Thor knew they had little to trade. That left behind four women and five children, along with old Ketil, whose broken leg hadn’t healed properly after his timber accident, and Jorgen the skald. Asa suspected he’d had a hand—and a tongue—in her father’s ill-timed departure. While he’d always been kind to her, telling her stories and taking an interest in Rune and even carving a small likeness of him once as a gift, she seized every opportunity to escape him. There was something about him that made her skin prickle, something that wasn’t right. And as she took up the comb to stroke her mother’s hair, she warily studied the hunched man smiling to himself across the fire.

PRÍR
    Jorgen held the smile on his face because she was looking at him and because it masked his real feelings. They were irritatingly strong feelings, feelings he couldn’t quite control, and so he made himself smile while he sat thinking. And listening, always listening. And rocking.
    She didn’t fear him. That’s what annoyed him the most. The others, even her pigeon-chested father, the clan’s chieftain, could be made to move aside with a dark glance. It was a precious art, one he’d been polishing for many years now, and he wasn’t about to let some child—a girl, no less—shrug that away.
    He felt for and found the bear tooth amulet he had tied on a thong around his waist and kept next to his skin, hidden beneath his tunic. His father, the clan’s skald before him, had given it to him, relating a belief about the amulet’s power. He chuckled, allowing his smile to widen a crease. Funny how his father hadn’t realized the heady power of his own position.