Eight years before Rockslide . . .

 

 

1

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He was out collecting firewood by dawn as usual. He wore his heavy cloak, for mornings were still cold even now that the snow was mostly gone, and the family would need a fire until midday.

     Often he met other boys with their slings and baskets in the woods nearest the village, but it was nearly stripped of firewood now, and he was alone in the large forest farther upstream. He quickly picked up a full load from the wealth of storm-blown spruce branches. The green of the forest was vivid against heavy grey clouds, and the breeze had died away. Sigurd sensed an approaching storm, perhaps even a late snowstorm.

     Afterward he realized that going to the farther forest had saved his life.

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Before starting for home, he sat on a fallen log beside the stream, at the edge of a large frost-covered meadow. The village looked small in the distance, lying between two hills at the stream canyon’s narrow mouth. Elvdal was its name—twelve houses west of the stream, which hugged the eastern hill as it left the canyon to flow out over the flats toward the river. The western hill hid his own house, which was far enough from the stream to be inconvenient, for Sigurd’s chores included fetching water in hide bags. Smoke would be curling above the house; his mother had already started the fire when he left. His brother would be milking the goats, his little sister helping with breakfast.

     Sigurd was the middle child, at thirteen a sturdy boy, as big as his mother, not as tall as Leif, his older brother, but already heavier. Sigurd was the family expert with bow and arrow, best of all the boys in the village, and a fine hunter. He never left home without his bow and arrows, even on wood-gathering trips.

     Sigurd’s father had been ill for two years and bedridden since midwinter. He had hoped to recover as the weather improved, but his cough was worse now than a month ago, and he was weaker. Sigurd feared the outcome, and every morning as he gathered wood he spoke prayers to the forest spirits for his father’s recovery.

     After the prayers, he sat quietly in the stillness.

     Raising his head at a distant noise, he was startled to see a plume of dark smoke above the hidden western part of the village. He jumped anxiously to his feet, shouldered his load of firewood, and started downstream toward home, hurrying as much as possible considering the weight of wood on his back. The path dropped steeply, and he soon lost sight of the village. He passed through the lower forest at a trot and had nearly reached the fields upstream from the village when he heard screaming. He rushed forward to where he could see what was happening.

      The village was in flames. Gangs of armed warriors ran from house to house setting fires and killing any who emerged. Every house was burning, the flames roaring, merging above the village into a tower of black smoke.

     Sigurd knew his family was dead or dying. His father, brother, sister. His mother.

     He saw at least fifty attackers, more than enough to overwhelm the village even if there had been warning. The screams of women mixed with battle shouts as men sought to defend themselves, but they were too few and were struck down, every one.

     Sigurd could not possibly change the outcome.

     The scene felt unreal to him, and he stood numb. Fifty armed men had burned a village and killed nearly a hundred people too quickly for him to comprehend, his conscious self crushed between the enormity of the act and its impossible quickness.

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“Sigurd!”

     He turned to see a younger village boy looking dumbly at the slaughter.

     “Gunnar.” The sound of Sigurd’s own voice surprised him; he had thought he would never speak again. “You don’t have your bow and arrows?”

     “We should hide. Or they’ll kill us too.”

     “They won’t come here. They came down the river from the west. I first saw fire from the upper forest. It was behind the western hill. They’ll continue downriver toward the sea.” Already the attackers were gathering downstream from the village, herding dozens of goats, sheep, and pigs, the village’s chief wealth. The boys could see the men and animals clearly.

     Gunnar stood sobbing. A cold rain spattered about the two boys. Sigurd felt a sick despair but knew that yielding to it would change nothing, that in the time it usually took him to eat breakfast, the world had turned completely around to face into darkness and horror. He knew in his bones that he would need all his wits and energy simply to stay alive. Grief would have to wait.

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Sigurd had heard all his life of the Raiders from the North, who ransacked and burned and killed without mercy, but those stories were old ones. He remembered both his grandmothers, who told terrible tales from their youth, although always finishing with how the raiders had been beaten back and thirty peaceful years had passed. His grandparents feared raiders would return. His mother and father hoped otherwise.

     Sigurd and Gunnar spent the rest of the day and all that night huddled in the forest, in the rain, without fire or food. The marauders camped downstream from the village with a huge bonfire and in the morning walked off eastward toward the sea. The boys entered the village then—together, so that neither would face alone what they knew they would find.

     The rain had stopped, but the day was much colder. Everything was soaked, and the village smelled of sodden ashes and death. Bodies lay everywhere, many of them badly burned. Many houses had been reduced to ash, burning quickly as flaming pieces of thatch roof fell in. Of Gunnar’s house the boys found only remnants, and in the ash and burned rubble they found no trace of Gunnar’s family. At Sigurd’s house the posts were still standing. The charred body of Sigurd’s father lay where his bed had been. Sigurd found a small body outside the house; turning it over, he recognized his sister. He searched the area for his mother and brother, but to no avail.

     He carried his sister to the forest, where the boys had spent the night, and then returned for his father. On that trip he found a stone shovel blade and carried it back to dig a grave. He laid the two bodies side by side and covered them. Gunnar helped with the digging and sobbed quietly as Sigurd spoke the prayers for the dead.

 

 

“I wish I had died too,” Gunnar said. He and Sigurd sat at their fire. It was nearly dark. They had set out hunting in the early afternoon, but when he realized Gunnar was a liability, Sigurd asked him to build and tend a fire instead. The hunt dragged on all afternoon, and Sigurd was lucky to return with a poor thin winter rabbit. Gunnar had made a foraging trip to the village by himself and returned with fire tools, a knife blade from which the handle had burned away, and an undamaged bone-handled flint hunting knife.

     The boys ate every morsel of rabbit, their only food in two days.

“Do not speak those wishes,” Sigurd said. “Do not think them. We were chosen to live, and we must abide by that.” Even as he said the words he knew their falseness, that given the choice, he too would rather have died than face life without his family. That night as he lay awake trying to come to terms with his loss, he planned the following morning’s hunt and wondered whether he was strong enough and skilled enough to live on his own, especially providing for a younger boy.

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2

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Life is simple at the level of the essentials. Find a way to stay warm—or die of cold. Find food—or starve. The nights were cruel even in good weather, and that spring was a time of unrelenting cold rain. Sigurd dreamed of killing a deer some early morning or late evening, but the does were wary and the bucks scarce, and he was lucky to take enough rabbits to survive.

    Sigurd and Gunnar hiked upstream, heading for a smaller village several days’ walk away in a different watershed, over a mountain pass. Sigurd was unwilling to share the flat river plain with the raiders. It grew colder as the boys climbed, and by the third day their path was covered with snow. Their hide shoes soaked through, and Sigurd built a fire under an overhanging rock face to dry them.

     The boys were warm and dry by the time they slept that night, but they awoke to shrieking wind and long before morning were in the midst of a spring blizzard.

     “This can’t last long, at this time of year,” Sigurd said.

     Gunnar did not respond. He was a slighter child than Sigurd and cold through. Their overhanging rock protected them from much of the wind and snow, but when Sigurd tried to rekindle the fire, the wind defeated him. The two boys huddled together for warmth and did not sleep the rest of the night.

 

 

By first light the storm slackened to occasional flurries, but the snow on the ground was deeper than the day before. Heavy overcast hid the sun, and the day was icy cold. As Sigurd built a fire and prepared to set out hunting, he was anxious about Gunnar, who was lethargic and pale after going without food for a full day.

     They had camped well above the stream and the river of cold air that follows it. Sigurd approached the stream cautiously to avoid spooking any game there and saw the doe at the moment she sensed him. She whipped her head toward him, ears up, looking for motion. Sigurd froze. By the time the doe convinced herself that she was not threatened and resumed browsing, Sigurd was numb with cold, barely able to move. He decided to try a difficult shot rather than risk scaring the deer away by going closer. He edged silently behind a tree and pumped his arms to dispel the numbness in his hands. Still out of the deer’s sight, he notched an arrow and drew the bow. Then, ever so slowly, he stepped out from behind the tree.

     The doe was looking intently downstream. She exploded into motion as a screaming child ran into view with two wolves in grim pursuit, closing fast. Sigurd turned toward the boy, who was stumbling in panic. Sigurd guessed he was about six.

     “Over here!”

     As the boy looked up, the lead wolf sprang. Sigurd’s arrow struck him in the chest, and he crumpled in mid-leap. Sigurd notched another arrow and turned to face the second wolf, but the pursuit was over. The boy leapt behind Sigurd, and the second wolf veered off and ran. The fallen wolf lay still, dying.

     “Are you hurt?”

     The boy shook his head.

     “Are you alone?”

     Another shake of the head. “My mother . . . I was ahead, and the wolves chased me. I thought they would catch me.”

     “Your mother is here?”

     The boy pointed back along the path. As Sigurd looked that way, a woman appeared, panting as she ran up the stream with her heavy pack.

     The boy ran to her. “Mama, the wolves wanted to kill me, but he shot one and saved me.”

     The mother’s relief came out as an angry outburst. “Ragni, I told you to stay close. Don’t you ever—”

     She broke off and looked at Sigurd. “You’re only a boy yourself. What are you doing here?”

     Sigurd drew a deep breath and told the story in a rush. “I am Sigurd, and I’m not only a boy. I’ll be fourteen at midsummer. I came from Elvdal with a younger boy after a raid four days ago. The raiders killed everyone in Elvdal and then went toward the river. We are trying to reach Fjellheim. My friend is cold and hungry and maybe sick. I was hunting when I saw your son and the wolves.”

     The woman looked silently at Sigurd and then put her hand on his arm. “I spoke hastily, Sigurd, and I am sorry. You saved my son. Thank you.” She looked into Sigurd’s eyes. “I am Asah, and this is Ragnar. We are going home to Fjellheim. I came to Elvdal with my husband to get Ragnar. He had spent the winter there with my husband’s parents. The day before the raid, Ragnar took me downstream to see the waterfall, which he loved, and we camped there. We saw the fires and the raiders as we returned in the morning. We hid until they went east. We wept as we walked through the village. Then we started home.”

     She paused and then said quietly, “My husband and his parents were in Elvdal when the raiders came. We searched but did not find them.”

     “My mother and father and brother and sister were there,” Sigurd said. “I was out gathering wood. So was my friend.” He looked at her pack. “Do you have food? I am afraid for him. He is cold and weak.”

     “I have food, and I will try to help your friend. Then you will both come with me to Fjellheim and stay with my family.”

     “Thank you for your kindness. If you don’t have enough food for that journey, we could cook and eat the wolf.”

     “I would rather eat the straps of my pack. I have plenty of food.”

     Sigurd stooped over the body of the wolf and retrieved his arrow. Then he led Asah and the boy Ragnar toward the camp where Gunnar waited.

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Sigurd had not known Gunnar well. Gunnar was four years younger, the same age as Sigurd’s younger brother Kani. Gunnar and Kani had often played together when they were small—their mothers had been friends as children. But Kani sickened and died at age six, and after that Sigurd saw Gunnar only occasionally.

     Gunnar was small for nine, and Sigurd’s concern for him was well founded. Gunnar had lost his family and had seen too much horror and gone too long without warmth or food. Sigurd saw him curled quiet and pale on the ground and feared he might have died. Gunnar did respond, if barely, when Sigurd shook his shoulder, but then lapsed back into sleep, or near-sleep, and Sigurd could not rouse him.

     Asah knelt by the boy, her face near his. Then she straightened up. “Sigurd, I think he’s simply hungry and cold. Can you build a fire?”

     The ground was clear of snow underneath the overhanging rock. Once the fire flared to life, Gunnar stirred toward it. Asah opened her pack, and Sigurd saw that it contained many dried plants. Asah took a small pot from her pack, filled it with water and crushed a leaf into it, and put it near the fire. While it heated, she crushed a different leaf, rubbing her hands together, and then stroked Gunnar’s face and head. Gunnar’s eyes opened, and he looked from Sigurd to Asah in apparent confusion. Asah reached beneath him, lifted him a little, and brought the pot of warm liquid to his mouth. “Drink this.”

     Gunnar drank, sighed, and lay back. “I thought I was dying, but now I’m hungry. We didn’t eat at all yesterday.”

     “Your spirit is suffering from the loss of your family,” Asah said, “and your body from cold and hunger, but you are a strong boy, and once you have had enough to eat you will feel better.” She reached into her pack. “I have venison for a few days for all of us.”

     By noon the sun broke through the clouds, and the day began to warm. The woman and the three boys rested and ate, and the companionship they provided each other soothed their grief. “If the weather clears,” Asah said, “we could be in Fjellheim tomorrow. With snow on the ground it would take two or three days, but I suspect tomorrow will be warm and dry.”

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3

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Sigurd walked ahead of Asah and the two younger boys and reached the mountain pass by late morning, well before them. Alone in that high place under a cloudless sky of a color seen only in the far north, he looked over the longest view of his life—a descending canyon opening southeastward to his first sight of the distant sea. He knew it immediately for what it was; his father had described this place to him so clearly that he felt he had seen it himself.

     He had climbed the steep snowy trail in cold morning shadow, but the gentler canyon ahead lay in full sun, its snow cover burned away. A group of deer browsed below, and occasional swatches of springtime color relieved the starkness of the alpine view. A stream trickled from a small tarn not far below him, nestled at the foot of a snowpack that extended upward into a side canyon. He descended to sit beside the tarn and waited for the others to catch up. The water was a blue even deeper than the sky it reflected, and where water met snowpack, the ice was a deep blue-green. Remembering his father’s delight at this place brought Sigurd back to his present reality, and he silently prayed for the spirits of his family.

     Asah found him so lost in thought that he didn’t hear her approach. She had labored up the climb in grieving silence, but reaching the pass had lifted her spirits, for she was nearly home. When she saw Sigurd sitting forlornly beside the stream, her heart went out to him. Losing his family at thirteen seemed a catastrophe even worse than her own, for he was alone and homeless, while she was surrounded by boys who felt like family.

     She sat beside Sigurd. “We won’t reach Fjellheim until late afternoon, but the going will be easy, downhill and with a good path.” As the four of them rested and ate, ground squirrels peered out of holes in the meadow below, and the day’s first breeze stirred the new grass.

 

 

The sun was low when they reached Fjellheim. All afternoon the boys had followed Asah through evergreen forests that grew sparsely on both sides of the stream. The canyon was narrow and steep in places, but near Fjellheim the slope gave way to level land. Beyond the village lay its fields, not yet green that early spring. In the afternoon sunlight their freshly-turned ground stood out dark against the sky.

     Sigurd was surprised to see that Fjellheim was even smaller than Elvdal, nothing more than a tiny cluster of houses along the stream. Asah’s house stood near the upstream end of the village, and she was glad to see it even though coming home without her husband wrenched her anew. Inside, a stone hearth occupied the center of a large single room. In one corner of the front stood a table with bench seats. Asah’s sleeping pallet was against the back wall, near Ragnar’s. During Asah’s absence, her older son, Oddi, had stayed with her sister in the adjoining house, and he remained there now, to make room for Sigurd and Gunnar, who set up their sleeping pallets in the front of the room.

     From the ceiling hung many dried plants. Outside, at the top of the streambank, Asah kept a small vegetable garden, her pride, though not yet planted this year. “The year Ragni was born,” she said, “the stream flooded, and the water was over the bank for days. Since then the garden has produced the best crops since I first planted it.”

     “You are kind to take us in,” Sigurd said, in this home that was his own now, but not his own.

     Asah looked steadily at him. “I am lucky to have met you.”

 

 

At the ceremony of the midsummer moon in Fjellheim, Asah presented Sigurd and Gunnar to the village and told the stories surrounding their arrival—of the raid on Elvdal and the massacre of its inhabitants, of the loss of Asah’s husband and Sigurd’s and Gunnar’s families, and of Sigurd saving Ragnar. None of this was new to the villagers, but in the ritual telling the events became part of the village’s formal history, to be retold every year. Asah was the speaker not because she was personally involved, but because recounting that history was her duty as an elder.

     As Sigurd and Gunnar stood before the assembly in the moonlight, she saw they had filled out, living with her and eating well. Gunnar was no longer the pathetic waif she had first met, and he had formed friendships with her son Oddi and her sister’s son Orn, both Gunnar’s age. Oddi and his cousin looked like blond twins.

     Sigurd had turned fourteen and was noticeably taller than he had been fifty days before. Asah thought him a good fit for Fjellheim. He had joined the men hunting soon after he arrived, and on his first hunt he killed a buck. The men appreciated his skill with bow and arrow and the courage he showed by killing a wolf to save Ragnar.         

     "He will grow to be a man of power,” one said to Asah.

     “He is that already. He saved Gunnar and Ragni. He is an unhappy boy, though, grieving for his family.”

     Sigurd’s buck had yielded meat, bone, and hide—also sinew, which Sigurd would use for bowstring and to bind arrowheads. Gunnar had arrived in Fjellheim without bow and arrows. Soon after their arrival, he and Sigurd had gone into the forest, returning with several straight beech branchlets for arrows and a fine strong dry branch of red oak for a bow, perfectly curved. Gunnar had shaped the bow and carved wooden points on three practice arrows. When the sinew was cured, Sigurd assembled the bow and the two boys made an archery range in the forest. Sigurd was disappointed by Gunnar’s lack of skill, but Gunnar practiced daily and by midsummer was already stronger and more proficient. Sigurd showed him how to flake arrowheads and secure them to arrows, and Gunnar worked on arrowheads every morning. His confidence jumped when he shot a rabbit with his own bow and an arrow he had made himself. At the midsummer ceremony he came before the assembly carrying his bow and arrows with pride.

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By the time of the ceremony of the midsummer moon, every one of Fjellheim’s sixty inhabitants knew Sigurd and Gunnar well. One man at the ceremony, however, knew nothing of the two boys—Elder Hjari, visiting from the much larger village of Kystenlandsbyen, a center of boat building and metalwork on the seacoast to the east. He had walked a full day to Fjellheim to bring news of raids on the coast and discuss Kystenlandsbyen’s plan to defend itself. He met with the elders of Fjellheim on the day of the ceremony to inquire about young men willing to help defend the coast.

     “Sooner or later, the raiders will move south along the coast,” Elder Hjari said. “They would not yet attack a village the size of Kystenlandsbyen, but they could overwhelm the small villages north and south of us, and we would be lost. For all of us, the only safety lies in a guard force made up of men from all the nearby villages. Fjellheim is only a day’s walk from the coast. How long would it last if Kystenlandsbyen fell?”

     At the ceremony, Sigurd caught Elder Hjari’s attention as a strong young refugee from a raid and a promising recruit. The elder mentioned Sigurd to Asah, and she brought Sigurd to him before dawn the following morning.

     “Elder Hjari,” she said with a deferential bow of her head, “here is Sigurd, from Elvdal. You heard his tale in the ceremony last night. He has lived with me since the raid on Elvdal.” Asah then retired from the room.

     Elder Hjari clasped Sigurd’s arms. “Sigurd, I sorrow to hear of the raid on Elvdal and of the deaths of your family members. The raids are barbaric, and we must stop them.”

     Sigurd stood almost as tall as the elder and looked him in the eye. “Sir, I am honored that you think me capable of helping.” Sigurd had of course already heard why Elder Hjari had come to Fjellheim and that he wanted to speak to Sigurd. Villages of sixty have few secrets.

     “The reports of your courage and skill go before you, Sigurd. I hear that you are already a fine bowman and hunter, and could become a leader of men. I offer you a chance to be trained as a warrior, and perhaps to avenge your family.”

     Sigurd paused for thought before speaking. “I owe much to Asah. She brought me here and has housed me and fed me for nearly two months. I appreciate your offer, but I must speak with her before I give you an answer.”

     “My work here is done. I will return to Kystenlandsbyen later this morning. I hope you will decide to come there yourself. When you do, come to me first, and I will make arrangements for your food and housing.”

     “Are you traveling alone, sir?”

     “I am traveling with Vadi, who has agreed to fight for Kystenlandsbyen.”

     Sigurd knew and liked Vadi, one of the village’s hunters.

     “If I am to come, I would like to travel with you. I will speak to Asah and return with an answer before the sun is fully risen.”

 

 

Sigurd was astonished to find tears in Asah’s eyes. She looked at him with a wry smile. “Another loss, and each one a fresh wound. When Fridrek died I thought my life was over. Then you killed the wolf and saved Ragni, and I realized what I had to live for. In another time, without war, you would have stayed and changed Fjellheim with new blood and new ideas. I feel I’m losing a son, and that is my sorrow.”

     They looked at each other at length and embraced. “You saved our lives too,” Sigurd said. “I was in despair when we met, and Gunnar was dying. I was fortunate to come here and live in your house as your son. I will never forget that. In any case, I will return every winter, and I will visit whenever I can. If Elder Hjari could walk here from Kystenlandsbyen in a day, I could do it in a morning, to see you.”

     “You are an unusual fourteen-year-old, Sigurd, for your depth as well as your courage and skill. I fear that as a warrior you could become coldhearted. But I see that you are destined to follow this path, that losing your family is the beginning of some new life. May you find what you seek.”

     “And you, Asah. Goodbye, and thank you.”

     Sigurd found Gunnar as soon as he had gathered his few things.       “I’m going, Gunnar. I would not have left you when you needed me, but now you are safe, and I have something I must do.”

     “Will I never see you again?”

     “Of course you will. I’ll be nearby often, and I’ll come here to visit. And I’ll live here in the winter. You and Asah are the only family I have.”

     Later that day, walking toward Kystenlandsbyen with Vadi and Elder Hjari, Sigurd thought about parting from Asah and remembered her sadness. He had not shed a tear since the raid on Elvdal and the loss of his family—even including his mother, the warmest and most treasured person in his life, and his sister, whose happy laugh he would never forget. He did not dare open the door to those sorrows, and he wondered whether that numbness would follow him into the new life Asah foresaw.