The Shades of Winter A Novel of Averraine

The vows of your heart are the blades of trust.

Yet even swords may be broken.

-From the Rede of the Kyn

Chapter 1

I was tying off the last sheaf of barley at the top of my row when one of the hall kids came bursting out of the trees yelling Ship!

I dropped my scythe and began running toward the path back down to Dyrsholt along with everyone else as if our lives depended on it, because chances were, they did.

I felt no fear. To be perfectly honest, I was almost happy.

I hate harvesting barley. I’m not terribly good at it. I’m not terribly bad at it, either. It’s one of those many things that one learns over time to do competently, purely by long hours of repetition. My choices that morning had been limited to this, or a session with Trude and the tally-sticks. I had seen it in her eyes when I went into the cook hall to scrounge a few oatcakes, and was lucky enough to have just been talking to Eydis about the need to get the last of the barley in, so that I had a plan for my day ready on my lips.

Late summer barley waits for no one.

But a ship on the horizon meant danger. It was well past the ordinary season, to be sure, and Dyrsholt wasn’t a rich prize or anything like, but raiders on their way home often lack discrimination, especially if the summer’s pickings have been slim. We’d had these sorts of incidents before, but not often.

And the danger, I liked to think, would be all for any raiders who thought we’d be an easy mark.

Inside the hall, there was nothing less than chaos. Someone was waiting with my mail shirt and my sword belt, but even as I reached for them, my son came in through the farther doors and called out to me.

It’s only the Kyndred. Gunnr was smiling. Virk says he’ll stall them as long as he can.

Behind me, I heard my daughter-by-marriage shift seamlessly from enumerating quantities of iron rations to be apportioned to which pig should be slaughtered. My mail and my sword belt disappeared, and a hall kid with a basin of water and a wide grin on his face was heading my way.

We were all smiling now. The arrival of the Kyndred meant a feast, meant news from other holdings, meant old jokes and old stories and a full mead-cup passed around. Instead of a skirmish, we would have a pleasant upset to our humdrum life.

How much time have we got?

Gunnr shrugged. Far less than we want. A half a candle-mark, if we’re lucky.

I turned to see that Gwennie, my father’s old Camrhyssi thrall, had brought me a clean tunic. I peeled off the ragged one I’d selected as suitable for harvesting. No one even looked my way. Old women’s bodies, well, no one cares about them.

I don’t, myself, hold with captive thralls, and have never taken any. For a start, their hearts are never in their work, they’ll never give you their best and why anyone should expect it to be different is a mystery. And then, ten to one they’ll spend all their days dismally pining for home, which gets on everyone’s nerves. Even bonded servants are less trouble, and usually more cheerful. They know they can make a life for themselves, sooner or later.

My mother had freed Gwennie, years ago. We thought she’d be off like an arrow for home - it was, I think, in my mother’s mind to arrange for her passage, as payment for years of service - but Gwennie had just bobbed a little nod of thanks and almost everything had gone on pretty much as it had before. The single thing that she did with this new freedom was to buy some very finely woven blue wool goods and sew a new overgown, which she entrusted to my mother, after extracting a promise that she would see to it that Gwennie went to her afterlife properly attired.

You’ll be glad of the company, then, she said to me, now. She had a note of reproof in her voice, but I ignored it. Almost everything Gwennie said came out like disapproval or doom-saying, depending on the circumstances. I pulled the shirt on over my head, and then caught at my granddaughter’s skirts as she teetered on her toddler’s legs towards the open hearth.

Aesa immediately fell to howling in rage and adding to the general chaos. I handed her off to a passing man-at-arms, who looked surprised but charmed when she stuffed his warrior-braid into her mouth.

Eydis, can you collect my scythe? It should be at the top of the third row.

It’s lucky this is my hall and my barley, as well as my scythe. She’d have slapped me, if it weren’t for that. Dropping tools wherever one fancies is not something Eydis tolerates easily. She’s not wrong, of course. Good ironmongery costs you.

The hall was quieter now, at least. The worst of a sudden raid is the way in which everyone panics, as though we hadn’t been through this a dozen times before. I have never quite understood it. We all knew what to do, and a frenzy of activity wouldn't save us. Only hard steel does that, but that urgency, at least, was past.

Moments later, my brothers and sisters in arms came through the doors of our hall to find us, not in a jumble of alarmed confusion but in a well-ordered hall, and as a nicely composed family grouping, neatly dressed and seemingly at our leisure.

A pretty good illusion, if I do say so myself.

Chapter 2

The Kyndred are good at filling up space. We used to joke that Ingvold alone could take up any two benches by himself, but it was true that our hall felt suddenly crowded and alive in a way that not even the entire household that had been rushing about making siege preparations only a quarter candle before had been able to achieve.

Sigurd was slapping Gunnr on the shoulders and asking about weapons drill as if Gunnr were yet a stripling lad and not a man grown, and Elke was dumping the contents of a sack of trinkets onto a bench, pawing through and looking for one to amuse Aesa with. I searched the faces.

Solveig? I said, but not to anyone in particular. The voices, the joy, the pleasantry, it all slowly stilled.

She’s dying, Tam, said Raisa, softly. That fever, last spring…she never really got well.

Her eyes said it all. Solveig dying. Likely, she was already dead. My eyes went to Lavran, standing so still, near the door, his face in shadow. I closed my eyes.

I wanted to go to him. I wanted to ease that pain. But it was Lavran. Solveig had been the only one to ever breach that wall. The rest of us, well, we just took him at his word and let him be.

Instead, I reached for the easy way out, taking the mead-cup around myself, and swapping the jibes and the mock-punches, as if nothing had ever changed.

Too few of us left. Time takes its toll, I know, but some deaths were just a waste. Vadik only two summers past, on that stupid raid down into Ilrae. Trygve from the frost-sickness, Britt in a brawl in Raethelingas last Winter’s End, all the others, and now Solveig.

But what did I expect? The world is made for the young and strong. We weren’t either of those things, anymore.

Still, we weren’t all dead, yet.

Trude captured the wandering Aesa, since the hearth continued to hold an overwhelming attraction for her. She settled in to a discussion of childrearing with Oddhi, who had a clutch of nieces and nephews, each with similar desires to launch themselves into unsafe places, while Gunnr made the rounds with mugs of beer and all around us, the servants were organizing tables and cutting thick slices of bread.

We always have a crowd when the Kyndred turn up. Everyone knows they will be welcome - we turn no one away on nights like these - and the news had spread fast. Nearby farmers and village crafters began drifting in with extra bread, pots of preserved fruit and the occasional newly-snared rabbit to help things along.

Sometime after the roasted meats had been portioned out, Geiri began to sing. He’d a fine voice and a prodigious memory, and I thought, as I had before, that we were lucky he’d married young and started a family. A small place like this wouldn’t have kept a talent like his for long, otherwise. Many a finer hall would have been glad of someone who could entertain them this well.

The evening ended much as it always did. Most everyone else had gone to their beds and it was just the nine of us, lounging around the table in various stages of inebriation or somnolence, while Sigurd and Oddhi argued about who had made the better deals on our first trading venture into Fendrais six years ago.

Well, all right, I said. To what do I owe the honour of a visit this time?

What do you mean? Can we not visit a heart-sister when we will? That was Elke, sounding uneasy.

A visit out of love? A wee bit out of character, don’t you think - all of you at once? Not to mention eight weeks of sailing together every spring is always enough of each other most years, and it will be two moon turns and more before Hrolf expects to see any of us in Raethelingas. By rights you should all be tucked up with your families, annoying them and making them long for winter. So, what has happened to make you go sailing at harvest time?

There was a collective sort of a sigh, and Raisa had her I told you so look on her face.

Lavran said, eventually, The shrine. At Heilaegr. It’s been raided.

Raided? Who would - ?

Istara.

I just stared. There was little enough to say.

Chapter 3

One might think that, having shared so much else down the centuries, that Raeth and Istara would be, if not united, at least in general harmony. One would be wrong.

We might spring from the same lines, we might share the same gods, and we might have fought the same evil together in the misty past, but our paths had diverged long ago. In good times, we adhered to an uneasy truce. In bad times - well, Istara wasn’t a place where simple farmers could tease out a decent living. They’d always looked eastward, coveting our fields and forests.

We’d had long years of what passed for peace, since Njall’s death. Somehow, Hrolf had kept us from outright war, with diplomacy and a judicious marriage into a northern family that had connections to Istara’s stronger chieftains. The raids were less focused, less problematic, although for some of the halls and steadings within easier reach of Istri, that wasn’t quite so true.

But since that disastrous day at Fraylingsgard, the incursions had been single incidents for personal gain, not political strikes at our heart.

I’m not especially devout. I honour the All-Father, I respect the All-Mother, I give thanks for good harvests and I never skip the obligations any warrior has to Skeid of the Battles. More than that, though? Let’s just say that the gods help those who help themselves, and that I’ve always assumed they didn’t need my constant attention to be well and happy.

But Heilaegr is a holy place, there’s no denying it. I’d only visited the once, but I had felt it. And those who were drawn to life there, you could sense how that holiness had rubbed off on them, too. They glowed with that inner light, and it was obvious they had transcended this mortal world in service to the gods. It was in the very air they breathed. Even Istarans frequently stopped there, to make offerings, to ask for luck, or simply to drink in that undeniable Presence. It was something we shared, and while it lay on Raeth soil, it had always been a place of peace, common to us all.

Until now.

It was a confused tale, at best, since the news was fresh, and none of them had the whole of it.

Every one of them dead, said Sigurd. Visitors and wise ones alike. Massacred.

Butchered, said Elke. Mutilated, too.

But why? It seemed unthinkable.

Because it’s us.

Lavran had been silent, even more silent than usual, since their arrival. We’d garnered one twisted smile out of him, over an old joke about pigs’ snouts that wouldn’t have made any sense to anyone but us, and he’d roused himself enough to try tripping me up when I carried another mead-cup around, but for the most part, he’d simply watched and listened, joyless, when he noticed anything outside himself at all.

But he now sounded resolved and surprisingly strong, as if some bridge had been crossed.

What does Hrolf say? There are any number of responses a king can give to an unprovoked attack on unarmed innocents. A lot of them aren’t sane.

At this, there was an uncomfortable silence.

Raisa said finally, unwillingly, Well, you know Hrolf.

He wept, apparently, said Sigurd, coldly. He wept and then he went up to the queen’s rooms, and didn’t come down to the hall for two days. And that’s the end of it, seemingly.

Oh, but surely… I looked around. What about the Council? Surely they have some plan?

There wasn’t one called. Well, and half of them are at home, seeing to the harvest, anyway.

And then what? I felt certain that once Hrolf got over the shock, he’d have at least talked to them.

But it appeared that he had not. He had not raised the subject at all, and when some had tried, he’d hotly denied that there was any evidence to say that Istara was culpable.

Even when the trader who had been first on the scene had described to all who would listen the bloody runes defacing the shrine walls, arrogantly shouting to us that we would fall to Istara’s might, he’d shut it all out. Even when the headmen of villages along the northern islands attested to seeing Istaran ships sailing past them, first north, then, two days later, south again, he’d refused to even acknowledge the deed, let alone the obvious perpetrators.

I got up and went to the little cask of mead set on a side-bench, filled my cup to brimming, and swallowed most of it in a desperate gulp. It felt, for a moment, as if it wouldn’t stay down long, but then the full-blown warmth of it settled, and I was left with an ugly combination of rage and despair.

There would have been a lot of children there, that day. It’s customary for those who are even a little god-touched to be sent there for training and as early as possible, before their gifts can do any harm. And then, in poorer families, especially in the north, it’s considered a good way to ease the number of mouths to be fed by sending one or two offspring to serve the wise ones, if only for a season or two.

And Summer’s Turning was considered a propitious time to dedicate yourself to the service of the gods, in any capacity. Istara had chosen their moment deliberately well.

Well, mayhap Hrolf is just being cautious, I said, after a bit. We don’t know that anyone in Istri itself is involved. I mean, it could be a few malcontents on a spree - it’s not to say that Jolgeir or the jarls had anything to do with it.

It sounded stupid, even to my own ears. Three warships, if the headmen spoke true, and one with that familiar dragon banner of the royal house. It would be hard to do all that without Jolgeir and his war leaders at least hearing something about it.

And if they had heard, and didn’t move to stop it? I couldn’t think what that really meant, it seemed as if that must mean something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Whatever it was, it could not be good for Raeth.

I turned back towards the table. They were all looking at me, as watchful as cats, and with a kind of reticence, too, as if they were drawn up to a shore, but reluctant to get their feet wet in the shallows.

Well, I don’t suppose you came merely to give me bad tidings. It’s been what? Ten days now, since you had this news? Tell me the whole of it.

It seemed obvious someone had a plan. It was equally obvious that plan would be at least halfway to madness, but I couldn’t fault anyone for that. There weren’t that many choices.

Most everyone, over the last years, had sunk into a kind of apathy. Katla had been a strong leader, perhaps a little quick to anger, but willing, if time allowed, to at least hear others’ views even if they seemed contrary, and when Njall ruled in Raethelingas after her, people had understood that their courage and their counsel were valued. With Hrolf, though, one never knew.

He hadn’t been raised to be king. He hadn’t been prepared for it - his life was meant to be one of service to his brother, like all the rest of the Kyndred. Thrust suddenly into the role of a leader, he’d been grief-stricken and uncertain, at first, and hesitant to take any action that might not turn out well.

It hadn’t gotten much better over time. He got more comfortable with command - too comfortable, some said: he began to enjoy giving orders. But in times of crisis, he still preferred to wait upon events, to consider every possible angle, or even to firmly ignore a problem’s very existence, until either the situation resolved itself, or, more frequently, he was forced into some inadequate remedial action, shoring up the damage done and hoping for better days ahead.

It had infected everyone around him. His rage against anyone who took matters into their own hands was terrifying - old Jarl Haakon had been locked in a disused granary at Raethelingas for days, and nearly starved to death before his son talked Hrolf into mercy - and all because, in a perfectly justified blood-feud over an ugly, public insult, he’d gone raiding into Istara and killed someone Hrolf’s wife, Gisla, was related to.

People began to be cautious. They began to stick closer to home, to watch their speech, and to protect themselves and their own, girding themselves against these new days when they had had to give up even the hope of assistance from Raethelingas.

The horror of this attack could not go unpunished. The Kyndred were right in this, at least. If we let this one go, it seemed obvious that we would lose everything. After twenty years, it felt as though we were right back to where we’d been when this had all gone wrong - except this time, we didn’t have a strong commander and an army of battle-hardened warriors. Despite everything, we’d been damn close to handing Istara an enormous defeat back then, with every intention of chasing them back into their own scattered islands and laying enough waste to their holdings that they’d think not twice or thrice, but a dozen times over before they set a single foot on Raeth soil again.

But that had not happened, and in the long years since, we’d dwindled into frightened, hesitant folk, with less far-flung trade and fewer raiding ventures, staying closer to home and trying not to remember the hopeful past.

There was no question, though, that there needed to be some answer to this outrage, an answer in blood.

And it had to be one that Istara understood.

Chapter 4

I suppose you’re the advance guard, then? I said. Gathering the forces? Who else have we got?

Well, no one, actually, said Sigurd. I mean, what with the harvest, and all - there isn’t much time. We need to strike quickly. Besides, we can’t ask anyone else to risk it. It’s down to us, Tamar. We’re the Kyndred.

Are you mad? What are we going to do? Sail into Istri Bay and launch an assault on Jolgeir’s hall? All nine of us?

There it was, that reticence again. Oddhi had his face deep in his mug, and there was a general air of shiftiness about them all.

Out with it, I said. What kind of idiocy have you been dreaming up?

Lavran pulled out a ragged scrap of sheepskin, a sort of crude drawing someone - certainly not Lavran - had scratched out, showing the whole of Istara, some of Raeth, and the northernmost bits of Keraine and Camrhys. It didn’t look terribly accurate or reassuring, but it was likely the best he could find on short notice.

He pointed to a spot, well west of Istara’s main islands. It was just a cluster of small, indistinct dots, most of which were simply rocks jutting out into the sea, inhabited by occasional sea birds and inedible molluscs.

But there was one place where that wasn’t quite true.

If we had Heilaegr, Istara had the island of Alvandir. If we had a place that seemed to be close to touching a realm of light, Istara had found a cave under the shadows.

It had always been a place to be shunned. When we came fleeing out of the north lands, still one people escaping our shared doom, we had not understood the sea road. It had taken long years to learn it, to make ourselves its master. Yet once we had, and we’d moved out from the mainland, it took only two or three foolhardy attempts at sailing those particular waters, before we collectively decided to leave it alone.

Fogbound and inhospitable, certainly not a useful place, and then there were those ruins.

Once, a long time before we’d come south, someone had built a mighty place there. The crumbling towers and walls were still plainly to be seen, stark against the wide horizon. There were rumours that a few hardy souls had gone there, early on, but those rumours likewise suggested that no one had ever returned from such ventures. It was best not even to remember it existed at all.

And then, suddenly, when my granddad was still a lad, so the story goes, some wise ones from Istara had sailed there, and stayed. Not swallowed up into misty misadventure, this time, no. They came with supplies, and clearly with a purpose. Somehow, one could not suppose that purpose to be pleasant.

They’d rebuilt the walls. They’d added a proper landing place, heavily guarded, where, at intervals, supply ships came and unloaded unknown cargoes. And the rumours of disappearances when uninvited travelers chanced there became facts: it was known, after a time, that among other things, criminals might be sent there, and thralls, sometimes, too, and the sense of wrongness about the place grew.

But if common report was anything to go by, any lingering fears that Istarans might have had about Alvandir were mixed with awe and reverence, and a sense of peculiar pride. They’d braved an unknown, arcane danger and bent it to their will. It had very quickly acquired holiness and a reputation for producing True Seers and other powerful things, and the kings in Istri began to rely heavily on the wise ones who came from the shadowed island.

The silence was lengthening. I was simply staring at my friends, my sworn family, these wonderful, beloved, exasperating men and women, with bemused shock.

Audric said, It needs to be something that hits them where they hit us.

And how, I asked, How, exactly, do you propose to get within a sword’s length of any of them? Ever supposing we could get near the place undetected, do you think they’ll just politely let us sail right up to the front door, tie up our ship, and form up before they spit us like dogs?

No, no, that isn’t what we want to do at all.

Well, then, what?

You remember Bolle, the trader from Andvettsholm?

I had to think a bit, before it came to me. Bolle had gotten an entire winter of safe moorings and good dinners out of his tale of a freak storm on his way back from an unsuccessful attempt to open up trade with some Camrhyssi lord on the coast.

You’re taking a traveler’s tale for instruction?

Well, said Lavran, stubbornly, he swears to the truth of it, even now.

That explained some of the days between hearing the news of the attack on Heilaegr and their arrival here, at least. And it explained where Lavran had gotten that drawing.

Bolle claimed he’d been blown off-course in a sudden, unseasonable squall. Worse, the rudder strap had broken, and by the time they’d managed to effect some make-shift repairs, they had drifted a lot further from their last known position. He’d made his best guess as to where he was, given the cloudy night, but in the early dawn, he’d found himself standing less than half a league off the shadowed isle.

He had a knack for the dramatic, Bolle had. By this point in his rendition of the tale, his listeners would have been all riveted, open-mouthed in fascination. He could have told them the wildest things, and they would have believed him without question.

The quayside portion of Alvandir might be heavily watched and guarded. Bolle didn’t know, and he was honest enough to admit he had had no desire to find out. But the north-westerly shore, he said, was virtually deserted. The wise had not been