Free Icefall by Matthew J. Kirby Page A

know it wasn’t only that.
     
    “I wish I could say it gets easier,” Bera said to you. “But I have to be honest with you, child. You’ll cry on your wedding day, and you’ll
cry at the birth of your first child, and each child thereafter, because your mother won’t be there. But she’d be proud of the woman you’ve become.”
     
    Asa, you looked up at her then, tear-streaked. “You think so?”
     
    “I know it,” Bera said.
     
    Then you said, “You’ll be there, won’t you, Bera?”
     
    And Bera said, “Always.”
     
     

THE WOLF
     
    I t takes me a few weeks more to tell anyone about my dream. When I finally decide to, I go to Alric. We sit in a corner of the hall away from the others, and I whisper my fears to him. As I say it, I sound foolish even to myself, and I expect Alric to dismiss it all as a childish nightmare. But he doesn’t. He nods his head gravely and leans toward me, listening.
     
    “So who is the wolf?” he asks when I’m finished.
     
    “I don’t know.”
     
    “And how deep was the snow in your dream?”
     
    “The snow?” I ask. Why would that matter?
     
    “Yes, in your dream, how deep was the snow?”
     
    I stop to think. I remember the bodies of the berserkers lying on the ground. “Not as deep as it is now. The snow was melting.”
     
    “So it was near the end of winter. Months from now.”
     
    “I suppose it was. Why? Do you think it will come true?”
     
    Alric shrugs. “I don’t know. But it’s best to be aware, isn’t it? We have some time, at any rate, before the ground begins to thaw and we meet our doom.”
     
    He gets up and walks away, leaving me alone, counting days. Months from now seems no time at all before the coming of the wolf when the berserkers fall dead and the hall burns to the ground.
     
    Raudi comes around one of the columns and stands next to me. Then he sits on his hands and looks at the ground near my feet.
     
    “I heard what you told Alric,” he says.
     
    I don’t mind that he was listening. It’s hard to avoid overhearing things in the winter-hall.
     
    “Why would I think it’s your fault that we’re here?” he asks.
     
    “I don’t really think that, Raudi. It was just a dream.”
     
    “But I don’t feel that way, and I would never say it.” He looks up at me. “So I don’t think your dream can come true. You see?”
     
    “At least not that part of it,” I say.
     
    He nods once, as if satisfied that he has said what he meant to say, and rises to his feet.
     
    “Wait,” I say.
     
    He pauses.
     
    “If you don’t feel that way,” I say, “why have you been so angry with me?”
     
    “I’m not angry with you.”
     
    “Raudi.”
     
    He rubs his chin as though he wears a beard, like a man would do, even though his face is still smooth. “I’m just frustrated that we’re here. All of us. I’m supposed to be fighting alongside the other men. But they didn’t think I was ready.”
     
    I don’t like to think about the fighting back home, and I’m glad that Raudi is here instead of there. But I don’t tell him that. “Just because you’re here doesn’t mean you’re not ready.”
     
    “How so?”
     
    “Well, the berserkers are here. It seems my father has only sent those whom he trusts the most. That includes you.”
     
    “I guess that’s true.”
     
    I lean forward and punch him lightly on the arm.
     
    “What was that for?”
     
    “For being so cross with me this whole time.”
     
    He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and I can tell there is something he has left unsaid. “I better go help Mum.”
     
    “All right.”
     
    He walks away, and after he is gone, I turn my attention to Muninn in his cage near my bedcloset. I wish, like Odin, I could send him flying back to my father’s hall, or to the battlefield. I wish Muninn could return and tell me what he has seen.
     
    The next morning, I help dish up skyr for Harald’s day meal. Our two cows can’t keep the