Daughter of the Wind Read Online Free

head.
    â€œ Odin, hear me ,” sang Gauk in a half-whisper.
    The bear exhaled, a long, moist wind.
    And it seemed to Gauk a voice within his soul spoke, a bear’s growl.
    Pronouncing his name.

Four
    Hego heard footsteps.
    They woke him.
    He lay there awake, listening to the gentle lap-lap of water in the fjord, and the silence of his beloved village of Spjothof.
    Even the deepest water rises and falls gently, with a quiet more beautiful than perfect silence. No ship could steal along the fjord without disturbing the water, and waking the village long before the keel touched the gravel bottom. No intruder could approach along the beach without even his tiptoed progress crunching loudly in the pebbly ridges along the water. The land approach to the village was all high mountain, and no one but supernatural beings dwelled up so high, in the snowfields that never melted.
    So, Hego reasoned, he was mistaken.
    And yet.
    He heard them again. Just two footsteps, out where feet did not belong, on the high sheep meadows uphill from the village. One footstep, treading with a man’s full weight. And then another just afterward, hurried, kicking a spray of field grass. Two different men.
    Hego sat up. What would wanderers be doing so high above the village in the short summer darkness? Hego groaned as he fumbled for the water scoop. Earlier that summer he had fallen on his face, and the injury had prevented him from traveling on the newly launched Raven when the ship had voyaged for the west-land with the two other famous ships, Landwaster and Crane .
    Even now, the three ships having come home in triumph, and then voyaging forth again to purchase flocks and barley up and down the coast, Hego had not been asked to join in. The young man was treated with affection, but no one considered him the equal of experienced warriors.
    Hego drank cold water from the bucket beside his bedding, the water pleasingly flavored by the birch wood slats of the container. It was not enough. He was as thirsty as a man who had sweated three hours in a bathhouse, as thirsty as a man who had dined on an entire basket of salt cod. He climbed up from his pallet in the straw-littered corner of his cottage. His shop bench was a crowd of blades village folk had left for him to sharpen, scythes and fodder knives.
    As he rose Hego was careful not to wake up Jofridr, the serving woman who boiled his pork and whose thimble was kept busy mending his homespun.
    Jofridr’s snores stopped as he took a step, the dried rushes on the floor whispering.
    â€œRurik?” she inquired sleepily.
    â€œI’m getting a drink of well water,” said Hego gently.
    Rurik was a helmsman lost in an ice storm many long winters ago, after less than a year of marriage to Jofridr.
    Her deep, steady breathing started in again. She had served Hego’s family for many years. When Hego’s parents had died, not many winters ago, she had mourned them almost as deeply as Hego.
    The young man took his battle-ax from the corner. Head-Splitter was a weapon equal to any in the village. At least, that was its reputation. Hego had never hurt anyone with it.
    He stepped out under the night sky.
    A mare heard his step and nickered, and Hego made a comforting, horse-like sound right back at her. He made out the grunt of Inga’s flatulent breeding boar, and Old Gizzur Quickhand’s deep, ponderous snoring, even though the skilled sheepshearer lived all the way at the edge of the village. Something about the night troubled Hego. He could not keep from wishing that hale Ulf were here, and lively Lidsmod, fighters with strong arms and good cheer, who could meet any foe.
    Hego’s head throbbed. Jofridr’s ale was thick and powerful, unlike the weak stuff brewed by other housekeepers. Ale drinking was a serious undertaking in Spjothof. A strong man was expected to be able to drink deeply and tell proud stories—how many seal skins he had brought back last summer,