Daughter of the Wind by Michael Cadnum Page A

anyone, if she had the opportunity. A single guard was posted near them, leaning on his spear.
    When Hallgerd left the ship, more than one Danish seaman wished her well, a show of courtesy that touched her.
    She felt little irony in replying that she hoped Njord, the god of ships and sailing folk, would strengthen every oar.
    â€œYou’ll find us good folk,” said Thrand, “if you are patient with us.”
    How strange the wharf felt under her feet! The hairy timbers were unmoving, and Hallgerd felt her legs search unsteadily, surprised at finding firm ground beneath them. Land drunk , some seamen called these first dizzying paces onto solid earth, but Hallgerd was careful to show no awkwardness.
    As she steadied herself, a bearded, bear pelt—clad swordsman strode along the dock. This broad-chested townsman greeted Thrand and Olaf by name, and offered the seamen the goatskin he carried at his side. Hallgerd recognized a berserker’s clothing, and observed him with interest and anxiety.
    â€œAlrek,” said Olaf, “I’m always glad to taste some of your mead.”
    Olaf wiped his lips with the back of his hand and offered the skin to Hallgerd, who declined courteously. “This mead is made from thyme honey,” said Olaf. “Rare and sweet.”
    Hallgerd was ready to decline again, but she realized that noble manners required her to taste this offering. Not all honey is the same, she knew. The bees busy in the mountain bred a honey much more delicious than the domed hives set along a barley field. Alrek’s mead was indeed flavorful—and strong. A few cups of this and even a berserker would be immobile.
    To her surprise, Alrek the berserker bowed as she returned the goatskin to his broad, suntanned hand. It seemed that a Danish Odin initiate was expected to be as well mannered as his neighbors.
    â€œYou’ve killed men by the hundreds,” Olaf prompted cheerfully, “haven’t you, Alrek?”
    Alrek shrugged, either overly modest or recalculating his victories. Berserkers were famously spare with words. “By the many hundreds,” said Alrek at last.
    â€œI don’t trust berserkers,” Hallgerd confessed as Olaf and Thrand led her into the crooked lanes of the town.
    Thrand said, “You are wise.”
    Spjotfolk expressed a degree of pity for town dwellers, tramping muddy streets, crowded around wellheads, and preferred the roomy, randomly situated longhouses of their own village. This Danish community had narrow, straw-strewn streets, massed with humanity and animals, and it smelled very much like a crowded habitation, ripe with manure and spoiled food. Goats bleated, pigs nosed a scattering of bright grain on the wet earth, and Hallgerd had an impression of buildings still freshly hewn, lumber bleeding sap and giving off the scent of just-cut forest.
    Curious eyes followed Hallgerd, but she did not have far to go through the thronged lanes of leather-aproned craftsmen, all of them finding an excuse to step into their doorways as she passed. She carried herself with as much quiet dignity as she could. The smell of malt was in the air, and the tink-tink-tink of a tinsmith’s hammer. The townsfolk wore vadmal —brown homespun wool—just like the men and women of Spjothof, although Hallgerd reckoned that the quality was trade-worthy and far from cheap. She tried to read her fate in the alert faces she passed, but she could see only recognition.
    And something else. Respect, perhaps. Or even envy. The townsfolk knew who she was, and why she was here.
    She herself knew nothing.
    Accompanied by Thrand and a few seamen from the ship, she found herself treated as an honored guest, the phalanx of armed men like body servants, pointing out the puddles of pig manure in the street so she could avoid them. A woman dressed in the drab, shapeless tunic of a slave ground grain in a stone quern, and other slaves swept thresholds and emptied slops