Sleipnir stood eighteen hands at the withers and had the arrogance to match.
Black as pitch, muscles moving under the hide with each stride in a way that made other horses look like a smaller version of what a horse was supposed to be. When I first saw him I knew the name before I thought it. Sleipnir, Odin's mount, the eight-legged horse that ran between worlds. Mine had four, but the arrogance was the same.
'Ragnar would have liked him.'
I thought about that as we rode the Kingsroad with the sun still low and the cold Northern air biting at my ears. Ragnar, Ivar, Bjorn, Thorkell. Men I had met in a previous life who had planted something in me that never left, a fascination with the myths of the Nordics, with the stories those men carried in memory as though they were personal property. My previous life already had that love. They only deepened it.
"You mentioned Odin before," said Kevin, on my left, with the voice of someone starting a conversation for lack of anything better to do. "Who is he?"
"The Allfather," I said. "King of the Aesir, god of war, wisdom, and death. Traded an eye for knowledge of all that exists. Hanged himself from the Yggdrasil for nine days to discover the secrets of the runes."
"Voluntarily?"
"Voluntarily."
Kevin went quiet for a second. "So he basically tortured himself on purpose to get smarter."
"Yes."
"And it worked?"
"He ruled the nine kingdoms."
Kevin considered that. "Fair enough then."
Perseu snorted on my right.
Sigurd, behind everyone, said nothing, but something in his posture shifted, that specific attention of someone who recognizes a name they know in a different way.
I kept talking. The Yggdrasil, the world tree, with its roots in the nine kingdoms and its branches touching the sky. The ravens Huginn and Muninn flying through the world each day and returning to whisper what they'd seen into the god's ear. Thor with Mjolnir, not the gentle hero of the softer stories, but the brutal, straightforward protector who killed giants with efficiency and pride.
"Wait," said Kevin. "Big man, kills everything in front of him, doesn't think too much?" He made a vague gesture behind him. "That's Sigurd."
Sigurd, behind them all, replied without turning."At least I kill giants. You'd kill them with fright."
Kevin ignored him solemnly."Maybe the giantesses," he said with the smile of someone who already knows he's going to regret it, "but from fright when they saw the size of my cock."
"Watch your language," said Perseu, without changing his tone. "There are ladies with us."
"The ladies with us," Kevin answered, "have watched me train for eight years and threatened my life at least three times each. I think they can handle it."
Across from him, Astrid didn't turn her head. "Four times."
Rhoslyn raised two fingers without looking up. "Five."
Kevin made the face of someone suffering a profound injustice and gestured for me to continue.
"If the giantesses don't die of fright," said Eldric, from the back of the group, in the flat voice of someone commenting on the weather, "they die of pity."
The silence lasted two seconds.
Sigurd let out a laugh that made his own horse step sideways. Perseu briefly closed his eyes with the smile of someone trying not to encourage it. Rhoslyn laughed without trying to hide it. Astrid didn't laugh, but the corner of her mouth gave her away.
Kevin stared forward in the saddle with the expression of someone who just got run over by a cart they never saw coming.
"Since when did you learn to talk?" he said finally.
Eldric didn't answer.
Loki, who was the most interesting problem in any pantheon I knew, neither hero nor villain, just someone who couldn't stop meddling with things. And the ravens Huginn and Muninn, flying through the world each day and returning to whisper what they'd seen into the god's ear.
"The ravens." Kevin turned slightly in the saddle. "Go everywhere without anyone noticing and bring information back." He paused for effect. "That's Eldric."
Eldric, who had been riding in total silence at the back of the group for hours, didn't respond.
"Eldric." Kevin waited. "Eldric, I'm comparing you to a Nordic myth. It's a compliment."
Silence.
"He already left," said Perseu, without taking his eyes off the road.
Everyone looked back. Eldric was still there, in the same place, with the same expression as always, which was essentially none.
"Unsettling," Kevin murmured.
The clearing appeared in the late afternoon, open and green at the edge of a lake that reflected the grey Northern sky. Clean water, firm ground, enough trees to provide cover. I stopped Sleipnir.
"Here," I said.
No one questioned it.
The tents went up with the efficiency of people who had spent years learning to do it fast. Razdhan, Belzakar, and Morghaz set up the camp with Unsullied methodology, everything in the right place, no unnecessary words. The six tended to their own horses, their own belongings, and soon the fire was burning in the center.
Sigurd lasted less than ten minutes sitting down.
"Sparring."
Morghaz looked at him with the stone calm of the ex-Unsullied.
"That wasn't a question," said Sigurd.
Morghaz sighed through his nose, stood, and the two of them went to the open space near the trees. The noise that followed was enough to know it was a good fight.
Eldric appeared at my side so quietly I almost didn't hear him.
"I need to go to the Dreadfort."
I looked at him.
"The shadows told me something strange." The brown eyes had that expression I had learned to take seriously. "I want to go and confirm it."
"We're heading to Last Hearth. You can ride with us until the halfway point."
He nodded. "I'll scout the surroundings before I sleep."
And he disappeared before I could answer, which was Eldric's natural way of ending a conversation.
Rhoslyn sat beside me with a notebook and that brightness in her green eyes I had learned to recognize.
"I have a proposal."
"Go ahead."
"With what we've gathered so far," she said, opening the notebook to a page full of numbers that only she could read at that speed, "I can quadruple the value in under a year."
"How."
"King's Landing." She turned the notebook toward me. "The merchants there operate with high margins and poor information. I have both the other way around. With the right capital and the right contacts, I can double it before winter and double it again in the spring." She turned the page. "And because it's the capital, I can expand the business to Essos much more easily. Now that your father's ships are being built, maritime trade becomes genuinely viable." She closed the notebook. "Eldric also told me he wants to start expanding the network to Essos. It makes sense for us to go together."
"Fine." I paused. "But both of you need to be careful with Varys's little birds. I know Eldric has dealt with them before and knows what he's doing, but you can never be too careful in King's Landing."
Rhoslyn nodded without looking surprised, which was her way of saying she had already thought about it too.
I looked at the numbers. They made sense the way Rhoslyn's numbers always made sense, which was completely.
I got up, went to Razdhan and told him he'd be going with Rhoslyn to King's Landing. He nodded. I gripped his forearm and he returned it.
I went back to Rhoslyn. She was already on her feet with the notebook closed under her arm.
"Talk to my father," I said. "Tell him how much you need. He'll send it." A pause. "And Razdhan goes with you."
She went quiet for a second, which for Rhoslyn was the equivalent of a considerable emotional display. Then she hugged me quickly and went to finish setting up her tent before either of us could make it more than it was.
Astrid was on a fallen log with her sword in her lap, the whetstone making that steady rhythmic sound that suited the end of the afternoon. I walked over and sat beside her.
"How are you?"
She drew the stone once more before answering. "Happy."
She said it the way she said everything, without decoration, but it was true, I could see it. I had learned over the years that Astrid was one of the few people I knew who was genuinely happy when she was moving, when there was new ground, when there was the possibility of a fight. The orphanage, the stillness, the routine without purpose, those things suffocated her. This didn't.
We talked for a while about nothing in particular, which was the kind of conversation Astrid tolerated best, and when the silence returned it was the comfortable kind.
Further along, Perseu had sat down with the pieces of his armor spread out in front of him and was polishing each one with the attention he gave to everything. Methodical, quiet, in his own world.
Sigurd came back from the sparring with Morghaz with his hair disheveled and a smile that said it had been a good fight. He grabbed his mead skin, sat near the fire, and stared into the flames with the specific satisfaction of someone who had just spent energy the right way.
I was taking all of that in when I noticed Kevin was no longer in the camp.
He came back an hour later dragging a boar across the ground with the expression of someone who felt the entrance deserved an audience.
"Everyone." Kevin raised his free hand in a broad gesture. "Dinner has arrived."
Sigurd heard the word dinner and got up from the log with the readiness of someone who had not been sleeping at all. He walked over to Kevin, looked at the boar, then grabbed the animal by the back with one hand and lifted it like it was a chicken.
"Leave it to me."
Kevin stood looking at his own empty hand for a second. "I hunted that boar for an hour."
"And I'll have it ready in twenty minutes." Sigurd was already walking toward the clear space near the trees. "You did the easy part."
"The easy part," Kevin repeated, to no one in particular, in the voice of someone documenting a historical injustice.
"Thanks, Big Man," Kevin called after him.
Sigurd laughed without turning, the kind of laugh that came from the chest, and didn't answer.
On the other side of the camp, Astrid and Rhoslyn were sitting near the fire. Rhoslyn had let down her own hair and was working on Astrid's braids with the concentration of someone doing something they enjoy, and Astrid was letting her, which for Astrid was a considerable display of trust.
The lake reflected the firelight when the last of the daylight went.
Then Eldric emerged from the tree line without making any sound, and everyone jumped, because everyone always jumped, without exception, no matter how many times he did it.
"Stop," said Kevin, hand on his chest. "One day I'm going to tie a bell around your neck."
Eldric sat near the fire without answering, which was the answer.
A little later Sigurd came back with the meat on a spit, set it over the fire with the practical efficiency of someone who had learned to do that alone since childhood, and the smell started filling the camp.
Kevin watched for a moment with his arms crossed.
"Who would have thought," he said, slowly, as though arriving at an important philosophical conclusion. "The biggest brute I've ever laid eyes on has a talent for cooking."
Sigurd turned the spit once, looked at Kevin with that calm expression.
"And you have a talent for getting hit," said Sigurd, with the same lightness. "But I don't go around mentioning it."
The silence that followed lasted exactly as long as Kevin needed to process it.
"Fair," he said at last.
Perseu lifted his eyes from the armor pieces just long enough to smile, then went back to polishing.
The fire crackled. The boar smelled good. The lake was quiet out there.
Rhoslyn stood up, went to her horse, and came back with a lute under her arm. She walked over to me and held it out.
"Sing us one of your songs."
I took the instrument.
Over these years I had discovered something I hadn't expected from myself. In the Elysian Fields of my previous life I had learned to play, studied with effort and discipline, with all the seriousness I put into everything. But the voice had never been the strong point. It wasn't bad. It was worked, technically correct, but it wasn't natural.
In this life it was different.
I couldn't explain it. It was as though the body I had been born into had kept something the previous one never had. A deep, melodious voice that resonated in a way I still sometimes found strange when I heard the echo of it.
I began to pluck the lute.
Oh, misty eye of the mountain below
Keep careful watch of my brothers' souls
And should the sky be filled with fire and smoke
Keep watching over Durin's sons
If this is to end in fire
Then we should all burn together
Watch the flames climb high
Into the night
Calling out father, oh
Stand by and we will
Watch the flames burn auburn on
The mountain side
And if we should die tonight
We should all die together
Raise a glass of wine
For the last time
Calling out father, oh
Prepare as we will
Watch the flames burn auburn on
The mountain side
Desolation comes upon the sky
Now I see fire
Inside the mountain, I see fire
Burning the trees, and I see fire
Hollowing souls, I see fire
Blood in the breeze
And I hope that you remember me
.....