no man outlasts the evening - Echofarandfaint (2024)

It is winter when the seið-kona comes.

There’s ice on the fields and nothing to eat but turnips. The sheep wear thick cottony coats and the ravens circle overhead in endless spirals. A constant mist hangs over the Danelaw, and the thralls throw extra furs on Lord Kylo’s bed.

Vetr is a dead season in Albion. Even after almost twenty years, Kylo still thinks of it as a land of fishermen and marshes. There is a heaviness in the sky that could make a man long for the fjords and frozen mountain tops of a half-forgotten home. It seems like nothing can break the monotony of the dark gray days.

Until a ship appears on the horizon.

They are Danes, not Saxons, Kylo’s scouts inform him when they arrive, sweating from the ride down the coastline. There is a dragon’s head at the bow and stern of the ship, they say, and she cuts through the water like a blade.

Whether they are friends or raiders, Kylo doesn’t know. King Snoke is dead and until his funeral rites are over the kingdom will know no peace.

The arrival of a ship is an omen, but not one he can read.

Kylo’s scouts ride ahead of the strange Danes’ landing party and report there are no Jarls among them, just a woman guarded by warriors.

Her hair is long and loose, they tell him, and there are tattoos on her face, dark blue runes etched into her pale skin. The men treat her with respect, the scouts tell Kylo. Or perhaps fear.

There are hardly any women in Kylo’s court. King Snoke had never married, and discouraged his warriors from it. There are thralls of course, and whores, but no noblewomen. And certainly no witches.

(Snoke had once told Kylo that the old Welsh king Hywel kept a virgin seer at his right-hand side and claimed she foretold the fate of the kingdom. “If she saw his death coming,” Snoke had laughed, “she didn’t warn him.”)

For his part, Snoke kept just enough of the old rituals to pacify the Danes that lived in his small kingdom, but embraced enough Christianity to assuage the Saxon king in the South.

Kylo served in the Great Heathen Army that had captured East Anglia for Snoke. The warriors leapt from their longboats as Vikings, but learned from the men in brown robes that they killed that they were “pagans.” Kylo had never heard the word before landing in England.

He and his men were proud to be pagans in those days, if it meant slitting the throats of cowards who wouldn’t even fight to protect their gold.

But the eventual terms of peace between Snoke and the Saxon King Alfred were clear. Convert, and keep the land they’d captured or spend the rest of their days at war. Snoke, who wanted power more than glory, agreed.

One by one, each of his warriors let the shivering priests submerge them in a wooden vat of freezing water in the courtyard of the castle. Kylo went under the water a pagan and came out a Christian. In return for this sacrifice, he became Snoke’s second-in-line. Close as a son. The priests remained, huddled in their stone chapel.

We are Christians now, Snoke told his warriors. Forget your heathenry. There is no place for it here.

Kylo and his men sat through mass with the same hardened courage that had once taken them to war. But over the years, their resistance softened. They were warriors no longer. Now they were Jarls, men responsible for swathes of land and the people on it.

Kylo was more likely to find himself adjudicating a dispute between sheepherders over stone boundary walls than wielding a greatsword or standing in a shield wall. He can barely remember the sensation of the blood fever descending on him as he cut down man after man. Once it had seemed the most important thing in the world.

Now his hair is graying and he worries over tithes and wergilds. And how best to send Snoke to the other world without offending the priests or inciting a power struggle for his throne.

And out of nowhere, there is a strange ship, and with it a strange woman whose face is etched over with words Kylo is no longer sure he can read.

Fires are lit on the ramparts and in the hall. Kylo gathers his hird around him. Jarls and priests and his guards, hardened men who once fought at his side, and now are grown round and complacent with peace.

“They are at the gates, Lord. She asks to speak with you.”

“Let them in.”

The witch is smaller than he’d expected, escorted by men twice her size. She is dressed in the leather and furs of a warrior, a dark green wool cloak fastened at her chest with two engraved bronze clasps. Her brown hair falls long and loose, uncovered and unbraided. Blue lines are etched into the space between her eyes and on her chin, symbols Kylo does not recognize.

It’s been a long time since he’s seen a seið-kona like this. It was years ago, when he was still a child, before he left the old country. A group of women, in the center of the camp, eyes wild in the firelight as they chanted and beat drums until the trance fell on them and they walked in the other world.

Theirs is a magic that has no place here.

She approaches his wooden throne with long steps, stopping a few feet in front of him and inclining her head. She does not kneel or bow or supplicate herself. He wonders if she knows she is expected to. Or if she would, even if she did.

In the corner of his eyes, Kylo sees the way it makes his men shift uncomfortably. The priests look one to the other with wide eyes.

“What is your business in East Anglia, stranger?” His voice sounds strong and unafraid. It pleases him. He may not yet be king, but still, he sits on Snoke’s throne and is so far unchallenged.

“You are Kylo Ren?” She does not speak in English, but in his mother tongue. The sound of it cuts through the air in the dark hall like a spear.

“You will address me in English.”

“Kylo Ren,” she says, her accented voice switching to the flat vowels of the Saxon language. “I was sent here with a message for you.”

“From who?’

Her eyes glitter in the gloom. There’s a faint curve in her cloak where he thinks her hand rests on a weapon at her belt.

“Kylo Ren. If you stay in this land you will die.”

To his left, Ushar stirs irritably.

“All men die,” Kylo says, too quickly.

“You will die before your time. Before you have completed the work you were made for. Before glory.”

“I have plenty of —”

“If you die in this land you will have no place in Valhalla.” Her tone has the finality of prophecy.

“What are you saying, witch?” Trudgen’s deep voice splits the silence. “Have you no honor?

“This land has no honor,” she tells the old warrior. Then her accusing eyes come back to Kylo. “You have lost the old ways. Threads have been spun for you but here you cannot follow them.”

“You speak of the Norns,” Kylo says. The word has not passed his lips for years. He has not thought of the three women who sit at the foot of the ash tree Yggdrasill and spin the fate of all men. Instead, he has grown weary listening to tales of Jesus Christ and his apostles. “You cannot know their will.”

“I can.”

“This is heresy, Lord.” It’s the bald priest’s wavering note now, from his place in the shadows along the wall.

“Nonsense,” the witch spits back. “Even you Saxons know of fate. Don’t you say it yourselves? “ Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel "?

Fate goes ever as it shall.

“Paganry!” The priest’s face is red and his finger is raised and pointing.

“No man can know the Norns' plans,” Ushar mutters darkly.

“And I am no man.”

When the witch smiles there is a warning to it.

“Enough,” Kylo says. “Tomorrow we honor the king. I will hear your message after that.”

She only nods as though this is exactly what she expected.

Kylo buries his irritation. The witch is a distraction he cannot afford.

As a young man, Kylo wore a heavy pendant of Thor’s hammer on a piece of cord around his neck. As he undresses for bed that evening in the candlelight, he feels its absence against his skin, a strange hollow where the weight of the metal used to lie.

His right hip aches more these days, as though it feels the lack of a sheathed sword.

Sometimes he dreams he is in the camp the night before a battle. But the battle never comes.

You have lost the old ways.

The witch takes her place in the crowd at the funeral outside the walls of the fortress.

Kylo doesn't know why he is surprised to see her there. The Danes gather to bid their King farewell and no one is turned away. Only the priests keep their distance, watching from high on the ramparts as though it will keep them clean.

The seið-kon looks on impassively as the rites begin.

In life, Snoke surrounded himself with the trappings of the dead son of the lone God. But in death, he’d made his wishes clear. He would go to his grave as his forefathers had, before they’d ever heard of the Holy Trinity.

The witch will see now that he has not lost every old way, Kylo thinks. He remembers at least this much.

The first person brought out is a girl, flanked by two older women. She is drunk and stumbling, and they hold her up with arms strong from work.

Kylo does not know the girl’s name, only that she was one of Snoke’s thralls. Pretty, red-haired and so, so young. She offered herself up for the ritual when the news of his death spread.

Snoke’s body laid in the ground for ten days as the funeral boat was built and garments sewn for his body. Now, the thralls open his grave and uncover his corpse, skin already black from the cold. He is stripped and redressed in funeral finery, while the redhead wails and sobs. Then he is carried into the waiting wooden ship that will never feel the sea. His body laid on a soft bed, surrounded by food and weapons.

One by one the sacrifices are made.

Kuruk slaughters a dog and tosses the carcass into the ship. Ap’lek and Ushar ride two fine horses across the fields until they’re glistening with sweat and then Trudgen and Vicrul slit the creatures’ throats. The blood turns the dirt to mud. The animals join Snoke’s corpse aboard the ship. Next two cows. Then a hen and cock. The air fills with the smell of entrails.

Cardo and Vicrul each take one of the redhead’s slender arms. They drag her over to the door frame of the wooden ship. Kylo steels himself. The crowd around him weeps and moans.

“'Behold, I see my father and mother!” she shouts. The crowd of mourners wails. The two men lift her again. “I see all my dead relatives seated!”

Kylo reminds himself it is an honor for this girl to play a role in a King’s funeral. If it was not her, it would be someone else. At least she is willing. At least he didn’t have to choose one.

They lift her a third time.

“I see my master seated in Paradise and Paradise is beautiful and green. He calls me. Take me to him!”

The crowd around Kylo erupts in a frenzy. The noise is deafening. When he glances across to the witch, her eyes are on him and her lips are unmoving.

An old woman moves through the crowd, head covered in a dark shawl. They part for her, whispering: The Angel of Death is com e. She approaches the redhead, still held firm between Cardo and Vicrul. The old woman nods. There is a wild look in the girl’s eyes.

Kylo’s other men step forward. Trudgen, Ushar and Ap’lek follow Cardo and Vicrul onto the ship. The drums are beating.

Kylo knows what will happen inside the ship but he is glad he cannot see it. The men will lay the girl on the bed next to Snoke. The old woman will put a thick cord around her neck and hold her hands above her head. The men will take her, one by one. The drums will cover her screams. When they are all finished they will pull the cord tight. If that is not enough, the old woman has a knife, ready to plunge into the girl’s chest. The men will emerge. The ship will be set aflame.

An hour from now, Kylo reminds himself, there will be nothing left of Snoke or the girl or the ship, but cinders and ash.

You have lost the old ways.

There is a rustle at Kylo’s side. The witch is next to him, appearing as if from nowhere. For a moment he imagines he can smell wild thyme. This close, her eyes are green.

“What did you think?” He isn’t sure why he asks. He does not need her approval. In a few hours, he will be crowned.

“I would rather bed a king and live,” she says.

Snoke’s crown is made of gold, melted down and reshaped from the riches Kylo and his men seized from the vaults of the monastery on Lindisfarne. As the priest places it on his head, Kylo remembers the screams, the feel of his sword hitting bone, the sick tang of blood and iron on his tongue.

Threads have been spun for you but here you cannot follow them.

“Where is the witch?”

Ushar kneels at the feet of his new King. “She will not sleep within, lord.”

“Where is she?”

“Camped outside the walls, at the edge of the forest.”

“What does she do?”

“The men cannot say, Lord.” Ushar pauses. Swallows. “Witchcraft.”

“Meaning what?”

“She collects plants. Builds fires. Chants and sings. But even the Danes do not understand her.”

You have lost the old ways .

“I will go,” Kylo says at last.

“Lord?”

“Enough. I will go.”

Ushar reaches for the hilt of his sword, begins to rise.

“No,” Kylo says. “I will go alone.”

When did he last leave the fortress? Perhaps in the spring to meet the Lord of Mercia and discuss trade terms? Or was it the year before?

Kylo has been a ghost in these halls. His men attend him as he attended Snoke. They conquer nothing, raid nothing, earn no rings of gold for their arms. (All his arm rings are packed away in a chest at the end of his bed. He no longer needs to prove his wealth or prowess.)

The air is thin and cold. Smoke rises from the squat dwellings outside the ramparts. There’s a smell of meat cooking. The high-pitched wail of a baby crying. He turns his horse away from it, towards the forest.

A small cluster of round tents, animal skins stretched over scavenged branches.

The witch’s camp.

Her men do not speak, just regard Kylo warily as he trots his horse towards them. None of them have said a word since they arrived. He assumed they spoke no English. Now he wonders if they have no tongues.

A sparse rain is falling. The flap of the furthest tent lifts, and her face appears, like a pale moon from the shadow.

Kylo dismounts. He is armed this time, sword at his hip, leather tunic and wolf-skin cloak. His hair is braided in the style of his youth. The way his mother taught him. The old way.

She stands at the tent’s entrance as he approaches. Without her cloak he sees her simple woven dress, and the belt and dagger at her waist. Her men do not move to protect her. Perhaps they do not need to.

“Welcome, King.”

“This is my land.”

He dislikes his own petulance. It does not befit a King. But there is something disquieting about the witch. She looks at him like he is a child.

“Come inside.”

Kylo gives orders. He does not receive them. And yet he bows his head and enters.

Inside, the air is thick. A fire burns in the center of the small space, casting long shadows on the walls. In the center of the flames are large stones. A small flap in the roof releases the smoke but leaves the heat.

“What is this?” He cannot stand it. He will choke.

“A ritual,” she says. “I sat through yours. Now you will sit through mine.”

“That ritual was one of yours. From the past.”

She laughs, clear as a bell. “No, it wasn’t.”

Kylo pulls at the claps of his cloak until it releases. “Snoke ordered it that way.”

“An old man’s memory of how a warrior should be honored. Snoke forgot more than he ever knew.”

Kylo rolls his sleeves up one by one. The heat is intolerable. His tongue is stuck to the inside of one of his cheeks. He needs water.

The witch clicks her tongue. “What kind of man kills a woman to reach Valhalla?”

Kylo stills. The witch crouches in the gloom. She tosses a bunch of herbs into the fire and it rears up suddenly and then dies again. The stones glow.

“Who are you?”

“A seið-kona.”

It’s only when she says the word that Kylo realizes they haven’t been speaking in English. Not since he arrived.

He tries again. “What’s your name?”

(Witch, seer, sorceress. The priests wanted to burn her, Kylo had seen their fingers itching.)

She doesn’t answer.

“You know mine,” he begins, “it's only fair…”

“I know much about you,” she says, voice low. “I have seen your thread among the weavings. The ends are split. They must be brought together.”

“I don’t understand your ravings, witch.”

She laughs again. The burning herbs are pungent and heady. Kylo’s vision swims. The ache in his hip is worse here, sitting cross legged on the hard ground. His sword belt lies beside him, but he doesn’t recall removing it.

“No,” she says. “You don’t understand. But you will.”

Kylo’s brow is wet with sweat. It trickles between his shoulder blades and the front of his linen shirt is already damp and ruined.

“It’s hot,” he whines.

“So take off your clothes.”

Sweat pebbles on his skin. Beneath his finery, Kylo's pale skin is a mess of scars. Bones broken and knitted back together. The silvery marks where arrows, swords and knives have all carved pieces out of his flesh. He is not young, but he is still strong. He sees her see it as he strips his shirt away.

The witch’s fingers are at the throat of her own loose gown, slipping beneath hidden folds to undo secret knots. Beneath it, she is naked, freckled, covered in lines of blue ink. Her body is a map or a story, but he can only make out a rune or two among the scrawlings. He cannot read her.

“What is this?” He reaches for the fastenings in his trousers, but stops himself.

“Dirt is a kind of grief,” she says. “Sweat is the cure.”

“Grief? For Snoke?”

“For the man you were. And the man you could be.”

She is closer now and he smells thyme again and wonders if it’s her hair or her breath.

He has had enough of her prophecies.

Kylo reaches out in the gloom for her arm, closes his finger over soft skin. “Tell me what you came to tell me.”

He does not need to pull her to him because she is already there, her hot breath at his ear. “Leave this place with me, and live. Or stay here and die.”

“This is my kingdom.”

“A kingdom of bones and ash. A funeral pyre.”

He smelt it on the wind the whole ride here. Charred flesh and smoking wood. It will be in his clothes for days.

“I put a sword in Snoke’s hand as he laid on his deathbed,” Kylo admits finally.

“The gods cannot be fooled. That is no warrior’s death.”

Kylo’s own sword arm has grown weak. He felt it as he strapped his belt on this afternoon and swung the greatsword back and forth before he came to her.

“He spent too much time with the dead god,” she continues. “Our gods are alive, Kylo.” She slides a burning hand across his bare chest. “Where is your hammer? Have you forgotten everything?”

“My mother gave it to me.” His voice shakes. His body weeps everywhere but from his eyes. “I don’t know where it went.”

“You will need it where we are going.”

Her hand inches down his chest, towards the very thing he does not want her to find. The place he’s hard and aching.

“Ah.” Her voice is whispersoft and he closes his eyes to hide from it. “This part of you remembers, then.”

He looks up at her. “Is this the ritual?”

Her smile is all teeth.

“No. This is because I want it.”

Her body is slippery in his hands as Kylo hoists her into his lap. Her legs grip him like a saddle. The heat chokes his mind. He wants nothing but to be inside her, to lose himself entirely. He tells himself he doesn’t want her dreams, or her prophecies, he only wants her cunt. Once he’s had it, all this will be over. He’ll go back and sleep in his bed, under his furs. And maybe he’ll even fuck another woman later, just to prove he can. Just to prove she has not bewitched him with her sharp tongue and her promises.

Her little cunt splits open for him like a jewel box. Liquid gold. Tight as a new arm band. She makes noises the Saxon girls couldn't dream of. Snaps at him like a wolf, sharp at his throat. Her mouth, when he finally captures it, feels dangerous. He runs his tongue along the ridge of her teeth anyway. She rides him at a gallop. There are no reins. He wants her on the ground beneath him on her stomach. He wants her begging, but instead he is.

“Slower, please. Not so fast, I’m —“

“Doesn’t even remember how to fuck,” she taunts him. “I’ll teach you.”

Kylo tries to pull out before he comes. He always does it that way. He has no interest in dark haired bastards in the camp, running under his feet, making plays for his throne. She feels it and digs her heels in harder.

“No. It’s mine.”

The word undoes him. He wants to be hers. She tastes like the wild freedom of the battlefield where the only choice was whether to live or die. He has been so lost, he realizes, as he spills inside her, as deep as he can. This is a return. Maybe inside her, he will find himself again.

“Where exactly do you want me to go?”

They lie on the floor, spent and sated, as the fire dies.

“I’ve seen your path. It goes west.”

“West? To Írland? To Ísland?”

“Further. Across the wild sea. To places our people have never been.”

“And how will we get there, seið-kona?”

“On my ship. With my men. With the help of the gods and the threads they have woven.”

She is not joking. Not in the slightest. He sees in her fierceness for the first time that she is young. Not much older than the redhead burned in Snoke’s ship.

“If I don’t go?”

He knows the answer. Warm beds and good food. Tithes and vassals and thralls to clean his boots. All his gold rotting, hidden beneath the stone floors.

“I’ll sail alone. And we will not meet again. Not even in Valhalla. Not even at the end of the world.”

It’s so simple, really. Almost as if there is no choice at all.

Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel , as the Saxons say. Fate goes ever as it must.

Kylo learned their language well enough to know that in Albion wyrd , fate, is female.

In his old tongue the word is… Urðr.

It comes back to him in that moment. Urðr is also the name of one of three Norns that sit below the world tree. As he remembers, it’s as though can hear his mother singing.

Fate in the form of a girl.

He has heard enough of heaven. The truth is, if he is not in Odin’s hall, another man will sit beside her. She will stand in the shield wall at the world’s end beside other great fighters and bare her teeth to the great wolf Fenrir. And her story cannot go that way.

“I remember,” he stammers, pain rushing into the space in his chest. “I remember everything.”

He reaches out a hand in the darkness and it meets hers. Their fingers lock.

A two stranded thread, woven together.