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Ruulo is a mother, and, like many mothers the world over, she often finds herself humming verse. When Kirug fusses, or refuses to settle, or simply wishes to hear her voice, she sings to him. More and more, as she settles into her new life in Baraag, she finds herself singing the verses of her homeland—that tiny nameless village in the forest north of Kagar, which she left behind willingly but will never shake from her heart.
The early spring snows settle thickly over the hall where they have been resident since the autumn, but nonetheless she knows that soon she will be leaving for the summer months to take up her work as a sailor. Her child will be without her for a long season—but she is determined that he will know that she will always return. And so when Kirug wakes in the dark of the night while the rest of the household sleeps, Ruulo sits beside his cradle, and aches with homesickness, and tells him of Sagash and the stolen winter sun.
Sing of brave Sagash, snowstorm-strider,
saviour of the ice-fields, unafraid of frost.
Sing of the north: of night neverending,
winter sun dwindling, darkness in the day.
Bone-pale is Sagash, snowy-complected,
garbed in grey furs of far-north foxes,
favoured by the gods: glory to the hunter,
stalking her game across the great snows.
The stolen winter sun sinks from the skies,
lingering long hours; lost is the light.
Winter winds whisper with worries of her people:
Sagash searches, seeking out the thief.
In far south forests, finds what she hunts for—
the stolen sun stored in the stash of a squirrel,
placed in a pinecone: prepared for the season.
Sagash steals back the sun’s receptacle,
feeds it to force-fire, frees it with warmth:
wan winter sun ascends to the skies.
Sagash sleeps soundly, sun’s warmth upon her,
weary with winning; but wakes to winter night,
what light there was is once again stolen.
Hardy the hunter who hies to the chase
to seek out sky-fire and steal it once more
from its kirug-pine cache, a second container;
she pilfers the pinecone to place on her fire:
the sun hurries home with a hint more heat.
Sagash and the squirrel struggle in the snows,
war through the winter with weary enmity.
In sunlight the squirrel steals from the sky;
in dusk the day-bringer defeats each darkness.
At dawn, fierce force-fire is fed new fuel,
fervently swallowing every sun-container,
growing ever-greater as it gains each pinecone,
until flames grow fat enough to fell frost.
With the new season, seeds for the squirrel:
the sun is made secure in the sky at last;
and at long last the hunter lays down her head.
Sing of brave Sagash, spring’s salvation,
she who feeds force-fire to frost’s defeat:
walker of the winter, winner of the sun.
Hishnak never had much of an education. She hadn’t even learned to read until Vaar taught her ten years ago, as part of the cautious initial dance of their courtship. The verses she knows are the old kind: the ones the skalds compose in their heads and stand to recite at the fireside in the depths of winter, that grandfathers memorize in childhood and teach in their old age to eager granddaughters hanging off their knees. She has a treasured mental library of verses of that type; she doesn’t know if any of them have ever been written down.
Sometimes it surprises people, hearing the kind of poetry she recites when the seas are wild and she’s standing exultant lookout on Salmon-Swift’s prow. She knows why. She’s straightforward and rakish and common to the bone, and no one expects her favourites to be the most formal style of heroic verse still practiced. She finds that terribly funny, especially coming from people who know how long she’s been in love with Vaar. And besides—she may not be much of a singer, but a voice like hers was made for declaiming.
Brunak, best of battle,
bold fighter triumphant:
dauntless dared the ocean,
defeated all foes there.
Set sails to the sunrise!
The sea provides passage:
that crew of stout comrades
carried proudly homeward.
Warriors awaited,
but weep for their ruin:
treachery of tempest
takes down the sea’s vessel.
Battle-captain Brunak
beats embracing waters
and swims to the surface,
the storm’s sole survivor.
That lord lost and lonesome
looks out over oceans
and sets himself sunward:
swims for home undaunted.
Unflagging and fearless,
he faces the tideways:
commands the great current
to carry him landward.
Powerful the pride of
that pitiless current:
the serpent strikes savage
to sink who escaped it.
Resolute he wrestles
the rage of the ocean,
subdues the sea-serpent:
strong the hand of Brunak.
Beaten by brave Brunak,
the beast bows before him;
he mounts the great monster
to make his way homeward.
The current now captured
lies calm where he placed it:
blessed is mighty Brunak,
who bested the ocean.
Vaar doesn’t sing often. It’s not because she doesn’t enjoy it: she learned to sing young, the working chants and soaring calls and strange droning songs of her homeland, and has loved since childhood the way the music resonates in her chest. It’s also not because she does it poorly: she sings a rich and vibrant alto that has always, to a one, stopped her crew in their tracks whenever she allows herself to give voice to it. But still, she finds it difficult to sing, even when her only audience is herself, for the same reason she keeps her emotions secure within a stronghold of impassive control—there is too much of herself in the notes she shapes, in the verses that move her; she would drown in an ocean of her own making.
So, when she sings, it is for solemn occasions, when only an ocean of feeling will do.
The verses that stick in her memory are not like the ones beloved of her crew. Many of them she brought from home; others she has learned from books; all of them have an edge or more of melancholy. They are not the rollicking work songs or the raucous tavern favourites she has been hearing her sailors sing for fifteen years; they are not the heroic verses Hishnak loves, or the playful, unfamiliar folk songs Ruulo has brought south. What they are, instead, is hers. And when the morning dawns clear and calm, and Salmon-Swift skims over a perfect pale sea, and her crew goes silent around her as she raises her voice in song, she knows none of them will ever forget that.
Sing of strange isles
swept over with spirits.
Uncanny and unrelenting the trials set against us;
magnificent and mighty the queen who defends us.
Emerged a great evil
on an eastern island:
a marauding monster plaguing the people;
a voracious villain draining dry the land,
so Eirak Shield-Shatterer
shouldered her burden.
Across the sea to spar with the spirit she went;
to the water to wait for the monster she went.
The queen of our kingdoms
carried her great cudgel,
alone and unafraid for the coming of her doom;
strong and selfless for the needs of her people.
From below the beast
broke with a bellow:
fighting he fell upon his foe Queen Eirak;
roaring she rose to do battle in return.
Swift was the spirit
in struggle against her;
with wicked weapons he laid her low;
with buffeting blows she battered his hide.
Eirak’s mighty magic
met the monster’s own:
his sinister sorcery stolen from the land;
her powerful protection willingly provided.
Brightly burning Eirak
bore the brutal beating:
made herself the mark of the maw of the monster;
sacrificed herself and was swallowed by the spirit,
for his wicked witchcraft
was weaker than hers:
the might of her magic tore apart the monster;
the last of our heroes thus liberates the land.
Lament for the loss
of our last true queen!
Let her wander the waterways watching over us;
let her come home when we have need of her again.