Heroes of the Valley

by Jonathan Stroud

  His father would sit the infant Halli on his lap at meal times and study him fondly, while chubby fingers explored the wiry bristle-comb of his beard and tugged it till the tears came. 'The boy is strong, Astrid,' he gasped. 'And mettlesome. Did Eyjolf tell you he caught him toddling in the stables? Right between Hrafn's hooves he went, and began to tweak his tail!'

  'And where was Katla while our child risked death? Oh, I shall pull her silly hair for negligence.'

  'Do not chide her. She is growing short of breath and is easily bewildered. Gudny can help guard her brother – eh, Gudny?' He ruffled his daughter's hair, making her flinch and scowl up from her needlework.

  'Not me. He went prying in my room and ate my cloudberries. Get Leif to do it.'

  But Leif was out in the moat meadow, throwing stones at birds.

  In those early years the demands of hall and House kept Astrid and Arnkel from active involvement with Halli's daily welfare. Instead it fell to Katla, his ancient, white-haired, bark-skinned crone of a nurse to tend to his needs, just as she had tended Leif and Gudny's, and before them their father's also. Katla was stiff and bent as a gallows, a shuffling hedge-witch whose appearance sent the girls of Svein's House squealing to their doors. But her almond eyes were bright and her knowledge gushed unceasingly. Halli loved her without restraint.

  In the mornings she brought the warm tub to Halli's room by candlelight and, after washing him, wrestled him into his tunic and leggings, combed his hair and led him to the hall for breakfast. Then she sat nearby, head nodding in the sunlight, while he played with wood shards on the rushes of the floor. Most days she dozed; most days Halli would promptly lever himself up and totter off to explore the private rooms behind the hall, or venture out into the yard, where the echo of Grim's anvil mingled with the whirring of the weavers' looms, and he could watch the men working far off on the hill. From Svein's House it was possible to see the ridges on both sides of the valley, and the little dark uneven stubs that ran continuously along the tops. They reminded Halli of Katla's teeth. Behind the cairns, hazy with distance even on a clear day, were the mountains, white-crested, flanks dropping precipitously out of view.

  Often Halli lost himself down the lanes and side alleys of the House, strolling happily with the dogs among the workshops, cottages, sties and stables until hunger drove him back at last to Katla's anxious embrace. In the evening they ate apart from his family in the kitchen of the hall, a comfortable place full of hot, savoursome vapours, broad benches and pitted tables, with the glow of the fire reflecting in a hundred hanging pots and dishes.

  There Katla would talk and Halli would listen.

  'Without question,' she would say, 'your features come from your father's side. You are the image of his uncle Onund, who farmed High Crag when I was a girl.'

  This was an unknowable gulf of time. Some people claimed Katla was more than sixty years old.

  'Uncle Onund . . .' Halli repeated. 'Was he very handsome, Katla?'

  'He was the ugliest of men, and had a difficult temperament to boot. By day he was amenable enough, and indeed something of a weakling, as you yourself may be. But after dark he gained greatly in strength, and was liable to ferocious rages in which he tossed men through windows and snapped benches in his hall.'

  This awoke Halli's interest. 'Where did this magical strength come from?'

  'Most probably drink. In the end an aggrieved tenant smothered him in his sleep, and it is a measure of the dislike with which Onund was held that the Council merely fined his killer six sheep and a hen. Indeed, the fellow ended by marrying the widow.'

  'I do not think I am like my great-uncle Onund, Katla.'

  'Well, you certainly do not have his height. Ah! See how your face corrugates sensually when you frown! You are Onund to the life. It is clear enough to look at you that you are prone to evil just as he was. You must guard against his darker impulses. But in the meantime you must eat those sprouts.'

  It did not take Halli long to discover that, Onund possibly excepted, his lineage was a matter of importance to everyone at Svein's House. This was welcome to a degree, since every door was open to him: he could wander at will past the sour-smelling vats of Unn the tanner and lie beneath the drying racks, looking up at the skins flapping against the sky; he could stand in the hot blackness of Grim's forge. watching the sparks dance like demons beneath the crashing hammer; he could sit with the women washing clothes in the stream below the walls and listen to their talk of lawsuits, marriages and other Houses far away down-valley by the sea. There were some fifty persons at the farm; by the age of four Halli knew the names of all, together with most of their secrets and peculiarities. This valuable information came more readily to him than to the other children of the House.

  On the other hand his status resulted in much unwanted attention. As Arnkel's second son, his life was valuable: should Leif succumb to creep or marsh fever, Halli would be heir. It meant that he was frequently prevented from carrying out important activities at the most inconvenient moment. Vigilant bystanders plucked him from the Trow wall as he began to navigate its teetering brink; they stopped him sailing the goose pond on an upturned trough with a pitchfork for an oar; most often they pulled him away from older, bigger boys just as they came to blows.

  In such cases he was brought before his mother, where she sat sewing and reciting genealogies with Gudny in the hall.

  'Why this time, Halli?'

  'Brusi insulted me, Mother. I wished to fight him.'

  A sigh. 'How precisely did he insult you?'

  'I do not wish to say. It doesn't bear repeating.'

  'Halli . . .' This was spoken in a deeper, more dangerous voice.

  'If you must know, he called me a fat-thighed marsh imp; I overheard him as he spoke with Ingirid! Why are you laughing, Gudny?'

  'It's just that Brusi's description is so delightfully apt, little Halli. It amuses me.'

  'Halli,' his mother said patiently, 'Brusi is twice your age and size. Admittedly his wit is wearisome, but still, you must ignore it. Why? Because if you fight, he'd hammer you into the ground like a short, squat tent peg, which would not be appropriate for a son of Svein.'

  'But how else am I to protect my honour, Mother? Or of those close to me? What about when Brusi calls Gudny a thin-lipped, preening little sow? Must I sit back and ignore this matter too?'

  Gudny emitted an incoherent noise and put down her stitching. 'Brusi said that?'

  'Not yet. But it is surely only a matter of time.'

  'Mother!'

  'Halli, do not be insolent. You have no need to protect your honour with violent acts. Look to the wall!' She pointed up into the shadows above the Law Seats, where Svein's weapons hung muffled in the dust of years. 'The days are long past when men made fools of themselves for honour. You must set an example as Arnkel's son! What if something should happen to Leif ? You would become Arbiter yourself, as – as what number in direct line from our Founder, Gudny?'

  'Eighteenth,' Gudny said instantly. She looked smug. Halli made a face at her.

  'Good girl. As eighteenth in line, after Arnkel and Thorir and Flosi and the others going back in time, all of whom were great men. In your father's case he is so still. Don't you aspire to be like your father, Halli?'

  Halli shrugged. 'I'm sure he digs excellent beet fields, and turns manure with a deft technique. In truth his example does not over-thrill me. I prefer—' He stopped.

  Gudny glanced up slyly from her work. 'A man like Uncle Brodir. Isn't that so, Halli?'

  Blood came to the face of Halli's mother then. She banged her fist upon the table. 'That's enough! Gudny, not a word more! Halli, be gone! If you are troublesome again I shall have your father beat you.'

  Halli and Gudny had learned early that mentioning their uncle Brodir was a reliable method of upsetting their mother deeply. She, who as Lawgiver dealt imperturbably in the hall with the rankest murderers and thieves, found the very name distasteful and hard to stomach. At some level her
brother-in-law offended her, though she never spoke the reason.

  For Halli, this curious power only added to Brodir's allure, a fascination that had begun in early childhood with his uncle's beard. Alone of all the men of Svein's House, Brodir did not shape the hair upon his face. Halli's father, for instance, in a ritual of great solemnity, regularly stood above a hot tub, staring through the steam at a polished reflective disc, methodically shaving his cheekbones and his lower neck, before trimming the rest with a small bone-handled knife. His moustache was carefully curled, his beard kept to the length of the first knuckle on his forefinger. His example as Arbiter was followed by the other men of the House, save Kugi the sty-boy, who though a man was hairless on his chin – and Brodir. Brodir never touched his beard at all. It bloomed out like a gorse thicket, a nest for crows, an ivy entanglement strangling a tree. Halli was entranced by it.

  'Shaping a beard is a down-valley tradition,' Brodir advised him. 'In these parts it has long been thought unmanly.'

  'But everyone apart from you does it.'

  'Oh well, they follow your father, and he is influenced by dear Astrid, who comes from Erlend's House, down among the Loops, where people's hair is so light-rooted it often blows off in the sea winds. It makes little difference if they clip and preen.'

  Beard aside, Brodir was unlike Halli's father in so many ways it was hard to imagine they had blood kinship at all. Where Arnkel was big-boned, Brodir was slight (though inclined to an ale-paunch around the belly), with a somewhat pudgy, ill-formed face ('Onund's stock again' was Katla's verdict). Arnkel radiated a ponderous authority, but Brodir had none whatsoever and seemed the happier for it. Despite being a second son, he had never taken possession of one of the smaller farms dotted among the lands of Svein's House. It was said that in his youth he had travelled far along the valley; now he remained at the old hall. working in the fields among the men, and drinking with them after dark. Most evenings he was consequently raucous, humorous and abrasive. Occasionally he absented himself on his horse, Brawler, and disappeared for days, returning wild-eyed with stories of what he'd seen.

  And it was the stories that Halli loved him for above all.

  On summer evenings, while Brodir was sober, and the westering sun still warmed the bench outside the hall, they sat together looking up towards the southern ridge and talked. Then Halli heard of the rich lands of the Loops, where the river was languorous, and the cows and farmers both grew fat; he heard of the estuary beyond, where the Houses were built on great stone levees so that during the floods of spring they seemed to float upon the water, chimneys gently smoking, like scattered boats or islands. He heard too of the higher tributaries, where the valley petered out among places of waterfall and tumbled stone, where grass gave over to slate and no animals lived except the chits and chaffinches.

  But always Brodir returned at last to the greatest of the Twelve Houses – Svein's; to its leaders, the Arbiters and Lawgivers, to their feuds and love affairs and the positions of their cairns upon the hill. And above all, he told of Svein himself, of his countless startling adventures, of his escapades upon the moors when it was still permitted to go there, and of the great Battle of the Rock, when he and the lesser heroes held out against the Trows and drove them from the valley to the heights.

  'See his cairn up there?' Brodir would say, pointing with his cup. 'Well, it's more like a mound now, I suppose, with all the grass upon it. All the heroes were buried like that, up on the ridge above their Houses. Know how they positioned him inside?'

  'No, Uncle.'

  'Sitting on a stone seat, facing towards the moors, with his sword upright in his hand. Know why?'

  'To scare the Trows.'

  'Yes, and keep them scared. It's worked too.'

  'Are there cairns all along the valley? Not just here?'

  'From Riversmouth to High Stones, both sides. We all follow the heroes and reinforce the boundary like good children. There are as many piles of stones above the valley as there are leaves on a summer tree, and each pile sits atop a forgotten son or daughter of a House.'

  'I will one day be like Svein,' Halli said stoutly, 'and do great deeds that are long remembered. Though I do not much want to end up on the hill.'

  Brodir sat back on the bench. 'You will find such deeds are difficult now. Where are the swords? Under the cairns or rusting on the walls! We are none of us allowed to be like Svein any more . . .' He took a long draught of ale. 'Save perhaps in our early deaths. All us Sveinssons die young. But no doubt your mother has told you this.'

  'She has not.'

  'Oh, and she a great one for the histories! So she did not tell you of my elder brother Leif – what happened to him?'

  'No.'

  'Ah . . .' He looked contemplatively at his cup.

  'Uncle . . .'

  'Eaten by wolves up-valley, aged sixteen.' Brodir pulled at his nose and sniffed. 'It had been a hard winter for the wolves, and proved harder still for Leif. The attack happened on Gestsson land, but the pack had come down from the Trow moors, so our family could not prove negligence . . . So it goes. Then there was Bjorn in the previous generation . . .'

  'Wolves?'

  'Bear. A single swipe while picking cloudberries up by Skafti's boulder. Mind you, that was better than his father, Flosi, your great-grandfather. A sad demise.'

  'How, Uncle? How?'

  'Bee sting. Swelled to the most appalling size . . . Not one for the ballads, if truth be known . . . Cheer up, boy! Do not fear – these are unusual deaths.'

  'I am glad to hear it.'

  'Yes, most of us die of overindulgence.' He raised his cup and tapped it. 'Too much of this. We're fated that way.'

  Halli swung his legs back and forth beneath the bench. 'Not me, Uncle.'

  'Your grandfather Thorir said exactly that. But he died even so – at your parents' wedding as a matter of fact.'

  'Of drink?'

  'In a way. He fell down the well while hunting for the pisshouse. Well, it is a gloomy outlook. I think I will go to the keg for another draught to cheer me. But you. my boy, should go to bed.'

  For Halli in his early youth, bedtime was the most intimate moment of the day, when he could mull on events and what he had learned. He lay beneath his woollen blanket, staring up at the window at the end of the cot, through which the stars shone cold over the dark slabs of the mountains, and listened to the hum of voices from the hall, where his parents conducted the evening arbitrations. When Katla came in to snuff the light, he would question her on whatever was on his mind.

  'Tell me of the Trows, Katla.'

  The room would be dark, save for the flickering candle on the shelf. Each wrinkle in the nurse's face stood out like a furrow on a winter field; she was a carving from some black-grained wood. Her words drifted in and out of his sleep-fogged mind.

  'Ah, the Trows . . . Their faces are dark as the mud under stones . . . They smell of graves and they hide from the sun . . . They wait inside the hill for an unwary soul to stray too high upon its slopes. Then they will spring! Set one foot beyond those cairns, Halli, and they will rise up and pull you screaming into the earth . . . Well, I expect you are growing cosy now. I shall blow the candle out . . . What was that, boy?'

  'Have you ever seen a Trow, Katla?'

  'No, thank Svein!'

  'Oh . . . Is there anything wicked you have seen?'

  'Never! At my age I consider it a miracle and a blessing to have been so spared. But note that my safety does not stem from good fortune alone. No, I have always carried strong charms on my person to ward off evil of all kinds. I scatter flowers on the cairns of my parents every spring; I leave offerings by the weeping willows to placate the wheer-folk. In addition, I avoid apple trees at noon, keep my eyes averted from the pointing shadows of the cairns, and never, ever relieve myself near a stream or berry bush for fear of offending its fairy resident. So you can see for yourself it is as much good sense and preparedness as anything. And if you wish to live long, you will fo
llow my example. Not another word, dear Halli! This candle must go out.'

  It is not to be thought that Halli was a retiring, unassuming child; indeed, from the first, he was unusually confident and overbearing. But he knew when to be silent. Day on day, year on year, he listened quietly to the tales of Svein's House. And every night, as certainly as if played out upon his mother's darting loom, the threads of each story were woven into his life and dreams.

  2

  SVEIN'S QUALITIES WERE EVIDENT from the first. As a child he was stronger than any man, capable of breaking a bullock's neck in an arm-lock. He was proud and passionate too, and, if his temper got the better of him, very hard to manage. Once he threw an insolent servant over a haystack; after that, when the anger was on him, he went out hunting Trows. When he was no older than you, he carried one of their claws home in his thigh after a fight out in the fields. The Trow had dragged him so deep into the earth that his armpits were filled with mud, but Svein caught hold of a tree root and held on all night till the sun rose over the Snag. Then the Trow's power was sapped and Svein broke free. He found the claw in his leg when he got home. 'I was lucky,' he said. 'That was a young one, not at full strength.'

  No, I don't know where the claw is now. Don't ask so many questions.

  At fourteen Halli remained short, broad and bandy in the leg. Though only two years from full manhood, he was little over half the height of his brother Leif, while his head reached Gudny's shoulders only when he stood on tiptoe.

  However, he had the luck of good health. He remained untouched by black creep, sow's fever, dank mottle or any of the dozen other maladies that were endemic to the upper valley. This hardiness was aligned to a certain vitality of spirit, which manifested itself in every thought and action, and which chafed at the daily restrictions of the House.

  Most of Svein's people were taciturn and patient, weathered inside and out by exposure to the mountain seasons. For them the long, slow rhythms of farm and field held sway; they tended the animals, grew crops and practised their crafts just as their parents had done. Despite their status, Arnkel and Astrid made no exception for themselves or their children and threw themselves into every chore, but it was noticed by all that Halli had little interest in following their example.