As the fourth plank slid away, Olaf darted forward. I heard Astrid scream just as he launched himself up the hull's interior and over the gunwale. My father and I stood as one, but rather than rush for the man above me, my father catapulted himself over the wale.
Across from me, one of Holger's men fell backward in surprise. That left the man above me. I spun and swung my blade as hard as I could at the first thing I saw: a leg. That man, too, had shuffled backward at the sudden appearance of Olaf and my father so that my blade ripped across his shin rather than taking his leg off at the knee. He wailed and stumbled farther back.
I was vaguely aware of blades ringing to my right, followed by a scream, and a splash. I had no time to look, for I knew the man behind me would soon be approaching. I turned in time to see his blade angling for my chest, coming fast. And then, suddenly, Astrid flashed up from the shadows and drove our one spear into the man's side. The surprise on his face was matched only by my own.
I spun then, knowing well the other man was still behind me. He had recovered and was limping toward me, though more cautiously after seeing his comrade fall to Astrid's spear. I brought my blade up and readied myself.
“Halt!” came a cry in the night.
I ventured a glance in the direction of the voice and saw a group of men running toward us. Turning back to my assailant, I yelled at him to come at me. That, I realize now, was foolish, for he was far larger than me and could easily have killed me, but after all of the injustices we had suffered and the great distance we had traveled, I wanted nothing more than to lay that man low. In the end, he did not attack me. With this new threat approaching, he backed away.
To my right, my father and Olaf stood on the dock, facing Holger, who bled from a gash on his cheek. Behind him stood another of his henchmen. I did not see the old man.
“What is this?” called the leader of this new gang, a tall, slender man whose loose blond hair fell to his shoulders and partially covered his face. “Who are you?” The man pointed his sword at Holger.
“My name is Holger and I am the emissary of Queen Gunnhild and her son, King Harald,” said Holger calmly. “We have come to return this boy to the queen.”
“And you have been told that the boy does not wish to return to your queen,” came another voice from behind the first man who spoke. The man stepped forward and I smiled. Dag. “Not only have you told me your half-truths to deceive me and our king, you now come like thieves to steal the boy from his mother.” Dag pointed at Astrid, who stood in the knarr.
“And you board my ship unlawfully to do it,” said the slender blond man, who I now knew to be Sigvard.
“Arrest these men,” ordered Dag.
“I am the queen's emissary,” responded Holger indignantly. “You cannot arrest me.”
Four men stepped forward with their swords drawn. They wore byrnies and helmets and carried shields. Holger and his remaining warriors, who had come to take us stealthily, were ill-equipped to fight them. They wore no helmets or chain mail shirts and carried no shields. Still, they did not budge. Rather, they stood with their swords pointed defiantly at the new threat.
“Lay your weapons down, and it will go easier for you,” called Dag.
“You know not what you do, Dag,” Holger growled.
“I will say it once again, then no more. Drop your sword, Holger.”
With a curse, Holger placed his sword on the deck. His henchmen followed his lead.
As Dag's men escorted Holger and his henchmen away, Sigvard came forward to survey the scene. The man Astrid had killed slumped over the gunwale. Another body floated in the water. I knew him only by his clothing. Aki, Haakon's neighbor.
“Now we know how Holger found us so quickly,” growled my father to Olaf and me. He spat at the corpse.
To my right, the graybeard lay on his back on the dock, his arms loose by his sides. His eyes gazed blankly at the dark sky. There was a puncture wound in the poor man's chest and a pool of blood below it.
“I am sorry,” said my father.
“Who killed him?” asked Sigvard.
“Holger,” said Olaf, pointing in the direction of the retreating mass of men.
Sigvard rose and stormed down the dock, back the way he had come, leaving in his wake a gang of nine men who stared stonily at us. Finally, one of them turned to the others. “Get that dead bastard off our ship. And fish that one out, too,” said the man, pointing to Aki's corpse in the water. “I will not have their corpses bringing their bad luck to our ship.” Several of the men fingered the talismans at their neck as they moved to do his bidding. “Careful with Arne, you louts!” he called to two of his comrades who fumbled with the graybeard's body. The man then turned his hard eyes on us. “He was a good man. You lot had better be worth his life.”
The following morning, Sigvard gathered his crew and told us to stay close to the dock. He and his men were going to bury Arne's remains in the graveyard on the east side of town, but did not want us to come. As we waited for their return, a crowd gathered on the beach. Shouts carried to us over the water as the group grew in size and moved close to the water. At the same time, one of Dag's men approached Sigvard's ship and beckoned for us to come. Wordlessly, we gathered our weapons and followed him to the beach and the gathering crowd.
Even before we reached the strand, I could see what awaited. The group had formed a crescent around several men, one of whom was Holger. They faced a fire that crackled in a pit on the beach, their bodies bound by ropes. Across the fire stood Dag, as silent and rigid as an oak tree in the midst of the townspeople. To his left, at the head of the crowd, Sigvard stood with his crew, their arms crossed and their faces masked with anger. Our guide led us to Dag and ordered us to face Holger and his bound men.
“Holger Einarsson. You and your men have attempted to take this child, Olaf,” he gestured at Olaf, “against his mother's will and, in so doing, have killed an innocent man and broken the peace of this place. In addition, you have lied to me and to my lord, King Erik. As a consequence of these actions, you and your men will be punished.”
Holger scowled. “I act at the behest of my lord and my queen and with the support of your king. If you punish me, you bring punishment on yourself.”
“I will take my chances,” replied Dag. “For the life of Sigvard's crewman, you will pay him two hundred silver coins.”
Holger tried to speak, but a warrior rammed the butt of his spear into Holger's back, knocking him to his knees. The crowd cheered as Holger collapsed.
Dag continued, unfazed. “For disturbing the peace, you shall pay another one hundred coins. And for lying to my lord, the king, and attempted kidnapping, you will each be given a choice. You shall lose a hand or an eye. Since Olaf Tryggvason was the subject of your crimes, it is he who shall exact the punishment.”
The four men with Holger accepted Dag's words with stoic courage. Holger did not. His face pinched and his cheeks flushed. He spat at Dag and yanked at his bindings until his guard rammed his spear butt into Holger's back again. The crowd cheered that wretch's misery and I felt a smile form on my face.
Dag did not delay the punishments. A guard brought the first man forth while Dag extracted a sword and a spear from the fire, the metal on each glowing orange and blue. The guard shoved Holger's man to his knees before a wood block and asked which he preferred to lose, his arm or his eye.
The man looked from Dag to Olaf. “Take my left hand, for I can still fight with my right. And I wish to see you with my eyes when I come to kill you.”
“Bravely spoken,” Dag responded as he handed Olaf the sword.
My heart thundered as I watched my young charge walk forward. He took the sword and stepped toward the man whose left hand was now being tied in place on the wooden block. The criminal watched Olaf warily and set his jaw. “Strike truly, boy,” he said.
Olaf gripped the sword in both hands. The glowing sword arced into the air. Astrid and Turid looked away. I stood mesmerized by the hor
ror and the anger pulsing in me. The blade dropped hard onto the man's wrist and bit into the block.
Surprisingly, there was little blood as the man's left hand dropped to the pebbled beach. There was only the man falling backward, holding his bloody stump before him as he struggled courageously to keep his scream inside. His guards grabbed him and pulled him free of the block, then used a leather strap and stick to form a rough tourniquet around his lower arm.
Olaf handed the blade casually back to Dag, who thrust it back into the flames as a guard ushered the victim away. There was a grin on Olaf's blood-speckled face, and I knew he was enjoying this. My stomach roiled. The men deserved their punishment and the punishment was just, but the sight of Olaf's boyish, smiling face speckled in blood lifted the bile in my throat.
Holger was made to watch as all of his men received their sentences. Each chose to lose his left non-fighting hand, and each accepted his punishment with varying levels of stoicism. About us, the crowd cheered each stroke of Olaf's blade. Those cheers swelled now as the guards brought Holger forth.
“This is not the end of my pursuit, Olaf,” Holger hissed. “I will find you, and I will kill you.”
Olaf smiled as the guard tied Holger's arm to the block.
“Go ahead, boy,” Dag coached.
He had not done so with the others, but this time Olaf yelled his fury as he brought the blade down. It struck with such force that Holger's left hand flew from the block and into the fire. Holger stumbled to his feet, then stared in horror at his dismembered limb. The guards came forth, bound his arm as they had the others, and marched him away.
“We shall collect your silver,” said Dag with finality. “Justice has been done.”
Sigvard approached my father then, his face grave. “That was a bad business, lord, and an inauspicious way to begin our voyage. We have lost a good man and friend. If I were not such a friend to Haakon, I would leave you all here.”
To my surprise, my father took no offense. “I understand your words, and I owe you a debt that I cannot readily pay,” he said. His eyes then turned to Dag. “I owe you both a debt.”
If Sigvard heard my father's words, he did not react to them. Instead he said, “Before we cast off, we shall give a sacrifice to the gods, for we will need it now more than ever.” He walked away with his crew in tow.
Dag, on the other hand, nodded to my father. “You owe me nothing. Vanish from this place and do not let me see you or that boy again. For I sense if we do, there will be a higher price to pay.”
And with those ominous words hanging over us, we left that wretched place.
Chapter 15
We sat on the foredeck, boys on one side, women on the other, doing our best to stay out from under the feet of the crewmen. I was weary and tried to doze in the cramped space beneath the fore gunwale. Across from me, Turid wept quietly, though I knew not why. Astrid soothed her with whispered words, and I suppose that was the best remedy, for the weeping eventually ceased.
I do not remember falling asleep, but I awoke to the call of ducks overhead and the sensation of water on my cheek. I sat up quickly, stiff from slumbering on the deck planks. A thin layer of water had splashed onto the deck and I had been lying in it. I peered over the gunwale and was greeted by a crisp, gray day.
We sailed with the shoreline to our left, heading east into a climbing sun that a shroud of gray clouds muted. A flock of ducks passed above our billowing sail, heading west. Sigvard stood in the aft deck holding the steer board, his loose blond hair blowing about his head in the breeze as his eyes scanned the water before us. Beside him stood my father. About the deck sat the crew — nine men in all — in various stages of repose. Some gambled. Others chewed on bread and hard cheese. One juggled with knives. They were a rough-looking lot who stole glances at us when they could. Several looked resentful or angry, others just curious, as if they were trying to piece together the puzzle of our presence on their ship. I tried to ignore them.
My father returned from the aft deck and slid down next to me with a partial loaf of bread in his hand. He tore at it with his teeth and chewed for a moment. Across from me, Astrid sat upright with her eyes closed. She was wrapped in a thick hooded cloak that hid all but a few strands of her cropped, golden hair. Her face, I realized, looked altogether different from that of the woman I remembered in my father's hall the previous summer. She was thin now — almost gaunt — and tanned from her work on Haakon's farm. Dirt streaked her cheeks and forehead.
Suddenly, her eyes opened, and she looked straight at me. “Why do you look at me so, Torgil?” she asked.
Startled, I looked away, too embarrassed to respond.
“You'd best eat, Torgil,” interrupted my father as he offered me the bread in his hand. “We will not have good bread and cheese for the length of our journey. Soon enough, the bread will mold and we will be eating dried cod, nuts, and anything else that can last. Believe me, you will be sick of cod by the time we reach Aldeigjuborg.”
“How far is it?” Olaf asked, twirling his knife on the deck in his boredom.
My father shrugged. “It depends on the weather, the winds, and the seas, lad. If all goes well, we could reach Aldeigjuborg in half a moon. At least that is what Sigvard just told me. I have never been there.”
I smiled at my father's words and the promise of reaching someplace new, far away from Holger and the reach of Queen Gunnhild and her son, Harald. It would be good, too, to start afresh and to prepare for our return home, whenever that happened to be.
The Lake was actually a long bay. It opened into a broad waterway near Westra Aros, but east of the village, in the direction we were traveling, it narrowed into a patchwork of tree-strewn islands and labyrinthine waterways. For two days, we wove our way through the channels, coming ever closer to the East Sea. As we neared it, the slack tide sucked at our ship's hull, as if some invisible hand pulled us inexorably toward our fate and Sigvard was only there to steer us to it, a ferryman to the unknown. The closer we came to the sea, the more treacherous the channels grew, the threat of hidden sandbars, floating logs, and hull-crushing stones ever-present. It did not help that we sailed in a wide, heavy knarr — more a plodding ox than a maneuverable serpent, especially with our extra weight and its burden of trade goods.
It helped that Sigvard and his crew knew every stretch of these shores. He knew where hazards lurked and those places to avoid —- where a bad tide could leave us stranded or dangerous logs could be floating, and where the inhabitants were protective of their lands and less than friendly. He knew, too, the coves where bathing was best and the women could have some privacy, or where the hunting was choice, or where the pike grew as large as baby seals and could be hunted with spears, or where a farmstead was willing to trade and add to his chance of profit in Aldeigjuborg.
Our captain was not a man who took chances. When he knew he could not reach a particular waterway by nightfall, he would steer into the safety of a quiet cove and wait for morning or a shift in the tide. Even with the sun high and visibility fair, Sigvard waited for the tide to lift his hull rather than attempt to snake his way through hazards. His caution suited me well, but not my father, who was mayhap more anxious to be clear of the Lake and away from the reach of Holger. One night, when Sigvard had gone ashore to barter with one of the locals for some fresh food, my father commented on Sigvard's caution to his second in command, a surly fellow named Tostig.
The man regarded my father for a moment before speaking. “I do not know who you are or what has brought our paths together. I know only that traveling the East Way requires equal measures of skill and fortune, and we did not begin this journey with the best of fortune,” Tostig said as he fingered the hammer amulet at his neck.
My father frowned but did not push the matter further.
Still, no matter how interesting the scenery or wildlife that surrounded us, it was difficult to remain stationary from morning until dusk with the sun baking our skin and nothing but wind, the la
p of water against the hull, and the creak of ship's rigging to fill our ears. To pass the time, we boys practiced juggling with our seaxes, or took our turn bailing water from the ship's hold, or learned the ways of the rigging and sail. At anchor, we tiptoed along the gunwales, trying to make it from stern to prow and back again, but more oft than not, and much to the enjoyment of the crew, ending up in the water. The crew would cheer or guffaw or curse our feats, so much so that my father recommended that we stop distracting the men and make ourselves useful. Sigvard heard my father's words and stopped him. “Let the boys have their fun, Torolv. The men enjoy it!”
On the evening of the fourth day, just as the sun began to sink below the treetops behind us, we angled for the shoreline. The wind had died on us earlier in the evening, so we approached under oar. Olaf and I raced to the bow and gazed at the muddy beach materializing before us.
“What is this place?” Turid asked to no one in particular.
“You will see,” answered a crewman.
We did not moor offshore as we had in other places. Instead, we pulled the ship ahead until the hull bit into the soft mud. The crewman who had answered Turid hopped over the gunwale and tied the ship to one of the trees.
“Get the logs!” ordered Sigvard.
More crewmen leaped overboard and disappeared into the woods, emerging a short time later carrying some small logs between them. These they placed next to each other so that they stretched, side by side, from beneath the ship's prow to a point midway up the narrow beach. Meanwhile, two more men tied ropes to iron hooks on the ship's hull and ran them up to a tree into which two deep grooves had been carved.
“Off, you louts,” called Sigvard as he jumped into the shallow sea, “and to the ropes!”
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