Freya looked where Hovard did. Never had she seen such a gathering. When her people raided, a fleet of twenty was deemed large. Here, hundreds of longships were drawn up on the strand, while many had also come by foot. Beyond the beach smoke from scores of campfires roiled into the air. Pavilions of hide and canvas spilled over the slopes that rose steadily to the base of Galahur – a giant stone bowl.
Sheltered by the rock ramparts, thousands could gather on the slopes within and hear. In the middle of the bowl was a simple mound of grass-roofed earth, the empty barrow of the long-dead king, upon which stood any who would speak at the regular Moot, which came every twenty years. Haakon, named the Great, was the last one to gather gods and men together in a Special Moot.
Thinking of him, Freya turned back to Hovard. ‘Haakon, who was buried up there, saw what we saw on a day much like this. Arrived here four hundred years ago with exactly your doubts. With your same questions: how can I convince a stubborn people and their stubborn gods to change the way they live? How, when all I have is my belief that they must?’
‘I am not Haakon, wife.’
‘No. You are Hovard. Yet just as he was not “the Great” until he persuaded them, neither will you be until you do. As you will.’ She took his face in her hands, pulled him closer. ‘Luck knows that you can do this or he would not have left you to do it on your own. Bjorn would follow you into hell flames, if you said you saw a way through them. And I—’
She broke off and he reached and took her head, as gently. ‘And you, Freya?’
‘I always knew I had but one life to live. And however long that life would be, I would spend it entirely with you. Not just because I love you. Because you always know what is right.’
They held each other, eyes in each other’s, for a long moment more. Then, as one, they leaned, kissed.
‘Aw! Aren’t you sweet? Enough, my cooing doves!’ The voice that came was northern, rough. They looked back on the squat and powerful form of Petr the Red. The god was well named, for every part of him that was unclothed – unkempt beard, pillar of hair, knuckles, caterpillar eyebrows – bristled crimson. ‘Soon you may find a place to fully express this passion. For now, steady for our arrival.’
They gripped the serpent’s neck again, just in time, as a last powerful sweep of oars drove the ship onto the shore’s gravelled and sloping bank. Immediately the vessel tipped sideways. Freya fell onto Hovard. He held them both and easily with one arm.
‘Oh fuck,’ muttered Petr. ‘Here he is.’
The next words came on a bellow, from a different, familiar voice. ‘Little Red Petr,’ Stromvar cried. ‘How good it is to see my old adversary! Tell me, hairy one, have your parries got any better in the hundred years since I last kicked your arse?’
Hovard smiled, though he hid it. Freya looked away. Their host had been kind to them on their five-day voyage from his native Kroken, where the Askaug gods had rendezvoused. In return, they hadn’t mentioned Stromvar, the god who’d killed Petr in combat three times in a row, a feat never achieved before – or since – in Midgarth.
It was something that he obviously remembered all too well, judging how his skin coloured into a match for his hair. ‘I won’t need to parry you next time, you piss head. For you’ll be too busy plucking steel from your head.’
‘Ho ho! A challenge, you all heard it!’ Stromvar always gathered followers wherever he went, such was the legend of the Lord of the Seven Isles. There was a crowd about him now, and more drawn by his voice. He looked around and grinned. ‘But for all his brave words, Little Petr knows he is safe, the rules of Moot protect him: no combat for two weeks before and for two weeks after.’
Petr flushed an even deeper red. ‘Fuck the rules!’ he yelled, and snatched up his battle axe. ‘Let us go … Strumbum! Here. Now.’
Stromvar’s eyes narrowed at his nickname. ‘Indeed,’ he replied. ‘Let us.’
Hovard looked at Freya and sighed. ‘And so it begins,’ he said softly. Then he leaned around the dragon prow, so the Lord of the Seven Isles could see him for the first time. ‘By all means, my lords, go,’ he said. ‘One of you slays the other. The rules of Moot are broken, the penalty is applied, so punishment ensues. Four hundred years since it last happened and memory dulls but I am certain death will be involved. It always is.’ He looked around. Many had gathered on the shore to witness the exchange, more were coming. It begins, he thought, and I am not even off the boat. His voice rose. ‘Meantime, those who threaten us, who would destroy us, rejoice. Rejoice as a divided people stay divided.’ He lifted Petr’s axe hand high. ‘By all means, lords, go to it. And after your heads have been struck off, let the rest of us kneel down right here and offer our necks to the slave’s yoke.’
Silence then, on the boat, on the shore. Until Stromvar broke it. ‘Can you wait a few weeks, Petr the Red?’ he said.
Heat faded from the smaller man’s cheeks. He lowered his axe. ‘I can if you can. Vengeance postponed tastes all the sweeter.’ He turned and looked at his crew. ‘But not as sweet as Kroken ale, is that not right, lads? The most prized in the land. Ready to be shared at the feast tonight, on the eve of Moot. That is, Dragon Lord, if you have brought some of that pickled whale you islanders so boast of?’
‘I have. And the men of Lorken have already promised a dozen of their fabled smoked wild boars.’ Stromvar grinned. ‘So let us feast and get drunk together, Petr. Maybe I’ll teach you a few parries afterwards, to make our next fight more of a contest.’
Instead of countering, Petr grinned too. ‘Maybe I’ll show you why I won’t need them.’ He turned to his crew. ‘Let’s set up our camp, lads,’ he shouted.
Men on the shore turned away to their own tasks. Freya leaned in to Hovard and whispered, ‘A good beginning.’
He nodded. ‘But only the beginning. What will be the end?’
‘My lady?’
They looked down. Stromvar had waded into the water which reached to his huge thighs. He raised his arms. ‘May I offer a goddess a ride to the shore?’
‘I can wade as well as you, Stromvar.’
‘You could. But why get such a lovely dress wet?’
Freya smiled, grabbed her satchel already packed at her feet, leapt and dropped into the waiting god’s arms. ‘Ah,’ Stromvar murmured, bending. ‘I knew you’d have some heft. I don’t like my women skinny. I like a bit of flesh on ’em.’
‘Is this what passes for sweet talk on the Seven Isles?’
‘Of course. The most charming folk in Midgarth, us.’
He turned and began wading to the shore. Behind him Hovard called, ‘Will you return for me, Stromvar?’
The god kept his eyes on Freya as he answered. ‘Do I look like a porter?’
They waited for him on the beach. When Hovard reached them, Petr and his crew close behind, Stromvar said, ‘I have been here three days. Shall we walk the camp? There are things you should see.’
Truly, it was already more town than camp. The priests who tended the sacred and eternal fire of Galahur were few in number, no more than thirty. But part of their function was to provide shelter for pilgrims who regularly came to ask questions of the departed gods. There was a modest hall for meals and prayer, and all structures necessary to keep a small town functioning – a smithy, a brewery, a granary, a slaughterhouse. Every twenty years the Moot tested their resources and stretched the town’s boundaries. Areas were set aside for the tents of the visitors and, by custom, each town or village had their own place, along rough tracks that ran over the foreshore and up the lower slopes of Galahur like spider webs. It was fortunate that the spring had come fast and hot that year. The last Moot Hovard had attended, thirteen years before, had been the wettest spring in even a god’s memory, the tracks turned to rivers of thick mud.
They walked, and Stromvar pointed out the land’s far-flung peoples: some dark-haired southerners gathered arou
nd the hearth of Einar the Black; fairer or red-haired northerners who acclaimed Petr and his men following behind – and acclaimed the many barrels of Kroken ale they rolled up even more. As they approached the westerners, Hovard and Freya began to recognise some of their neighbours. These were gods, men and women from island and inlet, from coastal mountains and forests. A blend of light and dark and red, they were distinguished by faces browned and toughened by sea wind and spray.
The tents and pavilions of the Seven Isles folk were pitched next to those of Askaug. Indeed there was little to separate the two camps. Folk who had faced each other over shield walls and sword not two weeks before, who would cheerfully have shed the others’ blood, now mingled, laughed, drank, shared food and fire.
‘It gives me hope,’ said Hovard, gesturing to them, and acknowledging the greetings of his comrades. ‘If old enemies like us can put aside our enmity perhaps the whole of Midgarth can.’
‘I do not wish to diminish your hope,’ Stromvar said. ‘But walk a little further.’
The eastern fringe of the canvas town they entered was frayed, as edges often are. Most of the tents were moth-chewed and poorly patched; some were just sheets flapping over open ground. The clothes matched the habitations, and rag-clad people glowered up at them as they passed. Where their own folk had overlapped, these blended – red-haired, fair and dark, wind-roughened faces alongside those which looked as if they’d rarely seen the sun.
‘Where are they from?’ asked Freya.
‘Everywhere,’ Stromvar replied.
Hovard halted, stared. ‘How is that possible? Each man knows his place, his land.’
‘Not when they have lost their gods.’ Stromvar swallowed as he too looked around. ‘Part of me came here hoping that your brother’s visions were wrong. That the gods of Midgarth were not diminishing in number, that they were simply … absent for a while. We do that sometimes, we gods. We need to wander, as beasts, as men.’ He shook his head. ‘But then I saw these people. In villages and towns across the land, their gods are gone. No, that’s not right. Their gods have vanished. Not to wander. They have been killed. And for all our faults,’ a small smile came, ‘yes, I admit, we have them, for we are greedy, concerned only with our own desires. But at least we provide a centre for our world, an order to it. These,’ he waved his hand, ‘have lost their order. So they abandon their homes, their farms, their villages. Many come here. The High Priest says it has been so for ten years. More and more people coming, staying. He says most tell him that their gods have abandoned them. And that if you had not called the Special Moot, he would have, because he can no longer care for so many.’
Freya noticed a woman slumped in the entrance of a tent. Her shirt was open and she was nursing a babe. It was a sight that always reminded her, suddenly, keenly, of the babes she’d borne and suckled. Three daughters – Helga, Djorn and Raika. Three who had grown and thrived and aged and died even as she and Hovard lived on. It was too hard, laying a white-haired woman on the pyre who once she had laid to her breast. After the last, Raika, two hundred years before, they had agreed to have no more. Yet Freya kept each of them alive in her memory, with the strength of her love. And often, on some endless winter night, she wondered if it would be such a bad thing to die, so she could hold them again for ever.
The woman she watched did not hold her child with love. Just stared dully ahead, her gaze vacant before her. Then, as if she felt them, she glanced up, met Freya’s eyes and her own hardened. She leaned forward and, without taking her gaze from the god’s, she spat. Freya winced, turned. ‘How many gods have come, Stromvar?’
‘There is still today and tonight—’
There was something in his voice. ‘How many, friend?’ said Hovard, taking his arm.
Stromvar looked down. ‘Only a few more than one hundred.’
Hovard and Freya both gasped. She spoke. ‘One hundred? There should be double that!’
Stromvar simply shrugged. Hovard took a deep breath, then exhaled long and slow. ‘I wish Luck was here. He always likes to know that he is right.’
As they turned to walk back to their own camp, Freya felt something hit her in the side. She glanced down, saw the brown lump that could be earth, could be worse, at her feet. ‘Fucking gods!’ someone hissed, and she looked back, could not see who had said it. It might have been any one of the sullen-eyed people, all facing their way now. It might have been the woman, still staring, and whose expression did not change as she plucked her baby from her breast.
‘And that’s another thing,’ Stromvar said, leading them away. ‘The mortals are angry.’
‘Just these?’ said Hovard, glancing back.
‘No. Now you have noticed it you will see that mortals are angry everywhere.’
Uproar. Once more the priest tried to take Algiz, the white staff of speaking, back. Once more the holder waved it above his head and shouted; though, as before, this man from the north – a mortal – could not be heard above the yelling of almost every person in the bowl of Galahur.
Freya sighed, looked around at the swaying, quarrelling hordes. They were spread on the slopes of the bowl in a great horseshoe, looking down upon Haakon’s Mound: a barrow beneath whose turf was said to be a stone chamber where the king’s body had been laid – though the story went that it was found empty the day after his death. On the mound stood the priest, and each speaker was meant to come to him, take the staff, be listened to in silence whatever his argument. Now men and some gods swarmed around it, crying out to be heard.
Yet the day had begun so well. The reverent dawn procession threading the terraces of Galahur, ascending to its crest and down into the bowl, each people, town or village walking to the soft accompaniment of flutes and drums and their own chanting. The High Priest, in his saffron robes, purple sash and antler mask, had called the ritual welcome, the prayers to seasons and to the gods, living and dead. Invoked Haakon the King, neither man nor god, both, who had called the first Moot four hundred years before and vanished soon after, leaving peace behind him – or at least a peace that gods and men could live with. It was said that he would come again, in the land’s darkest hour, to save them all.
This is it, thought Freya. So where are you, king?
The day had gone so wrong so quickly. The suppressed anger of the first speaker – a man from Lorken – had been released by every subsequent one. The first god to try to speak, Einar the Black, had been shouted down, even though none but he or she who held the white staff should make a sound. The priest had brought quiet for a time, for all listened to him. But the next god to speak, Stromvar, had also been hooted off. He looked so angry Freya had feared he might run mad, return to his boat to fetch his sword – for no weapon was allowed in camp or upon Galahur – and start slaughtering. A few whispered words and her soft touch had prevented him but he stood beside her now, a geyser about to spout.
‘Can they not see? Are they blind as well as foolish?’ Stromvar waved at the slopes. ‘At the last Moot here you couldn’t see a patch of grass for the people. One hundred more gods, each accompanied by their twelve. Now,’ he slapped his chest, ‘perhaps half those here are god-less. And they are the ones who scream against us the loudest.’
On the other side of Freya, Hovard stirred. He’d been silent, watching it all. But he could see that the priest, who he’d spoken to last night and who had at last wrested the stick back from the last speaker – he might be old but he had power still – was casting around for him. They had agreed that a few would be heard before Hovard came forward and told of why he had called the Moot. Few had been heard, truly. But he felt that if he did not step forward and speak now, no one else, god or man, would be.
‘Wish me fortune,’ he muttered, and began to push his way down the slope and through the crowd.
‘Fortune,’ Freya called to his back.
A cutting wind had sprung up, borne from the eastern
mountains, winter’s last echo whipping the banners of each town and people. A near silence came when the priest raised the stick – though angry muttering, which had never really ceased during any speech, continued like sea surge tugging at pebbles on the shore. As he wove down from the Askaugers’ place on the slopes, Hovard heard his name being whispered, along with other words, some complimentary, some not. Over his simple leather tunic, he had chosen to wear a cloak dyed in deepest indigo. Expensive, rich. Kingly.
‘Who does he think he is,’ came one harsh whisper in a northern voice, ‘Haakon the Great?’
It was a gamble, his choice of colour, because the people of Midgarth, men or gods, all thought they were roughly equal. Gods might live for ever upon the land – or beyond it if they lost their heads – but mortals could grow as powerful as any with a strong arm and the right desire. For a time. Evoking the memory of one who could have been either god or man and had chosen to rise above them both was a risk. But Freya and Stromvar had advised him, and they were right. His short time at Galahur had confirmed it. The scattered peoples of the land needed a leader.
He ascended the steps to the turf roof of Haakon’s Barrow. The priest held the staff in both hands, crossways before his chest. The man lowered his head, held the staff out. Hovard grasped it in his right hand, wrapping fingers around its middle. Its tip was an eagle, beautifully carved. Its base was shod in iron. Cut into its whole length were tala of warding, of prophecy, of power. Luck was the tala reader of the family, but he had taught Hovard enough to recognise the meaning of the shapes cut about the centre of the shaft. They urged the speaking of truth. I will speak mine, he thought, and began.
‘I am Hovard of Askaug,’ he called, his voice centred, deep, realising that here at the base of the bowl he did not need to shout. ‘I am the son of Bryn and Marka. Mortals both. So though I am a god, mortal blood flows in my immortal veins.’
A murmuring came at this, no words he could hear. He continued, ‘I tell you this because I see the anger here, dividing what has always been united. At least has been so since the day four hundred years ago when Haakon the Great stood where I am standing now and brought us together, gods and men—’
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