‘We should not blame the All Father for that misfortune,’ Ulrich said as he stretched out his right leg. He winced as Affreca pulled off his right leather boot. ‘That was due to elves, trolls or evil-willing Norns. Perhaps even witchcraft sent by our enemies to sink our ship. But when the misfortune arrived, it was Odin who helped us.’
Affreca was in no mood to engage in one of the Wolf Coat leader’s religious talks. Instead she concentrated on his foot and ankle that was already purple with bruising and swelling fast. ‘It certainly looks like something is broken,’ she said. ‘Maybe the ankle. Wait here.’
Huddling her arms around herself, Affreca stood up and picked her way down to the short, rocky beach. It was now littered with flotsam and jetsam – a lump of smashed wood here, a tattered sail remnant there – all that was left of the ship and its contents. All that could float, that was. Somewhere out in the bay the weapons and armour of the Wolf Coats would have sunk to the bottom faster than stone. Now they belonged to Aegir and his cold wife Rán, who must be rejoicing at such a treasure trove landing right in their laps.
Affreca found two pieces of splintered wood and some rope and carried them back to Ulrich.
‘I’m going to try to splint that foot,’ she said. ‘This will hurt.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be the daughter of the King of Dublin?’ Ulrich said, stretching out his injured leg but with an uneasy look on his face. ‘Yet you can shoot a bow like a woodsman and now claim you can tend injuries. What sort of princess are you?’
‘I wasn’t my father’s favourite daughter,’ Affreca said as she laid a piece of wood on either side of Ulrich’s lower right leg. ‘Particularly after my mother died and he re-married. My step-mother hates me. She hates all of my father’s children from his previous marriages. She sees us as some sort of threat to the trolls she gave birth to herself.’
‘The evil step-mother, eh? She can’t be that wicked or you’d be dead,’ Ulrich said.
‘Oh, she’d have done it if she got the chance,’ Affreca said, winding the rope around the wood that now sandwiched Ulrich’s injured leg. ‘But even though my father doesn’t especially love me he knew I would be valuable to him someday as a peace cow. He would not have let her do harm to me openly. He did enough of that himself.’ Her eyes flicked away for a moment. ‘My father’s usual response to the slightest annoyance I caused him was his fist.’
Ulrich frowned and squirmed a little. ‘I was just asking where you got those skills from, not how happy your childhood was.’
‘I was explaining how I needed to stay out of their way,’ Affreca said. ‘So I did not spend a lot of time around the Kings Gard in Dublin. My father had a huntsman who took me under his wing.’
‘Oh really?’ Ulrich raised an eyebrow.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Affreca said, her own brow creasing in a frown. She pulled hard on the rope, drawing the splints together tight around Ulrich’s leg. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth. Affreca looked up, surprised he did not cry out. The realignment of his broken bones must have been agony. His face held a fixed grimace and there was the slight noise of grinding teeth but no cry. For a brief moment Affreca considered pulling the rope even tighter, just to see how much pain Ulrich could take. Then she realised it was just the wicked part of her mind telling her to do that.
‘Turcail, my father’s huntsman, had four sons,’ she said. ‘He had had a daughter but she died young. I think he looked on me a bit like the daughter he never had, though he ended up teaching me a lot of things a boy should know. I loved being away in the woods hunting. I was free there, away from all the expectations, the hostility and the dangerous games of my father’s fortress.’
Ulrich gave her a sideways glance.
‘You know,’ he said in a quiet voice, as if he were talking to himself, ‘you might make a good Úlfhéðinn. If you weren’t…’
His voice trailed off and he stopped.
‘What? A woman?’ Affreca said.
Ulrich shook his head. ‘I was going to say “a princess”.’
Affreca tutted. She tied the splint off, yanking the knot tight with a little more force than was needed. Ulrich winced. Affreca smiled.
‘That should stop the broken bones moving about too much,’ she said. ‘At least until we can get some proper bandages. It won’t stop it hurting though.’
Affreca laid both of her hands on Ulrich’s splinted ankle. She closed her eyes and began to chant in a low, even voice.
‘As the Moon conjured it. As Freya, conjured it.
And Odin conjured it, as well he could:
Like bone-sprain, so blood-sprain, so joint-sprain:
Bone to bone, blood to blood, joints to joints,
So may they be mended.’
She finished her healing charm and opened her eyes. Ulrich’s grimace relaxed and he moved his leg to test how sore it was.
‘So what do we do now?’ Affreca said, looking around at the bleak hillside and the roaring surf.
‘We need to rescue the others,’ Ulrich said, as if it was a trivial thing. ‘But right now, we need dry clothes, weapons and food.’
‘And how do we get that?’
Ulrich pointed up towards the top of the hillside.
‘There’s a house up there. Probably some sort of crofter,’ he said. ‘I’m useless with this leg so you need to go up there and get whatever you can from them.’
‘You think they’ll help us?’ Affreca looked doubtful.
Ulrich laughed.
‘No,’ he said, lifting one of his hips and reaching beneath him. He pulled out a wide-bladed fighting spear. ‘This was washed up from the ship. Take it. Go up to that house and take what we need.’
Thirty-One
Affreca trudged up the hill, using the spear as a walking staff for most of the way. Her head hurt and the wind chilled her wet clothes to freezing but she knew her best chance of survival was to keep going. The thought that the house at the top of the hill might hold dry clothes and perhaps something to eat kept her climbing.
The settlement Ulrich had spotted was a couple of buildings huddled into the hillside as if trying to hide from the weather. There was one simple dwelling which was probably the home of a poor farmer or shepherd. It was a long house with low stone walls and a sloping turf roof that almost reached to the ground. Inside Affreca knew she would find the house divided between a compartment for the family and another for the animals. The family got the heat from the animals’ bodies during the cold winter months at the expense of the stench of their piss and shit. It was how the poor people in Ireland lived as well. There was also a small outhouse that could either be a toilet or somewhere to keep equipment, or both. Both buildings were surrounded by a dry-stone wall.
The farm seemed quiet. There was not even a dog running around the yard to bark at her approach. All the same she crouched down as she approached, dipping below the level of the wall. There was a gap in the wall that acted as a gate and for a few moments Affreca crouched beside it, her back to the stones, as she caught her breath and considered what her next steps could be.
She decided to start with the outhouse. There was less chance of running into someone and with any luck she could be in, take what they needed and then get away without any confrontation.
Affreca grabbed the shaft of the spear in both hands and got up into a crouch. She skirted through the gap in the wall and into the farmyard. For a moment she hesitated, eyes fixed on the door of the house, expecting it to open at any moment. When it did not, she turned and jogged to the outhouse.
The wood of the door was bleached white by the elements. It was tattered and broken around the edges. Affreca used the point of the spear to lift the latch and push the door. With a creak of hinges, it swung inwards, revealing a gloomy interior. She crouched, spear ready, waiting for anything that might spring from the outhouse. When nothing did, she advanced inside.
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she could see the outhouse was
a general store for the little farmstead. There was a stash of hay for the animals during the winter, some old tools – a mattock, a shovel and a hoe – and not a lot else. There was not much that would help her and Ulrich in their current predicament.
Then she saw a long strip of leather hanging from a nail on the wall. With a wan smile on her face, Affreca lifted it down to have a closer look.
‘What do you want?’
She whipped around at the sound of a new voice. Two figures stood in the farmyard, a man and a woman. Both were very old. They were wrapped in the poorest of clothes; sheepskins and rough woollen garments with long hoods pulled up for warmth. The man was bent over at the shoulders from years of toil and he peered at Affreca as if he found it hard to make her out. The woman scowled at her, her top lip raised to reveal the few remaining teeth in her brown gums. It was she who had spoken, using the tongue of the Gaels but with an accent that was different from how Affreca had heard it spoken in Ireland.
‘What do you want?’ the woman repeated. ‘As if we don’t know.’
Affreca lowered the point of her spear. She advanced to the door of the outhouse.
‘Our ship was wrecked,’ she said. ‘My friends and I are desperate. We need dry clothes. Food.’
‘Aye. We saw your ship,’ the old woman said. Her voice dripped with hostility. ‘It was a Viking ship. We know all about Vikings here. They’ve raided these shores many times. Vikings came here not more than a month ago, with their dragon ships and their demon banners. They killed our eldest son. Our second son drowned fishing last year. There’s just us left now. Look at my husband. He’s worked to death. You think he’s fit enough to keep this farm going?’
The old man tilted his head and peered harder at Affreca. He made a strange grunting sound. She wondered if perhaps age had addled his wits as well as ravaged his body.
‘Can you help us?’ Affreca said.
The woman raised a snowy eyebrow. ‘Help you? Why should we help you?’
The cold wind bit into Affreca’s chilled flesh and she proffered the spear blade.
‘Because if you don’t hand it over willingly, I’ll take it,’ she said.
As soon as she said the words, she felt regret. The old couple were pathetic. She was young and healthy and they were old and worn out. Life had been hard and cruel to them. The looks on their faces suggested her words had lashed them like a whip.
‘That’s always the way of this world, isn’t it?’ the old woman said, narrowing her eyes. ‘The strong take from the weak. And what do we do with what’s left? Look at us? Do we look like we’ve surplus to give away? It’s winter.’
Affreca felt another pang in her heart, then thought of Ulrich and what he would say if she returned empty handed. Her teeth began to chatter and she also remembered Einar and the others. If she froze to death, she would be no use to anyone.
‘Look, I won’t leave you destitute,’ she said. ‘I just need food and dry clothes. Go and get them and I’ll leave you alone.’
‘You may as well kill us. It’s hard enough to get by with what we have, never mind after giving some away,’ the old woman said but she turned and went into the long house.
Affreca held up the long leather strap she had taken from the outhouse wall.
‘Do you still use this?’ she said.
The old man shook his head. Affreca was starting to think he was mute.
‘Well you won’t need it then,’ she said, wrapping it around her wrist like an armlet.
‘It was my son’s,’ the old man croaked, proving that he could indeed speak. Affreca frowned. She did not need any more guilt. ‘He tended the sheep for the chief. He used that sling to keep off the crows and other predators. You know that if a lamb falls on its back it can’t get up? You know what the crows do? They peck out its eyes while it’s still alive. One day Vikings came like a flock of those crows. They were on a strandhögg – raiding for food like you – and they wanted the sheep. My boy was a fine lad and wouldn’t give up his master’s stock without a fight. He blinded one of them with a stone from that sling.’
Affreca looked down at the leather strap that formed the sling. The boy might have been brave but he was not very clever. She could guess what happened next though the old man continued anyway.
‘They cut his balls off. Shoved them in his mouth. Made him eat them,’ he said, shaking his head slowly. ‘Left him to bleed to death on the hillside. When we found him, his skin was white as the snow.’
Affreca saw tears in the old man’s eyes and felt a compulsion to put down the spear and throw her arms around him. But she had to stay strong. The others depended on her. To her relief the old man’s wife re-emerged from the door of their hovel with a bundle of what looked like sheepskins and a leather bag.
‘There’s a couple of jerkins and some dried fish,’ she said. Her voice was full of resentment. ‘May they give you no luck.’
‘Is this all you have?’ Affreca said as she took the items.
‘Do we look like we have more?’ the old woman said, her voice starting to rise in pitch. ‘Do you want the very clothes off our backs? Our house? Haven’t you Vikings taken enough already?’
‘Have you got a horse?’ Affreca said. ‘A pony maybe?’
The old couple exchanged glances and Affreca knew they had.
‘You can’t take the pony,’ the old woman said. She pointed at her husband. ‘Look at him. You think he can get any distance without something to ride on?’
Affreca could listen to no more. She raised the spear blade.
‘Get it,’ she said. ‘I’ll return the horse when we’re done. You’ll get it back. You have my word.’
The old woman frowned. ‘Why would you do that? Why should we believe you anyway?’
Affreca curled her lip. She needed to stop her teeth chattering but also hoped it made her look fierce.
‘Just get the horse,’ she said.
Thirty-Two
It was a little time later and Affreca was back with Ulrich on the beach.
‘You should have killed them,’ Ulrich said as he pulled on the bulky sheepskin jerkin. He had taken off his wolf skin cloak, which he then replaced back on top of the jerkin. Being animal hide, it had not retained the water. Affreca was jealous of his extra warmth.
‘You didn’t see them,’ Affreca said. ‘They were pathetic. No harm to anyone.’
Ulrich sneered and shook his head.
‘Maybe you wouldn’t make a good Wolf Coat after all,’ he said. ‘You think this noble stallion will be able to bear my weight?’
He pointed at the decrepit, ancient pony Affreca had led down the hillside. It was grey, covered in shaggy fur and tiny. Its back was so bowed that Affreca was glad Ulrich was so short, otherwise his feet would probably have trailed on the ground even when he was mounted.
‘It was all they had,’ she said.
‘Did you check?’ Ulrich said.
‘Maybe you’d rather walk?’ Affreca said.
Ulrich gave her a vicious look, then hobbled over to the pony and clambered onto its back, wincing at the pain that shot through his injured ankle as he did so.
‘Wait a moment,’ Affreca said. She crouched and began examining the stones on the beach at her feet, turning some over with her fingers as if looking for something. Then she selected a few roughly round pebbles.
‘Are you planning to throw stones at the Gaels?’ Ulrich said.
‘In a way, yes,’ Affreca said, holding up the slingshot she had taken from the farmer’s hovel.
‘You can use a sling?’ Ulrich said.
Affreca nodded. ‘The Irish are deadly with these. My father’s hunter taught me the bow and the sling. He used to joke that it would be a good way for me to keep unwanted young men away.’
‘Let’s get moving,’ Ulrich said. ‘With any luck the rest of the crew aren’t already dead.’
They trekked back up the hillside in the direction Ulrich had earlier watched the warband go with the rest
of the crew. They followed a small animal path through the gorse, Affreca going in front and leading the horse by the bridle while Ulrich followed, sat on its back, the spear in one hand. His displeasure at this situation was evident by the surly expression on his face and the choleric silence he descended into.
‘I’m glad I’m not married to you, I must say,’ Affreca said after some time. They had climbed about two-thirds of the way to the top of the hill and now had a clear view of the coastline below and over the sea. The ocean stretched as far as the eye could see. It was dotted with the dark shapes of many islands. Beyond them there was nothing but water.
Ulrich screwed up his face. ‘Not that it’s ever likely to happen,’ he said. ‘But pray, tell me why would that be?’
‘One little upset and you sit there sulking like a child,’ Affreca said. ‘I can imagine what you’ll be like in old age. You’ll be huddled by the fire, grumbling about everything. I pity the poor woman who has to share your later days.’
‘I’ll never grow old.’ Ulrich stiffened in the saddle, putting his chin up. ‘I will die in battle and Odin will take me to the Valour Hall where the only women to bother me will be the valkyries serving me ale.’
‘I don’t recall anything in the customs that say only men will go to the Valour Hall,’ Affreca said. ‘But you better hurry up if you don’t want to get old. What age are you now?’
Ulrich held up a hand. Affreca saw the sudden change of expression on his face and halted. Ulrich dipped onto the saddle bow then swung himself off the horse. He winced in pain as his injured foot touched the ground but he let no noise cross his lips.
Affreca looked ahead but could only see empty hillside. She shot a questioning look at Ulrich.
‘There’s some sort of building up ahead,’ Ulrich said, speaking in a low voice. ‘I spotted the top of it from the horse. It looks like an old fort or something. We should be careful.’
‘What do we do?’ Affreca said.
‘I’m not much use,’ Ulrich said. ‘So I’ll have to stay here and watch the horse while you go and scout it out.’
The Raven Banner Page 17