by Angus Donald
Valtyr gave a great sigh. ‘Jarl Snorri’s treachery has caused a rift between Duke Theodoric and King Siegfried. Theodoric blames Siegfried for not recognising that Snorri was the rotten apple in the barrel. They both insisted on nominating the next Master of Hellingar, but neither would accept their other’s candidate. So Theodoric’s son Widukind suggested you for the post. And this was generally agreed by all to be a good choice.’
‘Me?’ said Bjarki.
‘Did you get a knock on the head in the drawbridge fight, Bjarki? You seem to be unusually stupid today.’
‘That’s unfair,’ said Tor. ‘He is not unusually stupid today.’
‘Thank you, Tor,’ said Bjarki, ‘I’m glad at least you—’
‘He is exactly as stupid as this almost every day,’ she said.
‘If I do accept the position of Master of Hellingar,’ said Bjarki, ‘the first thing I shall do is demand the proper respect from my subordinates.’
* * *
Bjarki stood on the top of the gatehouse of the Fortress of Hellingar and looked out at the retreating enemy. The Frankish archers had been matched by the bowmen of the North who shot from behind their fences on the ramparts and dropped lethal arrows down on the Red Cloaks standing impotently, without cover, on the edge of the channel. After an indecently long time, during which many a Red Cloak dropped screaming with a shaft in an exposed limb, an order was given for the Franks to pull back.
Bjarki wondered what was to come next. The channel had defeated them; but surely that was only a temporary respite. They might attack again with swimming Green Cloaks, but he doubted it. They’d received a mauling at the fight on the summit, and he doubted the king had brought enough Swabians to overwhelm the Dane-Work without aid from the other scarae.
Behind him, Tor, appointed his deputy master, and assisted by Gunnar, was organising the food and lodgings in the longhouses for the new occupants of Hellingar Fortress. Bjarki had also reluctantly taken the time to congratulate Ivar Knuttson on his bravery in the fight at the drawbridge. He had been surprised, again, by the Boar Lodge man, who had followed his orders willingly, and charged down to attack Snorri’s men right beside him.
‘I decided it was better not to invoke my Rekkr powers that time,’ said Ivar, not meeting his eye. ‘It seemed unnecessary in such a petty skirmish.’
Bjarki avoided his gaze, too, and said: ‘Wise, Ivar, very wise.’
‘I noticed that you refrained from using them as well,’ said Ivar.
Bjarki was on the verge of saying something unkind in retort, but bit his tongue. ‘You did well, Ivar,’ he said. ‘You did honour to the Boar Lodge.’
Then he gave him a section of the fortress walls to command.
Now, standing on the roof of the gatehouse, Bjarki wondered if that had been a wise choice. This was his first experience of command and already he was not sure if he liked it very much. Could he trust, Ivar? He had no idea. If he had made a mistake, it could be disastrous. The fortunes of the garrison, nearly a thousand men and women, now rested solely in his hands. More than that: the future of the North. If he failed to keep Karolus out of Hellingar, then the Dane-Work would fall, and if the Dane-Work fell, it would be the end of them all, and the destruction of their whole way of life.
How could he keep the Red Cloaks out? They would find a way across the channel soon enough, and with their vastly superior numbers it would then be all over. They simply did not have enough warriors in the Dane-Work to win this fight – ten thousand men against two thousand. It was impossible. For an indulgent moment he thought about Goran, the long-haired man he had met in Brenna, and the dream of happiness he had dangled before him: the image of that longhouse on the edge of the forest, with the little fishing boat and the contented pig and the well-tended barley fields.
He sighed. There was something missing from that picture, though. A woman – and perhaps some little blond children running joyfully about the courtyard. But first a good woman. He tried to imagine Tor sitting quietly beside him after a day’s work – and could not. Tor was too restless a spirit, too spiky a companion, and besides, while he knew he loved her, and although she was undeniably pretty, he did not think of her in the warm, urgent way he sometimes thought about other girls when he noticed them.
Freya, then? She had been less in his thoughts of late. Had it really been a year since he had seen her? Did he still love her? He could not say. But he had made an oath to her. And he could easily imagine her beside him after the long day’s work in that perfect eastern homestead. They could be happy together. Yes. Freya. If she agreed. And if he survived the battle, of course.
Bjarki lifted up his face to the sunny heavens and closed his eyes.
‘All-Father,’ he prayed, ‘Odin, hear me now. If I must fall in this battle, make my death a good and noble one. Grant me one fine blazing moment of glory and, afterwards, accept me into your eternal feasting hall.’
He took a deep breath. ‘But, All-Father, if you do not wish my life to meet an ending here, then allow me, O Great One, to survive and make a life in the east. If you have some purpose for the great honour, this gift you have bestowed on me, show me, I beg you now, show me a sign of your intent.
‘Old One, I am truly grateful that you have allowed the gandr to come inside me; all that is holy comes from you, I know this, and I am humbled by the favour you have shown. But am I to be so highly honoured only for such a brief period of time? If not, if you wish me to continue to serve you for a little while longer, grant me this boon. Show me a sign, and let me survive this field of blood. Help me, All-Father, help us all in our time of need. Our enemies are mighty – their host is as uncountable as the stars. But you are the Lord of War who can shatter their spear-shafts, crack their swords, and split their shields in two. Help me now, mighty Odin, this I beg of you; if it is your divine will that I survive the coming test.’
Bjarki opened his eyes. The sun was setting in the west, in a blood-red sky. An omen, perhaps, of the battle to come. Or, more likely, just a sunset.
He felt foolish for praying; for begging for his life like a coward.
Then he looked east, and all the hairs on his neck stood up at once. For the old god had answered his prayer. The All-Father had given him a sign.
A mile away to the east along the muddy channel, Bjarki could see a large square sail, red-and-white-striped, and the low black form of a dragon-ship beneath it. A large flag depicting the fighting stags of Svearland flapped at the top of the mast, round shields adorned the sides of the ship, and Bjarki could see the glints of steel helms inside the vessel in the last rays of the sun. There were more sea-steeds behind the first, many more, too many to count.
The All-Father had sent aid to his people.
Chapter Thirty
Nose to nose with the future
Tor’s head was splitting. It wasn’t because the cub Garm had befouled the store cupboard he had been locked in all the day before, and the thrall responsible for cleaning it up was complaining loudly in her ear. It wasn’t because she now had to find food and lodgings for another five hundred Svearlander fighters in the cramped longhouses of Hellingar Fortress – she was delighted that her compatriots had answered Theodoric’s call and sent ten ships full of warriors to his aid. It wasn’t because Bjarki, the Master of Hellingar, seemed to be living in his own world, watching the enemy from the top of the gatehouse hour after hour while there was work to be done.
It was the hammering. For two days, the sound of hammers on wood, of nails being driven home, had rung out over the battlefield. It was not too loud, for the work was taking place behind the Frankish lines three-quarters of a mile away, but it was constant, insistent and menacing.
King Karolus was building his own bridges. Three of these contraptions – wheeled machines with an upright bridge section that could be lowered to give a platform across the water; in fact, very similar in design to the one that Bjarki had destroyed two days ago – had already been pushed forward of the
enemy lines and left with only a small guard of Blue Cloaks, the corps of Frankish engineers, about five hundred yards from the channel. It was almost as if the king was taunting them with his imminent attack, as if he were saying, ‘I can cross your little beck and crush you whenever I choose!’
In the meantime, the hammering and sawing never ceased, day or night. It felt sometimes as if the work was taking place inside Tor’s aching head.
She had just got the last of the Svears settled in their allocated longhouses and had arranged their daily rations from the stores, with the help of one of Theodoric’s clerks, and was sitting down for the noonday meal at the long table in Ash House with a sulky Garm and a bowl of barley soup, when she became aware that Valtyr was standing in the doorway, with Bjarki behind him. They were both looking at her with grave expressions.
‘There is someone from Svearland who wishes to speak to you, Tor,’ said Valtyr. He and Bjarki ducked under the lintel and came into the hall.
‘If it’s another boozy spearman whining about the amount of ale he will receive each day, he can shove his complaint right up his hairy—’
Tor stopped. Behind Valtyr and Bjarki was another figure, tall, even looming. He came forward and stood in a shaft of sunlight from one of the open shutters. He was a warrior; that was plain from the scars on his face and on his muscled bare arms, a tall, broad, brute of a man of middle years in cross-gartered trews and embroidered tunic. A wolf-skin cloak fell from his shoulders to his knees, a sword and a seax hung from his belt.
Tor looked into his face and the shock was as sharp as a slap. The resemblance was uncanny. The man looked almost exactly like Bjarki, an older, more battered version of Bjarki, and with brown rather than blue eyes. But this man bore the face that Bjarki would have in twenty-odd years.
‘I am Hildar Torfinnsson,’ said the man, in a rumbling growl of a voice. It was the voice that did it. The memories came crashing back: his ale-breathed face bending to kiss her goodnight when she was a child in her cot, the bristles of his beard against her cheek; his smell of man-sweat, horse and leather; the scent of her father; the scent of her childhood in Svearland.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No… I’m not going to… no!’
‘This is your father,’ said Bjarki. ‘He is also, it seems, my fa—’
‘You’re dead. You died. You jumped from Thor’s Rock and—’
‘I lived,’ rumbled Hildar. ‘I jumped from that high rock and fell so far and was swallowed by the storm-tossed waves below. Yet I lived.’
‘No, my mother said you… and where have you been… Because I thought you were…’ Then Tor, to her everlasting shame, burst into tears.
* * *
Bjarki summoned a thrall to bring them ale, bread and cheese, and Hildar sat on the bench with his two grown children gazing at him from the other side of the table, and Valtyr, leaning against the wall, watched with a sly smile.
‘Did you know he was alive?’ Tor asked the one-eyed old man.
‘I did – but I was sworn to secrecy.’
‘So you have kept this from me all the time I have known you. Some friend you are,’ she said bitterly. She was still embarrassed by her weeping.
‘He has also watched over you, Torfinna, all these long years, in my absence,’ said Hildar. ‘And over you as well, Bjarki, my first-born son.’
He turned very fast and snarled at Valtyr. ‘Although not as well as I might have wished. I gave you instructions about the boy, Valtyr. No Fyr Skola! None of that. He was not to become Rekkr. I was clear, I believe.’
Valtyr shrugged, and smiled more broadly, but Tor could see that he was tense and trying to hide his fear. ‘They were going to hang him, Hildar. I had to get him away. Also… well, fate, blood, call it what you will.’
‘We will discuss this on another occasion,’ said Hildar. It sounded a little like a threat. ‘There’ll be reckoning with the Bago folk, too. Olaf Karlsson took my silver but he, too, broke faith when he thought me dead.’
‘Where have you been?’ said Tor. ‘Why did you leave me… us?’
Hildar looked at Tor, then at Bjarki.
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘I owe you the telling of it.’
He took a long pull from his ale horn, and wiped his mouth. ‘You know, of course, what I am?’ he said, touching a thick finger to the centre of his brows where there was a long Wolf Lodge triangle in faded black ink.
They both nodded. ‘I reckon you must understand a fair amount about the Fire Born by now,’ Hildar said, looking directly at Bjarki.
‘But, let me tell you this, son. Whatever gnaws at you now, you can expect more of it. Then more still. It lives in you; it grows. It takes your body, your mind, then your soul. There’s not a thing you can do to stop it.’
‘I know,’ said Bjarki.
‘I did not want this for you, son, truly I didn’t. But it runs in the blood. I thought if I put you as far away from me as possible that you’d be safe…’
‘If it runs in the blood, why can I not find my gandr?’ said Tor. ‘Why am I not Rekkr as well?’
‘Only Odin knows that. But thank the gods that you are not, sweet daughter of mine. And pray that you do not attract a gandr to you in future.’
‘Ha!’ said Tor. ‘Come on, then. Tell us, why did you abandon us?’
‘This…’ Hildar touched his tattoo again, ‘this thing cannot easily be controlled, sometimes not at all. If you do not know it yet, son, you will one day. It is different for each of us. I lost control soon after the Wolf came to me in the forest. We used to have a special word for it in the Fyr Skola—’
‘Galálar!’ Bjarki laid the word down like a stone slab.
‘Yes. That is what they call it. I am losing my words. The Wolf is very great in me now; it gets stronger every year. I went… uh, Galálar in the Fyr Skola. There was a boy I hated. A bully, a swaggerer, and I ripped him apart with my hands. And some others. The Wolf overcame me. The Wolf was me. All of me. I don’t have the skald-skill now to describe it properly.’
‘I understand,’ said Bjarki.
‘I had to leave the Fyr Skola and I became a vagabond, travelling the North. I stole. I killed men for money. I was… a bad man, an outlaw.’
Neither Bjarki nor Tor said anything. But Tor felt Bjarki take her hand under the table and squeeze it. His hand was very warm; she gripped it tight.
‘I came to Svearland with nothing but blood on my fists, but the king there was good to me. He took me into his hall and fed me, gave me a place on his benches. And I fought for him. I killed for him at a great battle under the mountain peaks. Blundfjell was the place. And I earned his favour there by slaying the king of his enemies. After the victory, the Wolf was strong in me. I wanted to go on, to kill and kill and wallow in the blood of my foes for ever.’
Hildar was twitching slightly, his hands jerking, his limbs shuddering just at the act of remembering the bloodshed he had committed so long ago.
Valtyr said: ‘You don’t need to talk about this.’
‘I do need to talk about this… I must…’ Hildar was bellowing. Tor instinctively jerked back at the volume of his familiar voice. This huge man, she saw, was holding on to his humanity by the very slenderest of threads.
Hildar slowly regained his composure.
He whispered: ‘I went north. When I do not know what to do, I always head north. I went to the frozen lands of the Sami, and there I met a woman, a fine woman, a beautiful woman and… and she saw me, and she loved me.
‘She was a gothi of their people, one of their wise women, though she was young and beautiful then. She beat her holy drum and chanted her ancient words and breathed in the sacred smoke – and she travelled into the Spirit World and she found my Wolf, and she spoke to it, she soothed it; she fed it reindeer meat, stroked its fur. She calmed its ravening, she tamed it like a dog, and, for a while, my troubles eased. I, too, was tamed by her.’
Hildar poured himself more ale and Tor saw his hand was still shaking.
‘She died, of course,’ he said more calmly. ‘She died giving birth to you, Bjarki. She went off to dwell in the Spirit World. She left me behind.’
‘What was her name?’ asked Bjarki.
‘She was called Mist-in-the-Morning. She was a fine, strong woman, your mother. But when she left me, I was lost again.’
Hildar stared at the table in silence for a little while, remembering.
‘I went south then, with the baby, with you, Bjarki, walking for a month – you were strong, too, even then, my son, for you did not cry once. Not once in a whole month on that snowy march. I took you over the seas to Jutland, and to Bago. And at Bago, I gave you over to Olaf Karlsson, whom I had known in my earlier travels, and I gave him a bag of silver, a fortune – ill-gotten – and told him to care for you, and give you a good home. He was to treat you well, teach you a trade, and on no account was he to send you to the Fyr Skola. Ever. Not that for you. Did he treat you well, at least?’
Bjarki shrugged. ‘Not well. They were cruel. But it’s not important.’
‘Cruel,’ said Hildar slowly. ‘Cruel. Is that so? And Valtyr here says there was a girl in Bago that you cared for.’
‘I did – Freya was her name. I loved her. I made an oath to her. But I had to leave her when they banished me. They took her away from me.’
‘Hmm,’ said Hildar. ‘It is dreadful to be left behind. I know it, son.’
‘How did you meet my mother?’ asked Tor.
‘I went back to Svearland, after that,’ said Hildar, looking at Tor. ‘I went to claim my reward from Harald Fox-Beard, for Blundfjell. He kept his word, he gave me a village by the sea and a woman: your mother, Gytha.’
‘You hurt her; I remember the bruises and the tears,’ said Tor.
‘I did. The Wolf was in me, and growing stronger. I… wanted her to be Mist-in-the-Morning and… she was not. So, I was… angry with her.’
‘You think that’s an excuse?’
‘I make no excuse for the things I have done. The Norns spun my fate, not I. The Wolf was in me. I tried to kill the Wolf. I failed. I jumped into the wild water from Thor’s Rock but the sea god spat me out. Aegir rejected me. I crawled to land; I went north, to the Sami, to the soothing snows and ice.’