Blood Will Follow

by Snorri Kristjansson

  “Boys!” he shouted. “Why did no one wake me up?”

  It was oddly quiet for morning.

  He pulled aside the curtain that covered his sleeping alcove and froze. The bodies of three young men lay sprawled on the floor of his chamber, scattered like broken toys, with bloodied hands and torn faces. It hurt to look at them. Words gathered in his mouth, then tumbled out all at once, along with the remains of last night’s dinner. The bile heaved out of him, followed by sobbing gasps for air.

  Johan flailed around blindly for a moment, until he found what he was searching for—his ax. Clutching it in his left hand and wincing with every movement, he stepped out into the middle of the room. “Boys!” he shouted, his voice breaking.

  Somewhere within the house, something clattered into furniture.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted. “Boys!”

  The sound of breaking timber grew closer. A fine sprinkle of dust drifted down from above. “It’ll start to snow soon,” Johan Aagard thought. “I must make sure we’re stocked with firewood.”

  Something huge crashed through into the next room, and the light changed, as if someone had ripped a hole in the wall. A heavy, almost animal smell filled his nostrils.

  Johan gripped his ax as hard as he could. “Come on, then,” he hissed between gritted teeth.

  None of the farmhands had wanted to wake Johan up in the morning. Since he fell and broke his arm at Helga’s farm, he’d been even more ornery than usual, and he was always first up anyway. However, when noon came and went without the old man rousing, they drew straws. The youngest of them pulled the shortest one. He inched into the bedchamber.

  Johan Aagard lay where he had gone to rest, his face contorted in pain, blood soaking his bed. He had gouged out his eyes with his fingers.

  After much discussion they called on the elders at Skaer, who said Johan should be buried in a mound to fit a man of his stature, entombed in his bed so he had somewhere to rest in the afterlife. Besides, he’d clearly cared a lot for his bed, to commission such nice runework.

  The farmhands didn’t recognize the runes, but they all agreed that they were very new.

  When the day came, all of his neighbors showed up, except one.

  “Where’s Helga?” Johan’s foreman asked the town blacksmith.

  “It’s the strangest thing,” Skakki said. “We swung by Ovregard, but she’s not there. Must have been raiders or something. The whole place has been burned down—the horse has been stolen, and something’s dug up in the shed. It’s almost as if she never existed.”

  From the cover of a stand of trees half a mile away, Helga stood and watched the ceremony, idly playing with a rune-carving knife. Beside her, Streak munched contentedly on some moss.

  “You weren’t to know, Johan Aagard,” she said to the wind, “but I have seen a lot worse than you, and I’m still here.” In two swift movements she mounted the protesting Streak and guided the mare north, away from Skaer, her farm, and her former life.

  UPPSALA, EAST SWEDEN

  LATE NOVEMBER, AD 996

  A dull pain behind Ulfar’s eyes blurred his vision. The beams in the roof above his head felt miles away. His backache told him he’d been lying on the ground. Someone had placed him on furs just thick enough to take away the cold of the earth, and blankets had been draped over him, wrapped tight enough to make him uncomfortable and sweaty. His head throbbed and his stomach hurt.

  The blonde woman leaned into his field of vision.

  “You . . . you’re not my wife. Don’t have a wife.” Claws of fear scratched at his spine. His voice was not his own. His words were slurred, and all that came out was a quiet whisper.

  “I know,” the woman whispered. “Drink this.”

  “No—hnnh—” Ulfar struggled, but he was as weak as a newborn child. She held his head firmly and tipped a small water-skin to his lips. Drops of a liquid of some sort tipped out. Ulfar tried to clamp his mouth shut.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t. You have to.” She pinched his nose shut. “Just drink it. Everything will be fine.”

  He gave up long before he wanted to, swallowing, coughing, and gasping. The mixture had a bitter taste, masked with sickly sweet honey.

  She eased his head back onto the ground. “Now rest. I am sorry about last night, but you wouldn’t have come with me. I know how you loved her. Now we’ll be fine, though.”

  Poisoned.

  He’d been poisoned.

  Ulfar thrashed and tried to spit out the foul substance, but his body wouldn’t move. A cold chill went through him as he felt the liquid thicken his throat, seep into his blood, and cool him down, down below life. His heart beat faster, fighting against the invader, but it was no good. A rattling breath escaped him.

  “What?” she asked.

  “H-help . . . ,” Ulfar hissed.

  She looked at him, confusion written all over her features. “You’ll just fall asleep. Then you’ll be weak for a little bit. He told me.”

  In a last act of defiance, Ulfar held her gaze until his heart stopped.

  The moment he fell off the precipice into death, pain drove through him from his cold, blackened core, slicing his flesh like shards of a breaking stone. Every muscle in his body tensed, wrenched, and trembled. His jaw clamped shut, and the veins in his forehead throbbed. For a moment he was suspended, half a step from the blissful black . . . and then he was dragged from the abyss. His heart started beating again, weakly.

  His captor stared at him in mute horror.

  “. . . help . . . ,” he hissed. He could still feel the poison seeping through his veins.

  The woman looked at him, tears running down her face. “What . . . what can I do?”

  Ulfar tossed his head feebly. “. . . drink . . . ,” he muttered, but it was too late; his heart had started slowing again. He gritted his teeth and waited for the pain.

  The light had changed. Everything in his body ached, his eyes included. Straining them, he could just make out the edge of the roof. Nighttime, then.

  With a mighty effort, he rolled his head to one side.

  He saw the woman, crouching by a fire-pit. A small pot was suspended above it; she was stirring with purpose. He couldn’t smell anything.

  The ground was packed dirt, but not covered. So: outhouse of some sort? His eyes traveled along the edge of the bubble of light around the cook-fire, and shapes in the dusk slowly resolved into pens and a feeding trough.

  He was in the pig house.

  It would be easy enough to escape if he could only move. His heart felt a little stronger, but not much.

  He turned his head to get a better look at his captor.

  The woman was no longer stirring. Instead she sat still, watching him. Her eyes were puffy, and her hair was unkempt. “I . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Something sparked in the back of Ulfar’s head.

  She looked . . . familiar.

  He tried as hard as he could to remember the Uppsala girls from all those years ago. Greta’s screaming face came first, unbidden, and vague forms followed, but he could find no match in his memory, no recognition. No one from his travels, either, unless—

  Another thought struck him.

  “I’m so sorry,” she muttered. “I never thought you’d—”

  “Hurt so bad,” Ulfar said.

  The small blonde woman cried then, silent tears. “I don’t understand. You were just supposed to . . . He told me you’d be confused, like you’d just woken up, and I could drag you with me on a horse. You’d be ill, but only pretend. Not real. Not . . . like that.” The words tumbled out of her, faster and faster. “He gave me the powder, and I poured it into your ale. He said to put just a little and I was careful. I was careful.” She lapsed into silence, and her lips trembled.

  “Inga,” Ulfar wheezed.

  The woman’s eyes widened, and the words ground to a halt. “How—?”

  “You’re her,” Ulfar said. Every word hurt. “Stenvik.”<
br />
  “Yes,” she whispered. “You remember?”

  Ulfar nodded. The light from the cook-fire faded sharply at the edge of his vision, and he fainted.

  When he came to again, the air smelled of morning. He felt like a dead fish that had been struck against a stone a couple of times, but he was alive.

  Inga sat and watched him. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes ringed by exhaustion. “I’m sorry,” she muttered again.

  Ulfar spoke before he thought. “Shhh,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. I’m all right.” He shuddered. “Well, maybe not quite bear-wrestling-ready yet,” he said, grinning weakly. “But I’m very tired, and I haven’t seen you in a long time. How are things in Stenvik?”

  Inga just looked at him, trembling with a mixture of sadness, guilt, and . . . what? Everything about her appeared to slow down. “Stenvik is—Stenvik has—” She looked around the outhouse for the missing words. “Stenvik changed,” she said finally.

  “Oh?” Ulfar did his best to sound just curious enough. “How so?”

  “When King Olav . . . rescued us, we learned about the word of this One God, Christ. He’s very kind, and loving, and . . . , and . . .”

  Mustering all his strength, Ulfar placed a hand on her knee and looked at her. “They’re not here, Inga. He’s useless and soft, and Thor would smash his skinny little ass.”

  The smile that lit up Inga’s face was beautiful, radiant, guilty—and gone. She looked around, quickly, then turned a stern eye on Ulfar. “Shh,” she said, pursing her lips. “As I was saying—” The ghost of a smile hovered at the corners of her mouth. “Everything changed. Olav imprisoned Sigurd and Sven for worshipping their own gods, but the rest of the raiders were allowed to go free.”

  Ulfar fought against a tide of emotion. He was still in danger, and he needed information. “Really? But what about Harald?”

  True fury flashed in Inga’s eyes. She spat and suddenly looked neither frail nor feeble. “That bag of shit got what he deserved,” she hissed. “Less, if you ask me. I’d happily have tied him down and cut his dick off, slice—by—slice.”

  They sat together in silence for a few moments, remembering. After a while, Inga spoke up again. “I looked for you, you know . . . after. But you’d disappeared—you and Audun. There were stories.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  Inga started scratching at the ground, absentmindedly. “Like you being someone’s agent—some said King Olav’s, some said King Erik’s over here.”

  “Hm. Well, for what it’s worth, I kind of was, but not like that,” Ulfar said. “Geiri and I were traveling on King Erik’s behalf.”

  “I was told that you worked for the Forkbeard. That’s why he sent us to get you.”

  “And who was that?” Ulfar dropped the question almost without thinking, convincing himself he didn’t really want to know, that it was just curiosity, just an innocent—

  Inga backed off as if she’d just seen a wolf in the room. “I—It was . . .”

  He looked her in the eyes and smiled, a reassuring smile that he immediately suspected would comfort no one, but—

  “It was Valgard.”

  For a moment, Ulfar forgot most of his aches. He frowned and scratched his head. “Valgard? The healer?”

  “Yes,” Inga said. Her mouth trembled. “He said that we were to go and catch you and bring you back because he wanted to meet you, because you might know something about Forkbeard. But then, once when he’d had a little too much to drink and was running his mouth, he said he needed to have you because of something that happened on the wall when King Olav came.” She was caught up in her own world, so Ulfar had a crucial moment to pick his jaw back up off the floor. “He said . . . he said . . .”

  Finding a hidden reserve of power, Ulfar lifted himself up onto one elbow. “What?” he muttered softly.

  “He was drunk, but he said . . . I could soften you up and then, after he was done with you, he’d get rid of you like your useless cousin,” Inga said.

  And just like that, everything fell into place.

  Ulfar bent his knee and slowly, torturously, rose from his pallet. “Where is he now?”

  “Up north somewhere, I think,” Inga said. She looked at him, and when she saw his face, she shuffled backward.

  “He lied to you,” Ulfar said. “He used you. He—”

  There was a firm knock on the door. “Ulfar!” Goran’s voice was loud enough to be heard through the walls. “Are you there?”

  Ulfar glanced at Inga, then staggered toward the sounds. After a brief struggle with the latch, the door swung open.

  “Oh,” Goran said. After a brief pause, he added, “Are you well?”

  “I’ve seen better-looking corpses,” Heidrek said, standing behind him. Next to Heidrek, Arnar grunted his agreement.

  “What are you doing here?” Ulfar wheezed.

  “Looking for you, pukeface,” Heidrek said. “We got—”

  “Ingimar left,” Goran said. “We had a little too much fun and passed out. He picked a couple of likely lads from town and ran off the next morning. Probably got them for cheaper, too.”

  Arnar harrumphed in the background.

  “So we got to talking with the locals. Then Goran said we should check whether we could find someone rich, stupid, and annoying who needed to leave very soon,” Heidrek added.

  The sunlight and the sounds of town brought the full force of the headache smashing into Ulfar’s forehead from inside. He smiled at the pain. Pain meant life. “Did you, now? Well—it just so happens that I’ve got places to go and people to see.”

  He caught Goran examining him, uncomfortably like one would check a lame horse. “When were you thinking of leaving?”

  Ulfar caught his eye. “Now,” he said. “Go to the stables.”

  A moment later, Goran nodded, and the three men turned and walked away. When they’d gone, Inga emerged from the shadows. “Take me with you,” she said.

  “No.” Ulfar turned and walked toward the door.

  A strong, slender hand grabbed his shoulder and twisted him around. “Did it sound like a question?” Inga said. “I’m coming with you.” She stared straight at him. “I don’t like being used.”

  Ulfar looked down at the fire blazing in the woman’s eyes and sighed.

  When he showed up at the stables, no one asked any questions; they simply handed over the reins to five horses, unremarkable mares past their prime but well fit for their purpose. The stable-hand brought out bags of rations.

  “Thank him for me,” Ulfar said to him.

  When Ulfar emerged, Heidrek whistled. “He goes into the stables with no money and comes out with five horses and supplies. Impressive.”

  “Alfgeir wants us gone,” Ulfar mumbled. “Before there’s trouble.”

  Goran checked the horses in silence.

  Inga sat her mare gingerly. Ulfar reached over and adjusted her reins. “Hold like”—he wrapped the band around her hands twice—“this. And squeeze with your legs, or your ass will hurt for days.”

  Heidrek opened his mouth. The look he got from Goran nearly knocked out his teeth.

  “Thank you,” Inga said.

  The still, dark wave of trees rose slowly ahead of them, and soon they were swallowed up. The cold shadows in the forest had a restorative effect on Ulfar’s head; at last it was clearing. He gestured to Goran to take the lead and rode up alongside Inga.

  “What do you think of the horse?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he asked, “You have ridden before, haven’t you?”

  She looked at him as if he was an idiot. “Can you pick and clean a four-man net in half the time it takes to unload a boat?”

  Ulfar’s finger throbbed with the memory. “I’d be a bleeding mess in the blink of an eye,” he said.

  She smiled. “And I’m scared out of my wits up here.”

  He smiled back. “They’re terrifying beasts, aren’t they?” His mare whinnied in assent.

  They r
ode side by side in silence for a little while.

  “You want me to tell you things, don’t you? About . . . him,” she said, almost too softly to hear. Ulfar bit his tongue and waited. The gentle, rocking rhythm of the horses and the soft silence of the forest would do his work for him. “He . . . went straight over,” she continued. “I don’t know why, but King Olav’s men spared him—they put him in charge of converting the faithless. About a week after the assault, he started being all friendly, asking how I was, whether I missed . . .” Inga lost her words. She glanced at Ulfar, who looked back at her.

  “Every day,” he said quietly. “When I’m just about to sleep. And when I wake. Every single day.” He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out slowly. “Please continue.”

  Inga’s words rushed out, eager to pull the story in another direction. “He was very nice to me, told me I was needed, that I was important. No one had ever done that. He said I could start doing the king’s work for him. And I got confused.

  “Then he told me to go and get you—me and four men. He told us all kinds of tall tales about how you’d poisoned Harald, how you’d seduced Lilia with rune magic, that you were evil. They were to strong-arm you, I was to be . . . bait.”

  “And he gave you the powder,” Ulfar added.

  “Yes—the powder. He made it himself; he said it’d knock you out, make you look ill, make you easy to drag home. I don’t understand. I always thought he was very good with herbs and that stuff.”

  Ulfar thought for a while. “He is,” he concluded. “He really is.” Inga looked at him. “Sometimes things just go a bit wrong.” There was no doubt—of course Valgard had meant to kill him. It would have been absolute proof of his immortality.

  “The thing is,” Inga said, “I don’t think . . .”

  Ulfar turned back to her. She looked worried.

  “I don’t think we were the only ones he sent out to get you.”

  The next thing Ulfar heard was a whistling sound—and then Heidrek slammed forward, coughing up blood. The arrow was buried deep in his back. The next arrow took him in the shoulder, spinning him off the panicking horse.

  With speed belied by his bulk, Arnar spurred his mount around to face the attacker. He dropped to hide most of himself behind his horse just as the third arrow took it in the neck. It whinnied in a panic, but he had a good hold on the reins and pulled for all he was worth.