“Sigurd of Sogn,” said Hakon. “I know your brother Ragnvald very well. What brings you to my shores?”
“This is your land?” Egil asked.
“My grandfather discovered these islands,” said Hakon. “They have always been held by the jarls of Halogaland.” Egil knocked his elbow into Sigurd’s and Sigurd glanced at him. He could not read Egil’s face, and so turned back to Hakon.
“We have stopped here on the way to Iceland to seek our fortune,” said Sigurd. “Among us are many looking for a better life.”
“And Ragnvald let you go?” Hakon asked.
“I am a grown man,” said Sigurd, flushing. “I go where I wish.”
“And there is no place for you by Ragnvald’s side,” said Hakon. “Good. I can welcome you and your men. There is porridge and sheep-cheese enough for all of you, and you can trade for more provisions here.”
“Thank you,” said Sigurd. “We are hungry and thirsty.” He did not know what they had to trade for provisions. He had some treasures from Ragnvald: bits of hacksilver, a narrow gold arm ring, a penannular cloak clasp of brass and carnelian, though looking at Hakon’s rich dress, with no metal less precious than gold adorning him, he wondered if Hakon had any use for these trinkets.
“How many are you?” Hakon asked.
“Thirty adults, and some children,” said Sigurd.
Hakon smiled. “You are near enough to kin that I should be generous. Do not worry about payment—I will give you what you need. I am hungry for news, and feeding your followers is a small enough price to pay.”
* * *
Hakon could not feast Sigurd and the settlers very richly, but after weeks of dried fish and hard bread, his hall’s stewed onions and herbed oat porridge, flecked with bits of goat meat, tasted nearly as good to Sigurd as the best cut of beef. Hakon bade Sigurd sit next to him and tell him all he could from Norway.
“What are you doing so far from Norway?” Sigurd asked Hakon. A few glasses of Hakon’s mellow golden wine had emboldened his tongue.
“I always have to keep an eye on my holdings, and my sons are all busy.”
“Did you hear of your son Herlaug’s wounding?” Sigurd asked. “I heard that Ragnvald’s man Arnfast cut open his face, and he will be scarred for life.” As soon as he said it he saw that he had spoken out of turn.
“That is no way to tell a man of his son’s injury,” said Hakon. “Do you come here to bait me? There are many who would like discord between me and Harald’s men.”
Sigurd glanced at Egil, and found no help. He looked down at his plate. “I didn’t, my lord. He is—he lives, I have heard. He will be scarred, but many men are scarred. I thought it was news you would want to know.”
“Do not fear, young Sigurd,” said Hakon, looking satisfied now. “I have seen my son, and he will live, with the good healing of the sorceress Ronhild, and he will take his revenge upon the men who disfigured him.”
“I heard Harald outlawed feuding.”
Hakon snorted. “Might as well outlaw breathing. How else can these matters be settled? The law courts? Only when the judgment is not tainted.”
“Ragnvald said that feuds destroy districts and families,” said Sigurd, carefully deferential. He did not want to feel Hakon’s disapproval again.
“Ah, I see. You wonder if you will be able to strike against your brother,” said Hakon. Sigurd was startled by his assumption, and opened his mouth to correct him when Hakon continued, “Do you have a son who can carry out your revenge for you if you fall?”
This was not what Sigurd meant at all. He had been relieved when Ragnvald offered him friendship and took the burden of vengeance from him. But he did have a younger half-brother whom he rarely thought of, Vigdis’s son by Olaf, called Hallbjorn. He would now be a great boy of seven or eight. Old enough to learn to fight. Vigdis’s kin might want him to challenge Ragnvald, with land like Sogn at stake.
“I have a half-brother,” said Sigurd carefully. He wondered if Hakon meant to trap him into betraying Ragnvald. “I do not want to fight King Ragnvald.”
“But you do not want to fight for him either,” said Hakon. “Otherwise, you would not be here. Is it another land you seek, or only the freedom to make your own way, I wonder?”
“I seek another land,” said Sigurd. “I have not made a success at home, and thought I might do better abroad. I am sorry, King Hakon, I think you want me to say something, and I do not know what it is.”
“No,” said Hakon. “I only want to hear what you think—what all men of Norway think. It is all very well for kings to make war on each other and take taxes, but we take them to protect our people.”
“I had not thought of that,” said Sigurd. When he gave these matters any thought at all, he remembered the stories skalds told of the gods, that they made some men to rule, and some men to serve, and those who ruled held land and were owed taxes as the gods were owed sacrifices.
“Well, I am glad to hear the news of home,” said Hakon. “Your stepbrother, though you esteem him well, has risen too far, too fast.” His mustache moved in a smile when he saw Sigurd’s expression. “Do I surprise you?”
“I knew—I knew that you and he were no longer close.”
“No longer close, ha. I suppose that is true. He is an ambitious one, stepping on many as he rises. Your father was one of them, my sons and I are others. If you see him again, you should punish him for so much ambition.”
“I would not—” said Sigurd.
“No, I don’t think you would,” said Hakon. “He is lucky to have you so loyal. But remember—you were not loyal enough to stay. And you told me yourself that you are your own man. Do not forget that.”
Hakon’s words haunted Sigurd as he tried to sleep that night on a bed of dried grass that smelled like dog, and with Egil’s sour breath in his face. After so long at sea, it felt strange not to have the swaying of the ship to rock him to sleep at night. In Sogn all loved Ragnvald, and none questioned Sigurd’s choice to follow him. Perhaps he should not have left.
* * *
Sigurd and the settlers spent five days resting in and around Hakon’s hall, relying on his generosity to stay fed and dry. Sigurd traded some of his trinkets for provisions to feed their party for another four weeks at sea, for the journey could take that long. With Egil’s help, he directed the loading of the ship, making sure that it was evenly weighted, with the heaviest baggage along the keel.
They had no help from Dyri, who had made a place for himself at Hakon’s hearth and seldom stirred farther from it than to visit the outhouse after drinking ale all day. Sigurd and Egil sat by him one afternoon when the rain had been falling steadily all day from the low clouds that hid the tops of the islands.
“The ship is packed,” said Sigurd. “When can we leave?”
“After you build your own ship and learn to sail it,” said Dyri. “I will stay here.”
It took a moment for Sigurd to realize what he was saying. He already felt uncomfortable about the generosity that Hakon had extended them for this long, and now Dyri proposed relying on it further. “You need to look at the tides and tell us when we should be ready,” said Sigurd.
“I’m not going,” said Dyri.
“Why?” Egil asked.
“Winter is coming on and the seas will only grow more dangerous,” said Dyri. He had been playing knucklebones, and he turned his back to Sigurd. He made another throw and caught the ball on the back of his hand while he took the bones into his palm.
Sigurd kicked his leg. “You promised all of us a journey to Iceland. You’re saying we should hire a new pilot?”
Dyri kicked back at him. “No, I am keeping my ship and I am not going any farther,” he said. “There is land here to claim.”
“No trees,” said Egil. “Are you going to live in a turf house where you can never stand up? Do you know where King Hakon got the wood for this hall? He sailed it across from one of his Halogaland forests. You won’t be able to do that.”<
br />
“I have a ship,” said Dyri with a shrug. “I can make that into a house.”
Egil snorted. “No you can’t. The wood is too thin, and it will blow over in the first storm. And you will have many storms here. See how the houses are only in the valleys. I would wager it blows for months at a time in the winter.”
“Turf will keep out the wind, then,” said Dyri. “I go no farther.”
* * *
After talking to some of Hakon’s men, Sigurd discovered that no other ship was likely to take them on to Iceland at this time of year, and that Dyri’s refusal was not as strange and unmanly as he had thought. Hakon’s most experienced pilot spoke of waves many times the height of a mast, which came crashing into the islands with the heavy storms that had, in the days when the gods walked the earth, blown all the trees away. He said he had hoped not to travel again until the spring, but Hakon would travel south to the Shetland and Orkney Islands, and then, hugging the Scottish shore, make his way to Dublin. Of course, the pilot added darkly, the sea could do anything it pleased. Many men had drowned in sight of land, and would continue to do so until the world serpent rose up out of the ocean and drank it down to the dregs.
“Would it be so terrible to remain here?” Sigurd asked Egil. “I might not like living under turf, but we can stay in Hakon’s hall for now.”
“Turf or wood, that is not my concern,” said Egil. “Dyri is mistaken. All of the land here that is flat enough for building or farming is claimed. Perhaps he plans to beg his food off Hakon all winter. You may do as you please—I will find a way to go on to Iceland, if I have to make a raft and row there myself.”
Rain lashed the outside of Hakon’s hall, making the air inside close and damp. Steam rose up from Sigurd’s clothes on the side closest to the hearth fire. “I don’t know what you want me to do,” said Sigurd. “I’m not going to force Dyri to sail us at sword point. Ragnvald says that men make poor decisions when they’re threatened.”
“Does Ragnvald have any other way for us to leave?” Egil asked, testily. Sigurd stood, fuming, and left Egil alone at the fire. Egil always reacted with annoyance when Sigurd mentioned Ragnvald.
He collided with Hakon’s steward in the lee of the hall, as he directed the carrying of barrels of salt-fish from the hall’s stores. Sigurd offered to help. He had found, in those terrible, frightening days after his father’s death, that hard work kept him from thinking. Exhaustion quieted his wish to be someone different, someone who could have driven Atli off, not someone who looked like a man but was still a boy in his deeds.
On the evening before Hakon was set to leave, he held a feast for men of the island and asked Sigurd to sit near him again. “My steward says you are a hard worker—what do you hope to gain from this?” Hakon asked.
Sigurd felt a flash of irritation at Hakon, always looking for hidden motives. “I needed something to do,” he said. “The winter here will be dull and hungry. And I was hoping that you would let me and some of the families from our ship stay in the hall over the winter.”
“And you want me to feed them too, I suppose,” said Hakon.
“Many will have to survive the winter on gifts and hospitality,” said Sigurd. “And you have some stores here.”
“I would never let anyone starve,” said Hakon. “And I did not need your labor to do this. I am the ruler of this place. None will starve while I have the means to feed them.”
“You are generous,” said Sigurd, the words bringing with them memories of Sogn farmers coming to praise Ragnvald at year-turning feasts. Instead of brushing it off quickly, as Ragnvald always did at such praise, though, Hakon looked pleased.
“I thought you were trying to prove yourself so you could join my ships. I offer that freely. We have tarried longer than we should have here. It lacks only two months until Yule.”
“Why not stay out the winter here?” Sigurd asked. He would feel safer if Hakon remained on these strange islands at the end of the world. Without that anchor, it seemed that the winter storms might wash them all away into the sea.
“I would go mad, I think,” said Hakon. “There is even less to pass the time here than in a hall in Norway. You will see, if you stay.”
When Sigurd told Egil about Hakon’s offer, he said, “We must go. We can continue on to Iceland from Dublin easily enough. In the spring many ships will be making that journey.”
“In the spring, Dyri may be willing to go,” said Sigurd. “Perhaps we should stay.”
“Or he may not,” said Egil. “I do not want to wait. Hakon is your great friend now—ask him if I may go with you.”
Sigurd did, as Hakon reviewed the ships making ready to leave. Fulmars circled in the air above the shore, diving toward the ship from the cliffs that ringed the bay and crying out when they saw no food to scavenge. Sigurd had packed his belongings, though he had still not made up his mind to go with Hakon.
“Egil Hrolfsson wants to join me?” Hakon asked. He laughed, for no reason Sigurd could see. “He is Harald’s sworn man, is he not?”
“Yes,” said Sigurd, “though Harald has never called upon that oath.”
“I value loyalty as highly as Harald does, and I will expect it from you and your friend. But I do not ask for oaths that might conflict. Only know that if you betray me, you will die.”
“What of Egil?”
“I would be pleased to have him with me,” said Hakon.
19
Either because of Harald’s luck, or his mother’s magic, the wind carried his warriors swiftly from Nidaros to Geiranger Fjord. Heming captained his own ship, since he and Harald could not share the same space peaceably. Harald had not worked out the guardianship of Sogn with Ragnvald, but Atli refused to go to sea against Solvi or anyone else, so the matter could be delayed for a time.
“Did your sister tell you anything that could be helpful?” Harald asked as the pilot began to weave between the islands that guarded the entrance to Geiranger Fjord.
“Just that we will meet Solvi and his three ships, not only Ulfarr. He has allies, but Svanhild did not think they had left Iceland yet,” Ragnvald related. She had not been sure, though; memories of Solvi’s plans were mixed up with her memories of her son’s death. Ragnvald let his words stand. Harald did not do well with uncertainty.
“Yes, you told me already,” said Harald impatiently. “That is why we are attacking with eight ships and every man willing to quit a warm hall in this weather.”
“That is all she told me. She has been grieving.” She had changed greatly in their six years apart. Her features, which Ragnvald had never been able to picture without her smile upon them, now looked fey and haunted, with shadows around her eyes and under her cheekbones. The image Ragnvald had carried of her had been erased by this new, shattered woman.
“How long do you think she will be grieving?” Harald asked. “I offered to marry her once, and I would still like to. She is a woman of spirit. I have married the sisters of men I value far less than you. And she is still a beauty, or will be, when she learns to smile again.”
Ragnvald had always hoped that Svanhild would return to him and he could marry her to Harald, cementing them as kin. Svanhild’s sons should be as close to Ragnvald as his own, his second heirs, and if they were Harald’s also, then he and Harald could never be parted, not by Guthorm or Hakon’s plotting, or by any of Ragnvald’s missteps. But he did not know what Svanhild’s answer would be, and could not bear to cause her any unhappiness, especially not now.
“You honor both of us with this offer. I will speak to her about it,” he said cautiously. “She may need time, though.” Harald looked at him, uncomprehending. No woman save Gyda had ever even hesitated to join with him. He would do well to think of Svanhild as another Gyda, rather than like any of his other women. “Svanhild follows her own mind. More than any man or woman I have ever met. She’ll be a better wife to you if she thinks the marriage is her idea—think of her as a better-looking, more charming Hakon. That’
s the way to manage him as well.”
Harald gave Ragnvald a bemused smile. He probably did not understand that way of handling either a king or a woman—he had only to ask for a thing to see it fall into his hand. “Whatever you think is wise,” said Harald. “But I would have it done sooner than not. This match brings nothing but advantage.”
* * *
Fog choked Geiranger Fjord when Harald’s force passed the last barrier islands and entered the narrowing waterway. It hid the ridges that flanked the fjord, and blurred the points of land that Ragnvald remembered passing by in Solvi’s ship. He squinted, wishing his vision could pierce it. At least if Solvi’s sentries patrolled the cliffs, they would be as blind as Harald’s force down in the ravine.
Still, sentries could hear. This many ships were not silent, especially in the quiet of the fog. The oars made a slapping sound when they hit the water, the oar master called out the rhythm, and the ships creaked and groaned. Best assume that Solvi had news of their coming and would be prepared. Heming said that Ulfarr had two ships, lightly crewed, and Solvi brought with him another three, while Harald had brought eight, stuffed with warriors, as many as he could spare while leaving enough at Nidaros to defend against any who might try those defenses. Solvi might be planning to attack Nidaros, after luring Harald to Tafjord. Ragnvald flagged down a passing fisherman, hoping to see the face of his old friend Agi, who had saved him from the fjord, but encountered strangers instead, who told him only of ships sailing east and inland, and none coming out.
“The cliffs are growing steep,” Ragnvald said to Harald, who stood murmuring with Guthorm at the prow, staying well out of the way of the rowers. “From here on, there is nowhere to dock until we reach Tafjord, and I don’t believe Solvi will let us get that far.”
“You think we should go no farther,” said Harald. “Tell me what we should do instead.” Guthorm nodded at Ragnvald and made room for him at the stern. It seemed Guthorm planned to keep himself out of this decision so he could criticize it later. Harald looked expectantly at Ragnvald. When Harald turned all of that regard upon a man, he felt as though he was the most valued person in the world. Ragnvald had never ceased to be dazzled by it.
The Sea Queen Page 23