He looked down at Ulfarr’s bloody corpse. “Strip him and throw him into the water,” he said to Aldi, who stood near to him. “You can keep his armor. You fought well today.”
Ragnvald guided his ship to where Harald stood on the shore. “Luck was with us,” he said to Harald. “Your luck.”
“Too modest,” said Harald. His hands were red to the elbow with blood, his face spattered with it. He sounded as though he still wanted to kill. “You won this battle—with your hands tied behind your back. You, and not me. Hornklofe!” He called for his favorite skald, who accompanied him to all battles to make his songs. Ragnvald liked Hornklofe too, for he was a warrior as well as a poet. Hornklofe had wet his sword today, and was wiping it off on the trousers of one of the fallen. “Hornklofe, I want you to put in your song that Ragnvald won this battle with his hands tied behind his back.”
“Some will think the trick cowardly,” said Ragnvald mildly. “It was weather that won this for us. Without the storm, your only choice would have been escape.”
“Don’t put that in your song,” said Harald. “If Solvi’s allies had not hesitated, they could have outrun the storm and been upon us. I will thank you for your bravery, my mother for the storm, the gods for my luck, and drink so much I can’t see straight tonight. We make for Tafjord!”
20
As Solvi sailed away from the battle, he saw Tryggulf’s ship making its escape as well. Solvi was the more daring sailor, but Tryggulf had taught him everything he knew. Solvi’s and Gudbrand’s other six ships fell into the hands of Harald’s forces. Now he had Solvi’s men to torture for information or ransom for treasure.
Solvi had watched Ragnvald cut Ulfarr’s throat. Ulfarr, dead. Ulfarr, who had carried Solvi on his back when Solvi was a boy and his legs had been too injured for him to walk. Ulfarr, who taught Solvi to ride, and had fought every battle by his side. Svanhild had hated him, but Svanhild had not known Ulfarr as Solvi had. If a warrior like Ulfarr, strong in battle, cruel in victory, who had never known defeat, followed Solvi, then any man could be proud of doing the same.
“Should I kill this Jarl Rane or should you?” Ketil Flatnose asked, coming to stand next to Solvi. His voice was grim. The wind that had prevented Rane’s ships from reaching the battle brought Solvi’s and Tryggulf’s ships up next to them within a few breaths.
“His inaction cost me a son, you a friend, and all of Norway a great victory,” said Gudbrand.
Solvi took strength from his allies’ anger. Gudbrand would always back him, and defer to him, because Solvi had shown more bravery at Vestfold, and now Solvi would have a hold over Rane that would make him into a tool as well, one who could question Solvi even less than Gudbrand did.
“Neither,” said Solvi. “We need him.”
“Any kind of sailor, or man, would have found a way to come to us,” said Gudbrand. Solvi could not argue that. He had not seen the oars extended until near the end of the battle, when it was already far too late. “I cannot let him live.”
“You must,” said Solvi. “If he ever ceases to be useful, though, I will hold him while you cut him however you like—butcher him like swine. You have my word.”
Rane stood on one of the ships with Tova by his side. Tova’s neck was taut with fear. Rane’s eyes shifted when he saw Solvi, and his grip tightened on Tova’s waist.
“You coward,” said Solvi. Rane’s hand went to his sword. “You fucker of goats, you nithing. That battle should have been impossible to lose.” These were insults that a man must kill over, yet Rane still merely rested his fingers on his sword’s hilt without drawing it. He knew the justice of them.
“The weather turned against us,” said Rane. “Your men had all the advantage of the wind, while mine were fighting it.”
“Have your captains never learned to tack against the wind? Or command their rowers?”
“I did not want them to be too weary from rowing to fight,” said Rane. “I thought the wind would blow the battle onto us.”
“Not with ships lashed together and sails lowered,” said Solvi.
“I am not versed in sea battles,” said Rane.
“Is that how you justify this?” Solvi gestured at the sparse crews of his two remaining ships, the blood that spattered his armor. “You cost me my best warrior, who has been a friend to me since I was a boy. We could have defeated Harald today, but at least you are ‘well rested.’”
“You are a small man to say such things,” Rane retorted. Now he did draw his sword.
“And you are a large man to be such a coward,” said Solvi. “If this is the best the men of Norway can muster, we deserve to be ruled by that overgrown boy-king Harald. I am done with all of this.”
“Now, Solvi,” said Gudbrand, though he seemed uncertain what part Solvi wanted him to play, and turned to Rane. “Because of you, I have lost my namesake Gudmar, one of my two remaining sons.”
Solvi’s anger burned hot enough that he almost added that it was no great loss to lose one of Gudbrand’s thickheaded sons, not compared with the loss of Ulfarr. “I do not think much of your king either, if you are all he sends,” he said to Rane. “He may as well resign himself to King Harald as a neighbor now, and come to terms with Harald’s ambitions, for he means to rule the whole Norse peninsula, even the parts that Sweden claims now.”
“You need to stop insulting us,” said Rane. “These are my men, and they will stand by me.”
“Will they?” Solvi asked. Rane’s men exchanged glances. “Or, next time, will they support a man who has a chance of winning a sea battle?”
“This is your fault,” said Rane, thrusting his chin forward. “Your strategy failed.”
“Let us see what your men think,” Solvi called out. “Would they rather follow me in their next sea battle, or you—come on, raise your hands if you would rather follow me into a sea battle? If you would rather win than be ‘well rested’?”
The men in Rane’s own ship were slow to raise their hands, but from the other ships came cries, and raised hands, cries that resolved into a chant, “Win, win! Solvi! Solvi Klofe! Solvi Klofe!”
Solvi smiled a calculated, hungry grin, and turned so that all of Rane’s men could see his face. “I will give you a victory. I will give you a victory that men will sing of a thousand years hence.”
“How will you do that?” Rane asked.
“I am going to Uppsala, to the Swedish court, with our forces,” he said. Rane’s men were his now, and Rane knew it. “You will tell him what happened here, how you left me to fight Harald alone, and how the only way to settle the debt is to defeat Harald so thoroughly that none will ever count him a champion again. And if I hear the words ‘well rested’ again I will laugh in your face.”
“If you continue insulting me . . . ,” said Rane.
“I will say what I want,” said Solvi. “The only way to redeem your name is to defeat Harald with me. Don’t worry, next time your ships will be captained by men trained by me, and they will follow my orders. I am not going to die as the man that Harald defeated twice.”
* * *
The storm kept Harald’s forces from reaching Tafjord that night. They spent the remaining daylight beating against the wind and then made camp shipboard, tied up under narrow rock overhangs. Harald gathered his leaders, among them Ragnvald, Guthorm, Oddi, and Heming, in one of the ships. Another was full of prisoners from the battle, those who had surrendered rather than fighting on to the death, a mixture of Solvi’s and Heming’s men.
“Your mother overdoes it with the storm, I think,” said Ragnvald.
“Are you going to tell her that?” Harald asked, without the humor Ragnvald expected. “You are the bravest man I know, but no man is that brave.” He held a torch, which made his face look like a strange wooden mask. “I have been thinking of Tafjord’s betrayal. We have taken prisoners who must be punished. Once we arrive, my men will cut the left foot and right hand off all who fought against us. Those who survive this will be sold a
s slaves. You will make sure this is carried out.”
The words drew a vivid picture in Ragnvald’s mind: of men screaming, bleeding, and dying, of piles of hands and feet, like skalds described in the most terrible of underworlds. He was tired of death. “Is this a king’s work?” he asked. Surely Harald must be tired of death as well. “Those were Heming’s men. He should choose how to punish them.”
“They should not have fought me,” said Harald.
“If they had not, Solvi’s men would have killed them,” Ragnvald replied. They stood close together on the crowded ship, and they all stank of battle, of sweat and gore, of the contents of voided bowels and bladders that lay on the decking. Now Harald wanted to add to the carnage. “Why do you order this?”
“There is rebellion on my shores—Maer was conquered and it should have stayed conquered. This is how I punish rebellion, and now all will know it,” said Harald.
“If you mean to push districts to ally with Solvi, this will do it,” said Ragnvald. “And make very poor slaves.”
“Do not question me again,” said Harald. “It is you who told me that I must win every battle, and if I lose a single one, I will fail. And you know how close we came to losing today.”
“Harald, my boy,” Guthorm began, “Ragnvald is right.”
A drip of water from the cliff above fell into Harald’s torch, sending up a puff of steam, and another splashed onto his face. He rubbed it away angrily. “Do not argue with me, uncle. Ragnvald, today, has earned that right—you have done nothing useful for me lately, except sow discord among my allies.”
“I stand in agreement with Ragnvald,” said Heming quietly. “These were my men, some of them.”
“As do I,” said Oddi.
“You never do other than agree with Ragnvald, Oddi,” Harald snapped, then added more quietly, “I will think on it tonight. That is why I spoke with you. I value your advice.”
* * *
When Harald’s forces reached Tafjord the next day, Vemund’s traitors, Grai and Illugi, gathered all the captured enemy fighters in an empty stable. Ragnvald heard the screams, and knew that they were carrying out Harald’s original orders. He went to find Harald at the shore, where his men were unloading Solvi’s ships, laying out the axes and pieces of armor on the shore so he could distribute them as rewards to his warriors.
“You must stop them,” he said to Harald.
“I did not give the order,” said Harald. “They must have wanted vengeance.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Ragnvald cried. Harald shrugged. “None will believe it, not unless you punish these men—kill them yourself, before witnesses. Even then, many will think you ordered it. Harald—”
“I did not order it,” said Harald. “You do not trust my word?”
Ragnvald could not answer, so he turned away from Harald, and flinched as another scream rent the air. “I will stop this, then,” he said, taking off at a run.
“It is too late,” Harald called after him. “Come back, Ragnvald.”
Ragnvald ignored him. Grai and Illugi had gathered like-minded warriors to them, wolf-souled men who enjoyed cruelty for its own sake. There was no place for them in Harald’s shining plans for Norway. When he entered the building he saw slim Illugi holding a man down. He stared at the man’s face, contorted in fear and pain, for a moment before recognizing Dagvith, a warrior he had known from Hakon’s hird, back when Ragnvald had first joined with Hakon at Yrjar. Before Ragnvald could stop him, Grai brought down his ax upon Dagvith’s ankle, shattering bone. Dagvith screamed again.
“By order of Harald, King of Norway, you will stop this immediately,” Ragnvald commanded.
Illugi looked up. “He wants this to happen,” he said. “You know it, and I know it. You only wish he didn’t. It is almost done. Go outside, and your maidenly eyes will not have to see it.”
“I should kill you for that insult,” said Ragnvald.
“I withdraw it,” said Illugi. Dagvith whimpered, and Grai slapped him across the face. “Now go outside.”
“Ragnvald,” called out Dagvith in a broken voice. “Kill me, please. Kill me like a man before I die like a slave.”
He could do that at least. “Stand aside,” he ordered Grai and Illugi. Illugi shrugged and moved away. Bile rose in Ragnvald’s throat. Dagvith was fading as blood poured out of him. His eyelids fluttered. Ragnvald drew his sword and put it in Dagvith’s remaining hand, then used his dagger to cut Dagvith’s throat. He had died with a weapon in his hand, at least, and so his spirit would reach Valhalla.
“Are you here to kill all of them?” Illugi asked, with what sounded like real curiosity.
“I am no butcher,” said Ragnvald. “Not like you.”
“Then you had best leave us to our work.”
“Your work is done now,” said Ragnvald.
He took a step toward Illugi, who retreated with insolent slowness. “Very well, my lord,” said Illugi finally, after Ragnvald backed him up against the wall.
He took one last glance at Grai and Illugi’s moaning victims before leaving the shed, and again tasted the sourness of bile. He stumbled outside and retched until he had made a mess on the ground. Behind him, Illugi was laughing. He remembered what Harald’s mother, Ronhild, had promised him: “You will give everything you have to give to Harald, and when you have nothing left, you will give your life.” He fell on his knees.
Oddi rushed to his side to help him up, and said, “‘There is cruelty all over the land, full of broken shields. An ax age comes, and then a wolf age, before the doom of the gods’”—a saying from an old poem in which a seer spoke about the end of the world. Ragnvald felt he would collapse in his filth if Oddi said another word. Harald was his king, his choice, his fate, his golden wolf. Ragnvald should have seen this in him, that when Harald refused to cut his hair, he had allied himself with wolves, with wildness, with cruelty. He had sworn to be a wolf until he had conquered all of Norway.
* * *
Since Grai and Illugi had turned over the responsibility for their victims to Ragnvald, every morning he had the grim task of pulling bodies from the outbuilding, and burning them, for more died of their maiming than survived it. When he completed that task, he avoided Harald and instead worked himself into exhaustion with Heming and Oddi to clear signs of Solvi’s habitation from Tafjord.
“I want my king to be harsh to his enemies,” said Heming, on the second day of Ragnvald’s silence. “Better that than weakness.” Ragnvald remembered Hakon torturing men after a battle, and did not respond. At least those men had information to give.
Finally, the night before they were going to leave, Oddi found Ragnvald, and handed him a heavy fur blanket and a jug of spirits. The night was clear, the stars like chips of ice in the sky. “I cannot stand to see you like this,” Oddi said, his voice near to breaking. “Say something dark and humorless to me, to take away my sleep—I know that is what comforts you, even if it is horrible to me.”
“You have been able to sleep?” Ragnvald asked. He took the jug of spirits from Oddi and took a long swig. It burned his throat like the coldest winter air, which he welcomed, though the warmth it lent his stomach made him queasy. He did not want to feel warm, or better in any way.
“Yes, but Harald’s cruelty did not surprise me. You thought better of him, did you not?”
Ragnvald thought of his own hand holding the torch to Vemund’s hall—at Harald’s order. “I thought better of me,” he said. “I was wrong.”
“You thought well enough of him to spend your life like cheap brass at the battle against Solvi,” said Oddi, ignoring Ragnvald’s last words.
“The day of my death is already determined,” said Ragnvald. “And it was not that day.”
“Don’t do it again,” said Oddi dryly. “Next time I’ll have to go with you, and I am not god-blessed.” Beneath his self-mockery, Ragnvald heard the depth of his concern.
“I should have known about Solvi’s alliances. I should h
ave questioned Svanhild properly . . .”
“You should have known?” Oddi asked. “Is there nothing you are not responsible for? You advised Harald to avoid battle more than once, and then risked your own life when Harald refused your suggestions.”
Oddi did not understand. “Harald could not flee,” said Ragnvald. “He has to win every battle.”
“Win every battle, not fight every battle,” said Oddi.
“I still should have known that Solvi would bring allies,” Ragnvald insisted.
“If anyone should have known, it is Guthorm—he has his spies. What did Svanhild tell you? How do you know she did not come to Nidaros to lure you into this?”
Ragnvald went cold. “No,” he said. “I should have asked her for more information. I thought that Solvi’s allies would not join him until the spring, and I never asked her . . .” Svanhild had come to him with her spirit bruised, her face hollowed by grief for her son. Ragnvald had not looked further than that. But he remembered that she had lured him into a sort of trap many years before in Vestfold to allow Solvi’s escape. Harald’s actions—Grai’s and Illugi’s—had shown Ragnvald how soft and trusting he still was, no matter how hard he tried not to be. “I will ask her.” He put his head in his hands. “Either way, I am at fault for every death here.”
“You are not,” said Oddi. “But she may be at fault for some of them.”
* * *
Harald’s forces departed a few days later. Harald sailed in the lead ship, the fastest and smoothest sailing ship in this convoy. Ragnvald left him to it and joined Heming’s ship. He felt warmer toward Heming since he had argued against the torture of his men. Heming would not make him pretend contentment, and, unlike Oddi, he would not try to cheer Ragnvald either. Whenever Ragnvald closed his eyes, he saw again Grai raising his ax, the terror on Dagvith’s face, the blood and filth. He could not turn his mind from it, no matter how he tried. It followed him from dreams into daylight, and wherever he turned his eyes was overlaid with a smear of gore.
The Sea Queen Page 25