As Hakon walked toward the woman’s tent, Sigurd ran to catch up with him. “Arnfast comes from Sogn,” said Sigurd to Hakon. “So does his mother.”
“What?” said Hakon. “I have no time for you this morning.”
“Do you think that she came here without Ragnvald’s knowledge?” Sigurd asked.
“What do you want?” Hakon asked.
“I know Arnfast,” said Sigurd. “We guarded Sogn together for many years. I might—I want to learn what my brother is up to. And she might know.” Hakon nodded—he seemed to like Sigurd best when he spoke of revenge on Ragnvald, or perhaps he did not want to be in this woman’s presence without the support of other men.
Arnfast’s mother had been left to sleep on her pallet of straw with no blanket to protect her from the night’s chill, though at least she wore her mask again. It made her look, lying on her side, as though she were carved of wood, a ship’s broken figurehead.
“I can offer you an easy death, or a hard one,” said Hakon without preamble. “How did you come to be here?”
“Fool. I come for vengeance. I kill your son. Your family. Cursed.” She reached up with her bound hands to take the mask from her face.
“Don’t.” Hakon’s voice went high with fear. “Don’t, or I will torture you worse.”
She made a hideous sound, which it took Sigurd a moment to identify as laughter. “Worse? Than this?” She pulled the mask off. One of Hakon’s guards kicked her in the stomach, a movement more of panic than defense. She was still laughing as she struggled to her feet with her hands tied before her, her face clear for all to see.
“Tell me,” said Hakon.
“No secret. Son bring to Harald—king. He see. I kill your son, he kills son? Don’t care.” From the tension in her shoulders, Sigurd could see that every word pained her, and that was why she spoke so few.
“Your son is going to Harald. You will kill my son or he will kill my son?” Hakon said, trying to make sense of her garbled words.
Her face moved, approximating a smile on the less wounded side. She raised her hands in a motion that looked beseeching until she drew a finger across her throat. “Yes. He dies.”
“You came from Sogn? Which son brought you here?”
“Younger. To tell Harald: Atli—attacked Ragnvald. Wants Harald help.” She could hardly say the names, especially Ragnvald’s, which sounded, when she spoke it, as though she had swallowed something that choked her. Hakon questioned her further, probing for details of Atli’s attack, and growing frustrated with her short, difficult answers. When Hakon was finally satisfied that he had enough information from her, Sigurd’s feet had become tired from standing.
She brought strange news: Ragnvald fought with Hakon’s son Heming in Maer, while fending off attacks from Atli in Sogn, and Harald delayed sending aid. If this were true, Harald was a poor king indeed—he had just married Svanhild, and still would not send aid to her brother.
“This is good,” Hakon said, his face briefly lighter as he glanced at Sigurd, then darkening when he looked down at the woman on the floor again. “You will have your revenge on Ragnvald sooner than I thought. We will go to Maer to help my son Heming and this Atli. If Ragnvald is dead, I can give Tafjord to Solvi, and then he will give me my son back.”
Sigurd tried not to look shocked at the news the woman had brought, but he feared he did not make a good show. Hakon gave him a grim smile. “I know, you had not intended for your vengeance to come so quickly. Do not worry, I will make sure you live to enjoy it. Now you can do something for me.” He glanced at the woman, who sat on her heels, with her head bowed down, her hood mostly covering her face. “Kill her.”
“No,” said Sigurd, surprised into speaking before he could think. “I do not want her curse.”
“Do you believe my family cursed by her?”
“I do not know, my lord,” said Sigurd. “But I will not kill her. I am no killer of women. Your son wanted to do it—let him finish it.”
“I should give the knife to her and let her get her vengeance before she dies or her shade will haunt us forever,” Hakon muttered, then gave Sigurd a look of such cold rage Sigurd knew if he repeated what Hakon said, he would die by his hand. Hakon shook his head, as if to dispel the thought. “You’re right. She is cursed, and she has cursed my son. He should do it.”
Sigurd did not hear when it was done, but later that night, a pyre burned in a clearing in the woods, carrying the sparks and ashes of the woman’s beautiful figure and ruined face up into the sky. Sigurd swore to himself that he would help her get her vengeance. Herlaug would not be allowed to live long with this crime to his name.
* * *
Sigurd heard Hakon and Solvi arguing about Hakon’s new plan that night. They had been discussing it all day, and neither would veer from his course.
“We only have time for one battle before the fall and your men have to leave for their farms,” said Solvi to Hakon. Solvi said the word farms with some sarcasm—his men, his raiders, did not have farms to go home to. Sigurd had wondered at first, when meeting Solvi with King Eirik in Sweden, how Solvi had impressed the king of a great and powerful country so deeply, why he followed the advice of a landless raider. Solvi was as fine a sailor as the songs claimed, but what Sigurd found more impressive was how every time he spoke, even when his head was hidden behind the shoulders of taller men, everyone listened. His face was as clear and bright and attractive as Harald’s, though formed along a different pattern, with knife-sharp features. He was firm in his judgments, and uncompromising in the standards he held himself and other men to. But unlike Hakon, Solvi seemed to bring joy to his every task. Perhaps that was the source of his power, joy that burnished his confidence and certainty. Hakon could not help but picking at everyone, even his sons, until they bled.
“Harald is here in the south, as are all of our forces,” Solvi repeated. “Now is the time to lure him into a sea battle and defeat him. I have seen him fight—and he is not as lucky or as agile by ship as he is on land.”
“And let all his northern allies come to his aid again, as they did in Vestfold?” asked Hakon. He gave Solvi a piercing look, hoping, Sigurd thought, to see some shame at losing that battle. He would be disappointed, for Solvi’s face showed nothing but mild skepticism.
“If Ragnvald is fighting Atli Kolbrandsson on one side and your son on the other, then we need not fear him sailing to Harald’s rescue,” said Solvi. “Now seems an ideal time.”
“I will not risk it,” Hakon replied. “I do not like to leave Ragnvald Eysteinsson alive. He has a way of spoiling my victories. Yours too. Who do you think it is that married your wife to Harald?”
Sigurd watched carefully, to see if Hakon could finally wring an angry reaction out of Solvi. His face did grow stern, but he showed little other change.
“This is foolishness,” said Solvi. “This is about your pride. You hate Ragnvald for leaving your service for Harald’s, when it was you who chased him away.”
“Do you bait me, Solvi Hunthiofsson? I do not need your permission.”
Solvi gave a pointed look at Herlaug, who sat by his father. Sigurd had avoided looking at him since the death of Arnfast’s mother; now he tried to see if that murder had made any impression on the young man. His twisted face was hard to read, and his eyes as well, flat and hard, though he flinched and looked away when Solvi turned his gaze on him.
“My son is hostage against betrayal,” said Hakon. “He does not make me into a slave, nor say I should substitute your judgment for my own.”
“Perhaps he should,” said Solvi scornfully, “if you continue on this course.”
“Then kill Herlaug if you must—he is my least useful son, and I must aid my best,” said Hakon, disgustedly. Sigurd looked again at Herlaug, who now wore an expression Sigurd had only ever seen before on a man who had been stabbed in the stomach and was about to vomit blood onto the ground. Herlaug sprang from his seat and ran out into the night. Solvi jerked his c
hin at one of his men, Snorri, who followed him with a few other guards.
Solvi smiled, not pleasantly. “That was cruel,” he said. “I wonder when you will find that boy’s dagger in your back. Or perhaps he will carve up your face too. He does keep his blade sharp.”
Those words seemed to shake Hakon, and he replied in a low, urgent tone, “Ragnvald and Atli are fighting. If they receive word that I have joined with you and King Eirik, they will stop their fighting and come to Harald’s aid. Ragnvald may not have your silver tongue, but he can be persuasive when he wishes—he may even persuade my son Heming to help Harald. He has done it before. Then the trap we spring on Harald becomes a trap we are caught in, as at Vestfold. Come with me, and take back Tafjord for yourself.”
That made Solvi hesitate for a moment. “No, if I am sitting in Tafjord, I will only be a lure for Harald.” Solvi crossed his arms. “I will not sanction this. But you are right. Your son is hostage against betrayal, not stupidity. If you do not perish by this foolishness, come to me and we can see if it is not too late to make Harald’s death.”
“And if I succeed?” Hakon asked.
“If you succeed, you can have one of your sons back.”
* * *
Even as Hakon sailed north, the summer continued hot, baking Sigurd’s pale skin a bright red that cracked and scabbed. He took to wrapping a cloth around his head like a woman’s veil, and hiding in the shade of the ship’s walls whenever he was not needed to help row.
On every beach where they camped at night, Hakon asked the local farmers and fishermen for news of Ragnvald, Heming, and Atli, and every night heard nothing. Peace, they said, held in the western districts. The hot summer meant the farmers had to work hard to keep the fields from growing parched, but those who had enough labor to keep irrigation trenches flowing could count on good harvests. The high pastures gave better grass this year than ever before. No one had time for raiding.
“Do you not think we should have heard of the fighting?” Egil asked Sigurd when they sighted the entrance to Sogn Fjord.
“I don’t know,” said Sigurd truthfully. If the fighting had been quick and one of the leaders was dead, that news would have spread, and if it dragged on, news of a war would have reached them. Perhaps the farmers and fisherfolk they met did not care for much beyond their own horizons. They would repeat any songs made of this summer’s battles in the same way they did the battles of centuries earlier, making little difference between them and their local gossip. Sigurd could not mistrust the words of the woman who had died under Herlaug’s knife. A god-sent, half-spirit woman like that must speak truth.
They made the turn into Sogn Fjord on a strange day, bright sun overhead, and a sea mist on the water. All of Hakon’s men in his four ships sweat and cursed, and squinted at the fog. The air hardly moved, and they had to row. In the blank sameness of the swirling gray, it seemed as though they made no progress at all. It took three days’ rowing, through that same strange weather, before the ships reached the end of the fjord. Shrouded in fog at the top of the hill lay the hall that Harald had built for Ragnvald, the hall Sigurd had guarded, poorly, the hall that Atli held for Ragnvald now. All was quiet.
“What is the best way to approach?” Hakon asked Sigurd. “You know this land.”
“I thought you came to join with Atli against Ragnvald,” said Sigurd.
“We do not know what we will find,” Hakon replied. “I would be ready.”
“There is no way but this,” said Sigurd. “The hall is up the hill. The fog will hide us at least.”
“This is sorceress weather,” said Hakon. “I do not like it.”
Sigurd shrugged, trying to seem unconcerned. It did not matter what Hakon liked—this was his home ground. He would see Ragnvald soon.
“Lead the way,” Hakon invited him. The fog seemed to rise with them, keeping them hidden as they made their way up toward the hall. Atli’s guard stopped them halfway up the hill, a guard like the one Sigurd should have set to prevent Atli’s coming in the first place. The man tried to yell out a warning when he saw so many advancing on him. Hakon had two hundred following in his wake. The sound caught in his throat, choked off, Sigurd imagined, by the sudden dryness that he felt himself.
“You may live if you remain silent,” said Hakon. “Is your master here?”
“Atli Kolbrandsson is at home,” said the man in a whisper.
“Good,” said Hakon. Then to Sigurd, “Tie him up.”
Sigurd took two lengths of rope from one of Hakon’s guards and tied the man hand and foot, and after a moment, ripped a strip of fabric from his shirt to bind his mouth.
“We will come and free you if all goes well,” said Hakon. “If not . . .” His smile made Sigurd’s sweat feel clammy.
The next set of guards that met them sent up an alarm before Hakon could silence them, and he held back his men’s swords. Atli emerged from the hall, still drawing his sword as they reached it.
“Atli Kolbrandsson,” Hakon called out. “I am King Hakon Grjotgardsson, ruler of Halogaland and Trondelag.” He glanced at Sigurd. “Soon to be king of all Norway. I have heard that you fight my enemy Ragnvald of Maer, and I have come to offer you aid.”
“Ragnvald of Sogn, you mean,” said Atli.
“I thought it was Atli of Sogn,” said Hakon. “It can be, if you join with me.”
Atli had looked incredulous at Hakon’s words, though he recovered himself very quickly. “I have heard rumors, and here they are in truth: you have betrayed Harald Tanglehair, prophesied king of all Norway. You claim that title for yourself. I suppose now you shall tell me of your sorceress mother, who predicted your rise as well?”
“No sorceress,” said Hakon, “only right of arms and allies. All of Norway’s dispossessed kings fight for me now, as does King Eirik of Sweden. With Harald, you are a steward for this Ragnvald, Ragnvald Half-Drowned, a boastful boy with no family. With me, you will be king in your own right.”
“You do not know what I will be,” said Atli. “I know that you have delivered yourself to me for justice. You will make me a hero in my king’s eyes—in thanks for such a gift, I think I should not kill you, but I must.”
“Kill me?” Hakon asked. “I am offering you a kingdom.”
“You are offering me the cold hell of oath breakers,” said Atli. “That is not for me. These men you lead deserve better than you. Fight me in single combat, and whoever lives will have Sogn for as long as he can keep it. Swear to spare their lives, and if I die, my men will stand down.”
“You don’t have enough men to fight me,” said Hakon.
“Do I not?” Atli asked. “Do you think that King Ragnvald would leave me so poorly defended? You do not think well of him, but you must know him better than that.” As he spoke, more and more men gathered around them, emerging out of the mist—not as many as Hakon had brought, but they surrounded Hakon’s forces. If they fought well, on ground they knew, against Hakon’s men who had been exhausted by three days of rowing, they would win.
“You have one more,” said Sigurd to Atli, loudly, so all could hear. “I came to deliver news of this oath breaker to my brother.” He spoke in a rush, relief coming over him that he could finally speak honestly. “I don’t think I am the only one of Hakon’s men who has grown ill at the idea of following him. Who is with me?”
“Silence,” said Hakon, before any man could speak and add his voice to Sigurd’s. “Atli Kolbrandsson, I will fight you in single combat, as you say.”
Men formed a circle and made room for them. Atli called his son as his second, a slender man like him, though favored with more pleasing features. Hakon commanded his closest guard to stand second for him, to hand him shields, and fight in his place if he fell to an unfair blow. With no judge to call a start or finish, Atli and Hakon touched shield bosses and leaped at each other immediately.
Sigurd could tell from the first step that Hakon would lose. He remembered seeing Atli fight briefly when he took over Sogn
—he had never seen a man move like that before, sinew and speed, flashing like water in a mountain river, moving too gracefully for a man to notice his deadliness until it brought his death.
Atli forced Hakon to stumble once. Hakon escaped by blocking a downward stroke with his left forearm, a blow that drove him to his knees and made that hand useless. Blood flowed steadily over it onto the ground. Atli must have nearly severed the bone, for it took him a moment to pull his sword free—a moment that Hakon used to thrust his sword up into Atli’s belly so it came out high on his back.
Atli, trapped on Hakon’s blade, swung his sword around and crashed it down on Hakon’s neck, severing the artery so the blood burst forth over both of them as they fell together. Hakon died immediately, his blood soaking the earth.
Atli’s son rushed to his father’s side, and eased him to the ground. He drew the sword from Atli’s body. Blood foamed around Atli’s lips. His sons laid him down on an outdoor table, and Vigdis came to tend his wounds. His narrow chest, now bare for Vigdis’s work, grew pale as life began to leave him, making him look so small that Sigurd regretted ever having feared him.
Atli spoke to Vigdis and to his sons while Sigurd lingered nearby, wondering what should be done. Hakon’s men showed no will to fight. Some of them sat down where they had stood during the duel. Atli’s wife worked quickly, and brought ale to all of the men so they might drink together and claim hospitality rather than fighting. Atli’s son Aldi announced a funeral and funeral feast the following day.
“For who?” called out Egil.
“For both of them,” said Vigdis. “Atli will not last until morning.”
The Sea Queen Page 41