by Peter Fox
‘Why not?’ Rathulf began, feeling indignant that they would even now try to keep it from him. ‘I want–’ Then suddenly he understood: Bardi’s fury, Alrik’s sodden appearance and his apologies and guilty expression. Rathulf looked at his companion, but Alrik dropped his eyes. Rathulf turned back to Sigvald, again aware of a pain in his chest, but this time it did not come from his broken ribs. ‘Why can’t I see it?’ Rathulf asked, already knowing the answer.
‘Alrik dropped it overboard. He didn’t mean to do it,’ he added quickly, seeing Rathulf’s eyes widen.
‘He lost it?’ Rathulf whispered, cold anger rising within his heart.
‘Rathulf, perhaps we should talk about this later,’ Helga said.
‘I want my things!’ Rathulf shouted.
‘You can’t have them!’ Sigvald shouted back, then he took a breath to calm himself down. ‘They’re gone now.’
‘There must be something else,’ Rathulf said, struggling to contain his despair. ‘You must have kept something!’
‘Damn it Rathulf. Thorvald hid every last thing. He didn’t want you finding any of it.’
‘But it did get found, didn’t it!’
‘Rathulf, this isn’t going to help,’ Helga began.
‘What was in my trunk?’ Rathulf demanded, then he pointed at Alrik. ‘I want to know what he lost!’
‘It really wasn’t much,’ Sigvald said, but there was an edge of desperation in his voice. ‘The swaddle, which you already know about, and one or two other little things. Nothing that can’t be replaced.’
‘Replaced? How can you say that? They are all I had! They–’ He stopped and looked across at Alrik, who was watching him remorsefully. ‘You can rot between Hel’s thighs,’ Rathulf snarled at him, ‘because you’re no more a friend of mine.’
‘Rathulf, you mustn’t blame Alrik–’
‘No?’ Rathulf shouted, tears in his eyes. ‘Then whose fault is it? How about you then, since you murdered my family!’ He shoved past Sigvald, ripped open the door and stormed outside.
‘We saved you,’ Sigvald called after him, but Rathulf was beyond hearing.
✽ ✽ ✽
‘That went well,’ Sigvald said to Helga, staring at the doorway long after Rathulf had disappeared. ‘The poor lad must feel he’s surrounded by liars and traitors. Each one of us has been a part of this falsehood from the very day he was rescued, and I doubt that he’ll find a place in his heart to forgive us. We have stolen so much from him over the years.’
‘No,’ Helga said firmly. ‘That I will not accept. We have given him life. Without any shadow of a doubt, Rathulf would have perished had you not intervened, accident or no.’ She paused, regarding him carefully. ‘Why have you found a conscience after all this time? You have always wanted him to return home.’
‘What can I say? You saw his face. He doesn’t want to know any of this. You and Thorvald have been right all along. He’s a Norseman, and that’s how it should always have stayed. Only now, with the trunk lost, he must endure this pain for nothing.’ He glanced over at Alrik, who was slumped against the wall, sobbing quietly to himself.
‘And it isn’t over yet, husband,’ Helga said quietly. ‘We still haven’t told him who he really is. When and how are we to broach that?’
Sigvald turned away from Helga’s penetrating gaze and stared into the fire, knowing that the greatest and most important truth had yet to be revealed. ‘We will tell him nothing,’ Sigvald said. ‘Whilst many know the tale behind Ra’s discovery, Thorvald, Eirik, Bardi and ourselves are the only ones who know of the trunk’s true import. As far as everyone else is concerned, it simply contained a few admittedly cherished items from his birthplace.’
‘We’ve just confirmed that his family was represented by a wolven standard. He’s not a simpleton!’
‘No!’ Sigvald interrupted sharply. ‘It was bad enough that you mentioned the standard at all, although I suppose we should be grateful you left out the bit about it being woven in gold.’
‘He raised the matter of the banner, not me,’ Helga reminded him. ‘And I notice that you neglected to tell him the truth behind his brother’s abandonment.’
‘Aneurin drowned.’
‘And why was that, exactly?’
Sigvald gave his wife a long look. ‘Don’t go there,’ he warned.
‘The guilt Thorvald suffered – still suffers – over leaving Aneurin behind has all but destroyed him. He ceased raiding because of it!’
‘And I’ve always said he was a soppy idiot. Anyway, it helped him focus his attention on the one he did choose to save. Let’s just hope he doesn’t decide to confess to Rathulf when he wakes up. The boy will just as likely cut off the old fool’s head, given the state he’s in at the moment.’
Helga glowered at him, unimpressed.
‘Hel’s Thighs, woman!’ Sigvald said angrily. ‘What would you have done? Dash around Dumnonia to gather up all his kin? We had no idea who they were back then, remember. It’s best for all our sakes that Rathulf never learns the truth about this. His brother drowned.’
Helga shook her head at her husband, unwilling to accede.
‘Listen, Helga, we got away with this much more lightly than I could have dreamed. Thanks to Alrik – or the Gods if that’s how you want to see it – the banner and the trunk are now gone, so that’s the end of it.’
Helga looked at her husband for a long time before speaking. ‘The end?’ she said at last. ‘It has barely begun.’
✽ ✽ ✽
Rathulf sat on the cold floor at the foot of Thorvald’s bed, his knees drawn up under his chin. Beside him lay one of Bardi’s old swords from the wall, its polished iron blade gleaming dully in the lamplight. An icy draught blew under the door to the little hut, chilling Rathulf’s back and neck, but he was too exhausted to move. He felt as though someone had wrenched his heart from his breast and had wrung it dry.
His first instinct had been to flee, to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the hall and find a place to be alone. He had heard Ingrith shouting after him and had hidden in the shadow of the byre. Once she had passed by, he had taken the winding path that led alongside the fjord, stumbling in the dark until he had come upon a jumble of mossy boulders by the water’s edge to provide him shelter. There he had sobbed himself hoarse, shivering with cold and shock and wishing this day had never begun. He knew there was much more to this than they had told him, but he could take no more in. He needed time and space to think. All these years he had thought himself the simple son of a slave, but now that had been shattered. Who am I, he had wondered, that my family could boast a wolven emblem? What has become of my mother? Does she still live? And why do I keep seeing my brother in my dreams?
Quite how he came to be here on the floor of his father’s hut, he was unsure, but when all was said and done, it was the only place he could go. When he had first opened the door, however, he’d had but one desire: to drive a sword into his father’s heart and to hurt him as he had hurt Rathulf through his betrayal. But as the young Norseman had held the point of the heavy blade over Thorvald’s chest – his hands shaking with grief – he had looked down upon his father’s care-worn face and all the rage and fury had drained from him. Instead, images and memories from a lifetime’s companionship had flooded into his troubled mind.
All at once he was five years old again, standing by the waters of their home fjord, his father’s steady hand enclosed about his own as he reeled in his first fish. Then came the cool and blustery autumn morning that had been his seventh birthday, which he remembered so well. It was the day his father had presented him with a beautiful toy longship, fashioned by the farmer’s own hand. And how could he forget the devastated expression he’d seen on his father’s face when he had opened his eyes after falling from his pony; Thorvald at first fearing his son had broken his neck. Finally, Rathulf recalled the most important day in his life as a Norseman so far – barely one summer ago – and the unqualified pride and joy
he had seen in his father’s eyes when he had stepped forward to announce his intention to join the ranks of the menfolk by taking the Leap next summer.
How could Rathulf hate him, no matter how great his hurt? For here lay the only father he had known, and for better or worse, the one responsible for the person whom Rathulf had become. Rathulf’s birth-sire – whoever he was – remained an abstraction, a fictional character from an obscure saga, and try as he might, whenever Rathulf strove to picture his true father, always it was Thorvald’s steadfast, grey-eyed gaze that greeted him. And so Rathulf had slumped down at the foot of the bed with the sword beside him, desolate and confused, unable to reconcile the fact that on one hand Thorvald had loved and cared for him all his life, and on the other, had taken him from his true home and family, and worse still, was responsible for the death of his brother, and most likely, his mother. Then to top it all off, his father had hidden that past from him so that now, when he had, at last, started to find out the truth it was too late.
Rathulf rose and moved to the bench next to where Thorvald lay. A large, unwieldy bandage bound the leg that had been crushed in the avalanche, and the dressing looked to Rathulf to be in sore need of a change. The cloth showed yellow and brown in patches where the wound had seeped through, and below it, the leg had turned a strange shade of greeny-brown. A sickly odour pervaded the room, and Rathulf knew what it meant. He had seen too many men bearing injuries far less serious than these fall victim to Hel’s clutches to know that Thorvald’s fate would likewise be decreed. Few people survived such wounds, and no amount of praying or sacrifice could win back a life if the Gods had decided that a soul’s time on Midgard had come to a close.
I wish I could talk to you, he thought suddenly. I wish I could ask you what my birthplace is like. The few images that Rathulf had formed were based on dim recollections of his mother’s descriptions mingled with what Rathulf knew and had experienced from his adopted northern landscapes. How similar or different is my homeland from Norvegr? Do steep-walled fjords slice far inland, surrounded by mountains whose ridges and shoulders are cut by glaciers and their backs cloaked in gleaming sheets of ice? Or is it an entirely different landscape? Certainly, his memories of what his mother had described differed markedly from that of his home. He let out an ironic laugh. Home? What is home anymore?
He let out a groan, utterly confused and drained by the profusion of thoughts and images that tumbled around in his head. Overriding them all, of course, was the image of his brother, forever present to plague him. The feelings of urgency that arose with his presence were as strong as ever. What do you want? Rathulf asked in his thoughts. He cursed himself for not having told his father about him or his dreams before. Now I may never know the answers, he thought in anguish.
Perhaps the great intensity of Rathulf’s need woke Thorvald, for suddenly the farmer frowned, then he opened his eyes and blinked up at his son.
‘Father!’ Rathulf cried, dropping down beside the bed, his heart in his throat. Thorvald’s lips were moving, and Rathulf craned over him, trying to make out the words.
‘Rathulf,’ Thorvald said, then he paused, his chest heaving, ‘… you … must …’ He stopped again and closed his eyes.
‘Father?’ Rathulf repeated, his own voice barely audible.
‘… ring …,’ Thorvald whispered, ‘you …’ He swallowed and in what seemed to be an enormous effort, turned his head and looked Rathulf directly in the face. ‘Go … home …,’ he said. His lips continued to move, but no sound came out. His eyes burned brightly for a moment longer, then they went blank.
‘What ring?’ Rathulf whispered. ‘Father?’
Thorvald continued to stare at him, but his gaze had shifted to a point far beyond Rathulf.
‘No!’ Rathulf cried. He shook Thorvald by the shoulders, desperate to wrench him from this stupor. ‘Come back,’ he pleaded. ‘You have to come back!’ But Thorvald’s head lolled on his neck, and his eyes remained open but unseeing.
‘No,’ Rathulf croaked, sinking to his knees. ‘You can’t die.’
But Thorvald had departed Midgard, abandoning his son to that cold, unforgiving world. He had set Rathulf adrift – an orphan in every sense of the word – with no home, no kin, no past; and without them, no future.
12. An eye for an eye
Bardisby, Sognefjorden, Norvegr
‘He’s alive,’ Helga repeated, looking up at Rathulf from Thorvald’s bedside. ‘He is still breathing.’
Rathulf blinked at her, disbelieving, tears still flowing unchecked. ‘But he just died,’ he said helplessly.
Helga had heard Rathulf’s despairing cries and had rushed to the steward’s hut to find her distraught foster-son kneeling beside his father’s bedplace. She took Rathulf in her arms. ‘You poor thing. He has just slipped back into a quieter place where his soul can rest some more. He is not yet ready to return to us.’ She released her charge, and he moved to sit down next to his father, but the action twisted his chest, and he let out an involuntary cry of pain.
‘Oh Ra,’ Helga scolded gently, ‘you must stop dashing about like this.’
‘How is it my fault?’ Rathulf responded, wincing as he lifted his arms so that Helga could look beneath his tunic and undershirt. ‘And how can I rest when father is so… so sick? Why won’t he awaken?’
Her face softened, and she smiled. ‘I suppose I’m not being very fair, am I?’ She made a quick appraisal of Rathulf’s chest and frowned. Rathulf bit back another yelp when she prodded a particularly sore spot. ‘It’s back to bed with you, young man,’ she said sternly, ‘and it’s a good thing we’re going back to Lærdalsfjorden where I can keep a better eye on you.’ She clicked her tongue as she helped Rathulf pull his clothes on.
At that moment the door burst open and Sigvald strode into the room. ‘Curse it, Helga, we can’t find him anywhere. We’re going to have to–’ It was then that he spied Rathulf. He let out a long breath.
‘There you are. We were about to send out a search party.’ He realised that Rathulf had been crying and he glanced at Thorvald.
‘He gave Rathulf a little scare,’ Helga explained, ‘but he’s still with us.’ She paused for a moment, then added. ‘The sooner we can get them home the better. There are far too many distractions here.’
‘Is it safe to move him?’ Rathulf asked, looking towards his father.
‘We really don’t have a choice,’ Helga answered. ‘I can’t look after him properly here.’
‘But what if he dies?’
His words hung in the awkward silence for some time before Helga spoke. ‘You mustn’t think the worst yet. Although it is true that I had hoped for more improvement by now, there is still time.’
‘He has to get better,’ Rathulf said. ‘He must!’ He pushed past Helga and stepped up to his father’s bed, desperate now that he should live, for Thorvald was the only remaining link to his past. How many of Tegen’s secrets does father hold in his head? How much had she told him that he has yet to pass on to me, his son? Son? Rathulf’s heart ached over those words. I don’t even know who I am anymore.
Rathulf felt Helga’s reassuring touch, and he turned to look up into her motherly face, a small, frightened child again. ‘What will I do if he dies?’ he asked. ‘Where will I go?’
Helga’s voice came low and tender. ‘You will always have a home here, Rathulf, no matter what fates the Aesir lay before you. And although your trunk has been lost, which is indeed a terrible thing to have happened, ultimately you must remember it contained only things that in themselves held no value. The true essence of who you are lies here, within you.’ She placed a gentle hand on his heart.
‘I don’t care about my trunk,’ Rathulf said, knowing more than ever what mattered to him now. ‘I just want my father back.’
✽ ✽ ✽
The following morning under a blustery grey sky, Sigvald set about preparing the Vixen for departure. Rathulf had appeared soon afterwards, and without a word of gr
eeting had boarded the ship. He sat up at the prow, staring off into the distance, his face set in a hard frown. The young man’s expression deeply troubled the jarl, for it signified that Rathulf had finally begun to understand the significance of the loss of his trunk and its contents, despite the boy’s statements to the contrary. Worst of all, he was directing the blame for his distress – however rightly or wrongly – squarely at Alrik. Unfortunately, it was not altogether misplaced, and aside from the trunk, there was also the matter of Tariq to deal with; a birthday surprise ruined once again thanks to Alrik, although Rathulf had yet to make the connection between Tariq and his birthday wish.
Sigvald roundly cursed his nephew. The idiot boy was worse than a wayward arrow, and Bardi would have to rein in his son before he did any more harm; although in all likelihood it would be taken out of Bardi’s hands anyway. For the fact remained that Alrik had broken the blood-pact, and the Assembly would likely grant Rathulf the right to determine the sentence, and were it handed down right now, Sigvald could well imagine the unhappy result. Thankfully no one had spoken of it recently, but it was a thing that would have to be faced at some point or another. And what exactly were the Gods trying to say in all of this? Did they want Rathulf to go back to Dumnonia or not?
Sigvald absently re-tied a knot in one of the lines that secured the mast then gave it a tug to check the tension. Even if Rathulf spared Alrik’s life, Sigvald wondered, turning his attention to the disorderly pile of rigging that cluttered the deck, would Ra press for compensation? If I were in Rathulf’s shoes, I’d have Alrik expelled to show him just how it felt to be set adrift from your home and family. He shook his head at that foolish thought. And where would that leave Rathulf? No less an exile himself. Sigvald sighed. Ra would need the support of his friends now more than ever, yet as a result of this disaster, he had become estranged from his closest companion. Better they made up somehow, which therefore meant that Sigvald had to come up with a way to play down the trunk’s importance and work out a way to rescue Leif. On the latter he was stuck; no matter which way he played it in his mind, always it ended up with a bloodbath. The only hope there was to appeal to Eirik to intervene, but that would come at a high price. How things had changed from those free and easy raiding days of yore! Eirik had been a nobody back then; just another young Viking looking to prove himself, equal in status to the other three. But now? Sigvald smiled wryly to himself. How things had changed. There was also the unresolved matter of Rathulf’s identity, which Sigvald knew could not be left unattended, but how to raise it? Given Rathulf’s current state of mind, it would probably be the finishing stroke to send him over the edge.