‘What are the pair of you up to, anyhow?’
‘Haven’t you heard? The king’s fingered this one for an important mission.’
‘What mission?’
Erlan winked at her. ‘If you ask nicely, maybe he’ll tell you.’
Bara glanced uncertainly in the direction of the Great Hall while Erlan climbed through the fence. ‘Well?’ he called. ‘Are you coming back or staying here?’
‘What, you need me to hold your hand, do you, hero?’ Bara gave him a coquettish flick of her shoulder and turned back to Kai. ‘All right then, shorty – what’s this all about?’
Ambling through the small halls towards the looming shape of the Great Hall, Erlan was almost grateful for Bara’s interruption. The day had softened into a windless evening. Almost peaceful... Aye, he wondered, but how long would such a peace last? Till midsummer? Till the corn was cut? The gentle quiet as evening settled seemed a world away from the horrors of the Kolmark, but like the shadows lengthening over barn and byre alike, a darkness was coming. He felt it in his bones.
He looked up at the last streaks of light and thought of his own kin, far away. Right now, they would be sitting down for their supper after a long day in the fields – pulling weeds, putting in the second sowings of barley and rye.
A memory came, unbidden. Of Inga, flinging joyous arcs of seed across dark furrows. He tried to picture her face and found he could not. Only her hair. The taste of her lips, the feel of her fingers laced among his—
He recoiled, the memory suddenly pricking like a knife, too close. He forced his mind back to the present business.
Why the Hel was the queen troubling him with someone’s quarrel now? They had hardly exchanged a word since the Yule feast. What had been said then seemed unreal now. Perhaps he had imagined it. All of it. The lingering scent, the spark in her fingertips, the suggestion in her whispered words. Some ephemeral dream that lurked in the shadows of his mind... No – it couldn’t be that.
By the time he reached the north end of the Great Hall, darkness had cloaked the surrounding buildings, sharpening the flares sputtering overhead.
He thumped on the door.
Moments later he was following the flickering sconces down the corridor, his lopsided gait reverberating dully off the walls. There wasn’t a servant in the place. But then, never having been in that part of the hall, he thought perhaps that was normal. At length, he reached the queen’s chamber and knocked.
‘Who is it?’ came the queen’s soft burr.
He stated his name. There was silence, then, ‘Enter.’
He went in.
In one corner stood a brazier, the air above it rippling with heat. Against another wall was a silver mirror, tall as a man, and opposite, a bed-closet fashioned from rough-hewn timber framing the bed, which was covered with thick white furs. But of Saldas, there was no sign. At least none but the scent filling his nostrils, rich and subtle as a summer twilight.
‘Close the door.’
He turned and there she was, appearing from a curtain that screened one corner of the room. Her black hair, normally combed straight, was a little tousled and fell loose about her shoulders. She wore only a plain white shift cinched at her waist with a pale ribbon and clasped a small bronze mirror to her chest. Her eyes seemed to sparkle as if jealous of the torch flames. Altogether the effect was most striking. She was a woman of a little over thirty summers – perhaps twelve years older than he. Seeing her like this, he couldn’t deny her reputation as the greatest beauty in all of Sveäland was well deserved.
None knew it better than her, of course.
‘You know why you’re here?’
‘Bara said something about a dispute. Does the king wish to speak with me?’
‘The king is indisposed.’
‘He seemed well enough yesterday.’
‘And this evening he is not.’ The glimmer of a smile passed over her lips. ‘Do you doubt me, Aurvandil?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’ She looked him up and down. ‘Have you been fighting?’
Erlan was suddenly conscious his tunic was covered in dust and still damp – and stinking – with sweat. ‘I have, my lady.’
She seemed amused. ‘Other men might have made themselves more presentable before an audience with their queen.’
‘Forgive me, I—’
‘No matter,’ she interrupted. She took a step closer and he watched her slim nostrils flare. ‘Perhaps you have a thirst.’
‘As it happens, I do.’
She went to the table and filled two ox-horn cups from a silver jug.
‘What shall we drink to?’ She handed him one.
‘To the health of the king, I suppose.’
She lifted her cup and smiled. ‘Naturally.’ She took a languorous sip while Erlan slugged back his wine. It tasted sweet and heavy.
‘Now then,’ she said, her tone become business-like. ‘Some folk arrive tomorrow. The cousin of the Earl of Sodermanland. He appeals to my husband as kin – though in my opinion he presumes far too close a connection.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘It concerns his daughter. She’s to be divorced and there’s some disagreement over the property her father gave as dowry. It seems the husband has dropped his wife and is keeping the dowry for himself.’
‘A worthy man.’
‘Things are never simple. I’m told he paid a considerable bride price for her only to discover she’s of feeble health. Apparently she told her husband to find himself another woman. Sentimental little fool! Now her father is spitting because her husband took her at her word. Anyway, it’s all rather absurd. The king wants you to deal with this man while he is unwell.’
‘Are they feuding?’
‘Not yet. But that’s the point, isn’t it? The king wants none of this to escalate – especially not in Sodermanland and especially not now. Not with our current... preoccupations,’ she added. ‘You’re to convince him to do without his silver until it can be settled at the Summer Throng.’
She meant the annual assembly of Sveärs, which every freeman in the realm was entitled to attend, where disputes would be judged, debts settled and deals struck.
‘And if he can’t be convinced?’
‘See that he is.’
‘I’ll do my best. Though if you ask me, sickness seems a weak reason to put away a wife.’
‘Nonsense. It strikes me a very good reason. Why, I’ve known a woman divorce her man because drunkenness deprived her of her womanly dues once too often. Another man became a laughing stock when he was wounded across his buttocks. In battle, true,’ she shrugged. ‘He reckoned himself a hero, but his wife divorced him within the week!’
At this Saldas laughed, throwing back her head and shaking out her long, dark hair. Erlan watched the shadows play about the contours of her throat, feeling a stirring that had very little to do with legal disputes.
‘There seems small point in making a marriage vow if it can be undone so easily,’ he said to distract himself.
Saldas pouted. ‘How serious you sound! And how young! Have you not been married?’
He hesitated. He had made a promise once. Not a marriage vow, but words as solemn. ‘I can’t say.’
‘Ah! Of course. Our mysterious stranger who refuses to speak of his past. Come to save us all, and yet we know nothing of you.’ She moved closer, took another sip of her wine, eyeing him over the rim of her cup. ‘Nothing at all... Well, one day you’ll marry – again or for the first time – and you may come to appreciate the freedom of a vow that’s easily undone.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’ He took another swig to break her disconcerting gaze.
‘Count yourself fortunate. I am not so free. A king may cast aside his queen, but no queen can spurn her king.’ She scoffed. ‘Anyway, she’d be a fool to.’
Saldas moved still closer. He could almost feel the heat off her body, but he said nothing, only watched a slender finger trail along her colla
rbone.
‘Then again, power isn’t everything,’ she murmured. Her hand fell to her shift, teasing at the flimsy material, drawing his gaze to the plunging shadow beneath. ‘Sometimes even a king and queen are ill matched. And what’s a queen to do then, stranger?’
Erlan’s throat was dry as dust, despite the wine. Her breathing seemed to deepen, swelling her breasts towards him. He could see the shadow of a nipple, dark and firm beneath the linen. She took his cup and set it down beside hers on the table. She didn’t say a word. Didn’t need to. It was all very clear.
And yet he hesitated. This was a line only a very brave or a very stupid man would cross. But she wasn’t going to wait for him to decide which he was. Suddenly there was nothing between them. She ran a finger down the line of his jaw, then looked at her fingertip, rubbed away the salt of his sweat. ‘You’ve worked hard today. I wonder what strength you have left for the night.’ She smiled and let her hand drop. He felt fingers, light and sinuous, trace the hardening heat in his loins. She glanced at the mirror and he followed her gaze. In it he saw the slender figure in white pressed against him, watched what he could feel as her hand moved up and down.
Something in him snapped. He suddenly seized her waist, pulled her against him, heard her gasp as he bit her neck, his hand fumbling for her breast and finding a nipple, already hard as a bead of amber. Then his face was in her hands, her tongue in his mouth, wild and hungry, its taste indescribably sweet.
All of it, impossibly sweet...
Except that a voice crackled like lightning through the clouds of intoxication billowing in his mind. Beware another man’s wife. Her bed is a road to trouble. He recognized the words, and the voice. Both were his father’s, pounded into his head since he was a boy. He cursed that voice because his father was a hypocrite. Cursed the words because he knew they were true. Sviggar was an old man, an ill-matched husband maybe. But he was also Erlan’s lord.
He pushed her away.
‘What is it?’ she gasped.
‘I can’t do this.’
‘What?’
‘I’m sworn to your husband. I can’t love you.’
She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Who said anything about love?’ Teasingly she bit her lower lip while her fingers slipped through his hair and pulled his mouth down a second time. He felt her body enveloping him like a mist, her hand searching for his buckle.
But the thought was in his skull now, beating at it like Thor’s hammer. ‘I can’t.’ He jerked away.
‘No one will ever know.’
Erlan wished he could believe that. But there was some deeper instinct telling him to leave, to have nothing to do with this woman. He tried to push her away, but she wouldn’t let go. Then he shoved her, harder than he meant to, harder than was wise. She stumbled backwards, butting the table and upending a cup. Wine splashed down her shift, staining the white linen red.
For a moment she was stunned, looking down at herself as if she couldn’t believe what had just happened. But when her eyes rose to meet his, they were bright with anger.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she whispered, in a voice harsh as winter.
‘The only thing I should do. I’m leaving.’
‘Should?’ She scoffed. ‘Slaves live by “should”. Is that all you are, Erlan Aurvandil? A slave?’
The thought occurred to him that, if ever he were, it would be to her. That was exactly why he had to get out.
When he was at the door, she called his name, her voice now smooth as silk. ‘Look at me.’ His hand was on the latch but still he turned. She was a terrible sight. Terrible and beautiful as Freyja – if the goddess had happened to be in a particularly vengeful mood – with her black hair, her fierce eyes, and her white gown daubed red as blood. ‘Go, if you must,’ she smiled. ‘But know this. I mean to have you. And sooner or later, I will.’
Erlan let the drape fall and closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER TEN
Gerutha was naked.
That’s what she noticed first – the night air washing cold over her skin. Then she heard shouts, shrieks, the crackle of fire.
She opened her eyes, pain pounding her skull like a cudgel. Someone had hit her, hard.
It took a few moments to remember. The men had come by stealth. There had been wailing and the warning bell. Voices screaming in the night.
She had rushed outside, but already it was chaos. Shadows were breaking between the thatched houses in a swirl of fire and steel. A ghostly howling danced on the air. She remembered her first crazed fear: that the dead had returned to carry off the living – remembered turning to retrieve her boy, to keep him safe, and then the blow. That was all.
She tried to rub her eyes but couldn’t move her arms. She felt hemp bite at her wrists and realized her hands were tied behind her back. Why did her head feel so heavy? She looked down at naked feet. They too were lashed together. Beyond them, she could see a branch. She tried to wriggle loose, but only ended up flapping like a herring on a hook. Finally she understood: she was upside down.
Someone beneath her laughed. She felt a slap to her buttocks. ‘Patience, sister! Your turn will come.’
Gerutha twisted her head and saw a sneering face, smeared with grime.
I’m too old for this. But what surety was age against men like these? These killers didn’t care. She wanted to scream, like so many others were screaming, but what good would it do? Instead she hung, limp as a sack of seed, trying to make sense of what she could see.
Flames were everywhere. Blisters of black smoke billowed downwards into the abysmal dark. Shadows rushed, appearing to her like cockroaches scuttling across a ceiling. She saw blades fall and rise, heard whimpers and cries, animal yells and whoops. A man collapsed, but upwards, found his feet again, staggered, only for two shadows to pounce on him, scything him down like barley.
She didn’t want to see any more. Didn’t want to witness the destruction of everyone and everything she held dear. A man was gibbering prayers beside her. She turned her head and saw a line of bodies strung along a bough of the gnarly old oak that marked the village centre.
Every one was naked.
The screams were now dying away like an ebb tide, leaving only the wails of womenfolk being put to shame. The killers weren’t running now. They could take their time, stalking with horrible deliberation among the corpses that, until tonight, had been her kith and kin.
She hoped it had been quick for her boy. Hoped he hadn’t suffered.
She was about to utter a prayer to Hel, the two-faced guardian of the dead, but something caught her eye that killed the words in her throat: two figures approaching, silhouetted against the flames. Something about them seized her, something uncanny.
‘Well, well! You folks are in for a treat,’ crowed the man who had slapped her rump.
She paid him little heed. She was watching these other men, each an exact imitation of the other, except one wore a black wolf-skin, the other white. Both faces were obscured behind metal eye-guards. They halted before the captives. Then, as one, they removed their helms.
‘The White and the Black!’ moaned someone along the line. A woman began to blubber.
‘Sveär butchers!’ cried another.
‘Watch your filthy Gotar tongue,’ snarled the guard. There was a shriek as he prodded the offender with his spear-tip.
Gerutha was rigid with fear. Even upside down, their faces were all hard-set brows and noses cruel as daggers, mirrors of each other. Except the twin on the right had dark hair, dark eyes, dark beard. Everything dark as death. And the other... the other was a ghost. His hair and beard white as milk, his skin pale as a corpse. Only his eyes had any colour at all, glowing pink and pitiless in the reflected flames.
The White and the Black.
These last days their reputation had spread like a straw fire throughout the farmsteads and villages that bordered the southern edge of the Kolmark Forest. At first, the stories had been confused, exagge
rated, too horrible for anyone to believe. But the reports grew, the details always the same, each affirming the last like some awful refrain. Wolf-warriors from north of the forest. Sveär bastards who wouldn’t keep to their own lands. The deaths were bad enough, but it was how they died. Men flayed alive, women butchered beyond recognition. They struck like a hammer-blow, then slipped back into the forest, leaving everyone dead. All except one. There was always one survivor, and the survivor’s story always the same: two men with the same face. One white as a draugr. One black as Hel.
Their eyes flicked up and down the line of wretched villagers like wolves salivating over their prey. She recognized the voice of Klep the blacksmith, babbling for mercy. But she couldn’t speak, couldn’t take her eyes off those two faces that were one.
They looked at one another and seemed to smile. In her upside-down world, their faces looked like grimacing idols.
‘Well, brother,’ said the Black, ‘shall we begin?’
The White didn’t answer, only uttered a laugh so hollow it could have come from the gullet of Garm himself, Hel’s hound. He lifted his blade, already fouled with its night’s work. The villagers began to scream.
Gerutha swore an oath to herself: that she would not look. Not if they flayed the lids off her eyes. Nor did she. But she couldn’t shut her ears to the fearful sounds that rushed about her like the winds of Ragnarök while these brothers went about their work. She tried to think of better times, times with her son, who now, surely, was walking the Hel-road ahead of her. He wasn’t much younger than these two devils. She thanked the white god Heimdall that her son would never live to become like these.
She was shaking, her body no longer hers to control – except for her eyes, which she welded shut against the horror, though she knew her time was coming. She heard the man next to her uttering sounds no human should ever make, nor ever hear. On and on until at last there was a splattering noise. Then silence.
She was almost relieved. Hoped the pain would not be too unbearable. Nor too long. That her reward would be to see her son again, and soon.
‘Open your eyes.’ It was the smoother voice of the Black twin.
A Sacred Storm Page 8