‘Well, Sveär. What have you to say for yourself?’
At first the Black said nothing, just leered up at the Danish prince with that half-crazed grin. Then he started sniggering, on and on, till his whole body shook.
Ringast had no patience for this. He seized him by his hair. ‘Answer, Sveär. Why did you this crime and many others? Why?’
The Black stopped laughing and smiled. ‘Because it’s – so – much – fun.’ Then he spat in Ringast’s face. There was a gasp from the crowd and Thrand stepped forward so enraged Kai thought he might tear off the Black’s head there and then. But Ringast blocked him, calmly wiping the phlegm from his beard.
‘Then hear my judgement.’ Ringast raised his voice. ‘Wound for wound. Death for death.’
The Black’s smile slanted into a cold sneer. ‘My brother will be revenged on you. On all you southern pigs!’
Ringast peered down at him, unimpressed. ‘If you are the Black I know your name. Gettir Huldirsson. Your father made quite a name for himself in the Eastern wars.’ His jaw tightened. ‘I think it’s time we sent him the same message you’ve been sending us. Perhaps then your brother will stop.’
‘You started this war, Dane. But we will finish it.’
‘I think not.’ Ringast turned to the crowd. ‘Wound for wound. Death for death!’ The crowd fairly bellowed with delight. ‘Take him.’
The men flanking Gettir hauled him to his feet and dragged him down the slope towards two weathered stakes. Kai gave a rueful snort when he saw them. He was only too well acquainted with flogging posts. But he suspected Gettir was in for something far worse than a few lashes.
‘Mark well the fate of any Sveär who crosses us!’ cried Ringast.
Once his mind was made up, it seemed to Kai, this Danish prince was as bloodhungry as the next man.
The crowd cheered. Kai felt their bloodlust swirling round him, heard house-karls yelling drunken curses and death to all Sveärs. Instinctively he looked for Einar but couldn’t see him. Savagery was stalking among the crowd and he wasn’t the only one feeling it. Thrand’s voice boomed above the clamour. ‘See the dogs that dwell beyond the Kolmark! There are thousands more like this one! We should ride now and bring death to them all! Death and slaughter!’
‘Patience, brother!’ rebuked Ringast. ‘We need more men. But the time is near.’
‘Cowards are patient!’
‘And fools are impetuous. Enough of this, I say.’ Ringast turned to the flogging posts. His men already had Gettir stripped, spread and bound. ‘Now – begin.’
The crowd howled as the riders began meting out their lord’s hard justice.
Kai watched, his mouth a long grimace. But he was suddenly distracted by a smell that made him gag. He turned and there were Einar’s ruddy features at his shoulder, one eyebrow a line of dried blood. Kai looked down. Einar’s feet were bare and caked with brown smears.
‘Sorry to be the one to tell you this, my fat friend. But you stink.’
Einar paid him no heed. Instead Kai saw on his face an expression he’d not marked there before. Fear.
Kai clapped his shoulder. ‘I reckon I’ve seen enough for one day. Ain’t we got work to do?’
Not waiting for an answer, he turned Einar around and led him back through the crowd towards the forge. Einar followed, meek as a lamb. But Kai couldn’t resist one last look back. Through the welter of angry faces, he glimpsed the Black hanging there, body shuddering, features hard as granite.
And amid all those blood-chilling cries, he uttered not a sound.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kill enough people and sooner or later the most powerful lord in the land is going to learn of it.
Erlan was in attendance when tidings of the great scathe wrought by Huldir’s sons reached the ear of Sviggar. It arrived in the mouth of a young cowherd who lived in the south. The boy’s appreciation of the boundary between Sveäland and Gotarland was vague at best or, more likely, a matter of total indifference to him. Sviggar’s decree that none should cross the boundary in either direction had not reached him and his herd. If it had, he would likely have turned a deaf ear. At that time of year the best grass was south of the Kolmark, so south he went. And there, he gathered from the few encounters he had that all was not well in those borderlands. Death, destruction, rape and pillage more brutal than any had ever known. And all of it the work of cursed Sveärs. (The cowherd was sharp enough to keep his mouth shut when the talk took this turn.) He soon began to piece together the picture, and smart lad that he was, he saw it was worth the journey to bring word back to the lord of his land, especially if it meant a pouch full of silver for him, as he hoped. Thus, the news came to the king’s halls.
This is what he told.
A band of Sveär warriors, merciless killers, led by two brothers. Twins. One dark as the night, the other white as a new snowfall. Sviggar needed to hear no more. He paled with anger.
Earl Huldir was summoned at once, and with him his sons. Only one accompanied him, however. The ghost-man, as Kai called him. In truth, he hadn’t shown his face around Uppsala much in the time Erlan had been there. He didn’t speak much either, and what he did say was uttered in a low hiss, almost unintelligible unless he was looking you straight in the eye with that limpid stare of his.
He was peering at Sviggar now with the same smile bowing his mouth as had his brother’s, despite the fact that Sviggar was launching gouts of invective in his direction. But it all ran off Gellir the White like water off a moorhen’s back.
His father took it rather worse. Every man’s pride has a limit, and by Erlan’s reckoning, Sviggar was running Huldir pretty close to his.
‘I told you, my lord – it’s no slight against you that Gettir is not here before you now. We don’t know where he is.’ Huldir nodded at his son. ‘Gellir will tell you. They lost contact in the forest. After that, he’s heard nothing.’
‘Then we can assume he’s dead.’ Erlan thought it might have been prudent of Sviggar not to look quite so happy about it. ‘He’s a damned renegade! And a fool! You both are. None of this would have happened if you had done as I ordered. Do you have anything to say for yourself?’
He left a space of silence for Gellir to fill. It stretched and stretched. Eventually Gellir’s long tongue emerged, but only to wet his lips and retreat again. The fact was he didn’t need to say anything. He was practically glowing with insolence.
‘You’re a disgrace,’ the king muttered. ‘You and your brother. There was to be no provocation of the Wartooth’s hand, no cause for war given—’
‘The Wartooth makes his own cause,’ Huldir growled.
‘Hold your tongue, damn you!’ Sviggar pointed a long, brittle finger at the earl. For the moment Huldir backed down. ‘There was to be no cause of war given,’ Sviggar repeated. ‘Instead you have lent justice to their cause and doubtless put a surfeit of hate in their hearts.’
‘No more hate than burns in my heart already.’
‘I told you to be—’
‘I will not be silent! I cannot be! Not when I hear these words you speak. They’re the words of a coward. A craven! Since when did the king of Sveäland become lickspittle to that pile of excrement steaming on the throne of Leithra?’
‘You forget yourself, my old friend,’ hissed Sviggar.
‘No, it is you who forget yourself, my lord. You! The man I swore fealty to thirty years ago would never speak like this. That man would never cringe in his hall like some whipped cur in his kennel. Why would you dishonour me and my kin now?’ Huldir’s face was thunder. ‘It’s you who owes the explanation, not my sons. You! For trying to appease that murderous boar. He and all his kind deserve death. My sons have delivered no more than that.’
Huldir’s meaty fists were bunched on the table, the scar that ran across his grizzled face pulsed purple, his blank eye fixed in challenge upon his king.
Sviggar rose and nodded. ‘You’ve had your say. Now you hear me. Your sons are rab
id dogs. Nothing more. Whatever fate has befallen the other, this unruly boy and you are banished from these halls forthwith. Banished – you hear! Go back to Nairka and think about that oath you swore. Think about those thirty years of loyalty. It’s because of them that I let you leave here with your tongue. Go! And wait there for my instruction.’
Huldir’s jaw was grinding like a bondsman’s millstone. Erlan wondered whether a fresh outburst might erupt from his bush of a beard. Instead his reply was soft, almost sorrowful. ‘Your father would be ashamed to see this day.’
‘Get out.’
For a moment, Huldir seemed to remember his place. He drew himself up to his considerable height and bowed his head respectfully, as if there wasn’t a more devoted man in the kingdom. Then he signalled to his son and they marched out of the chamber.
Erlan watched as they swept past him. Huldir’s eyes were fixed ahead. Gellir, however, glanced at him as he passed. His pale eyebrow flickered, his mouth curled in a sneer.
Doubtless Sviggar had the right of it, as far as it went. But by Erlan’s reckoning he had just made an enemy he might come to regret.
‘That boy of yours needs to come back with some answers,’ Sviggar said to him when they had gone.
‘He will.’
‘If he comes back.’
Erlan said nothing, refusing to entertain that notion.
‘You see it, though, don’t you?’ Sviggar waved his hand after the banished earl. ‘I’m surrounded by incompetents and traitors. Men I used to trust with my life, I can’t even rely on to follow a simple command.’ His craggy frown softened and he smiled at Erlan. ‘I can trust you, though, can’t I?’
‘Of course, my lord.’
‘Yes. You must stay close, Aurvandil,’ he muttered, his eyes glazing. ‘I need you close to me.’
And suddenly he seemed very old and frail.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lilla’s head throbbed like a dragon’s heart.
She had gone deeper this time and for that there was always a toll to pay.
Seeking answers, she had gone to the ancient ash tree at the heart of the Kingswood, impatient to know what would be. To know what truly lay in Erlan’s mind. But when she sank back into the smoke-wreathed embrace of Urtha’s Weed and tried to conjure his face, he was elusive, unreadable. And now, having returned to her chamber, the pounding in her skull only made the wheel of thoughts in her head so much the worse.
She called in a servant and summoned water. The thrall-boy soon returned with a brimming basin. She plunged her face into it, enjoying its cold caress against her throbbing temples.
She looked into the bronze mirror and sighed. The smoke of Urtha’s Weed still tasted dry in her throat. Her mind wheeled again and she saw his face, remembered that look of longing in his eyes. But somehow, instead of the thrill of that moment, she felt embarrassed. The way it had ended had confused her. His stuttering apologies. What did it mean?
The boy was still standing by the door, shuffling from foot to foot.
‘Was there something else?’
The queen wished to see her, though about what, the boy had no answer. Only that she would find her bathing in the river.
She sent him away, fussed a little with her hair in the mirror, but soon gave that up for a bad job. Her tresses were an unruly muddle. Much like the inside of her head, she thought ruefully. Instead she went to find her stepmother.
Saldas had a favourite spot in a crook of the river where the waters of the Fyris ran a little slower and the branches of a weeping willow protected her modesty from the gaze of any hall-folk who happened onto the flood meadows. In any case, she was easy to find. Bara, her handmaiden, was standing on the bank holding her robe, gazing up at the clouds, her hair a splash of rust-red in all that green. Nearby Svein and Katla were foraging along the riverbank like a pair of terriers. When they saw her coming, they squealed with delight and ran to her.
‘We’re hunting grasshoppers,’ cried Svein.
‘How very brave of you!’ Lilla stroked each face in turn. ‘Can you catch one for me?’
‘What colour would you like?’ asked Katla earnestly.
‘They’re all green, stupid. Come on!’ Svein raced off along the rushes, leaving his little sister looking deflated. Lilla caught her hand and crouched down, level with her face. ‘Find me a blue one,’ she winked. Katla beamed and trotted off after her brother.
‘There you are,’ Saldas called up when Lilla appeared by the river’s edge. ‘I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.’
‘I went for a walk,’ Lilla lied. She never spoke of what she did in the Kingswood to her stepmother. And if Saldas knew, she never mentioned it.
‘Why don’t you come in?’ Saldas swirled her arms.
‘It looks cold.’
‘Of course it’s cold. That’s the point.’ Cold and clear. Lilla could see beneath the surface the wavering image of Saldas’s body, pale against the dark green of the Fyris.
‘I just washed.’
‘Your loss.’ Saldas sighed, a cloud of dark hair eddying about her shoulders. She ducked underwater and swam a couple of strokes towards the bank. Re-surfacing, she slicked back her hair, then rose out of the water. She was naked. The cold water had stretched her skin somehow, seeming to exaggerate the curves of her body – her rounded hips, the smooth orbs of her breasts. Her limbs were lithe and strong and, despite bearing two children, she had the figure of a much younger woman. Lilla was slightly in awe of her beauty and she found herself thinking, not for the first time, that her father must enjoy his young wife’s body. Not that she knew much about love-play herself. But looking at Saldas anyone could see that her father must be the envy of all the menfolk thereabouts. It was a strange thought. That this woman – who would have no business being in her family if it weren’t for her mother’s death – was now much closer to her father than Lilla ever would be. And looking at all that glistening flesh, she knew she could never offer him what Saldas could.
‘Help me out.’ Saldas reached for Lilla to assist her up the bank. Bara was waiting to wrap her mistress in an expansive blue cloak.
‘What did you want to see me about, Lady Saldas?’
‘Mother,’ Saldas corrected her.
‘Sorry... Mother.’ Bitch, Lilla thought, then felt guilty.
‘Bara – would you mind? The children...’ Saldas wafted a hand in the direction of the little ones, who were playing upriver. ‘They can stay a little longer, then bring them back to the hall.’ She turned back to Lilla. ‘Walk with me.’
Without waiting for her assent, Saldas set off across the meadow, her feet padding soundlessly through the tufts of grass. Lilla hitched her skirts and ran to catch up.
‘I’ve been thinking about something.’ Saldas turned to look at Lilla directly. ‘Someone, in fact.’
‘Who?’
‘Erlan, of course.’ Lilla said nothing. ‘I’ve been thinking about your reaction the other morning. About those other times I’ve seen you together. Even just yesterday—’
‘It hasn’t been so often, has it?’
‘It’s fine, my sweetling. There’s no need to deny it.’ Saldas reached out and squeezed Lilla’s hand. ‘I merely want what’s best for you. You know that.’
Did she? She hadn’t ever noticed Saldas wanting anything much for anyone but herself.
‘Anyway, it’s been turning over in my mind,’ she continued. ‘I feel it’s my place to warn you about letting your feelings run away with you.’
‘My feelings?’
‘I know you try to conceal the fact but you must remember I see more than other people.’ She smiled, touching Lilla’s arm. ‘You like him. Do you deny it?’
The pulse in Lilla’s temple seemed to beat a notch faster. Gods, but her head ached. And now she felt like a rabbit scurrying for cover under the shadow of a hawk. But it was too late. The warmth in her cheeks had already betrayed her. ‘I suppose. I like him well enough.’
‘Is it
a passion?’
‘A passion – gods, no! It’s— just a passing thing. Silly, really.’
Another lie?
Saldas gave a faint snort. ‘Of course, I remember how it could be at your age. So easy for the heart to get carried away. And if you’re not careful the body with it.’
Lilla blushed, embarrassed to speak of such things with her stepmother.
Saldas levelled her green eyes. ‘Erlan is an attractive young man, I suppose, in his way. But he’s an outsider. He’s not one of us, and certainly not for you.’ She scoffed. ‘A man like that – I mean! Come day’s end, what is he but a killer? In any case, a man of his unvarnished nature would never be interested in someone like you.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Lilla, a little too sharply.
‘Well, I—’ Saldas’s mouth curled, half-amused. ‘I don’t wish to be indelicate. But it would take a woman of altogether more experience than you to satisfy a man like Erlan. No. You’re destined for a different sort of man, one with a tender heart to suit your nature.’
What she means is someone insipid and weak, thought Lilla, her temper rising. ‘Maybe there’s more to Erlan than you know.’
‘That’s beside the point. And anyway, I don’t think so,’ Saldas added. ‘When a man kills as much as he has, his heart becomes hard. Incapable of love. He wants a woman only to satisfy his baser needs.’
Perhaps Saldas was right. Perhaps his ‘baser needs’ were all she had seen in his eyes.
‘Oh, there’s no need to look so disappointed, my dear. I’m simply trying to counsel you. Besides,’ she leaned a little closer, ‘he hasn’t given you any reason to think that he likes you in the same way, has he?’
Lilla hesitated, remembering the kiss, the flick of his tongue, sweet and alive in her mouth, how he had seemed to want to crush her against him. ‘No,’ she lied. ‘He hasn’t.’
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