‘Of course.’ She reached out and traced a nail down his chest and around his nipple. ‘Your crown will never be secure until every possible seed of revenge is destroyed. After what you’ve done, Lilla’s sons must come for you.’
‘We did it together.’
‘I merely served your will.’ She squeezed the hard nub of flesh, heard his intake of breath. ‘It was your decision to take the crown from your father. All the more reason that you’ll never win my love nor peace of mind until you’ve cut out your sister’s womb.’
‘You are a pitiless she-wolf, aren’t you?’ he snorted. ‘Lilla’s out of the way. We need only defeat her husband. She can do us no harm now.’
‘Do you dare baulk at this when I didn’t spare my own children to serve your ends?’ It had been a dark deed – perhaps the darkest she’d ever done – but she had steeled herself to it. It had been the condition on which Sigurd had insisted, on which everything had hung. Having now met it, there was no way she would let Sigurd pay a lower price than her.
His grey gaze flicked between her eyes. ‘Very well. She dies. Are you happy?’
Her lip curled in a shallow smile. ‘Not quite. There’s something else I want.’
‘What?’
‘The Aurvandil’s heart.’
‘And how the Hel am I supposed to bring you that? He’s probably halfway to Miklagard by now. Or else – if the gods are good – at the bottom of the East Sea in whatever worm-eaten tub he stole.’
‘The bones say otherwise. The cripple lives.’
‘Well then, my gentle queen, if it’s in my power, I’ll fetch his heart for you. You can even eat it, for all I care. I know you have a taste for such things.’
‘To see it will suffice.’
‘Satisfied?’
‘I will be – if you move, with all your men... tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? Out of the question. We’ve not yet mustered our full strength. And Starkad is not yet—’
‘If he doesn’t come this far north, we can save time,’ she interrupted, weary of his excuses. ‘Send word to him. We march with the strength we have and meet his fleet somewhere south of the Kolmark.’
‘Like where?’
‘Gods, must I lead you by the nose every step like some dumb ox?’
‘Well? Do you have a place in mind?’
‘Why not Bravik? It’s a large fjord – large enough to shelter Starkad’s fleet – and the road south passes close by to the west.’
‘Bravik,’ Sigurd repeated. He nodded. ‘Very well. Bravik it shall be.’
‘And we move tomorrow.’
His nostrils wrinkled with doubt. ‘More spears arrive every day. It would be hasty—’
‘You already have the largest host ever gathered in this land.’ She smiled playfully. ‘If you delay any longer, waiting for men who may or may not come, I fear you risk looking faint of heart.’
‘Are you calling me a coward?’ he flared, his pride touched, as she had meant it to be. But she knew how to stir other sensations in him, too. She let her eyes fill with heat and saw his expression change, heard the thickening in his breath.
With exquisite slowness, she slid her hand down over his belly until her fingers furrowed through his dark curls and closed around his manhood. She felt the rush of blood under her fingertips as she began to move her hand in long, lazy strokes up and down his growing length.
He was hard as steel in no time.
‘I know you’re no coward, husband,’ she murmured. ‘What I’m saying is, you’re ready.’ She let her fingers rise and fall with the rhythm of her words. ‘Ready to mount up. Ready to ride hard. Ready to fight. Ready to take what is yours.’
She looked down at him and let a soft moan of pleasure escape from her lips for effect. ‘Only reach out and it will fall into your hand,’ she whispered, squeezing a little tighter, moving a little faster. ‘Only close your fingers and all of it will be yours.’
His hips were shaking. ‘You’re right,’ he murmured. ‘It is mine to take. The Wide-Realm belongs to our line... To me.’ His voice was trembling. ‘I will go.’
She brushed her lips against his. ‘On the morrow?’
‘On the morrow, then.’
‘So be it,’ she said, letting his shaft flop onto his belly and rolling away. ‘And once you bring me your sister’s womb and the cripple’s heart, then I’ll show you how grateful a queen can be.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Erlan arrived at Dannerborg after dark, perched on the back of a cart, footsore and exhausted from a long and confusing journey, let alone from his numerous wounds. At least he had reached his destination. He was directed to the steward, a strange character who seemed to hold sway in the yard and immediately took him before the high seat in the mead-hall.
There, draped across the seat’s ornately carved arm-rests, was not Prince Ringast, as he had expected, but his brother Thrand, who looked like he was the wrong side of a barrel of beer.
When Erlan tried to explain who he was, that he had come from Uppsala, Thrand ordered him seized and disarmed at once.
‘There are too many damned strangers skulking about this place. Lock him up!’
‘The princess will vouch for me, at least. She must hear what I have to tell. You all must.’
‘Unfortunately for you, my brother’s fair wife isn’t receiving guests just now.’ Thrand’s beard cracked into an ale-soaked smile. ‘But I’ll be sure to pass on your message in the morning. Now tell me – Aurvandil, wasn’t it? How do you feel about pig-shit?’
They slung him in a byre that had until recently served as a sty, one that no one had thought to muck out. There were at least no animals in it and Erlan scraped together enough clean straw to sleep better than he had in a month.
He was awoken with a kick long after dawn had broken and, surprisingly, he felt well rested, albeit ravenously hungry too. And nervous – at the thought of seeing Lilla again, at how she would receive the ill news he bore.
‘Has the princess been told I’m here?’
‘Princess?’ the guard sniffed. ‘Don’t know about no princess. But Lord Thrand has a mind to see you.’
They put him in irons. Erlan locked his jaw against the pain as they clamped his mangled wrists. That these were his new friends was a depressing thought. Nevertheless, he followed them without a word of complaint.
Inside, Thrand was sitting in his big chair, upright this time, palming his brow. He looked ill-tempered and, frankly, unwell. On either side of him was a dangerous-looking crew. Some were clearly outlanders, especially the broad-shouldered woman lounging against a pillar. She was taller than he was, with cropped white-blond hair, a boiled leather tunic and a spear-straight nose.
A shield-maiden. He hadn’t seen one of them since his boyhood days at Vendlagard. Odin’s Daughters, the skalds called them. This one was peering at him as though he were worth rather less than a mummer’s fart.
Hovering at Thrand’s elbow was the steward, his bald pate gleaming like polished amber.
They stood him in front of Thrand.
‘A battle wound?’ said the prince.
Erlan snorted. ‘Which one?’
‘The foot, man – the foot!’
‘Oh, that. That was my father.’
Thrand let out a bellow of a laugh. ‘Well, we all know what damned whoresons fathers can be, huh?’
‘Did you really summon me here to discuss family?’
Thrand pulled at his long beard menacingly, his eyes shifting. ‘I suppose it was the Bastard King who sent you.’
‘No one sent me. And Sviggar is dead.’
Thrand’s expression changed, but not as much as Erlan had expected. ‘So it’s true. Well, if that’s all the news you came to tell, it’s been a wasted journey.’ He stood suddenly and ranged an accusing finger at Erlan. ‘You will tell me this, though – where is my brother?’
‘Where’s Ringast?’ retorted Erlan.
‘Never mind about him.’
<
br /> ‘This is his hall, isn’t it?’
‘Listen, you stinking pig’s turd. I’m the one gets to ask the fucking questions.’
‘Well, you’ll get no answers until he is here. Him or the princess.’
Thrand glowered at him a while, then turned to the steward with a scowl. ‘Where is she, damn it?’
‘Attending your brother, my lord. She has been sent for.’
‘Go see to it yourself. Quickly!’
Erlan watched Sletti gather his robes and hurry off towards the shadowy passageway. But when he reached the doorway he stopped abruptly and backed away with a servile nod.
And suddenly, there she was.
She seemed taller than he remembered, and she was dressed more simply than she would have been at the Sveär court: a pale green apron fastened with bow-brooches over a coarse-wool shift the colour of cream, and her hair tied in a work-wench’s braid. At her belt was a bunch of keys. But his eye found its rest on the bandage at her throat, dried blood staining one side.
She carried her head high, perhaps to armour herself against the implacable gaze of the crew of hardened warriors. He guessed it was their gaze that made her seem nervous. She still hadn’t noticed him as she approached and then she actually looked directly at him. Still nothing. It was only then that he realized his own appearance must have changed, at least beyond her recognition.
‘How fares my brother?’ growled Thrand.
‘His wound will mend.’
‘Let’s hope so, for your sake. It wouldn’t do for you to be left here, a widow among strangers, would it?’
‘His wound will mend.’
‘So you said.’ Thrand snorted. ‘But we have other things to discuss. Do you recognize this man?’
She looked directly at Erlan a second time. It was several moments before there was any spark in her eyes, followed at once by shock.
‘Erlan?’ The disbelief was blazoned on her face. ‘But... what’s happened to you?’
‘I could say the same. Been shaving too close?’
She touched her bandage abstractedly, still staring, but offered no explanation. Instead she went to him. As if by instinct, she pulled him close. He smelled the sweet scent in her hair. ‘You’re so thin,’ she murmured. ‘Your face.’ She touched the hollow of his cheek. He felt ashamed at how filthy he must be.
It was only then that she seemed to notice his irons. ‘Take these things off at once!’ she exclaimed, rounding on Thrand. ‘You should be honouring this man, not treating him like a common thief!’
‘He was a stranger. What else was I supposed to do after your uninvited guest the other night? I didn’t know he could be trusted. I still don’t.’
‘Remove these immediately.’ Her voice carried a new authority, one he had not heard in her before. And for the first time, he glimpsed her father in her. Thrand rolled his eyes and nodded to Erlan’s guard. Moments later the irons fell with a rattle at his feet and the guard dragged them away.
Lilla took his hands at once and pushed back his tattered sleeves. She gasped. ‘Where did you get these? What happened to you?’ In truth, his wounds were far better than he could have hoped. His feet, his legs, the lacerations and bruises about his body had all begun to heal remarkably quickly. He knew that was strange, but had no explanation for it. The same had happened when he had taken wounds far worse from the Witch King.
‘I was a prisoner. Of your brother.’
She looked up at him, confused, a thousand questions fighting behind her eyes. ‘But how came you to be here? Where’s Kai?’
‘Kai is dead.’ She uttered a long moan of despair. Tears at once sprang from her eyes and Erlan thought, not for the first time, that her heart was far too soft for a world so hard.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I know you loved him.’
Three simple words, words he had never said to himself. Had never seen were true until now. He loved Kai. The realization struck him in the heart like an arrow. All that time... he’d had someone after all, someone he trusted, a brother he had come to love, in his way. But now he was gone.
He tried to speak, but his voice failed him as a wave of grief came crashing over him. Perhaps she saw it in his eyes. She stepped away, giving him time to compose himself. ‘Go on. Tell us what we must hear.’
So he began to tell her, tell them all, delivering his litany of murder and betrayal and bloodshed. Name after name, deed after deed, he listed the crimes of Sigurd and his queen, and their wolf of a servant. All of them listened with faces of stone. Lilla’s was the hardest of all. He had expected her to rage, to wail, to weep. Anything but this blank wall. It was only when he told of the children’s murder that the wall broke.
‘O vile serpent! Faithless, false, traitorous black-souled whore!’ She fell to her knees. ‘O my father, my father! What a fool you were to press this snake to your heart! Gods, her own children,’ she wept. ‘What mother could do such a thing? If only I had been there—’
‘Then you too would be dead,’ said Thrand.
‘He’s right,’ said Erlan.
She looked up at him, and he watched the anger sink into a mire of sorrow. She suddenly seized him and buried her face in his chest, weeping, oblivious to his filthy clothes. Instinctively, Erlan drew her closer, feeling her shudders of grief echo through his own body. He was surprised how good it felt. How natural. To hold someone. To hold her. He closed his eyes.
There was a shuffling noise. Erlan looked up. Thrand was hauling his considerable weight to his feet. ‘Brother. We were told you were abed.’
Erlan felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned. Ringast stood there, his frame stooped in a dark robe, a heavy bandage patched across his chest, stained black and yellow. His face was sallow as a corpse.
‘She’s another man’s wife, Sveär.’
Lilla suddenly let go of him and turned to Ringast. ‘Come, husband. You must sit.’
Ringast continued to glare at Erlan, but he allowed Lilla to seat him.
‘I’m no damned Sveär,’ growled Erlan, glaring back.
‘I don’t care what you are. She is not yours to comfort.’
‘The Aurvandil was telling us news from the north, brother,’ said Thrand. ‘I think you should hear it.’
‘Where is Rorik?’ demanded Ringast.
‘Dead.’ It was the first he’d mentioned the youngest prince.
Thrand erupted, flinging his cup against the wall, roaring, ‘Bastards! Those shit-eating bastards! Why, I’ll drink Sigurd’s blood for this!’
‘Save your fury for the storm coming, brother,’ Ringast said in a voice of iron. ‘It’s as we feared, then. How did he die?’
‘I don’t know, exactly. Only that he was better off dead after Sigurd’s oathman had finished with him.’
‘Did they dare to break their oaths so soon?’ hissed Ringast. ‘Have they no respect for the gods north of the Kolmark?’
‘Sigurd used your brother to unite the earls to his purpose. Vargalf forced a confession out of him that painted you as the oath-breakers. He said you meant to take the kingdom by deception.’
‘We’ve kept our word.’
‘I know that. But it doesn’t matter now. Rorik confessed and the earls believed him.’
‘So the Sveärs never meant to keep their word.’
‘Sviggar meant to. But not Sigurd.’
‘We will avenge these deaths.’ He looked at Lilla. ‘All of them.’
‘All of us seek vengeance now. But Sigurd will not be so easily taken. He’s been gathering a host to match any that you have. Vargalf said a man called Starkad was also on his way to join him.’
‘Starkad?’ Ringast swore. The name caused a ripple among the other warlords.
‘Aye. And with him, three thousand spears.’
‘That’s my father’s doing,’ Ringast scowled. ‘Even so, Sigurd may have many, but so too have we – between here and Leithra.’
‘Your armies are no use apart. How far away are you
r father’s men?’
‘Too far. I’ll send him word at once to join with us as soon as he can.’ Ringast looked around the chamber, from face to granite face. ‘Well, Ubbi my friend,’ he growled to the oldest and hardest of all, ‘your patience is about to be rewarded.’
‘The Norns wove this long ago,’ Ubbi replied gruffly.
‘A sacred storm, my father called it,’ said Ringast in a wistful murmur. ‘And you, Aurvandil? You were sworn to Sviggar. Will you fight now for a Dane, against your oath-lord’s blood and banners?’
‘I’ll fight with you.’
‘Then swear to me now – as your lord.’
‘No. I’ve sworn too many oaths. Besides, the oath of vengeance I am under is enough. But I will fight with you... until Sigurd and Saldas are no more.’
Ringast eyed him carefully. ‘Very well. But if there’s treachery in your heart, I’ll rip it clean from your chest at the first whisper.’
‘So be it.’
‘Oh, stop it! Stop it!’ Lilla suddenly cried. ‘All of these oaths and blood-drenched threats! This is all too horrible. There’s been so much death already.’
Ringast made to comfort her, but she shoved him away. ‘How many more are now to come? Death after death, until we are all drowned in an ocean of blood!’ She stabbed Erlan with a piercing look. ‘I’ve done everything I could to stop this. Everything! And still this storm is coming.’
She backed away from both men, tears of boiling anger streaming down her cheeks. Suddenly she threw her arms to the skies and cried in a ringing voice, ‘Oh, Freyja, sweet Freyja – help me! Show me how to end all this death!’
With her cry still resounding in their ears, she ran weeping from the hall.
As her footsteps died, there was a long rasp of steel. Thrand was on his feet, brandishing a huge, double-handed blade.
‘There’s only one way this ends,’ he snarled. ‘With steel.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
The arrow smacked into the sacking with a thud.
Lilla grunted with satisfaction. It had been a year, maybe two, since she had picked up a bow, but it had only taken her half a morning to regain the knack for it. She drew another shaft from the quiver.
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