Estrid (The Valhalla Series Book 2)

by Johanne Hildebrandt

  From the brush they heard a rustling followed by a stifled scream.

  “Run!”

  Her kinswoman pushed Estrid ahead of her, and they started running, but they managed to make it only a few steps before a black shadow came rushing at them.

  The beast had found her. Then a sharp pain burned in her head. Estrid lost hold of Katla’s hand as she fell senseless into emptiness.

  “Raiding with you was one thing, but I can’t do what you ask of me now,” Skagul Toste said, and sat down on a log on the beach with a lecherous glance at the buxom Celt pouring mead into his stoup.

  The chieftain of the Geats preferred to stay by his hearth while his warriors fought with Sweyn, and talking to the old pig was never a simple matter.

  Sweyn carefully hid his impatience and surveyed the tents that densely lined the side of the beach. The smoke from the damp-wood fires was thick, and the men were packing up their rucksacks to head out.

  Toste was widely known for his guile and greed, and he might negotiate for days to get his way, time that Sweyn didn’t have. Still, he had to convince Toste to join their cause, no matter the cost.

  “You’ve already been fighting with me and my men here in England,” Sweyn said. “You’ve done a magnificent job conquering the enemy, so why not keep fighting and win geld closer to your lands?”

  Toste pulled his hand over his gray-white beard and chuckled to himself contentedly.

  “True. But why should I fight the father of my daughter’s son? If the gods are with us, Olaf will soon be king of Svealand, and that will greatly benefit the Scylfings.”

  The men standing near their chieftain nodded seriously. If they had any fighting spirit at all, they hid it well.

  Sweyn had nothing to offer. He nodded to Palna, who stepped forward, beyond dissatisfied with Toste’s decision.

  “Quit being willful, you old pig. You’re acting like some young colt,” Palna said harshly. “I’ve known you since you were little, and I know you always secure your flanks. You know that Odo is going to swallow up Denmark if he breaches the Danevirke, and then you’ll have those cross-worshipping Saxons for neighbors. With Odo as Emperor Otto’s hirdman and a man sworn to the church in Rome, it won’t take long before Odo’s army is on your turf with cross in hand. That’s why you can’t let Sweyn lose.”

  A slave held out a platter, and Toste snatched a piece of meat. He chewed for a long time and looked from Sweyn and Palna to his own men. Palna had a point, and his warriors no longer looked so self-assured. Finally he wiped the grease from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “If you took a highborn Scylfing wife, the alliance between the Jellings and Scylfings would be secured,” Toste said, narrowing his eyes and watching Sweyn attentively. “Then I would be honor bound to assist you in your battle.”

  “The one time I proposed to a Scylfing, it didn’t go well,” Sweyn replied, swallowing his anger.

  Toste was openly mocking him, because Sigrid had turned down his offers of marriage. If Sigrid had said yes when he proposed to her two years earlier, he wouldn’t need to beg the Geats for help. Damn that minx. There wasn’t a woman anywhere in the world like her.

  Toste took another bite of his meat.

  “Sigrid won’t do anything that might risk Olaf’s position on the throne of Svealand. That and Vanadís are the only things she keeps in her skull, bless her stubborn strength. But her daughter, Estrid, is of marriageable age. Marrying her would ally you with both the Scylfings and the king of Svealand.”

  Sigrid’s daughter! Sweyn laughed gloomily.

  “Old age has clouded your mind,” Palna said, sitting down on the log next to Toste. “You know the rumors. Are you pushing Denmark’s king into an incestuous marriage?”

  The old man shrugged.

  “I’ve never been much for rumors. People say I killed a dragon with my bare hands and that my fate-spirit, Skögul, stood beside me and farted when it happened.”

  He laughed heartily and trapped the slave girl between his legs. Letting out a giggle, she pulled herself free.

  “I won’t get into what you did with my daughter in your youth, but the boy looks so much like Erik that no one can harbor any doubt anymore that he’s Olaf’s father.”

  Sweyn tipped his head and took care to hide the disappointment that ached in his chest. He had often hoped the children Sigrid had brought into the world were his. He had taken great pleasure in the thought that Erik was in fact making Sweyn’s son into the king of the Svea. But what he lost if the children weren’t his, he would regain with well-equipped ships—and that more than anything was what he wanted.

  “I’ll marry the girl if you’ll fight with me,” Sweyn said, avoiding eye contact with Palna.

  He’d been planning to get rid of Gunhilda anyway. His wife’s brother wouldn’t be merciful if he repudiated her, and the Scanians might turn against him, but that didn’t matter. If he didn’t defeat both the Svea and the Geats, he wouldn’t have a realm to lose.

  “If you can make yourself single, I will swear to arrange things,” Toste said.

  “So it will be,” Sweyn said with a nod.

  “Then we have your word that the Geats will fight for Sweyn?” Palna asked.

  “No,” Toste said, shaking his head.

  What sort of hijinks was the old man up to now? Sweyn clenched his teeth in anger as Toste grinned at him.

  “And yet there will be steersmen from Geatland whom I can’t stop if they want to sail with the Danes. Fifteen ships, I think there were, when I last counted. Isn’t that right?”

  Toste turned to the chieftains, who nodded in agreement.

  Five hundred men would do. Sweyn smiled at the old warrior’s cunning. By offering him his daughter’s daughter and ships in secret, he secured the peace with Denmark, and whether Sweyn won or died, Toste would benefit without risking anything.

  “Then it’s decided. We’ll sail at dawn,” he said, and left the camp.

  “Let’s take the battle to the Svea,” Toste’s brother, Björn, roared drunkenly and vacuously as he paced back and forth in the dark hall, empty aside from the highest-ranking Scylfings. “The gods love people who die in battle, and I’d rather feast in Valhalla than wither away in Hel’s chambers.”

  Most of the chieftains agreed from where they sat on the benches around the hearth, still drunk, though the feast had ended and most of the guests had already gone down to the village. They gave manly nods, yearning for glorious deaths in the battlefield.

  Sigrid scoffed angrily at their foolishness. Growling about courage and desiring illustrious warfare was easy enough when you were drunk, but using your head and wiles to avoid a battle was more difficult.

  Erik knew how many ships and men they had, which was why he had demanded fifteen ships. That was far more than they could scrounge up even if they asked for help from other clans that had intermarried with the Scylfings.

  “Erik wants nothing short of war, and he’s going to win—don’t believe anything else,” she said, eyeing the men somberly.

  “What do you know about the matter?” called out the notoriously peevish Börje, dressed in a worn linen frock, his beard unkempt. “Does your loyalty lie with the Scylfings or the Svea?”

  Sigrid turned to the ungrateful chieftain.

  “Mind your tongue, Börje!” she roared so loudly that he jumped. “Without me we would already have been at war with Svealand. Your sons, standing next to you there, eager for battle, would already have been dead or never born. You all amassed the wealth that kept you alive during the crop failures and this time of peace with Svealand. Vanadís has finally returned to us thanks to the offering that she demanded and that I fulfilled.”

  She strode the length of the benches, among the men flaunting their embroidered tunics and braided beards. These good-for-nothing men were petty-minded and slow-witted, the ones her father had chosen to leave behind when he went off raiding. Now she stood alone at the precipice with a flock of sheep, an
d she couldn’t even rely on her own brother anymore. Sigrid turned to her brother, but Ulf did not meet her gaze. He stood with his arms crossed, running his thumb back and forth over his lips and staring at the floor. Next to him, Olaf looked unsure and fearful, which would never do for a king.

  Sigrid scanned the benches.

  “It may be easy and honorable for men to die in battle, but for those of us you leave behind with slaughtered livestock and farms that have been burned to the ground, life is not so honorable. If we fight against Erik first thing tomorrow, he will win, and every woman and child in the entire Scylfing clan will starve or be sent into slavery. Is that what you want?”

  “Well said, my lady,” Ylva said.

  The housekeeper stood next to her eldest son, Gullmar. He was a quiet ship builder who, unlike most of the others in the hall, still had some sense in his head.

  “Better to take the fighting away from our country, and throw it on the Danes,” Gullmar said.

  Björn drained his tankard and sneered at him.

  “If Toste saw how weak you are, he’d plunge a dagger in you,” he bellowed, spit flying from his lips. “We’re Scylfings, the best of all the warrior clans. We’re descended from Frey. The sacred blood of gods and kings flows within us. We are duty bound to our ancestors to fall in battle.”

  Sigrid closed her eyes. If only these stupid fools would drop dead here and now, much would be gained.

  “So it’s death you want for your wife and your daughters?” Ylva said angrily, eyeing Björn, who sat back down on the bench, still muttering.

  “Well, we’re all going to end up dying one way or another.”

  “There’s no reason it has to happen tomorrow,” Ylva retorted, crossing her arms. “Listen to our esteemed Sigrid. She has more sense than all of you put together.”

  Sigrid nodded gratefully to her housekeeper. She was showing her mettle now at any rate.

  “I say that we should seek peace,” she said, stretching her back.

  Her brother, Ulf, finally stepped forward.

  “I stand by my sister in this,” he said. “It would be madness to fight Erik here in our land.”

  It was about time Ulf listened to reason.

  Björn shook his head.

  “Madness or not, we still don’t have any ships.”

  “We can pay in silver for what we can’t provide in ships. To show him our loyalty,” Ulf replied.

  Before he could say any more, old Agne stood up and made a show of running his hand over his beard for a moment before speaking.

  “What if we offered Erik horses instead of ships?”

  The others nodded thoughtfully, as if poor, weak, winter-starved horses could make up for fifteen ships with crews.

  “More is probably required. Both silver and warriors,” Ulf said patiently, because he knew how stingy they were.

  “He already asked for five hundred men,” Börje said. “That’s almost every single competent warrior we have.”

  “We can probably find them,” Ulf said calmly.

  Impatiently, Sigrid watched the chieftains around the fire.

  Erik didn’t care about the number of ships or warriors; all he wanted was to punish the Scylfings, most of all Sigrid for possessing the one thing he needed—his son.

  She pointed to Olaf, who immediately straightened up.

  “We’ll give Erik what he wants, because nothing in this world or the next can replace the value of having a Scylfing on the throne of Svealand. It is the will of the gods that Olaf rule, and when it comes to pass, the Scylfings will be the most powerful people in Scandinavia.”

  She walked over to the hearth and looked each of them in the eye in turn.

  “The fate of the clan lies in your hands, and the crucial decision we reach tonight will echo from father to son until time ends in Ragnarök. Will you be remembered as the men who discarded the clan’s greatness in favor of death and destruction, or will you be spoken of with respect, as the cunning ancestors who made the Scylfings the most powerful of all?”

  Her words were like a dagger thrust into their biggest fear, for everyone knew that a man’s posthumous reputation was his most valuable possession.

  “If we submit to Erik, we will be forced to fight against our own people when Sweyn returns to take the power that is rightfully his,” Agne said. “Father against son, brother against brother.”

  Old Håkan Harefoot laboriously got to his feet and stuffed his thumbs into his belt.

  “I know one thing for sure and that’s that Scylfings never fight Scylfings. I say we listen to the noble Sigrid. Let’s choke down these insults, offer Erik payment, and then go raiding with him wherever he wants. It makes little difference to us whether he or Forkbeard rules the Danes.”

  Laughs of approval were heard around the fire, and Sigrid nodded at her relatives. No one could contradict his sensible statement, and they all gave their consent.

  Slowly Sigrid exhaled.

  Peace with the Svea and Olaf’s future were secured. These war-hungry fools wouldn’t be the ruin of them. Now it was a matter of persuading Erik to accept the offer of silver and men, and that truly was not going to be a simple matter. Sigrid swallowed her fear of what was to come. Vanadís had given her a blessing, and with the Radiant One by her side, she could not err. Whatever was going to happen was woven in the tapestry, and no one living could defy the will of the gods.

  “My lady.”

  She turned and saw Edmund standing with his helmet under his arm, a serious look in his eye.

  “Speak,” she said crossly.

  He cleared his throat, and only after that did he make eye contact.

  “We found a dead body.”

  An icy fear slithered down Sigrid’s back as Edmund took a deep breath.

  “And the noble Estrid is gone.”

  The flickering light from the torches danced over the contorted body, which lay under the leafless twigs of a bush. The throat was slit, and a few little bugs were hungrily devouring the fresh blood in the gaping wound.

  Sigrid squatted down and closed the deceased’s eyes.

  “I swear I’ll avenge you,” she whispered.

  Soot had served her faithfully and watched over the children from the moment of their birth. Even though Sigrid had released her from slavery, she’d stayed on to serve Estrid. The girl had been everything to Soot, and she had followed her wherever she went and watched over her. Sigrid gulped. Her loyalty had ended up costing Soot her life.

  “It must have just happened,” Edmund said, holding up the torch. “They can’t have gone very far.”

  They heard the dogs barking and the men yelling in the distance as they followed the murderer’s tracks in the night.

  Estrid was gone, kidnapped by enemies. Her daughter might have died alone and afraid, lying on the cold ground. Would Hel still admit her chosen one to the afterworld if she died that way? Was this the will of the gods?

  Vanadís, watch over her. Bring her home to me. I’ll do everything you ask, as long as I get her back.

  The gods glittered silently in the fading night sky, indifferent and remote, high above the suffering of mankind.

  “There’s no sign of blood or a struggle,” said Ulf, standing a short distance away and studying the footprints. “The wet ground should make them easy to track.”

  “Who took her?” Sigrid asked, still stunned.

  It could only have been Erik. He’d never cared about his daughters, and when Sigrid was queen in Svealand, she’d been forced to help one of them with charity so she and her mother wouldn’t sink into poverty. Erik hated Sigrid, and it would please him tremendously to take Estrid from her, but if he was the guilty one, at least she wouldn’t be harmed, just married off.

  “Were they Svea?” Sigrid asked.

  Edmund and Ulf exchanged a glance before Edmund spoke.

  “A large man picked her up and ran. There were two others with him. They ran that way.”

  He raised the torch
and pointed to the wooded ridge that ran out into the moorland.

  Sigrid saw Edmund’s mouth moving but heard nothing in the liberating emptiness. From the minute Estrid was born and Erik wanted to kill her, her life had hung by a flimsy thread. My beautiful, tormented daughter, will there be no end to your suffering? Estrid’s life had been so dark from the visions Hel had given her. Then she’d become ill, and every morning Sigrid woke full of worry that Estrid might have died during the night. Now she was missing, stolen away. Oh, Estrid, darling child, you must be so scared. If only I had protected you better.

  “If they make it to the river, she’s lost,” Sigrid finally said, in a voice so unfamiliar sounding that the men turned around, eyeing her worriedly.

  “Did she shoot the cross worshipper?” Ulf asked.

  Sigrid stared blankly at the foreigner hanging on the cross with an arrow buried in his chest. The birds had already pecked deep gashes into his face and arms, and his body was crawling with flies.

  Edmund picked Estrid’s bow up off the ground.

  “Why waste an arrow on a dead man?” he asked, concerned. “He died shortly after he was nailed to the cross.”

  Daughter, what forces lured you into the dark, alone and defenseless? Vast waves of grief washed over Sigrid.

  “Someone must have lured her here with sorcery and trickery,” she said, and took a deep breath. This couldn’t have been Erik’s work; it must have been something much worse. “There’s only one seeress powerful enough to do something like this—that cursed Ragna. Anund’s rabble is to blame for this, mark my words.”

  The sky had grown light enough that Edmund lowered the torch, and when he pointed into the morning mist swirling around their grief, they all knew Sigrid was right.

  The spikes on which the decapitated heads of Anund’s men had been skewered were empty.

  The enemy had come all the way into her land to fetch home their dead, and they’d stolen her daughter.

  “They’ll pay dearly for this,” Ulf said. His shame over not defeating the Scylfings’ rivals or preventing the attack sat like a tight mask over his face. “It’s my fault.”