Estrid (The Valhalla Series Book 2)

by Johanne Hildebrandt

“Mother is probably sitting around the hearth right now with her servants and staff,” she said. “I just hope she doesn’t forget me or think poorly of me.”

  Someone usually told a story while Sigrid sewed by the flickering firelight. Estrid swallowed the lump in her throat.

  “Why would she do anything like that?” Katla said, looking into the fire.

  Estrid closed her eyes, picturing her mother and Olaf standing in the courtyard just as clearly as if she were there. Ulf and his wife and all their children were there, too, and Toste, her grandfather, and the rest of the family. Soot, her servant, must be beside herself with worry. She was always so concerned no matter where Estrid went. Estrid curled up, missing Soot so much it hurt.

  “Aren’t you afraid they’ll forget us?”

  Katla shook her head so her blond curls danced over her shoulders.

  “You’re my only relative. As long as you remember me, I have my home.”

  Estrid cocked her head to the side and tenderly regarded her kinswoman. She truly was a blessing.

  An instant later a dark shadow fell over them, and Ragna came forward and squatted down in front of her.

  “No one will follow our trail,” she said.

  The seeress’s long, thin braids swayed around her face, and her predator eyes regarded Estrid without any emotion at all.

  “It will be easier for you if you stop hoping your family will rescue you.”

  The seeress gave her a piece of bread with a grimacing smile. Estrid wolfed the bread down immediately. It was so coarse that it crunched between her teeth, but it quieted the hunger that clawed at her stomach.

  “You and I are connected by the same blood, and we’re alike in many ways.”

  Estrid watched expectantly as the seeress’s smile again contorted her facial tattoos. What lies was she trying to trick Estrid with this time?

  “It’s true. Scylfing blood runs in my veins, but when the gods gave me my gifts, the family turned its back on me. I was forced to endure the visions alone, and you know what a burden they are to bear.”

  The seeress paused as if waiting for Estrid to say something. When she didn’t receive a response, she resumed talking.

  “I fled into the woods and lost my mind as my abilities swallowed me up. Fortunately Anund found me and brought me to his mother, a powerful seeress, who mentored me so I could learn to control my gifts.”

  Ragna patted Estrid’s cheek. Her hand felt rough against Estrid’s skin.

  “Few can shoulder gifts such as ours.”

  Estrid looked up in astonishment at Ragna, and for the first time she smelled the bracing stench of Ragna’s fear and weakness, as strong as the smoke from the fire.

  For her whole life she had listened to stories about Ragna and pictured her as some horrific monster, but she was just a feeble old woman.

  Estrid pursed her lips. She didn’t dare look at Katla, because she knew she’d start laughing if she did.

  Instead she lay down on the spruce boughs the slave spread out, and Ragna stood up.

  “She was lying,” Katla whispered, curling up behind Estrid’s back.

  “I know,” Estrid said with a snigger. “She’s not what I pictured, just a weak old lady.”

  Her body ached with exhaustion. She lay still on the bed of boughs, enjoying the safe warmth of Katla.

  “Be careful. Nothing is as it seems,” the slave said, her words scarcely more audible than a breath.

  “Don’t I know it,” Estrid mumbled, and shut her eyes.

  “We can’t feed them any longer,” Ylva said grimly, and nodded at the bench in the shadows under the longhouse’s thatched roof, where Yngvald and his Svea warriors sprawled, drinking mead from tankards.

  Sigrid scowled at the men Erik had tasked with guarding her during his absence. They were lowborn itinerants, dressed in armor and carrying axes, who actually believed they had power over her.

  One of them stood up and caught a young servant girl on her way to the cookhouse.

  “Come show me what you’ve got under your shift, sweetheart,” he cried out, and laughed when she wriggled free. “I’ll catch you soon enough,” he called after the girl, who ran along on her way so quickly that she startled the hens, sending them flying off in all directions.

  “They won’t leave a single one of the girls untouched,” Ylva muttered.

  Sigrid clenched her teeth so hard, her jaw ached as she walked over to the men. She wasn’t going to put up with these puffed-up rooster-men strutting around on her turf. If Erik thought he could take her estate from her with just these five men, he had a big surprise coming.

  “Mistress,” Yngvald called out, standing up with a sneer, “I’ve been waiting for you to come down from your hall to join us mortals here at the bottom of the hill.”

  “Then show me some respect,” Sigrid said coolly.

  The warrior was a coarse man with an uncombed beard, surely the third son of some powerful family that Erik had been forced to keep on good terms with. Nothing but stupidity could be gleaned from his mead-dazed eyes.

  “I honor the mother of the Svea king and esteem her,” Yngvald said, and bowed his head to her while making a face at his men, who were just as unkempt and filthy as their leader and laughed in response like buffoons.

  “Control yourself and your men. As guests of my estate, you are not entitled to fling yourselves at the womenfolk or pick fights with the men.”

  The look on his face hardened, and Yngvald raised his hands to silence his men’s laughter.

  “Mistress Sigrid, you must have misunderstood King Erik’s intentions,” he said slowly, stretching his back. “I am now in charge of your estate, farms, and fields—in King Erik’s name—and I need the accounts from your other four farms so I can carry out his wishes.”

  That lowly rogue really thought he could take her land from her!

  Sigrid smiled snidely at Yngvald, but before she had a chance to respond, Ylva stepped forward.

  “You are speaking to your queen, boy!” Ylva roared. “Anyone who insults Queen Sigrid will be punished with the whip or death.”

  A shadow of uncertainty flickered through Yngvald’s eyes as he realized that in his drunkenness he may have gone too far. He was weak and pathetic. Hatred prickled in Sigrid’s back like cold needles as she looked the warrior in the eyes. Then he snorted at Ylva, who stood, cheeks flushed and arms crossed.

  “Are you denying the king’s men what is their right, woman?”

  Sigrid looked at the crowd assembling on the lawn where both servants and slaves had gathered to take in every word that was said. A curse on all the Svea! She ought to have Yngvald and his men killed, but as long as Olaf and the Scylfings were Erik’s hostages, she couldn’t risk anything. It was better to scold the rooster until he submitted to her authority.

  “Erik the Victorious will punish you brutally when he finds out you have insulted King Olaf’s mother,” she said quietly. “The task he charged you with did not include bringing shame upon the Svea. I must send word to him of this immediately.”

  Now Yngvald didn’t know what to say. He pulled his hand over his uncombed beard and exchanged looks with the men, who weren’t laughing anymore, afraid of ending up on Erik’s bad side. It was outrageous that Sigrid had been forced to use Erik and his son to demonstrate her power, but it had worked.

  “Noble queen, I wouldn’t dream of disrespecting you,” Yngvald said, chastened, and his men agreed.

  Sigrid raised her chin.

  “Show me the respect I am due, then, and take heed. One more misstep and I will send word to Erik.”

  “You have my word,” Yngvald said.

  Without responding, Sigrid turned around and returned to her hall with Ylva beside her.

  “Well, that worked,” Ylva said, relieved.

  Sigrid looked out over the green countryside where the farmland was flourishing in the humid heat following the rain.

  “Only for a while,” she replied curtly. “From n
ow on I want to hear about everything they do.”

  “What curse has brought this misfortune upon us?” Sweyn asked, gazing up at the charred ruins on the seaside hill where Jómsborg had towered so majestically. There was nothing left.

  The impregnable stronghold, filled with its invincible armed forces, lay in ashes and ruin. There was no sign of people or cattle as they walked up the hill.

  The fortress’s tall wooden palisade had been burned down, and behind the charred logs they caught a glimpse of the burned-out remains of buildings. The ravens fighting over the remnants of what had once been buildings appeared to be the only signs of life in the twilight.

  “What could have happened?” Ragnvald asked, taken aback, as he surveyed the place where they had lived and suffered while being hardened from children into men. “Jómsborg was protected by the finest soldiers in all of the North.”

  “The Svea must have used sorcery and unmanly trickery to defeat those brave men,” Ax-Wolf snarled. His face burgundy with rage, he lowered his ax and then undid the leather armor that constrained his bulging gut. “I’ll split their skulls and piss on their carcasses.”

  Ax-Wolf was right. Erik’s men might have burned Jómsborg.

  “When I sailed west, there were five hundred warriors encamped here for the winter,” Palna said, shaking his head.

  His cheek twitched as he stared at his devastated world. Sweyn’s foster father had built Jómsborg and trained the warriors. His life’s work was gone now, and with it, the Jómsvikings that Sweyn needed so badly for his upcoming battle.

  Their home was gone and so was their clout.

  The ships were crowded along the shore at the base of the cliff, and the men had gathered around the fires. Their hopes of resting in Jómsborg and spending the evening around the mead casks were dashed by the unexpected destruction and devastation.

  Sweyn rubbed his neck, stiff and aching with worry, while he took in the jumble of charred wood.

  “I don’t see any traces of a fight,” he said.

  The Jómsvikings had sworn an oath to fight to the death. If the Svea had attacked them, the Jómsvikings would all have fought to the end.

  Yet there were no bodies or funeral pyres.

  Puzzled, Sweyn climbed over burned logs to survey the main street, filled with all manner of junk: charred shoes, twisted bits of iron, and half-burned textiles. All that was left of the buildings were burned-out beams; the garrison that had once been his home had collapsed in a heap.

  “Maybe the fire giant, Surt, came up from Muspelheim with his kin,” Ax-Wolf muttered gloomily. “If so, Ragnarök will be upon us soon.”

  The warrior’s back was stooped, and there was no longer any sign of his feisty strength. Jómsborg had fallen. The hird stood by in silence as night settled over the area. Their tense faces beheld the ruins, filled with disbelief and grief. The only sounds were the waves breaking and the gulls’ hoarse cries. Sweyn’s father’s ghost materialized in the darkening shadows by the knee wall around a well, sneering at his misfortune.

  “Without Jómsborg, you’re sunk,” he jeered mockingly. “You’re not fit to face the enemy.”

  Sweyn turned away in disgust. This wouldn’t do anymore. Their despondency was poisoning them with weakness. He took a deep breath and allowed his body to fill with a furious rage. They couldn’t cry like little children over what was lost. They were Jómsvikings and men, not sobbing slaves.

  “Send men to look for answers,” he bellowed to Ragnvald. “Someone in the village probably knows what happened. Ax-Wolf, you lead the search for bodies.”

  Sweyn’s words broke the paralysis, and the Jómsvikings immediately snapped into action. They spread out in small groups and combed the ruins and the surrounding area.

  Sweyn walked over to Palna and put his hand on his shoulder. It wasn’t just his foster father’s life’s work that had been lost.

  “You don’t know for sure that Åke died,” Sweyn pointed out.

  Palna had left Åke, his son, in charge of Jómsborg while he was away, and Åke must have led the defense of the fortress.

  “Better that he be dead if he lost Jómsborg without honor in battle,” Palna said, his face grim.

  The old man’s harshness was unyielding, and his mind was so hardened that he never retreated from anything. Sweyn shook his head and bent down to pick up a blackened nail from the debris. Åke was his brother-in-arms, and he would woefully mourn his death if he found out he had gone to the afterworld.

  Just then they heard an excited shout. “A survivor!”

  A teenager came limping through the wreckage, supporting himself with a walking stick. His cheeks pale and his clothing tattered, he raised his hand in greeting. Sweyn dropped the nail and hurried over to him to find out how the Svea had brought down the impregnable Jómsborg.

  The veils of mist swept around her legs as she walked through the shadow world. There was a cavernous silence, so quiet that she could hear her own heartbeat like a drum in the fog. Sigrid walked on, unafraid, because she had been here before and knew that soon she would be shown what she’d been sent here to see.

  She caught glimpses of people pale as snow through the mist, but they slipped shyly away as she neared them. That was as it should be, because the person Sigrid was looking for was not among them, and she needed to keep searching until she found her.

  Then, finally, she glimpsed a light in the meandering mists. At a distance it looked like a solitary flame, but it turned out to be her daughter, sitting huddled by the fire.

  Sigrid ran as fast as she could without getting any closer. She called out Estrid’s name over and over again with all her might, but no sound passed her lips.

  Looking vacantly into the fire, her daughter sat there, rocking back and forth in a huddled ball.

  Then Estrid quickly lifted her head. Like an animal that had picked up a scent, she sensed her mother’s presence.

  “Estrid!” Sigrid shouted with all her might, and this time she made a faint sound.

  Her daughter stood up and transformed herself in one motion. Tall and strong, she looked at Sigrid with the yellow eyes of a beast. She had feathered wings on her back, which she unfolded, like an eagle before it snatches its prey.

  “Fear me,” the being said in a voice so powerful that it shook the void. “For I am the beginning and the end.”

  Then Sigrid was lying in her bed. Sweaty and breathing hard, she stared up at the rafters on the ceiling in the dark while fear plucked at her heart.

  Her daughter was alive, and there was still hope. She rubbed her face with her hands while the vision of the winged creature burned in her eyes. Hel was protecting her chosen one. In vain she sought to check the uncontrollable worry that ached in her chest. Her little girl must be so scared. What if they beat and tortured her, or if she died alone? If only she could hold Estrid in her arms and embrace her. Beloved daughter, my heart and bleeding sorrow, may they find you unharmed.

  Sigrid sat up when she heard a light knock on the door. She brushed away a tear as Lia, who was standing guard outside the door, opened it.

  “Mistress, my husband is here with a message.”

  “Let him in.”

  Her heart beat faster in her chest. There must be news of Estrid.

  Sigrid looked hopefully at the jarl as he entered with a torch in his hand.

  “Did you find her?”

  Surely this was what her dream foretold. Katla was protecting Estrid, and they were on their way home.

  “The Scylfings sent a messenger. King Erik is no longer searching for Estrid. He and his men are riding toward Scania.”

  These words were like a kick to the gut. Erik had deserted her.

  A triple curse on that cockless pig of a liar. May he suffer in pain for all eternity. Rage washed over Sigrid like scalding water as she stared mutely at her jarl.

  “Why?” she finally asked.

  Edmund stepped into the room, and the light from his torch lit his face.
<
br />   “Sweyn Forkbeard has returned to Denmark from exile to challenge Erik.”

  Sweyn had returned.

  If you had only waited, my love. If you had only stayed away a little longer.

  Sigrid pulled a shaky hand over her hair and looked out the window, which was open on this warm night.

  Olaf was Valhalla’s chosen one. Vanadís would never let him be harmed. It had to be that way, because she wouldn’t believe anything else.

  She took a deep breath and forced her mind to be calm so she could think clearly.

  If Sweyn had returned from Britain, surely her father and the Scylfing leaders had followed.

  If Toste stayed and fought with Sweyn, he would be fighting against his own son, grandson, and the rest of the Scylfings who were now in Erik’s army.

  Father against son, brother against brother, sisters’ children will betray their kin. Sigrid clenched her fist so tight, her nails cut into her skin as she was reminded of Estrid’s prophecies. But nothing had happened yet. Olaf still lived, and war was not yet upon him. There was still hope. The worst had not yet come to pass.

  “We must get a messenger to Toste.”

  Her father must be informed of what had occurred. Then he would return immediately and avoid going to war against his own people.

  “Where should we send the messenger?” Edmund asked skeptically. “No one knows where they are.”

  There was only one place where Sweyn was completely safe, where his foster father was still the chieftain.

  “Jómsborg,” Sigrid said, straightening. “That’s where Sweyn and his father are.”

  “My lady, that can’t be done. We don’t have the men or the ships to send on such an uncertain voyage. We hardly have enough men to defend the estate. I can’t permit this.”

  Sigrid scoffed dismissively.

  Even Edmund, her loyal jarl, let her down when the going was at its most difficult. As Odin had said: Uncertain is that which a man must carry in another’s breast. Her son, her brother, and the chieftains had turned away from her, and now her own jarl had also.

  Sigrid smiled cheerlessly at the betrayal. A Scylfing never showed weakness, because that tempted both friends and enemies to take what they wanted. No one could be trusted, not even one’s inner circle. Edmund demonstrated all this through his words.