Estrid (The Valhalla Series Book 2)

by Johanne Hildebrandt

  They conversed warmly for a long time before he once again turned back to Estrid.

  “Do you see the girl?” he said, and pointed to a young maiden her own age, who was feeding hens in the farmyard.

  She was skinny and had dark hair, and her right arm was missing. Why was he showing her a worthless cripple?

  “Her name is Agna, and her father, Ansgar, was like a brother to me. Three summers ago your grandfather Toste and his men attacked his farm. They forced Ansgar to watch while they raped both the girl and her mother. After that they cut him up. First they cut off his feet, then his hands and arms, and when he was dead, they did the same to Agna’s mother. They had just started in on Agna when we reached the farm. The fight was hard, but we successfully drove the Scylfings away. Agna was the only one who lived, and she hasn’t spoken a word since that day.”

  He wiped the sweat from his brow and contemplated her thoughtfully, as if he wanted to know if she really understood what he was saying.

  Estrid looked askance at the liar. Her grandfather Toste was a man of honor. Agnatyr shouldn’t speak ill of her relatives.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I know that,” he said calmly, and then the look in his eyes hardened. “You’ve been fed lies since the day you came into the world.”

  Agnatyr pointed to the next house.

  “That’s Jorunn’s house over there. She lost her four sons fighting Ulf, your mother’s brother. The youngest of those heroic boys had only just turned ten.”

  Estrid turned away to look at the ghost of a proud, handsome old man, who walked over to stand beside her. His white beard was braided and decorated with ribbons, and around his neck he wore a bronze plate with the moon and the seven sisters in the sky.

  “That’s magnificent,” she told the ghost, and the old man nodded with dignity.

  Agnatyr grabbed her shoulder and forced her to turn around. He pointed to a small house with a thatched roof that was scarcely visible, huddled against the foot of the mountain.

  “That’s the home of Orm Långfaste. His daughters were impaled on Scylfing spears. They say they screamed in pain for a long time before death relieved them.”

  Agnatyr looked at Estrid expectantly, but she turned and looked away. She wasn’t planning to allow his lies to move her, no matter how hard he tried.

  “Stigbjörn and his wife, Inga, are both Scylfings,” he said in a voice increasingly filled with rage. “They were watching their neighbor’s kids when Toste rode into their area to kill Anund clansmen. When he found out they were hiding the children, he burned their farm, and they fled here.”

  If Agnatyr’s goal was to make her cry, ashamed at the Scylfings’ wickedness, he would be sorely disappointed. Estrid waved away a fly that stubbornly buzzed in front of her face.

  “When the peace agreement was reached between the Svea and the Geats, you refused to lay down your weapons, and you picked a fight with us,” she said. “You don’t want peace. You didn’t even stop attacking our farms when my mother spared the lives of the Anund women and children.”

  Agnatyr’s face flushed red, and she could see the blood vessels bulging in his neck again.

  “We fought side by side as brothers with the Scylfings in the war against Svealand for our freedom!” he snarled, spraying Estrid’s face with spit. “The Scylfings brokered a peace deal with the enemy behind our back, to strengthen their own power. When my father wouldn’t yield to the Svea, the Anund clan was declared the enemy, and since that day we’ve been hunted and slaughtered like animals.”

  Estrid took a step away and wiped her face on her sleeve.

  “You bear the blame for this, and only you, because your father was the one who refused peace and sought war.”

  She cocked her head.

  “Did you really think I would shed tears over members of the Anund clan when you and your cursed family have killed and maimed my relatives?”

  Inga, whom she played with as a child, had burned to death in her father’s house when she was only six years old. Torvald had been killed by a spear while fighting for his father’s farm at the age of thirteen. She couldn’t even count the funeral pyres she’d stood at, watching the dead rise to the afterworld.

  All the anger left the beast, and suddenly he looked sad.

  “Your mother, Sigrid, released my people, even though they attacked her own brother. Maybe we can still make peace.”

  Estrid regarded him with indifference.

  “Yet still you burned two farms after that.”

  “The men were starving without fully understanding the causes. War is a ferocious creature with a life of its own, governed solely by the will of the gods.”

  Estrid sighed heavily and looked up at the mountainside. It didn’t seem like Agnatyr was going to kill her today. It was more like he wanted to drag her around to show her how pathetic his clan was. There was still time to get away.

  “So now you figured out a new way to use me? How quickly Loki changes his form and footing.”

  “What choice do I have? My whole clan is threatened with annihilation. This valley is all we have remaining. If they find us, there won’t be anyone left who remembers our name.”

  Estrid slowly shook her head, puzzled by the beast’s ignorance. Even her mother couldn’t persuade the chieftains to make peace with the enemy they hated above all else.

  “Your peace is an empty dream.”

  Agnatyr smiled sadly.

  “Even so, I have a Scylfing wife, the daughter of King Erik and the sister of King Olaf. Your family should honor our union, set aside the feud, and make peace.”

  Estrid looked at Fenrir the wolf in astonishment. He clung to empty dreams in the hope of saving a family that was already damned. There was no hope for anyone in this valley. They were already shadows, just like all the ghosts around them.

  “When the Scylfings find out that you abducted me and forced me to marry you, they’ll kill us both for the sake of honor. Even if I’m spared, I’ll be forever doomed to a life of shame as an outcast.”

  She laughed as Agnatyr turned away and started walking toward the house.

  “Your alliance with my father was worthless, and the Scylfings are more powerful than ever. By the time the snows fall, you and your people will lie dead in this valley. That is your destiny. Surrender to it with dignity.”

  Agnatyr stopped and turned around.

  “Would you surrender?”

  Estrid looked around, and it wasn’t summer anymore. Rather everything was covered in snow, and she saw the houses in the valley on fire. Agnatyr lay in the creek with his head split open by an ax and his blood turning the water red.

  She closed her eyes, feeling that the snow had washed away all the lies and veils that clouded her mind to leave everything plain and clear. Agnatyr would die, but first he would kill Estrid tonight as she tried to escape over the mountain. That was the fate the Norns had woven for them and which she had dreamt of so many times. Still, she held out the same desperate hope as Agnatyr that a miracle would happen and that Balder would save her from the destiny she was born to.

  “No,” Estrid replied. “I would fight.”

  Sweyn smirked at Åke’s surprise as he led the horse up the hill toward the royal hall and the adjacent buildings.

  “You can lose the old woman now. Everyone gets that you’ll protect the poor,” Åke said.

  Even Åke didn’t fully grasp how the old woman’s blessing of him would spread like wildfire and strengthen the loyalty the poor felt for him. When the king honored a poor blind elderly peasant who kept the old ways, he gave everyone hope, and hope was what they needed after the winter of famine. It also strengthened Sweyn’s cause to have the monk Claudius in his party, walking by his side in his habit with the prominent crucifix. Sweyn needed to tread cautiously and win back people’s trust, which would take some diplomacy. Besides, it felt surprisingly good to be able to bestow favors on the needy. Sweyn took a firmer hold of the reins and
looked up at the old woman, who sat beaming on his horse’s back. The girl behind her back waved bashfully at the people lining the route and calling out greetings.

  Sweyn turned to Åke, who was trying to soothe the nervously dancing mare he was leading.

  “The old woman is welcome to stay in the royal hall for as long as she wishes, and she’s to be given enough silver to eat her fill every day of her life,” he said loudly enough that both the old woman and those standing along the road heard him.

  Now the residents of Lejre knew that their king didn’t protect only the rich families but also the poorest.

  “The sword has changed you into another man, my brother,” Åke said, raising one eyebrow in surprise.

  Sweyn smiled ever so slightly and looked up at the high roof of the king’s hall towering from the top of the hill.

  “Maybe it was about time for that.”

  This was where it had all begun, fifteen years earlier. Sweyn closed his fingers around the throne’s carved wooden armrests and looked out over Lejre’s royal hall, where aristocrats and nobles were gathered to honor him.

  As a young man he had walked through those ornate doors into this hall to demand his birthright from King Harald Gormsson and be recognized as his son. His half brothers, Erik and Torgny, had sat beside their father and listened, but it was Sweyn’s sister, Thyre, who had pleaded his case so that he received the recognition he needed.

  The rafters in the ceiling were dusty, and the tapestries depicting their ancestors’ deeds were gone, as were the valuable bronze and silver shields. The Svea had stolen everything they could get their hands on as they fled back to Svealand with the body of their dead king, and the mighty halls were echoingly empty. Still, the hall was his again, and that was all that mattered.

  “To our beloved king, Sweyn Forkbeard!” cried one of Lejre’s aldermen, dressed in his finest cloak with embroidered edges and a silver chain at his throat. He raised an ornate goblet, and the fleshy lips surrounded by his gray-white beard smiled. “Thank God you returned and drove the Svea out of the sacred land of the Danes.”

  The cheers were so loud, the rafters shook as a forest of hands rose in his honor. Worry that his iron fist would punish traitors was so great that the air reeked of it. Sweyn stood up and put his hand over his heart.

  “I honor you for your courage and brave opposition to the enemy,” he lied.

  Most of them had crouched down in submission to Erik’s superior numbers. He would amply reward the few who had stood up to the Svea.

  “Those who served the enemy have received their rightful punishment.”

  Palna had already set to work on those who had greedily served the Svea, and they lay dead in an unmarked grave.

  But a ruler couldn’t just take. What mattered was what he gave.

  “In gratitude for your loyalty and bravery, I grant the free men of Lejre a five-year exemption from taxes.”

  The cheers once again shook the rafters. The noblemen roared with joy, relieved to avoid punishment. Insincere weaklings. Sweyn raised his hand.

  “All I request in return is that the ships of Lejre’s leidang be ready to sail tomorrow. I cannot rest until all of Denmark enjoys the freedom you now have.”

  People nodded and gave him their word, but their joy was muted now. They should have realized that nothing was without cost.

  Sweyn nodded gruffly and sat down to receive his guests.

  “The first is your sister, Thyre,” Ragnvald whispered.

  “How fitting,” Sweyn said with a forced smile.

  The room went silent as Thyre stepped into the hall. Divinely beautiful in a gold-embroidered gown with her dark hair billowing over her shoulders, she strode up to the throne like a goddess, fully aware of the desire she aroused, that false little snake. His half sister had landed in Lejre immediately after Sweyn had entered the city. She had really hustled to secure the peace with him. Now her smile was radiant.

  “My king, my most beloved brother, your return made me weep for joy,” she said in her velvety voice. There wasn’t a man in the room who could take his eyes off her incredible beauty.

  Sweyn nodded briefly to her, careful not to allow the snake too close. Of all the enemies he had among the Jellings, she was the most venomous.

  “It pleases me that you’re in good health, sister,” he said.

  “You always have my deep and abiding loyalty, and I will do everything to serve you,” Thyre said, humbly bowing her head.

  It would be easy to be trapped by Thyre’s trickery, but now Sweyn knew for sure that Thyre was the one who had urged their two brothers to betray Sweyn. Thyre was the widow of Styrbjörn the Strong, who died at the Battle of Fýrisvellir, trying to overthrow Erik of Svealand. She had shamelessly made a pact with Erik of Svealand, her now-deceased husband’s enemy, to unseat Sweyn from power. Thyre had lured Sweyn’s half brothers into turning their backs on him at the battle in Jelling. Sweyn’s half brother, Erik Haraldsson, had ultimately confessed this to save himself. Sweyn had had a hard time believing him at first, but far too many witnesses had come forward since to report that Thyre had indeed visited Erik of Svealand several times and even shared his bed.

  She had flagrantly, shamelessly had sex with the man who had killed her husband and stole the kingdom of Denmark from her own half brother.

  Lost in thought, Sweyn ran his hand over the two braids in his beard.

  “You have served me well, Thyre, and I plan to ask you to serve me in yet another matter,” Sweyn said, and leaned forward.

  “Whatever you ask,” Thyre said, nodding eagerly.

  “Our alliance with the Obotrites needs to be further strengthened, and there is no better way you could serve me than by becoming King Borislav’s wife.”

  Thyre’s smile stiffened. Borislav was ugly as a boar, and it was quite clear that she couldn’t imagine anything worse than marrying him. Still, she couldn’t refuse her sibling. She was clever enough to realize that this meant Sweyn was aware of her betrayal.

  “I will gladly do as you wish, my brother,” she said, nodding deferentially.

  He would have taken her life if she hadn’t convinced their father fifteen years ago to recognize Sweyn as his legitimate son.

  “Gunnvald Handfast will be your attendant,” he said, and nodded at the scarred warrior, who stepped forward and gave Thyre a perfunctory greeting.

  Of all the warriors in Sweyn’s hird, only Gunnvald would never allow a woman to wrap him around her finger, so he should be able to withstand Thyre’s feminine wiles.

  Sweyn dismissed his sister with a wave of his hand, and the snake slithered away from his throne.

  Now it was time to deal with Sweyn’s two double-crossing half brothers. He had waited a long time for this moment and leaned back with pleasure as they were led into the hall.

  Torgny, the younger one, came in with his head drooping, looking sincerely repentant as he was escorted to the throne by two Jómsvikings in full battle regalia. He was wearing a simple tunic and leggings and had not been permitted either jewelry or arms. His dark hair was matted and uncombed from his time in captivity.

  Torgny’s own hird had turned on him when they heard about Sweyn’s triumphal procession, and they had brought him to Lejre. The irony that his brother had been betrayed by his own men was so great that Sweyn had laughed loudly for a long time when he heard about it. Torgny was a pathetic weakling who had no compass of his own.

  Jelling-Erik, however, was another matter. His eyes were still defiant, and he stood up straight as he walked through the room. When he reached the throne, he looked Sweyn in the eye.

  “Remember that your crazy lust for power is what caused your own family to turn its back on you,” he said defiantly.

  A murmur ran through the hall, and cries of anger were audible:

  “Kill the traitor! Off with his head!”

  “Yes, kill me like you killed Father,” Erik said with a grim smile. “Get it over with so I won’t have to
be paraded around like a war trophy.”

  Sweyn stared unemotionally at the two men he had once trusted.

  If he killed his own brothers, both the Jellings and the Jutes would have qualms about supporting him. If he set his brothers free, the Danes would view him as a weak king. If he banished them, they would seek out his enemies and continue to be a threat. There was only one way to go.

  “So grievous was the deceit by my own brothers, whom I esteemed so highly, that your deeds cannot continue to go unpunished. Many good men died in Jelling because of your infamous treachery against your king and country. You will wait, chained and confined, on this royal estate until I decide whether you are to live or die.” Sweyn leaned back and waved his hand. “Remove the traitors from my sight.”

  Feeling glum, he leaned back as his brothers were led out and the music began. People started discussing what had happened, eager to make a show of their support for him and demonstrate their loyalty to the man in power.

  His brothers would be killed quietly after people had forgotten about them, and no one would mention their names again. With them out of the way and Thyre off with the Obotrites, his closest enemies were taken care of. The whole thing had gone off better than he’d expected. He should have felt content, but there was no joy in punishing the two he had called his brothers. And he was still going to die soon in battle, either against the Svea or the Saxons. All he was fighting for now were his honor and a good posthumous reputation.

  Sweyn stared sullenly at the walls where those who had sworn their allegiance to him had hung their shields. It was still pretty sparse, and the multicolored shields were spaced far apart. Only two of them belonged to Scanian chieftains. He hadn’t heard anything back from Gunhilda’s family yet, but as long as she was his wife, they couldn’t turn on him.

  He sighed heavily. His royal power constrained every step he took and forced him to kiss up to people he’d rather not have to talk to, but with the threat from the Saxons, he couldn’t afford to squander an ally. He needed every sword he could get.

  “My king.” Ax-Wolf stepped up to the throne, grinning like a fool. “We found the heroine.”