There was some low-voiced discussion outside the door.
“Send your women out,” said Halfdan finally. “No harm will come to them.”
“Swear it,” said Ragnvald.
Halfdan spoke the words, and with his men as witness, Ragnvald had no choice but to believe him. He pulled Hilda to him and kissed her, then sent her out through the hall’s big doors.
Halfdan was just outside, his helmet pulled low over his eyes. Next to him stood Gudrod, slim and gleaming in his polished armor. Both of them had been foster sons to Ragnvald, for a few years in their youth. For a moment, all of this seemed like a misunderstanding, a boy’s game that had gone too far. Then they were men again, men who had come to kill him.
Ragnvald wanted to rush them, to die on Halfdan’s sword, but he did not know if they would then hurt Hilda, so he waited until her tall form had disappeared into the shadowy night beyond Halfdan’s warriors before speaking again.
“Do you remember your summers here?” Ragnvald asked quietly.
“The coward begs for his life now,” Halfdan announced. “I remember always hearing how wise and mighty you were, how no man could ever measure up to you. That is what I remember from my boyhood.”
“Fight me then,” said Ragnvald. “Are you frightened of an old man, whose hands have never recovered from Solvi’s torture?”
“You are trying to bait me,” said Halfdan. “I do not fear you, but I do not want to spend eternity with you in Valhalla. You die by fire.” He jerked his chin up and his men began to push the great doors shut.
Ragnvald stood and let them, not wanting to shame himself by trying to steal his death from Halfdan’s sword. Halfdan had the hall surrounded. If he tried to leave through any of the other exits, they would push him back in, and carry away tales of his cowardice.
“You do me great honor to give me so vast a pyre,” said Ragnvald through the door. “I will take many jewels and crates of gold with me to the next world.”
He felt a little ashamed at that lie—he did not have much gold, but he hoped Halfdan and his men would burn their hands sorting through the hall’s timbers looking for it.
He went to the kitchen, took his finest bottle of Frankish wine, made of precious glass, chased with silver and gems from Frankish jewelers. He sat at his long table, which had hosted farmers and kings, and drank from the bottle. The wine was light and fragrant, and tasted of the autumn that would follow on this summer, which Ragnvald would not live to see.
He had nearly finished the bottle by the time the kindling burned enough that he could see bright glints of fire through gaps in the hall’s planks. It took longer still for those planks to catch, still sodden as they were with spring rains. Ragnvald’s head spun from the wine before he began to cough from the thick smoke.
He drained the last drops from the bottle and inhaled deeply, trying not to cough, only to let smoke fill his lungs. He might die this way before the fire ever touched him. Drown on the smoke. Perhaps he would not be sensible when the flames took his body. He wished Hilda could know how easy this was. He felt no pain. Perhaps Alfrith would tell her.
Ragnvald lay down on the table. In the heat, it gave off the smells of feasts past, feasts presided over by his steadfast Hilda, flavored by the herbs from his wise Alfrith. Einar had recited his poems here, while Ivar applauded, and Rolli ran around the long fire, chasing after the dogs. Svanhild had been here too, smiling with a full heart, glad to be part of Ragnvald’s family.
This hall in Maer had never seemed as much like home as Sogn, but now it seemed fitting his bones would lie here, with Thorir to carry on his line. His other sons’ bones would lie across the sea, setting a claim on a wider swath of land than Ragnvald had ever hoped for.
His vision wavered. He was very hot now, sweating, the air searing his lungs.
Then the whole hall seemed to inhale, and suddenly he felt chilled. The wavering light made him think of Ran’s cold hall again where he had seen his vision of Harald as the golden wolf, the golden wolf who would both burnish him, and then devour him in flames. He saw Harald, Halfdan, and his son Einar, crowned in golden hair, wolves all. And here it was, the burning, the burning that had always been waiting for him. Halfdan was only carrying out the will of the fates.
He would go to Ran’s hall, even if he died under a wave of flame. Ran had claimed him when he was barely a man, and she would have her due. Alfrith would find him. And wherever he went, Ivar would be there, his beautiful son whom he had failed.
He hoped Einar would not try to avenge him.
He cried out, wishing he could see his family one last time, not simply Ran’s cold, wavering hall, gold turned green by sluggish seawater, but this was his fate. Then, through the walls of Ran’s hall, he saw Ivar, standing on the slope of a treeless hill. He smiled. At first, Ragnvald thought the smile was for him, but then Einar walked up to stand next to him, and they climbed arm in arm over the crest of the hill.
“Yes, wait for him,” said Ragnvald. The heat stole his voice. Everything around him was fire. “And do not let him join you too soon.”
42
Einar was in Halogaland, trying to rally Heming’s warriors to defend his father, when a messenger came with the news of Ragnvald’s death. He immediately set sail for Nidaros, to demand punishment for Halfdan and Gudrod.
They were not in Nidaros, but many others were: Harald and his followers, his wife Ranka Eriksdatter, swelling with a child. Hilda, Thorir, and Alfrith had all come as well, to find out what would become of Maer, and of Ragnvald’s murderers.
Einar found only a cool welcome in Nidaros from all except his kin. Men often avoided grief as though the bad luck that had touched him might infect them. Thorir too had few companions—no one wanted to talk with those who might be planning to murder Harald’s son, no matter how justified they were. He had arrived just in time, for Harald intended to make his decree that very afternoon, before the evening meal.
“I am grieved more than I can say at the death of my finest friend, King Ragnvald of Maer,” Harald said to his court. “And I am further grieved that it was two of my sons who did this: Halfdan and Gudrod. This is a great crime.” Harald did at least look sorrowful, his tan face and golden hair looking as though covered with a layer of dust. “They and all of their accomplices are hereby outlawed from Norway for a term of three years.”
Einar clenched his fists—this was less than Rolli’s sentence for the death of Aldi’s son.
“More than that,” Harald continued, “I will make restitution to King Ragnvald’s son and kin. Thorir Ragnvaldsson,” he said. Thorir stepped forward. “Your father asked that you receive the kingdom of Maer as your inheritance. This is your restitution.”
Einar could stop neither his movement nor his voice. He rose to his feet and cried out, “No! A man’s inheritance is not restitution, and three years’ outlawry is not a just punishment for this murder. Halfdan and Gudrod have been in rebellion against you for years. If this is the sum of their punishment, you might as well ask every king in Norway to bare their throats for the teeth of your wolfish sons.”
“Who is this who speaks to me so?” Harald asked.
Einar walked forward, his shoulders back, his head up. He hated that half the room was hidden to him by his missing eye, and that Harald’s court would see weakness and ugliness in his maiming. “I am Einar, firstborn son of King Ragnvald of Sogn and of Maer. Son of Ragnvald the Wise, Ragnvald the Mighty. Ragnvald Half-Drowned, who your son Halfdan condemned to die by fire because he was too cowardly to face him with a sword.”
Harald looked taken aback, but he still said quietly, “Ragnvald’s firstborn, but not his heir. What does Ragnvald’s heir have to say?” His low voice forced the chatter of the assembly to quiet as well.
Thorir stepped forward, holding his hands awkwardly. Einar could see that he wanted to put them to his chin, to smooth his sparse beard. “I am Thorir, King Ragnvald’s heir,” he said. “Maer is my inheritance, not my father’s wergild.”<
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“Well said,” Harald replied, skilled as ever at reading the mood of his court. “Your father does deserve more than that. What is a kingdom if it cannot be defended? How many ships do you have?”
“Five now, and it will be ten if you return the ones that went to make war in Scotland,” Thorir answered.
“Five and ten, that makes fifteen,” said Harald, with a smile to show he knew he was getting the count wrong. “For King Ragnvald’s wergild, I will bring it up to an even twenty, and fill them with armed men to defend Maer for you, not a man among them outfitted with less than a sword and a helmet.”
Thorir swallowed a few times, and said, hardly above a whisper, “This I will accept.”
“And you will swear that this makes restitution, that you will not seek revenge against my sons?” Harald asked.
“I swear it,” said Thorir.
Einar shot him a venomous look. With the death of Ivar and his father, Thorir had come into an inheritance he could never have expected before. No wonder his silence was for sale.
“And what about you, Einar Ragnvaldsson?” Harald asked.
“My father’s rest is not to be purchased so cheaply,” Einar replied. “Let my brother hereafter be known as Thorir the Silent, since he did not protest.”
“And you as Einar the Noisy?” Harald asked. “I remember your grandfather Eystein was called ‘Noisy’ for his boasting. And I hear boasting in your words as well. Still, you deserve something. Young Thorir has told me that your father gave you Orkney before he died. Since you were not to expect any inheritance at all, let that be your portion of your father’s wergild. But if you will not swear to obey my justice, as your father always did, then I cannot have you in my kingdom. Go to Orkney, and if I hear that you have set foot on Norse soil, I will think it is for no good purpose, and act accordingly.”
“And what if your son comes for me?” Einar asked. “He is not here to learn of your justice. Do you ask me to bare my throat for his blade, as you asked my father to do?”
Harald met Einar’s eyes for a moment, and Einar felt then a touch of Harald’s own grief. “I did not ask that of him,” he said, looking away.
But you did, Einar wanted to cry out. He swallowed down the words. At least Harald had not forced him to swear off revenge. He sailed from Nidaros with his crew that very night.
* * *
As Einar’s ship approached the bay at Grimbister, Aban, sharp-eyed, said, “Something is wrong here.”
They drifted a few more boat lengths and Einar saw the same thing—too many ships in the harbor, and not merchant ships either. One looked like Halfdan’s—the same one that had helped Einar set the trap to ensnare the Scottish raiders, when he had lost Ivar.
“Where can we land?” Einar asked, half to himself. Perhaps he could sail around to the Bay of Scapa, where he had crewed a bait ship, and Ivar had gone to his death. But Halfdan would know of that place.
Aban pointed at the tall pillar on the island to the south. “There is Hoy,” he said.
Einar shivered. Hoy was where he had lain next to his brother’s body, racked by fever, waiting to escape into death. He would rather go anywhere else. But it was close to Grimbister. He could attack from there.
He clenched his jaw. “Hoy, then,” he said.
The only place to land was a steep, rocky slope, above which stood the rude hall where he had lain. He remembered its shape, glimpsed through his swollen eye, and its smell, of earth and death, smells he thought would be his last.
Freydis greeted him at the hall’s doorway, and Einar ran to her, and collapsed to his knees, holding her waist.
“My father is dead,” he cried. He could never shed tears without them burning his missing eye, and the pain felt like it would tear him apart.
“I know,” said Freydis, stroking his hair. “Halfdan came here a few weeks ago. He slaughtered two of the best milk cows on the mainland for his feasting, and made us toast your father’s defeat.”
“How did you come here?” Einar asked, looking up at her.
Freydis smiled. “Halfdan does not believe that a woman would ever rebel against him. He did not guard me well.”
Over the next few days, messengers came to Hoy, saying that Halfdan’s men were eating up seed saved for the next year’s planting, slaughtering an animal every day for their feasting, and taking Orkney daughters as concubines.
Freydis came and related Halfdan’s latest abuses to Einar after he woke from a long night’s sleep, deep and dreamless, as though he had visited the dim lands of death. The rage that Einar had swallowed for so long felt as though it would come through his skin. He had half-starved the winter before to make sure that Orkney did not, and now it was for nothing.
Freydis touched his arm. “I do not think Halfdan will cut turf with the Orkneymen,” she said. “It is a wonder they have not already killed him.”
“They are farmers,” said Einar.
“Now that you are here, it is time to go to Grimbister and rally them,” said Freydis.
“So they can all die?” Einar asked.
“So they can fight,” said Freydis.
They sailed a small boat with Aban across the strait that separated Hoy from the mainland and around the western coast until they reached the Bay of Scapa. If Halfdan feared attack, he would set a guard here, but Einar saw no one.
“Go back and bring the rest of the men,” said Freydis to Aban. “I think we will need them.”
Aban looked to Einar, who nodded, and then he sailed off again. Einar and Freydis walked up the slope, Freydis leading the way, until they reached a small, rude hut, the same one in which Ivar’s body had been prepared. The door was tightly closed now, and smoke worked its way out of tiny gaps in the turf.
Freydis knocked on the door, and the taller of the crones, the one called Runa, opened the door. She beckoned them in. Einar immediately started coughing from the smoke inside.
Runa laughed at him and handed him a cloth to cough into. “This house is snug, eh?” she said. “No cold gets through in the winter, I’ll tell you that much.”
“I’m sure not,” Einar croaked.
The other crone, the shorter and fatter one, gave each of them a hunk of bread spread with butter that tasted of smoke and sea, as must everything in this house. “Good, you are here,” she said. “In the morning, take your men and march on these invaders, and you will defeat them.”
“That’s it?” Einar asked. “March on the invaders?”
“Yes,” said Runa. “We have been waiting for you. We have all been waiting for you. What have you to lose?”
“Will Freydis be safe, even if I fall?” Einar asked.
“Who is safe?” Runa asked in return. “No one. All will suffer and all will die at some time or another. No one escapes.”
“Then what should I do?” Einar asked.
“Sleep here.” Runa laughed at the face Einar made. “Outside if you prefer. And then you will see.”
Einar could not leave the house quickly enough. He made up a sleeping roll on the deep grass of the hillside, while Freydis stayed inside with the crones.
By the time she emerged, more of Einar’s men had come, a pitiful group, it seemed, no more than twenty. Freydis crawled under Einar’s cloak next to him.
“The moon is right for you to make a son with me tonight,” she said to him. “Orkney is yours, and you should pass it down to him.”
All around them, Einar’s men slept and snored, or waited, wakeful, for the morning. But Freydis was hot in his arms, pulling up her skirt, and he found a hunger in himself that had been missing at least since his father’s death. Many men did like a woman on the eve before battle, to remind them that they yet lived, and had things to live for.
He heard one of his men laugh, and another joke, seeing their movements under the blankets. Let them laugh, Einar thought. They could laugh and tease his son when he was born, and if they were lucky, grow old enough to call Einar’s son jarl.
; When the sky lightened, Einar sat up and saw the sleeping forms of his men, lumps in the grass of the hill, too small and so few, against Halfdan’s crowd of ships. This was foolishness.
He looked over at Freydis, who also began to stir and wake. She always opened her eyes like a kitten waking, and Einar felt a great wave of love for her. She was too precious to risk in a battle. They should escape to Iceland. They would not starve there.
Then Einar heard a quiet rhythm, no louder than his own heartbeat, but less regular, and then a low chatter, like a gull colony heard from far away. He made sure his trousers were tied and stood up.
On the hill below stood hundreds of men and boys, and even a few women, clutching axes and cruelly hooked turf cutters. The army of Orkney. One man, Thorkell, short and weathered before his time by Orkney weather, had appointed himself their leader. He came forward and said, “We would all cheer for Turf-Einar, but we don’t want to wake the invaders.”
“Invaders?” Einar asked.
“Yes,” Thorkell said. “They have already killed many of our animals and levied a tax. They are invaders. We voted, and we would rather have you.”
Einar turned toward Freydis, who was standing next to him, and gave her a kiss that made the men around him hoot softly.
“Freydis, my love, guard yourself until this is over,” he said.
* * *
Einar would not have thought that an army of short, tool-wielding Orkneymen could put so much fear into Halfdan’s forces, but there were not as many of them as Einar had heard Halfdan brought to Tafjord to kill Ragnvald. Perhaps Halfdan’s stronger warriors had soured on his rebellion.
Two hundred Orkney fishermen and farmers ran down the hill to slaughter Halfdan’s men as they woke from a long night of feasting. Einar killed several unarmed men before he encountered armed opponents.
With Orkneymen to his right and left, Einar did not fear for his blind side, only drove forward until he had reached the thickest part of the fighting. The battle seemed slow around him, every stroke he made sure and easy, his muscles moving without tiring, until he saw Halfdan. Halfdan, still tall and golden, fought like a god, and Einar felt every sleepless night, every hard thrust he had already forced from his tired arms. He had not fought a true battle, nor sparred with a worthy opponent, since losing his eye. Halfdan always had the reach on him, and now he would have the skill and endurance as well.
The Golden Wolf Page 45