by Lea Bronsen
Besides, Father was coming of age and suffered health problems. Alv thought important to stay close and assist in daily-life doings. Father may prefer his oldest son, but lately, he’d shown appreciation for Alv’s growing knowledge in medicine.
“Stay.” He blew Hedin a kiss. He’d rather have him around at all times, but he was seen as a strange enough person already, and blatantly showing a love affair with his male slave would be too much to accept for the community.
He opened the door and shielded his eyes from the bright sun. It was early summer, and despite endless salty winds blowing from the Atlantic, heat enveloped Eðni, their coastal village surrounded by savage hills and beautiful forests.
Men, women, and children streamed out of wooden longhouses and ran toward the shore where a war ship had moored along a quay. Behind, the dark blue ocean moved incessantly, sending wave after wave through the deep fjord.
As he came near enough to see inside the ship, his excitement plummeted. Only five warriors had returned, and Joar wasn’t among them. Two men tied thick ropes to the quay, while three others, features somber, struggled to carry a stretcher with a body wrapped in cloth. Why had the other warriors stayed behind?
Alv studied the shape of the corpse and frowned. Its length seemed shorter than usual. It was either a child or…an adult missing a body part.
A gnawing feeling grew in his stomach. He hated war, hated casualties. Especially when the dead came back in pieces.
Another fallen warrior. Someone was going to cry soon. A family was going to mourn the loss of a son, father, brother, or uncle… Questions would arise again. Why go to war when the human cost was so high? Why did greed always win over reason?
Once the men had placed the stretcher on the wooden quay, the crowd surrounded the misshaped corpse—but no one dared remove the cloth to uncover its identity.
A murmur sounded behind Alv. He spun. Father and Mother arrived. They would be disappointed that their favorite son hadn’t returned. The crowd split as the opulent, white-haired earl and his wife, dressed in expensive silk clothes and jewelry, strolled majestically toward the ship. The elderly couple passed Alv, ignoring him. Father asked the warriors with his big, commanding voice, “Who is the dead?”
One of the men who had moored the ship, a mass of muscle with a beard and long brown hair, climbed up on the quay with a round leather bag in hand. He stopped in front of Father and bowed his head in submission. Alv recognized Torsten, one of the Norsemen’s oldest and most experienced warriors. The man looked pained, tortured even. Was the dead person a close relative of his?
“Torsten.” Father put a hand on his shoulder. “What have you come to tell us?”
Torsten looked up, dark brown eyes shiny. His low voice wavered. “My earl, I bring bad news.”
A gasp went through the crowd. Who was going to cry this time? Alv’s chest tightened while he waited for the name of the deceased.
“Speak,” Father urged, raising his voice. “Who is it?”
Torsten swallowed, visibly containing his pain. After a moment, he went down on one knee, as if paying respect to the dead, and placed the bag beside the corpse with great care. “Joar died a courageous warrior.”
The air punched out of Alv’s lungs.
“Joar?” Father’s eyes bulged.
Mother whimpered and covered her mouth.
“I’m very sorry. The remaining men are hunting down his killer. I swear we will find him and make him pay a thousand—”
“Joar! My son!” Father fell heavily to his knees, but kept his hands in the air, as if too horrified to touch his son’s corpse.
Mother gave a loud shriek that froze Alv to his bones. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t happening. Joar had been killed? His big brother, the village hero? No, not possible… The picture of a handsome, valiant blond man flashed. His playful gaze and dimples could melt the coldest soldier heart. Joar! Alv’s throat hurt as if he’d swallowed a rock and tears rushed to his eyes, but he fought them. This couldn’t be true.
On his knees, Father heaved for breath and shook with emotion. He stared from the dead body to the bag. “T-tell me the truth. What hap-pened to my s-son?”
Torsten whispered, “The killer hacked his head off.”
So that’s what the bag contained... Cries erupted from the crowd. Alv wanted to close his burning eyes, wanted to turn inward and lock everything out. But the scene unfolding before him was too poignant to look away; a horrendous moment in life he would never forget.
“Oh, by Thor!” Gunnulf shouted. “Who dared to lay a hand on my son? He will pay with blood!”
Torsten shook his head. “We don’t know his name, but we have a physical description.”
Father emitted a roar like an angry bear and stretched his arms, pumping his closed fists in the air. “I will kill him personally!” he bellowed, looking like he made a pledge to the gods.
Mother sank to the ground next to him and cried with loud sobs, her face in her hands.
Alv still couldn’t move. Exclamations rose around them, sending freezing shivers up his spine. Everybody knew what his family was going through. Every family had lost someone at some point.
“Aaargh!” Father clutched his chest, as if enduring terrible pain. He bent forward, coughed loud, and gasped for breath.
Father!
“No, Gunnulf!” Mother spun to her struggling husband and threw her arms around him.
Father tapped on his chest and coughed again, his face turning a dark red.
“Alv?” Mother turned her shocked, tear-stricken face to him. “Please do something,” she begged, voice thick and raspy. “Please.” She who almost never spoke to him, and when she did, always spoke with condescendence! Now, she pleaded with him?
Alv shook from his daze and kneeled by Father’s side. The old, big-bellied man suffocated, his features deformed and his skin turning an ugly purple. Alv had never experienced this kind of situation. He was only an apprentice medicine man. What could he do?
He rolled Father’s heavy, twitching body onto his back and pushed his chin up to clear his airways. The old man’s bulging eyes stared at him in panic and his hands trembled violently. He opened his dark blue lips. No words came out but terrifying rasps from deep inside.
Was it his heart? Ears buzzing, Alv laid both hands flat on the middle of Father’s chest and pressed. Again and again, hard, at what he believed was the rhythm of his pulse. Words that Gorm, his teacher, had told him, replayed in his mind. “A person’s heart rate can be regulated with foxglove. But beware, the plant is highly toxic and…”
No time to wait. He shouted to the people around him, “Call on Gorm! Quick! He knows what to do.”
Too late—Father stopped fighting. His body became limp and the fat hands fell to his sides. A long, raspy breath escaped his throat, and the frighteningly wide eyes turned glassy. Alv put a finger to the side of Father’s neck. No beating.
Nooo!
He moved back on his heels, shocked.
Mother threw herself over the stilled body and cried, her back shaking. Alv’s eyes filled with warm tears. Loud lamentations sounded from the crowd.
After a while, Mother turned to look at him, her dark, accusing gaze not only saying, “You failed to save my husband,” but also, “you’re my sole remaining son.” Meaning, she expected him to take the position of earl, and she expected him to avenge his brother, but she didn’t believe he was up to either task. A cruel mix of feelings seemed to burn in her stare as she drilled a hole into his heart. She loved him for who he was—her youngest son—but she loathed and despised what he was—a weakling, a no-good.
As if he wasn’t hurting enough already! A mountainous responsibility descended onto his frail shoulders, scaring him to the deepest of his being. The worst was that Mother was right to accuse him before he had even tried: he’d never prepared to be a warrior, much less a leader. Never wanted to. Now, in order to inherit the earldom and avenge Father’s a
nd Joar’s deaths, he had to change his ways, harden as a man, develop new skills, focus on completely different things than those he’d been interested in, and create alliances.
He wanted to cry, but refused to confirm Mother’s accusations in public. He wanted to yell his anger, injustice, and grief, but needed to stay composed in front of the flocking crowd that undoubtedly regarded him with the same judgmental thoughts as her.
He was the weird boy wearing a coat of fox fur and not much else, who had never been seen courting a girl. A woman-like man more preoccupied by the teachings of medicinal plants and herbs than working for a position in nobility. Gunnulf’s young, useless son, who preferred a quiet, unimportant life to the one of a respected warrior and leader.
They were right, but they were wrong, too. He was smart, he had resources. He could adjust. He could grow. They just needed to give him the chance. If he showed them he was up to the task, they would leave him be.
Yes.
With as much poise and strength as he could muster, he stood and faced the crowd. He wasn’t used to speaking in public, but the time had come to behave like an adult. He swallowed his fear, focused on the hurt within to steel himself, and swept the many faces that stared at him, stopping to pointedly hold each person’s gaze for a moment. When he’d completed the circle, he cleared his throat and announced, chin up, “Whoever is responsible will pay with his life.”
A murmur of surprise emerged.
He took a deep breath. “I will avenge the deaths of earl Gunnulf and his heir.”
A few heads nodded.
He gazed down at his brother’s short, cloth-covered corpse. The pain blossomed, sharp as a sword and hot as boiling oil. The killer had to pay. It was time. High on hatred, Alv would leave his quiet life and innocence behind to become the blood-thirstiest avenger Norway had ever seen.
First, he needed a partner to execute his military orders. “Torsten.” He sought the seasoned warrior who knelt by Joar’s dead body. When their gazes met, he told him, “Stand up.”
Albeit looking skeptical, Torsten obeyed. A small victory because Alv didn’t legally have the right to command anyone.
Alv steadied his voice. “My father, Gunnulf, had high esteem for you.”
Torsten bowed his head.
“He would want me to give you the task of enrolling as many people as are needed to find the vicious, cold-hearted murderer of his son. No matter the cost. My father was wealthy, and I will pay the price. Bring in all men from nearby earldoms, young and old, and hire them to find the killer.”
Alv shot a glance at Mother, whose features had softened and indicated a beginning respect. “Be sure to inform them that the one who captures him gets a prize,” he told Torsten, while holding Mother’s gaze and silently asking for her consent.
She blinked. It was all he needed.
“Yes,” Torsten said. He looked drained, but made a courageous effort to stand straight and proud.
“You’ll start right away. I know you’re tired from your journey, but you are our best army leader and I would not leave a task of such importance to anyone else.”
“Thank you for putting your trust in my hands. I will do what it takes to avenge Gunnulf and his son.”
“Good.”
Torsten nodded. “May I suggest we split into two groups? In retaliation for Joar’s death, one collects everything of value in Bjorgvin and takes all inhabitants to serve as our slaves. The other group follows the coastline and searches for his murderer.”
“Excellent.”
“Then I’ll start preparing everything.”
“One last thing.” Alv paused for show. “I want my brother’s killer taken alive. I will kill him myself.” He said the last part on a breath, his heart thudding in his chest.
Torsten lifted a brow, and several, “Oooh,” of admiration rose from the crowd. Mother’s gaze shone with pride.
Alv’s pulse beat faster. No one had expected him to suggest this, not even he himself. He didn’t know where he’d found the strength nor the right words to say. But he had. Despite the ravaging pain inside and the fear of upcoming life changes, he felt ready. For the first time, he smelled blood, he wanted blood, and he couldn’t wait to confront his brother's killer.
CHAPTER THREE
Alv sighed. It had taken eight days of meticulous search through mile-long fjords between Eðni and Bjorgvin and more or less patient collecting of information from the local inhabitants to find Joar’s killer. Sometimes, since the common karl didn’t necessarily support Viking warfare and was reluctant to tell what he’d seen, he’d needed to be “convinced.” The different methods employed by Torsten and his men didn’t sit well with Alv, but flashbacks of his brother’s headless corpse had assured him that in this case, all means were acceptable for the cause.
On the eighth day, while a rain storm brewed, the warriors had tied the ship to a wooden quay at the bottom of a steep, glistening black mountainside that seemed to stretch miles up to the sky. An “informant” had admitted he’d spotted three strangers, a man and two women, climbing to a hut about halfway up the hill, on a platform wide enough for a little farmland. The warriors had seen many of these farms during their search. It was incredible how people could claw themselves to small, almost unreachable patches of greenery and make a living.
A thick rope and a hanging ladder made of rope and branches went straight up the hillside and disappeared from sight. Just from looking up and imagining the height of the farm, Alv felt queasy. Since he wasn’t as strong as the other men, it would take him longer to climb, so he decided to be the last. He watched as Torsten and nine of his men fixed weapons to their belts and went up, two by two in case the ladder didn’t support all their weights combined. The remaining warriors stayed behind to keep an eye on the ship.
What waited up there at the farm? Excitement coursed through him at the thought of finally meeting Joar’s killer. He had vowed to kill him, but how? He’d never laid a hand on anyone—couldn’t even make himself kill an animal. Maybe he would just push the man off the cliff.
* * *
It started to rain when Alv reached the top of the ladder, his legs hurting like never before and the skin of his hands sore from clutching the rope to hoist himself. Exhausted, sweating gallons yet shivering cold from having climbed a wet mountainside, he pushed off the last step, rolled onto the horizontal mat of greenery before him, and worked to catch his breath.
Don’t look down!
Instead, he focused on his surroundings: a flat patch of green grass where a cow and a few sheep gazed back at him, and a low, rudimentary hut, behind which the hillside continued straight up, as if hooked into the dark clouds above.
Beside the house, the warriors circled a bearded man sitting on the ground. He looked dirty and disheveled, his shoulder-long black hair wet from the rain and his clothes stained, but he hadn’t been mistreated by Torsten's men. As agreed, they’d tied his wrists and left it up to Alv to inflict punishment.
So, this was who had killed Joar? Alv waited for venom to fill his heart. It was unusual for him to hate. He imagined his beloved brother, laughing and joking, talking about girls, happy with life. Then he recalled the bag containing his hacked-off head.
When all he could feel was the need to strike the man who’d provoked Joar’s death, he stood and walked to the group while pulling his sword from the back of his belt.
As he approached, the prisoner stared at him, raven eyes flaring in a sharp, chiseled, and tanned face. Not tanned like the Norsemen from spending time outdoors, but a natural golden. A foreigner?
Alv stopped at his feet, spat on him, and sneered. “Who are you?”
“I’m a trader from the Netherlands.” The prisoner’s low voice vibrated, each word distorted by a heavy European accent. “My family led a quiet life before you savages destroyed everything.”
The warriors groaned.
Vexed by the insult, Alv raised his sword. “We’re not savages!”
“Well, the ones that raided Bjorgvin are. Were. I stopped one of them.”
“He was my brother!”
The prisoner’s gaze shone of despise. “Your whoring brother raped my sister.”
Raped? Alv frowned. He couldn’t imagine Joar hurting a woman, but to be fair, he needed to check the information before proceeding with the vengeance. “Where is she?”
“In the house. Don’t you dare touch her!”
“Me?” Insulted to the deepest of his core, Alv swung his sword and sliced the man’s cheek open. The warriors jubilated, but the prisoner didn’t blink once. Blood spilled in rivulets from a long, deep cut, blending with his beard and wet hair sticking to his neck.
Fuming, Alv spun on his heels and went to the hut made of clumsily carved wood boards. The farmer had to have pulled all the materials up from sea level.
He flung the door open.
Inside a dark room smelling of something sour-sweet he couldn’t identify, a fire lit the faces of two women. The oldest one, wearing peasant clothes and a headscarf, glanced to and from his sword while enveloping what looked like a newborn into a towel. The other, a well-dressed young girl with an eerie resemblance to the prisoner, stared at him, the white in her eyes showing. In a corner, a human shape lay on a bed.
He squinted to see. It was a sleeping woman. Or…? No, her chest was stock-still, her skin sunken and pallid, and a dark liquid covered the sheets at her legs. Blood! Everywhere. On the bed, on the floor… That explained the smell.
Coldness invaded him. The hatred he’d nurtured since he first saw the prisoner vanished. He placed his sword by the door, entered, and asked, “What’s happened?”
The two women glanced at each other, before the older one replied, “She lost too much blood. Now, we must take care of this little girl, and I don’t know how to feed—”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the farmer’s wife. I live here. She,” she said, and nodded to the young woman, “is the sister of the man you captured, and this poor thing there,” she said, and turned to the dead woman on the bed, “is, was, his wife. They were only staying overnight,” she hurried to add, blushing. “Me and my husband didn’t have nothing to do with it.” Apparently, she feared that the Norsemen would punish them for hiding a fugitive.