by Mark Coakley
15: AFTER THE BATTLE
The night after the battle of the beacon, Halfdan's army reached the bottom of the mountains, to find an orange glow filling the sky ahead.
Flames.
Eid was on fire.
Flames roared and swirled everywhere in the wood-built town -- along the two main north-south streets and each of the smaller, east-west streets; from the wooden docks on the shore of the fjord, to the wooden wall that surrounded the town; flames danced on traders'-stalls in the market, on the big, fancy, expensive homes of nobles in the center of town, and on the smaller homes on the outskirts; flames roared almost everywhere, except on the empty space where the hall had stood -- sending a thick, grey column of smoke twisting up to the night-clouds.
When Halfdan's army arrived, there were no foes around. Nobody wearing a helmet, nobody carrying a shield -- just a crowd of civilians, their stunned faces red from the heat.
The blazing town was surrounded at a safe distance by most of the folk of Eid, watching flames eat their homes.
One of them told Halfdan what had happened.
King Njal had killed King Gunvald, to end the sharing of political power. King Njal's men had battled in the streets of Eid against the Førde-men. King Njal's fighters had won. Most of the defeated, kingless, loot-less fighters had sailed back to Førde. But some of them had sold their loyalty to King Njal for silver, and these side-switchers had been sent to build and guard the mountain beacon-forts.
It was true that King Njal had found the skull of King Lambi buried in the ashes of his hall. King Njal had tied a piece of string through the skull's eye-holes, to dangle it from his horse's saddle as a foul trophy. As he was riding around the town, the head bouncing at his side, "a miracle happened."
A snake had slithered across the road in front of King Njal, frightening his horse and making the beast rear up onto its hind legs. King Lambi's fire-black skull had swung up on the string, and its gaping, fleshless mouth hit King Njal's left leg -- one sharp tooth poking through his wool pants, scratching the skin.
A small scratch, which King Njal ignored, until it became infected.
When folk saw King Njal walk, they noticed his limp.
Word spread that the flesh around the tooth-scrape was growing more and more swollen. And that the disease-demons now living inside his leg were pouring out a stream of white pus, and that the flesh around the hurt was rotting.
King Njal ordered his personal healer -- a Sogn-man who had accompanied the invading army -- to heal him. The healer tried chanted rituals, bleeding, the sacrifice of beasts and magic rune-carving. Nothing worked. The infection from King Lambi's death-bite only got worse. When the Sogn-healer admitted that he had failed, King Njal showed his cruelty by ordering a Sogn-fighter to poke out the healer's eyes, "a message about the cost of failure."
King Njal had then sent horsemen to many of the nearby Fjordane towns, with orders to bring every healer they found back to Eid, willingly or not. Five local healers had been brought to Eid from various places.
By then, the pus had been green and smelly, and the pain in the leg had felt to King Njal like torture.
None of the conscripted healers had healed him. Calling them all "traitors," King Njal had ordered their eyes poked out too.
Standing by Halfdan, Yngvild's grey-blue eyes went wide with fear. She blurted out, "Was one of the healers named Siv? Brought here from Loen?"
"I don't know," the Eid-man said.
"What happened to the healers after they were blinded?"
"Some of them died. Maybe all of them did. I don't know."
Over the roaring of the nearby flames, Yngvild wailed, "Mother! No!"
Halfdan put a hand on her shoulder, saying, "Stay calm. Siv probably wasn't one of the healers brought here."
To the Eid-man, Halfdan said, "Go on."
Three days ago, King Njal had been carried on a stretcher to the docks and put onto a ship to take him to Sogn. Some Eid-folk had guessed that he went back to his own kingdom to find a healer who could be trusted; others said that King Njal wanted to die at home, where his burial-mound would be raised.
King Njal left his eldest son, called Egil the Beard-Puller, behind in Eid to rule the stolen kingdom.
"We were glad to see Njal leave, but Egil was not an improvement," the Eid-man said. "Egil is as cruel as his father. And as lustful. All of us who are parents were terrified that he would notice one of our daughters -- the beast."
Many Førde-men who had switched loyalty to the famous and experienced King of Sogn found it hard to take orders from his arrogant, over-aggressive, twenty-four-year-old son. The fighters from Sogn, who had known Egil for much longer, also had little respect for him.
The panicked horseman from the mountain rode into Eid this afternoon, with an exaggerated story about a "large group of fighters" who had attacked the fort-guards and were on their way to Eid.
Egil had commanded his father's fighters (there were almost two hundred of them in Eid) to take defensive positions on the town wall.
They refused. Not knowing that the approaching army was only nineteen men and a healer-woman, nobody wanted to risk a battle.
"Egil has bad luck," one Sogn-man had said.
"We agreed to fight for Njal, not his brat," another had grumbled.
"We have enough loot. It's time to go home."
Egil had had no choice but to follow the will of his fighters.
The defeatist foe had quickly loaded their war-ships with boxes and bags of loot stolen from Eid and other Fjordane towns. With torches and poured oil, they had set fire to each building in Eid and to each ship left behind and to the docks. Then they had sailed away, west along the fjord towards the Endless Ocean.
Atli said to Halfdan, "So there is now no government here."
"What about us?" Halfdan said.
Atli nodded.
While waiting for the fire to burn out, Halfdan told his fighters to help the crowd of Eid-folk. It was fall, and the radiant heat of the burning town hid the air's chill. When the fire died, folk without shelter would get very cold.
Messengers were sent to the farm-houses outside the town walls that had been spared the fire, asking for donations of clothes and food and shelter-making materials. They were also asked to share their homes for a few days with the homeless children and old folk.
Yngvild's only concern was for her mother. She went among the crowd of Eid-folk, describing Siv and asking if anyone had seen her. One woman said that Siv had been one of the healers brought to Eid, but this Eid-woman did not know where Siv was now, "or if she's even still alive."
Later, Yngvild found another woman who said, "You're Siv's daughter? Yes, Siv is alive -- my family has been taking care of her. She's over there" -- pointing at the base of a solitary tree, where folk had gathered.
&n
bsp; "Thank you!"
Yngvild ran to the tree and found a stranger sitting at the base of the tree, leaning on the trunk. On this woman's lap was resting the head of a familiar-looking woman with a bandage-covered face.
"Mother!"
The bandage-wrapped face tried to turn towards Yngvild, saying in a weak and hesitant voice, "Is that really you, Yngvild?"
"Yes! Oh, Freya, what did they do?"
"They blinded me," Siv said. "With a bronze spike. Because I wouldn't heal that troll-king."
"Wouldn't heal him? Or couldn't?"
"Wouldn't. I know what is wrong with Njal, and how to heal it. But I would never heal the man who ordered the killing of Maris and Jann. Never."
Yngvild, sobbing, crouched by Siv and put a hand on her shoulder. The shoulder felt thin and fragile. Yngvild smelled the reek of infection rising from the bandages on her mother's face.
Yngvild changed the bandages over her mother's eyes, seeing the pair of sunken and scabby pits that had once held eyes just like hers.
Yngvild arranged for Siv to move into a local farmer's house, until other shelter was available.
Yngvild guided her sightless mother across a field towards that house.
"So hot," Siv muttered.
"The whole town is burning, Mother. I've never seen so much fire in one place before."
Siv said, "A town can be rebuilt. I'm just grateful that Egil and his father's men didn't kill all of the Eid-folk before leaving. I've heard a lot of terrible things about that nasty young man."
"Halfdan rules Eid now."
"The ruler of a town on fire. Give him my congratulations. The Eid-folk deserve my condolences."
"He's not like King Njal, or that Egil person. Halfdan will help these folk to rebuild Eid. He is good at heart and I care for him."
"Obviously."
At the farmer's house, Yngvild put her mother to bed, pulling the rough blankets over Siv's thin body.
"Try to sleep, Mother."
Yngvild sat by the bed, holding one of Siv's hands.
After a while, Yngvild said, "Mother? Are you still awake?"
"Yes, Yngvild."
"Do you remember the last thing you said to me, before I left you in Loen?"
"I asked you not to join your fate to Halfdan's."
Yngvild whispered, "And you predicted that if I went with him, you would never see me again."
"Yes, I remember."
Yngvild said, "Now it's happened as you said it would. You will never see me again. If I had listened to you --"
Siv reached a hand towards the sound of her daughter's voice and touched Yngvild's cheek; her bent, wrinkled fingers stroking the smooth, tear-wet skin of her daughter's face.
"Don't blame yourself," Siv said, softly. "Nobody can escape their fate."