Gunnhild moaned within herself. How often had she heard what this could lead to. As the drinkers got drunker, they grew more and more boastful, they strutted their manhood, they would brook naught that might be the least demeaning. And sometimes at last one said the other was drinking more than a fair share before passing the horn over, and the other flared up at that, and the end was harsh words or worse.
“He called me a mare and asked if my witch-sister would bring in a troll to be my stallion,” rasped Eyvind when Eirik told him to speak. “No man can sit still for that, can he?”
They had not nicknamed Thorvald the Hothead for nothing, Gunnhild thought. Yet Eyvind must have blared as loosely—or had he?
Eirik cut straight through to the truth. “If you’d kept your wits about you, you’d have kept the peace. If you woke angry today, you could have brought suit at the next Thing, or you could have challenged him to fight it out in a holmgang”—on an islet, the ground marked off by willow stakes, blows given turn by turn, and he who stepped out of the ground, or fell, was the loser. “You, though, had a sax with you,” Eirik ended.
“How could I be sure of these ruffians’ good faith?” Eyvind answered sullenly.
Even his brother Aalf gave him a hard look. Nobody else had borne weapons into the hallowed house. Knives were tools. Eyvind had kept the short sword hidden under his cloak, till suddenly he yanked it forth and stuck it into Thorvald. Not much blood gushed, though the man died after a few gasps. It had been a skilled, knowing thrust.
She had egged him on to this, Gunnhild knew. But how could she know he would be such an utter fool about it?
“Men of your household, King, and men of Thorir’s well-nigh came to blows,” said Skopti. “But others of good sense went in between. Now it lies with you.”
“You did well,” said Eirik grimly. “Eyvind, the law is the law. Because this manslaying happened where it did, at your hands, the law names you a wolf in the halidom, and outcast. I will hold my hand over you only as long as it takes for you to go from Norway.” He turned to Thorir. “But for goodwill’s sake, will you take wergild for your man, and Thorfinn for his brother? I leave it to you what the payment shall be.”
“No,” choked Thorfinn. “I’ll kill that murderer wherever I find him.”
Thorir shook his head. “I have never taken payment for a man,” he said, almost sadly, “and I will not now.”
So, after a time that dragged for Gunnhild, the meeting ended. The king, she, and her brothers walked out in the young sunlight, alone for this short span.
“I think something of yours went less well than it might have, Gunnhild,” Eirik said.
She stiffened. “Would the outcome I wanted have been bad?”
“Leave that be. Done is done. Eyvind, you’ve been my sworn man, and Aalf is yet. I’ll not forsake you. Go you must, but it’ll be with a longship and crew, and a word from me to my Danish kinsman.”
Eyvind gulped, wiped a hand over his eyes, and stammered, “Al—always will I be your man, lord, and, and your sons after you.”
May he do better by them in that morrow, Gunnhild thought.
Word reached her not too long afterward that King Harald Bluetooth had received Eyvind and his following well in Denmark. Eyvind was known to be among the best of fighters. Harald Bluetooth gave him some land and set him to standing offshore guard against vikings.
By then she had other things to deal with.
XI
King Harald Fairhair hated seid. Eirik felt less strongly, but did mistrust such doings. Gunnhild had known this was true of most highborn men. She never said more about her stay in Finnmörk than she had to. Rather, she led her listeners to think it had been a youthful mistake, which would have become a dreadful one if she had not been saved barely in time. Yes, she learned a few things yonder, mostly ways of healing and helping, but nothing great nor any threat to anybody.
When she met the old king, she had set herself to make him believe it too. Soft speech, warm smiles, worshipful glances, the least swing of her hips, quickly won him over. As for Eirik, he did not ask what uses she might now and then make of her skills, whatever they were.
In truth, there had been little thus far, forecastings and farseeings within narrow bounds, ill-wishings and well-wishings that she was never sure had wrought anything, the cantrips that kept his love from straying—although she knew her worldly ways had the most to do with that. Only during her first childbirth had she again flown free, maybe because the later ones were easier. When alone for a long enough span—which was seldom—she had cooked some brews and made some things that she kept hidden. Otherwise at such times she merely went through her knowledge lest she forget, dancing, singing, drawing signs; or she brooded upon it, tried to deepen her understanding of it. Naught more.
Now suddenly need came upon her.
Down in Vikin King Harald got news of a man in Hordafylki who was becoming well-known as a wizard. This Vitgeir foretold the morrow, turned maidens’ hearts toward men, cast blights or blessings, for those who paid him. Harald deemed there would be too much anger in that neighborhood if he had Vitgeir killed out of hand. Instead, he sent a messenger with his order that the business stop at once. The messenger brought back an answer in verse.
“Is it strange we do seid,
such as we are,
made to be born
of man and woman,
when Rögnvald the Highboned
readily does,
Harald’s son
in Hadaland?”
The king went white. Verse had its own power, whether or not it be itself a spell. It reached for the soul.
When Gunnhild heard, she knew what it meant. Here Harald had had recalled to him that Rögnvald Highbone was among his sons by Snaefrid, who had been a witch or worse. In time he forgave them for that, and made those who still lived shire-kings. But Rögnvald had taken to spellcraft of his own, become mighty in it, and gathered others about him. Few men had told his father what went on—few were sure, and belike fewer yet dared—but folk in the Uplands where he had his seat went in awe of him, and dark tales drifted out. Hitherto Harald had given it a deaf ear and a blind eye. He must not have wanted even to think about it. Now the staves were flung before him, for everyone to hear that, set beside Rögnvald Highbone, the likes of Vitgeir were mosquitoes, hardly worth swatting.
King Harald kept silent. Soon, though, he and Eirik withdrew to a room where no one could overhear them.
Night had fallen when Eirik came back to the house he used at this holding of his father’s. He found Gunnhild awake in their bedroom. Fully clad, she sat on a high, three-legged stool and stared into the flame of the one lamp that was lighted. Sometimes her gaze followed the smoke upward. It curled and twisted oddly, for the night was hot, altogether windless. The dull glow barely touched her face. Beyond it dusk filled the room and blackness the uncovered window.
Her skirts rustled in the thick stillness as she rose. Her eyes seemed huge, seeking his, the pupils as wide as a prowling cat’s, the whites aglimmer. “I think you bear tidings,” she said low.
Eirik’s grin was no kind of smile. “You know I do.”
“Can you share them?”
“Well, you’ll hear soon enough. I’m to do something I’ve been hankering for. King Harald has at last come to agreeing. Tomorrow I get men together and the stuff they’ll need for hard riding. The day after, we’re off to make an end of Rögnvald Highbone.”
“I had a—foreboding of that.”
Bleakness passed through Eirik’s look at her; then he put aside any questions and said flatly: “Too long has he worked his trollcraft. It’s sheer defiance of our father. Whatever he has in mind, we’d better forestall it.”
“I think it may well have to do with you.”
Eirik nodded. “If he’s alive when our father dies, he’ll likely grab for the kingship over all Norway that our father wants to leave me.”
And if he won it, what would become of thei
r sons? Gamli, bright, merry, flaxen-haired, running everywhere, soon ready to be fostered out in a household that would be kind to him; Rögnvald, namesake, but of the great jarl, not the witch-king, stumping around earnestly trying to talk; Guthorm, newly out of the cradle—and the next to come and the next, blood of her and Eirik, life and the fame that outlives life. An owl hooted beyond the walls, a voice of darkness and forgottenness.
“More brothers of yours than him have the same thought,” Gunnhild said. Those who held shires egged their folk on with promises. Others scoured about in viking or in outland wars, not really working off their anger but gaining followers. She and Eirik had talked about this erenow.
He shrugged. “Well, here’s a beginning.”
The owl hooted again and yet again. Its claws seemed to strike into her. She grabbed both Eirik’s hands. “I know something of what Rögnvald High-bone knows. Do you think he won’t be aware of you moving in on him? That he’ll merely sit there?”
“He won’t have time to raise a levy against us.”
“But to bring down death on you—a landslide, a galloping sickness, grisly sights, blind fear— No, take a while to make better ready. Let me help.”
“And let him get word of it. And smirch my name as one who used seid. No! Your cunning didn’t work so well for you at Gaula, did it?”
Because Thorir Hersir had been shrewd and Eyvind the Braggart witless, she thought bitterly. Or maybe because the norns had woven together her weird and Egil Skallagrimsson’s. She swallowed anything further. “You are the man,” she sighed. “I can only send my hopes along with you.”
He surprised her a bit by answering slowly, “Not that you’re unwise, Gunnhild. Far from it.” He threw his arms around her waist and pulled her to him. “
How well I know!”
XII
On the third day after he left, Gunnhild told her wenches and carls that she wanted to spend that night alone. They should sleep elsewhere than in the house. “I have thinking to do, and maybe a helpful dream will come,” she said. “If you happen to see or hear something, keep nonetheless away.” She slitted her eyes. “And then best will be for you if you don’t gossip about it.”
As evening closed in, she shuttered windows and bolted doors. The weather had changed. Wind whined; rain whispered. Lampflames wavered; smoke and smell eddied. Dusk deepened and shadows stirred, misshapen as trolls. She unlocked a chest. From beneath costly silks she took what she wanted and carried it into the bedroom. That door she also made fast.
While dried mushrooms, of a kind that most folk shunned, soaked in a bowl of water, she laid everything else out and shed her clothes. Raw damp kissed her skin. She undid the knot of her hair and let the black locks tumble free over shoulders and back. A necklace of eagle feathers, wolf’s teeth, and wildcat’s claws became her garment. It had taken years, money, and wariness to get all this, little by little, mostly from hunters who were poor enough to search it out for pay, afraid enough to say nothing. With her own hands she had woven and carved.
She had not known until now when or if she was going to want it. She had merely vowed to herself that what she did and suffered in Finnmörk would not have been for naught, and never again would she be as helpless as that day in Seija’s hut. Nor did she yet know how much use she could get from it. This was all untried, the outcome of thought, dreams, wordless feelings. So should it be, she half believed. If she was wrong, it could mean death or more than death.
She bared her teeth at the fear. For Eirik and their blood, she went into childbed over and over, as he went into battle. Tonight she set forth on a way that might go down hell-road. But without her he might well be bound yonder himself. Her sons were small. They still had need of their father.
Never would she forsake them or him.
A drum could have given her away. Having eaten of the mushrooms, she clapped her hands while she danced around and around the lamp she had set on her spaewife’s stool. She kept her gaze on the flame. As the beat took hold of her, the tiny fire seemed to widen, a gate through which she began to see reaches that went on beyond sight. When she knew the time was right, she stopped, took two legbones of a deer carven with runes in her grip, and knelt on the knotted cord. She shook the bones, swayed on her knees, and sang, eyes steadfast on the flame.
The rain strengthened. Its rushing filled her skull. The wind wailed. It lifted her on wings of pain and whirlingness. But she must not leave herself. Not altogether. “Rögnvald Snaefridarson,” she wove into her chant, “I behold you, I hear you, I, the night wind, I, the new moon, I, the shadow forever at your heels. You know me not, you know me not for what I am, your bane, Rögnvald Snaefridarson. I seek you; I seek you; I seek you—”
The flame opened. Half of her flew into it, through it, skyward and northward. Half of her sang spells. Dizzily in the room and flesh, knife-keenly in the air and soul, each was with the other.
Clouds rolled gray-white below; stars glittered above. The moon had long since set, but it was the first new moon after Midsummer Eve, when balefires had burned high everywhere in every land, and it remembered them. Ahead of her Thor’s Wain wheeled around the North Star, that some said was the eye Odin gave for wisdom. The moon belonged to older Powers, to earth and sea, begetting and bearing, wizards and witches. Norsemen offered to the gods in hopes of winning their goodwill. Shamans sought oneness with the world in hopes that it would do their will. Eirik called on Odin, who bestowed victory or death as he saw fit. Tonight Gunnhild called on herself.
The rain fell behind. She swept over land that grew ever more high and steep. Hamlets, steadings, and their fields lay murkily edged by wilderness. Then red stars glowered on worldrim. She flew downward and nearer. Buildings squatted near a brook that gurgled over rocks and glimmered dim silver. She knew Rögnvald was there. They sat up late inside. She passed through the roof and hovered in the smoke below the rafters.
Fire, tended by thralls who cringed more than most, leaped and crackled the length of the hall. Its light shuddered over the men on the benches. Few looked like fighters. Some were old and gnarled, some grizzled, some young but their eyes not. They were well though plainly clad. Warlocks seldom showed off wealth. Here was a gathering of them from widely around.
The man in the high seat was tall, his face gaunt, with a plowshare jaw under a swart beard. He was saying: “This will mean more than staving off a foe. Understand that. We cannot bring on an uprising against King Harald— not yet—but we can make the Uplands a stronghold against him.” Rögnvald grinned. “It may be that he falls sick and dies, or comes otherwise to the end of a life that’s already been long.”
“First we must cope with the threat of him,” said another.
Rögnvald jerked his head in a nod. “Have I not laid this out before you? A dead woman warned me—”
Gunnhild, in the flesh at the king’s garth, shivered. Maybe Rögnvald spoke truth. Maybe it was even his mother whom he had troubled in her grave. However he did it, he had gotten forewarning that his father would disown him. Therefore he sent after lesser wizards. Humble and weak though many of them were, surely none as learned as he, together they could wreak untold harm. And Eirik’s troop must be drawing nigh. He had guessed it would take him less than four days.
“Best not dawdle,” said one.
“No,” agreed Rögnvald. “Now that we’re here, we’ll find out what’s afoot, and where, and make ready.”
So, when by himself, he lacked the skill to spy afar. He was not so fearsome after all. However, an adder can bite while a man is crushing it underfoot.
Rögnvald pulled his tunic tighter about him. “Is something wrong, King?” asked a man nearby.
“No,” Rögnvald muttered. “Only that it’s gone cold, hasn’t it?”
Gunnhild withdrew.
Now she must blind them. She was not a Gan-Finn such as could sell a bag of winds to a Norse skipper or raise a storm that wrecked him. But tonight she was halfway one with the world and its wea
ther.
In the room at King Harald’s garth she sang and beckoned. Above the hall in Hadaland she flowed herself into the air; she shaped herself into water. Mist began to blur the stars. After a while the steading lay wrapped in fog so thick that no man could have groped his way through the night outside. Witch-sight would find only shapelessness. A sending could flit above, but what could it see below? Most likely the warlocks would take this for happenstance and wait for it to clear. They did not know how short a time was left them.
Gunnhild dared not linger. They might somehow catch a whiff of her. And she was drained. Hardly aware any longer, she fell back down from the Uplands like a river falling to the sea.
A roof snapped shut on the sky. She was alone with a guttering lamp. Dazed, she barely stumbled through locking her things away before she toppled into bed. Next day she was dull and wrung-out.
Strength came back. And then Eirik did with his news. The fog had not hindered him and his men, once day broke. It lifted as they neared the steading. They ringed the hall in with spears and set fire to it. Women and housefolk they let out, but they killed such warriors as tried to follow. Rögnvald and his wizards burned.
Eirik won high renown for his deed. Gunnhild said nothing about her part. The kings would have looked too askance at it. Skalds did not make poems about birthing either.
Rögnvald’s Snaefrid-brothers might want revenge. Gudröd Gleam in Agdir was the nearest. Throughout the months that followed, Gunnhild ill-wished him.
XIII
Gudröd spent that winter with his foster father, the skald Thjodolf of Hvini. Toward spring he grew so homesick that he ordered his ship made ready. Thjodolf warned him this was a bad time to sail. He even made a verse about it. But Gudröd would not listen. After he rounded the southern tip of Norway a great storm sprang up off Jadar. The ship went down with all aboard her.
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