At once King Harald and King Erling set forth with four fully manned longships. They came to the Thraandheimsfjord and went on by starlight. Grjotgard and his vikings met them where they landed and led them.
Late at night they reached the garth where the jarl slept. Dogs barked, men roused, but by then it was no use. The warriors ringed the house in with spears and torched it. They let women, children, and thralls out, but any free man who tried to pass through a door they killed.
High brawled the fire. Its light glowed uneasily on iron and billowing smoke, hid the fading stars, and lost itself in the darkness of pinewoods. When timbers crashed down, sparks rained upward. By midmorning the flames flickered low over ashes, charcoal, and some blackened bones. The air stank.
Harald and Erling returned to North Moerr. Grjotgard deemed it wise to come with them.
VIII
It took no witch-sight to foretell the wrath of the Thraands when they learned of Sigurd’s death. What caught the Eirikssons off guard was that this became no mere uproar, but swiftly and fully a readymaking for war. Men swarmed together, bearing weapons and food, from all the shires. Every vessel that could float went into the water. Gathered, the men hailed Sigurd’s son Haakon their jarl and leader. He bore straightaway south with host and fleet. There was nothing for Harald, Erling, and Grjotgard to do but withdraw to Raumsdal and South Moerr.
Harald and his mother agreed that this could not have happened were it not for Haakon himself. The new jarl seemed already to own his father’s knowledge, shrewdness, skill, and winningness, while the fire of youth made him a still more dangerous foe. “A worthy one,” said the king with a stiff smile.
Gunnhild allowed herself a faint sigh. “I could wish for an easier one.” She lifted her head. “Well, he can’t keep such a following afoot for very long. They must soon go home. We’ll deal with him as we did with his namesake—harry the Thraandlaw, inland as well as from the sea, give it no peace till either he yields or he comes to the same end.”
Harald did not think it strange that she said “we.”
So the months went by, winter, spring again—a year since Hrut left—then summer, harvest and fishing lean again, fall storms that wrecked ships and drowned men, another winter that in its deeps got ringingly cold, a new year as bleak as the last. The clashes between the kings’ men and the jarl’s were not few, some small, some bigger, bloodshed, looting, burning, with no real gain.
One or another of the Eirikssons often led a raid, but not always. They had business to handle at home. Also, they were wont to go in viking during the summer. More than rage and restlessness sent them abroad. They needed the loot, the captives to sell, and any other wealth they could grab. None ruled over enough land to support his households, guards, and the showing a king must make, the more so in these bad years. The scot from King Gudred and King Tryggvi helped, but did not stretch. Under Haakon Jarl, not only did the Thraandlaw pay nothing; it cut the Eirikssons off from Haalogaland, the Lofoten fisheries, and Finnmörk, with everything that these yielded.
True, they themselves sent nothing to Harald Bluetooth, nor acknowledged him their overlord. The Dane-king was put out, but stayed his hand. He had much else to think about: his own kingdom, its ongoing christening, its highborn and yeomen who were chafing at his grip; his ties and trade with Poland and Wendland, off whose shores he built a stronghold manned with picked warriors; the Goths along the marches of Halland, Skaaney, and Bleking; the mighty Swede-king behind them; the Holy Roman Emperor Otto, who grew old but whose forceful son of the same name had lately been crowned co-Emperor and nursed wide-reaching ambitions. Bluetooth could well someday find himself in need of a Norse ally.
The house of Eirik Blood-ax had been worse off than now, Gunnhild thought. It would be better off.
She ran her household. When she was there and Harald Grayfell away, she steered Hördaland. She fared about. She gave her sons redes, careful not to overdo it. She wove her web of newsbringers, spies, and gangrels ever broader and more tightly meshed.
Not all those who gave her tidings were lowly or came secretly, nor even most. Seamen, yeomen, tradesmen, craftsmen, herders, hunters often did, because she had ways of rewarding them. Reeves, hersirs, lendmen, sometimes their women, did, whether they liked her or not, because she had ways to lead them on when talking, or to make them understand that her ill will could bring grief on them. And some folk of any kind or rank did because in spite of everything, they thought it was best for the land that she know.
Thus Arinbjörn Thorisson docked his ship at the Byfjord wharf late in the second summer and brought his crew to the hall. This was a chill, gray, windy day; pines soughed loudly, crows winged low and darkling. Runners had gone ahead, and Gunnhild was set to receive the guests. She sat in the high seat, bedecked with gold, silver, and amber, to smile at the weatherbeaten men who came before her.
“Welcome,” she said in her warmest voice. “You must have heard by now that King Harald is not yet home from west-viking. Stay here till then, take your ease, rest, and fatten yourselves after what I can see was a hard faring. It was good of you to come,” this far south of Sygnafylki. These days Arinbjörn dwelt on his holdings there. Coming from the North, he had passed them by when he could have sailed straight into that fjord.
The square face drew into lines of trouble. “I’ve bad news for the king, I fear. Thor—Christ give he’s not met with woe.” A finger made a sign across the broad breast, belike the Cross although it could have been the Hammer.
He meant it, Gunnhild knew. Arinbjörn stood by his oath and his lord. Yes, she also knew he had not forsworn his Icelandic friend, and how Egil Skallagrimsson sent him a long poem of praise and thanks. She had, indeed, heard it from a seafarer who had gotten it by heart, when she ordered him to speak the staves and promised him safety. It was the richest gift any man could ever have made another, for it would live, and Arinbjörn’s name with it, while the world lasted. But she could put this aside. She must, if only for the sake of her sons. It was by her counsel that Harald let Arinbjörn stay mostly at home. Thereby the king got a strong chieftain in those parts, well thought of everywhere, to uphold him and speak on his behalf.
“He has not,” Gunnhild told Arinbjörn. “He won booty, but then was weather-bound. He’s now at sea and ought to arrive shortly.”
Arinbjörn squinted at her. His bulk stiffened a bit. Plain to see, he wondered how she knew. “I’m glad to hear that, Queen,” he said slowly.
She waved a hand. “Come, be seated, all of you. We’ll feast.” Gaunt though the year and the years before had been, she always made sure of enough in her larders.
Women brought ale and mead. She let talk run free along the benches, as king’s men and newcomers asked each other how things had gone, until the horns were drained and refilled. Thereupon she said bluntly, “Give me your tale from first to last, Arinbjörn.”
He shifted a little on the honor seat. Sailor, woodsman, farmer, warrior, leader of men and judge between them, he had scant word-skill. “Well, Queen,” he said, “I got together a troop and ships, as the king bade me. I’d guess the queen knows we were to hit the Thraands hard by both land and sea. My folk are trustworthy, I swear. I thought it’d be a surprise. But Haakon Jarl must have had spies out.”
Yes, he surely did, Gunnhild thought, though she had not been aware of how many or how shrewd. Here was a fox—no, a raven, Odin’s black bird, uncannily cunning, keen of eye and quick to warn its flock.
“We were headed north through the Updale when a gang attacked us,” Arinbjörn said. “It wasn’t too big. Neighborhood yeomen, we took them for. We beat them off without loss to ourselves. But they withdrew fighting. So we followed. Suddenly we were in a steep-sided gorge. They kenned this land; we didn’t. Down from the woods growing on the slopes, men swarmed. We barely hewed our way out, those of us who lived, and fled. I did hold the lads together, else they’d’ve bolted blind every which way and been hunted down like hares. We won to the
shore, to where our ships were going to meet us when they’d done their share. Half of them were lost. Haakon’s fleet had trapped them in a strait between two islands, same as his ax-wielders afoot caught my band.”
A breath gusted from him, like wind outside. “I’m sorry to bring such tidings, my lady, but truth is truth.”
“Good it is to have a man who sets it openly forth,” Gunnhild answered. “Tomorrow, maybe we can talk alone for a while.”
The weather had slackened but fog swirled and dripped when they met in her house. Flames struggled with dankness and darkness. She beckoned him to a chair and took one facing him. A table between them bore glass cups and a bottle of outland wine. She praised him, the doughty and steadfast, as she plied him, until he unlocked himself.
“Queen,” he said heavily, “I don’t know if we can overthrow Haakon Jarl. I don’t know.”
“We can wear him down,” she said, drawing him on.
“But meanwhile we wear ourselves down too. Yes, the Thraands are suffering, but so’s the rest of Norway.”
“The yeomen grumble. They always did; they always will.”
“It’s more than that. I meant to tell the king—” Arinbjörn broke off.
“Do, but tell me first. Here we can be frank. I think I can help you work out how best to lay it before him when a hundred others are listening.”
Arinbjörn nodded, braced his shoulders, and said in a stumbling rush: “This year at the Gula Thing— No, nothing spoken out in front of everybody. But talk amongst everybody. Stuff such as I’d caught snatches of here and there, now and then. But so widespread! About—maybe an uprising? And what more was there that I didn’t hear? They know I’m King Harald’s man.”
Nonetheless they trusted him this much, Gunnhild thought. Therefore she had better. “Who then would they have for king? Haakon Sigurdarson?”
“No, of course not. God gave that right to Harald Fairhair’s blood. But, well, the talk went as how two grandsons of his live on in the Southeast, or Sigurd the Giant more quietly in Hringariki— Queen, I say nothing against King Tryggvi or King Gudröd, nothing. It’s only what I heard folk wondering about.”
Gunnhild nodded. This was by no means astonishing to her. What made it grim was the man who uttered it. “A sign, yes,” she said, “as a cough may foreshadow something worse.”
Arinbjörn plucked up the will to speak further. “A wasting sickness, I think, Queen. Too much of Norway’s weary, hungry, mourning, angry. I’ve even heard say that the sons of Eirik are unlucky, that the heathen gods are taking revenge on them.”
She could not quite hold back the gall. “They dare!”
Arinbjörn plodded on. “Not only the lowborn, Queen. The highborn too. As you and your sons must know better than I.” It burst from him: “Why has none of them yet gotten a queen of his own?”
“They have found none they care to so honor,” Gunnhild must needs tell him.
“No house they care to so honor,” answered he, who had risked death often enough erenow. “Isn’t that true, Queen? How many great houses can they trust anymore? It’d be unwise to woo a girl whose father hates the wooer.”
“I know,” said Gunnhild evenly. She had given her sons the selfsame warning.
“Forgive me, Queen. I’ve overspoken myself.”
She bestowed a rueful smile on him. “You have not. Rather, I thank you for your straightforwardness. What you’ve said won’t go beyond these walls. But it will stay in me.”
Thus emboldened, he went ahead in his dogged way. “Queen, I know of men on both sides who’d gladly be go-betweens for making peace.”
“We shall see,” Gunnhild answered.
She would brood on it.
Before Harald returned to her, a ship put in from Orkney, belike the last of the season. The skipper told her that Ljot Thorfinnsson, the jarl, was dead.
The Scots had never stopped wanting that. While he was making his rounds in Caithness, a host of them went north against him. Although outnumbered, Ljot gave battle and drove them to flight. But many of his men who lived were hurt, himself not least. He crossed back over to the islands, but his wounds festered, fever took hold of him, he lay raving in his bed and soon died.
Again Gunnhild’s daughter was a widow. Nobody else sought her hand. Men muttered that doom went with her.
IX
Gunnhild wondered whether the gods were fighting for their hold on man or for their very lives.
Victorious everywhere this side of the Moors and Arabs, Christ had now driven them from Denmark, and still he pressed on eastward. Yes, at his back they lingered in the Western Isles and Iceland; but once the motherland fell, or even before, those outposts too would be lost. As yet, the Goths knew little of him and the Swedes less. But he could leave such folk in their hallowed shaws at their bloody altar stones while he outflanked them through Norway. Let him take that fastness, and the rest of the North would lie open. Already he had won footholds.
The gods fought back, with weather and worshippers for weapons. They had brought him to a standstill. How long could this last? If Christ was almighty, why did his warriors not sweep everything before them?
True, her sons were no saints. They had striven for the Church mainly because they saw—she taught them to see-Chow it could bring the stiff-necked freemen to their knees, heads bowed, at the feet of the king. Erling was the most God-fearing among them, but his zeal also flagged when he found what scant headway they made. Could it be that Christ withheld his help from such Christians as these? Then why did he give it to the likes of Harald Bluetooth? She knew the Dane-king too well to believe that the faith in his heart was any more pure than the faith of Harald Grayfell.
Could the heathen be right? They would have been willing enough to set Christ in Aasgard and offer to him as they did to the rest. Might he be akin to the gods but bent on their overthrow—another Loki?
Gunnhild had lived so long with strangeness that she knew she did not know. The thought was shuddery that no one did or ever would. Let her not weaken herself by it, but get on with her fight. She felt time at her back, breathing frost over her hair.
The sword and the psalm had both failed against Haakon Jarl. She had her own way, the Old Way.
So had she sought out Rognvald Highbone, more years ago than she wanted to reckon up, and wrought his death. He was a warlock. Haakon was only a heathen. She would go to him as she went to Rognvald, not swallow but shadow, herself meanwhile awake in the flesh and ready to work witchcraft.
The sun was about to turn downward into the shortening days of fall. On that night, ghosts and Beings went abroad. One heard them in the wind, glimpsed them in the glooms. Cold blue fires flitted, graves groaned; folk laid flint and steel at their thresholds and stayed behind barred doors.
Again Gunnhild emptied her house, saying that once more she would pray and meditate alone. If somebody caught a whisper of song or drumbeat anyway, why, of course uncanny noises went through this dark. Whoever might think a little further about that had better keep his or her lips clamped.
Again she soaked the dried mushrooms. Again she shed her clothes. The air felt colder than erstwhile. But then, she was no smooth-skinned, high-breasted, taut-bellied girl anymore. She let her grizzled locks fall loosely to cover what they could. She donned the eagle feathers, cat’s claws, and wolf’s teeth. She ate the holy food. She drummed and sang, dancing around and around a tall three-legged stool on which one lamp burned, her eyes never leaving its flame. As the Seeing began, she laid the drum aside, took the rune-carved legbones in her hands, sat down on the floor, swayed, and sang herself away from herself. “Haakon Sigurdarson, I behold you, I hear you, I the night wind, I the oncoming winter, I your death. You know me not, you know me not for what I am, your bane, Haakon Sigurdarson. I seek you; I seek you; I seek you—”
She slipped through the flame.
A thin scythe of moon was rising, near the white wanderstar of dawn or dusk. Elsewhere blew rags of cloud. Between the
m she spied a few more stars, unutterably far and icy. Land rolled beneath, a huge murk into which fjords cut like steel. Westward glimmered unrestful sea. She flew forever, and she flew no time at all, while back in the house she swayed and sang and suffered the pain of this.
A storm loomed black ahead. But yonder gleamed the great Thraandheimsfjord. She slanted down toward Hladi.
Out of the storm rode one to meet her. The stallion was black, his eyes fire-coals, his mane wild in the wind over which he galloped. The rider’s cloak flapped like hawk wings. Helm and byrnie cast back the fleeting light. Blood ran from the spear she gripped. Her scream ripped the sky.
The shadow veered off and fled.
Afterward, huddled back inside her body, dawn graying away the worst horror, Gunnhild remembered that Haakon Jarl oftenest called on Thorgerd Shrine-bride. Had his witchy gods, whose last strong defender he was, set that Chooser of the Slain to watch over him?
She stiffened her will and rose off the floor. Chill numbed somewhat the ache in every bone. Whatever truth lurked behind this world, the only thing to do in it now was make peace. So must she counsel her sons, then school them anew in waiting.
X
During that winter and into the spring, men of rank, Arinbjörn among them, went to and fro between the North and the South. At last their bargaining reached agreement and put an end to strife. Haakon Jarl was to keep the same rights and might in the Thraandlaw as his father Sigurd had had, while the kings should have the same overlordship and scot as King Haakon did. This was sworn to on both sides with the strongest of oaths.
The thought followed that even more good ought to come of face-to-face meetings. One of the messengers from King Harald, a clever-tongued little fellow called Ögmund, got Haakon Jarl aside. Of course no Eiriksson was afraid to show himself here. However, feelings must still run high in many Thraands. Might it not help soothe them, and be best all around, if the great jarl came down instead, to be heaped with gifts and honors?
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