Thus it was with eagerness that she and Grayfell received Glum when he got back. Straightaway they saw on his face that the faring had not gone well. Other sons of hers might have questioned him unseemly fast. Gunnhild felt a small glow beneath the sudden chill when her Harald made the travelers welcome, had them seated and drink brought for them, and gave gold arm-rings to the skald and the firstman of the guards that went yonder. Only then did he say, “Tell me the upshot, Glum. Waste no breath on honeying it. Later we’ll hear the tale from beginning to end.”
Glum knew his lord too well and honored him too much to shy off. “Be it as the king wants,” he answered. “We found King Harald Gormsson at Aarhus. He guested us fittingly and spoke mildly enough, in that roundabout way of his, so that it took days to learn what he really meant. He thanks you for your gifts and has sent gifts of his own back with us, though frankly, lord, I’d call them less than yours. He said that the sons of King Eirik and Queen Gunnhild were dear to him in Denmark, as they surely remember. He still bears only the best of wishes for them. However, he cannot help but feel they’ve shown little zeal for the Faith, and have yet to acknowledge his rights in Norway.”
Whispers hissed around the hall. “Go on,” said Harald Grayfell.
Glum obeyed. “King Harald Gormsson says he understands that it hasn’t been easy for you and your brothers, lord. The Norse are a headstrong breed, and these are years of hardship for them. You have your hands full, and may not yet be able to spare payments. He bears with that for now.”
Those men who had gone to Denmark nodded stiffly. Those who had stayed here caught their breaths and stared. “Go on,” said Harald again.
“King,” Glum told him, “he never said it outright, but he knows how to slip something across, day by day, word by sly word.” That he spoke so boldly about another king showed the depths of his love and trust, Gunnhild thought. If only there were more like him. “He believes you and King Gudröd dealt wrongly with King Tryggvi Olafsson and King Gudröd Bjarnarson.” Yes, Gunnhild thought, Bluetooth would have looked upon those two as a counterweight. “It makes him wonder—I’ll utter it flatly, lord—wonder about the worth or wisdom of a wedlock bond such as I laid before him.” Quickly: “What he said to tell you, however, King, was that he thanks you for this thought, that does him honor, and he will give it thought of his own.”
It was not an affront, Gunnhild knew. Not quite. Harald Bluetooth was too wily for that.
Harald Grayfell whitened. She leaned close to him in the high seat and murmured, “Go lightly. Make no fuss about this. Tell everyone you’ll think in your turn. Then bring up cheerier things, as though it doesn’t matter very much.”
“It does,” he said from the side of his mouth.
“Yes.” Once Haakon Jarl returned from viking, would he send messengers to Harald Bluetooth? “But no ax will fall soon. Watch. Wait. Make ready. Let slip no warnings.”
He sighed. “Always wise, Queen Mother.” Thereupon he barked a laugh. “So be it!” he cried. “Well told, Glum. Now we’ll see what our kinsman in Denmark has sent us, and make merry for half the night.”
Gunnhild felt an easing sweep through the hall, like the swift slackening of a tide-race in the fjord of her childhood. Best she leave, not to start anybody wondering. Besides, she didn’t care for slurred, drunken gabble. She made known that she was tired—feeling her years, she said with a smile—and left.
Outside, the low sun was lost to sight; the stones of the yard lay shadowless under gray overcast. Wind whistled. She drew her cloak tightly against it. How cold was the weather farther north? She had heard that there and in the Uplands farmers were keeping their kine in barns throughout the summer, feeding them on what hay could be gathered, like Finns. The fishing grew ever more lean. But farther yet, the Thraandlaw shires were not doing unbearably badly. The land and waters in Denmark still yielded well. Was God angry that her sons had more or less given up on bringing Norway to the Faith? Then why did heathen Svithjod thrive? Had something gone wrong with the world itself, with Norse man’s oneness with the old Powers of earth, sea, and sky?
A voice called her back. “Queen,” it whined, “may it please you, I have news.”
Ogmund stood there, sallow, skinny, stoop-shouldered. Although she did not stint him, he was drably clad. So he often was, to be less showy as he went about her errands. He must have shivered here for some while, knowing better than to break in on Harald Grayfell. She tautened as she answered smoothly, “Yes?”
“One of your lookouts has come, Queen. Sveinn Fox-nose. He says he has tidings. I gave him leave to stable his horse—a walking rack of bones, the nag is—and wait beside it in the warmth. Does the queen wish to see him?”
Sveinn Fox-nose, she recalled. He had no other name, never having known who his father was and forgetting about his mother once he had left her behind with her younger whelps. A woods-runner, hunter, trapper, surely a thief, but a fellow who ranged widely and heard much, earning pay when he brought her any worthwhile news. It was as if the wind passed between her ribs. “Bring him to me at my house in a little while,” she bade, and walked onward.
She was seated when they came. At her nod, Ogmund then left them alone. Sveinn louted awkwardly, a gaunt and grimy man in patched wadmal and greasy leather. Living mostly outdoors, though a smell hung about him, he did not really stink. She waved a hand at a goblet on a table nearby. “Be welcome, and drink,” she said. “Tell me what you have to tell; then Ogmund shall lead you to food and better lodging than a stable.”
“I, uh, I thank—” He picked up the earthen cup and gulped the hot mead. “Aaah!” He braced himself. “Queen, I have this from your watcher Visbur the Swart, who rode straight across Svithjod till he found somebody who’d take it to you. I was stopping by at the crofter Gellir’s—”
Gunnhild coaxed the tale forth. It stabbed in her.
Aastrid, widow of King Tryggvi Olafsson, whom Gunnhild’s son Gudröd got slain, Aastrid felt she had sheltered long enough with the chieftain Haakon the Old. She had meant from the first to seek out her brother Sigurd across the Baltic. Now she was getting set to go.
Gunnhild filled in with knowledge she had already garnered. Sigurd had done very well in Gardariki. Today, among other things, he was a high-ranking guardsman of Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavsson in Holmgard. Although Vladimir was only twelve or thirteen years old, already he had made his mark. Given time and luck, he might well follow—maybe overthrow—his brother Svyatopolk, the Grand Prince down in Kiev. Meanwhile he held the land up to Lake Ladoga, and drew scot from as far as Estonia; and Sigurd had his ear.
Gunnhild thought of Aastrid coming to her brother. She thought of what they might think of—maybe together with Harald Bluetooth, whose new queen was Polish, or even Haakon Jarl. Aastrid would take her child along.
No ship from here would be fast enough to waylay her. Nothing short of witchcraft could head off Aastrid and whatever doom it was that Gunnhild winded in Olaf Tryggvason.
That would not be easy or safe. Over the years she had used what she learned in Finnmörk to learn more. Hags and seidmen whom she met in Norway had little power, far less than hers, but from each of them she had won scraps of further knowledge. At last she could go forth not only as a bird, and not only to spy.
But then she must draw on that which lay beyond the world of man, at a full moon, the turning of the sun, or some other time when strangeness went unloosed by night. If now she waited for such an hour, she would be too late. She must have another thing of darkness instead.
And nevertheless— She remembered what her shadow met above Hladi, and fought down a shudder.
She steeled herself to hope that no such Being kept watch where she was bound.
As she sent Sveinn off with a few coins in his grubby fist, she bade, “After Ogmund has seen to your wants, tell him to come back here, but tell him when nobody else is listening, and say he’s to keep his mouth shut.”
Ögmund, who sneaked everywhere,
could find the thing for her—Ogmund, Kisping, he who had shot Haakon Aethelstan’s-foster’s death-arrow.
VI
Already in the following twilight he brought her what she wanted. Because he had promised such speediness, she had sent her housefolk away. “And begone until I come for you,” she ordered. “That may well be late in the day tomorrow, or even the day after.”
Word of this had reached Harald. He sought her out himself and asked what it meant. “As before, I will be at prayer, fasting, and thinking,” she answered.
He looked askance at her. “Wouldn’t that be better done in the chapel, and first you confess to the priest?”
“When did you last confess?” she gibed. Then, softly, “I said I must also think. My prayer will be for insight, a path for my sons through the dangers that beset them.”
He pursed his lips but said merely, “As you wish, Mother,” and soon went from her.
He had more than an inkling of what she did when alone like this, she knew, and he misliked it. Still—she grinned coldly—he was willing enough to take her at her word when something helpful might come of it.
Thus she herself opened the door at Ogmund’s knock. Trees and buildings hulked black against a sky the hue of a bruise. Workers yonder were through for the day and gone inside. A breeze whispered, unseasonably chill. Somewhere afar a wolf howled. At that, the king’s hounds began to bay.
The footling slipped over the threshold. She shut the door behind him. From under his cloak he took a small leather bag. “Here it is, Queen,” he told her.
“Put it on the table,” she said. “Where’s it from?”
“Off in the woods, Queen, near what’s left of a shelter. Folk say two outlaws denned there long ago. One took sick and died. His friend buried him but then was caught and slain. It’s still shunned.”
For the span of a gasp she was in another woodland hut, small, altogether helpless, with two robbers.
She snarled at the fear, threatened it, made it slink back into the underworld. Those men were dead too, cut down before her suddenly shining eyes, and she was never going to be helpless again.
“My lady?” She had not often seen Ogmund taken off guard.
“Nothing,” she said, flat-voiced. “A thought passed by that surprised me a little. You were bold to dig there.”
“The queen sent me. I kept telling myself the queen’s hand was over me.”
“As it will be while you stay faithful to her. You shall let fall no breath of this to anyone whatsoever. I’ll take it ill indeed if you do.”
“The queen knows I can keep a secret.” He smirked. “The queen and I already share many, don’t we?”
She wondered sharply what he meant by that. He was a slippery one.
“My lady has always rewarded me well,” he said. “When I came back from the war with King Haakon— I own that this time also I must flog myself onward. There wouldn’t be any hoard for a drow to sit on, but one hears of how even the lowliest dead can get angry when they’re stirred, and call down woe on him who does it. For my queen I took the risk.”
Yes, he was pressing on her, ever so shiftily. However, she’d better not lose time now in chastening him. She could hardly blame him for greed, and he had done what most men would have balked at.
She had filled a purse with coins not only from England but from as far as Serkland, and among them minted Empire silver. She dropped it into his hands, not touching them. “Here,” she said, with a nod toward the door that he understood. He gave his fulsome thanks while he went out. She barred the door. For a short while he lingered in her mind, a nasty taste. What was he really like inside? He must have tucked away a good deal of wealth by now, but he still lived among the servants and did not seem to buy anything besides fine clothes to strut in when he went to town—and, she supposed, the hire of a whore from time to time, though maybe his hankerings were otherwise. She should have taken the trouble to find out more; it was well to know one’s tools. But no, that would be demeaning.
Enough.
Still she hung back. What she meant to do was the worst kind of seid. Christ would cast her into the undying fire if she did not atone—if Christ cared what happened to heathens. The gods in Aasgard would scowl if they marked it. Seija would grieve if she knew, if Seija was yet alive.
It was for the house of Eirik.
She mustered herself, stepped stiffly over to the leather bag, and undid the cord. Reaching in, a hasty snatch, she pulled forth what was inside.
The skull felt heavier than it should be. Mold clung in patches to the yellow-brown bone. It smelled damp. The few teeth were black snags. She raised it and looked into the emptinesses where eyes had been. What dreams might the worms have shaped as they hollowed out this head? Nightmares, belike, if anything.
She set it down, reached back into the bag, and closed fingers on the lower jaw. Good. She had told Ogmund to make sure of that also.
Somehow it heartened her, in a wintry way. And the night would not be very long. She must get on with her work.
She bore the two parts to her loftroom, fitted them together, and set the skull on the high, three-legged stool. With the flame of her lamp she lighted a candle and used its hot wax to fix it so that it stood on the head like a single horn. She blew out the lamp. Everything else waited ready. Again she stripped herself, shook her hair loose, donned the feathers, claws, and fangs. Again she ate the holy food, twice as much as ever before. Again she drummed, danced, and sang. When at last she sat down cross-legged and swayed, she gazed not into the candleflame but into the eye-hollows.
“Dead man, you have walked down hell-road; you have fared far; I call on you to lend me the strength of the dead. If you will not, may voles gnaw your bones, may ants nest among your ribs, may trolls dig you up and scatter you. But if you will, then my man shall bring this your head home and make a blood offering on your grave. By the Powers of the night and the wind, by earth and fire and the hidden waters beneath, I lay this on you, I, Gunnhild the queen, I, mother of kings. Hear me and heed me, outward and onward even if to the ends of the world—”
She lay down. The shadow flew free.
A few stars glimmered past wind-riven, hurrying clouds. The land stretched utterly black. Broad Lake Vanern sheened within it, and other waters, but they soon fell behind as she bore northeasterly. Blindly aware, she found the sea, a shining sheet under a sky that here was more open, starful, the faintest whiteness in the east.
A ship lay hove to, waiting for daybreak. The shadow swooped low above. Although she had never met Aastrid, Gunnhild knew her and her bairn, knew how things now stood with her.
Haakon the Old had gotten her passage on a well-found knarr, bound for Holmgard with trade goods. Her foster father Thorolf Louse-beard and his own youngest son went along, to see her safely to her brother. She and the children slept in a kind of tent rigged for them at the forepeak. The shadow glided through the sailcloth, saw a slight smile on her lips, and flew off.
It found the low Estonian shore. Folk on farms were beginning to stir. Likewise were the crew of a longship grounded where they had camped for the night. They themselves were Estonians, mostly short, stocky men with high cheekbones and slanty eyes, though fair of skin and hair. One man showed himself to be their skipper. The shadow slipped into his head.
Gunnhild did not know the tongue he spoke. It was much the same as that in southern Finland, where the same breed—whom the Norse called Kvaens—were clearing and plowing land, pushing the reindeer-herding Finns she knew north into the wilderness. Estonia itself paid scot to Holmgard, but otherwise mostly went its own way. These men were vikings aprowl.
The skipper, like some others in his gang, spoke Norse. His name was Klerkon. The shadow whispered in his thoughts. He grew restless, walked about, peered aloft at the earliest gulls and cormorants, held a wet finger up to the breeze, and at last said he had a feeling that it would be lucky to steer straight west although that meant beating against the wind. His men grumb
led a bit, but nobody wanted to gainsay him. Having swallowed their hardtack, they floated the ship and rowed free of the rising tide before they hoisted sail.
The shadow lurked watchful. Daylight would dim Gunnhild’s far-sight and hurt her, but she must see how this went.
And so the vikings found the knarr on its way and closed with it. They laid alongside, made fast while they swapped blows with the other crew, and swarmed aboard. None of them took worse than flesh wounds, but Swedes fell like slaughtered kine till those who were left dropped their weapons and gave in.
Gleefully, the vikings bound them and shared them out to sell for thralls. The young woman, standing white-faced among the wallowing dead, might well have gone to Klerkon, but he owed another man for past help and let him take her. For himself, she being clearly of wellborn stock, he took the boy who clutched her hand, grabbing him away. He also got the old fellow who had kept beside her and the youngster with him.
He looked Thorolf Louse-beard over and snorted. “You’ll be of no use, gaffer,” he said in Norse. His ax swung and thwacked. Thorolf crumpled. Brains spilled from the cloven skull into the blood awash in the bilge.
The lad Olaf had wept. Suddenly he stopped. Dry and bleak, his eyes raked Klerkon. Three years old, he did not want to forget.
Rain blew out of the west, cloaking the sun. It let the shadow fly. Gunnhild came back to herself.
Drained of strength, aching everywhere, she could not linger on her pallet. She must rise, hide her witchy things, don clothes, go out, and be the queen till eventide let her sleep.
She had done what she was able to, against a doom far off in time and only half seen. Hard nigh her stood Haakon Jarl.
VII
News reached Vikin from Hördaland. Its yeomen were in an uproar because of what Sigurd Loudmouth had done to the lady Aalof. “I’d better go there and see to this,” said Harald Grayfell grimly. “We’ll send for Gudröd to hold the shires here. He has his wits about him, I believe.”
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