Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

“See Skarga setting the fire,” said his father, still practising patience.

  “Well, if it’s the curse, we wouldn’t have seen her, would we?” objected Hakon.

  “Skarga took the boy and the cart this morning, and went to Helmsby market,” said Gunulf. “She’s not back.”

  “Then she sent the spell from a distance,” nodded Ogot, “and thought we wouldn’t guess. But I know, and if the boy was with her, he’ll know too.”

  “Nasty, weasely slave brat,” Gunulf said. “He’d never tell.”

  “He will, after I’ve finished with him,” said Asved.

  “I thought,” remembered Hakon, “you said you knew how to stop the curse. Get the better of her.”

  Ogot kicked the milking bucket. “Fool. So I said that, alright, yes I did. I meant it too. Cockerels. Two of them, and in winter when the stupid birds are more precious, too. But it didn’t fucking work, did it?”

  “So now you’ve found a better way?”

  “I’ve already sent for Grimr the Skald,” nodded Ogot. “I sent a summons some days back. You’ve all heard of him. He’s got a name as a good man who gets things done. He doesn’t turn tail and he doesn’t turn false. Besides, he’s my fourth cousin on my mother’s side, so he’ll feel obliged. He’s family.”

  “I told you before,” Asved frowned. “I said I’d do it myself. I’m not shitting squeamish just because she’s my sister. I’ve always hated the sow anyway, nasty, skinny pale bones, all stares and wide eyes. I’ll do her in for you and get rid of the curse.”

  “You think I’d pay out good weight for someone else to get rid of her, if my own son could do it for nothing?” demanded Ogot with some passion, since paying out silver always hurt like Hel. “But I’ll not have the bitch’s curse come back on my own family, it’s as simple as that.”

  “You said this Grimr the Skald is your cousin,” Hakon reminded him.

  “Well, who gives a fuck for that?” said Ogot. “That’s not close family.”

  “And famed as a skald.”

  “So he can cut the bitch up by day and tell us some good stories by night,” said Banke, cheering up. “Then we’ll send him off next morning before something happens and the curse does him in.”

  “But mind, there’s to be no watching or trying to help,” Ogot insisted. “Grimr can do whatever he pissing likes as long as he does it alone. Rape or no rape, drowning or cutting, I don’t give a shit. You keep the Hel out of the way, and plead ignorance afterwards. Hear me?”

  Banke didn’t like the word ignorance. Ignorance sounded suspiciously like stupidity. “Innocence. Not ignorance,” decided Banke, looking surly.

  “What if it’s Skarga who’s innocent?” said Hakon, saying it slow.

  The others stared at him. “Don’t be a fucking fool,” said his father.

  The fire took a very long time to put out. The hall stood close to the crags and it was a long way down the cliff sides before hitting water. The barrels had been frozen solid since morning and the single bucket line from well to ashes turned to squabble and chaos. There was no one to organise it because the old man was too furious to organise anything more complicated than scratch his arse, set up a simple sacrifice or watch over a boar gutting. So even before night turned the flying sparks into dragon spit, there was nothing left of the hall’s proud timbers and by then the old man had calmed down. His home was rank black rubble disappearing under the snow quilt. It continued to snow and even the embers froze.

  Even before the final ignominy of the fire, Ogot King-wisher had sent out word. He needed a man who would rid him of his daughter and naturally he chose the man everyone recommended, for Grimr the Skald had many reputations. Then Ogot strangled a couple of cockerels and strung up their wilted feathers by the main doors. When the ravens came to tear at the flesh, he had assumed, as any sane man would, that Odinn had accepted the gift and was therefore contracted to help. Odinn had never been much of a woman’s god and could usually be relied on to outwit whatever female curse was lingering. The fire therefore came as a surprise, and with a nasty taint of divine treachery. Odinn had taken the gift of the cockerels, but had failed to complete the bargain. If even the gods couldn’t play their parts fair – well, Ogot trusted cousin Grimr would prove more reliable.

  The path to Helmsby was as rough pebbled as a small avalanche. With a relentless rattle, the two wheeled cart missed neither rut nor puddle, neither pot hole nor ditch. Besides, the pony had no wish to be away from its warm barn, dry hay and the crunch of last year’s apples. It plodded as slowly as permitted. Skarga was in no rush either, but for her it was because she hated home and had no wish to return there at all.

  Egil edged closer along the driving bench. He had been waiting for the right moment. “Lady, there’s something I have to tell you.” He looked around warily, still unsure of the moment’s suitability. Then he turned back at Skarga. “Last night I overheard your father talking to Tove,” Egil continued quietly. “He’s got – plans! I only caught some of it, but that was enough.”

  “You shouldn’t listen to other people’s secrets,” said Skarga. “Tell me anyway.”

  “Who’s Grimr the Skald?” asked Egil.

  She put her head down and thought a moment. “Some sort of cousin. A relative of my father’s but we’ve never met him. Never visited. He’s a famous story-teller.”

  “Your father’s sent for him,” Egil said.

  “Why should I be interested? Another bard, another night of pointless feasting. But the great skalds never bother coming this far north. We’re just a boring uncivilised backwater. He’ll refuse the invitation.”

  “He won’t.” Egil sighed. “He’s going to be very well paid, so he’ll come. But not for stories and sagas. He’s been sent for to take you away. To get rid of you for good. To murder you.”

  Skarga gulped and dropped the reins. “And the Althing sanctioned that?”

  “No, not them,” said Egil. “It’s a secret. Your father’s idea, but I bet it was that filthy Tove’s plan.”

  “Sweet Fricco’s prick,” muttered Skarga, “I’ll kill the bastard first. When’s he coming?”

  But Egil shook his head. “He hasn’t answered the summons yet. The passes are still frozen shut. When he comes, I’ll help you kill him.”

  A day travelling with pony and cart in foul weather left sneezes and bruises, sore shoulders and a raw rump. The pony’s hooves were tender too and the boy trotted off with it to the smith’s; the boy’s friend and the pony’s doctor. Skarga stayed the night with Erna the weaver. She bought three reaches of embroidered border as a bribe for Tove her step-mother, thirty five reaches of undyed woollen cloth for the household, six tapestry squares for her step-aunt Tovhilda to stitch bed hangings, and a roll of knitted Lindsay to make an undershift and stockings for herself. The dogs had settled into long dark streaks against the firelight, loose tongued and panting. The cauldrons had been swung up again under the roof supports while the scents of remaining food lingered, a mealy porridge with a wispy hint of cabbage which Skarga had been invited to share. Now in bed, she could hear a soft damp wind, snow muffled, against the roof thatch but the night’s ravages stayed outside with the wolves.

  Old Snorri the iron-smith had a baby kestrel in the back byre. Egil would go anywhere with a wild hunting bird to pet. Egil said, “I’ll be there if you want me, lady. Snorri says he’ll let me feed her tomorrow.”

  “Feed her your fingers probably.”

  “I’m not that stupid. Besides, I already know more about kestrels than Snorri does. But there’s more. You can never learn enough.”

  “Idiot boy. Knowing anything at all about hunting birds is more than enough.”

  They were sharing a spare cot in the woman’s quarters at the back of the hall. Egil snuggled closer, the best way to keep warm. “Don’t change the subject lady. You know you don’t want to go home yet. And they won’t miss you, you know that too.”

  “Brat,” Skarga said fondly. “I should have l
eft you on that mountain side to starve when you were a baby, instead of bringing you back to the longhouse.”

  “Now that’s cruel,” Egil sniffed cheerfully. “Reminding me my parents didn’t want me, just because yours don’t want you either. And for all you know, I got abandoned by mistake. Perhaps they came back for me later and sobbed all night into their snotty cots when they found I’d gone.”

  Skarga’s smile was invisible in the shadows. “While I had all the pleasures of changing your reeking piss-cloths and washing the puke off your chin after I’d fed you my own share of evening gruel. And me just nine summers old myself.”

  The next morning Skarga sat by Erna’s loom, flicking at the warp’s clay weights, asking the question she’d been practising in her head. “You knew everyone once, back when the market was busy after the first Saxon raids, and poets came from all across the lands to recite under the great hammer.” She looked up, as Erna nodded. “There’s a man I’m interested in,” Skarga went on mildly. “His name’s Grimr and he’s a skald. He’s cousin to my father but none of us know him except by reputation. Do you?”

  “So they’ve arranged a marriage for you at last?” said Erna, without interrupting the rhythm of her weaving.

  Skarga smiled. “Not exactly. I just want to know about the man.”

  “Well, don’t marry him,” said Erna. She fed in the thread, stretching it between her fingers. “He’s not a good man. I knew him a little, but I was young then, and he was younger. Perhaps he’s changed.”

  “Men don’t change,” said Skarga.

  “He was tall, with pale hair and eyes,” said Erna. “Those sort of eyes that stop you looking inside. Mind, he had a honey slick voice that went well with the old sagas. Made good drama, standing like a cypress in front of the cooking flames, weaving stories like I weave blankets. But he did other things too. I knew grown men frightened of him.”

  “I’ve a brother like that,” said Skarga. “Cruelty is a strange, lonely business.”

  “Grimr Ulfsson wasn’t just cruel,” said Erna. “He was clever and he could summon up dragons and night terrors. He was very young at that time, but he terrified me and well night everyone else. Now he’s surely older and stronger. Don’t marry him.”

  Skarga sighed. “Tell me why men were frightened of him.”

  “It was a long time ago.” Erna shook her head. “I don’t like remembering the past. It makes me wish I hadn’t got old.”

  So they stayed two more days and would have stayed longer perhaps, if the messenger hadn’t come. It was still snowing and the man was wearing it like a cloak. He almost fell off his horse at her feet. “My lady. It’s the king, your father.”

  For one glorious moment Skarga wondered if he’d fallen down the old well sodden with drink, and was dead.

  “My father is –?”

  “Lady, the great hall has burned to the ground. He’s demanding your return.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Skarga and stalked off to the smith’s barn to look for Egil.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The man was a long way from the land of his birth, and still out at sea when once again he smelled the thing he was always searching for, and so rarely found.

  He spoke quietly. “It’s there. I can sense it.”

  “There?” Safn, small and dark at the other man’s side, squinted across the gunwales into the low sun. He saw sky and sea and little else.

  “Yes, there.” The tall man nodded. “Beyond the horizon. I can smell it.”

  “You’ll want to go, then,” Safn said.

  The tall man nodded again. “Tell Orm. We head for land, south by south east. Once we get closer, I’ll adjust the direction.”

  “Orm won’t like it.”

  “I don’t give a dragon’s piss what Orm likes.”

  Safn spoke to Halfdan and Halfdan spoke to Orm. Halfdan said, “How he does it I don’t know. Land he says, south by south east. We’re three days off the nearest coast, and he talks like it’s a spit and a hop. How the Hel does he smell that far?”

  Orm sniffed. “You’re a single. He isn’t.”

  “Rude bugger, I’m a double but I can’t smell cow shit lest it’s under my nose.”

  “The sea bear smells a seal’s tears from twenty miles. The sea eagle smells a lemming when it’s still shivering underground.”

  Halfdan sighed. “So, does he know what this one is? Can he tell that too?”

  “No.” Orm wiped his nose on the frayed edge of his sleeve. “He won’t know that. Magic smells strong and musky and hot. Now that’s one fucking big excitement snorting up any bugger’s nostrils. But it don’t say who or what. Could even be a woman, there’s no way of knowing. Even you must smell it sometimes.”

  Halfdan nodded. “I live with it, don’t I? Smell it? By the hammer, I shit it. But not a new one, and not from this distance.”

  “A woman?” interrupted Safn, striding over. “That’s a good thought. We need more of them, all the gods know that.”

  “It’ll be a man. It always is.” Orm straightened up, legs heavy balanced, the wet planks creaking beneath his huge flat feet. “Come on then men. Let’s get tacking. Our gentle lord may be busy sniffing the putrid weed on the waves, but he’ll soon be smelling our blood if we don’t obey orders.”

  Halfdan looked to Safn. “I’d hoped for home. Not some half-baked trip back to southern shores.”

  But it was the captain who answered. He was behind them, his cloak flapping in the wind, his hair in his face, eyes like sudden torches, alight with the thrill. The swell roared against the bows, the clinkered boards groaning, and the sail caught as they changed direction, slapping back against the mast with a crack. Safn said, “Lord? You’re sure, then? A three day sail, a storm threatening, and you can smell it still? Is it worth it?”

  The man said, “Don’t you want to find the new ones?”

  “I do. But I want the clean snows and my warm bed as well. I’m not one of your puddle splashers.”

  “Then fly away home, my friend,” said the captain, grinning. “I’ll splash my puddles without you, need be. But I’ll keep searching for the new ones as long as I smell them. They’re miserable, Safn, and hungry, wretched with confusion. All that terrible yearning, and not a bugger to explain what hurts so much they weep inside. I smell them across a hundred horizons, and I’ll find them as long as they’re out there. And this one is small, and weak, and needs us.”

  “You know what he is then?”

  “He - or she. No.” The man turned his gaze back east, staring into the first darkening clouds of the incoming squall. “I’ve no idea what – nor where exactly yet. But there’s one of us alone out there, who needs our help, and will join us in time.”

  “All I can smell is the brine.”

  “This scent is brinier than brine. Sweeter than clover. Sharper than new forged metal. It’s the most joyous perfume in our whole wet world, Safn – and the saddest.”

  Three days eastwards on the nearest land, it had stopped snowing but the sky was as overcast as a wadmal cape and the wind keened through the brush, snapping at the pony’s mane.

  “I’ve often found it useful to act seidr-skilled,” Skarga told the boy on the way back home. They were being jolted in the back of the cart since the messenger, his horse tied on behind, had assumed the mature male’s authority to drive. “Being respected as a witch has practical benefits, especially when you loath your entire family, but I’m not really cursed you know. Though it’s odd how many odd things happen around me.”

  “Well, you killed your mother off by getting born,” nodded Egil. “Not that everyone thinks it was a bad move mind you, from what I’ve heard.”

  “Hakon and Banke were probably just jealous,” Skarga nodded. “You know, the new wife, after their own mother was shoved out.”

  “Hush,” Egil made squinting hints in the direction of their driver. “The slave’s listening.”

  “He couldn’t care less,” said Skarga. “No one’s going
to risk Banke’s temper by passing on insults and gossip.”

  They smelled the burning before they saw it, even now some days after the first spark, with the soot turned white and iced into swirls. Too frozen for cleaning up, no one yet had the heart to do more than kick at the remains, spit into the empty post holes and pick through the debris, hoping to find some item of value so far overlooked.

  Skarga stood and stared. She’d called it home, though a dreary one, and her possessions, what there were of them, had all been inside. And clearly they were blaming her for everything. She felt her father’s belligerence at the back of her neck. “Bitch. Kept away for safety did you, while it was going on? Come back now it’s all over, and your cursed work finished?”

  “I came back because you sent for me,” she said to empty air, not turning round.

  “After hiding in Helmsby. Good place to cast your spells without anyone knowing, except the boy.” His breath was getting hotter. “But I know what you did and I’ll get it out of the brat, and then have you whipped for it.”

  She turned round then and glared at him. She was two fingers taller. He’d always resented those two fingers. “If you dare touch Egil,” she said, “I will curse you to Ragnarok and your foul sons with you. Don’t touch him. I’ll confess if you want, but leave Egil alone. He hasn’t done anything.”

  The old man grinned. It had been easier than he’d hoped. “You’ll confess then? In front of the whole Assembly?”

  The Althing Assembly had no hall to meet in anymore, but they could always sit in cow dung in one of the byres, which Skarga thought was where most of them belonged. “They say exactly what you want them to anyway. Why bother with the meeting?”

  “I’m king. I uphold the law. It has to be official.”

  Skarga sniggered. “King? Farmer-king. King-wisher. King of a few fields and a couple of ditches.”

  He hit her but he’d been practising patience so it was no more than a heavy back-handed slap. The real satisfaction would come later and the whipping she’d earned would leave more than just bruises. “So,” he straddled her as she lay in the snow, one foot raised in warning, “Either I’ll have Asved hold your piglet under water until he tells what you did, or you confess willingly to the Althing. Say it.”