Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Egil raced from the high ground down the cliff path until his calf muscles ached and his lungs wracked, coughing and wheezing. He arrived at the dockside and stared up at the serpent’s golden eyes, the sneer of its open mouth, and the curl of its forked tongue. The wooden monster stared back and Egil shivered. He darted around the ship’s hull, searching for any remaining member of the crew. Two men were still on board, humping barrels from the stern, empty now of their fresh water and in need of refilling. Egil shouted over the rumbling and clanking.

  “Your captain, lord. Who’s your leader?”

  The man stuck his beard over the gunwales and stared down at the ragged boy dancing alongside. “Well, brat? Why do you need to know? What business of yours? You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to tell me,” objected Egil. “Are you ashamed to announce him?”

  The man laughed. “Go away, brat. Don’t talk of things you know nothing about.”

  “But that’s the point,” Egil yelped. “I don’t know, and I want to. If you won’t tell me your captain’s name, then tell me if you carried a passenger.”

  The man, leaning both elbows on the gunwale’s wet timbers, was still laughing. “Passengers? We’re a fighting langskip, lad, not a hog-swill carrier. For a boy your age, you’re certainly ignorant.”

  “Grimr the Skald,” persisted Egil, staring up. “The travelling bard. Was he on your ship? Did you bring him here?”

  “Ah,” the man stood straight again and started to move away, embracing the next barrel to tip for the roll. “So it’s one particular man you’re frightened of, is it? Or are you searching for the father who threw you and your whore mother out? But I don’t answer questions of slave brats. Get back to your work, and leave me to mine.” And he turned, stomping off across the deck.

  Egil sighed, slumped, and began to trail back up the path to the village. It had started to rain, a silvery drizzle which soaked him gradually through to his undershirt. He was dripping when he got to the ale shed, and Tove screeched at him. “Get out of here rat, mud on your shoes and snot on your sleeves.”

  Telling Tove you hadn’t wiped your nose on your cuff for an hour at least, would get you a slap not an apology. Besides, Skarga wasn’t there, and that was all Egil had come for. He hurried out and trudged up to the longhouse. He wiped his feet carefully before going in, but Skarga wasn’t there either.

  The crew from the longship, forty strong or more, were half in the house, half out in a group by the turnip patch. Every man had a horn of ale and Egil understood why Torvil was in a panic. Ogot could be a good host when strangers were fighting men from a fighting ship and every one of them well armed. It might be customary to leave spears and swords on board when invited to a new lord’s home but no one was fool enough to leave his knife, and every man’s belly had a long leather sheath strapped horizontally across it and a well carved seax handle within reach of his fist. Careful to look insignificant and not appear to be spying, Egil pattered at the guest’s boots and refilled cups. There was satisfied scum on every moustache and Egil smiled, for soon Ogot would have to bring out his precious store of best mead.

  The gossip was mostly inane. A few dragons gutted, an army of trolls herded into the waves. Foreign kings, sea battles, the usual exaggerated heroism. The men had wintered in the Saxon’s land but sailing back home for the late spring, they’d hit a storm and been forced further north. They’d seen sea monsters and what might have been the wake of Jormundgandr, with a hump of coils to frighten a troll. But they hadn’t gone under, for their captain was the most experienced sailing man in all Midgard and had kept them safe, every one, their ship without a splinter, and the silver intact in their hold.

  Though he claimed not to be the captain, it was a tall, big bellied man who seemed in command. His blond beard was thick but his hair was as fine and silky as a woman’s, and as long too, tied at the base of his neck and coiling down his back. “A great ferment of sea serpents,” he spluttered into his cup, “being a threat to any sane man. But we tamed the seas and sailed on.”

  “Orm,” cackled another well weathered sailor, discovering some secret source of humour, “is our Second on board.” He indicated the long haired man. “And an expert, Orm is, on sea serpents.”

  “I never heard tell there were that many,” muttered Ogot, who was eager to sound at least part educated in the ways of the sea. “Though I’m no traveller myself, being too busy chieftaining my own home lands.”

  Orm squared his shoulders and winked slowly. “Is more monsters living in the great oceans,” he said with a conspiratorial nod, “than any land lubber might guess at.”

  “So where is home port?” inquired Ogot. “Have you far to sail from here?”

  “A fair way with a fair sea,” said Orm. “Due north, where the pack ice freezes all year.”

  And their captain’s name? He was marching the crag edge, they said, thanking Odinn after their near drowning and miraculous salvation, and would be up to the longhouse when he’d done. In the meantime, his name was his own and not to be spread thin or handed freely to everyone, including no doubt those who weren’t worthy either to know it or speak it.

  The ale barrel was soon empty and Egil sidled out, quickly scurrying the dividing ditch up to the trees beyond the fields. He knew every copse for he’d scoured them for falcons, kestrels and merlin, and could find a nest with his eyes shut. He’d dried off a little by the longhouse hearth, but now he was wet again. A blackbird was singing in his shower. The rain was little more than a soft sheen between the pines, sparkling on the fallen cones and strung in spangled glimmer on the spider’s webs, but it seeped through the coarse flax of his tunic and up through the broken soles of his shoes. Egil knew the places Skarga liked to go, where her step-mother and brothers wouldn’t find her. He searched them all.

  If Grimr the bastard bard was captain of the long ship in the bay below, then there was little sense in his men keeping the name secret. Ogot had called for the man and offered a good price for an easy job, so why deny him? A man might cover his identity for many reasons; for caution, for shame, for bravado or for fear. For ambush perhaps, or for superstition. But this time, it didn’t make sense. And Egil had never heard that Grimr, as well as poet, killer and turd, was also a sea captain. The hero of the long ship might be quite another, with Grimr his passenger, yet there had been no one Ogot had greeted back at the house who seemed to be a man expected, welcomed, or even known by repute. The carved serpent head at the quayside might simply be what she claimed to be, a fighting ship returned from a westerly wintering and thrown off course by storm.

  This time, there might be no Grimr the Skald at all.

  There seemed to be no Skarga either, and Egil, scurrying through the lower branches, was soaked for little reason. A raven was watching him, head on one side, eye bright and feathers closed tight against the damp. Egil decided to return to the village. He went slowly, there being no further point in hurrying for any purpose even to escape the drenching. He could see the king’s longhouse before reaching it and it seemed the ship’s crew had left. There was no sign of the raucous men from before, no drinking joviality or boisterous noise. With the ale barrels drunk dry and the field’s mud wet, the crew would be off bartering for supplies to finish their journey. There was smoke rising thin and smudge grey from the thatch and the doors stood open, but there was a sullen silence and nothing moved, not even the dogs. He tramped back down across the turnip patch, pushing the straggles of his hair from his eyes. He would get a beating for having left his work, but he didn’t care about that.

  Podgy fat palms grabbed his collar from behind and Egil felt the rough calluses and the flex of the hard fingers. He whimpered. Then, spun around to face his captor, Egil saw Banke flat-nose, not Asved the black as he’d feared. It was a relief, but not much of one. The collar ripped and Banke transferred his grip to the child’s scrawny neck and began to choke him. Egil hung limp and his feet left the ground. “My s
ister’s piglet,” said Banke, hot breath directly into the boy’s closing eyes. “Too grand to work like the other slaves then? And your bony mistress hiding is she? Well, I want her.”

  Egil, struggling, found his voice. “Put me down, lord and I’ll find her for you.”

  “Warn her, you mean. Think I’m stupid, little piggy?”

  There were simple rules around Ogot’s land and family, and never using the word stupid near Banke was one of them. “Lord, forgive me, but I don’t understand. Warn her of what? If you want her, I’ll look for her, and I’ll tell her to come to you.”

  Banke worked it out. “I’ll find her myself. I’ll get rid of you first.”

  The wooden rain-butt by the central doorway stood nearly as tall as a man and considerably taller than Egil. It was filling quickly with the steady drip from the thatch’s overhang and the silver drizzle. Egil’s toes lost ground again and he was tipped head first, tumbling into the water filled depths of the barrel. His arms restricted to his sides by the narrow planks and his legs kicking wildly, his head was immediately under water and up past his shoulders. Unprepared, he had not held his breath. Bubbles in his nose, eyes squeezed, mouth snapped shut too late. He began to lose consciousness. Black wings enclosed him and the living world fled. He was aware of the last sour waterlogged gasping grasp at life speeding past his nose, and he stopped struggling.

  There were golden eyes with a huge pupil blacker than storm clouds, that saw past his fears and on into his dreams. Eagle’s eyes, the giant eagle of the peaks that he had always loved more than anything else. The golden eagle that represented the greatest freedom of all, and the grandest beauty. It caressed him with its feather tips and he was warm and he surrendered to it utterly. Then he was lifted with a powerful grip around his ankles and flung high into the air until, like the eagle, he flew.

  He had accepted death, but found himself tossed back onto the wet ground where he retched for air. He saw legs in front of his face, and vomited over the boots of a tall man. Seemingly far, far above him were two clear sounds, and neither made any sense. The first was a voice he did not recognise at all, saying words that made little impression. “Well,” said the voice, “that’s gratitude for you.”

  The second noise was one Egil recognised fairly well, for it was Banke crying and squealing like a spitted sow. He’d heard that sound before. Banke cried whenever he was thwarted, and squealed when his father kicked him, which was often. But this time it wasn’t Ogot doing the kicking.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I want to gouge his eyes out,” squealed Banke. “I want to cut his prick off and stuff it up his arse. I want to twist my knife between his ribs and strangle him with my bare hands, slow, so his tongue pops all the way out and goes black.”

  “Yes, yes,” murmured Ogot sympathetically. “But you can’t. You can’t touch the man at all.”

  Banke stamped both feet repeatedly so that the ground vibrated, the logs bounced and the little fire hissed on the hearth. “I have to. You have to let me have him.”

  “Be reasonable,” said Ogot, losing some patience. “Grimr’s under my protection and I’m paying him a fair weight of silver to do a good job. You want rid of your damned sister, don’t you?”

  Banke shook his head with some violence. “I’ll get rid of Skarga, or Asved can. Let him get the curse. Asved’s a creepy little bastard anyway. Then I’ll rip this fucking Grimr up in fucking pieces.”

  Ogot shook his head. “You touch him, and I’ll have you flogged. Is that clear enough?”

  Banke’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s not fair. Let me squeeze him, just a little bit. Let me squash his head. I promise I won’t kill him. Just let me hurt him.”

  Ogot grabbed his son by his short blonde beard, lowered his short neck, thrust forwards and head butted him. Banke’s nose had been broken by his mother as a child and lay already wide and flat across his cheeks. Now it started to bleed and his forehead began to turn crimson.

  Banke stared in fury at his father. He started to shake. He threw himself heavily on the ground, the shaking became more pronounced, his big fuzzy head banged on his knees, and the sobbing became louder. Hot tears rolled across all the plains of his face, left sled tracks through the grime and stung his eyes, but he could not stop.

  Ogot kicked his son hard in the gut. Banke momentarily lost breath and became abruptly silent. He doubled over, curled tight, and sighed meekly. Ogot walked away. Banke, still quietly crying, crawled on hands and knees and disappeared into one of the cupboard beds on the far side of the hall. It slid shut with a dull thud.

  The tall man who had so displeased his host’s son, was leaning calmly against the carved doorway, watching with casual interest. “So this is the delightful family I evidently belong to,” he remarked. “How interesting.”

  “Don’t fuck with me,” said Ogot with feeling. “My boy may have a bit of a temper, but there’s nothing wrong with that. You shouldn’t have messed with him.”

  “He was drowning a small skinny brat for no apparent reason that I could discover,” said Grimr the Bard apologetically. “It would certainly have polluted the rainwater barrel. So I pulled the child out again.”

  “And knocked my son down and kicked him in the crotch,” nodded Ogot. “Hardly a friendly greeting to your host.”

  “It seemed like a pleasant idea at the time,” explained Grimr with a faint smile. He was an exceptionally tall man with wild blonde hair, wide squared shoulders and a high forehead beneath the shaggy golden curls. “Besides,” he added helpfully, “I didn’t know he was your son. Not that it would have made a lot of difference if I had. I didn’t like the look of him.”

  “I’m not sure I like the look of you, if it comes to that,” said Ogot, who was losing his carefully preserved patience.

  “Your prerogative,” smiled the man Grimr. “Makes no difference to me.”

  Ogot marched over to the ornate king’s chair of dragons and carved knot work, which faced the low fire. He sat down rather heavily and stretched his legs. It eradicated the unnecessary advantage Grimr had in height. “Well, if it comes to that we don’t have to be friends,” Ogot said, “but we’re family and that counts for something. And now we’re going to be business partners. You know what I want done.”

  “I know what you want done, and I’ll do it,” agreed Grimr, unmoved from his position by the door. “But I’ll take her and her slave brat away from here, and do things my own way. And I’ll take double the silver.” He was still lounging, still smiling.

  Ogot scowled and took a deep breath. “I can’t afford that. As to the process, you can do what you like. Throw the bitch overboard. Fuck her to death. I don’t give a snot wipe for how you do it, as long as she never comes back. And full and proper dead mind, not sold for slavery somewhere you think I won’t know about. That wouldn’t work for me and besides, no daughter of mine should be reduced to slavery. So I have to trust you and they say you’re a man to be trusted. As for price, you’ve seen the silver weighed and I can’t double it, but I’ll throw in the two arm rings I’m wearing, and the amulet you saw round my son’s neck. That’s all I can offer.”

  Behind the tall man, the late sunshine had frightened away the rain and now silhouetted the figure, leaving the intensity of his face in deep shadow, the brilliant blue of his eyes in dark suggestion, and his hair lit in sudden filigree as vivid as the arm rings the king was holding up. “I’ll take it,” said Grimr.

  The sunshine lasted only a few more moments before shrugging behind the mountains. The night came increasingly late in northern summers, shrinking back the tentative warmth into a short black chill. The longhouse fire was lit higher, a huge interlacing of logs covering the central hearth. The flames growled and roared and spat. Two cauldrons hung suspended by chains from the ceiling, and another sat toad-like on a flat stone trivet. To the side a long iron spit held the revolving carcass of a reindeer and the soot-boy turned the handle, licked his blistered fingers, bent his head and
stretched as far from the blaze as the lever would permit. The child would get his share of the roast after the guests had filled their appetites, if his burns didn’t ruin his own.

  The turning beast dripped grease and sweaty flesh and the men crowded around the hall. Ogot took up the chief’s place on his high backed chair and his four sons stood flanking him. Tove’s chair was smaller but deep cushioned and she wedged her hips well back, just able to reach the ground with both plump little heels. Banke had a bruised and purple eye, which matched the embroidered hem of his tunic. Grimr the Skald stood with his back to the fire and faced his crew and Ogot’s family and the jarls of the village He raised his arms and smiled. His telling of the sagas carried great fame and the crowded hall hushed. The turn-spit forgot his pains and leaned forwards. Ogot stretched out his legs, content. This evening would increase his own reputation, and rid him at last of the curse of his daughter.

  The tall man had a good voice and he used it well in the telling. He used his long fingered hands too, sketching a thousand scenes across the dancing flame lit shadows as the resonance of his voice called out the monsters, the serpents and the gods. In keeping with tradition there were no candles lit and no lamps, so the breathing bustle of the room became small and instead the space was filled with marching, black eyed strangers, with the snow tipped mountains of Jotunheim, vast dark and silent lakes and the thundering tides of the oceans. Jormundgandr rose from the waters and crushed the boats that invaded his realms, the giants strode down from the rocks, splintering the land with their axes, and the hero Sigurd flexed his muscles and slayed the dragon Fafnir. It seemed steaming black blood filled all the hall, the blue puckered wing skin was slashed and torn across the benches and the dragon breath hissed, then merged with the pale smoke of the cooking fire, died in wisps, and went out.

  They did not begin to feast, to rip the deer meat from the blackened carcass nor even brought out the ale and the mead until Grimr the Skald had finished every tale that he consented to tell, and, smiling and nodding to the clamorous cheering, sat, presented with the highest honour they could afford him, of taking the chieftain’s chair for the night as the most wondrous poet ever heard.