Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  From easy ribaldry, the mood turned to old tales and then Orm began to sing. His voice was very deep, with a murmur of rain on long grass. Another answered. More a chant than a song, the voices were turns in musical conversation, the parts rolling one to another, either mournful or mystic. Skarga remembered the chanting on board ship when the dolphins raced the bow wave. Again, the swimming melodic language was one she did not understand. Egil sat close amongst the men, back against Safn’s knees, eyes gleaming red in the scatter of firelight. The sky above was untapestried for invisible cloud hid the stars and the full moon, first haloed, was muffled by mist. Grimr the Bard did not lead his men in poetry or song. He leaned against the soft turfs, watching and listening. He drank a great deal but spoke very little. The lick of low flame kept each man warm and the hot food and plentiful ale had insulated them all.

  Although Grimr had ordered her to sit by him, he ignored her. She thought he watched the boy. Carefully unobtrusive, she stared at Grimr as Grimr stared at Egil. Then Grimr leaned forwards suddenly and spoke to the child. His eyes were strangely intense but his brief words were utterly disguised for he spoke in the language of the song. Egil looked up. Clutching his curved horn, its lip slick, he was a little drunk and the heat of ale and fire had flushed his small face, turning his cheeks round red. Skarga knew Egil would not understand, for the child spoke no other tongue than her own, and was surely already half asleep. Yet she heard Egil reply to Grimr, vivid, enthusiastic, in words that did not exist for either of them, and Skarga thought that somehow she had drunk too much after all and must already be asleep herself, and dreaming. She saw Grimr stand suddenly, his shadow from the firelight shooting her into a black so deep it smelled of other worlds, and before him Egil scrambled to his feet, then Safn, and then Lodver. Four bodies, Egil caught between. Skarga’s comfortable warmth and the solid strength of Grimr’s leg against hers, sped and was gone. The shadow figures swayed, twisting into dark flames. Skarga was conscious of feathers against her face, the deeper notes of the singing becoming more pronounced. No longer sad, the chanting was intensely thrilling. Then she realised, with shame, that she was crying. She wondered why, when the music seemed infused with joy, she was caught into doubt and misery. She continued to sob quietly and no one took any notice. She had never before known a dream where so much emotion tore at her.

  For a moment she saw only Grimr’s back, stretching out, his arms extending into even greater shadows. Then he moved aside and she saw Egil, eyes bright shining like the moon. Behind him the small men Safn and Lodver had become huge. She closed her eyes, tear moist, and when she opened them again, the figures had entirely gone.

  She woke with feathers tickling her nose. She was back in bed, her stomach was full and she was comfortable. Egil was sitting cross-legged at the end of the mattress.

  “Is it morning? Have you slept? What happened last night?”

  Egil shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve only just woken up, but I’ve looked outside and it’s light already. I think I got drunk.”

  “Did I fall asleep by the fire? Perhaps you did too. How did we get to bed?”

  “Someone must have carried me,” Egil shrugged. “I don’t know about you. After the singing, I don’t remember much else.”

  Outside they sat on the grass where the ashes of the feasting lay in long mounds under a shifting stratum of smoke. Two crows and a small kite picked at circles of bare ribs rising from a sheep’s white skeleton. Skarga and Egil sat where it was warm, squinting through smoke. “The men didn’t wake you to go with them today,” Skarga remarked. “They’ve left us both.”

  “They’ve only gone fishing,” said Egil, “and to check on the ship. Do you mind if I go off and find them?”

  Of course she minded. “No, brat. Go and enjoy yourself. Catch plenty for dinner.” She watched him scamper off and slowly returned, dull minded, to the longhouse, to dream of sunshine.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Skarga said, “I’m leaving. Somehow, I have to get away. Otherwise I shall go quite mad. Or am I mad already? I sit here day after day wondering when someone’s going to kill me. And if this vile dreariness goes on much longer, I’ll want to die. But he won’t hurt you. You stay. I’ll go alone.”

  Egil had returned early, festooned with fish, rainbow scales caught in the coarse weave of his slave’s tunic. “Don’t be stupid.” He flung down the fish in little bursts of brine and a slow ooze of pale watery blood. “I’m going where you’re going.”

  The evening frost had not yet settled but Skarga shivered. “No - stay. You’re making friends with the crew. I know quite well how much you want to stay with them. You’re even making friends with Grimr. But he’s a cruel man and I have to get away.”

  “His men love him,” said Egil quietly.

  “Perhaps it’s only women he hurts,” said Skarga. “If you stay with him you’ll become a great warrior and go adventuring. But I have to escape. Not overland this time, but over the sea. Tomorrow when the men are busy, I’ll steal a coracle.”

  Egil said, “There’s an inlet where they keep the eel pots and the extra nets. A lot of little boats are tied up waiting.”

  “We have to save food then,” said Skarga, “and keep it for the journey.”

  Egil was slump shouldered. “Alright. And I’ll make us a new bed in one of the other barns. We can’t talk secret plans with everyone listening.”

  That night as the men feasted, Skarga bundled her share of food inside her cloak, curled into the straw bed in the barn and ate. A little later she plodded the few muddy steps back to collect more food, pretending hunger while storing what she could for the next day. There was mutton and fish and seal blubber and small crabs. The village women had baked flat cakes of bread, thick and blackened around waffled edges. Skarga ate one and went back for more. She saw Egil amongst the crowd of men and nodded to him. He extricated himself from Safn’s side, and taking his bowl of food, slipped out to return alone to the barn. Skarga went across to the hearth where the remaining food lay heaped beside the fire.

  “Hungry for once?” said Grimr. She was startled. He was standing, leaning one-shouldered against the central pillar, well back from the hearth and watching her as she helped herself again to bread and meat. The longhouse was the usual scrummage of men, most of them drunk. Grimr did not appear to be drunk. He held his drinking horn loose in one hand, and had not bothered to refill it. His eyes seemed strange at first, as if the steady blue was drifting before another deeper eye, black as nightmare behind. She thought he must be drunk after all. She had long experience of how dangerous men might be when what little sense they had was further disguised by ale or mead.

  She shivered, and said, “Perhaps it’s the cold. Yes, I’m hungry. Do you object?”

  He watched her in silence. Then, quite abruptly, he said, “This day’s short storm means worse to come. No one should take to the sea tomorrow. A small boat would be swept away. Even an experienced sailor would capsize and sink.”

  Skarga stood, momentarily both immovable and speechless. She gripped the bowl she carried and the smell of the meat which filled it seemed suddenly rancid. Finally she said, “Why should I need to know that?”

  Grimr appeared faintly amused but Skarga saw no warmth in the smile. “You should learn acceptance,” he said softly. “Those without power need to exercise careful judgement. Your childhood must have taught you judgement but you are not exercising it to any benefit. The boy has accepted, but you have not.”

  But she did accept, just for a moment, the gloom of blame. Then her sense of injustice fired into sudden anger. “It’s you who exercise judgement,” she said, disguising the sniff with a rigid jaw. “You don’t like me but you don’t know me. You take my father’s silver and agree to have me killed. Did you even bother to find out why? Or if I deserve it? You’ve dragged me to a strange land without explanation or comfort or occupation or freedom or friendship. You don’t care that I’m confused and utterly miserable. You deny
me any future, dead or alive. And now you lecture me on a woman’s modest behaviour.”

  She would have continued but he raised his hand, still smiling, and her words ran out. A faint twitch at the corner of his mouth annoyed her. “I did not speak of modesty, nor am likely to,” he said. “Indeed, I find female modesty most inconvenient. However, you are not alone and you are quite unharmed. Nothing else, since you have no power over it, need concern you yet.”

  “No, I haven’t been beaten or raped,” said Skarga with repressed fury. “Do you expect me to be grateful for that?”

  The blue of his eyes glittered like the sparks of the fire and the darker pupils behind faded. “Gratitude is a sentimental extravagance,” he said, “and in this situation, would be entirely undeserved. I have not beaten you because you have not angered me, at least, only mildly. I have not raped you because it would never occur to me to do so. I have no need or desire to take an unwilling woman into my arms and I have no reason to suppose you willing. My men never take any action they presume unapproved, and so you are quite safe from us all. That is a practical explanation to what requires no gratitude. You might be more grateful for the explanation itself, since I rarely feel inspired to give one.”

  The heat was intense at her back, but it was her face that burned. She could not think of anything to say and knew only that she hated him. Eventually she bit her lip, simply nodded, and turned back to the heaped food by the fire. Grimr’s voice, briefly, continued behind her. “Take what you want,” he said, “but take the advice as well. A great storm is building far out to sea. And my warnings are never arbitrarily offered.” Grimr disappeared at once into the smoke thick mingle of his men.

  Skarga filled the bowl slowly, then ran back through the rain, slamming the barn door tight behind her. Egil was fast asleep in the straw. It was a long time before she could find sleep herself and when she did, the rain thundering violently on the roof turfs turned to galloping hooves and a huge horse was chasing her through the shallows of the incoming tide. Then the horse became a bear. Beyond its shaggy white fur the snow danced like silver tears.

  Egil woke her. “It’s getting late. Do you still want to go?”

  Skarga struggled up, throwing off first the dream and then the straw. “Have you heard the men leave?”

  “No. I think the rain’s too heavy. They’re mostly snoring in the longhouse and from the look of the smoke, they’ve built up the fire again so they mean to stay there.” Egil frowned. “It might be best this way. We can slip away easily enough. No one ever watches us anyway.”

  Skarga said, “Alright, I have to risk it. If we get caught I’ll say it was all my idea. They won’t hurt you.”

  Egil paused as he packed up their store of food. “We’ll probably drown so it’ll be too late for anyone to blame anyone. And don’t tell me again that I don’t have to come, it’s getting boring.”

  The rain turned to sleet on the open moors and Skarga pulled her cloak over her head. Egil’s cloak was thin but hooded and he tugged it deep across his eyes so the water slid to its lip and there cascaded onto his shoulders. Oiled for resistance to rain and wind, its seams were threadbare and within minutes Egil was soaked. His boots split again and the mud squelched quickly between sole and stocking. “You’ll drown before we even get into the boat,” Skarga called. “Can’t we find shelter?”

  “A thorn twig perhaps?”

  An inlet of the sea, like the narrow estuary of a river long disappeared, slipped sluggish between pebbled rises. It did not lap its banks nor acknowledge the tide but slunk dismal under scummy weed, smelling of stale brine and dead fish. Six little boats were moored with their ropes under rocks. Two were sheepskin coracles, the others were narrow wooden planked, oars lying loose in sodden bilges. Beside the prickled yellow sprigged gorse were piles of folded nets, stacked rods with their hooks rusting in the rain, long handled prongs, fishing spears, and spare oars of various lengths. Under oiled protective sacking were kept heaps of old canvas, worn sails, woollen blankets and sheepskins. Two huge tree trunks, but not from any towering oak to be found on the treeless sheep islands, lay prepared as replacement masts for any ship damaged in storm. There were pots woven from reeds for catching eels and crabs. And finally there was a man sitting waiting on the metal hump of an upturned anchor.

  “It is very tiresome, having to repeat myself,” said Grimr. “And in this weather too.”

  Egil limped to where Grimr sat, and looked apologetic beneath his streaming hood. “Please. We won’t go to Ogot’s vik,” he said. “She can’t go back to the family anyway, so no one will know she’s still alive. It won’t make any difference to you.”

  “Every action affects every other action in this life, child,” Grimr said. “There is always a difference made, but it is rarely the one you imagine it will be.”

  Skarga glared at him. He had no right to anticipate everything she meant or did. “I won’t come back with you willingly this time,” she said. “If you try to make me, I’ll fight you.”

  He stood up, laughing at her. The great bear pelt he wore glistened with a thousand sparkling rain drops, and beneath it his chest and arm muscles strained beneath the rough wool of shirt and tunic. He was so much taller than Skarga, she had to peer up at him, and he smelled of her nightmares. “Fight me then,” he said.

  Instead she stood quite still. “Don’t hurt Egil,” she mumbled. “He only came with me to be loyal. He doesn’t really want to leave you anyway.”

  “I know,” said Grimr. “I know what he wants.” His head was uncovered. The pale brilliance of his hair was turned sleek wet black. Skarga swallowed, wiped away the rain dripping from her nose and took a deep breath. Then she walked straight past Grimr and approached the nearest boat, a small rowing skiff slopping water inside its shallow keel. Grimr watched her a moment. Then he reached out and stilled her arm. He said softly, “How many times must I rescue you both? You don’t know the sea. You’re frightened of the ocean.”

  “I’m more frightened of staying with you,” said Skarga without looking at him. “You talk as though I’m just being wilful. But it’s more than that. I’ve heard about you. I know what you’ll do if I stay.”

  He swung her, pulling her away from the water and the boat, holding her head up and back with one hand gripped into her hair and the other hard around her body. She felt her feet slip in the mud, her weight taken and her breath suffocated. She had one hand free and she reached beneath her other arm and snatched at the hilt of her knife. She had fought with her brothers often when young, when her defiance outweighed her fear of them. Instinct remembered practise. She feinted, first falling in the direction she was dragged and then rolled, coming up with the steel in her hand. She knew where to aim and the metal slid deep between Grimr’s ribs above his heavy belt. He frowned briefly, as if for once he had not anticipated her intention. He wore a long knife in an ornate leather scabbard, but he did not draw it. He released Skarga’s hair, wrenched her blade from his chest and flung it, making no effort to staunch the quick bubbles of blood. Instead he grabbed her throat, long fingers hard up under her jaw, stretching around her neck. He jerked her backwards and without even quickening his breathing, began to squeeze.

  Skarga wheezed and slumped, kicking for solid ground but finding again and again only the contact of his shins. But Grimr did not release her. His eyes, cobalt like the deeper sea, were so intensely fixed on her face that she could neither close her own nor look away. She was aware, in a blurred confusion of diminishing consciousness, that his eyes were more fierce and hurt far more than the grip of his fingers.

  Egil’s hand came silently from behind, slipping around unseen and unnoticed. He loosened Grimr’s long sword and pulled it free from its strap. Then he stabbed it with all his force into Grimr’s back, up hard under the last rib, first a jab and then a deep cut where the thickness of the bear cloak had been thrust aside.

  Grimr crumpled forwards, slack bodied, falling heavily first to his knees and t
hen onto the great curve of the iron anchor. Its huge edge sliced through his cheek bone and an immediate surge of dark blood stained the puddled earth beneath him, turning the sky’s reflection scarlet. His face slumped downwards into the sluice of rain mired mud and he lay without either movement or sound. The bear skin was slick with his blood and the wound in his back continued to bleed. Egil pulled out the long blade and stared at the dripping metal. Blood and rain mingled along the flat of the steel.

  Skarga had staggered back against the little boat, gasping for breath. “Bring the sword,” she said. “Hurry.”

  Egil was very still, mouth open, staring. Grimr lay in deep shadow, legs bent up beneath his weight. The blood soaked the hip of his tunic and the coarse linen weave of his britches. He did not seem to be breathing though the increasing pressure of the sleet thrummed louder than any dying man’s struggle for breath.

  “Hurry,” said Skarga again. “Unless you want to stay with him.”

  “I didn’t want to kill him,” whispered Egil. “Only stop him killing you.”

  Skarga reached over, and put her arm around the boy’s skinny shoulders, holding him tight. He felt limp and she thought perhaps, though now silent, that he was crying. “Egil, you were brave. Thank you. Truly, thank you.”

  He pulled away and began to loosen the little boat’s mooring. Grimr’s body lay close, still bleeding. Dragging by the untied mooring rope, Egil pulled the boat away from the others until it bobbed free, catching the slip of water down the long point of the inlet. “Climb in,” said Egil. “Be careful. Hold it steady ‘til I take over. I’m going to get another pair of oars.” A smash of sudden thunder reverberated across the water. The blackness was lit jagged, lightning followed by more thunder. Skarga took the oars lying in the base of the boat and scrambled to slot them into place. Egil, still onshore, hesitated for one moment. Then he knelt beside the prone body and leaning forwards, moved Grimr’s head to the side so that his mouth and nose were no longer under slime or mud. Egil’s small hands trembled. Beneath his fingers, Grimr’s head felt heavy, his hair stuck to the gaping cut across the bone beneath the closed eye. Then with the corner of his cloak, Egil cleared the wet earth from the man’s lips and nostrils. Finally he stood again and without looking back, hurried to the boat.