Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Egil was different. Before he learned to speak, Egil crowded like a hen, quacked like a duck and whistled like an eagle. He laughed, sucked his toes, and adored his new mother so utterly that he became permanently attached to her child’s narrow hip. Ogot King-wisher had given his rebellious daughter permission to keep the brat as a slave. Hakon and Gunulf had been uninterested. Asved had hated the rival at first sight. Banke, who enjoyed games of kick bladder, quickly found a new use for him.

  Skarga tortured herself through many sweet memories before she fell asleep. It was Egil’s face on her mind as she woke in a drift of confusion, as if she had seen him and held him while sleeping, but could no longer summon that memory in the midst of so many others. She rose quickly and broke fast from the package of food her father had supplied when she left. Not having eaten the night before, the sliced bacon, bread and herrings were still untouched. She kept enough for later and re-harnessed cart to pony. Shortly afterwards with the sun still climbing to midday, the path veered sharply away from the cliffs. The crag points were too dangerous for wooden wheels and a milder roadway dipped east. She hated the tickle of brine in the air, the endless crashing of wave on rock, the sounds and smells of the sea. She hated what the sea had done to her and she was glad to leave it. Had she learned to swim, as a few of the boys did, she might have saved her child. But she had always feared the open ocean and its wintry thunder.

  Now the countryside became softer with mellow pale fertility of sprouting flowers, and tall tangled greenery. There was food in every field. Mushrooms grew in the shady loam within the tree shadows, ripe berries hugged their thorns in clusters, herbs and salads waved beside the path, there were edible blossoms, the soft new shoots of weeds, and signs of roots for the digging. She felt the warmth of the sun on her face, as if the land welcomed her. Only one thing surprised her, for she had expected the bard to follow and reclaim her before now

  Then the path twisted again and she was in the forest. The trees closed their shadows tight. Forest shadows were also bards. They told many stories and threatened others. She was unsurprised then, although it was unexpected, when she heard the singing and saw the people. She knew the song, for it was the plea to Odinn for the care of the dead and the crossing of the great sea to Asgard. Skarga stopped the pony at a respectful distance and waited, sitting straight in the cart with the reins pulled tight.

  Four jarls carried the bier and four others led the way. At least twenty followed, chanting to the steady drum beat. This was a large man and would have taken a deal of dying. His weight pressed on the four shoulders, bent beneath the platform they supported. The corpse was helmeted, an embossed shield laid across his chest, spear, bow, axe and sword arranged at his sides, a walrus ivory hilt beneath the fixed grip of his right hand. The beauty of his weapons spoke of chieftain and reputation, and the embroidered silks he wore beneath the polished chain mail meant wealth. Ogot’s vik celebrated funerals by boat, a small knarr deep buried beneath a mound of earth in the main cemetery, or a larger langskip afire towards the ocean’s horizon, but this was an inland community with no ocean’s rituals, simply a dais of tarred planks covered in well tanned deer hide and the dead man dressed in all his pride.

  There were four drums and a horn, drinking songs, every man’s duty to sing his loudest and the women’s to cry their best. Skarga heard nothing else until an arm thrust tight across her throat from behind. Her tongue clamped between her teeth, long fingers gripped her hair, and a low voice hissed in her ear. “Don’t struggle, trollop. I dislike unnecessary exertion.”

  He had not thought her worth pulling steel. She found her knife at once and stabbed it hard, back over her shoulder. He lurched sideways, wrenching her bodily from the cart, head first, legs wild. She tumbled, skirts up around her knees, falling heavily. The pony, snorting and terrified, felt its reins loose and bolted, the lumbering rattle of the cart dragged behind.

  The funeral procession had not stopped. The leaders had seen Grimr assault the woman, climbing unnoticed into the cart behind her. But lone women from unknown places were of little concern. Few would take the risk of interrupting religious traditions, and offended gods were far more dangerous than any solitary man with his attention on a solitary woman. Now, however, the mourners paused, hesitant, unsure and trapped by trees, until too late. The fleeing pony crashed directly into the leaders. The cart, wobbling wildly, caught the corner of the bier. The corpse rolled from his dignified slumber and found a new rest beneath a fir tree, scattering his massed weaponry behind him. The pony, sensing freedom, continued. The cart had broken the straps to its shafts and now toppled one sided, its remaining wheel revolving in the air, its other now separate and finding a different path, spinning and crashing into the forest. Beneath the cart the quiet warrior now lay, his grand helmet hidden, his shiny shod legs protruding from the shattered spokes.

  Skarga turned her fall into a somersault and jumped up, starting to run. Grimr kicked. The kick brought her down. She curled, face protected, but as Grimr leaned to take her she aimed again and more accurately. Instead of stabbing, she sliced. Grimr swore, his wrist dripping hot crimson.

  The funeral party were scattered, the pony gone, its path an echo crashing back through the firs, the corpse lay unconcerned beneath the upturned cart, and Grimr brought the back of his wounded hand across Skarga’s face. His other hand was again into her hair and holding her still as he kicked her hard in the belly. She moaned and tried to struggle. Her nose was bleeding with the metallic sting of blood wet on her lips. The man forced her knife hand up to his mouth as if he might kiss it. Then he bit. She cried out and her fingers lost grip, the knife dropped and Grimr kicked her again. His boots were well soled. Skarga fell and stayed down. Grimr left her. He walked towards the dishevelled and furious funeral crowd and bowed briefly. Skarga did not hear his words for the blood drumming in her ears was louder than the funeral drums. She scrambled to her knees but got no further. Grimr returned, grabbed her around the waist and dragged her back along the path. Her heels scraped stones as she gasped for breath. Another cart was waiting with a harnessed pony and beside it a tethered, obedient horse. Skarga was lifted and slung onto the cart’s boards.

  Grimr stood and watched her as she wiped the blood from her face. His own hand was bleeding heavily but he took no care for it. The drops had turned sticky and travelled a slow slimy path down to his finger tips and then to his boots where a black stain spoiled one toe. Grimr seemed to be watching Skarga with some faint but discernible interest. “Attacking me,” he said softly, “or at least attempting to, is usually considered most unwise.”

  She glared. “I’ll kill you if I can.”

  “Ah.” He smiled. “How naive. But any diversion in this sadly predictable life is always welcome. I may decide to keep you alive a little longer than I’d intended. Not long, you understand, but perhaps until tomorrow. Or even the day after. I shall consider it.” There were ropes in the cart and he began to tie her, roping her by the ankles, first together, and then to the jutting base of the driving box. The feel of his hands on her legs was unpleasant. Skarga cringed, gritting her teeth. His blood smeared her calves. He pulled the rope very tight and knotted it. It rubbed fiercely against her ankle bone. She said nothing.

  Grimr mounted, taking the cart pony’s bridle and attaching it to his horse’s harness. Heading back along the track in the direction in which Skarga had come, he kicked his horse to a slow amble, his back to his prisoner. The shadows were now deep amongst the trees, the sun beginning its lumbering descent into dull evening. Briefly, Grimr looked back over his shoulder. “There is a sack in the back of the cart,” he said, voice expressionless. “I brought food for the journey. You may share it.”

  Skarga had expected no such consideration but she was hungry. The cart was larger than the one she had travelled in previously and it bumped, hurling and bouncing her against its sides, but although bound by both legs, her hands were free and she reached for the sack. Its ties were tight s
o she was clumsy as she managed to reach inside, but recognised no touch of bread nor waxed linen holding meat or fish. Something felt sticky, even stringy. She managed to spread the opening and up tilt it.

  There seemed to be hair. A piece of venison perhaps, still attached to its flanks, but the hair was too long. Skarga cringed into the far corner of the cart, away from the thing that now frightened her. It rolled from its bag, wobbling, then settling on its stump. It was the head of a woman, swollen around the eye sockets, nose and lips, the signs of the pox lost in bruises. One cheekbone was split. It was smothered in dried blood. Skarga retched, her hand over her mouth. She would no longer be able to thank Tovhilda for her generosity.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Skarga screamed but quickly bit her tongue. She was crying quietly when Grimr finally stopped the cart. Tovhilda’s sad squashed features still bounced and rolled a little beside her legs. Grimr swung from the horse’s back and strode over to her. He took the thing by its hair and slung it into the trees. Then he turned again to Skarga, leaned over and slapped her. She choked and became silent. “Use the sacking,” he ordered, “to wipe up your vomit. Then throw it out.”

  She obeyed. The smell of blood soaked sacking and blood spotted vomit continued to make her nauseas. Grimr watched her for a moment and then remounted. Skarga slumped down and closed her eyes.

  At the edges of the forest, not stopping but veering abruptly to the right, Grimr took a narrower track. Little more than a passage for deer, the beaten earth wound ever inland across scrubby moor, sparsely tree studded, wind barren and smeared with brackened ponds. It led directly to the mountain’s foothills.

  When Skarga woke it seemed incredible to her that she had slept. They were once again deep in shadow and the cart, still her prison, had stopped. The night was bitter and she was uncovered, though she found her cloak and pulled it around her. Neither Grimr’s horse nor Grimr were in sight but the tall wooden wall of a building sheltered her from the whistle of the wind and the cart’s pony, loose tethered, was beside her and asleep on its feet. When Grimr emerged from the building in which he had passed the night, he did not acknowledge her and the journey continued. Grimr carried a satchel of food and ate when he felt inclined, but offered nothing to his prisoner. The scenery was monotonous, the weather equally so. Grimr did not allow Skarga freedom to empty her bladder or stretch cramped leg muscles but sometimes he dismounted to ease his own back and shoulders, walk a few steps and stamp the circulation back into his feet, piss at the roadside and allow his horse to wander and find its own break-fast.

  Skarga counted time by the slow rise and arching descent of the thick clouded sun, a journey as drearily imprisoned as her own. For the entire day she had neither eaten nor walked, nor had she spoken any word. This was the same cart in which she had been brought with Egil, roped and bruised, back to Ogot’s vik just one short week before. A week’s day for each god, but none had looked kindly on her. They had taken the only person she had ever loved.

  It was the next day with the bleary sun directly above when the trail became a mountain track and the moors became cliffs. No ocean crashed its waves against the crags and below was only shadowed precipice and the loose scatter of tumbling pebbles. One side the drop, the other the heights. Colder again, Skarga silently thanked Banke’s unexpected toothache and Asved for his cloak. She had cried for Tovhilda. She still cried for Egil. Now misery enveloped her like wolf pelt and she began to cry for herself. She was desperately hungry. Her thirst hurt more and her throat was painfully dry, but not drinking also brought its little, pitiful benefits, for emptying her bladder meant soaking her own skirts and sitting in wet, acid and humiliating stains. The mundane was always the final shame.

  She had stopped crying, had begun again, and wore dried tears like patterns in grime, when the mountain flattened to plateau and the path ran even. In front of them a farm stretched larger than any of Ogot’s, a village in itself, with billows of dark smoke puffing up from the longhouse thatch and the surrounding fields already harvested. As they closed the distance Grimr quickened the pace, a rare concession to tiredness, and almost immediately the hall’s carved doors were flung wide and a crowd of men hurried out, a dutiful crush of slaves, a fat servant in a leather apron and a bustle of jarls who waited at the doors. The slaves took the horse’s bridle, holding it as Grimr dismounted. Once firm footed, he nodded towards the cart. “Stable the pony. Take the female into some barn far from the house, cut the ropes and lock her in. She stinks.”

  The fat servant was bobbing and bowing. So this was Grimr’s own home. It was no leaking, borrowed shack on some distant dismal island. It was the grand property of a wealthy man. This Grimr, who was surely the only true Grimr, being of reputation both great and terrible, owned a hall of some magnificence set within its own farmlands. He wore king’s jewels and the embroidered silks of the richest of merchants. His retinue were respectful, he ordered a staff of many servants and owned many slaves. He did not stink of the sea. He combed his hair and cleaned his nails. His horse was high-backed foreign, proud, and harnessed in silver and softest calf’s leather. Skarga frowned. A man who discovered riches should also discover contentment. Cruelty was surely the vice of miserable and solitary men.

  She was unshackled. Now well accustomed to dirty straw and the confinement of draughty barns, the scratching of mice and chicken lice and the orders of the men who chose to control her, she curled small and closed her eyes. This was the third imprisonment, and probably the last.

  Water was brought in a bowl and she drank, but it was late evening before she was finally given food. She ate porridge flavoured with pig’s fat. No other thing occurred and Skarga sank to watching the clambering of beetles and the spinning of a small spider above her head. Aimlessness led to sleep and again she dreamed.

  This time the dream developed, and the sea beast carried her. She was no longer frightened of the hurtling stormy waves, for the beast calmed them and cut its way through the water as a forging iron will cut through steel. She became the girl in Grimr’s poetry, and loved the sea creature as the girl had loved the dolphin. But her lover dived beneath the ocean’s huge secret depths, and there she saw Egil’s broken white body on the sea bed and fell beside him, taking him in her arms, drowning at his side.

  Then as she ceased to breathe, the sea eagle dived. Beneath the heaving waters, its talons swept and caught her. She felt her flesh puncture and bleed in its grasp, but she was pulled from the waves and thrust upon the shore. There she sat and cried because she had lost both her loves. She woke up crying, as so often before.

  A burst of sudden water as ice cold as her dream made her gasp and forget her tears. “Wash, slut,” said Grimr, dropping the bucket. “I want you clean.”

  As he left, the door swung a little and the early morning sun entered pale. Skarga stumbled up to reach for freedom, but a stocky woman entered and blocked the way. She introduced herself as Aud. “The master wants you groomed,” she said, frowning. “I have a comb and scissors. I’ve been ordered to take you to the stream. If you try to escape I’ll have to chain and beat you. If you succeed in escaping, I’ll be killed.”

  Skarga said, “Alright. I understand.”

  It was a fine morning, even for a prisoner. She walked unbound beside the woman, who held her fast in one large sweat damp hand. The grass was springy, goat grazed and short, studded with animal droppings. The animals now in the next field had left their fertilizer behind to enrich the next sowing. Always living beside sea cliffs, Skarga had never known the bite of mountain air. This land spread much farther south than Ogot’s vik, but the high chill lay permanent behind the sunshine, and the snow on the peaks was visible against the sky. There was a mountain stream, a splash of ice from those same snows.

  Skarga undressed as ordered, took the comb, and waded into the shallow ripples. The current was fast below her waist, slapping against her legs and belly. The sun was pleasant on her naked shoulders but she was too near to the longh
ouse for comfort and she disliked the scrutiny of the woman. Skarga sat, stretching her legs out underwater, leaning back as far as the depth would allow her, water lapping her chin. She closed her eyes as the sun played light and shadow over her face. For a few moments she forgot Grimr and even Egil. Then she used the tallow soap she had been given, ducked her head and washed her hair, then combed it. Exhilarated, her skin quickly accustomed to the cold. It was a long time since she’d had a chance to bathe or wash her hair. The woman Aud watched her patiently from the bank and Skarga wondered how easily she might escape. She could surely run faster; certainly more supple than Aud. However practised the woman in securing prisoners, well, so was Skarga in escaping. Long years of evading her brothers and now more recent escapes were fast becoming a habit. So Aud would be killed if she got away. But Skarga would be killed if she stayed. She closed her eyes and summoned her strength.

  But when she looked up the woman had gone and so had her clothes. Grimr was sitting at ease on the bank. He was not even looking at her. His gaze was far off on the slow slopes away to a soft green horizon but when he spoke, it was to her.

  “Come here,” he said.

  Skarga sat in silence for a few breaths. Eventually she said, “No one willingly walks naked to their death. I can get out from the stream on the other side and run. You don’t have your horse.”

  “I can run faster than you could possibly believe,” he answered her. “And I have no objection to chasing you through water. I dislike unnecessary exertion, but I enjoy hunting a worthy quarry.” He tapped the curved wood slung across his shoulder. “And I have my bow.”