Hrald was far taller than Tindr now, and Tindr, grinning, lifted his hand up to Hrald’s head in acknowledgment of this. Tindr began to sign to him, asking many questions, most of which Hrald could not know or answer, but he thought he was able to make clear that he would be here a full month, until the Moon was at its fullest. He would ask Rannveig to tell her son that he hoped he might be able to walk the woods with him. Perhaps they might set snares for the big blue-tinged hares, or Tindr could just take him on some favoured trackways, or to the caves he had once shown them when he and Ceric were here as boys.
Right now they were just glad to see each other. The third cow lowed, which made Hrald look at her. Tindr then looked as well, to see her shifting her weight in her impatience to be done. Like her sisters she was spotted white and grey, with liquid amber-brown eyes. She lifted her great head toward Tindr and flapped her ears at them both.
Hrald was not alone in being early afoot. Eirian ran out from the hall, basket in hand, and came to the men. With quick hands and a smile on her pretty face she asked Tindr to allow one of the waiting cats another squirt of milk. He did so, and the brown-striped skogkatt, as heavily furred as a fox in its winter coat, opened wide its jaws to receive the treat. She laughed her thanks, then ran off to the fowl houses, where she had care of both hens and geese. These she would free into their pens for the day, and then deftly rob their roosts of eggs so they might break their fast.
Yrling came out as well, and after greeting Hrald and Tindr, went straightway to the paddock where Tyrsborg’s four horses stood swishing their tails. They were in the care of Yrling and Tindr, and as the boy began forking hay to them, Hrald thought for a moment of Bork, caring for his own beasts back at Four Stones.
Hrald walked with Eirian to the kitchen yard, where Helga was at work, poking up the fire. The girl held her basket against her narrow front, and looked up at her older brother gravely.
“Hrald,” she wanted to know. “Do you know Cymru – Wales? Cymru is its real name. Mother told me. She is half-Welsh.”
Hrald shook his head. “The Kingdom of Wales. I know it has had fierce Kings, and many war-like Princes. They are their own people, Eirian, with their own tongue. I do not know them. The Kings of Wessex and Mercia have both made peace, and warred with them.”
“I want to go there,” she told him, with great seriousness. “Some day. Grandmother is there. She lives by the River Dee.”
“I hope you can visit,” Hrald said. He knew nothing of the woman, save that she had been of that race. To find her after two decades seemed but a faint hope, but perhaps if she still lived, she could be found. A determined search could be aided by God, and Eirian come face to face with her grandmother, as she wished.
Later that day Ceridwen and Hrald went down to the brew-house to visit Rannveig. Eirian came too, taking charge of Rodiaud, who, screeching with glee, ran ahead down the hill so quickly that the girl had to catch up to her and stop her lest she tumble. Even early as it was in the season, the awnings of the brew-house were rolled up, for with the men of Hrald’s ships docked there, the brewster and Gudfrid had constant call for food and ale. Rannveig gestured her visitors out to her own place, and Hrald gave greeting to several of his men as he passed through the brew-house. Once seated at the table in her own snug little house, Hrald delivered his message.
“Sparrow sends you loving greeting,” he began, which made both Rannveig’s and his mother’s face light with pleasure.
“She is known by her name, given in Frankland, Bova. Now she is Sister Bova, for she is a consecrated nun at the foundation of Oundle, near to my hall.”
Rannveig was listening with great interest, but it was clear, without real understanding. She could have no notion of what a nun was, but Hrald made it as plain as he could.
“She dedicates herself to her God, the one on the cross she reveres. She lives amongst a large number of other women, and men too, under the keeping of a powerful woman, the Abbess. The men and women live together as brothers and sisters, and pray and work together. Bova is the brewster there, providing ale every day for over one hundred folk. I have heard priests – the men who lead their rituals – jest that Oundle is their favourite spot to visit, for the goodness of her ale.”
Rannveig clapped her hands in her delight at hearing this. Hrald had further message to share.
“Bova has warm remembrance of you, Rannveig, and thanks you for the skill of making good ale, with which she serves all who live there, or visit.
“She is still small and brown, like a sparrow, but she smiles every time I see her. She is happy there.”
He thought of more to add, now that Rannveig knew the tale of his dead sister.
“Also, she is devoted to my sister. Every morning she goes into the shrine in which Ashild is buried, and places a blossom or branch on the stone under which she sleeps.”
Rannveig took this in, nodding solemnly. “It does me good to hear this, about our little Sparrow. She has found her nest, indeed.” The brewster craned her neck, looking down at the necklaces she bore. She fingered one. “When you return I will give you the necklace which I had given her, so she might remember me for the rest of her life.”
On the way back up the hill, Eirian fell in next to Hrald. She had listened with care to all he said, and now had questions. “Hrald. When you were talking about Sparrow, and where she lives now, what does that mean?”
He looked down at her. Her deep blue eyes were large with interest. He took a breath, and began.
“There is a different God in my land, the big island where your mother is from.”
“Only one God?”
“Only one. But he has a Godly son, and there is a Holy Spirit as well.”
“Like a ghost?”
He smiled. “Not quite. He is more like a thought that can come to people, when they pray.”
The girl was quiet for a few steps. Then she said, “I am sorry about your big sister. Mother told us. She said Ashild was very brave. I am glad Sparrow leaves Offerings at her stone.”
Next morning Sidroc told Hrald of his plan for the day.
“Come, let us ride to Ragnfast. We will get you a horse to use while you are here.” He grinned as he said the next. “You can ride my wife’s mare, she has plenty of spirit, like her mistress, and will take the bit in her teeth if you let her.”
Yrling saw them heading to the paddock, and was at once at their heels and wanting to go. Then he remembered he had promised Aszur to help with the rivet setting on the prow of his ship. He had helped his father and Tindr at this with Dauðadagr, and could not fail the ship-master now, not when he had, as offered reward, the chance to take the steering-oar in his own hands later in the day. “I will work on a sea-horse instead,” he told them, as he made his way toward the pier.
Father and son saddled Sidroc’s black stallion and the dun mare. She was a striking creature, with her mottled reddish coat, dark legs and black stripe from mane to tail, and Hrald said so. The men wore their mantles, for the sky was over-clouded, with no Sun to warm them. They began at the upland path at the end of the kitchen yard, riding single file for the narrowness of the track. The ever-green of pines and spruces looked the darker against the tiny leaves of the white-barked birches, as bright a green as the first peas. The meadowlands were now awash in early flowers, and the birds which flitted, skimming over their heads, were fully intent on nest-building. From their grasping beaks dangled lengths of straw and newly-broken twigs, ready to be woven into the bowls of waiting frameworks. Others were out seeking grubs and seeds, twisting their heads from side to side as they regarded the men on their great beasts. When the horsemen approached a second, well-worn path, Hrald knew it.
“The way to the farm where Ring lives is there,” Hrald recalled. It was yet another spark to the memories he carried from his first visit here, with Ceric.
His father turned in the saddle and stopped his horse.
“Já,” his father agreed. “I recall how you boys
watched Ring at his training of the goshawks.”
It brought to mind those at Four Stones, and Hrald spoke of them.
“The goshawks you brought me – they do well.”
His father nodded in satisfaction. “I hope they will breed soon, and give you young.”
Hrald thought of flying the goshawks with Dagmar. They had come back with nothing. He recalled his pleasure in bringing the female harrier to her, and asking himself, What would my father think, if he knew I pursued a daughter of Guthrum? It had all come to nought, just as their day’s hunting had.
Hrald said no more, nor did his father. They looked at each other a moment, and then Sidroc turned his face back to the path and touched his heels to his stallion’s flanks. Hrald knew his father was speaking for him as well, that he hoped he would find a mate and have children.
When the trees thinned they entered a clearing, in which fresh grasses were already beginning their climb through the Winter-dried stalks of the old. They rode side by side, a position that eases difficult talk. Sidroc had something he would ask his son.
“The day of the battle,” he began. He need not say what battle it was; Hrald knew.
“The man you followed into the forest…”
Hrald turned his head and looked at his father’s face as he went on. “There was a reason for that.”
Hrald nodded.
“It was Onund. He was a friend of Gunnulf’s.”
Gunnulf was Jari’s younger half-brother at Four Stones, and Sidroc had been there when Gunnulf had been killed during Hrald’s duel with Thorfast. Onund had not been raised at Four Stones, and Sidroc had never seen him until that day. He had clear memory, though, of the man falling upon the feet of the dead Gunnulf. He did not relinquish his hold on the body until Jari had stooped low to pick up his brother in his arms. Onund had looked up with twisted face as Jari carried Gunnulf away.
Hrald would say nothing of the history of the men; he had not betrayed Gunnulf nor Onund and would not do so, even to his father. Both men were dead, and their story was their own. Yet he could speak one truth, and did.
“Onund always bore a grudge against me for Gunnulf’s death. Asberg heard him once at Turcesig telling Thorfast’s men that I boasted of killing him. I cast him from the hall for this. I hoped never to see him again. To find him there with Haesten and his renegades – ” Hrald shook his head.
Sidroc picked up the thread of the battle. “You killed him there, in the forest.”
“Já. He drew me in. We were alone, in a wooded clearing, scarcely large enough for us to draw our weapons.”
That desperate struggle needed no power of recall; it was all too near in Hrald’s memory.
“I tripped him.”
The import of this struck his father. That was how Gunnulf had been killed, a simple trip, then a plunge of the sword into his back. Onund had been a powerful man, older than Hrald, and a more than considerable match for his son. Any means Hrald had used to drop him was meet and right; that was what combat was.
Hrald went on.
“I bloodied him, then killed him with my first blow. Then… something happened. I could not stop slashing at him.”
Sidroc looked away a moment, then back at his son.
Hrald met his eyes, fully. “It made me… fear myself.”
Before his son’s duel at Four Stones, Sidroc had looked him in the eye and tried to hearten him. Hrald had at last triumphed in that contest, but the older warrior well knew that winning carries its own burdens.
Sidroc was silent a space as they moved steadily forward upon their horses. He would say nothing to deny the boy’s fear, so honestly expressed. All he could do was to place it in a larger landscape, to pull away from that single moment which had caught his son and still held him.
“When there have been words between two men,” Sidroc told him, “things emerge on the heels of victory. Anger can lift the sword from our hands, and act on its own. Next time your grip will be firmer.”
Hrald had looked away, his eyes cast down at his horse’s mane.
“Do not reproach yourself,” his father went on. “It was not needless savagery. He was dead, a quick kill any man would want.” Sidroc’s eyes rose for a moment to the cloudy skies. “The Law-giver Tyr sees these things. I know this.”
He turned his eyes back to Hrald, and said the next with calm resolve.
“This man betrayed you, and Four Stones. In doing so he was false friend to Gunnulf, who the shield-maidens claimed in an instant for a seat of honour in Freyja’s hall.
“You must let this go, as you will much more that will come your way.”
They returned from Ragnfast’s with the biggest horse the breeder could supply, a pale chestnut gelding with a fine head and cream-coloured mane and tail. On the way back to Tyrsborg Hrald tried leading the dun mare behind him, but true to his father’s warning, she was not happy to follow in the footfall of the strange horse. Sidroc took her, and even then she kept coming up alongside his stallion, as if she would take the lead. Both men must laugh at her frowardness, one paired with her quickness, for Sidroc related that of all their horses she alone had learnt to open the door of her stall, by pushing her muzzle against the wooden toggle that secured it shut.
Once back at Tyrsborg they walked down to the pier where the ships were tied. The lead ship was under sail, crossing the bay on which sat the trading road, tacking, and turning back again. As she neared the pier they saw it was Yrling at the steering-oar. Standing next to him, no taller but much stouter, was Aszur, grinning so that his gold tooth glinted in the Sun. Yrling spotted his father and brother on the pier, and lifted one hand to wave at them. Only a few men were aboard, and he needed both hands on the oar to bring her in, with the ship-master’s help. They had seen him helming the fine drekar, and Yrling’s face beamed at them. He did not run to where they stood, but stayed and withdrew the oar from the water as Aszur instructed, then helped with the tying up with one of the crew.
The men who had made the journey, whether Hrald’s warriors or the practised seamen of Aszur, were settling into a routine. They slept aboard the ships, cooked for themselves on shore from foodstuffs they bought from the trading road, and continued to enrich Rannveig’s brew-house in their purchase of ale and hot meals. Yrling was much aboard all three drekars, making himself a favourite amongst the men. The boy was willing to take on any task, especially the tarring of the captured ship of the Danes, which had need of it. As Tindr had taught him, he gathered moss and sheep’s fleece and stirred it well into the sticky pine tar. Heedless of blackened hands and smeared face, he packed it tightly with a narrow wooden knife into any gaps in the straked planking of the hull. He must rub his hands almost raw with sand and the cold sea water before walking up the hill to the hall, where a laughing Eirian would hold up their mother’s polished silver disc to his face so he might see the daubs still on his face and clinging to his hair.
Some nights Tindr and his family joined them at Tyrsborg. The first time Šeará emerged from the forest path Hrald felt himself in the presence of a rare kind of beauty. Everything about her was unlike any woman he had ever seen. The yellow-white of her long hair, the eyes of crystal blue, placed at a slant above high and chiseled cheekbones, the almost milk-like fairness of her skin. She was dressed all in napped deerskin, in a tunic and leggings of that soft but strong covering, with furred boots upon her feet. She came forward with a smile to greet him, in a voice soft and low and with an accent unlike the speech of Gotland. There was a natural directness about her, as well. She knew no sham modesty, no coy dropping of the eyelids or sideways glances when a man looked at her with admiration. Her openness to meet men on their level put him in mind of Ashild.
Her children were dressed as she was, in napped deerskin tunics and leggings, decorated with thread work and ribbands of bright hue. The boy, Juoksa, was a fine little fellow, a few years younger than the twins, and the girl, Jaské, just a bit older than Rodiaud. The two little girls ran off t
ogether to Gunnvor as soon as they saw the other, and the ready way the cook produced a honey cake and divided it between them was proof that this hope had been met in the past.
Ceridwen saw how struck Hrald was with the Sámi woman, and smiled at him in agreement. “I thought the same, when I first saw her. One feels the power of all Midgard, and the animal she loves, even in the way she dresses.”
Tindr’s joy in his family was evident, his ice-blue eyes moving amongst them with quiet pride. Hrald remembered his crude efforts, with Ceric, in making their desires known to the hunter. He now watched with awe the way his wife and Juoksa, and even little Jaské spoke with Tindr, soundlessly, and with their hands and faces.
That night when Hrald lay down in his alcove he thought of Tindr’s good fortune. He had been deprived of hearing and speech, but this did not keep from him the love of a faithful woman. Would he find the same, he wondered…
Hrald worked with his father and Tindr in cutting and stacking firewood to dry. The long Winter was lately ended, that to come still far distant, but the work of keeping the hall warm was year-round. The trees had been felled by Sidroc and Tindr at the beginning of Winter, and left in the forest until the snow and mud abated, to be pulled out one by one behind the strong backs of the black stallion and Eirian’s gelding. The latter horse, though not large, was patient and seemed to derive satisfaction from the task of pulling. They were dragged through the wood, then sawn and chopped in Tyrsborg’s work yard.
They took the trip upland to Ring’s farm. The whole family came, Sidroc and Hrald on horseback, Ceridwen and Eirian and little Rodiaud in the small horse-cart, with Yrling at the reins, driving his own gelding. They carried food and drink for the outing to share with Ring and Astrid and their young ones. They had need to leave Flekkr at home, not wishing him to disrupt his siblings at their bird-flushing work which Ring had been so carefully training them to.
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