SNAFU: Hunters

by James A. Moore

* * *

  Kjarstan would not, would never, break his oath.

  This, Udr Udarsson knew as well as he knew his own name, and the names of his father and grandfather before him. This, he knew as well as he knew his own heart.

  The very implication was an insult, the kind of insult only answerable by blood. To suggest Kjarstan had not only broken his oath but utterly betrayed his king and kindred by joining with that yellow piss-dog, Gunnleif? For that, even blood would not suffice.

  Yet, when the expected day of arrival came with no sign of his banner… when a second day passed the same, and a third… when possible explanations for delay wore thinner and thinner…

  What else were men to think?

  Udr and Anbjorn told them what to think.

  “If Kjarstan is not yet come as promised,” they’d said, “it is because some ill fate or fortune has befallen!”

  They, two of Kjarstan’s best and most loyal warriors, had accompanied King Jorfyn’s messenger to Langenvik as proof of intent. Their earl – their friend, and war-brother! – would not lightly cast them aside as hostages.

  “On my life, I so swear it,” Udr had said. “On my life and my sword.”

  “Both of which,” a dour old lord called Olla had retorted, “will fast be forfeit if you are proved false.”

  “It is that misbegotten whoreson Gunnleif you should give blame,” Anbjorn said. “If his dogs struck Kjarstan by surprise in the hills–”

  Back and forth they had argued – Jorfyn’s advisers voicing their doubts, Udr and Anbjorn their protestations. Finally, with harsh words about to turn to harsher blows, the king intervened. A small group of swift riders, he declared, would go out in search of Kjarstan’s missing men. A dozen, no more. To seek sign or answer, and return with news.

  “We will ride with them,” Anbjorn had said.

  “Madness!” cried Olla. “If they are to stand hostage against treachery, do not let them leave!”

  “Do you say,” asked Anbjorn, with a dangerous hush, “that we would turn against our own king?”

  “I say,” said the old lord, “that you would be loyal to your earl.”

  Anbjorn might then have struck him, respected elder or not, if Udr and Jorfyn’s skald hadn’t intervened.

  Again, the arguments raged with much shouting, until the king decided one would go while the other stayed behind. It satisfied none, but mollified enough, and so the matter was settled. The king then had them draw lots. Udr was chosen to ride.

  He rode with a handful of others selected by the earls and from the king’s own guard. They set out for Pedham, back-tracking the route Kjarstan should most likely have taken. On rare occasion they ran across spies or scouts from Gunnleif’s army, dispatching them with ruthless efficiency of sword and spear.

  Now they had reached the high-hill river valley, and something was not at all right. A strange mood crept over them, a strange apprehension. Talk died away. Men tensed in their saddles and twitched alert at every bird-call or noise. More than one checked to see his blade rested loose in the scabbard, ready to be drawn.

  Udr himself felt uncommonly jumpy; his sack tight, his skin crawling. Nothing he could see, hear, or smell gave any reason for such skittishness.

  The valley ahead lay peaceful, dusted fine green from the new-growing grass. The river flowed smooth in its course, disturbed only by the silvery leap-flicker and splashing of fish rising to snap at skate-flies.

  Still, his palms clutched, sweating at the reins as he guided his horse through the random scatter of stones. He found himself wishing the lots had drawn differently, with him the one to stay behind at the war-camp where it was safe.

  Which was no sort of thought for a warrior… a wrong sort of thought in more ways than one… and he could not say why.

  Further on, one of Jorfyn’s men gave a shout of discovery. When the others neared him, they saw he’d found a horse. Udr recognized it as one of the horses from Pedham, wandering saddled and bridled but riderless among tall grey standing stones, nosing at the tender green shoots to graze on the new grass.

  “It bears no wounds, nor bloodstains,” someone said. “Where is its rider?”

  “Look, there’s another, by the river there, drinking.”

  “Riderless as well, with panniers and packs untouched.”

  “Why would they abandon their horses yet laden?”

  “They did not abandon their horses,” Udr said. “They must have been attacked.”

  “Well, if they were, why would the attackers not have–?”

  “Here!” called another man, amid a jumble of stones. “See this.”

  They rode to him as he stood over a bright splash of crimson that Udr first took for blood then he recognized it as a crumple of cloth, white on red. A white sword on a red field, attached to its pole but lying forsaken on the ground.

  Udr sprang down and bent to it. “Stefnir never would have let drop his uncle’s banner.”

  “Then where is he? Where are they?”

  “Dismount. Spread out and search.”

  They did so, anxiously, their former apprehension creeping again along their nerves.

  “I see a shield.” A man pointed. “And a spear beside it.”

  “Broken?”

  “No, not broken, not so much as scratched.”

  Without any order given, they gathered together, forming a defensive circle as if in anticipation of attack. Udr shivered, and by no means was the only man to do so. The air had gained a sudden chill.

  And when had the sunshine given way to this fog?

  * * *

  The war-camp of King Jorfyn consisted of tents and huts surrounded by trenches, thorn-brambles, and angled rows of stakes hewn to crude points. The banner of the king – three white serpents interlocked on a triangular green field – flew accompanied by the banners of other earls and battle-chieftains.

  Njoth, Jorfyn’s skald, brought Hreyth and Egil into the makeshift wittan-hall, where gathered the king and his advisers.

  It was a small assembly, a half-dozen earls and war-lords seated on benches by a stone-ringed central hearth-fire. Apart from them stood a young man with a dark beard; he was unarmed and his posture declared his resentment of that fact.

  The king himself – of middle years, greying but not wrinkled, hale and hearty – wore a tunic of green wool with white wyrm-work embroidery at collar, cuffs and hem. He held across his knees a scepter, a long whetstone below topped by a piece of whale-ivory carved into entwined serpents. His cautious, intelligent, war-weary gaze fell upon the newcomers.

  Two other women were also in attendance. One, red-haired and curvaceous, sat near the king’s side, nursing a babe at a plump, freckled breast.

  The other, immense and imposing in shining battle-glory, stepped to block Hreyth’s way. The sword strapped across her back must have measured four feet in the blade. Its grip-worn leather hilt proclaimed it was by no means just for show.

  “I am Valhild,” she said. Her helm hung on a strap at her side, leaving her bare-headed with myriad thin, close-woven blonde braids. A scar sliced her chin. “First among the king’s guard.”

  “Hreyth of the Grey Cloak.”

  “So, you are the rune-witch Njoth’s been going on about?”

  “I am.”

  “Hmf. I expected some haggard old crone.”

  “It seems we are both of a sort to defy expectations.”

  “True enough.” Valhild’s gaze swept Hreyth’s mail-coat, and the sheathed seax at her hip. She grinned. “Mine’s bigger.”

  Hreyth smiled, touching Rook-Talon. “Mine gets the job done.”

  Valhild roared a laugh and clapped Hreyth on the shoulder hard enough to make her stagger. “I like this one,” Valhild told the king, then turned to Egil – she towered over him, but he did not back down. “And who’s this?”

  “Egil Einarsson,” Hreyth said. “Or, Egil Splitbrow, as men call him.”

  “I can see why.” Valhild inspected the scarred, fis
sured dent at the front of his bald, lumpy skull. “You must have a hard head.”

  Egil looked up at her, mouth unsmiling, eyes flat. “It gets the job done.”

  Again, the big woman laughed, louder than ever. She slugged him on the arm. The sound was like that of a mattock meeting a bull’s carcass. “I like this one as well,” she said to King Jorfyn. “You’ll do worse than to put your trust in them, I think.”

  With that, she stepped aside and let them pass into the circle, where spaces were made for them on the benches. Further introductions were made. The angry, resentful young man apart from the rest was called Anbjorn, who followed Kjarstan, the missing earl.

  There had not been much in the way of serious confrontation between their armies as of yet this spring. The sides were too evenly matched, neither leader wanting to risk a direct assault, neither having the numbers to make a proper siege. So, they sat across the bay and tide-plain from each other, with occasional scout-parties and skirmishes, negotiations, insults, raids, and harassment.

  “Fifty men more or less,” said Jorfyn, “may not seem like much in a war. But these are Earl Kjarstan’s men of which we speak. Among the best, each worth any three of Gunnleif’s.”

  “Any five,” Anbjorn said, earning him not a few glowers.

  “And in battles such as we face here,” the king continued, undeterred, “every man counts. If Kjarstan had come as intended, we would have taken the town by now.”

  “But, if Kjarstan has joined Gunnleif,” put in an old earl, Olla, he of the sourest, expression. “Those same fifty men, whether worth five or three, will slaughter us like wolves upon lambs.”

  Jorfyn raised a hand to forestall an argument. Or, rather, to forestall the rekindling of an argument that had already gone on far past its welcome – Anbjorn protesting his lord’s loyalty, Olla doom-mongering, the others debating how those fifty men could turn the tide and which way, and so on.

  “I cannot move against Gunnleif without knowing what’s become of Kjarstan,” the king said, addressing Hreyth and Egil directly. “I need him with me. More vitally still, I need him not against me.”

  “Your spies at the town?” asked Egil.

  “Have heard nothing beyond that which we know.”

  “Would be hard to keep so many men secret.”

  “Agreed,” Jorfyn said. “Regardless of where matters lie with his loyalty – which I have never before had reason to doubt – I cannot believe he could be with Gunnleif and we’ve no word of it.”

  “Nor would they have deserted,” Valhild said, which brought fervent agreement from Anbjorn. “We’re not speaking of Saxon farmers running back to their fields, or dirt-eating Britons skulking in the bushes.”

  “Then there’s the matter of the riders we sent out,” Jorfyn went on. “A dozen men, hand-chosen by myself and my earls.”

  “And Udr, my war-brother,” Anbjorn said. He shot Olla a look like an arrow. “Unless you think Udr betrayed them, led them into a trap.”

  “They have not returned,” said Olla, uplifting his palms as if that itself proved enough.

  “I’ve told you, something happened to them. Something strange.”

  The old earl scoffed. “Armies of men don’t just disappear. It isn’t as if they were at sea, where they could have been sunk, lost, and drowned, ship and all.”

  “Folk do vanish,” said Njoth, the skald. He was lamed, absent a leg at the knee, getting about on a stout wooden crutch. “Not only at sea.”

  “My grandmother would tell me of farmsteads, or villages, or whole halls abandoned,” Jorfyn’s wife said, lifting her babe and patting its back to draw up a milk-burp. “As if overnight, leaving work half-done on the loom and unfinished meals upon the feast-tables.”

  One of the other earls nodded. “Mine would tell me of travelers venturing into dark forests or over high passes, never to be seen again.”

  “But not,” Olla said firmly, “whole armies out of thin air! Grandmothers’ tales? We’ll be talking of dark-elves and seidr-magic next!”

  “Aren’t we already?” Hreyth asked. She rose and moved near the glowing hearth, turning in a slow circle to let them all see the strangeness of her mis-matched eyes – one blue as the fjords, one amber-gold. “Is that not why I’m here? Your king’s skald, in his wisdom, sent for me because folk do disappear, or worse.”

  No one answered. Only a few – Valhild, Anbjorn, Njoth, and the king most among them – could long withstand her gaze.

  “We may think we are mighty, with our kingdoms and oaths, our laws and law-speakers,” she went on. “We forget there are older places, and things, of this world.”

  Njoth nodded vigorous support. “If they trespassed on a giant, a dwarf-cave, a troll-den… if they woke a dragon from its slumber… disturbed a grave-barrow…”

  “There’s no knowing what they might have unleashed,” Hreyth finished for him. “And whether it will be satisfied with whatever it’s already done, or will come looking for more.”

  * * *

  In the town was the army of Gunnleif Guthnarsson, whose banner – a snarling yellow dog on a triangle of black – waved from the top of the walls. Shields hung there as well, round shields painted half black and half yellow. Spears leaned ranked against the ramparts, an iron-tipped forest.

  But no one came out to challenge or follow as their company of eight rode from Jorfyn’s war-camp beside Langenvik’s broad bay.

  With Hreyth and Egil were Valhild, of course, and Anbjorn, and four other warriors chosen by the earls.

  The day was brisk and clear, the wind off the sea sharp as a blade’s edge. Eventually, as they rode amid idle conversations, a burly swordsman named Atli asked Egil what someone always seemed eventually to ask.

  “Does she lay with you?” he whispered. “Is she your woman?”

  He no doubt intended discretion, but Hreyth’s ears were keen. She hid a smile as Egil made his usual growling reply.

  “Ask such again, and my fist will give answer.”

  There was then a moment of cautious, considering silence. Then one of the others – called Thrunn – mentioned he’d heard it likely they’d see a rainy spring, and his friend Osig replied that a rainy spring meant a fair summer, and so the subject was safely changed.

  Valhild, who’d also heard the exchange, grinned wryly at Hreyth and made more distance fall between their horses and those of the men. “Will your fist give answer if I ask you the same?”

  “Oh? Have you an interest?”

  She snorted. “Not in you. I only fight and drink like a man.”

  Hreyth’s eyebrows rose.

  “He seems tough,” said Valhild, as if by way of explanation.

  “The toughest.”

  “But that wasn’t my question.”

  Hreyth released her reins with one hand, and made a fist – a rather small one. She looked at it, then looked at Valhild, and chuckled. “To what end, breaking my fingers?”

  “You might land a lucky blow.”

  “I’ll not chance it. As for the question beyond the question, Egil was brought orphan to the hall before I was born, and is as a brother to me.”

  Again, the big woman snorted. “There’s a story told often enough. If I’d a sack of silver for each lovestruck fool I’d seen crying over his mead because of some girl who held him as brother or friend…”

  “Tyr’s truth in that,” Hreyth agreed, rolling her eyes. “But, in this matter, it is as I say.”

  “Very well, then. How came he by his distinctive scar?”

  “When he was brought orphan. His village fell under attack. His family was slaughtered, he himself injured and left for dead, only a child. My mother tended him, took him in. She was a healer… of sorts.” She frowned; speaking of her mother was not something she often did, or found pleasant.

  Most folk, realizing as much, let it pass. Not so Valhild.

  “Of sorts?”

  “She brewed potions. Both helpful and… otherwise. They say she poisoned her
husband.”

  “Did she?”

  “I believe so. I was too young to know at the time. I remember he beat her, and they hated each other, and when he died, his kin accused her of murder.”

  “Your mother murdered your father?”

  “No,” she replied. “That’s why her husband beat her.”

  “Ah,” Valhild said, nodding in worldly-wise comprehension. “What of your true father, then?”

  Hreyth shrugged. “Of him, I can say only what was told to me, and it sounds the most terrible arrogance.”

  “I like terrible arrogance.”

  “You would.”

  “Don’t make my fist give answer!” Valhild hefted hers, the knuckles callused, a design of Thor’s hammer marked into the skin with needle and ink.

  They both laughed.

  “As I was told it,” Hreyth said, “during a long year when the men and their ships were away a’viking, a stranger visited the hall. A lone wanderer who wore a grey cloak and a strip of cloth bound over his lack of an eye. He sought to discuss seidr-magic with my mother, staying three days and three nights as her guest.”

  “And when he was gone…?” Valhild made a rounding gesture in front of her belly.

  “And when he was gone.” Hreyth mimicked the gesture.

  “A one-eyed wanderer in a grey cloak, eh?” She whooped, drawing the attention of the others. “You’re claiming Odin All-Wise himself –?”

  “I do not claim so, only say as I was told, and I warned you it sounded a terrible arrogance.”

  Just then, Anbjorn signaled urgently. “Tracks,” he said. “Hoof-prints. They must belong to Udr and those who rode with him.”

  “Let us investigate,” said Valhild, testing how her great sword rested in its scabbard. She winked at Anbjorn. “Remember, if you’re leading us to some trap or our doom, I’ll cleave you from crown to crotch.”

  “I assure you,” he told her earnestly, “I’ve not forgotten.”

  * * *

  They crested a rise and beheld the broad river-valley, green and peaceful, dotted with dark, coarse boulders and smoother grey standing stones. No carrion-crows circled, no scavengers roved, no stench of decay reached them on the mild spring breeze.