‘A telling you shall have,’ she cried, bowing her sharp-lined face to his father. ‘If it pleases our Vendling lord. And the lord has gold,’ she added.
A knowing jeer slewed around the drunken faces.
His father slipped a ring from his finger and tossed it to her. She plucked it expertly from the air. ‘There’s gold to make a start. Speak nothing falsely just to please us, sister.’
‘Never,’ she said, scraping low; the ring vanished into the fathomless folds of her cloak. ‘Those who speak lies to gain gold mock the True One. Scabby hags – and fools! They curse their own heads. Fear no deceit from me, noble host. As the Lord of the Hanged shows me, I will tell.’
She backed closer to the firepit. So close Hakan thought her cloak must catch fire, but the heat seemed to bother her none. Her silhouette darkened before the dancing flames, her face shrouded in shadow.
‘The road to the World Tree is reached by galdra song. Will any sisters stand and sing to the Slain-God?’ She looked about, a crooked grin creeping over her mouth. ‘Perhaps you, sister?’ Her gaze fell on Tolla.
The nurse blanched. Tight-lipped, she shook her head.
‘Sing,’ his father said. Tolla’s eyes darted to him, but still she didn’t move. ‘Must I tell you twice?’
Slowly, Tolla rose. ‘My thanks, sweet sister,’ cried the vala. ‘I need three more.’
Another thrall stood. Then a distant kinswoman, come from the shores of the Western Ocean. Last of all, Inga rose, dark and lovely in her crimson robe. Hakan’s heart quickened.
‘Sing out, sisters,’ the vala cried. ‘Sing to Odin, the Ancient One. Sing so he gives me sight, far into things yet hidden.’
Tolla was first to sing, the others soon weaving their voices with her sweet and wandering melody:
The Brown-Eyed God hangs on a tree
Screaming he sees of Was and Will Be
The song meandered on, the four voices rising with the tendrils of smoke to the rafters.
When fire burns the Masked One calls
The slain about him all will fall.
The vala began to sway, face tilted, eyes closed, staff weaving back and forth, fingers rattling the bones at her belt. The song reached its end and the women stood, silent. But the vala went on dancing, as if to some other music, unheard by the hushed revellers. Eyelids flickering, she began to utter a guttural moan. She stretched on her toes, arms swaying higher and higher. Suddenly her eyes snapped open, half-maddened with heat, searching, scanning, far above Lord Haldan’s seat.
‘The High One speaks,’ she wailed. ‘The High One sees. This land is favoured – fortune and wealth, for this generation and many.’ A cheer rose around the hall, some beating the table with approval. But they were soon hushed. ‘Sons and daughters of Jutland will carry their blood far, over wave and vale. The Jutes will live long in the songs of men.’
Hakan scanned the grinning faces, flushed with mead, as his own must have been. By the gods, he could speak as well as this damned vala. Fortune and wealth? It was easy enough to promise that and get his father’s gold for it.
‘From your sisters’ wombs, fame and gold shall come,’ she continued. Another cheer. But then she paused, a frown wrinkling her brow. ‘And yet . . .’ Her stare grew wide. The hall-folk leaned in, hushed in a moment. ‘This land knows fire and death,’ she murmured. ‘Ere long, blood will run in its furrows. Tears will run like rivers.’
The listening faces darkened. This was less pleasing.
‘And you! Lord of the Vendling blood! Neither man nor beast will cut you down.’ The band around her head glittered silver, her eyes grown suddenly fierce. ‘Yet you will take a wound. A wound so horrible! Pierced through your heart with a blade that cannot be stopped. Your days will be long and bitter. The All-Father will never grant you rest.’
All eyes sped to their lord, waiting for the eruption of anger many knew only too well. But his father only sat, listening, face hard as flint.
Suddenly, the vala gave a shriek that split the air. ‘Quail, you men – tremble, you women! The Slain-God thunders here! The final destruction shakes these walls from the ends of time. The kindling that will burn the World Tree to ashes is lain here – bonds of kin are cut; beauty and love are slaughtered like swine. You must drink the cup of sorrow to its dregs.’ Her body was shaking; at last her legs faltered and she fell to her knees.
The last words of her telling died away and the company sat stunned. Was no one going to say anything? Hakan lurched to his feet, indignation boiling his head.
‘This is all you tell?’ He slammed down his cup, sending it bouncing away. ‘You speak good fortune on our folk, then curse this household?’
The vala’s head turned to him, eyes aflame, and immediately he wished he had stayed in his seat. She glared at him a while, as if seeing something that was strange, even to her.
‘Who speaks?’ she said at last, her voice shrunk to a whisper.
‘I am Hakan, son of Haldan. Chosen Son of the Lord of the Northern Jutes. This you well know.’ Flush with ale and still angry from the business with Konur, Hakan spoke far louder than he meant. He suddenly felt foolish.
At first, the vala made no reply. Instead, slowly she pulled her hood over her head, and bowed down to him. Once . . . twice . . . a third time. Each bow, she lay down flat, pressing her head to the ground and stretching out her arms. His kinsfolk gaped on, making no sense of this strange prostration or what it might portend.
Hakan held his tongue, puzzled as anyone.
The vala got to her feet. ‘Hail to you, you Chosen Son. I bow because your road will be one of suffering. You are marked for a path beyond even the All-Father’s sight. A greater hand is on you – deeper magic, outside my telling. You will bear much pain, but you will never break. You will fall and rise again.’
‘Enough – wretch!’ Haldan’s roar broke like a thunderclap. ‘Black whore of Hel! We give you gold and you repay us with curses!’
The vala was ready for this, returning his outrage with a cool smile, her face a dance of shadows. ‘For gold, I spoke – aye. Yet it scarce matters whether Odin has me tell what will be or not.
The fate of all men is graven on the World Tree. It cannot be undone.’
Lord Haldan looked on her a long moment before he answered, eyes dark as a storm. ‘You see the fate of other men clear enough. I wonder, have you seen your own?’
A flicker of doubt crossed her face. Haldan gestured to a nearby thrall. ‘Fetch a rope.’ The servant hesitated, eyes flitting between them. ‘Now!’ The man scurried off.
The vala’s face greyed to ash. ‘Lord, I spoke only the truth – just as you asked.’
‘And for that you have your gold. But speaking truth bears fruit. Both sweet and bitter.’
‘But, Lord, this is not just!’
‘With this hand, I hold justice,’ he replied, holding out his left; and then offering his right. ‘And with this, I protect my people. True or not, your tellings are a cancer in this land. One I intend to cut out.’
The vala scrabbled to dig Haldan’s gold from the depths of her cloak. ‘Lord, keep your gold. It is nothing to me. Please. Take it.’
‘Nay – keep it. It was fairly earned. Along with this.’ The rope had arrived. Haldan took it and began tying a knot. ‘You should be pleased. Odin has spoken tonight. We show our gratitude with a sacrifice to his honour.’
The fear on the vala’s face twisted into a sneer. ‘You cannot turn what must be.’
‘Nor can you. Take her.’
Two men flanking her rose without question and seized her. She wrestled uselessly as they shoved her up on to the dais.
Haldan flung the rope up into the shadows of the rafters. A moment later, the noose dropped to the floor. He snatched it up and slipped it over her writhing head. The vala was babbling a flood of prayers and pleas and curses. But his ear was iron to them all.
Every eye was on him as he pulled the rope tight. Hakan’s heart was thundering like
a stallion’s hooves.
‘The Lord of the Hanged awaits you.’ The vala screamed.
The rope whined, and the scream was cut short.
Yet the vala’s words still echoed in Hakan’s mind. You will bear much pain, but you will never break.
Above him, her feet, calloused and black, capered to Odin’s dance of death.
You will fall and rise again.
CHAPTER THREE
Next morning, a breeze was blowing from the southwest.
Hakan decided this was the only good thing about the day since, instead of sleeping off the ill-effects of the night before, he was astride his horse.
His father had woken him with a kick, and told him to get dressed. When he’d shaken the sleep from his head and appeared in Haldan’s chamber, his father said he was sending him to Vindhaven, the small market harbour half a day’s ride south.
Officially, he was to report on the provisioning there: how trade had gone over the summer, what stores they had laid aside from harvest, the state of their flocks and herds, how they would fare through the coming winter, what levies in skins, amber and such like they meant to send north to Vendlagard.
Unofficially, his father ordered him south to cool his heels. ‘I don’t want to see you for a week,’ he growled. ‘Preferably two.’ After Vindhaven, Hakan was to head to Vestberg and then cut north to Hallstorp, before he came home. It wasn’t the first time he’d taken the brunt of his father’s wrath. But that morning, Hakan had to admit, Haldan was in a rare fury.
‘You and your bloody temper!’ Hakan had put at risk everything he had been building for fifteen years, he railed. Hakan knew a feud with the Karlungs wasn’t in their interest, and his scuffle with Konur had given Earl Karsten leverage against his father.
But he also suspected his father had woken with a few regrets of his own. He had gone too far last night with that business with the vala. Perhaps it had been the drink. That and Haldan’s steel-edged certainty of always knowing right from wrong. But Hakan suspected this time his father had acted without thinking. That was a rare thing. Whatever came of it, his father’s deed would win no one’s praise.
So Haldan was taking out his disgruntlement on his son. And here he was, under a sweltering sun, sweating through breeches too thick, with a stomach leaping about like a herring on a hook.
It was just before noon. Already he had stopped to nap in the shade of a wood to avoid tumbling from his saddle asleep and breaking his neck. He’d tried sticking his head in a stream a league back. Bliss while it lasted, but not enough to stop the pounding in his temples nor the sick feeling in his belly.
Sick and angry.
It was all well for his father to berate him for his short temper but it didn’t take a vala to know where that came from. Almost as long as he could remember, Hakan had had to answer the taunts of other boys. Cripple, they called him. And a cripple he was, thanks to his father.
He’d hardly been five winters old when Haldan took him for a walk down by the shores of the Juten Belt. There he had helped him climb to the top of a rock, as high as he’d ever climbed. Hakan thought they were playing a game. His father stood below, arms outstretched. ‘Jump!’ he’d said. ‘Jump and I’ll catch you. Come on, don’t you trust me?’ Of course, he had trusted him. Hakan had swallowed down his terror and jumped. And at the last moment, his father stepped aside. He meant for his son to land in the sand and take a tumble. But there had been another rock hidden under the sand. Hakan had landed right on it and cracked his ankle. After that he could walk only with a limp; run hardly at all. Not like the other boys anyway.
His mother had been furious. ‘What the Hel do you think you were doing?’ she had screamed.
‘Teaching him a lesson,’ replied Haldan.
She had sworn and asked what possible lesson that could be.
‘That you can’t trust anyone in this world,’ Haldan had replied. ‘The sooner he learns that the better.’
Well, Hakan had remembered the lesson. His ankle would hardly let him forget it. Of course, his father had been sorry. He hadn’t meant for him to be hurt. It was no honour to Haldan to have a son with a limp, after all. But in a twisted way, it had served Hakan. If you can’t run, you have to stand and fight.
He’d learned how to do that, and right well.
When the thumping in his head allowed, he spent the journey trying not to dwell on the words the vala had spoken over him. Easier said than done. They kept returning to his mind like the refrain in some unending song. With each repetition, they pushed further into his brain, roots burrowing deeper, never to be dislodged.
He tried to dispel them with happier daydreams of Inga. But these seemed to slew from sun-bathed visions of them as man and wife, an absurdly pretty child running about their feet, to recollections of their sweaty couplings, up against a barn or rolling around in the dry dirt of some wood. Neither of these achieved much besides leaving him simmering with frustration. And then he remembered seeing her across the feast, laughing at something Konur had said, the way he touched her elbow. And instead of his own body, writhing with hers in a slick of sweat, he pictured Konur’s, and jealousy bubbled bitter in his guts.
And yet, this was Inga. Maddening as she was, he had never been able to stay angry with her for long.
When the sun reached its highest, he came to the top of a hill and saw for the first time the inlet where Vindhaven lay. The settlement had grown up along the northern edge of Odd’s Sound, a shallow fjord that opened into the grey rollers of the Juten Belt. A small beech wood ran along the ridgeline, obscuring the village from view, but over the treetops he could see skeins of rising smoke.
He kicked his horse on towards the wood. But as he did, he sensed something was wrong.
On a summer’s morning, there would be fires. People had to cook; the smiths’ forges must keep burning. But so many? With smoke so black? Instead of a few wisps, dark billows stained the sky.
Reaching the wood, he slipped from his horse and guided it through the undergrowth. Suddenly he stopped. Some instinct told him to go on alone. Tethering the mare, he crept forward the last few yards.
At the treeline, he froze.
Vindhaven was burning.
Below, the ground fell away into meadows; beyond that, along the shoreline, were the barns and dwellings of Vindhaven. Every one was on fire.
Thatching snapped and cracked. The village was chaos. Men stalked about bristling with war-gear, menacing in their iron helms and mailshirts. Some went bare-chested, others wore wolf-skins. All of them carried evil-looking axes or crude butcher’s knives. Even from there, Hakan saw they were stained red with blood.
He shrank behind a blood-beech, fear drying his mouth. Screams and wails spiralled towards him on the breeze. The roof of the meet-hall, the heart of the little harbour, suddenly caved with a gush of soot and sparks.
He saw heaps of discarded clothing. Not heaps, but bodies, he realized. Vindhaven was not well defended. They had spears, axes, a few swords, and a handful of men who knew how to use them. But nothing to withstand these killers. The butchery must have hit them like a sea-squall.
There was worse to see.
In front of the meet-hall, a furnace was blazing. A few yards away was a line of villagers on their knees. Some sobbed; some writhed on the ground. Others pleaded with the big warriors. A few waited meek as lambs.
Within the furnace, darker shapes broiled. The stench of burning flesh floated like demon’s breath to his hiding place. And then the biggest of the wolf-warriors began his grisly work.
Schuck, schuck, schuck. The noise of his axe carried with the stench. Hakan watched, eyes riveted to the sight of head after head rolling on the ground like gaming-bones, painting the mud crimson. From that distance they might be rag dolls, heads plucked and tossed away – one child taunting another. Except dolls didn’t scream like that.
Suddenly, from one of the nearby houses, a boy appeared, not ten winters old, screaming like Hel’s own houn
d. He ran at the nearest raider – a squat killer, half-naked, face black with tattoos. The boy had a butcher’s knife.
Brave little bastard.
There was a streak of steel, and the killer’s axe opened him up from rib to spine. He crumpled into a shuddering heap of rag and bone.
Hakan tasted bile.
Something caught the tail of his eye and he looked east. An old woman broke from the lee of a smithy and ran for the slope. She was coming straight for him. He clenched his teeth, willing her on; but she was desperately slow.
She’d put maybe forty yards between her and the village before one of the wolf-warriors saw her. He sprang after her, and was on her in moments, knocking her down without even breaking stride. She rolled over, trying to fend him off, but he just ignored her puny fists, threw her on her face, and shoved up her skirts. Her wails faded to pitiful moans. When he was done, he pulled up his breeches, and, almost as an afterthought, pinioned her with his spear.
By now, most of his comrades were carrying chests or trestles loaded with pots and barrels and other goods. They wouldn’t find much of value among the meagre homes of Vindhaven. A little gold or silver hidden away if they were lucky. Bronze or glassware maybe, what they could carry of the harvest yields, a few weapons.
They wouldn’t leave empty handed, but it was hardly rich spoils.
Then Hakan looked further east, and through the drifting smoke he made out the lines of a ship. Even from there, he could see it was a true wolf of the sea: hull sleek and black, maybe thirty paces end to end; with a single mast, its sail furled out of the wind; a fierce prow. In the hold, lashed together and wretched as beggars, Hakan spied women – a dozen of them, heads drooped in fear.
Perhaps the raiders had done better than he thought. Thralls were valuable anywhere; thrall-girls more than most.
He was suddenly filled with fury. These were his people. They looked to his father for their protection. One day it would be him they looked to. Yet how these folk had been failed!
He felt ashamed and full of vengeance.
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