by Julia Knight
“That’s where their godi—their priest that is—he does his rituals. Sacrifices.” Rowena shuddered and Wilda joined her when she realised what the dark streaks were. “Don’t do people no more, though, or not since I’ve been here. Used to, mind. That godi tells gruesome tales about it when he’s in his cups. I think he likes to scare us God-fearing folk with it.”
“What do they sacrifice then?”
“Depends. When they have their spring or winter ritual, it might be a lamb. When they’re off to raid, often as not it’s fighting horses. If he’s asking their gods for something, then it could be anything. I seen him do a hare last week, trying to see if he could fathom the wyrd of Bausi’s wedding. Reckons she’ll give any husband a lot of sons, so Bausi was well-pleased, him having had nought but daughters as yet. And sons close to the king too. Harald’s named his heir, right enough, his grandson, and Bausi’s new bride’s cousin.”
Then this fjord and its jarl would become more powerful. Yet Sigdir wanted to get away, out from under Bausi. Wilda followed Rowena down the slope, through a stand of birches and on toward the shore. Sigdir stood there, resplendent in his armour, a close-fitting helm covering his bright hair.
Wilda was beginning to wonder about Sigdir. As Rowena said, there seemed two people trapped in him. One, the obvious one, was a violent brute. Yet the other—he’d seemed concerned for Myldrith, seemed bewildered and hurt at Einar’s supposed betrayal and had been steadfast in his insistence on protecting the honour he thought she had. She couldn’t decide if he was the Devil’s child Bebba said he was, or just a man caught in a different world than Wilda had known.
A woman stood next to him, heavy with child and with a stony look to her. “Bausi’s first wife, Ragnhilda, come to welcome the new one to the house,” Rowena said.
“How many wives does Bausi have?” Wilda asked, appalled.
Rowena laughed. “A Norseman may have as many as he can afford, or stand. Bausi’s got two already. I’m thinking that this new one will be favoured, though, and not just for her kinship with the king. She’s said to be the fairest Norse maiden on the west coast. Look at Ragnhilda’s face. She looks like she swallowed a cat.”
The ship that glided toward them was enormous, more than twice the size of the one Sigdir had brought Wilda in. The sail was raised, dyed a blood red with a raven stooping. There was no prow carving—Rowena said that they removed it when coming into the fjords, for fear of offending the land-wights, more heathen superstition. The oars moved in a quick, precise rhythm before they were shipped with practised ease, and the ship came to rest neatly by the little jetty.
Men scurried about securing the boat, and a plank was laid so that getting ashore was made easy. A warrior, almost a match for Sigdir in height and the splendour of his armour, stepped down the plank and Sigdir greeted him warmly with a clasp of hands. The ship was large enough that a kind of tent was pitched near the rear of the deck and, once the ship was secure, the flap opened and three women came out. Two were clearly maids, from their plainer tunics and apron-dresses.
The third walked with a straight back and a proud head. As well she might. Her clothing was very fine, bright blue linen with gold edging and several silver and gold pins, and her cloak was dark blue wool trimmed in silver fox. Wilda caught a flash of some red stone in the centre of the cloak’s clasp. The girl’s hair was golden and left loose—because she was unmarried, Rowena said—except where it was held by a golden fillet across her brow. The girl’s face was even finer than her clothes. Fair skin with a hint of blush to the cheeks, clear eyes and a mouth upturned in a serene smile that encompassed everyone on the jetty.
She approached Ragnhilda, still smiling, to be greeted with cold words from a harsh face. The smile faltered a little, but the girl rallied and she and her maids followed Ragnhilda up the hill towards Agnar’s house. “Got to get her ready and can’t do that in Bausi’s house. Old Agnar will have been thrown out, and many of the wives of the village will be in there. They do all this bathing and such and hand out all sorts of advice on being married. I expect the spae-wife will be there.”
“Spae-wife?”
Rowena grimaced. “Heathen magic, it is. Best you don’t think on it, but old Geira’s a nice enough biddy. It ain’t the dark sort of magic. She’s a dab hand at birthing, women and animals, I’ll give her that.”
The men from the ship finished their work and came ashore. One of Sigdir’s men led them up to the feasting hall. Sigdir caught sight of Wilda and, once they were gone, came over to her. He frowned behind the nose-guard of his helm but said nothing for long moments as he regarded her. It seemed to her that he was weighing something in his mind, maybe her and her worth, or rather her lands’ worth, against what she had cost him.
Of a sudden, her shame was not just at lying with a man she wasn’t married to, and a heathen at that. Not for lying with Toki for pleasure rather than procreation. No, it was for the shame she’d brought on him, the disgust of his brother because of her, though he didn’t know it yet. Finally, with a snort, Sigdir growled out some words to Rowena and stalked off up the hill.
“He says you’re too forward, too different. That you should be readying for your own wedding, and him too. It’s—you shouldn’t really be talking before the ceremony, you see? But it’s plain you want words, and there are some he’d speak to you, too, answers he wants. In private, excepting for me.”
Tension ran from Wilda’s shoulders in the faint hope for Einar, and because she needn’t wait to know what this Bausi had decided. She followed Sigdir up the slippery steps cut into the ice, past the open space that had begun to fill with people, all decked out in their best furs and finest, warmest clothes. A riot of blues and reds and greens against the grey of the blood-streaked stone, the black of the birch trees’ bare arms and the dark, brooding menace of the mountain.
The path wandered to the river, steeply sloping up past the falls that thundered and made any speech nigh on impossible to hear even from two paces away. A group of warriors in bright armour and brighter cloaks moved down the path and Sigdir stepped aside. Wilda and Rowena followed his example. The leader of the group stopped and Sigdir spoke something Wilda would not have caught, even if she’d been able to understand. He seemed oddly ill at ease, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and Wilda turned to see who could discomfort him in such a way, this man who seemed to have no fear of anything.
Wilda staggered back, slipped on the ice and fell, tumbling down the steps in whirl of skirts and banged limbs. She got to her hands and knees almost before she realised her fall had stopped. Her heart thudded up around her throat, making breath hard to come by, tinting her vision pink. She had to go, she had to run. Now, as far and as fast as she’d ever run before.
A mailed arm slid round her and helped her to unsteady feet and she let out a little breathless scream but it was Sigdir, a perplexed, worried look to him. Compared to the face she thought she’d seen, Sigdir had no power to scare her now. A face that had danced in her dreams too many times to count.
His black hair was braided neatly rather than left to go wild, silver rings threaded his beard and he was broader than she remembered. Yet the twisted smile in that beard was the same, the dark, watchful eyes under thick brows. The hand that had held the sword that had pierced Einar from behind, who’d tried to take his head. Bear Man, who’d killed Mother in front of her, who’d killed one of his own men. Who’d tried to kill Einar, and her.
Sigdir followed her gaze and his frown deepened for a heartbeat before he cleared his face, indicated Bear Man, and told her why Einar had been silent all these years, why he’d asked for her silence on it.
“Jarl Bausi,” Sigdir said.
Chapter Sixteen
Cattle die, kinsmen die; the self must also die. But the fair fame never dies of him that has earned it.
Havamal: 76
They made it back to Sigdir’s longhouse and Wilda sank down to a bench, her mind racing. Einar’s jarl—
brother even—had tried to murder him, had murdered another of his men. Yet if what she could gather was true, a jarl had much power over his men, as a thane would at home. More so, the warriors swore oaths it was said, oaths of fealty to their lords, witnessed by their heathen gods. Oaths not meant to be broken, unless they wanted to go to their version of hell. It couldn’t be just that, though, or Einar might have left, surely? Might still leave.
Sigdir watched her carefully as Rowena fussed. Wilda found she had little fear of him now. Whatever devilry had been in him before seemed leached away to leave the real, true man in its place. She wondered again about what Bebba had said, about Bausi changing the wyrd of the men who followed him, changing the wyrd of the village. Something had happened out there in the pig barn to change Sigdir.
When Wilda could stand it no more, when she was about to burst wondering what had happened to Einar, Sigdir spoke.
“A negotiation, he says,” Rowena said. “Not your whole price, but not an outright death. An einvigi, that’s like a fight for honour. Only he says that Bausi will fight instead of him. Because of a price Toki should have paid before or somesuch. But that ain’t our Sigdir’s main concern. You knew him, Bausi I mean, that was plain. I think—I think Sigdir’s wanting to know a lot.”
Wilda thought back to Einar’s urgent fingers on her lips, asking for silence, the desperation in him. That he’d been silent on it all these years it seemed. It also seemed best to make sure of that first. She’d not said it in words, not agreed, but she wouldn’t betray him. Not Einar. Yet she had to find a way to get him—get them both—out of this.
“I met him, yes. He killed my mother on a raid in my home town. I remember him.” No mention yet of the other death, of what he’d done to Einar. Not until she was sure. “A question for a question. Why did Einar not speak till I came? Why does everyone treat him like he’s simple?” Bebba had touched on it, but it still made little sense to Wilda.
Sigdir shoved back on his bench and turned his head away, clearly unhappy with the question. Finally he nodded, as though making a momentous decision. “The greatest failure for one of the Norse is cowardice. It’s a shame not to be borne. To be a coward is to turn your face from Odin, from Thor and Tyr and all the gods. Toki was, is, a coward. He ran when he should have protected his brother—my brother too—from the Saxon spear that killed him. He’s not Einar, he’s Toki. Einar died when Arni did and that day Toki was born. The fear and shame turned his mind. He never spoke, except to beg the spae-wife not to see him when he first came back, injured almost to death. Begged like a coward, so we knew it was true. I wish now that he’d died along with Arni, that I didn’t have to see him, be reminded of it. Toki’s not my brother. Einar was, but he’s dead. Or I thought he was…I thought he was, till today.”
Sigdir dropped his head into his hands, ground the palms into his eyes as if to try and grind knowledge into them. “He says he’s cursed because he didn’t die, that me and our sister are cursed too. He’s raving, I know that. I know he’s not been right, not been Einar, since he came back, a sorrow to me more than he’ll know. But he seems so sure. Surer still that I should keep you away from Bausi, and I don’t know why. Why should he want that?”
His blue eyes were still now, watching her. Wilda wanted to trust him, to trust someone. Yet Einar’s fingers on her lips, the look on his face…and this man had been among the worst to torment him. Had struck her for little more than talking to Einar, had driven Myldrith past mere despair.
No, she couldn’t trust him, except maybe on one thing. It was clear that Sigdir had reservations about what Bausi intended for Einar, that he loved his brother. She had to work on that, and trust to God, and hope.
“Because he knows what sort of man this Bausi is, a man likely to drag you all down to your version of purgatory,” she said. “And he doesn’t trust him. I know nothing else.” Forgive the lie, forgive all the lies, and all my sins. “Please, can’t you stop this—this duel? Can’t you do anything?”
Sigdir’s eyes never wavered, and Wilda fought the urge to blurt it out, to say that it was Bausi who killed that other brother, she knew, she’d seen. Einar had asked her silence, and she would give him that if nothing else, but Sigdir’s next words crushed her.
“My brother is dying for you,” Rowena translated. “Everything dies, except fair fame. Make his death worth it, give him something to stand in front of Odin with and plead his case for Valholl. Let him have his fair fame, and stand to watch it. Be a Norsewoman, and hold your courage. You have promised me a marriage and a promise is a vow to the gods. Do not shame me in front of Bausi.”
At dawn the next day, when the faint sun began to rise behind the high mountain and Odin’s Helm, Bausi returned to Einar and pulled him to his feet. “A treat for you, young Toki. A wedding, a sacred place for our einvigi after. A willing audience for your death. At least you might hope to show some courage here. Am I not a merciful brother, to allow you to die with a blade in your hand and have a chance at Valholl?”
Bausi laughed at the look on Einar’s face and threw the end of the rope to one of his men, an older warrior with a cut-about face and hands like gnarled roots. “Bring him at the back, I don’t want him scaring my bride.”
They left the longhouse with much ceremony, warriors and karls singing an old song about Baldur the Golden. Bausi led, his face bright yet unreadable, the silver rings in his beard flashing. They came onto the path by the falls and began down the steps cut into the ice until they came level with Sigdir’s longhouse.
Sigdir came out, no less resplendent than Bausi, freshly bathed with the same silver rings in his beard and his hair newly braided. There was a new look in his eyes, too, one watchful of Bausi that Einar had never seen there before. His gaze slid over Einar with no ripple.
They reached the sacred space under Odin’s Helm, with its scarred and streaked stone, its comforting arms of birch. Many stood there already, though they quieted from their chatter as Bausi strode through them, Sigdir at his right hand. A proud pair of warriors, unimpeached in courage, with no known shame of honour to tarnish them.
Einar watched the crowd and wondered what spell Bausi had woven about them, that they never questioned him. That they never saw. All knew what he was like, the casual brutality, yet it was never questioned. Not even by those who had been oathed to their father, or known him, who was as different to Bausi as midwinter is to midsummer.
Geira stood back from all of them and her eyes found Einar’s. She flicked a glance at Sigdir and back approvingly. The wyrd of the village, of the fjord, and she thought it rested with Einar. He dropped his head so he didn’t have to look at her. He had nothing to change it with, no bright sword, no rings of gold or oaths of fealty. He had einvigi, and that was all. His last chance to do one thing to show before Odin, that he knew how to die well. Before that, he had Wilda and Bausi, and only the faint hope she would keep her silence. Then she would go with Sigdir, across the North Sea, far from harm. Tomorrow maybe. It didn’t matter when, as long as she kept her peace till then, where she would be safe.
The crowd parted to let Bausi and Sigdir through to the sacred stone, where the godi stood ready. Rings sat atop the stone, four gold sparks in the faint sunlight. Bausi jerked his head at the godi to get started. Time to prepare the sacrifice, ready for when the brides entered. Something special for this day, for both Winter Nights and the weddings of the jarl and his brother.
The crowd parted and a young lad brought forward the sacrifice. Something special it was. Horse-Einar, snorting and nervous at the people and noise. Bausi caught Einar’s eye and a smile twitched his beard.
Einar got up from his knees and made to move forward. Not Horse-Einar, not him. His only respite from loneliness, a patient kind soul, who bore Einar with equanimity. Einar’s only friend, who never judged or taunted, but nudged for treats and whickered a greeting. Not Horse-Einar, sheen-mane, young and strong and handsome, as he’d once been.
Horse-Einar whic
kered and pulled back on the halter. The lad tried to urge him forward, but the horse wouldn’t move, leaned back against it and planted his hooves. The godi moved toward him, hand out, soothing Horse-Einar until his ears twitched forward and his legs became less stiff. A handful of grain relaxed him further. The sacrificial knife glittered in the godi’s other hand.
When the knife slid in a smooth arc for Horse-Einar’s neck, Einar moved, pulling against his ties, finding his wider voice. “Not him, Bausi, that’s my horse, mine, not yours to do with as you will. Leave him, leave him!” His voice broke on that last word, and the scar-faced warrior behind Einar jerked on the rope to bring him back to his knees.
The knife continued in its arc, undisturbed by Einar’s powerless outburst. Horse-Einar’s blood slaked the earth, and the crowd bellowed approval as the godi finished the job, took Horse-Einar’s heart and laid it on the stone. It would wait there, with the godi, to see which bird came for it first and so divine from that the wyrd of today’s weddings. The carcass of Einar’s only friend they carried away for thralls to butcher for the coming feast. Einar stayed on his knees, unable to get up. Unable to see anything but the blood, the poor, still heart atop the stone.
Not Horse-Einar.
The crowds parted again, this time to let through the brides. Bausi’s blonde beauty came first, a vision in blue. A gold fillet across her brow matched her hair as it swung in the firelight from the torches that brightened the grey of the short day. Then, hair dark as the other was fair, came Wilda. No less beautiful to Einar, she paced behind, her eyes wide at the blood, at the heart atop the stone. Then she saw Einar on his knees and her step faltered.
Here it was. She would see, she would know. She would say, and all these years of Einar’s silence would be brought to nothing. The people of the fjord wouldn’t believe her, not a sometime thrall, a Christian. Even if they did, Bausi held them in some kind of spell-thrall anyway. The wyrd of the fjord, the spae-wife had said, changed beyond changing.
