Halldor was a little taken aback by her direct manner. “You are tall,” he said and then stopped as he realized he was stating something very obvious. “My apologies,” he continued, feeling a flush rise in his cheeks. “Forgive me if I have said or done something to offend you.”
She shook her head, though he could not tell if she was responding to his words or to her own thoughts. “It may not be my place to offer you and your master advice, but I am certain it has not escaped your notice that we do not have such horses to spare for you and your men,” she said, changing the subject.
“Aye,” Halldor said awkwardly, still somewhat befuddled as to how he had managed to express himself so poorly.
“While my father would have sent word to the farmholds to gather mounts, your arrival coincides with many of those same folk being here for the festival. It will be much easier for my father to request horses from them. It is quite fortuitous, don’t you think?”
“I…yes. Yes, it is.”
“I am certain my father’s hauscarl is among the farmers now, making known your needs. Your master will have horses on the morrow, and what better way to spend the day than with entertainment and feasting?”
“I can imagine no better way,” Halldor said.
Sigrid looked at him again, staring at his face, and though her attention was not unwanted, he still felt awkward. She offered him the briefest of smiles again and then bowed once more before taking her leave.
Halldor tried his best not to stare after her, and he managed to resist the temptation for a few moments.
“Who was that?” he heard Kjallak ask.
“The Jarl’s daughter,” Halldor said distantly. He tore his attention away from Sigrid’s departing form and looked at his elder. “She—” He cleared his throat. “The Jarl is making arrangements for horses,” he said.
Kjallak glanced after Sigrid. “Is that all she said?”
Halldor caught a twinkle in the eye of the older woman who was watching the tables of food. She glanced away quickly when he glared at her. “Aye,” he said, “that was the gist of it.”
At the outdoor feast following the games, Halldor and Kjallak were seated at the high table with the Jarl and his wife. They were joined by a striking older woman, nearer to fifty years of age than forty, who was introduced to them as Grimhildr, Pettir’s sister, along with a willowy woman with dark hair and eyes named Malusha, who was Grimhildr’s daughter—the Jarl’s niece.
Grimhildr was a tall, spare woman who wore a tunic and long coat of rich wool. Her elaborately tooled boots reached high up her calves, and heavy raw-silk trousers were bloused into them after the fashion of the Rus far to the east. Large beads of amber and chains of silver and gold hung about her neck, and her wrists were bedecked with many bracelets, her fingers each sporting one or more rings. Her saex knife’s sheath was similarly rich in its decoration, and she wore a sword slung low on her left hip.
Malusha, on the other hand, wore a light gray linen dress, the neck and wrists of which were trimmed in elaborately stitched patterns. Over this she wore a dark blue woolen apron with silver medallions, covered with hammered runes, securing the straps over her shoulders. Kjallak showed no sign of confusion as to the difference in attire between mother and daughter. “skjölmdo,” he said to her after pleasantries had been exchanged with the Jarl and his wife, Fenja. “It is a pleasure to meet you. I had been speaking with one of the Sworn Men earlier today, and he was telling me stories of your charge.”
Halldor had been glancing around the room on the pretense of making sure the other Shield-Brethren were taken care of. They were scattered across several of the tables reserved for the Sworn Men. He counted heads, noting that the winners of today’s games were intermixed with the Shield-Brethren and the Sworn Men, a pairing that made him smile. He caught sight of Sigrid, and she looked up and smiled at him just as Kjallak’s words penetrated his thick head. skjölmdo. Shield-Maiden.
“Aye,” Grimhildr said. “I am rather proud of her, in fact; she shows extraordinary promise.”
Halldor’s attention was pulled away from the other tables by the arrival of the thralls with trays and plates of food.
The choicest bits of the ox that had been roasting all day came to their table, and then the warrior’s table next, and so on. Halldor had seen the beast earlier—suspended on a thick pole of green wood over a long pit filled with coals—and knew there was an enormous amount of meat to be had from an animal that size. He suspected there would be no shortage of meat, and his eyes widened as the thralls continued to bring trays of food to their table. There were roast boars and goats, salmon and herring—fresh, smoked, or pickled!
After the meat came a sweet soup made from dried fruit; bowls of spring greens with vinegar or cooked in bacon fat; roasted or boiled turnips and beets; flatbread with gravy, honey, or preserves; and—as a rare treat, indeed!—boiled eggs. There was mead as well, of course, flagons and horns of the thick, honey-flavored drink, and Halldor was suddenly concerned that he couldn’t eat enough to be a dutiful guest. There was just too much food!
And no sooner had the thralls finished laying out the feast, than people began to get up and move about the room, completely disregarding the distinctions of the arranged tables. As Kjallak and Grimhildr fell into comfortable conversation—old warriors sharing stories of distant exploits—Halldor was subjected to a steady stream of available young women who subtly hinted that they might be available to him that very evening. In fact, the thralls weren’t subtle at all, making their intent plain even to the extent of whispering often quite explicit offers in his ear.
He did his best to remain amiable throughout, keeping in mind that he was a sworn initiate of the Shield-Brethren. While the order did not require celibacy of its knights, he did not know the Jarl’s household well enough to chance offending some family member or another by bedding one of the eager—and quite persistent!—thralls. As soon as he could manage without being offensive, he excused himself from the throng and made his way toward the clusters of fighting men, whose company was much less fraught with…
“The maids do like a new face, don’t they?”
Halldor recognized the man as the one Kjallak had been speaking to earlier in the day. Äke, he remembered, the First of the Jarl’s Sworn Men. “Aye,” he replied. “I am like a rare flower.”
Äke threw back his head and let loose a full-throated laugh. Halldor joined him, though he did not think his comment that uproarious.
“I am Äke Fair-Haired,” the other man said when he had recovered from his bout of humor.
“I am Halldor, son of Sigvatr.”
“A Shield-Brethren knight,” Äke said.
Halldor nodded. “That I am.”
“The skalds sing stories of men like you,” Äke said, sipping from his horn.
“Do they?” Halldor said, his attention wandering. He spotted Sigrid near one of the bonfires that provided the light and heat that kept the night at bay. “She is skjölmdo,” Halldor said, figuring he might as well fess up to what he had been looking at.
Äke laughed, pressing his teeth against the bottom edge of his horn. When he lowered it, his beard sparkled with mead. “Aye, that she is,” he said.
“It would seem to me that a woman would be at some disadvantage as a fighter; they lack the upper body strength and weight of a man. Though I suppose that matters little if they are trained well,” Halldor said thoughtfully. “It is not the arm that wields the sword, but the body,” he mused, quoting from the lessons that had been drilled into him at Týrshammar. “The body is moved by the feet, and the hand follows the foot.”
“Aye,” Äke said, a touch ruefully. “Size may be telling, but it is not the entire story.” He rubbed his ass, making a show of wincing.
Halldor took Äke’s measure carefully. He was taller and heavier than Sigrid and his arms were longer. Maybe a full handspan longer. “Truly?” he said, his curiosity plain in his voice. “Ah, now there is a story I must
hear.”
“I hardly know it,” Äke said, looking chagrined. He took a long pull from his horn. “Early this morning, I merely said that the lang ax was a man’s weapon, and next I knew she took one up and called me out. I took my shield and a practice sword and we squared off. I moved in when she stumbled and next I knew I was flat-out in the dust.” He glanced over at Sigrid, his face reddening with embarrassment. “That girl never stumbles. I should have known better.”
“So she fights with the lang ax?” Kjallak asked.
Äke snorted. “No, she was taught to fight with the hewing spear. I’ve never seen her fight with a lang ax before. It didn’t matter. She picked it up and sussed it out right quick.”
“She’s that good then?” Halldor asked.
Äke looked thoughtful a moment. “In some ways she’s the best I’ve ever worked with,” he said. He pointed a finger at Halldor. “Mind you,” he continued, “I’ll thump you good if you ever tell her I said so, Shield-Brethren or no.”
“I have forgotten already what it is you have told me,” Halldor assured him, though he most certainly had not.
Äke belched before continuing. “She never puts a foot wrong, and her sense of timing and distance is just as good. I tell you, I was a warrior when she was just a gleam in the Jarl’s eye, and I am First among his Sworn Men, but I never take for granted that I could defeat her in a fight.”
Halldor stopped a passing thrall and took the flagon of mead from the young woman. He refilled Äke’s horn and tapped the flagon lightly against it. “Let us drink then,” he said, “to the hope we shall never have to face her on the field of battle.”
“Aye,” Äke said, shaking his head and lifting the full horn to his lips.
Halldor raised the flagon to his, though he did little more than sip from the wide-mouthed container. Over the rim, he looked at Sigrid, a subtle prickling at the back of his skull.
The sensation was not new. If he was mindful, it would steal over him while in battle, though he had felt it the previous night. It had stirred him awake, in fact. Shortly before the boat had sprung its seams.
Temperatures plummeted as soon as the sun fell from the sky, and despite the fires, the warm clothes, and copious amounts of mead, the nighttime air began to seep through clothing and chill the skin and bones beneath. Some of the heartier souls filled the yard inside the palisade, where more bonfires burned and the walls reflected and contained the heat. Instruments were brought out, kegs tapped, and soon music and dancing filled the space.
The core of the party—the Jarl and his family, the Sworn Men, and their guests—retired to the great hall of the longhouse for a hot drink and to hear the tales told by a skald who had traveled to the hold for the occasion. The common folk would pass through as space allowed, clustering into the hall to hear bits and snatches of the skald’s songs before returning to the yard for more merriment.
Sigrid took advantage of the coming and going of the thralls and the commoners to slip out of the great hall herself during the applause and cheers that followed one of the skald’s stories. The cold air was refreshing after the smoky great hall of the longhouse. The combined misty breath of the revelers picked up the light of the fires, making the air almost glow over the crowded yard. The sound of flutes, horns, fiddles, and drums echoed across the space filled with dancing bodies.
As she neared the tables—a few still laden with the remnants of the feast—she was surprised to find her cousin Malusha idly nibbling on some dried fruit. The younger woman looked up at Sigrid, smiled, and lifted up two horns of mead as if she had been waiting for Sigrid.
Sigrid accepted the horn from her tiny cousin. “What?” she inquired, noting that Malusha’s grin had not diminished.
“Help me, cousin,” Malusha implored, fighting hard not to laugh. She pointed past Sigrid. “Is that the sun, rising early, or…”
Sigrid glanced quickly over her shoulder and spotted the giant Shield-Brethren, his blond head bobbing above the crowds. His hair reflected the firelight in a way that made it appear to glow. Sigrid tried to grab Malusha, who was already dancing back, staying out of reach. “Do not leave me,” she hissed at her cousin.
“Never,” Malusha laughed. “But I know when to make myself scarce too.” Sigrid’s cousin vanished into the shadows of the longhouse, the trilling sound of her laughter fading after her.
Sigrid considered running after her for a moment, but when she heard Halldor call her name, she held her ground. Raising her horn, she rapidly drank half its contents, her throat tight against the sudden influx of mead. Nearly choking, she forced herself to slow down.
“Do you dance?”
She swiped the back of her hand across her mouth before she turned. “Dance?” she asked, trying to make her lips turn upward into a smile.
Halldor’s face glowed in the firelight, or perhaps the apple color in his cheeks came from the mead—Sigrid wasn’t entirely sure. “Yes, dance,” he said, waving a hand toward the merriment going on near the palisade. “It is what people do when they are celebrating. They dance; they drink; they—”
He broke off, and Sigrid was impressed that he could manage to eke out another shade of red in his face.
“And what part should I dance? The man’s or the woman’s?”
“Aye,” Halldor said. “I have heard that about you. Though, while I still have my wits about me, I can attest there is no confusion in my mind.”
“Made up your mind already, have you?” Sigrid replied.
Halldor took her tone the wrong way, and his face crumpled as he brought up his hands defensively. “No, no,” he said, “I only spoke of dancing.”
A hearty peal of laughter slipped out of her, and he blinked in surprise, uncertainty writ across his features. Starting her training as young as she did, she had little practice in the womanly arts of flirtation and fewer opportunities to miss them, and maybe it was the drink making her bolder than she might be otherwise, but she found his awkwardness disarming.
“I wasn’t,” she said. “Speaking of dancing, that is.” She took a long pull on her horn, giving him time to think about what she was saying, and when it seemed as if he hadn’t quite got it, she said, very deliberately, what was on her mind—what Malusha had known she was thinking. “All things being equal, I’d kick your heels out from under you and have you right here in the yard.”
Halldor gaped at her for a second and then threw his head back and laughed, his voice ringing with honest delight at her nerve. “Äke told me you’d give as good as you got in a scuffle,” he said. He raised his hands again. “Peace, skjölmdo, I yield. Thank the gods I only came at you with words; I would fear for my life if we crossed steel.”
And well you should, she thought, intending to say those words as she stepped forward, meaning to poke him in the chest with a stiff finger as punctuation for her words, but also as an excuse to stand closer to him. But her finger never touched him. His eyes never left her face, but he grabbed her finger before it had even crossed half the distance between them. He squeezed her digit—not unkindly—and then, realizing what he had done, he let go and stepped back.
“I am sorry,” he said quickly. “Did I harm you?”
“No,” she said, quite puzzled. Her hand was still upraised, finger extended, but he was out of measure now.
Measure.
She was thinking about her finger as a weapon, and Halldor as an opponent.
He rubbed at the side of his head as if it bothered him, and when he looked at her again, all the levity was gone from his eyes.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Something’s wrong,” he said.
As the words left his mouth, a cry came drifting out of the longhouse—a long, terrified wail. Sigrid shuddered as she heard it, and she quickly brushed past Halldor, heading for the longhouse. “My mother,” she snapped at his unasked question.
FOUR
Halldor followed Sigrid as she rushed into the longhouse. A headache was bloomin
g in the back of his head, a combination of the mead dulling his senses and a sudden increase in his heart rate. Thralls and Sworn Men were milling about, both in front of the longhouse and in the great hall inside. He caught up with Sigrid as she pushed her way into the great hall, and together they forced their way through the crowded confusion.
The fire in the long hearth that ran down the center of the room had burned down nearly to a bed of coals, and the light it threw off made for many shadows in the corners of the room. He spotted several Shield-Brethren; though they stood alert, hands on hilts of weapons undrawn, they were not ready for battle. They had been given no orders.
At the far end, near the half wall that separated the Jarl’s private quarters from the rest of the hall, he spotted Kjallak, Grimhildr, and a few other Sworn Men. Sigrid broke away from him as they approached: she moving to speak with Grimhildr; he, to Kjallak. Kjallak’s expression was a welter of emotions: concern, apprehension, anger.
“What has happened?” Halldor asked.
“The Jarl’s wife, Fenja, was suddenly stricken during one of the sagas,” Kjallak said. He waved a hand at the closed partition to the Jarl’s quarters. “The Jarl is trying to comfort her now.”
“Are we under attack?” Halldor said.
Kjallak glared at him. “Why do you think that?” he snapped.
Halldor glanced briefly around the room before returning his attention to Kjallak. He hesitated to say anything in front of the others. Fortunately he was spared having to explain his question by Sigrid.
“Mother had a vision, didn’t she?” Sigrid said.
“Aye, she did,” Grimhildr replied, even as she watched Halldor closely. “She saw sails off the coast. Coming out of the darkness. Landing at the village.”
“This isn’t the first time she has had such insight?” Kjallak asked, picking up on the inference in Sigrid’s statement.
“No,” Grimhildr replied. “Though she has not had such insight for some years.”
Foreworld Saga 01 SideQuest Adventures No. 1 The lion in chains, the beast of Calarrava, the shield maiden Page 8
