The hum of voices ceased. Somerled had risen to his feet. He wore a little circlet of finely wrought silver in place of his customary neat hairband; he appeared quite pale, very serious, and every bit a king.
“I call this assembly to order,” he said gravely, not raising his voice. “The matters we must deal with tonight are dark and troubling. They touch on the very safety and security of our settlements on this shore. Our enemy works subtly. He seeks to undermine us by turning our most loyal servants and comrades to traitors, our dearest friends to enemies. Do not think that the great victory we achieved at the Whaleback was the end of this struggle. Oh, no. The fight goes on in the hidden crevices and corners of this land, in the dark caves and sinister places of the earth, on the far-flung islands. The evil works subtly; it is under our very noses, in front of our very eyes before we see it in its true colors.” Somerled sighed, his dark gaze intent on Eyvind. “That is why this hearing has been called without delay. I will not lie to you. You know this man has been my closest friend since childhood, dearer than a brother, sworn to me by blood. You know the pain I feel in pursuing this. I did indeed speak with him, offer help, seeing, as he could not see, the poison our enemy had slipped into his mind. But Eyvind would have none of it. It was he who demanded the formal hearing I conduct tonight. Perhaps he was right to do so. These charges are of the gravest kind, and if we find him guilty, the penalty will match them in severity. You all know what that means.” There was a slight shuffling of feet, a fidgeting around the hall. Grim stood by the western door; Eyvind saw his ferocious scowl. Where was Eirik? Where was Margaret?
“So, we shall commence. I will set forth the charges; Eyvind will have his turn to speak. Decision and penalty will be pronounced tonight, and the sentence carried out at dawn tomorrow. Such affairs unsettle us all; they stand in the way of our plans and endeavors and cast a shadow on the fair fields of our conquest. I cannot have this. I want this over quickly, over and done with.”
Men muttered among themselves again; it seemed to Eyvind to have the sound of agreement. Were there no friends here, nobody who would listen? Had Somerled convinced them all before this had even begun?
“Very well, Eyvind.” The tone had changed now; it was a silky, deceptively soft voice, one Eyvind had heard before in a court of law, deliciously anticipatory, like the sound in the throat of a cat before it moves to take the prey. “The facts are thus. You led your men forward at Ramsbeck with a courage nobody disputes…”
It was an expert account. Somerled held the audience in the palm of his hand as he set out the tale of his Wolfskin’s disappearance, his own grief and fury at Eyvind’s apparent demise at the hands of King Engus and his warriors. Then there was the ghostly sighting at the lair of the island witches, when he sent his men out to capture Engus’s niece. The girl was a sorceress, and had needed to be stopped before she employed her dark arts against his own forces.
As he spoke, Somerled moved out from behind the table and paced to and fro, sometimes behind Eyvind, sometimes before him. Eyvind noticed how this king looked each man in the eye as he passed, as if speaking directly to him. It was unnerving. He set his own gaze forward, fixing on a particular point in the stone wall above the heads of the intently listening arbiters. Soon he himself must speak; he must try to set his case out clearly, weary as he was. He must keep this going, he must not give in. The longer the hearing lasted, the more time he bought for Nessa.
“Then he came back,” Somerled was saying, “in the flesh this time. Odin’s bones, I’ve never felt such joy as I did at that moment, seeing my old friend alive, though a mere shadow of himself. We were poised on the brink of our great victory; I needed no more than my Wolfskin’s presence to make that day perfect. I sent him forward to take his place among the others in the vanguard, for despite his obvious weakness he seemed hungry for it. And then…” Somerled’s voice faltered. He looked down at his hands, folded before him. “And then…it pains me to put into words what all of you know already. Erlend, lad, stand forward and tell this assembly what happened that dawn at the Whaleback.”
Erlend cleared his throat. He was a man of few words; a Wolfskin’s realm was the field of battle, the prow of the longship, not an assembly of law, if such a title could be given to this makeshift proceeding.
“My lord, and all gathered here—I can only say what we all saw that morning. Eyvind’s return gladdened our hearts. It seemed a bright omen that he had come back to us on that particular day, at that particular time. It had Thor’s mark on it. I did think Eyvind somewhat…somewhat changed, ill perhaps, and weakened from so long living wild. We did not know where he had been, and he told us he had forgotten. Then, at the moment of advance, he…”
“Take your time,” said Somerled kindly.
“He did the unthinkable,” Erlend muttered. “Disobeyed Thor’s call and your orders, my lord. Tried to stand against us. He was shouting nonsense, wild accusations, a madman’s babble. We had no choice but to take him down, the three of us. He endangered the mission.”
Eyvind kept his gaze on the wall. He counted the stones up to twenty and started again, trying not to hear the anguish in Erlend’s voice. To jeopardize the mission was the worst offense a warrior could commit—almost the worst.
“Thank you,” Somerled said. “You can sit down now.” He lifted his hands wide, turning to encompass the entire crowd assembled there with his gesture. “What could one do? What could one think? There was a woman in it, of course: who but Engus’s own niece, the witch whom we burned with her uncle that morning? I saw the fury in the Wolfskin’s eyes when he heard of her demise. It was clear to me he had been seduced by this girl’s sorcery. Eyvind’s always been a little naïve where the ladies are concerned. There was a whore back home in Freyrsfjord; half the men of the settlement had been through her, but our friend here still bristled with righteous anger if one made the slightest reference to the lady’s…generosity.”
Laughter rippled around the room. Eyvind clenched his teeth. He’s trying to rattle you, he told himself. Stay calm.
“Eyvind gave the slattern flowers and words of love. The rest of us gave her no more and no less than she expected,” Somerled said dryly.
Eyvind closed his eyes a moment. Signe never lay with you. She would have told me.
“This is a simple sort of fellow, one you want beside you in the field, for he is—was—renowned for his courage and his skill in arms. He’s not a man you’d send on an errand requiring wit or diplomacy. In many ways, this great warrior is like a child: easily pleased, easily led. He was like unformed clay in the hands of these people. It took but the space of a season for them to confuse and corrupt him. He returned to us damaged beyond repair. My friends, this man you see before you can no longer tell right from wrong, friend from foe. I tried to reason with him, I tried to help him. Eyvind would have none of it. He seems fixed in this skewed vision. And alas, in such a state he is a danger to us and to all our endeavors. A man strong as an ox and addled in his wits cannot be let loose in a small, contained realm such as this. And who would bear him across the sea as an exile? One does not undertake a long ocean voyage with a dangerous madman on board. I weep to say it, but I see only one answer here.”
There was silence, a silence that drew out as Somerled folded his arms, and gazed at Eyvind a while, then slowly, as if himself stepping toward an executioner’s axe, walked to resume his seat among the arbiters. Not one man present uttered so much as a whisper.
Eyvind drew a deep breath. He gripped his hands together before him, lest they begin to shake. “May I speak now?” he asked as steadily as he could.
There was a stir at the side of the hall, near the doorway.
“I’ve a question first!” It was a rough voice, Grim’s, loud with nervousness.
“You speak out of turn.” Somerled’s tone was chill. “The accused man is next. Questions later.”
“In the Thing, at home, a man has his kin to support him. This isn’t right. Where
’s his brother? Eirik should—”
“Enough!” This time the voice was a lash. “Do you accuse me of being inequitable in my treatment? You, a Wolfskin? What do you know of the law?” Somerled turned to the man by his side, Harald Silvertongue, who had been Ulf’s law speaker. “You explain,” he said sharply.
Harald rose slowly to his feet. His hands were restless, nervously plucking at the fabric of his long robe, twisting and twining together. “Eirik Hallvardsson was sent for some time ago,” he said. “As you see, he hasn’t made an appearance. If an accused man’s brother does not come to his aid, that says something about the nature of the offense, does it not?”
“Where is Lady Margaret?” Eyvind asked suddenly. “Should she not be present here, as the widow of our former chieftain?”
Somerled raised his brows. “We’re dealing with a matter between king and subject here,” he said coolly. “This has nothing to do with Margaret. Besides, she’s away from the settlement.”
“What I have to say has everything to do with her,” Eyvind said. “We should wait for her, and for my brother. Back home in Rogaland, a man has time to prepare his case, to gather his support—” He faltered to a stop, seeing the hard finality in Somerled’s eyes.
“We’re no longer in Rogaland,” the king said. “And you’re wasting time: your own time. Speak up. What explanation can you offer for your bizarre acts of treachery? Or do you tell us it was some other man who stood up there on the causeway and swung his axe against his own comrades?”
The moment had come, and there was no help at all. Even Grim had been cowed to silence. “No, my lord.” Good, his voice was steady: a pity about the hands and the thumping heart. “The charges as you lay them are true, in terms of fact. I did stand against your forces, and I do not regret it. Your actions at the Whaleback were wrong, deeply wrong.” He felt the shudder that ran through the hall; he had just signed his own death warrant. “I trust only that tonight I may give you an account of my reasons, an insight into what you call a great victory.” He tried the trick Somerled had used, turning so that every man present might meet his eyes for a moment, read his expression. It was awkward; the iron shackles that hobbled his ankles were but a handspan apart, joined by a heavy chain that clanked as he moved. “Do I seem crazed or wild? I am as sane as I ever was; saner, maybe, for now I see truth where once I hid from it. That was no victory, but a cruel and barbarous massacre, and the man who led it holds kingship here on the flimsiest of grounds. He sent you into attack on a day when your adversary held mourning rites for close kin. That breached the rules of right engagement; any leader worth his salt knows that. Yet not one of you dared challenge his decision.”
“It’s not I who am on trial here,” Somerled said quietly. The men beside him murmured agreement.
“Get on with it,” said Harald Silvertongue testily. “We’re not interested in the pros and cons of the battle, only your part in it. Right engagement, and so on, is all very well when you’re facing an enemy of your own kind; the Danes, for instance. With primitive tribes, like this one here, such niceties are inappropriate.”
“Have you forgotten the treaty sworn on both ring and stone?” Eyvind asked. “Ulf made peace with these folk, a pact solemn and binding. Do you clasp hands one day in promise of amity, and the next day stick a knife in your ally’s back?”
“You’re a fine one to speak of promises,” Somerled said evenly. “Did you and I not swear an oath of loyalty in blood? Yet you sought to undermine my great endeavor. Even now, you stand in my hall and accuse me of some kind of double dealing. And you have broken another, deeper oath: your oath to Thor. That show of defiance at the Whaleback, that brief display of dazzling strength, it was all an illusion, wasn’t it? Thor has lost patience with you; he has abandoned his favorite son. You just can’t fight anymore.” He gazed about the room, eyes bright. “War fetter, my friends, the malady men dare not name. It has clutched even at our brightest and most dauntless warrior. What other reason could there be for his flight after the battle of Ramsbeck?”
A great weariness descended on Eyvind. He was aware of the trembling in his hands, the ache in his knees, the haziness in his head. Sounds seemed to come and go in waves. This would not do at all. He had barely begun to tell them. His hand came up to touch the place where Nessa’s small token still lay beneath his tunic, next to his skin.
“I acted as I did to preserve the treaty,” he said, finding the strength somewhere to make his voice steady. “The Folk of the islands treated us with generosity. We repaid them with death. If that is what it means to be a warrior, then perhaps it is a blessing I can no longer wield the axe as once I did. I know one thing. I cannot follow a chieftain who has his own brother’s blood on his hands.”
“What!” Harald Silvertongue had risen to his feet again, and so had Olaf Sveinsson on the king’s other side. The hall buzzed with shocked voices. Somerled himself sat tranquil as ever.
“The fellow’s crazy!” Olaf exploded. “This is dangerous nonsense.”
“Indeed,” put in Harald. “Let us hear no more of this rubbish. If Eyvind Hallvardsson can’t keep to the point, his account of himself is not worth listening to.”
“Not at all,” said Somerled gently. “When a man faces a sentence of death, we must at least give him a hearing, however distasteful his manner of expression. Far be it from me to gag his arguments as soon as they seem to touch too closely on my own actions. Do go on, Eyvind. I never thought to hear you putting forth a legal case, old friend; this is truly a novel experience.”
There were a few chuckles, but the prevailing mood was as somber as the look in Somerled’s eyes; for all the king’s banter, it was clear to Eyvind that he understood this was a fight to the death.
“I make no apology for my manner of speaking,” Eyvind said. “Like Erlend, I’m a fighter, not a courtier. I’m here to tell the truth, that’s all, to be heard before you decide my fate. I stand by what I’ve said. As Somerled told you, I’m a simple man. I cannot spin magic with my words to change men’s minds for them and make them see black as white, or white black. I wish to speak of a day on High Island, a day when our good chieftain, Ulf, was slain in accordance with a foretelling, and his brother took his place as leader. Will you hear me?”
There was a frozen silence. Then Olaf Sveinsson said thinly, “This matter has no relevance to the charges. My lord king, it grows late. Must we listen to this?”
“Why not?” asked Somerled lightly, and leaned back in his chair, narrowing his eyes to slits and folding his arms. “It’s free entertainment, after all; we get little enough of that in this godforsaken corner of the world. Please continue, Eyvind.”
Borrowing a trick from Somerled, Eyvind turned around, spreading his hands in a gesture that encompassed those at the rear of the hall, the Wolfskins, the guards, the men of lesser rank. “You know me,” he said simply. “You know I don’t have it in me to tell falsehoods. Somerled was my friend. As boys, we spent many a season in close companionship, on the hunt, in the fields of my mother’s holding at Hammarsby, skating on the lake there, telling tales by the fire. Know then that it pains me deeply to speak thus against him, for he is a man of many admirable qualities, whom once I deemed well fit to lead. When we were children, he told how he would one day be a king, and the others laughed. I believed him. I think I sensed then what I understand now—that he would let no one stand in the way of his ambition, not even his own brother.”
There was a rumble of voices around the hall, then silence as Eyvind spoke again. “I have strong cause to believe that Somerled intended all along to take Ulf’s place,” he said quietly, fixing his gaze again on the stones of the wall above the king’s head, for he could not look into those implacable dark eyes and say what he must say now. “There was no love lost between them; there never had been. Ulf did not want Somerled at court. He seized at every chance to leave his brother with us on the farm. Ulf dreaded bringing him on this voyage.”
“Dreade
d,” Somerled drawled, “that’s a little strong. But it’s true Ulf didn’t want me here. It was Eyvind himself who won me a place on the knarr: a fine act of friendship for which I remain immensely grateful.”
“I did so, it is true. It is to my continuing guilt and shame that I ensured he could travel to this shore. For when Ulf brought his brother to the Light Isles, he brought unquiet. He brought blood and cruelty. He brought his own death.”
Now there was complete silence. Harald Silvertongue’s fingers seemed the only thing moving in the chamber as they played restlessly with a spoon someone had left on the board from supper. Eventually Harald cleared his throat and spoke.
“These are grave matters, Wolfskin. Since my lord king wishes to hear your tale, it seems we must let you speak. I see no way in which these accusations can aid your own cause. Spare us the details, at least, and keep your account brief.”
Olaf muttered agreement; Somerled was silent. He was gazing with interest down the hall past Eyvind, and despite himself, Eyvind turned his head to look. There were women passing along the chamber now with jugs of ale, filling the cups as they went, young dark-haired women clad in plain skirts and overtunics, green, red, blue; girls with ghost-pale skin and shadowed eyes. One bore a livid bruise to the cheek; the other walked carefully, as if bearing an unseen hurt. They were daughters of the islands: Nessa’s people. The sight of them captive in this place stirred Eyvind to fury and terror. He saw, in the moment before he looked away, how the hands of men moved to grope, to fondle, to pinch as they passed, and how fierce resentment warred with fear on the drained young faces. One of the girls spat at a man’s feet, and the fellow cuffed her on the ear, and there was a roar of laughter from the knot of warriors who stood nearby. Eyvind turned back to face Somerled, and Somerled’s lips twisted in a smile.
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