One King's Way thatc-2

by Harry Harrison

  Queen Ragnhild, wife of King Halvdan, had no liking for her mother-in-law or the son whose bed she occasionally shared. Often she wondered whom she would have chosen for herself, if her father had been spared to arrange marriage for her. Sometimes she wondered if even Haki the one-armed berserk might not have made a better match, mountain-troll though he was. As she came to her full strength and influence she consoled herself when necessary with one or other of the stalwarts of her guard. Her husband insisted that no man might stay overnight on her island, for the sake of his own good name and the legitimacy of their one child. But much could be done in the daytime. Ragnhild was like Asa in only one further respect: she too centered her life on her only son, the boy Harald. If Ragnhild had allowed it, the boy's grandmother might have turned a fraction of her disappointed love from son to grandson. It was one theme where their interests ran together.

  “Midnight already,” said Ragnhild in the warm silence. “He will not come.”

  “Maybe he never bothered to try.”

  “Men do not turn their back on invitations from me. I felt his mind as he stood on the dock. He could no more refuse me than my hounds a bitch in heat.”

  “You describe yourself well. But you could have done as much without the play-acting. Bitch that you are, you could have sent your hound Stein to cut him down.”

  “His friends of the Way would have protected him. That would have drawn in Olaf.”

  “Olaf!” The old queen spat out the word. She owed her life to her stepson's forbearance, and the life of her child. She hated him the more, and the more still because her child did not feel as she did, consistently respected and deferred to his elder half-brother, for all Olaf's name for bad luck and Halvdan's history of conquest.

  “And your son, my husband, would have supported his brother,” added Ragnhild, twisting the knife she knew was there. “It was better done as I did it. His body will be found in a week's time, when it swells, and men will say what fools the Enzkir are, to walk out on rotten ice.”

  “You could have left him,” suggested Asa, determined to give her daughter-in-law nothing. “He was no risk. A one-eyed stripling from a country far away, from the slavelands. Who would think such a man a risk to a true king like Halvdan? Or even to your puny Harald? You would do better to fear that half-troll Viga-Brand.”

  “It is not size that makes the king,” said Ragnhild. “Or the man.”

  “You would know,” hissed Asa.

  Ragnhild smiled contemptuously. “The one-eye had luck,” she said. “That was what made him dangerous. But luck lasts only till it meets a stronger luck. The luck that is in my blood, the luck of the Hartings. It is we who will make the One King in the North.”

  The door behind them creaked open, letting in a blast of freezing air. Both women sprang to their feet, Ragnhild seizing the iron stake she used to summon her thralls. Through the door stumbled two men, one tall, one short. The short one pushed the door closed, dropped its latch, this time pushed home the peg that prevented it being opened from the other side.

  Shef pulled himself straight, walked wearily across the room, sword still in hand, forced himself not to drop groveling in front of the blessed glowing embers. His features were barely recognizable, caked with mud and the filth of shore and forest. Blood and slime covered his hands and matted the hair on his forearms. Where his skin showed it was blue with cold, a touch of deadly white on his nose and forehead.

  “You sent me a message, lady,” he said. “You warned me of the bridge-guards, but you lied about the ice. I met your dogs, too, here and there on the shore. Look, this is their hearts' blood.”

  Ragnhild raised the iron spike she had snatched up, beat with it on an iron triangle hanging above the fire. As Shef moved forward, sword raised, she stood motionless.

  The slave-girls had been asleep, though not yet dismissed, on pallets out of sight. Four of them tumbled through the door that led to the main hall and the other apartments, rubbing their eyes and pulling dresses straight. It was not wise at any time of night to be slow in answering the summons of either queen. As Asa often said, she would be entering her grave-mound soon now, and she still had not chosen who should keep her company in death. The women, young or middle-aged but all with weary careworn faces, lined up hastily, daring only to cast side-glances at the two strange men. Men? Or marbendills from the deep? Queen Ragnhild might press even a marbendill into her service.

  “Hot stones into the steam-room,” snapped Ragnhild. “More fuel for this fire. Heat water in basins and bring towels. Bring two blankets—no, one blanket for that one and my fine robe of ermine for the English king. And girls—” The women halted in their first obedient scurry. “If I hear that anyone hears of this, I will not ask which one of you told them. There is always a Swedish ship in port, and space on the temple trees at Uppsala.”

  The women ran out. Ragnhild looked from her full height down at Shef, still standing irresolute in front of her, and then across at Asa.

  “There is no arguing with the stronger luck,” she said. “Best to join with it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Shef sat on a broad wooden bench which almost filled the tiny dark room, lit only by a single wick burning in a dish of whale-oil. Beneath it a covered trough of hot stones radiated heat, scorching heat that shriveled the mouth-lining and stung the nose with the stink of pine-resin from the wooden walls. He luxuriated in it, feeling the deep chill thaw from his bones. Feeling also the need for instant decisions recede. He was in others' hands now. Even Karli was no longer his responsibility. He did not know where they had taken him.

  At the queen's instructions, the slave-women had pulled him away, taken off his filthy, clammy clothes. One of them had rubbed his face furiously with handfuls of snow taken from the fast-shrinking drifts outside, to prevent the frostbite that had already attacked it. Others had poured warm water over him, rubbed him with lye, scrubbed off the dirt and blood and animal fat from his hands. Dimly he had realized that they had also taken his sword, that something or other of the same kind was happening to Karli, but the sudden entry into warmth had half-stupefied him. Then they had led him into the steam-room and left him.

  For a while he sat, not even sweating in the fierce heat, just letting the warmth soak through to his half-frozen marrow. Then as weariness came over him he lay back, propping his head against a wooden billet, and fell into a light, uneasy sleep.

  Somewhere in the dark above him, his fate was being discussed. He heard the now-familiar rumble of mighty voices. One spoke for him, he realized, one against.

  “He should have died on the ice,” said the hostile voice: cold, authoritative, unused to contradiction, the voice not only of the Father but the Ruler of gods and men.

  “No-one should blame a man for saving himself,” argued the second voice: Shef knew he had heard it many times, recognized it as the voice of his patron, perhaps his father, Rig the cunning.

  “He threw away the spear, the spear with my own runes on it. He denied me sacrifice. He does not follow the heroes' road.”

  “The less reason, then, for taking him to you. He would not find a place in Valhalla, would not be an obedient recruit for your Einheriar.”

  The first voice seemed to hesitate. “And yet… There is a cunning there. Too few of my champions have that. Maybe it is a quality I will need on the day of Ragnarök.”

  “You do not need it yet. Leave him where he is, let us see where his luck takes him. He may do you service in his own fashion.” The second voice was lying, Shef knew, he could tell it by the sweet reason that dripped from its tongue. It was buying him time.

  “Luck!” said the first voice, suddenly amused. “Let us see that, then. If he has a luck, it will be his own, for mine he has thrown away. And he will need powerful luck to survive the dangers of Drottningsholm. We will watch.”

  The two voices drifted away in a rumble of agreement.

  Shef came to himself with a start. How long had he slept? Not lon
g, he thought. It was too hot for anyone to lie comfortably. He was sweating now, and the bench under him was damp. Time to get up and look about him. He remembered the lines of poetry he had heard from Thorvin:

  Not evident to any, where un-friends sit

  In every hall.

  As he rose to his feet, the door of the tiny room creaked open. There was a fire lit in the room outside, and from the glow behind her, he realized that the figure standing in the doorway was the queen, Ragnhild. He could not see what she was wearing. As she came forward, closing the door, she pressed close to him.

  “You have shed your jewelry, queen,” he said with a roughness in his throat. He could feel himself stirring at the woman-smell that came from her, stronger even than the pines.

  “No-one can wear gold in the room of hot stones,” she replied. “It would burn. So I have shed my rings and armlets. See, even my brooch has gone.”

  She caught his hands, held them to her gown, ran them down its lapels. The gown fell open. Shef's hands cupped the heavy swell of her breasts, realized she wore nothing but the one open garment. His arms went round her, his hands stroked down the long muscular slope of her back, gripped her buttocks fiercely. She pressed forward, thrusting her pelvis into him, pushing him back. The bench caught him behind the knees and he sat back with a thud.

  As the sweat poured suddenly from his body, the queen straddled over him, thrust herself down on his rigid erection. For the first time since he had entered Godive two years before in the Suffolk wood, Shef felt the inner warmth of a woman's body. It was as if a spell had been released. Half-amazed at his own ability, he tore the gown aside, seized the queen by her hips, began to thrust upwards violently, still sitting.

  Ragnhild laughed, steadying herself on his shoulders. “I have never known a man so active in this room,” she said. “Usually the heat makes them as slow as a gelded steer. I see that this time I shall not need the birch-twigs.”

  Unknown time later, Shef walked to the outer door of the hall, opened it, peeped cautiously out. In front of him, to the east, he could see a thin line of light over the Eastfold hills far on the other side of the fjord. Ragnhild looked over his shoulder.

  “Dawn,” she said. “Soon Stein and the guards will be here. You will have to hide away.”

  Shef pushed the door open, let the air in on his naked body. In the last few hours he had been first frozen, then all but roasted. Now the air felt only pleasantly cool and fresh. He took deep breaths of the clear air, thought he could scent in it the green smell of grass thrusting up through the vanishing snow. Spring came late to Norway, but then plants and animals and people all made up for lost time. He felt more alive and alert than he had since his boyhood. The danger threatened in his dream was forgotten.

  He turned, seized Ragnhild once again, began to push her to the floor. She resisted, laughing. “The men will be here. You are very vigorous. Have you never had your fill before? Well, I promise you—you will have it again tonight. But now we must hide you away. The girls will not talk, and the men will not look. They know better. But we must not give Halvdan any excuse for trouble later.”

  She pulled Shef, still naked, away from the door.

  Karli wondered where they had hidden his friend—he supposed he now had to call him, his master. He himself was lying on a straw mattress in a garret reached by a ladder through the slave-women's quarters. A small unshuttered window gave light, but he had been warned not to look out. His gashed wrist and head had been bandaged, and he was wrapped in a warm blanket.

  The ladder creaked, and he reached for the sword which he had picked up when they separated him from Shef. But it was only two of the slave-women coming up together. He did not know their names: plain, brown-haired women, one his own age, one ten years older with a deep-lined face. They carried his clothes, washed clean and dried by a fire, a loaf of hard bread, a crock of ale and another of curds.

  Karli sat up, grinned, reached appreciatively for the ale. “I would stand up and thank you properly, ladies,” he said. “But all I have on is this blanket, and what I have behind it might shock you.”

  The young one smiled faintly, the older one shook her head. “There is not much that shocks those who live on this island,” she said.

  “How is that?”

  “We have other things to worry about. The queens play their games, with men and the king and the boy Harald. In the end one of them will lose, and pay the forfeit, and be carried to the grave-mound. Queen Asa has already started to put aside the things that will go in it with her, the sledge and the cart and the jewels and the fine clothes. But neither she nor Ragnhild will go alone, when they go. They will take attendants—maybe one, maybe two. I am the least valuable of those here. Maybe Asa will take me, or Ragnhild send me. Edith here is the youngest. Maybe Ragnhild will be jealous and send her.”

  “Edith,” said Karli, “that is no Norse name.”

  “I am English,” said the younger girl. “Martha here is a Frisian. They took her from her island in a mist. I was caught by the slavers and sold in the market at Hedeby.”

  Karli stared at them. Up till then all three had spoken in Norse, the women quite fluently, Karli still uncertain. Now he changed his speech to the Ditmarsh language, related to Frisian and English, which he knew Shef could easily understand.

  “Did you know that my friend and I are not Norsemen either? He is a king in England. But they say he was once a thrall, like you. And they tried to sell him in Hedeby only weeks ago.”

  “Tried?”

  “He knocked the man who said he was his master down, and threatened to sell him instead. A good joke, and not a bad punch. But listen—I know my friend, and I know he has no love for slavers. When we get back to our friends, shall I ask him to buy you from the queens here? He would do it if he knew you were English, Edith, and he would take Martha too.”

  “You aren't going to get back to your friends,” said Martha flatly. “We hear a lot. Queen Ragnhild fears your friend. She thinks he may take the place she means for her son. She meant to kill you both last night. Now she means to drain your friend's manhood, get a child from him, in case his blood is the one destined for rule. Once she has that child in her belly, your friend will find the henbane in his porridge. And you too.”

  Karli looked uncertainly at the loaf he had been gnawing.

  “No,” the woman went on, “you are safe yet. As safe as we are. Till she has got what she wants.”

  “And how long will that take?”

  Martha laughed for the first time, a short and mirthless bark. “Putting a child in a woman's belly? You are a man, you should know. As long as it takes to walk a mile? Less, with most of you.”

  “More with me,” muttered Karli. His hand had strayed automatically and unresisted to Edith's knee.

  Valgrim the Wise looked carefully at the dripping spear, its steel head already showing rust. He spelled out the runes on its iron shaft.

  “Where did you find this?” he asked.

  “On the shore of Drottningsholm,” said Stein, the guardsman. “When we went back on to the island this morning, as usual, I sent men to round up the dogs as we always do. They couldn't find them, and the queen Ragnhild told me she had been disturbed by their howling and sent her maids out to bring them in. When I asked more, she flew into a rage and told me to get out before she had my ears cut off. I guessed something was wrong and sent out a guard-boat to row along the shore, now the ice has gone. They found this.”

  “Floating?”

  “No, the head's too heavy. They said it was close to the shore, in about three feet of water. The head was lodged on the bottom, but the shaft was still bobbing about.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “They could have drowned on the rotten ice,” suggested Stein. “It all went quite suddenly early last night, when the rain came on.”

  “But you don't think so?”

  “It's the dogs,” said Stein. “There's something fishy there, and
Ragnhild is hiding something.”

  “Maybe a man?”

  “Probably a man.”

  Both heads turned to the third man in the room, the remote unbending figure of King Olaf.

  “This seems to affect the good name of your family,” said Valgrim, a trifle uncertainly.

  The king smiled. “What you are thinking is that it is also a good test of luck. If King Shef was on the rotten ice last night, and survived, that was one test passed. If he got past the wolfhounds, that was another. You want me to set him a third?”

  “Third time pays for all,” said Stein.

  “I agree. A third test it is, and then no more, from me or from you. Agreed.”

  Valgrim nodded, reluctantly, eyes full of calculation.

  “Then I will send word to my brother that there is reason to think things amiss on Drottningsholm. I have never done that before, and he knows I would not do it lightly. So he will believe me and give permission for a thorough search of the island and every building in it, from end to end. You must think how you would make it, Stein. And if intruders are found there, hiding, then they must go to the king's justice. It will be heavy, when he thinks the good name of his son Harald is concerned.

  “Till then, Stein, you had better double the guards on the bridges, both from Drottningsholm to the second island, and from that to the third and to the mainland. A bold man could swim between the islands too, so have your guard-boats out between them. I need not tell you to make sure there is no boat a man could steal.

  “If this is to be a test, it is in your hands to make sure it is a strict one. Do not come to me afterwards and say, this was no fair test, any man might have escaped. You must make sure that the only escape is by Völund's path, through the air! Then if King Shef escapes, we will know that Völund he is, in whatever shape.”