by Peter Fox
‘Master Rathulf?’ It was Myran, his tone respectful but concerned. ‘Shall I take that?’
Rathulf looked at the blood seeping between his fingers and became aware of the hot pain in his palm where he had sliced it with the blade. It hurt a lot, but it felt good. Really good.
Myran put his hand on Rathulf’s forearm then gently took the dagger from him. The Persian laid it aside, then stood in front of his master.
Rathulf was barely aware of the slave’s presence. Instead, he focused his mind on the wound and the glorious, throbbing pain in his hand. He clenched his fist, squeezing it tight, trying to intensify the sensation, but Myran interrupted again.
‘It is unwise to substitute the hurt you feel in this way, master Rathulf.’
‘I don’t want to replace it. I want to end it.’
‘You cannot do this so easily, Master Rathulf,’ Myran continued, in his irritatingly considered way.
‘Well I know one way to get rid of it,’ Rathulf muttered.
‘Do not wish death upon yourself when you have so much to live for.’
‘Grisskítr! My horse is lame, my father’s lame, I’m lame. All my friends are gone, thanks to me. My family are all dead. What’s the point?’
‘In my land, to kill oneself by one’s own hand is a great dishonour. So too, in yours. Do not seek such an outcome.’
‘Then tell me, how have you done it? How have you kept on living when you have nothing?’
‘Nothing? I have life, master Rathulf, and each morning that I wake might be the day I return home to my family.’
‘They’re dead too, remember?’ Rathulf said coldly, ‘and you can’t just wake up and leave.’
‘Really?’ Myran asked. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that I might be here by choice? That here I do have freedom, even as a slave. Here I escape the shame and retribution for my failures, and I avoid the numerous heavy responsibilities and duties that came with my position. Here I can lead a simple life, with few demands and ample space for reflection. You consider this an appalling fate, whereas I welcome it. I know who I am, master Rathulf. Do you?’
‘It’s different for you. You were an adult when you were captured and sold as a slave. I was a baby. I know nothing about the place of my birth. I belong here, in Norvegr.’
‘Do you?’ Myran asked. ‘You and I are more alike than you know.’
‘We are nothing alike,’ Rathulf snapped. ‘I can tell you one difference right away: I’m not a charcoal-eater like you. You’re just making excuses because your life is pathetic and demeaning. You were once a great warrior, but now you’re so afraid of death that you go on living this pitiable existence.’
‘No, Rathulf, you are wrong. I do fear death, yes, but you fear life, which is a much greater sadness.’
‘What do you know?’ Rathulf said angrily. ‘You’re just a slave.’ He snatched up his dagger and strode from the stable, furious with Myran, not due to his disobedience, but for speaking the raw truth. Which only made Rathulf feel worse because he knew that he had no right to call Myran a coward. I am the coward, he thought bitterly.
Rathulf did not return to the house, because he knew that all it would bring him would be scolding tuts from Helga for the cut on his hand, and another lecture from Sigvald about his self-indulgent melancholy. So he struck out across the home fields towards the mountainside instead. Rathulf wore only the simple undershirt and trousers in which he had been sleeping, and he soon shivered in the pre-dawn chill. He walked barefoot, and by the time he had reached the top of the mountain, both feet were bruised and cut by the sharp rocks of the path.
Sigvald and the others came for him after being roused by the interfering Persian, but to Rathulf’s disappointment, nothing untoward happened to him while he wandered the uplands waiting for them to catch up with him. He saw not a soul, nor did he encounter any monsters of the night. Indeed there’d been no sign, no word, no hint at all that Ivar’s promise would be borne out during the whole time since the Althing. Perhaps Eirik had scared them away, or, more likely, killed them all off. “Always strike the first blow,” was one of the jarl’s mottos, so perhaps he had applied it in his defence of Rathulf. Whatever the case, his walk was uneventful, other than giving himself more injury, which, like the cut on his hand, he relished.
He bore the rebukes from Helga and Sigvald in silence, no longer caring what they had to say. It was all futile. He sat in docile silence while Helga applied a healing salve to the cut and bound his hand, and he ignored Sigvald’s continued demands for an explanation of his reckless behaviour. Why are you even bothering to ask? he wondered. You know the answer, so why don’t you leave me alone?
The following night he dreamed again of Aneurin, Leif and Alrik, and he woke panting in horror. He closed his eyes, but the disturbing images lingered. Unable to contain his despair any longer, he rose from his bedplace and sought out his chest. He scowled down at the accursed wolves of his birthright, hating them and his brother for bringing him so much misery.
Well, I know how to stop it, once and for all, Rathulf thought.
He carefully opened the lid, watching for any signs that anyone in the household heard him, then he carefully removed the sword and the cloth-bound ring. He padded barefoot to the door and eased it open, looking over his shoulder to check again that no one had been roused. Satisfied, he stepped out into the blustery night and quickly shut the door behind him. He made his way down to the fjord, spearing off in an oblique angle to the house so that if anyone emerged, they would not see him. He reached the shoreline, where the waves splashed noisily onto the shingles under the stiff north-westerly breeze.
He unwound the bandage on his hand and let the fabric flap away into the breeze. Then he opened the little cloth bundle and took out the ring. He rammed the circlet onto his finger and tossed that cloth aside too. Then he drew out the sword and dropped the scabbard onto the ground. He sank to his knees, shivering in the cold wind. You win, brother, he thought. You want me to join you? Fine, I will. I am going to come to Niflheim then hunt you down and cut you to pieces for ruining my life, jævla rasshull.
He lifted the sword and held the point against his chest above his heart, wrapping both hands tightly around the hilt, not caring about the pain in his hand as the wound opened again as he twisted his fingers around the cold steel guard. The razor-sharp point stung where it cut into his skin, and he turned the blade a little so that it would slip cleanly between his ribs. Take care, brother, he thought grimly, for here I come.
✽ ✽ ✽
The stone hit Rathulf hard on the back of his skull, and he dropped the sword in the shock of the strike. He instinctively put his hand up to his head as he heard shouting from somewhere behind him. Confused, and still not sure what had happened, he snatched up the sword again, intent on finishing what he started. He was too slow. Myran crashed into him before he could raise the blade. Both tumbled onto the ground, the slave deftly kicking the weapon out of the way as he rolled off Rathulf. He took his young master in a firm neck hold so quickly that Rathulf found he could neither move nor cry out. He struggled to free himself, but the slave’s strength and grip were as effective as they were surprising. In that moment Rathulf realised that Myran could have overpowered any of his Viking masters whenever he’d pleased – even Sigvald – and he wondered at the slave’s remarkable self-discipline. He spotted a discarded sling lying on the ground beside him, and he understood now what had struck him. Myran again shouted for help.
Ottar was the first to come to the Persian’s aid, followed soon afterwards by the rest of the household. Sigvald and Thorvald arrived last; Sigvald all but carrying his friend to the water’s edge. Rathulf attacked Myran immediately the slave released him, but Ottar intervened and tore Rathulf free.
‘Enough!’ he roared, clamping his powerful hands on Rathulf’s forearms and pressing them to the young man’s sides. ‘What is the matter with you? Do you not know where you’ll end up if you kill yourself?’
/> ‘Of course I do!’ Rathulf shouted back, struggling in vain to free himself. ‘Why do you think I wanted to do it?’
Ottar shook his head, genuinely baffled. ‘Enlighten me.’
‘Because I want to be with Alrik, which means I have to go to Niflheim, where at least we’ll be together again, even if we are ergi.’
‘That’s fool’s talk,’ Ottar said. ‘You’re neither of you ergi, and Alrik is in Valhalla.’
‘He most certainly is,’ Sigvald added firmly. ‘In Valhalla, I mean.’
Helga asked Ottar to let go of Rathulf, and she took her foster son’s hand in her own. ‘He was your best friend,’ Helga said. ‘You spent virtually every day together since you were tots. Of course you’re going to miss him. What you are experiencing is normal, Rathulf. It’s called grief.’
Rathulf looked at her in despair. If this is normal, then how in all the realms of the Aegir will I be able to carry on? ‘What about my dreams?’ he said. ‘They’re terrifying me, Helga. I’m afraid to go to sleep anymore.’
‘Oh Ra, you are stricken with sorrow. That’s what all this is about.’
‘No, you haven’t seen my dreams. There’s something wrong with me. There’s always been something wrong with me. I’m cursed.’
‘Enough of this blubbering boy,’ Sigvald said harshly. ‘You feel your difference because you are Dumnonian. Like it or not, you are set apart by your blood, rank and title. You lay claim to a vast land and people, and you are afraid of what that means.’
‘Of course I’m afraid!’ Rathulf shouted back. ‘I keep telling you, I DON’T WANT ANY OF IT! I keep telling him that too, but he won’t listen!’
Sigvald frowned. ‘Who won’t listen?’
‘Who do you think? My brother! He’s the one sending the Night Mara after me. That’s the main reason I want to go to Niflheim: to find him and smash his head in, just like Leif did to Horik. It’s all I see now when I sleep. It’s either dreams of Alrik or dreams of him, neither of which I want. I hate Aneurin. I want him to leave me alone, but he won’t, will he? He’ll keep hounding me until I’m dead and join him in Niflheim, or to whatever realm that cursed Dumnonians go. And he’ll take every one of you with him, because you’re the ones who started this by attacking my family, wrecking my ship, and drowning him.’
‘We didn’t attack them,’ Sigvald growled, equally angry now. ‘You’d just as likely be dead if we’d not been there, and remember when we arrived, we found the place ablaze. That’s how we were able to find the bloody thing in the fog. You lot were already hacking each other to bits when we turned up. We just took advantage of the situation, and we were only after loot. We didn’t care who was fighting who. Ottar can verify everything I’m saying because he was there too.’ The jarl flung his hands up in exasperation. ‘You know all this!’
‘Then why is he punishing me?’ Rathulf countered. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with it! It’s you he should be seeking out, not me.’
‘He’s not seeking anyone…’ Sigvald began, but his voice trailed off, and he swallowed. ‘By the balls of Sleipnir,’ he whispered. ‘That’s it. That’s what he’s doing!’
Helga frowned at her husband. ‘I don’t follow?’
‘He’s searching for Rathulf.’
Helga tilted her head, not understanding. ‘Rathulf’s been telling us that for some time now. What are you talking about, dear?’
‘Fruit and seeds,’ Sigvald said automatically. He swore again. ‘That’s what we’ve been missing!’ He looked Helga straight in the eye. ‘How could we have been so blind?’
‘Sigvald, whatever are you going on about?’
The jarl didn’t answer her. Instead, he turned to Rathulf. ‘Your brother; the one in your dreams, your visions. How old is he?’
Rathulf’s brow furrowed in thought. ‘I... I don’t know. It’s hard to tell exactly, but he’s older than me. A young man...’ Then, like his fostri before him, Rathulf stopped as he suddenly realised what the jarl was saying. A man? But he was only a boy when he drowned. And you don’t grow old in Niflheim: you are stuck at the same age as when you died, cursed to wander the frozen wastes forever until someone can avenge you back up in Midgard. Then he remembered the unsettling vision he’d experienced on the night before the Leap, and how tangible it had felt. At the time he’d assumed it was an older version of himself. But it wasn’t, was it? That had been a living, breathing person, practising sword-craft with his sword-master. He even spoke to me! Rathulf realised, his stomach twisting into a ball. He felt dizzy. It can’t be.
Sigvald clapped his hand on his forehead. ‘Curse that witch!’ he said. ‘Why couldn’t she have just said it straight?’
‘Said what?’ Helga demanded.
‘A tree bears many fruits,’ Sigvald quoted emphatically. ‘Most fall within the canopy’s embrace, but sometimes its seeds are carried far from its roots. When I asked the Lady Valgerd about Dumnonia, she said why did I think it was Ra’s to claim? When we left Aneurin behind, he was just a young boy, Helga, but the person Rathulf is seeing is older, sixteen years older. Don’t you see?’
Helga blinked at the jarl, astonished.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Ingrith said, ‘You said he drowned.’
‘He did drown,’ Ottar whispered. ‘I saw him myself.’
‘But none of us actually checked, did we?’ Sigvald said. The jarl turned to his foster-son, but Rathulf had already arrived at the same realisation.
‘That’s no ghost I’m seeing,’ he said. ‘My brother is alive!’
✽ ✽ ✽
They had to pick Rathulf up off the ground because upon giving voice to his realisation, the boy’s head span and his knees buckled beneath him.
‘He’s alive!’ he said for a second time, struggling to take in any more.
Sigvald nodded. ‘He has to be. That’s why you keep seeing him.’
‘But you said Tegen and I were the only survivors.’
‘That’s right,’ Ingrith said, folding her arms and glaring at her father. ‘Rathulf’s the king.’
‘Indeed,’ Helga warned. ‘Husband, this is dangerous talk.’
Sigvald frowned and tugged at his moustache, trying to remember the sequence of events on that damp, foggy morning, so many years ago. It had all happened so quickly: the collision; the loss of the Sea Swift; then Rathulf’s and Tegen’s rescue. He remembered the other boy clearly, clinging to one of the shields. Tegen had put up such a fuss when they’d sailed off without him. Had he survived? The fact was he didn’t know because they hadn’t taken the trouble to look. Then he recalled the person in the water who had shouted after them as they had rowed away; an older man, who could have taken the boy to shore and revived him… He turned to Ottar. ‘Can you remember?’
The shipwright shook his head. ‘As I said, I assumed him dead, as did we all.’
‘There can be no other explanation,’ Sigvald said, cursing his inadequate powers of recollection.
‘If he survived, why hasn’t he come looking for Ra and the trunk?’ Ingrith protested, evidently having decided to act as Rathulf’s spokesperson in the face of her boyfriend’s inability to speak.
‘Perhaps he did try,’ Sigvald said. ‘Or perhaps they don’t have ships capable of reaching our shores. Perhaps he can’t come for other reasons. What if he is a prisoner somewhere? Maybe the people who killed his family hold him as a hostage or slave. That would explain the injuries Rathulf has described and the squalid surroundings.’
But Ingrith wasn’t listening, for a terrible thought had struck her. ‘What if he is dead? Aneurin I mean. What if he is trying to find Rathulf so he can take him into the other-world with him, just like Rathulf says?’
‘Hold your horses, girl,’ Sigvald said. ‘We’ve been here already. He’s not in Niflheim. I’d be willing to wager my life that Aneurin is alive. The problem is, how do we find him?’
Rathulf had barely taken any of it in. He looked to his father, who had been oddly silent throughou
t. Suddenly Rathulf realised what the strange expression on Thorvald’s face meant.
‘You knew!’ Ra whispered. ‘How?’
Thorvald shook his head slowly. ‘I knew only what the oracles told me, Rathulf. I didn’t, and in fact, still don’t, have any evidence to support it. I’d always thought as Sigvald had that the boy drowned.’
‘But you weren’t sure, were you? Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘How did you expect me to raise it?’ Thorvald said impatiently. ‘One morning, over breakfast? Oh, by the way, you should know that you might have a brother out there somewhere, although just where I couldn’t tell you, because the last I saw of him, I’d left him lying face-down in the sea.’
Rathulf sat down on the ground and closed his eyes, trying to shut everyone and everything out. Alive! My brother is alive! He was at once elated and terrified. His first thought was that he must find him, but where would he look? How will I start? Where will I start? If the images in his earlier dreams were any indication, Aneurin was clearly in need of rescue. Yet Aneurin’s circumstances seem to have changed since the avalanche – if the visions were to be believed – so much so that he was now receiving tuition in sword-craft. But if he isn’t in Niflheim, then where is he? Dumnonia? Then a thought struck him. He told me the name of where he was, dammit. Skeptersby or something like that? Hel’s thighs! Why didn’t I pay more attention? Rathulf felt dizzy again, and he opened his eyes. Sigvald and Ingrith were leading Thorvald away, astutely recognising that Rathulf needed some space to himself.
