‘What’s yours?’
‘I am Thora, and if you get me out of this spunk-dribbling town I can tell you everything you need to know about the north.’
BY THE NORTHWEST COAST OF DENMARK EARLY NOVEMBER, AD 996
The waves stroked the sides of the boat, slapping against the cutting oars. The sails snapped in the wind. Above and behind them the seagulls cawed, hovering over two longships.
No one spoke.
The men rowed with a will, as if the further away they got the more they would forget, as if staring at the back of the man in front of them would make the images in their heads go away.
Audun sat with his back up against the mast, shivering despite the heat in his veins. He was covered from the chest up with congealed blood, grey skull sludge, vomit. He remembered the fight in frozen moments – strangers with bearded faces twisted in rage, teeth bared, wild eyes. The leap. The surprise on their faces as he landed among them. Screams and breaking bones. The taste of their fear, and the blood. The smell of the blood. He shivered and thought he would throw up again, but there was nothing left in his stomach by now. Audun wrapped the torn shift around himself and tried to huddle into as small a space as possible.
In the stern Hrutur steered, silent but frowning, as the knarr ploughed through the waves, cutting a path straight for the land of the Danes. The men stayed quiet, even when the pale blue line on the horizon became a strip of sand and grass.
A grunt and a nudge, and Hrutur’s boatsman took the tiller. The captain turned his back to Audun, knelt and started rummaging in packs by his feet. When he turned and rose he was holding a small travel sack. A hand-axe had somehow found its way to his belt. None of the rowers looked at him as he made his way to Audun’s spot by the mast.
The captain crouched by Audun, close enough to be heard over the wind. ‘Listen. We thank you for what you … did for us. But I think you’re trouble, and I won’t have any trouble on my boat. We’re setting you off just north of Skaer. There’s food, some coin and a new tunic in the sack.’
Audun looked up at the weathered captain. ‘Thank you,’ he mumbled.
A strange expression flitted across Hrutur’s face. Shame? Pity? ‘It isn’t much,’ he muttered. ‘Just your oarsman’s pay. Go south off the beach; the village of Skaer is a day away. Road’s a couple of miles inland.’ He rose, made his way quickly to the captain’s bench and took the tiller from the boatsman. The knarr curved sharply, heading straight towards a sandy beach up ahead.
They landed smoothly and still no one spoke. Audun struggled to stand, then somehow managed to turn and walk towards the bow. As he clambered over the edge he heard muttered voices.
‘—beast—’
‘—monster—’
‘—berserker—’
The freezing water shocked him out of his stupor and he waded onto dry land as fast as he could manage. Behind him feet hit the water and curses rang out, louder than ever, calling for a good push. Mothers were mentioned; insults flew.
Audun staggered away from the boat and up off the beach, sinking into the cold sand with every step. Yellowed tufts on the bank started linking up and soon he was standing on dying autumn grass. Pulling off the bloodied tunic, he allowed the cold wind to bite at his skin for a while. More memories of the fight on the ship trickled back into his head: the pitching deck, the blades that nipped and scratched but somehow never hurt, the crunch of broken faces. He thought about how close he’d been to dying, and the phantom wound in his chest started itching again. He wanted to scratch it, to keep scratching it until he could claw his heart out and throw it away.
The tunic was a serviceable, homespun thing, a sailor’s under-shirt, woven thin and tight. Audun pulled it on and shivered. The wool clung to his cold skin like a hide and he felt ridiculous. Berserker? Dressing in the fur of the mighty bear to take its powers? Audun snorted. ‘Fear the monster! Fear the beast!’ he said to no one in particular. Standing on the beach, on his own with the wind cooling his cold, wet skin, he felt decidedly un-beastly. He flexed his shoulders and cracked his neck. Whatever scrapes he’d picked up in the attack were already healing. What he needed now was somewhere to hide from trouble for a while.
The road stretched out before him, weaving across the plains. Far off in the distance, hills rose above the flatlands; to his left, yellow and reddish forests obscured the view.
He sighed and started walking.
JUTLAND, NORTH COAST OF DENMARK EARLY NOVEMBER, AD 996
The plains ran on almost as far as the eye could see. He’d found the road soon enough, though it was not much to speak of. There was very little out here – he thought he’d seen a faint line of chimney smoke once but it was so far away that he thought no more of it. The good thing about roads was that most of them led somewhere, he thought. There’d be something at the end of this one, too.
Then he saw the hound.
It was a blur of black and white and noise, bounding over the hill ahead of him. Within moments it came to a snarling stop six feet away, head down but eyes up, ears back and hackles raised. Thinking quickly, Audun trained his eyes on the ground, only glancing at the big animal from the corner of his eye: this was the kind they kept to growl at wolves in the night and round up anything on legs in the day, good for snapping his shin in half if it felt like it.
Audun reached slowly into his sack and rooted around for the greasy chunk of meat Hrutur had given him. He teased off a strip and waved it. The dog leapt sideways across the road and barked louder. Audun crouched and held out his hand. ‘Come on, boy,’ he said in soothing tones. ‘Here, boy.’ The dog barked furiously at him, but Audun did not make eye contact; instead he kept his gaze on the ground and the hand holding the meat outstretched, but drew it ever-so-slightly closer to his body.
The dog stopped leaping about and approached, still growling.
Audun pulled his hand in further, muttering nonsense all the while in the same calming voice.
Still the dog drew closer, barking once again as if to emphasise that there had been an argument and that it had won.
Audun smiled and threw the chunk of meat over its head.
With improbable speed, the big dog leapt and caught the chunk in midair, but Audun was already up and walking past it. A couple of moments later the dog was on his heels, bounding and barking.
Audun ignored him for a couple of steps, then turned and addressed him. ‘Do you want some more?’
The dog barked louder, tongue flapping, tail twitching. Audun raised his hand, made sure it saw and reached for the bag. ‘Sit,’ he said. The dog paid no notice, so he withdrew his hand. The dog barked. Audun moved his hand towards the bag and tried again. ‘Sit!’ he said. Now the dog stopped moving. ‘Sit,’ Audun repeated, as authoritatively as he could. The dog barked once, loudly – and sat down. ‘Good boy!’ Audun said and quickly tore more meat off the bone in his bag. The dog’s tail thumped as the hand came out and it caught the flying chunk again.
Audun started walking in the direction the dog had come from.
Moments later, the dog came bounding after him, still barking at the world. Audun stood still and relaxed his hand by his side. When the big animal nudged him, Audun scratched the dog behind the ears. They fell into an easy stride, the dog loping along around and beside him.
The smoke lines were so thin that he smelled them before he saw them. Cresting a hill, he saw Skaer, thought back to Hrutur’s words and couldn’t help but wonder what passed for a village these days. This was nothing but a smattering of houses with runty cook-fires and what looked from distance to be a very crude pier set hardly a ship’s length into a naturally sheltered harbour.
The dog barked once more and took off at a dead run towards the houses.
‘So much for company,’ Audun muttered and scratched his arms. Still – they might have work. There was nothing for it but to go and find out.
SKAER, JUTLAND EARLY NOVEMBER, AD 996
‘There is nothing for you here,’ th
e man said, scratching his pock-marked chin. ‘I hardly make a living myself, so I don’t know what we’d do with another blacksmith.’
Audun looked around his pitiful excuse for a smithy and thought he could probably point out a couple of reasons why the man was struggling for work, but decided against it. ‘I see. Do you have any suggestions?’
‘Try Helga in Ovregard. She’s a widow, our Helga, and will need a hand, although she’ll deny it. Mind you, might want to hurry,’ the man added with a smirk.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ the man said as his face contorted. Whatever he was trying to dislodge with his tongue popped loose and was swallowed. There was nothing more Audun could get from him on the subject, so he settled for provisions and instructions. The blacksmith took Audun’s coins, counted them and gave back a fire-steel, a leg of lamb, a small knife and a hammer that belonged on the scrapheap. They both knew Audun was being fleeced, but that was the way it was. Back in Stenvik he would probably have called it ‘traveller’s rates’. As a parting gift, the man had told him where to find Ovregard, although ‘south’ wasn’t much to go on.
A good while later, before the sun had completely disappeared across the horizon to his right, Audun had found a copse that offered reasonable shelter from wind, rain and unwanted visitors. He built a fire and sat down to eat his food.
He fell asleep in a new country, but with warm feet and a full belly. His last thought was of the morrow, when he would go and find this Helga and get hired as a farmhand. There was nothing out here for anyone. He’d be hard pressed to find any trouble.
*
‘Will you look at that,’ Johan sneered and reined in his horse. ‘This whole place is going to shit.’ The heavyset farmer dismounted in one swift movement, strode up to the crooked fence-post and gave it a vicious kick before his big, callused hands reached for the sledgehammer that hung off the horse’s saddle.
‘You will keep your hammer away from my fence-post, Johan Aagard!’ The voice cracked like a whip in the cold morning air.
In one swift motion, the hammer swung from over the big man’s shoulder and came to rest by his feet. He leaned on it as if that had been exactly what he had always intended to do.
‘Helga! The sun who rises in the morning!’ he exclaimed. The owner of the voice reined in her horse a good twenty yards away from him and did not appear in the least affected by his charms. Thick, silver-streaked black hair was tied back from high cheekbones, narrowed eyes with crow’s feet and a stubborn mouth. ‘Oh, don’t be like that, Helga,’ Johan said, smiling hard. ‘I just saw that … thing and I thought to give you a hand before it fell over and you lost a cow or something like that.’ He was still smiling.
‘Hoping that if you fixed my fence-post I might invite you to use your hammer on my bedpost?’ the woman shot back.
‘And why not? Your land is next to mine; we’re doing the same work twice as it is and nobody’s warming my bed. What’s not to like?’
‘You, for a start,’ Helga snapped. ‘I had no need for you when my husband was alive and I have no need for you now. So with all the neighbourly love that I have to give to you – I’ll keep my land as is, I don’t mind the work and you can go and fuck your own sheep if you’re cold.’
The smile stayed on Johan’s lips as he hefted his hammer and mounted his horse, but it had left his eyes a long time ago. ‘We’ll see, Helga. You’re a hard-hearted woman, but I’ll win you over yet.’
As he rode off, she exhaled. Her mare whinnied softly in protest, and she found she was squeezing the reins in a white-knuckled grip. She relaxed and the animal snorted under her. ‘Forgive me, Streak. He’s just … he’s just such a … I don’t know what he’ll do.’ Her features hardened. ‘But while his cock is still attached the knife stays under my pillow.’ She urged the mare into a gentle trot towards the fence-post and dismounted smoothly.
‘Besides, I don’t need a man—’ She knelt down by the base of the leaning post and fished out a small spike from somewhere in the folds of her tunic. She dug behind it, stabbing hard at the earth and rooting around, grunting with the effort. ‘To fix a post.’ Satisfied, she stood up, leaned her shoulder on the top of the post, bent her knees, set her feet and pushed. The fence groaned as the rails squeaked back into place. She held the post down and kicked and stamped at the earth around the base until it stood solid and didn’t rattle around.
‘See? Hammer? What nonsense. Ground’s frozen – he’d’ve split the post. Although he could have hurt himself, so maybe I should have let him.’ Helga mounted the horse and patted its neck. ‘Now, home with you, lazy old girl,’ she cooed. The horse snorted once and turned around, following the fence.
She saw him from a mile away and her stomach lurched. There was no mistaking the man in her yard, standing by her door. Her first instinct was to turn and flee; to head for Skaer or somewhere else. Breathing deeply, she muttered, ‘Can’t run, Helga. You can’t run.’
She assessed the situation. It wasn’t Johan. It wasn’t any of … them. The stranger was – or appeared to be – alone. He did not have a horse so he’d have walked far to get to Ovregard; it was miles inland, which all but ruled out raiders. Nobody from her past knew she was here, and Forkbeard’s recruiters had done a good job of rounding up the strays last year – so who was he?
Half-annoyed and half-curious, she set off for home.
*
Streak thundered down the stretch, enthusiastic to get inside. Helga tugged at the reins, cursing her own reluctance, but eventually the mare slowed down to a canter and finally a walk.
The man had turned when he heard her approach and now he stood in front of her, rocking gently from one foot to the other, keeping more than a polite distance. He was younger than she’d thought he’d be. Or maybe she was just older than she used to be.
‘Well met, stranger!’ she said as she pulled on Streak’s reins and the horse stopped. She cringed inside at her own voice. How did it get so shrill and loud all of a sudden?
The man looked up at her as if he was trying to remember the words. Was he a bit slow? ‘Well met,’ he finally said in a quiet voice. ‘I am Audun. I am handy with tools and a good worker. They said at Skaer that you might need a farmhand.’
Oh, did they, now? ‘Was it Skakki?’ The man stared at her. ‘The blacksmith? Ugly bastard, skin like a cow’s arse, always something in his teeth?’
A flicker of a smile was there and then gone. ‘Might be, yes.’
‘Well, he’s about as good with his advice as his smithing.’
The smile turned into a grin, but it was swiftly overtaken by a frown. ‘So that means … you won’t need any help? With anything?’
Helga smirked. There was something about this one that felt right, and she made a decision. ‘Not necessarily. How are you with horses?’
Audun shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Decent? Only recently learned about them …’ The last sentence faded into nothing.
‘Well, let’s set you a test, then,’ Helga said. She dismounted and did not admit to herself that she was pleased by how gracefully she could still do it. ‘This is Streak.’ The horse whinnied in response. ‘She’s a cranky old nag, like myself. Put her away.’
Audun nodded and she watched as his attention switched from her to the horse. Suddenly he looked a lot more sure of himself. He started mumbling and took one step towards Streak. Helga felt herself drawn in – she could hear the odd word here and there, but it was more like a stream of sounds.
Then she looked at Streak, who never let anyone near her and would snap at the Skaer kids if they got too close.
The horse tossed her head and sidestepped. Her ears were pinned back and her head tilted as if she was trying to figure out where she’d heard a tune before.
Audun stepped closer to Streak, and closer still.
He was a lot more substantial seen from the ground. They were of a similar height, and Helga couldn’t help but notice the way the material of his t
unic strained against his shoulders and chest but not his stomach.
And then Streak stepped towards him, reached her head forward – and nuzzled him.
‘Good girl,’ Audun muttered. ‘Good girl.’ Big, rough hands stroked the horse’s neck; hypnotic, firm, warm strokes …
‘Do you have any brushes?’
He was looking at her. The colour in Helga’s cheeks rose a lot more than the cold morning required. ‘Yes. Stable.’ She pointed.
‘Thank you,’ Audun said. She looked hard at his face for some kind of smirk, a sparkle in the eye, but he was already away with Streak, who was following him like a dog.
Helga remembered to breathe. ‘Well … maybe I could use a bit of help, just to get ready for the winter,’ she mumbled. ‘Just for the winter, mind. Nothing permanent.’
She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head hard, blinked and looked in the direction of the stables.
‘Yes. Maybe. Yes.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Food, board as far as it goes. But just for the winter. And he can sleep in the stables,’ she added with unnecessary determination, then spun in a half-circle before she remembered what she was going to do and headed into the main house.
*
Audun rubbed down Streak, who stood calmly by with her head hung low. He’d struggled to find things to say to Helga for the first couple of days, but it was getting better now. That first time in the yard he’d remembered uncomfortably well how bad he was at talking to women. ‘It was lucky you were there,’ he said to Streak, who nudged him. ‘Saved me from crapping my pants, you did.’ The horse snorted in agreement.
It had become easier once they had work to do. She was a competent taskmaster and knew what needed doing. She could tackle most of it herself, too, although her eyes had near popped out of her head when he’d shifted the cracked millstone for her. That had been a heavy bastard and no lies, but he’d found the extra strength somewhere. And that shed had needed to be cleared.
‘Audun!’
‘Barn!’ he shouted back.
The Valhalla Saga Page 44
