He’d had to wait until spring, when challengers began coming again. In the meantime, he paid three of the newer, younger ones to carry a chest to Rabady as soon as the weather made that possible. These were Jormsvikings, they weren’t going to cheat him, and mercenaries could take a paying task from a companion as easily as from anyone else.
More balancing in that chest. His mother would surely be locked into a grim life, a second husband dead (and she only a second wife in Thinshank’s house), no rights to speak of, no sure home. Bern had left her to that, taking Gyllir into the sea.
Silver didn’t make redress for everything, but if you didn’t let yourself get soft you could say it went a long-enough way in the world.
He couldn’t safely return to Rabady: he’d almost certainly be known (even changed in his appearance), taken as a horse thief, and more. The horse had been named and marked for a funeral burning, after all.
The horse, in fact, he sold to Brand Leofson, a good price, too. Gyllir was magnificent, a warrior’s ride. Had been wasted on the isle with Halldr Thinshank, bought by him merely because he could buy such a creature. The pride and show of it. Leofson wanted the stallion, and wasn’t about to bargain with Bern, not after all that had happened. Bern hadn’t hesitated or let himself regret it. You couldn’t allow yourself to be soft about your animals, either.
You could get irritated, mind you, and swear at them, and at yourself for not choosing more carefully. He’d picked a placid bay from the stables for his new mount, discovering too late its awkward trot and a disinclination to sustain a gallop. A landowner’s horse, good for walking sedately to town and tavern and back. He wasn’t going to need more, he kept telling himself, but he was accustomed to Gyllir. Was that softness? Remembering a horse you’d had? Maybe you didn’t talk or boast about what you’d done, where you’d been, but surely you could remember it? What else was your life, except what you recalled?
And perhaps what you wanted next.
He waited, as he had to, for spring to unlock the roads and the challengers to begin arriving at the gates. He was letting Brand advise him. Leofson had been taking a protective attitude towards Bern since they’d returned, as if killing Thorkell (being allowed by Thorkell to kill him) gave him responsibilities to the son. Bern didn’t feel he needed it, but he didn’t really mind, and he knew it wouldn’t last long. It was useful, too: Brand would take care of Bern’s money, send it where he needed it, as he needed it.
Once he’d figured out where that was.
They watched the first few men arrive before the walls and issue their challenges and Brand shook his head. They were farmhands, stableboys, with outsized dreams and no possible claim to being Jormsvik men. It would be unjust to his fellows to claim their challenges and ride away and let them in. They drew the runepieces inside the walls and the challenges were randomly taken. Two of the boys were killed (one by accident, it appeared to those watching, and Elkin confirmed that when he came back in), two were disarmed and allowed to go, with the usual promise that if they returned and tried again they’d be cut apart.
The fifth challenger was big-boned, older than the others. He had a serviceable sword and a battered helmet with the nose-guard intact. Brand and Bern looked at each other. Bern signalled to those on duty at the gate that he was taking this one by choice. It had come. You waited for things, and then they were upon you. He and Leofson embraced. He did the same with a number of the others, who knew what was happening. Shipmates, drinking companions. It had only been a year, but warriors could die any time, and forming bonds here didn’t take long, he’d discovered. Bonds could be cut, though, Bern thought. Sometimes they needed to be.
Thira, hard little one, only waved to him from behind the counter of her new tavern when he went to bid her farewell before going out. Her life was the opposite of his, he thought. You took care not to form any links. Men sailed from you and died, different men climbed your stairs every night. She’d saved his life, though. He lingered in the doorway watching her a moment. He was remembering the fourth stair, the one missing on the way up to her room. Important, he reminded himself, not to be soft.
He took his new horse from the stable, and the gear he’d carry north, and his sword and helm (roads were dangerous, always, for a lone man). They opened the gates for him and he went out to the challenger. He saw relief and wonder in the man’s blue eyes when Bern lifted an open hand in the gesture of yielding. He motioned to the gates behind him. “Ingavin be mindful of you,” he said to the stranger. “Honour yourself and those you are joining.”
Then he rode away along the path he’d taken coming here. He heard a clashing sound behind him: spears and swords being banged on shields. His companions on the walls. He looked back and lifted a hand. His father wouldn’t have, he thought.
No one troubled him going north. He didn’t avoid the villages or inns this time. He passed the place where he’d ambushed a single traveller himself because he’d needed a sword for the challenge. Hadn’t killed the man, or didn’t think he had.
It wasn’t as if he’d lingered to be sure.
Eventually, after what felt like a long, slow journey, he caught his first glimpse of Rabady in the distance on his left as the road dropped near to the coast. (Inland, the mountains rose, and then the endless pines beyond, and no roads ran.)
He came to the fishing village they all knew on Rabady, the one they usually went to and from. He might even be known here, but he didn’t think so. He’d grown his beard and hair, was bigger now across shoulders and chest. He waited for twilight to fall and the night to deepen and even begin its wheeling towards dawn before he offered the prayer all seamen spoke before going upon the water.
He prepared to push the small boat out into the strait. The fisherman, roused from sleep in his hut, came to help; Bern’s payment for borrowing it had been generous, far more than a day’s lost catch. He left the horse with the man to mind. He wouldn’t be cheated here. He’d said he was from Jormsvik, and he looked it.
It was black on the water as he rowed towards the isle. He looked at the stars and the sea and the trees ahead of him. Spring. Full circle of a year, and here he was again. He dipped a hand in the water. Bitterly, killingly cold. He remembered. He’d thought he was going to die here. He missed Gyllir then, thinking back. Shook his head. You couldn’t be this way in the north. It could kill you.
He was stronger now, steady and easy at the oars. It wasn’t a difficult pull, in any case. He’d done it as a boy, summers he remembered.
He beached the small craft on the same strand from which he’d left. He didn’t think that was an indulgence, or weak. It felt proper. An acknowledging. He gave thanks to Ingavin, touching the hammer about his neck. He’d bought it in autumn, nothing elaborate, much like the one that had burned with his father in Llywerth.
He moved inland, cautiously. He really didn’t want to meet anyone. People here had known him all his life; there was a better-than-decent chance he’d be recognized. That was why he’d come at night, most of the way towards dawn, why he hadn’t been sure he would come at all. He was here for three reasons, last of the balancings before he changed his life. All three could be done in a night, if the gods were good to him.
He wanted to bid farewell to his mother. She was in the women’s compound now, those who’d brought the chest had told him. A surprise, a good decision for her, though with his silver she could change that.
After, in the same place, he intended to find the old volur. He wouldn’t need long with her but he’d probably have to leave quickly, after. Though he also wanted to speak, if possible, perhaps only for a moment, depending how events unfolded, to a girl with a snakebite scar on her leg. He might not actually be able to do so. It was unlikely he could linger after killing the volur, and he wasn’t sure he could find a girl he wouldn’t recognize. The women kept watch at night, even in the cold. He remembered that.
Remembered these fields, too. He’d ridden Gyllir the last time, had a long walk n
ow. He kept close to the woods, screened by them, though it was unlikely any lovers would be out this early in spring. The ground was cold. You’d need to be wild with desire to come out here with a girl, and not find a barn or shed with straw.
He had two farewells to make, he told himself, and someone to kill, then he could leave with his past squared away, as much as that was ever really possible. He was going to Erlond, he’d decided, where his people had settled in the Anglcyn lands. It was far enough away, there was land to be claimed, room to settle and thrive. He’d had a winter to think about possibilities. This one made the most sense.
He heard a twig snap. Not his own footfall.
He froze, drew his sword. He had no desire to kill yet, but—
“The peace of Fulla be upon you, Bern Thorkellson.”
When all you have to remember, through the circle of an eventful year, is a voice in the dark, and the voice is that of someone saving your life, you remember it.
He stayed where he was. She came forward from the trees. Carried no torch. He swallowed.
“How is the snakebite?” he said.
“Only a scar now. My thanks for asking.”
“She is … still sending you out on cold nights?”
“Iord? No. Iord is dead.”
His heart thumped. He still couldn’t see her, but the voice was embedded in him. He hadn’t realized until this moment how much so.
“How? What … ?”
“I had her killed. For both of us.”
Matter-of-fact, no hint of emotion in her voice. One less task for him tonight, it seemed. He struggled for words. “How did you … ?”
“Do that? One of the young women in the compound told the new governor how the volur had used magic to force an innocent young man to steal a horse from someone she’d always hated.”
He was still holding his sword. It seemed silly to be doing that. He sheathed it. Was thinking hard. He was good at thinking. “And the young man?”
“Went to Jormsvik after the spell left him. Wanting to win glory, efface his shame. And did so.”
He was fighting an entirely unexpected urge to smile. “And the young woman?”
She hesitated for the first time. “She became the volur of Rabady Isle.”
The desire to smile seemed to have gone, as suddenly as it had come. He couldn’t quite have put into words why this was so. He cleared his throat. Said, “A great and glorious destiny for her, then.”
After another pause, a stillness in the dark, he heard her say, just a shape, still, an outline in the night, “It isn’t, in truth, the destiny she would choose, had she … another path.”
Bern found it necessary to draw a breath before he could speak again. His heart was pounding, they way it had at Champieres. “Indeed. Would she … have any willingness to leave the isle, make a different life?”
The other voice grew softer, not as assured. Like mine, he thought.
“She might do that. If someone wished her to. It … it could also be here. That different life. Here on the isle.”
He shook his head. Tried to make himself breathe normally. He knew a little more of the world than she did, it appeared. In this matter, at least. “I don’t think so. Once she’s been volur it would be too hard to live an … ordinary life here. There’s too much power in what she’s been. This is too small a place. Whoever became volur after wouldn’t even want her here.”
“The next volur might give permission, a release from power,” she said. “It has happened.”
He didn’t know about that, had to assume she did. “Why would she do that?”
She waited a moment. Then said, “Think about it.”
He did, and it came to him. He felt a prickling at his neck. That sometimes meant the half-world, spirits, were nearby. Sometimes it meant something else. “Oh,” said Bern. “I see.”
She realized, with a kind of thrill, that he really did. She wasn’t used to men being so quick. She said, still carefully, “Your mother asked me to welcome you home, to say that she is waiting, at the compound, if you wish to see her now. And to tell you that the door on the barn needs fixing again.”
He was silent, absorbing all of this. “I know how to do that,” Bern said. “How do you know it is broken?”
“We’ve been to the farmhouse together,” the girl said. “Your father’s. It … can be bought again. If you want.”
He looked at her. Only a shape. You were not to be soft. It was dangerous in these lands. But you were allowed, surely, to feel wonder, weren’t you? A man went through the world carrying only his name. Some left that after them when they died, lingering, like a burning on a hill or by the sea. Most men did not, could not. There were other ways to live through the days the gods allowed you. In his mind, he spoke his father’s name.
“I’ve never even seen you,” he said to the girl.
“I know. There are lights in the compound,” she said. “She’s waiting. Will you come?”
They walked that way, the two of them. It wasn’t very far. He saw the marker stone in the field, a greyness beyond. Dawn, he realized, would be breaking soon, over Vinmark and the water, upon the isle.
A GREYER, WINDIER DAWN would also come, a little later, farther west.
He still liked to keep a window open at night, despite what wisdom held to be the folly of doing so. Ceinion of Llywerth sometimes thought that if something was offered too readily as wisdom, it needed to be challenged.
That wasn’t why he opened the window, however. There was no deep thinking here. He was simply too accustomed to the taste of the night air after so many years moving from place to place. On the other hand, he thought, awake and alone in a comfortable room in Esferth, the year gone by had made one change in him.
He was entirely happy to be lying on this goose-feather bed and not outside on the ground in a windy night. Others would deny it, some of them fiercely (with their own reasons for doing so), but he knew he’d aged between the last spring and this one. He might be awake, sleep eluding, but he was comfortable in this bed and guardedly (always guardedly) pleased with the unfolding of events in Jad’s northlands.
He had wintered here, as promised, would be going home to his people, now that spring was upon them again. He would not travel alone. The Anglcyn king and queen would be sailing west to Cadyr (showing their new fleet to the world), bringing their younger daughter to the Cyngael.
He had wanted this—something like this—so much and for so long. Alun ab Owyn, to whom she would be wed in what could only be named joy, was the heir to his province, and a hero now in Arberth, and Ceinion could deal with his own Llywerth, easily. There was so much that might come of this.
The god had been good to them, beyond any deserving. That was the heart of all teachings, wasn’t it? You aspired to live a good and pious life, but Jad’s mercy could be extended, as wings over you, for reasons no man could understand.
In the same way, he thought, as the night outside began to turn (a ruffle of wind entering the room) towards morning and whatever it might bring—in the selfsame way no man could ever hope to understand why losses came, heart’s grief, what was taken away.
Waiting for sunrise, lying alone as he had these long years, he remembered love and remembered her dying, and could see, in the eye of his mind, the grave overlooking the western sea behind his chapel and his home. You lived in the world, you tasted sorrow and joy, and it was the way of the Cyngael to be aware of both.
Another breeze, entering the room. Dawn wind. He would be going home soon. He would sit with her, and look out upon the sea. Morning was coming, the god’s return. Almost time to rise and go to prayer. The bed was very soft. Almost time, but the darkness not quite lifted, light still to come, he could linger a little with memory. It was necessary, it was allowed.
END IT with the ending of a night.
I know not, I,
What the men together say,
How lovers, lovers die
And youth passes away.
Cannot understand
Love that mortal bears
For native, native land
—All lands are theirs.
Why at grave they grieve
For one voice and face,
And not, and not receive
Another in its place.
I, above the cone
Of the circling night
Flying, never have known
More or lesser light.
Sorrow it is they call
This cup: whence my lip,
Woe’s me, never in all
My endless days must sip.
—C. S. LEWIS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Laura, as always: calmly confident from the days when I was first charting the sea lanes of this journey, and remaining so when I cast off and shoals (and monsters) appeared that hadn’t been on the charts.
Charts can take one only so far in a novel, but in a work of this sort, drawing upon very specific periods and motifs of the past, it is folly to embark without them, and I have had the benefit of some exceptional cartographers (if I may be indulged in a continuing metaphor). There are too many to be named here, but some must surely be noted.
On the Vikings, I owe much to the elegant and stylish synthesis of Gwyn Jones, and to the work of Peter Sawyer, R. I. Page, Jenny Jochens, and Thomas A. Dubois. I have drawn upon many different commentaries on and translations of the Sagas, but my admiration for the epic renderings of Lee M. Hollander is very great.
Histories of the North are caught up in agendas today (as is so much of the past), and clear thinking and personal notes became a necessary aid. I am grateful to Paul Bibire for answers, suggestions, and steering me to sources. Kristen Pederson provided a score of articles and essays, principally on the role of women in the Viking world, and offered glosses on many of them. Max Vinner of the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde kindly answered my questions.
The Last Light of the Sun Page 49
