One King's Way

Chapter Twenty-four

It is an expensive business finding you shelter,“ said Brand wearily.

Shef said nothing. He might have replied that it had sometimes been profitable too, but allowances had to be made for Brand's state of mind. He was not sure how many days had gone by since the battle—in the high latitudes it was hard to tell. Everyone seemed to have been furiously at work for longer than they could bear, stopping only when they fell asleep. And yet—it was an ominous sign—dark was returning to the sky. Summer was past, winter coming on. It came on very fast in Halogaland.

However many days it had been, the settlement still looked barely survivable. All three of the ships in the harbor were sunk or unserviceable. By sheer bad luck Cwicca and his crew had found the range and managed to depress their machine just as the battle was won, and put a rock neatly through the base of the Crane's mast. Driven by terror of the whales her crew had managed to pole her over and beach her, but she would never sail again. The Walrus still sat at the bottom of the harbor, her mast poking forlornly above the surface. The Seamew had caught fire and burnt. Though there were small craft of all kinds available, there was no ship big enough to sail south for Trondhjem, the nearest port, and return with provisions. In time, one would be made from the salvaged planks and timbers—for of course there was little large wood readily available on the barren coast or the wind-swept islands. For the same reason rebuilding the burnt huts would be hard, for all the local skill in using stone and turf. Much of the precious windfall of the grind had gone up in flame, and with it the storehouses and warehouses where Brand kept not only the furs and feathers and skins of the Finn-tax, which he traded, but also the meat and cheese and butter on which he lived.

And besides Shef's train, and Guthmund's crew, there were maybe seventy survivors off the Crane. They had been promised their lives, and no-one had suggested breaking the promise. But they all ate. There was no way everyone on the island could live through the coming winter, however hard they fished and sealed. Many of the Halogalanders had quietly slipped back to their homesteads, making it clear they wanted no part of Brand's problem. They would live. It would be the strangers, and their hosts, if they were fool enough to share, who would die.

“At least we have gold and silver,” Brand went on. “That doesn't burn. The best thing we can do is put a boat together, a makeshift, load it with every man we can squeeze in, and send it off south. If it hugs the shore it might get to somewhere with food to spare. Then turn Ragnhild's Westfolders out, buy as much as we can, and head north again.”

Again Shef forbore to say anything. If Brand were not so tired he would have seen the faults in the scheme. The Westfolders would be many enough to overpower their guards, take the money, and leave the settlement as foodless as ever. As it was, guarding them was taking far too much of everyone's resources. They would have to be sent off on their own. If they could be brought ever to venture out to sea again, with their new terror of the whales.

“I am sorry,” said Brand, shaking his massive head. “I have experienced too much to make any sensible plan. A marbendill for a cousin! I knew, but now everyone does. What will folk say?”

“They will say you are fortunate,” broke in Thorvin. “There is a priest of the Way in Sweden, whose special devotion is to the goddess Freyja. His craft is the breeding of animals, the way you must cross-breed or in-breed to get the best-yielding cows or the woolliest sheep. He has spoken to me often of mules, and the breeding of dog and wolf, and such things. As soon as he knows, he will come here. For it seems to me that we and the sea-men are more like dog and wolf than we are horse and donkey. For your grandfather Bjarni bred with one of their females, and she had a child, your father Barn. But Barn too had a child, and that was you, and your ancestry is plain if we see you together. If Barn had been a mule, a human mule, that could not have happened. So we and the marbendills are not so far apart. Maybe there is more marbendill blood in the race than we knew before.”

Shef nodded. The thought had come to him before as he looked at the northerners, with their massive frames, their eyebrow-ridges, their hairy skins and bushy beards. But he had not aired the thought. He noticed that the word “troll” was being used more sparingly around the settlement, replaced by “sea-folk” or “marbendill,” as if others were also reckoning their ancestry.

“Well, be that as it may,” said Brand, looking slightly more cheerful. “I do not know what we are to do. I wish, I don't mind saying it, I wish I had the good advice of my cousin.”

But Echegorgun had slipped away very soon after dragging Brand to the shore. He had seemed for a short time pleased with the attention he received, and certainly pleased by Brand's gratitude. Then the noise seemed to irk him, and he had vanished as only the Hidden Folk could. He had also taken Cuthred with him, both of them apparently swimming the firth back to the mainland. Echegorgun was impressed by Cuthred.

“Not quite a Thin One,” he had said. “Stronger than Miltastaray, anyway. And look at the hair on his back! Grease him well, he could swim with the seals too. Miltastaray likes him. He could be a good mate for her.”

Shef had gaped at the last thought, and then said cautiously, unsure how to put it. “I thought you said, Echegorgun, that you knew what had happened to him. Well, what happened was that some of the other Thin Ones, they cut off, well, not what makes him a man, but what…”

Echegorgun cut him off. “I know. It means less to us than to you. You know why you live such short lives? Because you mate all the time, not just in season. Every time you do it, more of your life gone. A thousand times for every child, I have listened at many windows! Hah. Miltastaray would look for something else in a man.”

And with that they had gone. Shef had had time only to speak to Cuthred and ask him to ask Echegorgun to bury his human kills, like a civilized person, instead of smoking them like a—like a marbendill. “Tell him we'll pay him in pigs,” he had said.

“You haven't got any pigs,” Cuthred had replied. “Anyway, I prefer pigs to people.”

Perhaps they would all have larders like Echegorgun's before the winter was out, Shef thought. As the circular discussion between Thorvin, Brand, Guthmund and the others continued, he got up, brooding, and walked away. He carried with him the lance he had taken from the smokehouse: it felt more comfortable than the ‘Gungnir’ spear, or the expensive swords he had acquired and lost. The best thing to do when you were faced with an insoluble problem, he had found, was to ask everyone about it till you met the one who knew the answer.

He found Cwicca and the gang sharing a scanty meal in a break from their work of trying to recover planking from the wrecked ships. As he approached, they stood up respectfully. Shef wondered for a moment. They did that sometimes. Sometimes, misled by his accent when he was speaking English, they forgot and treated him as one of themselves. They seemed to be doing that less often.

“Sit,” he said, but remained standing himself, leaning on the lance. “Not much to eat, I see.”

“And there's going to be less,” agreed Cwicca.

“There's talk of sending the prisoners away in a ship, when we've built it. If we could build two we could trust someone to go south for food.”

“If we could build two,” demurred Wilfi.

“If we can get anyone to sail it,” added Osmod. “Right now everyone's so scared of whales they'd run aground if they saw a spout.”

“Dead right too,” put in Karli fervently. “I mean to say one thing, lord. You know I saw one of those things when I poled across from Drottningsholm? Right out on the water, close up? Well, one of those here was the same one. I saw a bite-mark on his fin. Same thing here. It looks as if—well, as if they followed us up.”

Or followed you up, he thought but did not say. The English ex-slaves had told him many strange stories of their master, whom they both venerated and felt at home with. He had believed few of them. Now, he was beginning to wonder. Was there a penalty, he thought, for a man who had greeted the son of a god by knocking him down. There had not seemed to be one so far.

“Well, if we don't do something we'll all starve to death,” said Shef.

The ex-slaves considered the prospect. Not an unfamiliar one. Many slaves, and as many poor folk, died in the winter, from cold or hunger or both. They had all known it to happen.

“I had an idea,” said Udd, and then stopped, with his usual shyness in front of a group.

“Was it about iron?” asked Shef.

Udd nodded vigorously, recovering his nerve. “Yes, lord. You know that ore we saw down at the College at Kaupang? The sort that took so little working, because there's so much metal in the stone? It comes from Jarnberaland. Iron-bearing Land.”

Shef nodded encouragingly, with no idea where this thought was leading. They couldn't eat iron, but sarcasm would cut Udd off completely.

“There's a place called Kopparberg too. Copper Mountain. Well, the thing is, they're both over there.” Udd pointed across the harbor to the mountainous shore opposite. “On the other side of the mountains, I mean. I thought, if we can't sail, we could walk. It's not as if there's nowhere the other side.”

Shef looked at the jagged forbidding shore, thought of the terrible cramping struggle up the side of Echegorgun's inlet. The path they had come upon. The easy ridge route Echegorgun had taken to bring them out opposite the island.

“Thank you, Udd,” he said. “I'll think about that.”

He walked on till he found Guthmund the Swede. Guthmund was in unexpectedly good spirits. He had lost his ship, and there was every chance of dying of starvation. On the other hand, the loot from the Crane had been surprisingly good. Ragnhild had taken half her ancestral treasure with her, to buy men and revenge, and it had been recovered from the wreck. Deaths in the attack had meant fewer people to share it with, too. Guthmund greeted his young leader with a smile. They called him Guthmund the Greedy. His ambition was to become Gull-Guthmund, or Gold-Guthmund in English.

The smile vanished as Shef asked him about what Udd had said. “Oh, it's up there somewhere all right,” he agreed. “But I wouldn't know where exactly. You folk don't realize. Sweden is a thousand miles long from end to end, all the way from Skaane to the Lapp-mark. If Skaane is Swedish,” he added. “I am from Soderrnanland myself, I am a true Swede. But I guess, I guess this is about as far north as Jarnberaland.”

“How can you tell?”

“By the way the shadows fall. If you measure a shadow at noon, and you know how far it is from midsummer, you can tell how far north you are. It is one of the crafts of the Way, Skaldfinn Njörth's priest once showed me.”

“So if we went up there and walked due east we would come to Jarnberaland in the country of the Swedes.”

“You might not have to walk all the way,” said Guthmund. “I have heard it said that there are lakes up there in the Keel, the central range, and they run east and west. Brand told me that when the Finns on this side raid the Finns on the other—Kvens they call them—they take bark boats and paddle along them.”

“Thank you, Guthmund,” said Shef, and walked on again.

Brand looked incredulous when Shef reported the results of his conversations to him and Thorvin, still sitting together. “Can't be done,” he said flatly.

“Why not?”

“It's too late in the year.”

“A month after midsummer?”

Brand sighed. “You don't realize. Up here summer doesn't last long. On the coast, all right, the sea seems to keep the snow and ice off for a while. But just think. Remember what it was like in Hedeby, like spring, you said. Get to Kaupang and it's still ice-bound. And how far is that? Three hundred miles north? Here you're another six hundred. A few miles in from the coast—and that's as far as I've ever been, even chasing Finns—and there's snow on the ground more than half the year. The higher you go, the worse it gets. The high mountains never melt at all.”

“So cold is the problem. But Udd's right, is he, it is Jarnberaland on the other side, maybe two hundred miles off? Ten days' travel.”

“Twenty days' travel. If you're very very lucky. In some of the country I've seen three miles is a hard day. If you don't get turned round and die walking in a circle.”

“Still,” Thorvin put in, pulling at his beard, “there is something few people know. And that is that the Way is strong in Jarnberaland. Naturally, for we are craftsmen and smiths. And smiths go to iron. There are priests of the Way there, working with the folk who mine the iron. Some say it is as good as a second College. Valgrim was against it. He said there could only be one College.”

And he the head of it, Shef thought. Valgrim's errors had finally caught up with him. He had been in the boats that rowed back to the Crane, and only two of the men in them had survived, Brand and a young man who had remained hunched into a ball ever since they pulled him on shore, making small noises of fear. Ragnhild could have died that way too, Shef told himself. Just an accident. Another of the ones that surrounded him. Part of his luck, Olaf Elf-of-Geirstath would say, and King Alfred with him.

“So if we crossed the mountains,” Shef went on, “we might even find help the other side.”

“But you can't cross the mountains,” Brand repeated, exasperated. “The mountains are full of Finns and—”

“And the Hidden Folk,” Shef completed for him. “Thank you, Brand.” He rose to his feet and walked off yet again, the lance marking his paces.

The final word came from a man whose name he did not know, one of the Crane's crew, sweating in the pale sunlight as he and his mates heaved rocks on to a sled, to drag to the settlement to make a few more winter shelters. Halogalanders watched them from a distance, carrying bundles of seal-harpoons. Shef, still unsure of his proper course, paused to watch them for a moment. One of them looked up. A relative of Kormak, he spoke bitterly. “Today we sweat, you watch. We were defeated—but not by men, by whales! That cannot happen twice. Next time you will find no protectors. The Rogalanders are still looking out for you, and Ragnhild's kin will pay her bounty. And behind them, the Ragnarssons. Sigurth Snake-eye will pay as much for you as Ragnhild would have. If you go south, you will meet someone. You will never see England again, one-eye. The only man who could get through what waits for you would need an iron skin. Like Sigurth Fafnirsbane. And even he left a weak spot!”

Shef looked down reflectively. He knew the story of Sigurth who killed the dragon Fafnir—he had seen a part of it himself, in vision, seen the dragon-mask. He knew too that Sigurth had been betrayed by his lover, and killed by her husband and his kin, once they found out that the dragon's blood that had made his skin impenetrable had been checked at one spot by a leaf that stuck to it, and left him vulnerable only in the back. He, Shef, had had an angry lover as well, though she was dead, and her husband too. And he had killed a dragon, if Ivar Boneless might be considered as such.

The parallels were too close for comfort. And it was true enough that the North Way down the coast was also the one way south, and all too easily blocked.

“I hear what you say,” he answered. “And I thank you for your warning. But you meant it in malice. If you have nothing better to say, do not speak next time.” He reached out, carefully, and tapped the angry Viking on the very throat-ball with the point of his lance.

The human mind is strange. Nose-bleeds start from fear. A stammer is cured by a shock, feeble old women start from their beds in a crisis and lift great timbers from their sons' bodies. Kormak's relative knew he had spoken too freely. Knew that if the one-eyed man ran him through with the lance, there would be no complaint against him. As the point touched his throat, his gullet froze with fear. And remained frozen.

As Shef walked away one of his mates said to him in an undertone, “You chanced it there, Svipdag.”

Svipdag turned to him, eyes wide. Tried to speak. Tried again, and again. Nothing came out but a low gargling. Men saw the terror in Svipdag's eyes as he realized that he meant to speak, but had been robbed of the ability as if a cord had been tied round his windpipe.

The other prisoners looked after Shef's retreating back. They had heard stories of him, of the death of Ivar, of Halvdan, of how King Olaf had handed over all his luck and his family's into this man's keeping. They knew he bore the sign of some unknown god round his neck, his father, some had heard.

“He said, ‘do not speak’,” one of the Vikings muttered. “And now he can't!”

“I'm telling you, he called the whales in too,” said another.

“And the Hidden Folk come to his help.”

“If I'd known all that, Ragnhild could have whistled herself hoarse before I came on this gods-forsaken trip.”

“You don't have to do this, you know,” said Brand when Shef told him of his decision. “We'll think of something. Get those greedy louts from the Crane out of the way, things'll look better. We can send some lads south in the dories, maybe buy a boatload of food in Trondhjem, and a boat to put it in. You don't have to walk off into the snow, even if someone else does.”

“That's what I'm going to do anyway,” said Shef.

Brand hesitated, embarrassed. He felt he had spoken too gloomily earlier, provoked this insane decision. He remembered when he had first taken Shef under his protection, after they had put his eye out. He had taught him Norse, taught him how to use a sword properly, taught him the way of the drengr, the professional marching warrior. And Shef had taught him much too. Raised him to glory, and to riches—for the crisis now was one of food and fuel and ships, not of money.

“Look, no-one I know of has ever been deep into those mountains and come back, let alone come out the other side, Maybe the Finns do, but they're different. It's wolves and bears and cold. And where are you if you get through? Sweden! Or Swedish Finnmark, or somewhere. I can't see why you're doing this.”

Shef thought for a few moments before replying. “I think I have two reasons,” he said. “One is this. Ever since I went to the cathedral this spring, saw Alfred and—and Godive marry, I've felt that things were getting out of my hand. People pushed me, and I went along. I did what I had to. From the sandbank to the slave-market to Kaupang to the queen. Across the Upland and up to here. Chased by the Ragnarssons and Ragnhild and even by the whales. Now I think I've retreated as far as I mean to. From now on I'm going to go back. I have been deep into the darkness, into the smokehouse of the Hidden Folk, even. Now I have to get into the light. And I don't mean to go back the way I came.”

Brand waited. Like most of the men of the North, he believed deeply in luck. What Shef was saying was that he meant to change his luck. Or maybe that his luck had turned. Some people would say that the young man had luck and to spare. But no man could judge of another's luck, that was clear. “The other reason?” he prompted. Shef pulled his pole-ladder pendant forward from his chest. “I don't know if you think this means anything,” he said. “Do you think I have a god for a father?”

Brand did not reply. “Well,” Shef went on, “I keep seeing things, as you know. Sometimes asleep, sometimes awake. I know someone is trying to tell me things. Sometimes it's very easy. When we found Cuthred, I had been shown to look for a man turning a great mill. Or had I heard the mill-wheel creaking already? I don't know. But then, and the time when Cwicca broke down the wall of the queen's house to get me out, I had a warning. A warning about something that was happening right then. All that's easy enough. But I have seen other things that are not so easy. I saw a hero dying, and an old woman. I saw the sun turn into a chariot pursued by wolves, and into a father-god's face. I saw a hero ride to rescue Balder from Hel, and I saw the White Christ killed by soldiers of the Rome-folk who spoke our own tongue. I saw the heroes in Valhalla, and I saw how those who are not heroes are received there.

“Now all those sights were trying to tell me something. Not something easy. Not only from one side, from the pagans or the Christians. What I think they were trying to tell me—or maybe I am telling myself—is that there is something wrong. Something wrong with the way we all live. We are sliding into the Skuld-world, Thorvin would say. Virtue has gone out of us, out of us all, Christians and pagans. If this pendant means anything, it means that I must try to put it back. One step at a time, as you mount a ladder.”

Brand sighed. “I see your mind is made up. Who will go with you?”

“You?”

Brand shook his head. “I have too much to do here. I cannot leave my own kin unfed and unsheltered.”

“Cwicca and his gang will come, I think, and Karli. He came with me for adventures. If he gets back to the Ditmarsh he will be the greatest story-teller they ever had. Udd for sure, maybe Hund, maybe Thorvin. I have to speak again to Cuthred, and to your cousin.”

“There is a skerry where I can leave a message,” Brand conceded reluctantly. “Your chances would go up a great deal if he would accompany you. But maybe he thinks he has done enough.”

“What about provisions? What can you spare us?”

“Not much. But you will have the best of what we still own.” Brand pointed. “One thing. Why are you still carrying that old weapon? All right, you picked it up in the smokehouse when you had nothing else, but look at it. It's old, the gold inlay is worn off, the blade is thin, it has no cross-piece. Not half the weapon Sigurth's ‘Gungnir’ was. Give it to me, I'll find you a better one.”

Shef hefted the weapon thoughtfully. “I call it a good spear that conquers,” he said. “I'll keep it.”