The Sea Queen Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Map

  Places and Characters

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Linnea Hartsuyker

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  Places and Characters

  Places

  Sogn—a district in western Norway, south of Maer, ruled by Ragnvald

  Ardal—Ragnvald and Svanhild’s childhood home

  Sogn Fjord—the fjord in Sogn

  Kaupanger—a market town on the north side of Sogn Fjord, one of the few towns in Viking-age Norway

  The Keel—the mountain range that runs the length of Norway, dividing east from west

  Trondelag—a district in northwest Norway

  Trondheim Fjord—the fjord in Trondelag

  Nidaros—King Harald’s northwest capital, modern-day Trondheim

  Halogaland—a district in northwest Norway, ruled by King Hakon

  Yrjar—King Hakon’s seat of power in Halogaland

  Smola—an island near Yrjar

  Maer—a district in conflict, formerly ruled by Solvi’s line

  Tafjord—King Hunthiof’s seat of power, at the end of Geiranger Fjord

  Geiranger Fjord—the fjord in Maer

  Naustdal—the seat of power in South Maer

  Vestfold—a district in southeastern Norway, ruled by King Harald

  Vermaland—a section of Vestfold

  Faroe Islands—islands between Iceland and Norway, ruled by King Hakon

  Reykjavik—Iceland’s primary settlement

  Dublin—the capital of Norse Ireland, ruled by King Imar

  Uppsala—the capital of Sweden, ruled by King Eirik

  Characters

  Ragnvald Eysteinsson, king of Sogn

  Vigdis Hallbjornsdatter, Ragnvald’s stepmother and concubine

  Einar Ragnvaldsson, Ragnvald’s son with Vigdis

  Ragnhild Hrolfsdatter, called Hilda, Ragnvald’s wife

  Ivar Ragnvaldsson, Ragnvald’s first son with Hilda

  Thorir Ragnvaldsson, Ragnvald’s second son with Hilda

  Hrolf Ragnvaldsson, called Rolli, Ragnvald’s third son with Hilda

  Sigurd Olafsson, Ragnvald’s stepbrother

  Arnfast, man-at-arms

  Svanhild Eysteinsdatter, Ragnvald’s sister

  Solvi Hunthiofsson, Svanhild’s husband

  Eystein Solvisson, Svanhild’s son with Solvi

  Tryggulf, Snorri, and Ulfarr, Solvi’s companions since boyhood

  Thorstein, a young captain

  Harald Halfdansson, king of Norway

  Guthorm, Harald’s uncle and adviser

  Asa Hakonsdatter, Harald’s wife, King Hakon’s daughter

  Gyda Eiriksdatter, Harald’s betrothed, queen of Hordaland

  Atli Kolbrandsson, an adventurer

  Bertha, Atli’s wife

  Aldulf Atlisson, called Aldi, Atli’s son

  Hrolf Nefia, farmer in Maer

  Egil Hrolfsson, Hrolf’s son

  Ragnhild Hrolfsdatter, called Hilda, daughter, Ragnvald’s wife

  Ingifrid Hrolfsdatter, another of Hrolf’s daughters

  Hakon Grjotgardsson, king of Halogaland

  Heming Hakonsson, Hakon’s oldest son, rules Maer

  Asa Hakonsdatter, Hakon’s daughter, married to King Harald

  Oddi Hakonsson, Hakon’s base-born son

  Geirbjorn Hakonsson, Hakon’s son

  Herlaug Hakonsson, Hakon’s son

  1

  Hilda rested on a rough wooden bench that stood against the outside of the living hall at Sogn. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back so the overhanging roof shadowed her face, and the afternoon sun warmed her body. After a cold and rainy spring, the summer’s heat made her feel almost drunk. She smelled the comforting scents of ripening hay, fertile earth, and smoke from the kitchen fire. Her youngest, Hrolf—called Rolli—mouthed at her breast. If she sat still, eyes half-closed, not moving, she could ignore her aches and exhaustion, the weariness that had plagued her since Rolli’s difficult birth. At least Ragnvald’s battles kept him and his men away this summer. She found it much easier to run the hall with only a few men around, her word obeyed without question.

  A boy’s shriek forced her to sit up and open her eyes. Einar, Hilda’s stepson—Ragnvald’s son by his former concubine, Vigdis—lay with his stomach on a branch of the tree that stood just outside the hall. He held his half-brother Ivar by the wrist so Ivar’s feet dangled in the air. Ivar yelled and squirmed, and then swung once, twice, and hooked the branch with his other elbow. With Einar’s guidance, he pulled up both feet and held on from underneath the branch with all four limbs wrapped around it. At the foot of the tree, their younger brother Thorir looked up enviously from his play. He was still too small to climb trees with them.

  “Einar, be careful of your brother. You’ll hurt his shoulder,” said Hilda.

  “I’m always careful,” said Einar, with his usual sullenness. Whenever Hilda scolded him, he responded like a man whose honor had been challenged, as though he wanted to put his hand to the sword he would one day wear. Einar had Vigdis’s golden coloring and her high cheekbones, which on him looked raw rather than beautiful. Ragnvald had named him for his foster-brother, Einar, who he had been forced to kill while reclaiming his birthright from his stepfather. “You have to swing,” he said to Ivar. “Let go with your arms and swing.”

  Ivar did as his brother suggested, and then yelled in triumph as he caught the branch with his two arms wrapped around one side. He let his legs go and swung again, sending a stab of worry into Hilda’s chest, and then wriggled his way onto the top.

  “I did it, Mother, see!” Ivar cried. The two boys lay atop the branch facing each other, grinning. With Ivar’s russet head and Einar’s golden one, they made a perfect image of carefree boyhood: suspended in a green tree, against a sky of blue and white, two boys who loved each other as strongly as their mothers had hated. Hilda felt a brief twinge of guilt at depriving Einar of Vigdis. The boy deserved more mothering than Hilda could give him, but she hated Vigdis too much to allow her to stay for her son’s sake.

  By the time Ragnvald had brought Hilda home as his bride, Vigdis, his own stepmother, was six months pregnant with his son Einar. Pregnant, she looked even more like Freya, goddess of fertility and the harvest, a goddess who demanded sacrifices of honey and blood, sweet and bitter, life and death. Hilda could not compete with her beauty or the way she had enthralled Ragnvald. Finally, after Hilda had given birth to Ivar, and Ragnvald had accepted his son by laying a sword across Hilda’s lap, which she would hold in trust for Ivar until he grew to manhood, Hilda had asked him for another gift: to send Vigdis away, and he had done it, though not happily.

  “I see Uncle Sigurd,” said Ivar from his perch. He squatted atop the branch now, testing his balance.

  Einar crouched on the branch as well, looking like a forest cat a
bout to pounce. “That’s not Sigurd,” he said. “That’s . . . why are there so many?”

  “We have enough food for dinner if Sigurd has brought friends,” said Hilda. Sigurd spent little time at the hall during these long summer days, and Hilda did not begrudge him his leisure. Soon the harvest would bring too much work for Hilda to rest in the sunshine with her children, and soon Ragnvald would return as well, bringing news and demands she must satisfy.

  “My lady, there were too many men in the field,” said Einar. “It wasn’t Sigurd that I saw.”

  Hilda stood, cradling Rolli more tightly. Einar could be exaggerating to make himself seem important, but he had keen eyesight. Hilda saw only waving grass beyond the fences, green and gold, rippling in the wind. “Where?” she asked.

  “They’re gone now,” Einar replied.

  “And I see Sigurd,” said Hilda. She moved Rolli over to her hip so she could hold him with one arm and wave to Sigurd with the other. Sigurd waved back—an expansive, friendly gesture—and so did his companion, Dusi, a follower of Ragnvald’s who had stayed in Sogn and married the daughter of a farmer with no sons.

  “My lady!” Sigurd called out as he opened the wicker gate and walked into the yard. When he passed under the tree, Ivar jumped down onto his back so Sigurd could swing him around and then up onto his shoulders. Einar waited until Sigurd had carried Ivar a few steps away before dropping down from the branch and landing lightly on his feet. Sigurd would have carried him too, but Einar rarely liked to be touched.

  “Any news?” Hilda asked, warming under Sigurd’s smile.

  Sigurd bent forward to balance Ivar against his head and raised his palms so Hilda could see the grime covering them, black dust and ash. “The house of Svein the Charcoaler burned down,” he said.

  “Again? Was anyone hurt?”

  “Svein’s hands are blistered and his wife has a black eye from a beam that fell on her,” Sigurd answered.

  “Svein is too foolish to be the charcoaler, I suppose,” said Hilda. Dusi laughed as he fell into step behind them. Einar stepped forward to take his bundle of dead birds. He slung them over his shoulder so they dangled down his back, their heads just brushing the ground.

  “Come,” Hilda said warmly to Sigurd and Dusi. “Let us go inside. I will have Thora give you some ale. You can tell me more of Svein the Charcoaler’s accident. What a fool!”

  Hilda walked into the kitchen as Sigurd told the story. Her eyes adjusted slowly from the bright afternoon to the darkness within, where most of the light came from the cook fire in the hearth. The room was empty except for the young deaf thrall who kept the fire fed and floor swept.

  “Thora,” Hilda called out for the servant who should be overseeing the kitchen and its thralls. “Where are you? Where is everyone?” The kitchen should have been full of women at this time of day. A droplet of sweat from Hilda’s neck ran down her back, making her twitch. She bent down and gave Rolli to Ivar, and touched Thorir’s lips to quiet his toddler’s chatter. Ivar was too small to hold the baby easily, and Rolli began to fuss until Einar walked over and gravely stroked the baby’s head. Even through her uneasiness, the sight caused Hilda another pang of guilt. She should be kinder to the boy.

  In the quiet, Hilda heard low sounds of conversation from the hall’s great room, where the household slept and worked in bad weather. Perhaps a traveling peddler had come selling trinkets cheap enough for even thralls to covet, and drawn all the women from the kitchen. Since Harald moved his court to Nidaros and installed Ragnvald in Sogn, farmers need not fear raiders as they had in years past. No one should be in the hall without her knowledge, though, and Einar had seen men in the fields.

  Hilda pulled her eating dagger from the scabbard at her waist. It would do her little good against a trained warrior, but she felt better clutching the steel grip.

  “What is it?” Sigurd asked loudly. Hilda flinched and put a finger to her lips. She crept toward the door. “Let me,” said Sigurd, drawing his sword. “I will tell you if there is anything to fear.”

  Before Hilda could stop him, Sigurd burst through the door into the hall’s main room where men’s shouts greeted him. A warrior grabbed his shoulders and spun him around. Another shook Sigurd’s sword from his grasp, while a third pressed him against the wall with a dagger to his throat. A Sogn man lay tied up and gagged on the floor near Sigurd’s feet.

  More men stepped forward and pulled Hilda through the door, bruising her wrists. They shoved her face-first over the long table. She froze. Her head scarf fell over her forehead, so she could see nothing except the stained wood of the table she was pressed against. She smelled the grease from years of meals eaten upon it, mixed with the sweat of these men. She had always hoped she would fight if raiders attacked, and choose death rather than letting a man rape her, but instead she was grateful she could see little, and only hoped it would be over quickly.

  “Grab the boys,” said one of them. Rage flooded through her, breaking her paralysis. She would fight for her sons as long as she lived, and she was ashamed that she had forgotten them in her fear, for even a moment. She raised her right foot, kicking her heel up between the legs of the man who held her. He grunted and shoved her face harder into the table.

  “Let her up, let her up,” said another man, this voice lighter and gentler than the others. Hilda’s captor pulled her to standing and turned her around to face the newcomer. She sat back against the table, her heart pounding, her mouth full of a bitter tang, as though her stomach tried to crawl out through her throat. With her newly free hands she pushed her scarf back so she could see.

  In front of her stood a slim man, with lean cheeks and bulging, colorless eyes that caught the lamplight. He wore rich clothing, and held himself wary and upright like a warrior.

  “Greetings, my lady,” he said. His was the gentle voice she had heard, a beautiful baritone, melodious and mocking. “I am Jarl Atli Kolbrandsson. And Sogn is mine.”

  2

  Ragnvald rose from his seat by the fire to greet Arnfast, who ran, panting, into the camp. He had seen Arnfast winded after a scouting mission many times before, and knew not to ask for a report until Arnfast’s chest had stopped heaving, no matter how impatient he was. Arnfast put his hands on the back of his head, drew a few more deep breaths, and shook himself slightly. Aside from the sheen of sweat on his brow, he now looked as fresh as he had when he departed at midday. “King Vemund and twenty of his men have camped at the foot of the cliff near the rock fall,” he announced.

  Ragnvald frowned, rubbing his thumb along the side of his beard, over the scar by his mouth that gave his expression a sardonic twist no matter what mood he wished to convey. “That does not seem right,” he said. “Why would he camp at a cliff face with no escape?”

  Arnfast shrugged. “I only know what I saw.” He had been Ragnvald’s sworn warrior since the battle at Vestfold and understood his duty: to act as Ragnvald’s eyes, not his mind. Five summers of battle had kept Arnfast fleet and slim; the passing time only made his face grow thinner. He shifted his weight from side to side. He was restless unless he was moving, or watching in stillness. He always scouted alone.

  “It is certainly a trap. But you say that King Vemund was there?” Ragnvald asked, though he had never known Arnfast to be wrong.

  “Yes,” said Arnfast. “I saw his sharp teeth, with the ruby set in one of them.” King Vemund, styling himself a wild raider, showed his bravery by enduring the pain of having his teeth filed into points, and set with jewels. Arnfast had seen truly.

  “It is the first sure sighting we have had of him in a month,” said Oddi, who was sitting by the fire, carving wooden nails, always needed for ship repair. He flung the wood shavings onto the campfire’s coals, where they burst into tiny flames. Heming sat nearby, surrounded by his favorite warriors, feeding crumbs of stale bread to a squirrel by his feet. Ragnvald beckoned him over to hear Arnfast repeat his report.

  While he spoke, Ragnvald looked out over the o
ther men sitting around the fires. Harald’s armies had been chasing their enemy King Vemund over South Maer all summer. Too many of Ragnvald’s men had fallen to arrows that came without warning from thick stands of trees, and from the blows of warriors who appeared as if from nowhere, and disappeared as quickly, always refusing to meet in pitched battle. Ragnvald needed to win a victory for Harald soon, or this whole summer of battles would add up to nothing but losses on Harald’s side.

  Now, at least, Ragnvald knew the location of their most important enemy: a place he knew well, for his men and Harald’s had marched over every patch of ground in Vemund’s territory of Naustdal. The flat clearing at the base of the cliff formed an ideal camping ground in peace time, with a fire pit already dug and lined with stones. A tangle of rock fall and saplings rose to the east, which made approach or escape impossible in that direction. Only one path led to the clearing.

  Vemund had started the summer with perhaps a hundred men loyal to him. But Ragnvald had killed his share, as had most of Harald’s followers. Now Vemund set a tempting trap, one Ragnvald could not afford to ignore. Though if he attacked, Vemund would likely have another force ready to come and trap them there, against the wall. After the summer’s fighting, he probably had no more than forty men remaining. An even fight against Ragnvald’s forces on open ground; an uneven one in Vemund’s forest. Still, if Ragnvald did not confront Vemund now, he would escape for another year, and Ragnvald would have failed Harald.

  “Very well,” said Ragnvald. “We will wait here and attack at midnight.”

  “And spring his trap?” Oddi asked.

  “Yes, but we will separate, so it is he who will be trapped,” said Ragnvald. “This is a desperate gambit for him—even if he tries to trap us, he is still up against the cliff wall.” He explained how they should approach: well spaced for stealth but exchanging frequent signals. If any man missed a signal, it meant they had encountered attackers in the dark, and should retreat. “When we see their torches through the trees, Oddi, your half will hold back, and wait for the trap to close, then come to help us.” He made Oddi, Heming, and Arnfast repeat his instructions back to him.