The Sea Queen Page 10

  “Atli has asked for my generosity, and reminded me of my duty to a guest. He has asked to hear your deeds, and I would not let your praises go unsung,” said Ragnvald. “Oddbjorn Hakonsson, your able captain, will begin. But”—he glanced at Atli—“there is much more to tell. I wish for each man among you to stand and give an accounting of the deeds of you and your fellows. Even a king cannot have eyes everywhere, and I know that deeds of valor large and small have taken place this summer. Let no man be silent if he has a tale to tell.” Tonight Ragnvald would not need their swords to best Atli, only their words.

  * * *

  Of those seated at the high table, Atli nodded off first, followed by Oddi. Then Hilda gathered the children from where they lay dozing among the sleeping dogs and tucked them into their beds, behind curtains at the hall’s perimeter. Atli’s men began to droop after ten of Ragnvald’s had stood to relate the tales of their small skirmishes. The snores of Ragnvald’s men soon joined Atli’s. Ragnvald had to pinch his thigh to keep himself awake as his warriors told their stories. If the talk flagged, Ragnvald roused himself to question the speaker and extend his tale. He pushed on through a haze of fatigue, finding that he did not want to sleep, even though his body craved rest. These tales told him parts of the battle he had missed.

  Frakki had fought side by side with his best friend from childhood at their first stand against Vemund and saw him die three days later of a stomach wound.

  Malmury, one of the few women among Ragnvald’s fighters, had lost her right eye. Ragnvald decided to compensate her with a large chunk of an armband, hacking it to pieces on the table with an ax, and startling Atli awake for a moment. Malmury declared that she would rather have the gold than her eye, since she had never been a beauty. Those who remained awake toasted Ragnvald as ring breaker.

  “Ring melter, rather,” said Slagvi, a grim-looking man with a mean, twisted mouth. “It takes a hard man to stand by while other men burn,” he said. Slagvi claimed that he had kept the fire burning all night, while other men withdrew. “I watched, just as you did, my lord.” Ragnvald was loath to reward him—the fire had not needed tending, not that Ragnvald remembered. Yet reward him he did, for following orders, for not flinching from the fire’s gaze.

  At length all men slept, including Atli and his warriors. Even the last man to speak, Bergvith, who had saved his scouting party from certain ambush, sat down after his tale, dazed, and was asleep with his head on the table a moment later.

  Ragnvald crawled into bed next to Hilda. Still asleep, she turned over to make room for him. He wished to wake her, not to satisfy himself on her, but to see a more pleasant sight than the rough faces of his men, still not washed from their journey. Ragnvald was finally home, and wanted to be wrapped in its embrace. He listened to Hilda’s breathing until it finally sent him to sleep as well.

  * * *

  When Ragnvald woke the next morning, Hilda’s side of the bed was cool. Ragnvald felt relaxed and alert—better than he ought to after a late night of drinking. Today the hall would be his alone. He knew he must follow Atli to Nidaros to make sure Atli did not use his silver tongue to persuade Harald he had some claim to Sogn. Harald would never favor Atli over Ragnvald, but if Ragnvald were not there to defend himself, Atli could use his tale of taking over Sogn for ten days to his advantage.

  Still, there would be time enough for Ragnvald to have some meals with his wife, play with his sons, and see how Sogn had fared this summer without him before rushing back to Harald’s court. When Harald had made Ragnvald king of Sogn six years earlier, Ragnvald thought that the whole of his duty was to protect his subjects from raiders, collect taxes, and hold the year-turning feasts. He would let none of his subjects starve, of course, and if he succeeded in those aims, he would be remembered as a better king than his grandfather, and far better than his father, who had not even been acclaimed king by the Sogn ting, had only managed his own estate, and that poorly.

  Ragnvald had hosted a harvest festival in his first year as king, and attracted only a few of his subjects, though he sent messengers in every direction carrying his invitation. The food he asked Hilda to cook had spoiled without enough guests to eat it, and thralls fed it to the pigs. Ragnvald assembled a band of warriors and set out to collect the taxes he owed Harald, which at least some of his subjects should have brought to the festival in the form of livestock, grain, and cheese. He would, in turn, give his taxes to Harald as silver, timber, or furs. Ragnvald’s first stop was at the farm of Lief Liefsson. He had visited Lief’s farm with his father as a boy—the elder Lief had a herd of cattle that dwarfed the herd at Ardal. When Ragnvald became king, his son Lief had twenty cows, which still made his one of the richer farms in Sogn.

  “What happened to your fine herd, Leif?” Ragnvald had asked him. “I thought to borrow one of your bulls to service our cows at the hall.”

  “Starved,” said Lief. “Another bad winter like the last, and the herd will not survive.”

  Ragnvald had not thought it a particularly bad winter. Then, he had spent it with Harald at Vestfold, where the weather was milder. “How did you come to such a pass?”

  “Too many raids from other districts—carried off all the good stock, and what is left breeds sickly. They don’t give much milk, the calves don’t survive. My brother Leiknarr thought he would fare better in Iceland, so off he went. Also, he fought for King Gudbrand in Hordaland and feared Harald would not like him here.”

  Harald might care about the allegiance of Leiknarr and once-rich farmers like him, or he might not. Probably not, as long as none of them decided to call himself king and take a king’s privileges. “I will send my men to borrow your strongest bull as your season’s tax,” said Ragnvald. “I will ask for no more than that.”

  He found the same or worse at most of the other farms he visited on that first circuit. The farmers on poor land owned no livestock at all except some stringy chickens that rarely laid eggs. At many farms, the damage had been done by earlier raids that were never answered in kind. The farms that had held on to their wealth boasted many sons who grew to manhood and could wield a sword well enough to raid the livestock back from their neighbors. That was as it should be—raids of neighbors were for sharpening the skills of high-spirited boys, not draining away Sogn’s prosperity.

  Ragnvald could not give Harald taxes from Sogn that year, or any year since. He spent all of his first winter in Sogn making plans, and in the spring, he began to use the gold he had won fighting at Harald’s side to gift all of the farmers who attended his feasts with calves and sheep. He took Lief with him to visit other districts and buy livestock from them, for Maer had fared better over the last few years. Though Maer’s farmers raided one another, King Hunthiof and Solvi had been too fearsome for raiders from outside the district to trouble them. Each year Ragnvald poured what he won from Harald’s wars into Sogn’s farms, and each year they grew a little richer.

  Now Sogn farms produced as much as they had before Ragnvald’s father died. In another three years they could sell cows, sheep, and goats to the kingdoms that had first supplied them, and begin to replenish the gold Ragnvald had spent. Would Atli have done that as king of Sogn, or would he have taken what little Sogn’s farmers still possessed?

  Atli’s was the first face Ragnvald saw in the hall after pushing back the curtain that hid his bed from the common area. He sat dicing desultorily with one of his men and pushing his spoon around a bowl of steaming porridge. He grinned when he saw Ragnvald. “Good morning, Ragnvald Eysteinsson. In wakefulness, at least, you are a hero without peer!” If Atli’s head pained him, it did not show. Well, he had slept longer than Ragnvald, if less comfortably.

  Ragnvald put his hand to his sword. “My hospitality extended through the night, and I slept late enough to give you plenty of time to be gone.”

  “Come, you kept us up so late, I was certain you had changed your mind and wished to extend our stay.” Atli ate a spoonful of his breakfast.

  �
��Were you certain of that? Truly?” Ragnvald asked. “I promise, I have not.”

  “Do you withdraw your hospitality, then? Is it to be a battle?” Atli spoke the words as a jest, his red, too-full lips opening over half-chewed food and making Ragnvald’s stomach unsteady. A servant appeared at that moment with some light ale and a bowl of porridge. The smell of food settled his queasiness. He was only hungry.

  “If you like,” said Ragnvald, imitating Atli’s jesting tone with an edge. “Since your men cannot move with enough speed to have cleared out by morning, and there are fewer of them than mine, I will let you be the one to decide.”

  “My brother king,” said Atli, “can we not stop this bickering until we have a judgment? I have been promised Sogn as you have.”

  “You are no king to call me brother. I cannot believe that Harald promised you Sogn,” said Ragnvald. “Tell me truthfully what you were told, and I may hold back my men’s swords.”

  Atli took another bite of his porridge, chewed, and swallowed it, and wiped his mouth with his shirt again, leaving a smear upon the fabric. “It was not Harald but his closest adviser,” said Atli. “Lord Guthorm told me that you were so often absent from Sogn on his nephew’s behalf that it needed a true king.”

  Ragnvald had long felt Guthorm’s animosity, and if Atli spoke truly, now he had proof. “And he thought that I would hand over Sogn to you without a fight?”

  “He thought I should see what needed doing here, and I found you absent, just as he said.”

  “I can’t tell which of us is being misled,” said Ragnvald, “and I don’t care. Sogn does not need you for a king. You have tangled Guthorm’s words to your own ends.”

  Atli shrugged. “Perhaps. The way I see it, the only thing to do is go to Harald, this most just of kings, and let him decide. Together. I could have run off and stolen a march on you, yet I did not. I want this done fairly.”

  “I would gladly agree to meet you there in a few weeks,” said Ragnvald, “and let you pour whatever you liked into Harald’s ear in the meantime. I do not need that advantage.”

  “We are both for Harald,” said Atli, “so we should be friends, and arrive as friends. You are cleverer than I expected, though. Guthorm told me you were a solid fighter, but too quick to anger, and to take offense. Last night you proved that you can make a joke as well as any man. I slept well, though, so the joke is on you—”

  “You do chatter on,” said Ragnvald testily, trying to discern insult from flattery in Atli’s cascade of words. “I have been long from home. I must oversee the harvest. Remove your men from my hall. I do not care to where, but leave Sogn.” Atli’s style of speech was catching.

  “My men are farmers too,” said Atli. “Farmers without homes. Now that Harald has made Norway safer, he invited us home. We will help with your harvest and travel together to Nidaros in plenty of time for Yule.”

  Ragnvald did not want to do murder under his own roof, or order his battle-weary men to another fight, not when they all ached to go home to their own farms. Atli had done no damage here, except to Ragnvald’s pride, and even then, he had given no outright insult. He had punished the man who had harmed Hilda.

  “Very well,” said Ragnvald. “Your men may camp in my fields. If they help with the harvest, they will be fed.”

  “Excellent,” said Atli.

  “I expect your men to behave themselves. If any of them commit a crime, all will be counted guilty, and punished.”

  “I will fill a basket with their severed hands if any of them are caught stealing,” Atli agreed cheerfully. Ragnvald could not frame an adequate response to that, so he shooed Atli off. Atli ordered his men out of the hall. They moved with impressive speed, even with aching heads, and made camp on the sunny side of Ragnvald’s hall, while Ragnvald went to tell Hilda what he had agreed to. He had been bested again, though he was not sure exactly how it could be an advantage to Atli to arrive together—perhaps Atli wanted them to be friends, to gain whatever advantage he thought Ragnvald’s friendship could bestow. Or perhaps he could not approach anything directly, but must tack after it, missing, and aiming again, blown from his goal by his own contrary spirit. But no, Atli seemed more like a cunning man who had gamed this out many moves ahead.

  * * *

  Ragnvald watched Hilda run her boar-bristle brush through her hair, counting out the strokes under her breath. When she reached a hundred with one handful of hair, she moved to the next. Unbound, her hair puddled around her as she sat on the bed. It glowed in the candlelight, as smooth and inviting to the touch as tallow-finished oak. She bent, and the candle behind her showed the outline of her breasts through the thin fabric of her underdress. She had grown heavier with the bearing of each of the children, and looked forbidding when fully clothed, solid as a fence post. Here, in private, Ragnvald saw her beauty again, the soft curves of the woman he had married.

  He had spent the day visiting the farmers in his district whose lands bordered his own, to find out how their summer had passed. Sigurd should have been here to report to him. He sighed angrily, and Hilda turned to look at him.

  “No, continue,” he said. “I do not want to disturb such beautiful work.”

  She smiled, the curtain of her hair hiding her bruised cheek. She held the brush out to him, a little hesitantly. Sometimes in the winter he did this for her. He rarely had the time or patience when he was home in the summer, after a long day doing whatever work Sogn’s rulership required. He took the brush and sat behind her, noting the part she had made to divide what was done from what was undone. He worked out the tangles from the bottom first, thinking of Svanhild carding wool, the task that she spent most of the winter doing, since her spinning did not live up to their mother’s standards. Hilda’s hair was autumn, not winter, a deep brown with the golden highlights of a long harvest afternoon.

  “What are you thinking of?” Hilda asked, carefully keeping her head still as she spoke.

  “You’ll make me lose count,” said Ragnvald.

  “You’re not counting,” said Hilda. “You’ve gone past a hundred already.”

  Ragnvald reluctantly set aside the handful of hair that he had been brushing, letting it slide over his hand before picking up the next.

  “Where is Sigurd?” Ragnvald asked.

  “Atli’s men made him the butt of their jokes,” said Hilda. “They did not harm him. Or any of us. Yet . . .”

  Ragnvald could see it. Sigurd had grown up into a warrior of surprising physical talent, and little sense. His pride was like a boy’s, innocent and easily wounded.

  “You know him,” said Hilda. “He goes up to stay with my father sometimes. You know he and my brother are friends.”

  “Your father makes him feel important,” said Ragnvald. Of course Sigurd would go there to lick his wounds. Hilda let him finish the rest of her hair. When he was done, she took the brush from his hands, and began plaiting her hair into the long tail she left it in while she slept, a rope thick enough to tie a warship to shore even in a gale. After she finished, she took his hands, and lifted them to her lips, kissing each, one at a time.

  “Atli is still here,” she said.

  “He told me he means to stay until I will go with him to Harald so each of us can argue our case.”

  Hilda let go of his hands. “And you agreed? Do you fear that Harald would give away your land? Does he hold your loyalty so cheaply?”

  “No, Harald would never do that,” said Ragnvald.

  “Then why would you go?” Hilda asked.

  “Atli won’t leave unless I go with him,” said Ragnvald.

  “You’ve only just returned,” said Hilda. She took his hand again. “Your sons miss you.”

  “I missed them.” He pulled her closer to him. “And you.”

  “Atli is still here,” she said again, with different meaning. She pushed at him weakly.

  “So you refuse my bed?” Ragnvald picked up the end of her braid and brushed it over his fingers. She could not o
bject to this touch. “Perhaps I should kill him after all. Then he could not spread tales to Harald.”

  “No,” said Hilda. “Not under our roof.”

  She yielded to him then, and unbound the hair she had just braided so she could lay it across his body, but when she spread her legs she said, “Be careful. I do not want to be pregnant again so soon.”

  He stopped before they could join and rolled on his back on the bed next to her. “We only have three sons, and no daughters. A man who is rich in children is wealthy no matter what else befalls him.”

  “It is too soon,” said Hilda. “Rolli is not yet weaned.”

  “Being careful is how we got Rolli,” said Ragnvald. Hilda had not wanted to be pregnant then either, and then he had agreed and tried to spill his seed on the ground whenever they lay together, but still she became pregnant.

  “He is a joy. But you must be more careful.”

  “Another one might be a joy as well.”

  “His birth nearly killed me,” she said with a shaking voice. “If you cannot be careful, then take one of the thralls instead.”

  He looked up at the ceiling. He had been away in Nidaros for Rolli’s birth, and had returned to find his wife quieter, more inward-looking than she had been before—the marks of a confrontation with death. It had been a year, though. He felt her heat beside him, and wanted to be in it, part of it. He never liked rutting with thralls. A thrall had no choice but to submit, and, in the best case, seemed to accept it as a duty. In the worst, well, some men seemed to like a crying woman, but Ragnvald did not. “I do not want a thrall,” he said.

  Hilda turned onto her side to face him. “A concubine, then.”

  “You sent Vigdis away,” Ragnvald reminded her.

  “Yes. Do you want her back?” Her voice grew cold.

  “I want more sons. And daughters to marry Harald’s sons.”

  “Then you need a concubine younger than your stepmother,” said Hilda.