Heroes of the Valley (22 page)

Aud had been in briefly to get a jug of watered beer for the women in the weaving room. After she left, Astrid remarked: 'She is a pleasant girl, Aud.'

Halli nodded. 'Yes, Mother.'

'Clever enough, and good-looking in her way. That's full; now seal the jar with the cheesecloth. I'll tie the string round. I see you get on with her well.'

'With Aud? Yes, Mother.'

'Pull it tighter. That's it. So, do you want to lie with her? Oh, see – now you've torn the cloth. You don't know your own strength, Halli, and for Svein's sake do not flush so! I am your mother; I can ask these questions. There,
I'll
hold the cloth; you tie it round. Now cut it with the knife. Just so. Well, if the idea embarrasses you that is all well and good, because at fifteen you are not yet a man. But your brother Leif is a full four years older, Halli, and I must find him a wife. I have told him to talk with Aud, see what he makes of her. Reach me that next pot, the one over there. Of course. Arne's House is
not
one of the better ones, but she is an only child, and that means a great deal. We would unite the Houses by that marriage. Why are you not ladling?'

Halli resumed his work mechanically. His mother paused to consult with a serving girl who was taking broth to Arnkel's room. When he had her attention once more, Halli said: 'Perhaps Aud does not yet want marriage.'

'She will be sixteen in the spring. I met your father at that age. Of
course
it will be on her mind. I want you to leave the poor girl alone for a while, Halli – give Leif his opportunity. He is not the most expressive of boys; the last thing he needs is you scowling like a stoat in the corner of his vision while he tries to press his suit.'

'Mother, Leif needs no sabotage from me. If he manages two sentences without tripping over his trailing knuckles he will have exceeded my expectations.'

His mother rapped him on the head with her ladle. 'Such remarks are
exactly
why you must be elsewhere. I expect Aud's tired of you by now in any case. She seems a gentle, rather sensitive child. You are a violent killer. I doubt she will have much use for you.'

* * *

Following his mother's confidences Halli urgently wished to talk with Aud, but found himself singled out by Eyjolf for long, complicated tasks in obscure portions of the hall. When at meal times he emerged, begrimed, he found Aud always inaccessible, sitting with Astrid and Leif, smiling and laughing at their conversation.

Halli sat glumly at a distance, often joined by Gudny, who seemed equally irritable at the attention Aud was getting.

'They won't get anywhere with
her
,' she remarked at last.

Halli grunted. 'She seems to be enjoying it.'

'
Seems
to, Halli, that's the key. The girl's a vicious flirt. She wears a dozen faces, moulds people to her will. Look there at Leif – see how he gawps and grins like a half-wit, with his sleeve trailing in his soup. If she asked him to jump from a crag this moment, he would do it at a run. What has she got
you
doing?'

Halli started. 'What?'

'You're in her power too, don't deny it. I've watched you for weeks. If anything, you're more addle-headed than Leif, craning your neck round after her like an owl. Keep clear of her, is my advice. She'll lead you into trouble, not that you need any help with that.'

Halli didn't have much to say to this. He went back to his work.

E
VERYTHING AROUND US BELONGS
to Svein. Not just this hall, this House, its wall, and fields, but the landscape beneath them too. There isn't a stream, forest or crag round here that doesn't attest to it. Listen to their names: Svein's Leap, where he jumped the gorge to catch the Deepdale boar; Skafti's Boulder, which he threw upon the thief who tried to steal his belt; the great pit at Trow Delving, dug by Svein in a single day to unearth three Trows and burn them with the sun; as well as all the rest of the meadows, tracks and trails that he mapped out, so that our lives might be a little easier on our way towards the cairns.

'This is my land, and you are my people,' Svein was fond of saying. 'Obey me and my laws and I'll always protect you.'

For everyone in the House the winter was long and difficult. The snows fell deep as the Trow walls; a minor outbreak of dank mottle laid several children low. Supplies of salted meat and fish were gradually depleted. The well was ice-bound and even the pails brought into the hall froze solid unless stored near the fires.

Little by little the weather quieted and the nights grew marginally less long. It was possible on some days to see across the valley to Rurik's ridge. Ordinarily such improvements signalled a time of hope and expectation for the coming spring, but that year shadows lay upon the inhabitants of Svein's House. The Arbiter, Arnkel Sveinsson, seventeenth in line from the Founder, lay dying in his bed. The canker that had grown within him secretly had taken final hold; as the winter ended, his strength drained steadily with it. The flesh on his frame fell in; the bones pressed jaggedly up beneath his skin like crags and outcrops on the hills. His face was a jutting ridge, each cheek a tumbling escarpment; the blood in his veins ran cold like mountain streams.

Members of his family took turns to sit with him as he slumbered, his breath bubbling with intermittent coughs and rasps. He seldom woke, and when he did his conversation was hard to understand. He ate and drank with a messy lack of control, dribbling like a child.

Halli did not find it easy to be in his father's presence and his vigils were spent in tense, unhappy silence, dreading that Arnkel might stir before he'd left the room. He kept his thoughts as far from the sick bed as he could, letting them roam the moors, searching out the old path the settlers had taken. For hours he watched the tumbling snow beyond the window, willing it to stop, dreaming of escape.

Soon, sometime soon, the thaw would come. When it did, that would be the end of his ties to the House. He and Aud would be gone, first chance they had.

Despite the disapproving scrutiny of his sister, Halli had continued to spend time with Aud throughout the winter. It may have been that Astrid would have done more to separate them, but she had grown increasingly preoccupied with her husband's condition, and was not interested in Leif 's shrill complaints.

'She excused herself from my table claiming a migraine!' Leif roared. 'What should I see soon after? Aud closeted in Halli's room, fresh-faced and giggling and obviously in the best of health! What is the matter with the girl?'

It wasn't long, however, before Leif himself became too preoccupied to give much thought to Aud. With Arnkel fading and Astrid distracted, he had to assume leadership of the House. From the beginning this did not go well. By turns hesitant and overbearing, Leif struggled to impose his authority. At meetings in the hall, when pent-up emotions frequently spilled out into bitter argument and, occasionally, drunken tussling, he was unable to keep control.

A frequent question put to him concerned the danger posed by the Hakonssons, to which Leif always replied in the same way: 'There is nothing to fear! Even if Hord persists in his aggression, the Council will defuse the issue long before he can come up-valley. With the thaw comes the great melt; the torrents will be impassable. By the time the roads are cleared, the Council will have acted, and Hord will have seen sense. It will come to nothing. Don't worry your silly heads about it!'

So spoke Leif, but not everyone was convinced and they told him so. His confidence battered, he sought frequent solace in the ale keg, and this made him even less effective than before.

Halli, meanwhile, prepared for his expedition beyond the valley. He and Aud gathered fleeces and extra woollens against the cold and stored them in secret beneath his bed. Halli also located a number of old tools that might double up as weapons.

'What's the point in
that
?' Aud scoffed. 'They'll weigh us down.'

'I know, but if we're wrong, and the Trows—'

'Oh, please. Even if they do exist – which they don't – they'll be tucked up underground. It'll be daylight, remember? The first time we go up we won't stay long. A quick look round – then back before dark.'

'It's best to be prepared.'

'Well,
you're
carrying them.'

In the late evenings, when the House was quiet, they talked long with Katla, mining her for details about the lands beyond the boundary. The old nurse approved of Aud, and was garrulous and cheerful, particularly with a hot posset of wine and milk in her ample lap. She would sit close by the hearth, her wrinkled face shining, bright eyes flicking from Aud to Halli and back again.

'Of course,' she'd say, 'I knew Halli when he was even smaller than he is now. When he was nothing but a chubby fat babe, squalling naked by the fire! Ah, you should have seen his little bottom, smiling up from the rug! All pink and dimpled, it was. I'd pat it dry with—'

'Oh, I don't think Aud wants to hear all
that
,' Halli said hastily. 'Tell us one of your old tales, why don't you? About Svein or the Trows or something.'

'Yes, tell me, dear Katla,' Aud said. She was sitting below Katla in a posture of the utmost familiarity, nestling close against her knees; Halli, who sat in a chair opposite, was mildly irritated by the sight. 'Tell me of the founding of the House again,' Aud went on. 'It is
such
a fascinating story.'

Outside, the winter storm shook against the doors and windows. The fire leaped in the grate. The old nurse simpered. 'How can I resist your pretty face? Well, they say that when Svein was but a babe – rather less chubby than Halli, I don't doubt – his parents brought him over the mountains. A good many other settlers were with them. The valley was heavily forested then. They arrived in a pleasant glade, where—'

Halli snorted. 'Oh, this is the old one about Svein and the snake.'

Katla scowled at him across the hearth. 'If you know it so well, tell it yourself!'

'Oh, but he's terrible at storytelling,' Aud said. 'So tedious it's impossible to believe. We'd be asleep in moments.
Please
, Katla.'

But Katla was affronted, her face corrugated with annoyance. She took a long drink from her cup and wiped a milky moustache from her upper lip with a vigorous hand. 'No, no. Halli might be bored. We wouldn't want that.'

Halli gave a shrug. 'Why mind me? Repetition's never stopped you before.'

'You wouldn't
think
he was a killer, would you?' Katla remarked to Aud. 'He seems so inconsequential.'

With a glare at Halli, Aud said, '
Don't
be so cross, dear Katla. If you don't want to tell it, that's all right. But I was wondering about one thing. When you told me the other night, you said this was the very first House to be settled in the valley.'

A curt nod, a sip of posset. 'Yes, yes, that's true.'

'All the other settlers dispersed after Svein's parents chose this site?'

'So the story goes, as Halli will remember, since he's heard it so
very
often.'

Aud wriggled coyly where she sat. 'Oh, forget about Halli; he's just a churl. How I love these old tales! So that means the way the settlers came across the mountains must be somewhere close, above this House.'

The old nurse cocked her head. 'It must be so. The details have been forgotten long ago. It's said great Svein discouraged talk of the old days before his time. He liked tales to be about himself – and who can blame him, when he was so above the ordinary?
His
story began here in the valley and we're his people, so that's where our story begins too.'

'Even so, I wonder if there's still a path up there,' Aud said, smiling. 'A high pass, a way to the world beyond. I wonder where it might go, what's over there . . .'

But now Katla's features had darkened. 'What an odd fancy, sweetness. What makes you ask such foolish things?'

Aud's smile faltered. 'Um . . . Halli was talking about it the other day, and I just wondered. But setting his stupidity aside, it's funny to think there might be a path up there that we'll never see. Would you like some more wine, Katla?'

'Fill it up and fill it high. Well, you can thank your lucky stars, girl, that you'll never see that path. If you did, it would be while running for your life with a big fat Trow slavering at your heels. Ah, what they'd do to an innocent like you . . .' The old woman broke off wistfully for a few moments. 'No, it's not a pretty thought. Good job Svein's up there with his sword, warding them off.
That's
what they're scared of – that matchless sword. With that in hand, and his silver belt around his waist, Svein never lost a battle. Not for him a sly garrotting or a treacherous stab in the back, like
some
people we could mention.' She winked across at Halli, who scowled. 'No, if you displeased him, he'd lop off your head in an honest, straightforward manner. Harsh, perhaps, but you knew where you were with him. Ah . . . those were the days.'

'His sword was forged before the settlement, the tales say,' Halli ventured. 'Impossibly hard and sharp; could cut through anything.'

Katla nodded. 'Yes, it's a pity we haven't swords like that now, for when Hord Hakonsson comes a-calling. Who in the kitchen's fault is
that
, I wonder. Not yours, sweetness,' Katla said, ruffling Aud's fair hair. 'Not mine, either.'

Spurred on by a surge of indignation, and perhaps by the posset in his cup, Halli leaned forward in his chair. 'Say what you like about the Trows, Katla,' he said, 'but they just come out at night, don't they? So why shouldn't people go beyond the cairns by day? Like Svein and the heroes did.'

Katla gave a hoot of mirth. 'I should think the Trows would be enough deterrent for anyone. Even the heroes were careful of their claws! But if that's not enough for you, breaking Svein's boundary brings disaster on your House –
and
on your person, more's the point.'

'What kind of disaster?' Halli persisted. 'What if a foolish, headstrong girl, say, should step beyond the cairns?'

Katla's expression became one of dark satisfaction. 'Such a girl would go barren that same instant. She'd be a husk, as arid as a poor old maid like me.'

'Well now,' Halli said, glancing at Aud. 'What sensible girl would risk that?'

Aud grinned lazily back. 'What if the miscreant was a boy, dear Katla?'

'A boy? Oh, for
him
the consequences would be even more fearful. But I don't know as I like to mention the details in such delicate company.'

'Oh, Halli can take it.'

'No, dear, I couldn't possibly say.'

'Oh, go o—'

'Well, if you
must
know,' Katla went on, almost in the same breath, 'if you force me to mention it, for a man the curse would work as follows. First his privy parts would suffer a sudden dramatic dwindling; then they'd curl up like a dying woodlouse; then all at once they'd fall off, plop.' The old woman drank deep from her posset and smacked her lips. 'So who in their right mind would
dare
?'

'Who indeed?' Aud stepped near the fire and took down the jug. 'Another drop, Halli? Your mouth looks rather dry.'

* * *

Little by little the winter waned. Snow stopped falling; the weather improved. Beyond the Trow walls the old snow was piled across the fields in undulating waves of crisp, etched dunes, sculpted and scoured by winds. One morning, with wan sunlight breaking through the cloudbanks, Halli noticed that the dunes seemed a little lower. Next day their crests began to sag and gape. When he stood in the porch he could hear the stir of water moving; the air swelled with the rush of dripping, the sound of the coming thaw.

'Good,' Aud said. 'Shall we head off ?'

'Not till we see grass all the way to the top.'

A week passed. Men went out into the block-hard fields. With each day the snow on the ridge behind the House retreated further into hollows, pits and shaded strips in the lee of walls. The slopes were patterned with dirty white streaks. Green stripes stretched to the cairns.

'All right,' Halli said. 'Let's go.'

The morning was still young, the pale sun clambering through the south-eastern sky, in and out of wisps of cloud. The wind that tumbled down from the heights held more than a trace of winter, but it was already the warmest day of the thaw so far. Sweat stippled their foreheads as they climbed.

They were halfway up the ridge.

Halli, somewhat out of breath, turned to look back. The House was still just visible away to the right beyond the hill's fold. Svein's road showed beyond like a length of dark cord, winding off amid the mess of snow-sodden fields. One or two people worked there breaking earth, striking it with soundless strokes; they seemed very far away.