The Viking’s Sacrifice (14 page)

No fool, Sigdir, then. He knew how to play Bausi, what to offer, when to push, when to stop and wait.
It might not be too late for Sigdir.
And maybe it wasn’t, but it was too late for Einar, by Bausi’s answer.

Finally Bausi smiled his twisted smile. “So you have a great prize and you let a nithing like him at it? Makes me wonder who out of the two of you is the simpleton. But your plan, yes, I’ll think on that. Yet first, what to do with this wretch. A thorny problem, one even Odin the wise might balk at. You have to honour the price, but he mustn’t go unpunished for what he’s done. A thorny problem indeed, but I have the answer.”

He turned cold, dark eyes on Einar, who shrivelled under that gaze. Einar had ever known that if he became a hindrance, any trouble, he’d be dead. Trouble enough he’d caused and too late now to change it, too late to help Wilda. His courage was sucked away by the ice in Bausi’s eyes, by the remembrance of what he’d said on the return from the raid.
An accident is an easy thing to arrange.

“Einvigi,”
Bausi said with a lift of his lip that might be amusement. “Let Ullr decide. Don’t ask your little thrall, tell her that’s what will be. She can be in a collar again soon enough, and then the question of bride price flies away. But in deference to her request, the blood will not be on her new husband, but on her new brother-in-law. On me.”

Sigdir’s shoulders relaxed and he subtly moved stance. No longer looking for Bausi to attack. When had little Sigdir, all scabbed knees and tangled hair, become such a warrior? Yet his answer—Sigdir’s eyebrows pinched down and his eyes began the restless roving that meant he was deep thinking. Questioning Bausi’s answer, Einar hoped, seeing that a threat to thrall her again wasn’t the right way.

Worse for Einar.
Einvigi,
a duel. Brother against brother, for blood in front of the god Ullr to decide who had the right of it. Einar, with a wry-leg and not having picked up a weapon other than his scramasax for eight years, against Bausi, who’d been on many raids, killed many men. Who’d bested him before, would have killed him with ease if not for Wilda. As good as a blood price, because it would see Einar dead.

Sigdir’s eyes flicked Einar’s way and he saw the worry there, the fret that all was not as it seemed, but he nodded to Bausi, accepting what he said.

“After the weddings.” Bausi’s grin twisted further as he stared at Einar. “The blood can add to the sacrifice, a morning gift for my bride. Now, leave him here with me. I want to keep him under my watchful eye.”

He leaned down from his high seat and held out his hand for the rope that bound Einar. Sigdir handed it over with a dark, complicated look Einar couldn’t fathom and Bausi yanked him close, making him stumble.

“Sigdir.” Einar’s voice was hoarse, barely loud enough for him to hear, but Sigdir turned. He looked different somehow, but Einar couldn’t see how or where he’d changed. Only that he need say no more, Sigdir knew what he was going to say, from the short nod, the pitying look. That maybe he’d pulled the right thread.

Sigdir left and Bausi yanked again on the rope, pulling Einar to the foot of the high seat before he tied the rope tight to a pillar, leaving Einar barely any slack to move.
Bear this, the quiet courage. Bear it, and Sigdir will live, will see Bausi for what he is in time. Wilda will live
.

“Talking quite freely now, aren’t you? Be careful of it, little brother. Be very careful. Sigdir is grown, but he’s mine now, twisted in with all I’ve done and he’s done for me. And young Gudrun, ah, well, soon enough it will be time to find a husband for her. And I’m sure you want a good match for her, rather than someone like Rurik, fat and old and ugly, or Orm, who barely has a pot to piss in. Or someone like me.”

Bausi’s eyes creased at the corners, a true smile from him for once as he thought on this. “Like me, and who will do to her what I did to your Ragnhilda. Dry her up, wear her out, grind her down. Because she was yours, because she only gives me daughters, because after a time she couldn’t bear me near her but pride wouldn’t let her ask the
godis
for a breaking of our marriage. Because she blamed it all upon you, for not being the man she wanted. She thought she was getting the better deal, no longer to marry a third son but a jarl. I only married her so as not to lose the bride price, but ah, she was greedy and she’s paid for it. So be careful with all these new words, Toki. You’re still the madman simpleton, still the nithing, and one wrong word from you…”

The curse dangled out of Bausi’s kirtle, taunting Einar with its existence, with its nearness. If his hands weren’t tied, if he had the courage of Thor he was born with, he could end it all, now. Grab the little flake of wood that ruled his life and throw it on the fire. Without the curse he could let free all the words that had built up inside him over the years, lodging in his heart, choking in his throat. Words that would condemn Bausi, and he could not say. A rune he could not take, for the deaths it would cause, his and others. His courage was to stand and bear the unbearable, to watch Bausi twist the wyrd of the whole fjord and be helpless to stop it.

“I said nothing of it, to anyone.”

Bausi cuffed him round the head. “I know that! Maybe you really have gone simple. But keep holding that tongue, keep holding it for Sigdir and Gudrun. Face your wyrd, keep silent and all will be well for them. Until the
einvigi,
when the price will finally be paid, that I should have had from you years since. You’ve given me the perfect opportunity to get you as dead as you should have been then, and finishing that wyrd will give me much pleasure.”

Rowena came into the longhouse, rubbing her fingers to get the warmth back in.

“Is he back yet?” Wilda couldn’t settle to anything but kept jumping from one task to another, from preparing the day meal ready for Sigdir’s return to combing wool to curing the mutton from the slaughter. She burned the gruel for the thralls, dropped the skyr and honey that was to be Sigdir’s meal, tangled the wool and cut a deep gash in her finger, trying to separate racks of ribs. Her apron dress was an unholy mess of skyr, honey and streaks of both sheep’s blood and hers.

“Lord have mercy,” Rowena said when she saw. “Here, that cut needs binding better. It’s easier with my two hands than your one.”

She got Wilda to sit down and bound her finger with quick, efficient wraps of old linen. “No, he’s not back yet, but a ship’s coming up the fjord, and such a ship! Bausi’s new wife, ready for the wedding tomorrow. Kin to the king here, she is. Sigdir will be down there to greet her, most like, show off all the warriors and such. Bausi’s had them all cleaning their armour and braiding their beards.” She looked up at Wilda. “You want to get his answer right now? And, if it’s not a cheek to ask, why did you ask for that, for Toki not to die?”

Wilda stood up and took off the apron dress but didn’t answer, because she didn’t know how to or even really why. Because he’d saved her once when he needn’t. Because she thought she loved him, and that wasn’t right, not unless he came to God, and she’d seen how he was, seen the faith he had in the Thor’s hammer that dangled from the pin on the apron.

If he came to God he wouldn’t be the same man, she could see that, could see how they all were with their gods and how it made them see things in a way she never would, and she would see things in a way they never would. Too, it was because she was ashamed that he’d lied to save her honour when it was she who had seduced him, when she had no honour. Yet Rowena was looking at her, curious for the answer, wanting to know. “As I said, because Christ teaches us we should forgive, something these people would do well to learn.”

It was forgiveness she wanted too. Wilda got to her knees in front of the little altar Rowena had made, that all the Christian thralls prayed at. It wasn’t much, a crude carved cross, but it was theirs, a place for them to believe. Sigdir allowed them that.

Wilda shut her eyes and tried to remember the prayers the priest often used at home. It wasn’t that prayer that came to mind, but one the goodwife had used, over and over, while Wilda gave birth to a boy who never saw his first dawn.

Have mercy upon me, O Lord, have mercy upon Thy sinful servant and woeful handmaid, who now, in my greatest need and distress, do seek Thee.

She felt no better, no lifting of her shame, no peace running through her. This place was godforsaken, at least by her God. Wilda got to her feet. If Einar died because of her there would be no forgiveness, not in her soul for herself. She couldn’t sit and wait, her nerves were too stretched. “Yes, I do need the answer now, Rowena. Can we go and watch the ship, and I can talk to Sigdir?”

Rowena patted her hand, almost as though she were talking to an invalid or an old woman. “I was hoping you’d come. It’s always an event when a ship comes in, and this one should be no different. Better even. Come on, it’ll take your mind away.”

They bundled up in thick cloaks and Wilda took the time to unpin Thor’s hammer from her soiled apron and use it to clasp her cloak at her throat. It was a comfort there, somehow, in a way her crucifix had rarely been.

The wind had dropped as the sun rose behind banks of grim grey clouds. For once those clouds had receded above the tops of the mountains, and the rock stood over the fjord, dark with trees and a grave splendour.

Rowena led her down by the path cut through the snow, steps carved out in the steep places. Past snug houses with smoke puffing from their tops, past fields and sleeping orchards choked with snow. Others, free men and women and thralls too, made their way to the lip of the fjord, where the dark, oily waters lapped at the gravelled shore. The women stared at her and talked in gossipy tones as they passed but Rowena refused to repeat what they said so Wilda could understand. The path wound away to the root of the mountain, under a great hanging rock in the shape of a helm.

“Odin’s Helm they call it, reckon it makes this a lucky place,” Rowena said.

Underneath the helm, snow had been cleared in a vast space between bare birch trees, so that the yellowed winter grass lay in a ring around a flat-topped grey stone. Dark streaks ran down the stone and into the grass.

“That’s where their
godi
—their priest that is—he does his rituals. Sacrifices.” Rowena shuddered and Wilda joined her when she realised what the dark streaks were. “Don’t do people no more, though, or not since I’ve been here. Used to, mind. That
godi
tells gruesome tales about it when he’s in his cups. I think he likes to scare us God-fearing folk with it.”

“What do they sacrifice then?”

“Depends. When they have their spring or winter ritual, it might be a lamb. When they’re off to raid, often as not it’s fighting horses. If he’s asking their gods for something, then it could be anything. I seen him do a hare last week, trying to see if he could fathom the wyrd of Bausi’s wedding. Reckons she’ll give any husband a lot of sons, so Bausi was well-pleased, him having had nought but daughters as yet. And sons close to the king too. Harald’s named his heir, right enough, his grandson, and Bausi’s new bride’s cousin.”

Then this fjord and its jarl would become more powerful. Yet Sigdir wanted to get away, out from under Bausi. Wilda followed Rowena down the slope, through a stand of birches and on toward the shore. Sigdir stood there, resplendent in his armour, a close-fitting helm covering his bright hair.

Wilda was beginning to wonder about Sigdir. As Rowena said, there seemed two people trapped in him. One, the obvious one, was a violent brute. Yet the other—he’d seemed concerned for Myldrith, seemed bewildered and hurt at Einar’s supposed betrayal and had been steadfast in his insistence on protecting the honour he thought she had. She couldn’t decide if he was the Devil’s child Bebba said he was, or just a man caught in a different world than Wilda had known.

A woman stood next to him, heavy with child and with a stony look to her. “Bausi’s first wife, Ragnhilda, come to welcome the new one to the house,” Rowena said.

“How many wives does Bausi have?” Wilda asked, appalled.

Rowena laughed. “A Norseman may have as many as he can afford, or stand. Bausi’s got two already. I’m thinking that this new one will be favoured, though, and not just for her kinship with the king. She’s said to be the fairest Norse maiden on the west coast. Look at Ragnhilda’s face. She looks like she swallowed a cat.”

The ship that glided toward them was enormous, more than twice the size of the one Sigdir had brought Wilda in. The sail was raised, dyed a blood red with a raven stooping. There was no prow carving—Rowena said that they removed it when coming into the fjords, for fear of offending the land-wights, more heathen superstition. The oars moved in a quick, precise rhythm before they were shipped with practised ease, and the ship came to rest neatly by the little jetty.

Men scurried about securing the boat, and a plank was laid so that getting ashore was made easy. A warrior, almost a match for Sigdir in height and the splendour of his armour, stepped down the plank and Sigdir greeted him warmly with a clasp of hands. The ship was large enough that a kind of tent was pitched near the rear of the deck and, once the ship was secure, the flap opened and three women came out. Two were clearly maids, from their plainer tunics and apron-dresses.

The third walked with a straight back and a proud head. As well she might. Her clothing was very fine, bright blue linen with gold edging and several silver and gold pins, and her cloak was dark blue wool trimmed in silver fox. Wilda caught a flash of some red stone in the centre of the cloak’s clasp. The girl’s hair was golden and left loose—because she was unmarried, Rowena said—except where it was held by a golden fillet across her brow. The girl’s face was even finer than her clothes. Fair skin with a hint of blush to the cheeks, clear eyes and a mouth upturned in a serene smile that encompassed everyone on the jetty.

She approached Ragnhilda, still smiling, to be greeted with cold words from a harsh face. The smile faltered a little, but the girl rallied and she and her maids followed Ragnhilda up the hill towards Agnar’s house. “Got to get her ready and can’t do that in Bausi’s house. Old Agnar will have been thrown out, and many of the wives of the village will be in there. They do all this bathing and such and hand out all sorts of advice on being married. I expect the spae-wife will be there.”

“Spae-wife?”

Rowena grimaced. “Heathen magic, it is. Best you don’t think on it, but old Geira’s a nice enough biddy. It ain’t the dark sort of magic. She’s a dab hand at birthing, women and animals, I’ll give her that.”

The men from the ship finished their work and came ashore. One of Sigdir’s men led them up to the feasting hall. Sigdir caught sight of Wilda and, once they were gone, came over to her. He frowned behind the nose-guard of his helm but said nothing for long moments as he regarded her. It seemed to her that he was weighing something in his mind, maybe her and her worth, or rather her lands’ worth, against what she had cost him.

Of a sudden, her shame was not just at lying with a man she wasn’t married to, and a heathen at that. Not for lying with Toki for pleasure rather than procreation. No, it was for the shame she’d brought on him, the disgust of his brother because of her, though he didn’t know it yet. Finally, with a snort, Sigdir growled out some words to Rowena and stalked off up the hill.

“He says you’re too forward, too different. That you should be readying for your own wedding, and him too. It’s—you shouldn’t really be talking before the ceremony, you see? But it’s plain you want words, and there are some he’d speak to you, too, answers he wants. In private, excepting for me.”

Tension ran from Wilda’s shoulders in the faint hope for Einar, and because she needn’t wait to know what this Bausi had decided. She followed Sigdir up the slippery steps cut into the ice, past the open space that had begun to fill with people, all decked out in their best furs and finest, warmest clothes. A riot of blues and reds and greens against the grey of the blood-streaked stone, the black of the birch trees’ bare arms and the dark, brooding menace of the mountain.

The path wandered to the river, steeply sloping up past the falls that thundered and made any speech nigh on impossible to hear even from two paces away. A group of warriors in bright armour and brighter cloaks moved down the path and Sigdir stepped aside. Wilda and Rowena followed his example. The leader of the group stopped and Sigdir spoke something Wilda would not have caught, even if she’d been able to understand. He seemed oddly ill at ease, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and Wilda turned to see who could discomfort him in such a way, this man who seemed to have no fear of anything.

Wilda staggered back, slipped on the ice and fell, tumbling down the steps in whirl of skirts and banged limbs. She got to her hands and knees almost before she realised her fall had stopped. Her heart thudded up around her throat, making breath hard to come by, tinting her vision pink. She had to go, she had to
run.
Now, as far and as fast as she’d ever run before.

A mailed arm slid round her and helped her to unsteady feet and she let out a little breathless scream but it was Sigdir, a perplexed, worried look to him. Compared to the face she thought she’d seen, Sigdir had no power to scare her now. A face that had danced in her dreams too many times to count.

His black hair was braided neatly rather than left to go wild, silver rings threaded his beard and he was broader than she remembered. Yet the twisted smile in that beard was the same, the dark, watchful eyes under thick brows. The hand that had held the sword that had pierced Einar from behind, who’d tried to take his head. Bear Man, who’d killed Mother in front of her, who’d killed one of his own men. Who’d tried to kill Einar, and her.

Sigdir followed her gaze and his frown deepened for a heartbeat before he cleared his face, indicated Bear Man, and told her why Einar had been silent all these years, why he’d asked for her silence on it.

“Jarl Bausi,” Sigdir said.