When your needs were uncomplicated, it was easy enough to spend a good part of the resources you had (last of the Volgans, heir to all they possessed) buying two hundred mercenaries at the end of a summer.
If people had trouble looking at your face for long it was hardly difficult to lie to them. The Jormsvikings were smug, complacent, full of self-love, beefy and drunken, amusingly easy to deceive, for all their celebrated prowess on ship and in battle. They were what they were, Ivarr thought: tools.
He had dropped gold and silver onto a trestle table in a Jormsvik barracks hall, and told them that Aeldred’s coastal burh at Drengest was unfinished, under-defended, with ships they might seize for themselves and a newly dedicated sanctuary with too much gold.
He’d seen this, he said, when he and his brother went west in spring. And a watchman they’d taken and killed for information, along the coast, had told them before he died that the king and fyrd were spending the summer at Raedhill, hunting north of it, leaving Esferth exposed. Another lie, but Ivarr was good at lying.
Ale went round a smoke-filled room, then round again, and songs were sung about Jormsvik glories in days gone by. And then came another predictable song (Ivarr had heard it too many times, but made himself smile, as if in rue and remembrance) about Siggur Volganson and the great summer of twin assaults on Ferrieres and Karch, and the famous raid on the hidden sanctuary at Champieres, where he’d claimed his sword. More drinking during that, and after. Men asleep at the tables, heads down among spilled ale and guttered candles.
In the morning Ivarr formally paid the mercenaries to make it worth their while to sail, even if they should find little enough for the taking in the Anglcyn lands. He stung their pride—so easily—pointing out how long it had been since they’d challenged Aeldred on his own soil.
There was glory to be won, swords to be reddened, Ivarr said, before dark winter came to the northlands again and closed the wild sea. Make it sound like music, he’d found, and listeners would dance to your song—while not looking at your face.
Simple, really. Men were easy to deceive. You needed only to be clear in your mind about what you wanted them to do. Ivarr always had been, was even more so now. Brynn ap Hywll and any of his family found were to be staked out naked, alive, in the slop and mud of their own farmyard while Ivarr carved them one by one. Ap Hywll was fat as a summer hog, he’d need to cut deep. That was all right, it was not a difficulty.
The blood-eagle rite was a final act of vengeance for his slain brother and grandfather, he would say, sadly. A ritual done in honour of Ingavin’s ravens and eagles and in memory of the Volgan line, of which he was the last. After him, they would be no more. And men would hear it and look sorrowful. Would even honour him for it around winter fires.
Amusing. But to make it happen he had to get these ships to Cyngael shores. That was the only uncertain part, if you excepted the fortune that underlay his finding those merchants with a horse earlier today. That, he didn’t actually want to think about right now. He’d have missed the ships, otherwise, been left on a hostile coast alone. Perhaps he should think about it. Perhaps Ingavin or Thünir was showing his lordly countenance to a pale, small, crooked figure after all. And what could that mean, after so many years?
A distraction. For later. They had to go west, first. That had always been the delicate task. It would have made no sense for Brand Leofson or any other leader to take five ships so late in the year for the feeble returns a Cyngael raid offered these days. Ivarr had known that. So you worked it another way: you told them they were going after Aeldred where he was rich and vulnerable. And when that proved—as you knew it would prove—not to be so after all, you relied on your tongue and their stupid hunger for Ingavin-glory to lure them a little farther west … since they’d already come this far, and it would be such a terrible loss of face to go back empty-handed.
It was a good plan. Would have been easy, in fact, if Burgred of Denferth hadn’t been with the accursed party they’d surprised in the night. The earl had been worth a ransom the raiders could grow fat upon, and they’d known it. Thick-witted and ale-sodden or not, they’d understood who this man was. Aeldred would have paid the taxes from ten cities and a hundred households to have his companion back. And then five Jormsvik ships would have turned around and rowed happily home into the wind, every man singing all the way.
It would have driven him mad.
He’d had no choice but to shoot the man.
An unsatisfying killing, done in haste, no pain involved—except his own when Skallson came near to killing him for it. Ivarr hadn’t actually been afraid—he couldn’t remember ever being afraid—but he hadn’t been ready to die, either.
For one thing, he didn’t expect eagles or ravens to escort his spirit to shining halls when death came for him. Ingavin and Thünir loved their tall warriors with bright axes and swords, not twisted, wry-mouthed misfits with death-white skin and eyes that saw better at twilight than in the day’s bright sun.
It was less bright now, in fact. They had been pulling steadily from the coast and now the sail was up. The sun was over west. Ivarr waited, as ever, for the evening shadows to come, changing the colour of the sea and sky. He was happier then, happier in winter. Cold and darkness didn’t distress him; they felt like his proper place.
Men thought he was weak. Men were wrong, almost without exception fools beyond the telling. He wondered, sometimes, if his mighty grandfather—never seen or known, killed in Llywerth before Ivarr was born—might have thought the same way, crashing like a wave again and again upon peoples who could do nothing against him for year upon year, until it ended by that western sea.
The gods knew, he had reasons enough to kill Brynn ap Hywll. He would do the women first, Ivarr thought, let the fat man watch, bound and helpless, naked amidst the shit of his yard. It was a pleasing thought. You needed to hold it in mind, point towards it, let nothing distract or divert.
“You will stand up now,” said Brand Leofson. A bulky shape above him, suddenly. “Before the council begins you will explain your lies.”
He’d expected that. Men were easy to anticipate. All he ever needed was a chance to speak.
Ivarr rose slowly to his feet. Rubbed at his jaw where he’d been struck, though there wasn’t any pain to speak of now. It was good to look small, though, frail, no danger to anyone.
“I didn’t think you’d do what I needed done,” he mumbled. Kept his eyes down. Turned his head away, submissive as a beaten wolf. He’d watched wolves in winter snow, learned from them.
“What? You admit you lied?”
Gods! What had the ox-brain expected him to do? Deny it? They’d seen the finished walls and readied ships in Drengest, which he’d said was empty and exposed. Sixty of them in two parties had been slaughtered today by Aeldred and the fyrd out from Esferth—where he’d told them the king would not be.
He hadn’t expected those deaths—there was nothing good about losing so many men—but you couldn’t let such things affect what you’d had in mind for so long. This entire end-of-summer journey with the Jormsvikings was, after all, a second plan. He was supposed to have taken Brynnfell and the sword in spring, not had his sodden, stupid brother die with almost every man in that yard. Ivarr was all alone in the world now. Shouldn’t there be mournful music with that thought? All alone. He’d killed their sister when he was nine; now dear Mikkel had been cut down in an Arberthi farmyard.
Let the skalds make bad songs of it. Sorrow for Siggur’s strong scions/Valour and vaunt among the Volgans …
He didn’t feel sorry for himself. What he felt was fury, endlessly, from first awareness of himself, a bent child in a warrior world.
“I lied because we have fallen so far in twenty-five years that even with the warriors of Jormsvik, I was unsure of us.”
“We? Us?”
“The Erlings of Vinmark, friend. Ingavin’s children of the middle-world.”
“What the one-eyed god does that drivel mean,
you drip-nosed gutter spawn?”
He needed to kill this man. Had to be careful not to let it show. No distractions. Ivarr looked up, then ducked his head again, as if ashamed. Wiped at his nose, placatingly.
“My father died a coward, his own great father unavenged. My brother fell as a hero, trying to do so. I am the only one left. The only one. And Ingavin has seen fit to have me misshapen, unworthy in my poor self to take vengeance for our line and our people.”
Brand One-eye spat over the railing of his ship. “I still don’t know what raven-shit rubbish you are spewing. Speak plain and—”
“He means he planned to go to Arberth all along, Brand. Never had any thought of Anglcyn lands. He means he tricked us with lies about Aeldred to get us to sea.”
Ivarr was careful to keep his eyes lowered. He felt a pulsing in his head, however. This young one, whoever he was, had just become an irritant, and you needed to avoid showing that.
“That the truth?” Brand turned to him. He was a very big man.
Ivarr hadn’t wanted things to move this quickly, but part of the skill of these moments was adapting. “Jormsvik has its share of wisdom, even from the young ones who might not be expected to know so much. It is as the boy says.”
“Boy’s older than you think, maggot, and killed a Jormsvik captain in single combat,” said Leofson pompously. A beefy, thick-brained warrior. All he was. Ivarr held back a grimace: he’d made a mistake, these men were famously bound to each other.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Shut up, rodent. I’m thinking.”
The very halls of Ingavin tremble at such tidings was what Ivarr wanted to say. He kept silent. Composed himself with an image of what he wanted, what he needed: the family of Brynn ap Hywll in their own yard—or maybe on a table in their hall under torches, for better light?—naked, all of them, the women soiling themselves with terror, exposed to his red, carving blade. Wife and daughters and the fat man himself. The goal. All else could come later.
“Why you want to get to Arberth so bad?”
They heard sounds across the water; the other ships, moving nearer for the council. They were out of sight of shore, darkness falling soon. Needed to be careful: ships could ram and gouge each other in the sea, riding so nearly. They would rope them together, create a platform of ships, even in open water, in twilight. Jormsvik seamen. They knew how to do such things better than any men alive. A thought, there.
Ivarr took a breath, as if summoning courage. “Why Arberth? Because Kjarten Vidurson in Hlegest seems ready to be a king, and he should have the Volgan’s sword again. Or someone should.”
He let that last phrase linger, emphasized it just enough. He hadn’t planned to mention Vidurson, but it worked, it worked. He could feel it. There was a rhythm to these things as ideas came, a dance, as much as any single combat with weapons ever was.
“The sword?” repeated Brand, stupidly.
“My grandfather’s blade, taken when ap Hywll killed him. The death never avenged, to my shame—and our people’s.”
“That was twenty-five years ago! We’re mercenaries, for the great gods’ sake!”
Ivarr lifted his head, let his pale eyes seem to blaze in the torchlight. “How much glory do you think you’d gain, Brand Leofson, you and every man here, all of Jormsvik, if you were the ones to regain that sword?”
A satisfying silence on the deck, and across the water. He’d spoken loudly, ringing it out, that the other boats, approaching, might also hear. He pushed on, next part of the song. “And more: do you not think it might even give you, give all of us, some power and protection from Vidurson should he prove … other than some think he is?”
He hadn’t planned this, either. He was very happy with it.
“What does that mean?” Leofson snarled, now pacing like a bear on the deck.
Ivarr allowed himself to straighten, an equal speaking to an equal. It was necessary to have that status back. “What does it mean? Tell me, men of Jormsvik, how joyously will a northern man who sets himself as king over all the Erlings—the first in four generations—look upon a walled fortress of fighting men in the south who answer only to themselves?” It was like music, a poem, he was shaping a—
“If this is so,” interrupted a voice again, “you might have raised it with us, and let us take counsel at home. You said no single word about Kjarten Vidurson. Or about Arberth, or the Volgan’s sword. Instead, tricked to sea with outright lies, sixty good men are dead.” It was the boy, the scarcely bearded one. He snorted. “Didn’t that watchman you say you captured in spring tell you about the new fair starting this year?”
Ivarr’s flaring anger calmed quickly. So easy, it was. They made it so easy. He wanted to laugh. They were fools, even when they weren’t.
“He did say that,” he replied, keeping his voice mild. The second question had so nicely taken him off the harder first one. “But he said that because the fair was just beginning—as you say—the king was leaving it to his stewards. That’s why I thought there’d be merchants to raid, with few to guard them, rich takings for brave men.”
“Just beginning?”
“As you said,” Ivarr murmured.
The young one, not as big a man as Leofson but well-enough made, began to laugh. Laughing at Ivarr. With others watching and listening. This was not permitted. He’d killed his sister for laughing like that, when she was twelve and he was nine.
“I will not be made mock of,” Ivarr snapped, a hotness in his brain.
“No?” said the other man. His amusement subsided. He had looked away before; he wasn’t doing so now. Lights had been hung on the ships’ railings, all five of them, and at prow and stern. They were aglow, these ships on the water, marking the presence of mortal men on the wide, darkening sea. “I don’t think I’m mocking you, actually. Or not only that.”
“What are you saying, Bern?” asked Leofson, quietly.
Bern. The name. To be remembered.
“He’s still lying. Even now. You know the peasants’ saying. To trap a fox, you let him trap himself. He just did. Listen: this is the third year of the Esferth Fair, not the first. Every man we met on the road knew it. The city was thronged, Brand, overflowing. Tents in the fields. Guards everywhere, and the fyrd. I said ‘first year’ to see what this fox would do with it. And you heard. Don’t call him a maggot. He’s too dangerous.”
Ivarr cleared his throat. “So the ignorant peasant we captured was wrong about—”
“No,” said the one called Bern. “I planted that thought in your head, Ragnarson. You captured no watchman. You never put ashore here. You went straight to Brynnfell in Arberth, and failed. So you wanted to go back—there, nowhere else—for your own blood-hunger. Ingavin’s blind eye, sixty men are dead because you lied to us.”
“And he killed an earl we took,” someone shouted from the ship nearest to them. “An earl!” Voices echoed that.
Greed, thought Ivarr. They were driven by greed. And vanity. Both could be used, always. The hotness was making it harder to think clearly, though, to take back control of this. If the one named Bern would only shut his mouth. If he’d been on one of the other ships … such a small change in the world.
Ivarr looked at the man more closely. A ship on either side of theirs now, men lashing them together, practised ease. It had grown darker. His eyes worked better in this twilight with lanterns. Ingavin’s blind eye.
Something slid into place with that phrase.
“Who is your father?” he said sharply, anger cracking through, with awareness. “I think I know—”
“He’s a Jormsviking!” snapped Brand, his voice crashing in, heavy as a smith’s hammer. “We are born when we pass through the walls into brotherhood. Our histories do not matter, we shed them. Even maggots like you know that of us.”
“Yes, yes! But I think I know … The way he speaks … I think his father was with—”
Brand struck him, a second time, harder than before, on the mouth. Iva
rr went down on his back, spat blood, then a tooth. Someone laughed. The hotness went red. He reached towards the dagger in his boot, then stopped, controlling himself to control men. He could be killed here, going for a weapon. Sprawled on his back, he looked up at the big man over him, spat red again, to the side. Spread his hands, to show they were empty.
Saw a sword, then another one, both bright, as if flaming, torchlight upon them. He died there—astonished, it could be said—as Leofson’s heavy blade spitted him, biting deep into the deck beneath his body.
BERN REMINDED HIMSELF to breathe. His arm, holding a sword, was at his side. Brand had knocked it away with his own before killing Ivarr with a thrust that had the full force of his body behind it.
Leofson levered his weapon free, with difficulty. There was a silence amid the lanterns, under the first stars. Brand turned to Bern, a curious expression on his scarred countenance.
“You’re too young,” he said unexpectedly. “Whatever else he was, this was the last of the Volgans. Too heavy a weight to carry all your life. Better it was me.”
Bern found it difficult to speak. He managed a nod, though he wasn’t sure he really understood what the older man was saying. There was a stillness, a sense of weight all about them, though. This was not an ordinary death.
“Put him overboard at the stern,” Brand said. “Attor, do the ‘Last Song,’ and properly. We don’t need any god angry tonight.”
Men moved to do his bidding. You put Erlings into the sea if they died on the water. Last of the Volgans, Bern thought. The phrase in his head kept repeating itself.
“He … he killed sixty men today. As if he’d done it himself.”
“True enough,” said Brand, almost indifferently.
He was moving on already, Bern realized. Leader of a raid, other things to consider, decisions to be made. He heard a splash. Attor’s voice rose. They would be able to hear it on the other boats.