Pushing back through them, Vali then ran to the end of the lane and stared down into the valley behind the hill. No Danes. Instinctively he looked over to Disa’s farm. A pall of smoke hung over it. He gave a shiver. Had Disa been able to run with her burned legs? Had Adisla managed to get her away? Her daughter would not have abandoned her, he knew that.
He glanced around for help but the only warrior near him was Bjarki, still barely conscious, tied up to the point of strangulation with a couple of small children hitting him with sticks. Vali shooed them away from the berserk, all the time looking around for any of his men who had remained.
‘Bragi, with me!’ he shouted, as loud as he could. But Bragi was gone, down to the Danes’ boats, planning to take them out to sea and deny the attackers their escape. Vali was on his own. Dread swamped his exhaustion and he ran towards the burning farm faster than he had ever run in his life.
19 Endings
Drengi had arrived in time to at least face the invaders. He was a farmer not a fighter though, and he was lying by a feed trough with his own axe embedded in his chest. The old Dane Barth had been shown no mercy by his countrymen and was slumped next to him as if dozing in the sun. Little Manni was dead at the doorway of Disa’s house, Vali’s old seax still in his hand.
Vali closed his eyes and tried to compose himself. He had no time for mourning; he needed to find what had happened to Adisla and her mother. He ran into the smouldering building. The Danes had tried to set it alight but the turf roof would not burn well and the smoke looked more like that from a dung heap than a fire. Disa had been murdered in her bed. Blood was everywhere, a grisly scarf of red extending down the front of her white smock. He approached and saw that her throat was cut. He could imagine all too well what else had happened to her.
Vali knelt beside her and took her hand. She had been his mother, or the nearest he had to one. He said nothing. So far that day he had learned what it was to believe in a fight and take up arms in a cause that was beyond plunder. Looking into Disa’s eyes, it seemed impossible that he would ever do anything else. He did not cry, which surprised him. There was something inside him too cold for tears. It was a certainty that seemed to lodge in his throat like a bolus, stopping up any emotion. He would have vengeance for this. Adisla had told him to kill a hundred of them. He wouldn’t stop there. He would kill the Danish king and all his stinking race, tear down his halls and burn his lands to ashes. The Danes had unleashed a wolf by what they had done. He had never known such purpose in all his life. But first he had something else to do.
He went to the top of the bed and kissed Disa on the forehead.
‘I will find her,’ he said and then left the house. As he did so he passed the boy’s body. He ruffled his hair and kissed him. He went to take the seax but thought better of it. Instead, he just squeezed the child’s fingers onto the weapon’s handle. ‘You keep it,’ he said, ‘use it in the afterlife. Go to Freya’s halls, not Odin’s.’
Vali heard a groan. He looked up. Drengi was still alive. He ran over to the fallen man.
‘Drengi, it’s me, Vali.’
Drengi was just about breathing, the axe had caused a terrible wound in his chest and his mouth bubbled with blood.
Vali didn’t know what to do. Disa or Jodis might have known, but one was dead and the other who knows where.
‘Drengi, you’ll live. I’ve seen men with worse wounds survive. You will live.’
This was not true and they both knew it.
‘They came for her, Vali; they came for her.’
‘I know.’
‘No, they came for her. No treasure, no plunder, her.’ He let out an awful cough, fighting to suck in breath. Vali’s mind was too disordered to take in what Drengi was saying.
‘You’ll be fine, Drengi. I’ll fetch Ma Jodis and she’ll patch you up. You see, you’ll be fine.’
‘Vali, they were looking for her. They asked for the healer’s daughter.’
Vali couldn’t understand why that would be at all.
‘Asked who?’
‘They had taken the boy Loptr prisoner. He led them here and told them who to look for. They were shouting her name.’ He coughed and blood flowed over his lips.
‘Is the boy dead too?’
‘No, he ran away. Remove the axe, Vali. Take the axe away. It is a blight to me.’
‘Yes.’
Vali put two hands to the shaft near the head. He pulled and Drengi screamed. He pulled again and the axe came free. Drengi coughed and spluttered, hacked and wheezed. Then he was quiet. Vali took his hand. He was dead.
Vali became aware he was being watched. He looked up to see Loptr peering out from behind a pig shelter.
‘You can come out now, child. They’ve gone,’ said Vali.
The boy didn’t move. He looked very scared.
‘Did they take her? Did they take Adisla?’
The boy nodded.
‘Which way?’
The child pointed at the track heading south out of the farmstead that led to several broad beaches. If the Danes had got their ships away from the harbour, they might pick up stragglers there.
‘Go back down to the harbour,’ said Vali. ‘If you encounter any of our warriors, tell them I’ve gone down to Selstrond to find these pirates. And tell them to come and help me. Quick. Go on!’
The boy didn’t move, just stared at him. It was no use, Vali decided. Loptr was too shocked by what he’d seen to do anything. ‘Well, don’t go into Ma Disa’s house,’ said Vali, and he set off for the beach.
When he arrived, the shoe told him all he needed to know. It was where the track petered out in the sand, just at the point that anyone coming onto the beach would find it. It was hers, one of the green leather best she had been wearing to greet him back from his journey. Clearly she had kicked it off.
He was only just too late - the longship was close offshore. He couldn’t see Adisla but there were around twenty warriors visible on the boat. Still he didn’t really absorb Drengi’s words: ‘Vali, they were looking for her.’ His brain was hot with hatred and he didn’t even recall what Drengi had said.
‘Come back, you cowards!’ he screamed. ‘I am one and you are twenty. Are the odds not enough in your favour?’
There was no reply from the ship; the Danes were too busy with their sail. But then, for a heatbeat, he saw her, struggling to dive overboard and swim to freedom. She was pulled roughly back onto the boat.
‘I’ll find you!’ he screamed as he splashed out into the water. ‘And know, Danes, that if she is harmed I’ll visit a thousand times worse on you and your kinsmen! I am Vali, son of Authun. I am death to you!’
Vali felt utterly hopeless. There was no prospect of pursuit. Forkbeard’s longships were away down the coast at the regional assembly; all they had were a few faerings - four-oared inshore boats - and he couldn’t chase a warship in one of those.
How would he find her? He’d try Haithabyr, he thought, the market where any slave brought to Denmark ended up. He could buy her, if he could raise the money from his father or borrow it from Forkbeard. Then he remembered: he had the berserk. He would get what he wanted to know out of him. He turned back towards the site of the battle.
When he found Bjarki he was in no fit state to answer questions. The drugs, drink and the bang on the head had rendered him almost insensible. All he could do was curse and drool. He was safe for the time being but Vali wondered how long he would last if any of the townspeople got hold of him. Preserving the berserk’s life was his only key to finding Adisla. The man was too big to drag anywhere without help. Luckily, up the hill at that moment came Bragi with two farmers, Gudfastr and Baugr, Loptr beside them. So he had done his job after all.
‘How does it go?’ said Vali.
‘They’re routed. One ship captured - a good day’s work.’ Bragi didn’t look quite as jubilant as Vali might have expected.
‘They’ve taken Adisla. Ma Disa’s dead, and the rest of them at the house
from what I can tell.’
Bragi’s mouth fell open. ‘Anyone else?’
‘I don’t know. They were quick so I think it unlikely. They didn’t take him, did they?’ He nodded to the boy, who was still looking at Vali with wide terrified eyes.
‘They were being quick, for sure, or they wouldn’t have left the boy. He’d have got a good price at market. You’ll want vengeance, won’t you, Loptr?’ said Bragi.
The boy said nothing, just withdrew behind Baugr.
‘Get that berserk down into the village,’ said Vali. ‘He’s got some questions to answer. As soon as he recovers, let me know. Tell the people that by my command there will be no celebration until Forkbeard returns. Make them keep a watch. Two drakkars escaped and may well return if they think we imagine the danger is past.’
He turned away down the hill, towards the valley.
‘Where are you going?’ said Bragi.
‘To see Ma Jodis,’ said Vali.
20 A Hard Road Forward
‘Ma, it’s me. Ma.’
Jodis’s house was much smaller than Disa’s - not much more than a hut sunk into the earth, its walls just waist high. With its flat turf roof you could hardly see it until you were right on it.
Vali knocked at the door. ‘Ma, it’s me, Vali. Ma, it’s all right, they’ve gone.’
The door opened and Jodis peered out. She was trembling though trying not to show it.
‘How many dead?’
‘I don’t know. It could have been worse. We beat them. They’ve gone, Ma.’
Jodis wiped the tears from her eyes.‘Adisla? Ma Disa?’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ he said. ‘I—’
‘O Freya, guard them,’ said Jodis, who had guessed no good had come to the women. ‘What?’
‘Ma Disa is dead and Adisla taken,’ said Vali.
Jodis could no longer hold on to her tears.
‘I’ll avenge the first and find the second,’ said Vali.
She gave him that look again, the one she’d given him when she’d heard that Forkbeard had planned to hang Adisla, but then she tempered it. She was very fond of Vali but regarded him as something of an idiot. The capture of the wolfman had shown that he wasn’t.
‘Do you even know where they’ve gone or who they were?’
‘I suspect they’ll go to Haithabyr, at least eventually. They were Danes - Haarik and his men.’
‘They could take her to his court or sell her in the east, or do many other things with her. She could be anywhere.’
‘Which is why I’m here,’ said Vali.
Jodis looked blankly at him.
‘I want you to work Ma Disa’s magic. It took me to the wolfman; it can take me to her.’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve never done it. Ma Disa had a gift for that. I just helped her.’
‘Then you know how it’s done?’
‘Yes, but it’s not possible, even if I wanted to. The fire herbs are all gone. They grow only in the spring and they’re very rare. We won’t be able to harvest any for months.’
‘Those herbs are entirely necessary?’
‘Yes.’
Vali breathed out heavily. He had no faith at all that the berserk would yield information under torture, though that wouldn’t stop him trying. Did the berserk know anything anyway? He was a hired hand. Vali knew that when Forkbeard went on raids with berserks he kept the target secret until they were at sea, to prevent them going it alone. As much as it would please him to try to beat information out of Bjarki, Vali doubted he actually had any.
‘There is no other way?’
Jodis shrugged.
‘What?’ said Vali.
‘There is, but it will kill you.’
‘What is it?’
‘You go to Odin at the mire,’ said Jodis.
‘Meaning?’
‘It’s not been done since I was a girl, but if the prophecy is important enough to you then it’s worth it. You go to Grimnir’s Mire and present yourself to the god of the hanged, the god of the drowned, and you ask him what you want to know.’
‘How do I do this?’
‘By drowning,’ said Ma Jodis.
‘How can the prophecy be any good to me if I die?’
‘You go to the edge of death, and there you bargain with the gods for your life. You offer them what you can, and if it pleases them they take it and tell you what you need to know.’
‘What can I offer a god?’
‘Your suffering,’ she said.
Vali stiffened his jaw and gave a short nod. ‘Have you done this?’
‘No, but I have seen it done. It was many years ago now. Princess Heithr went to the mire.’
‘I thought that was just a story. Was it a success?’
‘She revealed four traitors in her father’s court and the location of the Thjalfi hoard.’
‘They found the hoard?’
‘They did. Though she never got to see it. The ordeal killed her.’
Vali put his hand on the low roof and thought for a moment. What was his life without Adisla anyway? Everyone has to die, it’s just a matter of when. Only a fool would throw his life away, though.
‘Can you do it? I don’t want to die for nothing, Ma.’
‘It’s straightforward but more a question of whether you can do it. You drown at the sacred mire, the place between land and water. It’s a gateway that leads to other places in the nine worlds. The force of your will is all you’ll have to help you find the path. You need no more preparation than a warrior dying in battle does to make it to Valhalla.’
Vali gave a curt nod. ‘How long will it take?’
‘Who knows? You must drown and revive, drown and revive, until the vision comes to you or you drown and do not revive. It could happen the first time; it could happen the tenth or never. And it’s not easy to force yourself back to those waters, no matter how much you’re burning for an answer. You’ll fight it, so you’ll need to be tied.’
Vali had vowed to ask Odin for nothing but his was a circumstance he had not foreseen.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Vali.
‘There is one other thing,’ said Jodis. ‘The gods aren’t the only things waiting in the nine worlds. We’ll put a noose on you. It’s a symbol so the god can find you, but if you snap your bonds or begin to speak as a giant or witch, or worse, then we’ll use it to kill you. Don’t converse with giants, Vali, nor with the other monsters you may see down there.’
‘Bring your rope,’ said Vali. ‘If this is the only way, then this is the only way.’
‘You’ll need men to help you in and out of the water. Even in your bonds you’ll need to be held down,’ said Jodis, ‘and I haven’t the strength to strangle you or the sureness to shorten your suffering with a knife.’
‘Is your grandson in there?’
‘He is.’
‘Then send him to Hogni and Orri,’ said Vali. ‘Come on. We need to begin.’
21 The Drowning Pool
He had been at the drowning pool before, of course. It was in a sunken hollow on a natural shelf in the low hills that led up from Jodis’s farm. Prisoners and sacrifices had been sent to the gods in Grimnir’s Mire in years gone by, but no one had died there since the princess had sought her answer all those years before. The children knew its reputation though, and it was said that the ghosts of long-dead kings and warriors haunted the waters at night.
Vali felt a chill go through him as he sat waiting for Hogni and Orri. Was it the breeze cutting in from the sea or was it some deeper feeling? How many had died there and to what purpose? Did places such as the mire really carry an imprint of the deaths they had seen or was it just childish memories that set his flesh creeping, the echoes of stories told to frighten and thrill the long winter nights away?
He felt very cold. Clouds had rolled in off the sea, turning the sky to iron and spitting the air with rain. He wished he had brought his cloak with him but then realised he was going to be a lot colder soon
. And what did his discomfort matter? Did Adisla have a cloak to shelter her from the rain out on that boat? What was happening to her? He couldn’t bring himself to think on that. For every discomfort or abuse she suffered, he vowed to himself, those who inflicted it on her would suffer one hundred times worse. Until he met her again, he swore, no pain would daunt him. He had suffered as much as it is possible to suffer when he saw her on that longship.