Vali was kicked forward up the hill, still gasping and retching. His mind was full of what he had seen beneath the waters: the wolf, the cave, but most of all the memory of Adisla, himself and the wolfman, all twisted and misshapen under the influence of that dreadful rune. Their destinies were linked, he knew that, and the knowledge brought him comfort as well as dread.
24 Trial
There were voices raised against Vali’s execution. Arnhvatr said how he had organised the defence; Hakir spoke of his bravery in the line. But Forkbeard’s charges were strong ones.
The assembly took place two days after Vali had been taken from the pool, but the summons had travelled quickly and only those from the most distant farms did not attend. People were drawn into Eikund to hear of the Danish attack and to see the spy Forkbeard had caught.
The king was a blunt man and laid out his case bluntly. First, Vali had known of the raid and had called in the attackers when Forkbeard was away. Second, he had killed Drengi because of his jealousy over Adisla. That could not be denied, as the boy Loptr had seen him with the axe in his hand, standing over the body. He had also been heard on the Hogsback telling Drengi he should die. Third, when the enemy attacked he had tried to make off with a quantity of plate, a plan undone by the very people he was seeking to help. He knew that, though he had brought the berserks to Eikund, they would not recognise him in their rage and, fearful of their swords, he had fled. Fourth, in the wall he had refused to take up weapons and had even saved one of the invaders from death. When it became obvious his crimes would be uncovered, he had gone to the drowning pool to try to conjure magic to save his skin. An additional point, if additional points were needed, was that the traitor could even speak the language of the enemy. Why had he bothered to learn that, if not to trade with hostile powers?
Vali could not speak. His throat had clamped shut after his ordeal in the pool, and his mind with it. He had taken something with him from those waters, a pressure in his skull, a weight that seemed to make his head too heavy for his body. He had stepped close to something, he felt, something hidden within him, and had pushed the normal world away.
The assembly seemed to pass as in a dream, its significance not quite graspable. There were faces, some familiar, some unknown: hard-eyed farmers’ wives staring at him in accusation, warriors, some friendly, some inscrutable, some hostile. Many people were sympathetic to him but a battle is a crucible of confusion. Those at the port when the raiders arrived had no coherent picture of exactly what had happened. Forkbeard made sense of it for them - interpreted the actions of the day, named the heroes and the cowards.
Vali’s thoughts seemed obscured, glimpsed only in blurs, like the light of the day through the waters of a mire. He had never been so cold. He shivered and his flesh was pale and blotchy. The voices around him said it showed his weak-hearted nature.
Each man who had been with Forkbeard at the regional assembly said Vali was a coward and a turncoat. The warriors’ shame at being absent when the Danes attacked redoubled the venom of their accusations.
Forkbeard knew he had let his people down, been too easily deceived, lured into complacency by years of peace. He needed a scapegoat, and Vali - an outsider and a man who didn’t fit the heroic mould - provided him with one. Vali’s mistake had been that he hadn’t realised it wasn’t enough to act heroically. You needed to talk heroically too, show relish for arms and slaughter, not laugh at heroes and spend your time chattering with women at the hearth. When Vali had led the defence, deceived the berserks and won the victory, many could hardly believe the evidence of their own eyes. By the time Forkbeard had finished bludgeoning his message home, they didn’t.
Queen Yrsa had unwittingly endangered her son too. She made a mistake that Authun in his right mind would never have committed. Wary of the Danes’ capacity for deception, she had not gone to the regional assembly and doubled the watch on her shores. She had known there would be an attack on the Rygir but suspected the Danes might have more than one target or, if they were successful in Rogaland, would push on to Horda territory. The Horda’s absence at the assembly - not even a jarl was sent to represent them - was all the evidence Forkbeard needed.
Vali was a spy, said the king, a spy who had been placed in his court from his earliest years, accompanied and tutored in deceit by the scheming Bragi.
Vali’s old tutor was next to him, beaten and bound. Bragi shouted his denials but Forkbeard had him struck down. The vote was taken. It went badly. Vali was seized by Forkbeard’s guards and dragged outside.
A pit had been dug up on the hill, twice as deep as a man is tall and just wide enough to stop anyone wedging themselves against the walls and climbing out. Vali noticed none of this as he was thrown into it - just the fall and a sensation of breathlessness. The pit was wet. The rain had stopped but there was two fingers’ depth of water at the bottom. His clothes had been torn to nothing during his struggles in the mire and he was cold. Still he was exhausted and he fell into a dead sleep, dreamless.
Vali heard voices at the top of the pit. Argument and struggle. Then something large and heavy landed across him with a thump.
‘Bastards,’ said Bragi. Vali shoved the old man off him and he rolled away, cursing. ‘I have demanded a trial,’ said Bragi. He was fuming. He was indifferent to anything but the injustice he had suffered and, it seemed to Vali, had been complaining of it almost as he fell.
Vali glanced up at the square of stars above him and looked around him at the walls of the pit. He swallowed. There was an awful ache in his throat and one in his head to keep it company. He remembered how he had once stood on Bragi’s shoulders to gain access to the church. That was their way out of the pit. He was sure he could reach the lip to pull himself up. Did he have enough strength, though? A face appeared against the moonlit sky, almost as if on cue to render his question meaningless. There were guards. All he would get for trying to climb out was the butt of a spear in his face.
‘A trial is the least I am owed.’ Bragi was actually thumping the walls.
‘A trial?’ said Vali. His voice was rough and it was painful to speak.
‘Not that thing in the hall,’ said Bragi. ‘A trial by combat - holmgang, the proper way.’
‘You can’t challenge the king to fight. The assembly has decided.’ The prince spoke slowly and quietly to save his throat.
‘I have challenged him and he will provide a champion,’ said Bragi.
Vali leaned back against the wall. There was an acrid scent in his nostrils. He recognised it. Down on the beach they were burning the dead. Glimpses of what he had done came back to him.
‘I killed Orri,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Then I am a kinslayer.’
‘You were bewitched by the mire. And he attacked you, remember. He was coming for you with a knife at the time.’
‘You would make a good advocate before the lawspeaker,’ said Vali. ‘I killed him. He was my kin.’
They sat for a while. Vali tried to come to terms with his crime. He couldn’t. He deserved to die for that alone. Then he said, ‘If you win, you’ll be free. I suppose it’s as logical a way out of this mess as any.’
‘I knew you would see it that way, lord,’ said Bragi, ‘and I am pleased to say I have issued a challenge on your behalf, as your trusted vassal.’
Vali almost laughed but the effort hurt.
‘Which of the king’s champions am I to face?’
‘Leikr,’ said Bragi. Vali swallowed. Forkbeard knew his business. He meant him to fight Adisla’s brother.
‘And you?’
‘The berserk in the pay of the Danes.’
‘He lived then?’
‘Yes. Forkbeard has promised him his freedom if he defeats me.’
Vali looked at Bragi. He was an old man, really, still useful in a shield wall or on a raid because of his experience; in personal combat he would be no match for the berserk. Bragi had his tricks, his skills and his willpower. The
berserk was in his prime, a giant and a war leader. Still, Vali was pleased for Bragi. He would die the way he would have wanted.
Bragi read what was on Vali’s mind.
‘It was the best I could do. Better this way than the rope, eh?’
‘I won’t fight Adisla’s brother,’ said Vali.
‘Then he’ll kill you.’
‘Yes. I deserve that for what I’ve done.’
‘And she?’
‘He’ll look for her.’
‘No. Forkbeard won’t let him. He’s declared her nithing, a sorceress and a force for evil, for the bad luck she has brought.’
‘Adisla is no more a sorceress than I am.’
‘Forkbeard says she is, that she was so envious of his daughter that she bewitched you and turned you against the people who have been your hosts for so many years. Do you know she killed her mother? It was seen, as the Danes approached their farm. She cut her mother’s throat.’
Vali breathed out and leaned back. What must it have taken for Adisla to do that? Her mother must have asked her to do it to deny the Danes the satisfaction of her rape and murder. Again Vali felt no tears, just that hollow empty feeling that he knew he could only fill with Danish blood. He imagined little Manni with his seax at the door, trying to defend his mother and sister, struck down by people who could easily have disarmed him and sent him on his way with a kick up the backside. Vali had never known such a cold fury inside him.
‘Ma Disa couldn’t be moved and Adisla looked to spare her,’ said Vali.
‘That’s not how Forkbeard sees it. Or her brothers. They’ve forsworn her and are pledged to kill her, if ever she’s found. The girl’s hopes rest with you, which is to say she has none at all.’
Vali nodded. ‘Then I,’ he said, ‘must find a way to live.’
25 Escape
It was the brief night and the lonely voice of a wolf was in the hills, far away over the dark valleys, its howl testing the emptiness. It was almost as if Vali could understand what it was saying. ‘I am here,’ it said. ‘Where are you?’ A bright full moon lit the night sky, turning Vali’s skin to silver, even in the pit.
‘They sound hungry, don’t they? Don’t worry, little wolf, you won’t starve for long. We’ve got two juicy hunks of traitor flesh here in the pit for you.’
It was the voice of Ageirr, the rider who had taken Adisla, come to taunt him. Her brothers had come before of course, but they had said nothing. Leikr had looked down at him, and Vali had felt his friend’s anger and pain. He’d tried to talk to him, not to defend himself but to tell him his little brother had died a heroic death, but Leikr had just walked away.
Ageirr was not angry; he was there for fun. He pulled down his trousers and took a heavy piss into the dark of the pit. Neither Bragi nor Vali gave him the satisfaction of complaining.
‘I did it with your little girl, you know, Vali. She asked me to. She said you couldn’t do it properly and would a real man please her.’
‘You’ll have the same pox as me then,’ said Vali with difficulty. ‘I thought your piss smelled like mine.’
Bragi laughed like he might shake something loose. The old man’s arm-thumping appreciation of Vali’s wit almost made the prince wish he hadn’t bothered.
Ageirr chuckled under his breath. There was movement beside him. He had someone with him, it seemed, most likely some of his cronies from Forkbeard’s bodyguard. He poked his head over the side of the pit.
‘You don’t seem bothered by what I did. Is she such a slut?’
‘Adisla wouldn’t look at you, Jarl Ageirr; she prefers high-born men.’
Ageirr set his jaw. ‘I am a jarl and the same as you,’ he said.
‘Is a jarl the same as a prince of the line of Odin? Tell me, did your father grant your mother her freedom before or after he knocked her up with you? Or is it true what they say, that she loved the thrall Kobbi and that you are his child?’
‘Which Danish pig’s bastard will Adisla be fathering?’ said Ageirr. ‘She’ll have been ridden from here to Haithabyr by now, and when they sell her on she’ll be ridden from there to wherever she’s going.’
Vali had been trying to keep Adisla’s likely fate from his mind since she had been taken.
‘If you’ve anything behind those words, step into the pit and let’s debate them in the old-fashioned way,’ said Bragi.
‘Oh, do be quiet,’ said Ageirr. ‘I wouldn’t want you alerting anyone to the little present we’ve brought for you. No no, you’re far enough away that no one will hear.’
‘Where are the guards?’
‘We are the guards.’
There was a sound of dragging and then some conversation between Ageirr and the other man at the top.
‘Take the bag off its head as you throw it in. No, you idiot. Cut the ties on the legs but hold the muzzle, I don’t want the thing biting me.’
There was a low note of distress that Vali had heard before. He knew what they had. It was a wolf.
‘Forkbeard will want to know how that got in with us,’ said Vali.
‘It just fell in, I suppose. You know what wolves are like,’ said Ageirr. ‘They sneak up on even the most vigilant guards. If you kill it, we’ll just say it fell in. He’s hardly likely to believe a kinslayer.’
The word felt sharp as a spear to Vali. Ageirr could try to humiliate him in any way and he would ignore it as the spiteful rantings of a fool, but nothing was more bitter to him than the truth that he had murdered one of his own.
Vali heard a scrabbling at the side of the pit, saw a flicker as something moved across the sky above him, and then a body hit him, hard. Instinctively he flinched back, throwing up his hands to defend his face from the attack of the wolf, but nothing came.
He heard a shout and the sound of a sword coming free from a scabbard.
‘Who’s there? Who’s there? No, no! No!’
Something else, wetter, hit him.
The light was dim in the pit but Vali could see perfectly well. It was just that his mind was having difficulty coming to terms with what was in front of him. Across his legs was the body of Ageirr. He was dead.
With them in the pit was another body. It was Signiuti, one of Forkbeard’s bodyguards, pulsing blood from a huge wound at his neck. He had fallen flat on his back onto Bragi, his sword still in his hand. Vali saw he had no throat; it had been torn clean away. Vali pushed Aegirr’s corpse off him, the blood black and shiny on the white of his hands, light on darkness, life on death.
Then Bragi was on his feet, taking the sword from the corpse’s hand. A face looked down at them. At first Vali thought it was a wolf. Then his eyes adjusted to the light. It was his own face, framed by a wolf’s pelt.
‘Do you mind stopping throwing bodies at us?’ said Bragi, ‘second thoughts, chuck a few more down and we’ll climb out on ’em.’
A ladder was lowered into the pit and neither man needed a second invitation. Bragi was up first. Vali untied Signiuti’s sword from his belt and followed.
When he put his head over the lip of the pit, he could see Bragi looking uncertainly at the wolfman. Feileg was freeing the wolf. He untied the animal’s front paws, then took off the bag. The wolf snapped and bit but Feileg made a low noise, inclined his head and scratched at the dirt. The animal became calmer. It looked about it, first at Feileg, then at Bragi and Vali. Then it ran and was gone.
Vali pulled himself up to face the wolfman in the moonlight. His instinct was to attack him but he had seen where that had got Aegirr and Signiuti. The bandit’s hands and face were covered with blood and Vali didn’t need to be told where it had come from.
The wolfman fixed him with a stare. His eyes seemed to go right into Vali. The prince recognised the look - cold murder.
‘Where is she?’ said the wolfman.
‘Who?’
‘The girl. Adisla.’
‘I don’t know. I want to find her. Why does it concern you?’
‘I love her.’
/> ‘What?’
‘I love her. She was kind to me. It means she loves me too.’
This was too much for Vali to take in, so he concentrated on more immediate concerns. ‘We have to leave. Now,’ he said.
‘You do what you like,’ said Bragi. ‘I’m going to find the berserk. To back down is to admit my guilt.’
Vali looked up at the stars. He couldn’t believe what Bragi was saying. ‘Who to? Forkbeard? You know he plans to make war on my father. That is your enemy, down there in those farms. The gods have proved you right by rescuing you from this pit. Don’t spite your fate by throwing your life away. I’ll need your sword where we are going, old friend.’