Wolfsangel

30

The sun shone brightly on Vali during his time at Hemming’s court but he knew things were going badly for him when the king didn’t receive him immediately. It was a week before he was summoned to the main hall, a week in which he stayed in the longhouse he had been allocated in case he should bump into the monarch outside his halls. He knew that the meeting had to be on Hemming’s terms — at the time and place of his choosing. So when the summons came it was welcome — a relief from boredom and the frustration of inaction, at least.

Vali went alone. It felt good to get out into the clean air after a week in the smoky house and he took the opportunity to look around.

Hemming’s settlement was impressive, containing five big longhouses. There were ramparts — one with a gate — on every side of the settlement apart from that adjoining the winding sea inlet — or river as it now was. A smaller version of the sea wall being constructed at Haithabyr extended from the rampart into the water in a semicircle with a chain across the entrance from the river. Vali didn’t know whether to marvel at the skill of its construction or despair at how difficult it would make escape. There were only a couple of lookouts on the sea wall but, thought Vali, how many does it take to raise an alarm? No ship could come or go unless the chain was lowered, and if Vali and his companions tried to escape overland, Hemming would simply alert the surrounding farms.

A jarl in a bright yellow tunic conducted him to the hall, a huge structure with bulging sides like a ship’s. You could have fitted two of Forkbeard’s halls inside it.

A door was opened and he went in. At the far end he could just see through the haze of the fire a tall thin man sitting on a large stone seat. As Vali was led forward he saw the king more clearly. He was richly dressed in bright blue silks, his eyes elaborately decorated with kohl and his lips smeared with the juice of berries.

Kneeling at his side was the drab figure of a Christian priest, his head shaved into a tonsure. He was scribbling on a tablet and Vali would normally have been intrigued to look at what he was doing. On Hemming’s other side was a pretty woman in a long silk gown of pale yellow. She came forward to Vali with a drinking horn. It was a beautiful thing, polished and inlaid with silver.

The woman spoke in an exotically accented Norse. ‘I am Inga, queen of the Danes, and I bid you welcome to our court. Drink, guest. Accept the mead of friendship from Hemming, king of the Danes, mightiest ruler of this Middle Earth.’

‘My gratitude to the noble queen. I accept this drink in recognition of our friendship, now and in the future,’ said Vali.

He took a sip.

‘Formalities over?’ said Hemming, who had been preoccupied with a parchment. He handed it back to the kneeling priest and looked up at Vali. ‘Good. You are welcome, Vali of the Horda, over and above the high words with which we honour you.’

The king spoke perfect Norse without a trace of an accent.

‘Your majesty is good to see me so soon after my arrival,’ said Vali.

‘All other business ceased when we knew you were here,’ said Hemming with a short smile. The king then sat in silence for a moment, staring at Vali.

Vali wondered if he was expected to say something, but he couldn’t think what that might be so he just kept quiet.

‘Why are you here? The truth.’

‘To ask your permission for the Rygir to attack Haarik, or for you to order him to compensate us for our loss.’ Vali did not like to lie but there was a saying, ‘A lie to an enemy is no lie at all.’ Hemming was a potential enemy so deceit was allowable, honourable even. An oath, however, well, that would be a different matter.

‘That is not why you are here,’ said Hemming. His manner was calm: there was no threat at all in his voice. Only the sudden restlessness of the priest gave Vali any indication that anything was wrong. The man glanced at the king and went pale. Vali remembered that, at least in word, these priests were opposed to killing, though confusingly they did eat human flesh. If someone lied in front of Forkbeard he could expect to be given to Odin before he had the chance to tell his next one. Was Hemming similar, if with quieter manners?

There was another long silence. This time Vali did feel the need to break it first.

‘I am here on a fool’s errand,’ he said.

The king raised his eyebrows, indicating that Vali should go on. Vali tried to think fast. He needed to describe his mission in a way that Hemming would find acceptable.

‘I was sick as a boy,’ he said, ‘and a healer in Rogaland tended me and cured me. I vowed to her then that any service I could do her, I would. Her daughter was taken in Haarik’s raid and her mother begged me to find her and free her. It is an oath I made before Odin, lord. I had to act upon it. Forkbeard was not keen to help me find a lowly freewoman’s daughter. Hence here I am, in the only transport I could muster. I am looking for a girl.’

‘Go home then. An oath in front of idols and false gods means nothing,’ said the priest. His accent was thick and strange.

Hemming held up his hand. ‘To us, father, an oath in front of a goat or a duck is worth something. A man is only a man in as much as he can keep his oath.’

The priest remained motionless; Hemming puckered up his mouth in thought.

‘Not the whole story, is it?’

‘Lord?’

‘Were you running towards this girl or away from Forkbeard?’

Vali smiled. ‘Something of both, sir.’

‘Lord of wisdom, help me now!’ said Hemming to the rafters.

The priest smiled uncertainly.

Hemming shook his head and looked Vali up and down. ‘So what am I to do with you?’

Vali said nothing.

‘No, really, I want your advice. Come on. You started this mess, let’s see you get us out of it. What shall I do with you?’

‘Help me find the girl.’

Hemming laughed and waved the back of his hand at Vali as if to swat him away. ‘She is Haarik’s taken in war. And besides I don’t think she’s even his to give by now.’

‘She’s been sold on?’

The king didn’t answer the question but sat back and gave Vali that appraising look again. ‘What do you know of sorcery, prince?’

‘Very little.’

‘You are too modest. The lord Odin has his intelligencers and I have mine. Do you want me to tell you what my ravens whisper to me?’

The priest shifted again.

‘Anything the king wishes to tell me, it will be my honour to hear.’

‘You fight foes with neither spear nor sword. Mighty war bands fall before you, defeated by mobs of boys and old men. You consult gods in the mire. You miraculously escape the most secure captivity and consort with wildmen and shape-shifters. Seers and wizards from the four corners of the earth look into their ponds or take to their hanging trees, and the visions they see are of the son of the wolf eating up the world. A boy escaped from some hags of the north of your country tells, as he dies, a story about a great enchantment being laid, again for the son of the wolf. Is that not how you are known, prince, as the son of the wolf?’

‘These stories are exaggerated. I am a sore disappointment to my father, I can assure you of that.’

‘I hear that as well,’ said Hemming. ‘If I believed half the seer babble I’d hang you now and take the consequences.’ He paused and seemed thoughtful, then looked straight at Vali. ‘Understand my problem. Your father is stricken.’

Vali tried to stop the alarm registering on his face. He failed.

‘Yes, I know. Your mother rules in his place. That makes you very important, for the moment. If one of your cousins or uncles seizes the throne, however, it makes you less important in one way, more in another. Your value as some sort of bargaining counter drops, but I think the new king would pay well to have you returned to him, breathing or not. On the other hand, were I to give you a few ships to conquer your homeland then a good many of your kinsman would rally to you and, with luck, I would have another king paying me tribute from overseas, the proper oaths having been extracted. That said, I’m always interested in short-term gain. Forkbeard is keen on seeing you again. You could still be valuable there.’

Vali opened his mouth to speak but Hemming held up a hand to silence him.

‘What am I to do? I’ve enough problems to contend with without this.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m looking for a reason to let you go but I really can’t find one.’

‘I eat a lot and am expensive to keep,’ said Vali. He tried to keep his manner light. If he had no bargaining power with the king at all, at least he could try to make him like him.

Hemming smiled. The priest stood and whispered into his ear. The king listened impassively while the queen asked Vali how he liked the mead.

The priest sank back to the floor.

‘You are important,’ said Hemming. ‘I can see that without employing seers and wizards. That’s common sense. Son and heir of that prodigious killer, your father, the Horda will want you on the throne if you’ve got even a sliver of that old steel in you. My priest advises me to kill you.’ He gestured to the man in the sackcloth, who actually coloured with embarrassment. ‘His religion finds practitioners of Seid threatening. Coincidentally, word from the west makes me even more inclined to kill you. Haarik wants you as a gift for the northern sorcerers. That’s why he came for you.’

‘He came to plunder,’ said Vali.

‘Hardly. He must have known Forkbeard would have hidden his gold very carefully, particularly while he was away. Why go storming in risking war with the Rygir when there are West Men who can’t muster a drakkar between them not a week’s sail away?’

‘I-’

‘Why three ships? He has near sixty, you know. Well, fifty-nine after you relieved him of one. What can you do with three? Hit and run, no more. If he thinks Forkbeard is stupid enough to leave his treasure so near the shore then he’s not the Haarik I know. It was people he was after, if not you then those close to you. That’s why he went for the girl.’

‘How could he know about her?’

‘How do I know about you?’ Hemming shrugged. ‘Haarik doesn’t have a large network of spies but he has his methods, I’m sure.’

‘No Rygir man would dishonour his lord by spying.’

‘Yes, he would,’ said Hemming. ‘Or he’ll talk in drink at markets or to traders. Some with ambitions of their own will go further.’

‘Name the traitor, and if I see him again he will die.’

Hemming shook his head.

‘Well, I’d hardly be likely to do that, would I? The facts are these. Haarik wanted you. That’s the word I hear. You. Which is why you become important again. I mean, I might allow you to accept his hospitality, for a consideration. On the other hand, if I do that we all know that King Authun has his ravens too, and your mother Yrsa even more. If I hand you over to Haarik, I anger your father. While I have no doubt my men could crush the Horda in war, I also have no doubt your father would make us pay a high price for the victory. He may be sick, or that may be a bluff. Whatever, I think there’s a chance he would make a remarkable recovery and demonstrate his uncanny knack of finding the opposing king on the battlefield.’ He glanced at his bodyguard. ‘And it would be a shame to meet such a formidable, some say unbeatable, warrior and destroy the myth.’

‘Kings are for glory, not long life,’ said Vali, repeating the well-known saying.

‘Your father seems to have combined both to alarming effect. It would take a brave man — though needless to say I long for such a chance to prove myself in combat against such as he — a brave man indeed, to bet on ending either.’

‘I tell you this: Authun would let me die a thousand deaths before he gave you or Haarik so much as a coin in ransom. I am not so important. He can name an heir.’

Hemming tapped his knee.

‘I disagree. You are important. Line of Odin and all that. What do you do in the far north-east?’

The question surprised Vali, as it was meant to.

‘Nothing. I have been on one raid in the west but nothing further.’

‘To the land of the Whale People? Vagoy, the wolf island, or around there in Ultima Thule?’

Vali recognised the old name for the islands at the end of the known world. He shrugged.

‘What do you know of the wolf island?’ said Hemming.

‘Nothing.’

‘Haarik’s son was captured near there a year or so ago. I’ve wondered if that’s anything to do with all this.’

‘In what way?’

Hemming shrugged in his turn. ‘Haarik loves his son, though why I cannot tell. The boy’s an idiot. I don’t know. There’s always been a rumour about the Whale People keeping a vast treasure up there — maybe he went looking for that. He’s the rarest sort of fool if he has.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the northerners are as poor as prophets. There is no treasure. I’ve sent men up there myself to check, but it’s a flat cold rock, nothing more. Whatever he was up there for, he’s got lost, and Haarik wants him back. But then Haarik attacks the Rygir instead of going after him. It makes no sense.’

Vali was nervous. He drained the mead and the queen came forward with more.

Hemming went on: ‘He could have you, but quite frankly Haarik went against my advice in raiding the Rygir, so I’m certainly not rewarding him with what he wants. What to do, what to do?’

‘I intend to find the girl I’m looking for and live as a farmer,’ said Vali. ‘I want nothing to do with kingship.’

Hemming snorted. ‘Well, you’ll find that in this life what you intend rarely has any bearing on what you finish up doing, particularly as a king. If I let you go, you’ll become king or die. Whoever became king in your place wouldn’t want Authun’s son hiding like a wolf in the byre. You’d be dead, and your family with you, within a year. Intend. Intend! I didn’t intend you to come here. If you’d passed through Haithabyr without proclaiming who you were I would never have detained you.’

‘We feared attack by the townsfolk.’

‘Haithabyr is the world’s biggest port,’ said Hemming. ‘People are used to strangers. You could have come and gone as you pleased. It isn’t some farmstead where you have to sound your horn as soon as you’re in earshot or risk doing the dead lord’s dance.’

Vali felt stupid and angry. Why hadn’t Forkbeard allowed him one of these holy men — sitting on his shoulder, recording his orders so they couldn’t be forgotten, lost or argued about, and teaching him to speak like Hemming? Surely it was worth kneeling to their god for that, whatever you believed in your heart.

‘If you release me, you have my oath of friendship.’

‘Well, I had already considered that. I’d be something of a fool to let you leave without it, wouldn’t I?’ said Hemming. He smiled again at Vali. ‘If you and your friends could contrive to die in an accident then many of the problems this causes me would be solved, you know.’

Again, Hemming’s face lacked menace, though Vali could see the danger was greater than his manner suggested. He was businesslike and thoughtful. Forkbeard would have been screaming in Vali’s face or sucking up to him.

‘If your majesty releases me then I shall endeavour to do my best to fulfil his wishes,’ he said. ‘I intend now to go to Haarik and ask him for the girl.’

Hemming laughed. ‘Make sure you ask him when you’ve got your spear halfway through him or you’ve very little chance of a pleasant answer. Anyway, Haarik didn’t go home, so you won’t find him there.’

‘Where did he go?’

For the first time Hemming seemed on the edge of anger.

‘Should I tell you that so you can hunt him down and kill him, he who swells my coffers with chests of silver and gold? If you intend to use me as your raven, prince, the least you could do is throw me a little corn.’

‘I have none to give.’

Hemming turned his face away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t, do you? Go back to your quarters. I’ll decide whether to kill you, sell you or keep you by the end of tomorrow.’

He extended his hand and the priest passed him up a piece of parchment. Queen Inga took the drinking horn from Vali’s hands and a bodyguard led him from the hall.