‘So you’ve heard of him,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’ve heard of him. A friend of his, are you, or else looking to sell your sword to him?’
Snorri had taken me for a freebooter as well. Was it so obvious, I wondered, that I had become a masterless man, one of those landless, wandering warriors that until recently I had so despised?
‘He’s no friend of mine,’ I replied. ‘And my services aren’t for sale.’
‘What, then?’
‘He stole something that belongs to me,’ I said. ‘I want it back.’
Twenty
WE SAT IN near-darkness on one of the benches that ran along the long sides of the hall, while Magnus crouched by the dwindling flames of the peat fire, his tufted woollen cloak drawn close about his shoulders. The air was suffused with the smell of damp thatch and rotting timbers. Instead of rushes as we tended to use in England, I noticed the floor was covered with a loose scattering of woodchips and moss, which clearly hadn’t been replaced in some time, if the mouse-droppings everywhere were anything to judge by.
‘His fortress is far to the north of here, among what are known as the Suthreyjar,’ Magnus said, satisfied now that we hadn’t come to taunt him, and having accepted my offer of silver.
‘The Suthreyjar?’ I asked.
‘The islands that lie off the coast of northern Britain,’ Snorri offered by way of explanation. ‘They used to be under the control of the jarls of Orkaneya and the kings of Mann, but now they are havens for pirates, the dominions of petty warlords. Those are dangerous seas that surround them, and yet that’s the way one must travel to reach Ysland and the frozen lands beyond.’
‘Haakon is one of those pirates,’ Magnus said, and there was spite in his voice. ‘And one of the more powerful among them, too. He likes to call himself a jarl, but no king ever bestowed that title upon him. He makes his living in the spring and autumn by preying on the trading ships that sail the waters close to his island fastness, and in summer by raiding along the shores of Britain, sometimes selling his services to noble lords and kings in return for rich reward.’
‘How did you come by this knowledge?’ I asked.
Magnus was silent for a moment. In his eye, though he tried to hide it by turning away, I spied a glimmer of a tear. ‘I know’, he said, speaking quietly now, ‘because, to our misfortune, my brothers and I tried to purchase his services for a campaign of our own.’
‘You did?’ Snorri said with some surprise. ‘You, a warrior?’
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘He made off in the night with all the booty we had captured on our raid, leaving myself and my brothers unable to pay our men for their service.’ He took a deep breath. ‘A fight broke out. My eldest brother was killed, the other gravely wounded. He did not die straightaway, but fell into a fever and left this world three days later. I alone managed to escape with my life, together with a few of my oath-sworn followers, as well as some who had served my brothers.’
‘You never told me this,’ Snorri said.
‘And why should I have done? This was three summers ago, before I even knew you.’ Magnus turned back to me. ‘So, you see, he took something from me as well. Something more valuable than gold or silver or weapons. He took the lives of my brothers. It’s because of him that they’re now dead, and I find myself reduced to this.’
A moving story, to be sure, although he was not alone in having such a tale to tell. In a similar way Eadgar had taken from me my lord and all my loyal brothers in arms on that night at Dunholm. What I wanted to know was the one thing Magnus had not yet told me.
‘Where is Haakon’s fortress?’ I asked.
‘I do not know the name of the island, although I know how to find the fjord in which it lies.’
‘You’ve been there before?’
‘Once,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen his stronghold on its crag by the sea. Jarnborg, he calls it.’
‘The iron fortress,’ Snorri murmured.
Magnus nodded. ‘It might as well be made of iron, for all the success that men have had trying to capture it. It’s all but unassailable, protected on three sides by high cliffs rising from the water, and approachable only by a narrow neck of land, but it’s so steep and uneven that you could never lead an army up it.’
‘Could you take me there?’ I asked.
‘Take you there? Why?’
‘To claim back what’s rightfully mine.’
‘With this army?’ he asked, nodding at the various members of my retinue. ‘Four men, yourself included, and one girl?’
‘And as many others as I can hire.’
He snorted derisively. ‘Hosts numbering in the hundreds have marched against Jarnborg and failed to take it. What makes you think you can do it with five?’
‘It needn’t come to an assault, if Haakon is willing to deal with me.’