King of Thorns

Sindri ushered us up the steps to the great hall’s entrance. The whole place had a sorry look to it. The black dust coated everything with a fine film. It tickled the throat like a feather. The patrol horses looked thin and unkempt.

“The Duke wants to see us still wearing the road?” I asked, hoping for some hot water and a chair after so many miles in the saddle. A little time to prepare would be good too. I wanted to remember where I knew the name from.

Sindri grinned. Despite the beard, he hadn’t too many years on me. “The Duke isn’t one for niceties. We’re not fussy in the northern courts. The summer is too short.”

I shrugged and followed up the stairs. Two large warriors flanked the doorway, hands on the hafts of double-headed axes, their iron blades resting on the floor between their feet.

“Two of your party should be enough,” Sindri said.

It never hurts to trust someone, especially when you’ve absolutely no other option. “Makin,” I said.

Makin and I followed Sindri into the gloom and smoke of the great hall. The place seemed empty at first, long trestle tables of dark and polished wood, bare save for an abandoned flagon and a hambone. Wood-smoke and ale tempered the stink of dogs and sweat.

At the far end of the hall on a fur-strewn dais in a high oak chair a figure waited. Sindri led the way. I trailed my fingers along the table as we walked, feeling the slickness of the wood.

“Jorg and Makin,” said Sindri to his lord. “Found heading north on your highway, Duke Alaric.”

“Welcome to the Danelands,” the Duke said.

I just watched him. A big man, white-blond hair and a beard down his chest.

The silence stretched.

“They have a monster with them,” Sindri added, embarrassed. “A troll or Grendel-kin, big enough to strangle a horse.”

In my mind a gargoyle howled. “You brought a snow-globe,” I said.

The Duke frowned. “Do I know you, boy?”

“You brought a snow-globe, a toy of the ancients. And I broke it.” It had been a rare gift, he would remember the globe, and perhaps the avarice with which a little boy had stared at it.

“Ancrath?” The Duke’s frown deepened. “Jorg Ancrath?”

“The same.” I made a bow.

“It’s been a long time, young Jorg.” Alaric stamped his foot and several of his warriors entered the hall from a room at the end. “I’ve heard stories about you. My thanks for not killing my idiot son.” He nodded toward Sindri.

“I’m sure the tales have been over-told,” I said. “I’m not a violent man.”

Makin had to cover his mouth at that. Sindri frowned, looking rapidly from me to Makin and back at the Duke.

“So what brings you to the Danelands then, Jorg of Ancrath?” the Duke asked. No time wasted here, no wine or ale offered, no gifts exchanged.

“I’d like some friends in the north,” I said. It hadn’t been part of my thinking but once in a long while I like a man on sight. I’d liked Alaric Maladon on sight eight years earlier when he brought my mother a gift. I liked him now. “This place looks to have missed a harvest or two. Perhaps you need a friend in the south?”

“A plain speaker, eh?” I could see the grin deep in his beard. “Where’s all your southern song and dance, eh? No ‘prithees,’ no ‘beseeching after my health’?”

“I must have dropped all that somewhere on the way,” I said.

“So what do you really want, Jorg of Ancrath?” Alaric asked. “You didn’t ride five hundred miles to learn the axe-dance.”

“Perhaps I just wanted to meet the Vikings,” I said. “But prithee tell me what ails this land. I beseech you.”

He laughed out loud at that. “Real Vikings have salt in their beard and ice on their furs,” he said. “They call us fit-firar, land-men, and have little love for us. My fathers came here a long, long time ago, Jorg. I would rather they stayed by the sea. I may not have salt in my beard but it’s in my blood. I’ve tasted it.” He stamped again and a thickset woman with coiled hair brought out ale, a horn for him and two flagons for us. “When they bury me my son will have to buy the longboat and have it sailed and carted from Osheim. My neighbour had local men make his. Would have sunk before it got out of harbour, if it ever saw the ocean.”

We drank our ale, bitter stuff, salted as if everything had to remind these folk of their lost seas. I set my flagon on the table and the ground shook, harder than any of the times before, as if I had made it happen. Dust sifted from the rafters, caught here and there by sunlight spearing through high windows.

“Unless you can tame volcanoes, Jorg, you’ll not find much to be done for Maladon,” Alaric said.

“Can’t Ferrakind send them to sleep for you?” I asked. I’d read that volcanoes slept, sometimes for a lifetime, sometimes longer.

Alaric raised a hairy brow at that. Behind us, Sindri laughed. “Ferrakind stirs them up,” he said. “Gods rot him.”