“What is your name?” he asked the child.
“Hilda,” she said, startling Ragnvald, though it was a very common nickname. His own Hilda was a Ragnhilda; Svanhild could have chosen it for herself. Hild meant battle, and this girl had seen one young.
“That is the name of my intended bride,” he told her. “It is a strong and lucky name.” The child only stared at him.
Strewn about the grass behind the barn, the bodies of men lay, most of them with their throats cut from ear to ear, neater than Ragnvald had managed with his man. Farmers, mostly. The few weapons clasped in dead hands were farm implements, not swords. The girl stared at them, soundless. Ragnvald worried that she might cry again, but as the silence stretched on he began to wonder if this child had lost her wits in the attack. He hoped the mother would come back soon.
She returned, as the girl started to fuss, with her hands dripping, and her face clean except at the hairline, where blood dyed her blond hair red. It was unbound now, making her look a maiden, even with her solid figure.
“Do you think they will come back?” Ragnvald asked.
The woman shrugged and scooped up her daughter, who yelled and wriggled when her mother held her too tight. “They only took what they could carry, and there is no one to defend this place now.”
“I am here,” said Ragnvald.
“Yes,” said the woman. “You came too late to save much of anything, though, didn’t you? My daughter and I are dead already. Go on, take whatever is left and leave this place of the dead.”
“You are not dead yet,” said Ragnvald, trying to ignore the way her words made his flesh crawl. She could not have guessed that he was half dead too, plucked from the water, with none to know if he lived or died. “The ting begins soon. You can bring suit against these men.”
“Do you think I know who they are? What are the men of Sogn to me if they could not prevent this?”
This was what happened in a land without a king. Someone should have been protecting the shores from raiders—perhaps Hunthiof, or perhaps if Ragnvald’s father had held their family’s lands, this farm would have fallen under his protection. Ragnvald could have been the protection she needed, instead of coming too late. Now she had only the yearly meeting for redress, and only then if she had a culprit to name and witnesses to call.
“If I am to stand guard for you, I will need food,” said Ragnvald. He could do that much. “I have been traveling and have not eaten well in a long time. Will you fetch some for me?”
He spoke firmly again, to try to cut through her anger and despair. “I do not want you to stand guard,” she said. “I told you, my daughter and I are dead. We lack only a blade to make it true.”
Ragnvald stood and took her arm. Her daughter shoved a hand into her mouth, her eyes wide and frightened again. “You owe your daughter better than that,” he said. The child reminded him of Svanhild after their father had died, abandoned by father and mother both, as Ascrida withdrew into despair. “I will watch her while you find me food. Then we will go on to the ting gathering. This is a rich farm, and it is yours now. You should marry a man better able to protect you this time. As a widow, your husband is your choice.”
“What makes you think I want another man after this?” she said, shuddering, but she did hand little Hilda over to Ragnvald.
“I spoke not of what you want, but what you and your daughter need,” he said. With her face clean, she was handsome enough, probably near thirty, full-cheeked, with a pouting lower lip and strong, even brows. A good catch for a man with strength at arms and little wealth. “And I need food.” He was accustomed to speaking to his mother like this when she withdrew into herself, and it worked on this woman as well. She scowled at him, but went off to do his bidding.
6
“My guard is sleeping again.” The words came as a cross-current to Ragnvald’s dream of gold and ships that passed by over his head. With the words came a pressure on his leg. He opened his eyes in a squint and saw Adisa, for that was the woman’s name, standing over him, toeing his calf with her soft leather shoe. She was correct; he had been dozing in the warmth of the morning sun, where it gathered on the south side of the barn. It had seemed like a good idea to sit down and rest as he kept watch, until now.
He had been keeping guard at her farm for two days, spending the daylight hours helping her dig graves for her menfolk and piling cairns, then mumbling half-remembered words of the burial ritual, while she stared at what must have been memories, playing out in the empty air before her. Nights he passed here, or more often on his feet, waiting for an attack that never came.
Adisa was quiet and somber most of the time, and her daughter scarcely louder. The girl followed in her mother’s wake without making a ripple. Now, though, Adisa’s face quirked with an ironic half smile that Ragnvald answered with one of his own.
“Go inside and sleep,” she said. “The dead are resting, and the living have plundered their fill.”
Ragnvald did not think that was true, but he could not stay awake another full day and night without rest. This farm still had too much bounty for the raiders not to consider returning. Adisa wore copper brooches to fasten her overdress. Within empty stables, metal-worked tack hung on nails. And the woman herself—if a man kidnapped her, and made her pregnant, he could claim rights to this farm, even if she later divorced him. If she had no kin to defend her, a man who took possession of the farm and its lady would have some rights.
Ragnvald thought his fear of returning raiders would keep him from sleep when he lay down on the mattress Adisa showed him, but instead he fell into the dream of before, of the golden hall beneath the waves, as though he had never left it.
His first thought on waking was about how vilely he stank. He had not washed in weeks, and now he had spent two days burying the dead. Adisa must be more grateful to him than she could bring herself to say, to let him sleep on her clean mattress. As twilight came on, he fetched water and wood to make himself a bath. It felt as much work as burying the dead. He almost nodded off again when he finally sat within the bathhouse and let clean sweat and steam carry his grime off him. The heat loosened the clotted blood on his face, from wounds he had almost forgotten in the exhaustion of the last few days. Adisa had never even asked about them.
“Ragnvald, are you asleep again?” Adisa asked from outside the bathhouse. He did not answer at once, not asleep, but warm and free from worry as a cat in the sun.