Ragnvald examined Runolf more closely. The strain told on his face. A muscle pulsed in his jaw. The tendons in his neck stood out like ropes. Heming fought with freedom and grace, Runolf with grim purpose, trapped in an impossible situation where the only escape was death or outlawry. Ragnvald stole a glance at Hakon. The king watched the contest, intent as a falcon, his heavy brows drawn low over his eyes. Ragnvald wondered what outcome Hakon hoped for. Men did not always love their sons best.
Runolf stumbled, and Hakon started forward and then checked himself. “His fate has put him in this place,” said Egil. “All he can hope for is to die with his sword in his hand.”
Egil was right. Runolf fended off two more blows from Heming and then stumbled again. Ragnvald took a step toward him without thinking, as though he could take Runolf’s part—but who was Runolf to him? A wise man would stay out of an impossible fight.
Runolf’s knee hit the earth. He scrambled to his feet again and tried to bring his sword up, but Heming’s was there first, a hard stroke against the side of his neck that went foul and sliced down into his shoulder. Heming worked to free his sword as Runolf fell. He raised his shield arm one last time even as death claimed him. The blood on Heming’s hands was black in the deepening dusk.
“Does Runolf have family to avenge him?” Ragnvald asked Egil, shaken. He glanced at Egil, whose eyes were still fastened on the dark wound. A woman came forward, her face like a crumbling cliff, and placed her veil over Runolf’s eyes.
“Who would challenge a king’s son? They will take the wergild instead,” said Egil. Ragnvald watched Runolf’s woman, whose hair trailed over the fallen man. She looked like a woman who would rather have blood than a payment from Hakon. Wergild would not take away her pain or let her husband’s spirit rest.
“We will see tomorrow,” said Ragnvald. Tomorrow when the trials began, and Ragnvald would also see if Egil would testify for him. Ragnvald looked back up the length of the table to where Hakon’s sons sat. They joked and postured for one another as though nothing had happened, even as Heming called for a rag to wipe the blood from his hands and face. Slowly, men returned to the feasting tables. Ragnvald watched Hakon’s sons on their carven chairs, trying to read their personalities from how they ate. Heming took bites when it pleased him, gesturing with his dagger more often than he used it to spear a piece of meat—already boasting of his victory tonight. The middle son, Geirbjorn, tried to imitate Heming’s manners, but he had not the trick of it, and the hungry way he watched his brothers and father gave his jealousy away. The youngest trueborn son, Herlaug, was sour of face, and ate as little as his brothers, without their enjoyment or showmanship. Perhaps Ragnvald had been wrong to be jealous—he might wish for a father like Hakon, but brothers like his sons would be far more trying than Sigurd. Oddi alone ate with great appetite, more intent on eating than on his kin’s words, though he still laughed when it was required of him. Ragnvald wondered how he felt about Runolf’s killing. Before the duel his eyes had sparkled; now they seemed troubled.
Ragnvald shook his head. It mattered little to him that Hakon had ambitious sons—they only followed their father’s example. Hakon’s father Grjotgard had held far less land than his son did. Hakon had spent his youth conquering more lands, and now they stretched far into the north, where the lights in the winter sky touched the ground, where the elves and hulda-people lived, in lands eternally swathed in mist. Some men still managed to outshine their fathers.
*
Blood ran through Ragnvald’s dreams that night. He woke in the dimness of midnight, feeling hungry and feral, a wolf outside a crowded hall. He wanted to rise and walk across the assembly grounds to Olaf’s tent and finish it then and there. Instead he sat in the entrance to the tent he had borrowed from Adisa’s family, picking the worst of the dirt out of his tunic, and the wild feeling gave way to nervousness that knotted his stomach. Solvi should at least give him a share of treasure today, more if Ragnvald could use the threat of Svanhild’s knowledge to force Egil to testify. Solvi might even turn the accusation upon Olaf—the best outcome, for Ragnvald would then have leverage to force Olaf to give him the lands he held in trust for Ragnvald. Perhaps even his own lands.
As he waited for sunrise, a deer wandered close. Ragnvald did not have spears or a bow, so he only watched it pick between the saplings on dainty feet, putting its nose down to eat. It was a young buck, with fuzzy points of antlers on its forehead. He wondered that the animal was alone; perhaps he had been driven off by the lead stag, although it was not yet rutting season. The deer lingered as the sky lightened, eating tiny tree shoots bare.
He remained near his tent until he could not stand waiting any longer, and then walked out to the trial ground. Log sections on end stood in a circle for spectators’ seats. Men sat with their sons, teaching them who was admirable, to be emulated, and who was not. Ragnvald had sat there once with his father, who thought that men should settle issues by dueling, not by suit. Olaf, however, said that feuds destroyed great families, and the land was more peaceful under the law courts. And anyway, a duel could still be fought if the litigants did not find the verdict fair.
The men who formed this year’s jury sat in true seats on one side. Twenty men were chosen by lot to serve as the jury, and they could ask questions and demand witnesses. Of course, the audience shouted out questions too, and the jury could be sure to know which way the wind blew before they voted.
Solvi and his men stood to the outside, behind the crowds seated around the circle. They seemed more dangerous than the other men there, aloof from the farmers’ conversations, the small concerns of sheep and meadow. Solvi’s smile was mocking.
Ragnvald paced near where the other petitioners gathered; his face must have warned people off from approaching him, for few did. At length Hrolf Nefia held up the speaking stick and banged it on a rock for silence. Hrolf had taken the role of law speaker this year. Each year someone must speak a third of the law, so every man who did his duty and came to the trials would know it complete in three years.
Hrolf invoked Tyr, the giver of laws, asking him to witness the jury’s fair judgment. Once he finished reciting the law, the trials began. Jarl Runolf’s family brought suit against Hakon’s son Heming for Runolf’s death. Runolf’s uncle made his case, and each side called witnesses to attest to the fight between king’s son and jarl. Runolf had, Heming’s men swore, insulted Heming’s manhood, which lessened the amount of wergild that could be paid. The jury awarded the payment, meager and ungenerous for a jarl’s death, and Runolf’s family took it, rather than continue a blood feud with a family as powerful as Hakon’s. A murmur went up from the assembly. Accepting wergild over feud might bring peace, but it was not the stuff of poetry. The crowd wanted more blood.
More death suits followed, and it was not until afternoon that less serious suits were allowed.