“Or is it the girl?” Snorri asked, when Solvi failed to respond.
“What about her?” said Solvi. “She’s not here.” Sometimes it seemed as though Snorri could read his thoughts. He had dreamed of her last night, and woken up happy, then grown sour as he realized that she was only a dream, that she was far away from him, and if she thought of him, it was with some mixture of dislike and amusement. If he had taken her away before the trials began—but what was done was done.
“She doesn’t matter,” Solvi said. Though she had liked him, he was sure of that.
*
They approached Tafjord on a day of pure calm, and had to cover the last leagues by rowing. A dense fog hid the halls. A mass of arguing voices reached their boat before they drew close enough to see anything. No violence, it sounded like, but a crowd had gathered. Solvi saw to the horses and sent Snorri ahead.
When Solvi was finished stabling the horses, he found a great confusion of farmers milling around the kitchen door. Snorri stood on a log, calling for order in his broken voice. No one heeded. Solvi waved his arm over his head, and Snorri leapt down and walked over to take the reins of Solvi’s horse.
“It’s the delivery of spring vegetables,” said Snorri, a thread of panic in his voice. He could pilot a ship through the worst of storms, but a simple household transaction left him floundering.
“Where’s Geirny?” Solvi asked. His wife was housekeeper at Tafjord—she should manage this delivery with her steward, Hunvith, and make certain that each farmer had delivered according to his requirements.
Snorri shrugged. “She is sick, I have heard.”
Solvi was tired from his journey, but would rather handle this than have to see his father or Geirny. He took Snorri’s place on top of the stump, and called for silence. When he exerted himself, his voice could be heard ship to ship in a gale, and he was proud of it. On the post, he was only a hand’s breadth taller than the surrounding farmers—and they grew up shorter than well-fed warriors. They knew him for Hunthiof’s son, though, and the muttering stopped.
Solvi had grown up riding all over these men’s farms. He began calling out their names according to their distance from Tafjord, according to the memories he had of riding to greet them in the days when he had dogged the footsteps of his father’s old steward Barni. Now Barni stayed in the hall, for his joints always ached, and played endless games of tafl with Solvi’s father. Know their names, Barni had told him, when Solvi wanted nothing more than to adventure across the sea as his father had done. The names of farmers held no excitement next to that.
“Humli, what do you bring this year? How do your shaggy cows?” Humli farmed the upper slopes, and had bred his cows for their thick coats, which he tanned into rugs and wall hangings that made his home the warmest, if strangest-looking, dwelling within walking distance of Tafjord.
“Warm as always,” said Humli, bringing forward a sack of spring onions, fragrant through the soiled homespun.
Solvi called out a few more from his perch, then climbed down to walk among them, shake hands, and give out silver to those who had done well this year. He talked with each of them to hear the state of their lands, and who had sheep carried off by wolves. Solvi gifted one wolf-plagued farmer a puppy from one of his hunting dogs.
The farmers lined up their tributes along the outside kitchen wall, except the living beasts, including a calf that would make a kingly roast this fall. These Solvi bade them lead into the byre, where one of the thralls could see to their provisioning. Except for horses, animals did not live long at Tafjord—there should be plenty of space for them.
The last farmer showed Solvi his cart’s burden: sacks of turnips from the last season. It was not much, but Solvi recalled that this man’s farm stood on the very edge of the arable land, near where the ground became too rocky to farm in the high mountain passes. He could be forgiven. Solvi gave the farmer his tally stick, showing that his tax had been approved, and sent him to the kitchen for some lunch.
Finally Solvi had accepted all the tribute, the cheeses, cabbages, eggs, dripping leather-lined baskets of skyr, the skins of ale, all the things that would feed Hunthiof’s court over the summer. He invited those farmers that lingered to stay the night for feasting, although he did not know if anything would be prepared for them.
Two large halls stood higher than the sheds and outbuildings that made up Tafjord: the high-roofed drinking hall where Hunthiof feasted his warriors, where tales were told, and feuds began, and the longer, lower-roofed living hall. Solvi entered his home through the kitchen, and found Geirny sitting with his father, playing knucklebones. Geirny giggled when Hunthiof caught her wrist in his hand and prevented her from scooping up the bones before the clay ball bounced again.
“The farmers have brought in their tribute,” said Solvi. Geirny tossed the ball again. Solvi threw the tally sticks down onto the table, among the bones. “This is your duty, Geirny.”
Geirny tossed her hair. Solvi remembered when he had first seen her, and wanted her. When his father had paid her father, King Nokkve, a steep bride price to buy this beautiful woman for his crippled son.
“I thought my duty was to give you a son,” she said.
“Yes,” Solvi answered. “And you have failed at that too.” He regretted the words the moment he said them, for he could predict what would come next, and it would set servants’ tongues to wagging.
“Whose fault is that?” Geirny asked, her voice rising shrill. He should have divorced her long before this, before their relationship had soured so much she would question his manhood before witnesses, but their marriage had also bought peace between Hunthiof and King Nokkve. Solvi’s mother had been Nokkve’s sister, which made Geirny his cousin. That family connection alone should have bought peace, and would have, if both kings were not so quick to anger.
He had been down this road with her before. If he reminded her that the law gave him the right to divorce her for barrenness, she would cite his twisted legs as the reason none of their sons had lived to take breath. Would Svanhild attack him thus? Probably, he thought, but she would not shirk her duty with the farmers either. Ragnvald had spoken of her on their journey together as the most spirited of women, and Solvi had found her so, spirited and charming.
“Call your steward to bring the tributes into the kitchen and have dinner prepared for the farmers who pass the night here,” Solvi commanded Geirny. She looked from him to his father, and brazenly held his father’s gaze until he nodded his permission. Solvi thought of Svanhild, and of the ocean, and the men who looked to him for instruction, leadership, life, everything, so he would not rage at his father and Geirny.