Einar’s eyes lost their teasing sparkle. He glanced over Svanhild’s shoulder at his smithy. “I think it would be better if he did not. Many men have found land and wives in Iceland and the south isles,” he said, meaning Norse Orkney. “Ragnvald would be better off if he did the same. Will you try to make him see that, if he returns?”
“Why would you say that?” Svanhild asked. “This is our father’s land. Ragnvald’s land. Olaf promised—” She could not quite recall what Olaf had promised; Ragnvald had been telling her, as long as she could remember, that Olaf only held the land in trust for their father. She was unsure of the legality, but Ragnvald had said that if Olaf wanted to take the land from him, he would have to do so in front of the Sogn district ting, make his shameful case before men who knew their family of old, and knew the land belonged to them.
Einar looked pained, as well he might, for any conflict would put him between Olaf and his foster siblings. Svanhild could not care about that, though—Ragnvald was in the right.
“Be reasonable, Svanhild. Your brother is still a boy—”
“He helped Olaf fight off raiders for the last three summers, while you—” She stopped before she could insult his manhood, but his face told her she had already wounded him. “Einar, I didn’t mean—It was Olaf who was too miserly to keep enough men here . . . and if what you’re saying is true”—she had to swallow to get the next words out calmly—“he probably wanted Ragnvald to risk his life against the summer raiders so he would die rather than get the land.”
“Ragnvald is my friend,” said Einar stiffly. “But he has surely realized that Olaf means to keep what is his now, and he has powerful friends. Ragnvald would be better off starting anew, elsewhere.”
“I will not tell Ragnvald you said this,” said Svanhild, in shock. She was sure Ragnvald had not realized anything like that and would think it a grave injustice. And Einar was his friend. “I must get to work. And the cows look hungry.” They had started to nibble on the short, already chewed grass at her feet.
“Svanhild . . . ,” he said, pleading.
“My brother values loyalty,” she said, “and so do I. Good day.”
Einar bid her good day with a painful-looking bow and walked slowly toward his smithy.
Svanhild applied her switch to the cows at the rear of the herd to drive them along the path that led around the southern edge of the lake. Olaf ruled the stretch of land and tenant farms along the south coast of Lake Ardal and several leagues farther south, more than the work of a day to walk around. Near the western end of the lake stood the remains of the hall her grandfather Ivar had built. He had been the king of Sogn while he lived, and passed the lands on to his son Eystein, who had lost pieces of that land every year, and lost his life raiding with Olaf. When Olaf returned with the news of Eystein’s death, he had married his friend’s wife and built a new hall, farther back from Sogn Fjord and the Danish raiders. Farther from ships that bore news and trade goods, as well.
One of Svanhild’s earliest memories was picking over the charred remains of the hall, prying melted pewter off rocks. Now grass covered the post ends, though she could still find pieces of charcoal between them if she looked. The cows liked to graze here, for the grass grew lush over the burned ground. She had little more than tales to remember her father by, while Ragnvald had some boyhood memories. When they were younger, Ragnvald’s tales were all of their father’s adventuring, for he had visited every district in Norway, and every land around the North Sea. As they grew older, Olaf’s doubts made Ragnvald remember their father’s lies, the winter he had been gone without word and their mother thought him dead. “He earned every man’s love and no man’s trust” was what Olaf said of him, on a rare Yule when he had been moved to speak of his fallen friend. While Olaf had no man’s love or trust.
Svanhild pulled her spindle and a piece of wool roving out of her pocket and perched on the stone wall that separated this field from the next. She gave the spindle a flick of her fingers to set it whirling, and began drafting out the greasy wool. Twice she pulled it too thin and the spindle clattered to the ground, the unspun fleece picking up bits of moss and earth that Vigdis would scold her over. She wrapped the wool around the spindle and tucked it into her pocket. Her fingers would not bend to the task today, not after Einar’s words. Ragnvald would not have chosen to settle abroad without her, not after his promises to her, but he could have died while raiding, just like their father had. If Ragnvald was dead, they would never again walk through the woods to the witches’ cave, never hike out to the cliffs overlooking Sogn Fjord and watch the seals play. If Ragnvald was dead, she did not like her prospects here: Olaf would marry her to Thorkell or one of his sons to keep the peace. Thorkell was a brute old enough to be her father, and his sons were either weak or brutish themselves. Ragnvald could not be dead.
Slanting sheets of rain chased from one side of the fjord to the other. The sun shone where Svanhild sat, though clouds approached from all directions. When the rain reached her, Svanhild pulled her cloak over her head and sat in the lee of a rock outcropping. She grew hungry in the afternoon, and rounded up the cows to drive them home.
As she left the cows to graze in the field closer to the hall, she heard the clatter of wood blades against one another from the practice yard. She walked around a fence corner, and saw her stepbrother Sigurd make a few hacks with his wooden sword against the practice post, then rest it against the wall. He slumped down next to it. Perhaps he had the same worries about Olaf’s intentions that Einar did—surely he did not want the land any more than Svanhild wanted him to have it. Sigurd needed someone to tell him what to do at every hour of the day. He could not hold Ardal against raiders.
She walked over to him and picked up his practice sword. The iron core inside the wood made it heavy. She had wanted one for herself once, and Olaf had beat her for it, saying she would make herself too ugly and scarred for marriage if she fought among the reckless boys. Ragnvald had taught her as much as he could, but she had been too small and impatient, and then her housework left her little time.
Sigurd was tall for his age, spindly as a beanstalk, and neither as strong nor canny as Ragnvald had been at his age. He was the son of Olaf’s first wife, a woman long dead, replaced by Vigdis and Svanhild’s mother. Sigurd had been young when he came with Olaf to live here in Ardal. Where both Svanhild and Ragnvald were dark as their father had been, Sigurd had Olaf’s washed-out coloring and a flaxen shock of hair above a face reddened by exertion and pocked with acne.
He sneered at Svanhild when he saw her. “You should be inside, caring for my little brother.” Vigdis’s new son was still young enough to be crying for milk at all hours of the night. He needed a wet nurse, not Svanhild.