Ragnvald and Oddi brought the deer meat back to the ship to pack it in salt so it would not spoil. Ragnvald found a sturdier rope to tie the boy up. He secured him to one of the ship’s ribs, and tied his hands and feet. It still did not look quite secure enough; he could well imagine the boy getting out of his bonds and wriggling over the side—Ragnvald remembered being that age well enough to remember getting into and out of all kinds of spaces adults could never go—but he had no surer way to hold him. He could not seal the boy up in a barrel, much as he might want to.
Dark came early in the shadow of the cliffs. The insects and birds quieted as the darkness drew in. As Ragnvald leaned over the edge of the ship to wash the blood from his hands in the fjord water, Oddi crouched next to him.
“Leave it,” he said. Ragnvald looked at his hands. The blood had grown tacky as it dried, and now his fingers stuck together when he made a fist. “Blood spilled now, blood spilled later. You’ll want them to fear you.”
The deer blood smelled different from a man’s blood, less metallic. He had spilled deer’s blood many times, men’s only a few. When they attacked the monastery in the Hebrides, Solvi’s berserks had smeared blood on their faces and worked blood into their hair to make it stand out in all directions. And the monks had run.
Ragnvald looked up when Guthorm approached. “How did you end up with a prisoner?” he asked Ragnvald, who explained as quickly as he could.
“I suppose we’ll have men enough to guard the boy as well as the ships,” said Guthorm, eventually. “I don’t like it, though. What if this boy has minders who wonder where he is?”
“Better for them to wonder than know what he saw.”
“You could have killed him and left him in the wood. Made it look like an animal did it.” Ragnvald recoiled; the boy was younger than the novice monks Ragnvald had helped kill with Solvi’s raiders, still a child. Guthorm shook his head. “I had thought better of you, from the tales told of you,” he added.
“I could bring him back there and do it,” said Ragnvald.
“No, it is too late. We depart at nightfall. Perhaps he will be of use as a hostage.” Guthorm turned to step from Hakon’s ship back to his own. The creaking of many ships moored together, and the low voices of men who knew battle was coming, filled the still air.
“I knew your father,” said Guthorm. “I hope you don’t have his faults.”
“I hope not as well,” said Ragnvald to his retreating back. Fuming, he spoke to the pilot of one of the ships, who would remain behind to move them if they were discovered. He promised the man silver if he looked after the boy, and freed him once their forces had been gone for a full day. That should give them enough time.
18
In the morning, Svanhild crawled out of her shelter, and saw frost on the ground from the night before. A curl of bark had caught a splash of water that she used to wet her face. She took all the items out of her pack and rolled them more securely than she had been able to do in the dark at Hrolf’s farm. Perhaps she should wait here until Thorkell became tired of searching for her.
No, that was the voice of fear speaking. He had hunting dogs, he had her scent. She must keep moving. Face strangers, who might not know her name or her family. Men who would—would men be willing to take her where she wanted to go? Would the daughter of the kings of Sogn, kings passed into memory and faded reputation, be able to command any respect, even to buy it with jewelry? It was all very well to dream about being a Brunhilda, bent on revenge for an insult to her husband, when she could not even stand up and continue walking.
She argued with herself a few minutes longer, and had almost resolved to rest another day when she heard the barking of dogs in the distance. That noise put enough fear into her breast that she must start moving, or shake apart with it. She put her bags over her back and started following the slope downhill, trying to keep an even pace, as her feet kept moved faster and faster, through brambles that scratched her skin and tore her clothes, making her a mess all over again.
She reached Kaupanger after another night spent outside. The only town on the western coast, it was choked with buildings, more than Svanhild had ever seen together before. She had heard stories of cities in faraway lands, where tens of thousands of people lived together. Such things could only exist where the land was flat and fertile. The richest Norse farms might support no more than a hundred, including thralls and children. More would starve.
Before leaving her campsite, Svanhild had brushed her hair out and put on her festival dress. She fastened it with pewter brooches and a slim, unadorned pewter chain between, leaving the smaller, richer silver brooches in her pack. These were treasures from her mother, only on loan for the ting. Svanhild hoped her mother would not begrudge the expense. She tied her hair back neatly under a green wimple that Vigdis had said made her eyes look bright.
A stream separated her from the ship-filled beach. She stepped over a mossy rock, and lost her balance when a slop of vegetable mess came hurling out an open door. A few seconds later two huge pigs rushed over to slurp it up. Svanhild put out her hands and caught herself in the filthy water that flowed through muddy ground.
The crowd of buildings and people had looked orderly from above, where she could not hear it, where she did not have to step over the messes made by animals, by the press of humanity. If she walked close to the shore, she had to step over rotting masses of seaweed, surrounded by clouds of stinging flies, and dodge merchants’ crews tossing their wares to and fro. But when she walked on the street inland, she lost her bearings.
At least she was not the only woman walking around without a male escort. Some of the women she saw were waiting at storefronts, or driving a few cows through the streets. Some people nodded to one another when they passed, and no more greeting than that. It seemed terribly rude. Svanhild had never seen a stranger come to Ardal without a greeting or an offer of food, and here she was a stranger. Yet she remembered her father telling her that these people did not live in concert as on a farm, but in small, separate households, weaving between one another, like all the types of insects that live on a single tree.
She followed a finely dressed lady to a slightly cleaner part of the town. Ditches had been dug here to carry sewage away. Men walking through would toe animal droppings into the ditch as they passed by, while women picked their skirts up high to step over them.
Svanhild lost sight of the finely dressed woman, and hurried instead to catch up with a woman who looked more like a wealthy farm wife, dressed for warmth and practicality. She carried two heavy baskets of vegetables, one over each arm, and was leading a cow.
“Excuse me,” said Svanhild. “Do you know where I could sell gold or silver?” The woman scowled at her and did not answer. Svanhild wilted. “Or do you know who I could ask?”
“I’m busy,” she said. “They’re not far.” She pointed in a direction that could be anywhere in the south end of the town, and continued on her way. Svanhild walked a few paces in that direction. All the houses looked the same, with leather shutters tied down tight.