Solmund’s sons were well made, taller than their father, loose-limbed, with the promise of attaining their father’s bulk one day. They climbed over masts and gunwales like mountain goats on a steep slope. None among them looked as formidable as Ragnvald, though.
Svanhild had been too scared and busy over the past few days to think of her brother much. Soon she would pass over the same sea roads he had sailed on his way to Yrjar. She would see the things that he had seen and described to her: the diving of ocean birds, the sea fog, the seals that rested on rocks and called to each other like playful children. The wind blowing off the fjord smelled new-washed.
After they maneuvered out into the middle of the fjord, Svanhild picked up the spindle and the bolt of fine wool roving. “Do you have anything rougher?” she asked. “I’m better suited to sail wool.”
Haldora plucked the spinning from her lap. “You need not spin at all, my dear, I only thought you might be happier with your hands occupied.”
Svanhild smiled at that. “I can as easily comb wool for you, or something simpler.”
Haldora gave her an odd look, but like most women, she detested the tedious task of picking sticks and dirt out of wool, and then the endless combing between iron spikes until all the fibers ran the same way. At least Svanhild could always make friends by offering to do that work.
*
They stopped that night on a narrow beach beneath the fjord’s high cliff. Solmund’s sons pitched a tent on the sand while Svanhild and Haldora prepared the evening meal. Svanhild added some of Gerta’s bread to the repast. She and Haldora waited on the men until Haldora sat down next to her husband on a piece of driftwood to eat her meal, salt fish boiled with some leeks, and so Svanhild sat down as well, rather than waiting until the men were done.
“How do you come to be out here alone?” asked Solmund.
Svanhild tried to tell a short version of leaving Hrolf’s farm, glancing at Haldora, who smiled at her—she did not mind hearing the same story twice. So Svanhild added as much as she could of Ragnvald’s story, before she meant to, telling of Solvi, how he tried to kill her brother, at Olaf’s leading.
“It is like something out of an old song,” said one of Solmund’s sons eagerly, tripping over the words.
“And Solvi asked for me,” said Svanhild, laughing and blushing. “It is too foolish to be a heroic tale, and I would rather not figure in a comic one.”
“This Thorkell does not seem so bad,” said Haldora gently.
Did all women think the same? Svanhild looked to Solmund. “Do you trade with Solvi Hunthiofsson?” she asked. “Or his father?”
Solmund looked taken aback, perhaps to be questioned so boldly by a woman. Svanhild bit her lip—she should have followed Haldora’s lead more. Haldora was competent and brave, it seemed, to lead this life, but gentle too.
Solmund finished chewing his bread before he spoke. “I used to. Before I married, when this Solvi was still a boy. Tafjord was a rough place, always too many warriors without enough to do. When I brought servants to help me, Hunthiof’s men would have sport of them, forcing them to fight one another so they could bet, that sort of thing.” Warriors played cruel games, and servants and thralls were usually the butt of them. Svanhild knew this. A good king would keep his men from doing too much damage, but they must be allowed to pass the time somehow.
“That was before Hunthiof’s wife died. I came there once after that. By Thor, I was glad I had left Haldora and my sons at home. It had become haunted. The boy ran wild. Men had been killed in duels—or nothing as formal as a duel—and their bodies lay unburied around the hall. It had snowed early that year at least, so the stench was not so bad until I came into the hall. I should have fled then and there.
“‘I would bid you welcome,’ King Hunthiof said when I came with my usual wares. ‘But we are the dead here, and there is no welcome from the dead, for the dead.’ His words chilled me. I could see that he had taken leave of his senses, and that his men, those that remained, had followed him into madness. His son, Solvi, had recovered from his injuries enough to walk, but he did not speak. He only wandered among the fallen men—and none could tell those fallen from drink from those fallen in death. He ate and drank whatever had been left to spoil on the table. I saw him vomiting in a corner before I left, with no woman to care for him, to wipe his face. I do not know what happened to the women who once served the hall, but sometimes I have dreams about it. If the child had not been maimed, if his father was not a king, I think I might have stolen him away. Certainly I wish I had.”
He shuddered. Svanhild thought he had not meant to say this much, but now that he had begun, he was far away, back in that world. He gripped his wife’s hand hard, making her tanned skin white.
“He took all my goods as spoils—for Hel, they said—for none can bring goods away from the country of the dead. And then he took my servants—one of them, Sverri, had been with me for years. He had been my companion since I inherited my first ship from my father, may he lie quiet in his barrow. He said that if I would leave the land of the dead, I must pay for the privilege. Of course I protested, and asked for him to take me instead, but he said no, that Sverri would do, that taking the life of a free man would put them in debt—I do not know what they meant. Their rituals were none I had heard of before. Whether they were from some terrible god, or only Hunthiof’s madness, I do not know. I will not tell you how they killed Sverri, though they made me watch, and once they had smeared me with his blood, they put me back on my ship and sent me with my hold empty, back out into the stormy fjord.”
Solmund let go of his wife’s hand and shook himself. “I borrowed heavily from all my friends so I could continue to trade, for all the wealth I had left was my ship. I have heard that Hunthiof’s madness is not so strong as it was, and he is a canny ruler again. Some traders still go to his hall, but I shall never go again. And I have heard I am not the only trader he served thus. Is it any wonder that his son should have grown up cruel and capricious? I am glad you are going to your brother. He will want to keep you out of Solvi’s grasp.”
Svanhild felt guilty for making Solmund relive those memories, and her heart went out to small Solvi, wandering through that hellish hall, with none to tell him what was wrong.
*