“The roughest raider is likely to be a drunkard as well, my dear. Other threats will have more weight.”
At least Vigdis’s sarcasm made it easier for Svanhild to quell her tears. “I don’t want to marry. I want my own land, and men to farm it and to go abroad sometimes and—”
“Women must marry,” said Vigdis. “Marry a rich old man, so when he dies he will make you rich enough to choose whatever husband you like. I think Olaf wants to marry you to Thorkell.”
“So I can die bearing his son?” The idea made Svanhild’s stomach twist, as though her very organs already feared it.
“Perhaps he will die and leave you a widow who can do what she likes.”
“Is that what you were trying to do with Olaf?”
“Svanhild,” said Vigdis sternly.
“You can’t tell me what to do.” Svanhild shook her head, scattering the tears she was trying to hide, and pushed past Vigdis and out into the pasture.
She rushed across the fields and into the woods, where some shadowed grove would still shelter winter’s snow. She found a cache of not yet melted snow in the roots of an oak, and there she sat, numbing her hand, while the sun set.
3
Solvi sat in the stern of his ship, with his hand on the steering oar, and guided it through a long curve into the harbor. The wind blew ever away from Tafjord, shielding it from all raiders except those who lived there. It was a difficult spot to attack by land as well, flanked by mountains and ravines. Solvi’s father Hunthiof and his father before him had been sea kings since the founding of their line, descended from the sea god Njord, who briefly loved a woman of the land but left her lamenting, to raise up sons who would leave her as well. The descendants of that sorrow grew into a line of hard men who raided up and down the Norse coast when lands across the North Sea were no more than legend, before these crowded times when every farmer’s son dreamed of sailing and raiding across the ocean. They had never been farmers. Their bones kept guard over no land.
Usually Snorri served as pilot, but Solvi liked to guide his ship in these last leagues to Tafjord and his father’s hall, so he could control his approach. His father would find something to criticize in Solvi’s decisions on this journey, though his memories of his own raids must have grown hazy by now. Solvi fingered the pommel of his dagger with his free hand. Some blood speckled the gold inlay. The deed was done; Ragnvald had been sacrificed to Njord and Ran. If he did not die of his wounds, he would drown, pulled down by leather armor and choked by cold.
The memory troubled Solvi. He could have found a dozen other times to end Ragnvald’s life earlier, out of the view of the men who now glanced at him with suspicion and fear. It was good for men to fear those who would rule them, but fear could also be tricky; a man might think it better to put a dagger in Solvi’s back than risk his own unprovoked murder when Solvi’s mood turned.
He wondered if his father had not backed the wrong ship in this race. Ragnvald’s stepfather, Olaf, was a cunning enough warrior—it was he who had brought Ragnvald’s father, Eystein, low and taken his wife. But Ragnvald had the gift of leading men, something the taciturn and tight-fisted Olaf did not. Olaf squeezed cruelly the lands he took from Eystein and lost them, farm by farm, to other leaders who required less of them.
“We need strong men like Olaf,” his father had told him, “and he wants this done.” If Ragnvald lived, he would surely go after his birthright, and with determination such as his, Solvi had no doubt he would win, and guard his land better than Olaf ever had.
When the wind brought him close to shore, Solvi saw that ships other than his fathers’ had made landing here, fine ships, though new; their beams shone with a varnish of fat that weather had not yet stripped from them. High company.
The shallow pebble beach crunched under the keel of his ship. Solvi jumped out, wetting his feet in the waters of home. The halls of Tafjord sat at the bottom of the valley at the end of Geiranger Fjord. A patchwork of fields and wooden fences stretched up the bowl of the valley to the crests of the rocky cliffs. Beyond the cliff wall rose the mountains of the Keel, hard and white and impenetrable.
Solvi reached down and splashed water on his face, washing off days of sweat and grime. His father’s servants waited on the beach, ready to unload the ships. The watchmen must have seen them approaching.
Solvi leapt up on the pylon where his ship was tied. Long practice let him land lightly, not betraying with even a twitch of his face how his scarred feet pained him, how he struggled to make his legs obey him after so long at sea. He spoke loudly enough that the warriors on all five of the ships that had followed him the long way to Tafjord, now beached alongside one another, could hear him.
“You all have homes to go to, and maidens to impress with your riches and your stories. But if you feast with my father tonight, you can tell your tales to our skalds so they can write songs of your adventures, and then they will be sung not only in your houses, but in the halls of kings.”
The men let up a cheer, all except Ragnvald’s friend Egil, who looked up at Solvi from where he sat, eyes wary. As Solvi finished speaking, Egil turned his attention to packing up his gear. Solvi’s other men bounded out of the ship, hurtling over the gunwales and splashing down in the shallow water. On their backs they carried the treasure each had won personally in Ireland. They would come tonight, though, to see what else Solvi might give them. He made sure to be known as a generous lord; his ships had taken rich plunder, and there was more to share.
Solvi drew his father’s steward to him as the men trooped toward Hunthiof’s hall. “Who is here?” he asked. “I don’t know those ships.”
“Warriors from Vestfold,” he said. “King Guthorm and his nephew Harald.” The man spoke blandly enough, but Solvi knew those names from skald’s songs that mentioned them in the same breath as gods and giants. Harald could not be more than sixteen years old, yet tales had spread from Vestfold of his strength at arms. They said that he could best any man with any weapon, and with a sword he had fought off ten blooded warriors. Harald’s mother was a sorceress who had prophesied that he would be king of all the Norse lands. And he was here. Solvi’s father could not like that.