“Yes,” said Solvi. He must move them on, settle things before the winter, and find a place to spend the winter where Svanhild might be safe. Travel meant nights spent on the open ocean, without even the privacy of curtains, on uncertain water, where things had been sour between them. Travel also meant visiting at the halls of all the kings he must court and make into allies if he wanted to sail against Harald. If Rorik had given him warriors, or been willing to stir from Dorestad himself, Solvi could visit the halls of other kings and laugh if they refused him. He could not follow the tale he had spun for Svanhild of a life of pure freedom, but if he remained here too long, it would be all that was left to him.
True, he would not have to gather an equal force. Solvi and the kings he had in mind had followers who lived half their life on ships, and in a sea battle should overwhelm Harald easily. All the songs spoke of pitched battles on high fields, men in shield walls, and the noise of a melee on a bloody field. They would not fight so well when every misstep meant a fall into the water. Still, the gods smiled on Harald, while Solvi had had to wrest his life from the fates at an early age. Sea battles turned even more on luck than those on land.
Solvi bid his men prepare the ships for sailing back up the river from Dorestad, but still dallied a few days after the work was done, lying long abed with Svanhild in the morning and seeking her bed early in the evening, before his men were done drinking up Rorik’s ale.
“Do you think Rorik is tired of your men brawling in his hall?” Svanhild asked when they lay together in the night. Her hair flowed over his skin like a dark stream.
“Tryggulf is also telling me we should leave before the weather turns too much against us.”
“Is he right?”
“Yes, he is right. I think you enjoy having a roof and a bath too much for me to want to take that away.”
Svanhild did not respond. Her silences did not seem to come easily to her. They gave voice to the constraint that still lay between them—she was quiet when she could not speak pleasantly without falseness.
“What are you thinking, Svanhild?” Solvi asked.
She turned so her head no longer lay on his arm. Only her hair touched him now. “I cannot advise you, when you would fight Harald, for that is where my brother is,” she said slowly.
He brushed her hair off him and sat up. “I did not ask for your advice,” he said, a lie. She was not worldly, but she was clever. Her counsel would be wise even if it were not correct.
She sat up as well and wound her arms around his shoulders. “I am loyal to you. I would never betray you. I would swear on the lives of”—she swallowed—“any children we may have. Which I will value far more than Geirny did hers.”
He grew still, thinking of the children that he had never named. It should have been his choice, whether to acknowledge her daughters or leave them to die. Instead she—and probably his father—had made that decision for him. No more. He and Svanhild had not spoken of sons or children since that magical night. Solvi could not think of it without a sick sort of longing that he tried to keep at arm’s length. He did not fear to cross the open sea between Frisia and Norway, even in the fall, at least not for himself, but now he must fear it for Svanhild, and what child she would bear for him.
“Please, I am sorry for it,” said Svanhild, misinterpreting his tension. “I only fear that when I speak, my fears for him may be more—if I speak something that harms you or him, I will not forgive myself for it. I will tell you what I can, but now I want to say that we should leave Norway and never return. When we are there, I will always be divided.”
“Tafjord and Maer will fall to Harald, then,” said Solvi. Now he understood her silence, and pulled her close to him. “Whatever else he has done . . . it’s my father there, in Tafjord. He let me live when he should have left me to die.”
“I have heard . . .”
“I do not remember those times,” said Solvi quickly. He had heard the stories too, of his father’s dark hall, of the rites to Hel, of tortures. He had been too young, as he was too young to remember the fire, except in dreams. He remembered only when his father spoke to him again, and gave him his companions. Enough spoke of his father’s madness that it must be true; he would defend the father who had let him live, made a maimed boy his heir. “I will defend him, and that does not mean sitting in Tafjord waiting to die. I will keep the fight from his door.” And prove that his father had not been wrong in his decision.
“And I will be with you,” said Svanhild. “I swear.”
*
The next morning Solvi concluded his business with Rorik, adding a few more bolts of cloth and other treasures to his hold, presents, perhaps, for kings.
“Three magic swords,” said Rorik, during their leavetaking. “My gift to you and your lovely bride.” He gave Svanhild a wink. “Perhaps you will have two sons.”
Solvi felt Svanhild at his side take a quick breath. He kept himself from looking at her. He thanked Rorik, and unwrapped the first of the swords.
“It is an Ulfberht sword,” said Rorik, “made of star-metal from the far east, and forged by our best smiths.” Solvi’s own sword was brother to the one Rorik held, but a man could never own too many. Alliance with a king and all his men might be bought with such a sword.
“Other swords will break upon them,” Rorik continued. “They are swords fit for kings, and kings’ sons. Never forget that I am your friend. If Harald should take Tafjord, you would be welcome here.”
“He will not,” said Solvi. He wrapped the sword again.
“If you gain other allies, send word here,” Rorik said, “and I will dispatch men to join you. May Odin’s crows pluck out my eyes if I lie.”
*
The weather was stormy when Solvi’s ships reached the mouth of the Rhine, sheets of rain slipping one after another over a muddy sea. They spent a cold night on the riverbank, Svanhild shivering against him, then set out for the Norse coast.
Mist and squalls moved over the water, pacing the ships. Solvi kept them close together. When they reached Hardanger Fjord in Hordaland, they learned from the fisher folk that Harald had come and made various kings swear to him, then left again. Solvi laughed when he heard this.
“He comes and asks for words, and then leaves again,” he said to Tryggulf and his men. “It is as if he never came at all.”
During a lull in the sailing, when the sound of the wind kept their voices from other ears, Svanhild asked him, “You think these kings will not keep their word? I wonder that your men follow you, when you believe so little in oaths.” She looked a bit surprised at her own bluntness.