King Hereafter (34 page)

On Thorfinn’s ship, no one spoke. The grey goose flamed, and its shadow moved, shortening. ‘On such a day,’ Thorfinn said, ‘it would not be a hardship to die.’

Sharply, Thorkel Fóstri turned his head. ‘You have seen a sunrise before.’

The air could be drunk: fresh and cold, with a smell of peat-smoke and seaweed. Thorfinn said, ‘Not like this one.’

The sea-loch with its green islands began to open before them. Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘Was that the knoll?’ and had hardly spoken when, from the rising ground on their left, a shield flashed once, and paused, and then several times more.

Rognvald had arrived at Loch Vatten, the ancient stronghold of Snaebjorn his grandfather’s cousin. And the Irish flotilla of warships was still in the inner loch, the long finger of water that ran six miles inland to Drynoch. There were ten of them.

‘Then they’ll be at Loch Beag,’ Thorfinn said. ‘There’s a fort just inside the entrance. All right. There’s no hurry now. It will only be a matter of moments before their look-out wakes up, wherever he is. I thought you had a mail shirt?’

‘It came undone,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘And the smith has been too busy to mend it. Don’t offer me yours: I couldn’t stand the weight of it.’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ Thorfinn said. ‘You’ll just have to fight better than usual.’

The shields were out now, and the spears, and the sun, high and yellow and normal, flashed on the bossed leather jackets and the polished cones with their tangs over cheekbone or nose, and the heavy barred gloves and grey ring-tunics. Arnór held Thorfinn’s weapons: the gilded axe and the helmet from Canute, and the painted red shield: the good hide stretched over a framework that had once been Sigurd’s, with a spiked and engraved boss in the centre that Sulien had told them was Breton.

The green island of Wiay lay ahead of them. From its rear, a square of blue sail appeared, luminous in the low sun. Following, crowding, were others. The wind had risen, and was against them.

Thorkel Fóstri turned and looked over the water to where, out of sight, Thorfinn’s nephew Rognvald was waiting, with a hundred armed men and two ships, to burn the tail of Diarmaid’s nephew. ‘I have changed my mind,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I would rather Diarmaid’s nephew died today. Let us go and arrange it.’

Afterwards, they said that the crimson sunrise, like the dark afternoon at Stiklestad, had been its own harbinger. Afterwards, the loch received heavier bodies than the black and white feathers of guillemots, and the water became red all over again.

The Irish ships, in the end, were destroyed. They fought, in their first confrontation, with an abandon the Orkneymen had neither expected nor experienced before, but found themselves slowly borne back towards Vatten. When the two ships of Rognvald closed in from the rear and attacked them, they went into a blood-frenzy that reminded Thorkel of all he had heard of the berserkers.

Yet these were Irishmen, men of Leinster, out for a roving life and some booty and to satisfy the ambitions of a dangerous kinsman just coming into the peak of his powers.

‘They’re terrified of Diarmaid. They must be terrified of Diarmaid,’ yelled Thorkel Fóstri to his foster-son as he hacked, swearing, at the throng of big-shouldered men who had begun to find their way over his gunwales.

He heard Thorfinn snort something in reply and had the satisfaction of seeing the shield-wall of men beside him advance and push the invaders back into their own rocking boat before something punched him hard in the ribs and he turned round to fight it. Then he found that he couldn’t turn round, because of the haft of the spear that was stuck in him.

Late in the afternoon, when the Irish ships were emptied and sunk and the land forts destroyed; when the Irish dead had all been buried and covered with stones, against the wolves; and their own dead and wounded placed on board the nine ships with their booty, Thorfinn had time to kneel by his foster-father where he had been laid in the stern. Rognvald was there.

That day, Rognvald had been everywhere. Without him, it was clear, their own losses would have been even greater. And while they sailed at their ease
through the night, he and his men had achieved the porterage of the two ships that had turned the whole battle. Bit by bit, now that there was time, the scale of that endeavour had begun to emerge.

Sitting now beside Thorkel’s quiet body, he said, ‘I’ve been able to take the spear out. If he doesn’t bleed any more, he might live. But the man who knew most about these things on my ship is dead.’

‘And on mine, too,’ Thorfinn said. Thorkel was yellow-white and breathing harshly, and the cloths over his side were stained red. Thorfinn said, ‘We should get back quickly. How many have you lost?’

‘Thirty men,’ Rognvald said. ‘Some of them yours. This will bring Diarmaid after us.’

‘Us?’ said Thorfinn. ‘We have some men to ransom, and some stock from the forts, and a quantity of reasonable swords and belts and gear that will fetch money. But it seems little enough to make anyone eager for more.’

Rognvald smiled. His face was blackened with metal-dirt and smeared blood, and with his helmet removed, his hair clung darkened and dull to his head. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I needed the booty, and wish it had been more. Nor would I hope for a battle of that sort more often than I deserve it. But yesterday I was dead, and today I am alive. You do not know what you have done.’

‘Allowed you to take two-thirds of Orkney?’ said Thorfinn. Squatting on Thorkel Fóstri’s other side, he had not ceased watching the wounded man’s face.

‘And saw to it that if I needed food, I could not get it,’ Rognvald said. ‘It was a clever move, and I could have complained to King Magnús, as I would have done had you refused to move out of your trithing.’

‘But you didn’t,’ Thorfinn said. ‘He’s too busy?’

‘Don’t you know, even yet, why I came back to Orkney?’ Rognvald said.

Then Thorfinn looked up. Rognvald’s gaze, waiting for his, took and sustained it. Thorfinn did not look away, but his face held no expression. Rognvald said, ‘I am the dog at your heel. Everything I have ever done has been an attempt to be like Thorfinn.’

There was no one within earshot, and no escape either. Between them, Thorkel Fóstri groaned and was silent.

‘What do you want?’ Thorfinn said.

‘This,’ said Rognvald. ‘I knew only one way to make you give it me.’

‘To sail with me?’ Thorfinn said. ‘But surely—’

‘But surely not,’ Rognvald said. ‘Your brother’s son, the rival claimant to Orkney? You would never have let me within your doors unless I had forced you. I am not a bad fighter, on sea or on land. But if you find me an encumbrance, you can always tell me.’

‘And you will go?’ Thorfinn said.

‘No,’ said Rognvald, smiling again through the dirt. ‘But you can always tell me.’ He rose, and then sat down again.

‘What is it?’ Thorfinn said.

‘Shall I be brave, or shall I make you sorry for me?’ said Rognvald. ‘I had an
argument two days ago with a man with an axe, and he got the better of me for a moment, before I killed him. I have a cut on one thigh.’ He leaned his head back against the bulwark and looked at Thorfinn. His skin, naturally fair, had turned pallid. Then, bending forward, he unfurled a stained cloth from above his right knee.

The wound was freshly re-opened, and so deep that Thorfinn could see the white bone. He said, ‘You walked all night with that?’

‘With an eye, naturally, to this moment,’ Rognvald said. ‘I inflicted the cut on myself, to tell the truth, but I hope you won’t tell anyone.’

He was no fool. From no angle could he have produced so deep a gash by his own hand. And to prove or disprove his story, one need only question his men. He was rebinding the wound already himself, smiling a little. He said, his eyes on what he was doing, ‘Have I persuaded you? Are we partners?’

‘I suppose I might have expected this,’ Thorfinn said. ‘You are really fishing for Arnór.’

‘No. You may keep Arnór,’ Rognvald said. It was an assent, however oblique, and he knew it. He said, ‘Thorkel won’t like it. Nor will your beautiful wife.’

‘I’m not sure that you will like it,’ said Thorfinn, ‘when you know what I have in mind to do. But if you will undertake to carry all of my ships whenever I find it convenient, I have no doubt that we will make a team to astonish the Empire.’

‘Or Duncan?’ Rognvald said.

S PREDICTED
, Thorkel Fóstri did not like the new alliance, nor what he heard of its subsequent course, from his sickbed at Helmsdale. Nor, to begin with, did many of Thorfinn’s hird, with the exception of Arnór, for whom a new world had opened.

Thus sang Arnór Jarlaskáld, and the men who had been there applauded him.

When Diarmaid, over in Ireland, took time from his plundering of Water-ford to send another and bigger fleet to attack Galloway and to reclaim and strengthen the bases he already had on that coast, Arnór was the first to jump aboard with Rognvald and Thorfinn and set out again to oppose him.

Thereafter there were so many battles that he lost track of them, but there was no doubt of the success of the combined sweep, and even Eachmarcach, who joined them for part of it, had to admit that his friend Thorfinn was earning all he possessed of rights in Dublin and on the headlands and fortresses of the opposite mainland, that had once been held by the kings of Cumbria and Strathclyde.

After a wet start, it proved a remarkably good season for acorns, and the ships they brought back with them were full of pigs. It had been, said Rognvald, as they parted in the firth to go their separate ways for the winter, a year for the
strand-hogg
.

Thorfinn came back to Caithness, but, it appeared, found difficulty in
settling. There was, as usual, a spate of domestic matters requiring his attention, together with some news of the outside world that had escaped him during the long summer of flying over the seas, punctuated by explosions of battle and the bright counter-explosions of after-battle when one touched a shackle-free crest for a moment and held it, perhaps, for a night, with the brotherhood of one’s friends.

The Lady Emma, said Thorkel baldly, standing with both hands on a stick, had been sent packing finally by her stepson King Harold of England, and was now in Bruges as guest of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, the young stepson of her niece.

‘Oh,’ said Thorfinn.

King Magnús of Norway (said Thorkel), on whose advice no one knew, had slackened his war on Hardecanute, Emma’s son ruling Denmark, and a pact had been made between the two Kings whereby the survivor would inherit both Norway and Denmark if the other died childless. Magnús, as Thorfinn was aware, was fourteen years of age, and Hardecanute was twenty-two but had had no success with any girl he had been supplied with.

‘Well, I hope at least he had some amusement trying,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Have some pork. It’s the best you’ve ever tasted.’

Thorkel Fóstri lifted his stick, and his foster-son trapped its heel in his hand as it swept sharply down to his dish-edge. Thorkel Fóstri snatched a step to keep balance, and then, changing his hold, slowly lowered the ferrule as Thorfinn released it.

‘I said, have some pork. I also said, perhaps, I am not over-interested at the moment in what you are telling me. I didn’t say you could strike me and get away with it,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I have, I think, heard everything you have been saying, and also what you imply. My stewards in Caithness and Moray and Ross and Mar and Lochaber have all been working hard on my behalf, but are not likely to continue to work hard if I pay no attention to them and if I fail to resolve the difficulties that fall to be settled by an overlord. You also think I ought to visit my wife. When,’ said Thorfinn, cutting some pork, ‘I have been at home for more than twenty-four hours I may give the matter some thought, and I may even agree. But at the moment I don’t want advice.’

‘You are right,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘And it is the last time you shall have it. If there’s nothing more, I should like to leave for Helmsdale in the morning.’

‘There’s nothing more,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Unless you want some pork?’

It was an open winter, with just enough frost to stiffen the roads. From Helmsdale, some weeks later, Thorkel Fóstri heard that Thorfinn had moved from Thurso to Canisbay and then, bypassing Helmsdale, had moved on south to visit his lands on both sides of the Spey.

He had with him all his hird, barring the men he had left to control Caithness and Birsay; and with him was Rognvald.

Then he was back, and the summons came as usual for Thorkel Fóstri to come to Canisbay for the Yule gathering, which meant for most of the rest of the winter. After a sleepless night, he sent back the messenger, accepting. He
had never thought the rift permanent. It was his own attitude to Thorfinn that he did not want altered.