The Last Light of the Sun (16 page)

I
t had not been a good spring or summer for the traders of Rabady Isle, and there were those quite certain they knew why. The list of grievances was long.

Sturla Ulfarson, who had succeeded Halldr Thinshank as governor of the island’s merchants and farmers and fisherfolk, might have only one hand but he possessed two eyes and two ears and a nose for the mood of people, and he was aware that men were comparing the (exaggerated) glories of Thinshank’s days with the troubles and ill omens that had marked the beginning of his own.

Unfair, perhaps, but no one had
made
him manoeuvre for this position, and Ulfarson wasn’t the self-pitying sort. Had he been so, he’d have been inclined to point out that the notorious theft of Thinshank’s grey horse and the marring of his funeral rites last spring—the start of all their troubles—had happened before the new governor had been acclaimed. He’d have noted that no man, whatever kind of leader he might be, could have prevented the thunderstorm that had killed two young people in the night fields shortly after that. And he might also have bemoaned the fact that it was hardly within the power of a local administrator to control events in the wider world: warfare among Karch and Moskav and the Sarantines couldn’t help but impact upon trade in the north.

Sturla One-hand did make these points decisively (he was a decisive man, for the most part) when someone dared challenge him directly, but he also set about doing
what he could do on the isle, and as a result he discovered something.

It began with the families of the young man and woman killed in the storm. Everyone knew Ingavin sent the thunder and all manner of storms, that there was nothing accidental if people were killed or homes ruined by such things (a world where the weather was utterly random was a world not to be endured).

The girl had been doing her year of service to the
volur
at the compound by the edge of the forest. The young women of Rabady Isle took this duty, in turn, before they wed. It was a ritual, an honourable one. Fulla, the corn goddess, Ingavin’s bride, needed attention and worship too, if children were to be born healthy and the fields kept fertile. Iord, the seer, was an important figure here on the isle: in her own way, as powerful as the governor was.

Sturla One-hand had paid a formal visit to the compound, bringing gifts, shortly after his election by the
thring.
He hadn’t liked the
volur,
but that wasn’t the point. If there was magic being used, you wanted it used for you, not against you. Women could be dangerous.

And that, in fact, is what he discovered. The families of the young man and the girl were elbowing each other towards a feud over their deaths, each blaming the other’s offspring for the two of them being out by the memorial cairn, lying together when the lightning broke. Sturla had his own thoughts as to who had inveigled whom, but it was important to be seen to be conducting an inquiry first. His principal desire was to keep a blood feud from Rabady, or, at the least, to limit the casualties.

He set about speaking with as many of the young ones as he could, and in this way came to have a conversation with a yellow-haired girl from the mainland, the newest member of the circle of women in the compound. She
had come (properly) in response to his summons and had knelt before him, shy, eyes suitably downcast.

She had little assistance, however, to offer concerning the two lightning-charred young ones, claiming to have seen Halli with the lad only once, “the evening before Bern Thorkellson came to the seer with Thinshank’s horse.”

The new governor of Rabady Isle, who had been leaning back in his seat, an ale flask in his one good hand, had leaned forward. The lightning storm, the two dead youngsters, and a possible feud became less compelling.

“Before he what?” said Sturla One-hand.

He put the flask down, reached out with his hand and grabbed the girl by her yellow hair, forcing her to look up at him. She paled, closed her eyes, as if overwhelmed by his powerful nearness. She was pretty.

“I … I … should not have said that,” she stammered.

“And why not?” growled Ulfarson, still gripping her by the hair.

“She will kill me!”

“And why?” the governor demanded.

She said nothing, obviously terrified. He tugged, hard. She whimpered. He did it again.

“She … she did a magic-working on him.”

“She what?” said Sturla, struggling, aware he was not sounding particularly astute. The girl—he didn’t know her name—suddenly rocked forward and threw her arms around his legs, pressing her face to his thighs. It was not actually unpleasant.

She said, weeping, “She hated Thinshank … she will kill me … but she uses her power for … for her own purposes. It is … wrong!” She spoke with her mouth against him, arms clutching his legs.

Sturla One-hand let go of her hair and leaned back again. She remained where she was. He said, “I will not hurt you, girl. Tell me what she did.”

In this way, the governor—and later the people of Rabady—learned of how Iord the seer had made a black
seithr
spell, rendering young Thorkellson her helpless servant, forcing him to steal the horse, then making him invisible, enabling him to board the southern ship that had been in the harbour—board it with the grey horse—and sail away unseen. It was done by the
volur
to spite Halldr Thinshank, of course, which was not an unreasonable desire, by any means. But it was a treachery that had unleashed—obviously—malevolent auras upon the isle (Halldr’s, one had to assume), causing the calamities of the season, including the lightning storm that killed two innocent youths.

Erling warriors were not, by collective disposition, inclined to nuanced debate when resolving matters of this sort. Sturla One-hand might have been more thoughtful than most, but he’d lost his hand (and achieved some wealth) raiding overseas. You didn’t
ponder
when attacking a village or sanctuary. You drank a lot beforehand, prayed to Ingavin and Thünir, and then fought and killed—and took home what you found in the fury and ruin you shaped.

An axe and sword were perfectly good responses to treachery, in his view. And they would serve the useful additional purpose of displaying Sturla’s resolution, early in what he hoped would be a prosperous tenure as governor of the isle.

Iord the seer and her five most senior companions were taken from the compound early the next morning, stripped naked (bony and slack-breasted, all of them, hags fit for no man), bound to hastily erected posts in the field near the cairn stone where the two youngsters had died.

When they came for her, the seer tried—babbling in terror—to say that she’d
deceived
young Thorkellson. That she’d only pretended to cast a spell for him, had sent him back into town to be found.

Sturla One-hand had not lived so many years by being a fool. He pointed out that the lad had
not
been found. So either the seer was lying, or the boy had seen through her deception. And though young Thorkellson had been known to be good with blade and hammer (Red Thorkell’s son would be, wouldn’t he?), he was barely grown. And where was he? And the horse? She had her magic, what answer would she give?

She never did answer.

The six women were stoned to death, the members of the two feuding families invited to throw—standing together—the first volleys of stone and rock, as the most immediately aggrieved. The wives and maidens joined the men, one of the times they were permitted to do that. It took some time to kill six women (stoning always did).

The ale was good that night and the next, and a second ship from Alrasan in the south—where they worshipped the stars—appeared in the harbour two days later, come to trade, a clear blessing of Ingavin.

The yellow-haired girl from the mainland had stood at the edges of the stoning ground; they’d made the younger ones from the compound come watch. She’d had a fearsome serpent coiled about her body, darting a venomous tongue. She was the only one not terrified of it. No one stood near her as they watched the old women die. The governor couldn’t remember (he’d drunk a good deal that day and night) just how he’d learned about her having been bitten back in the spring. Perhaps she had told him herself.

The snake was noticed in the field. Not surprisingly. Serpents held the power of the half-world within the skin they sloughed, rebuilding it anew. A snake would devour the world at the end of days. It was much talked about that night. A sign, it was agreed to be, a harbinger of power.

The girl was named by Sturla Ulfarson as the new
volur
of Rabady Isle a few days later, after the southern
ship had done its trading and gone. Normally the men of Rabady didn’t make this choice, but these weren’t normal times. You didn’t stone a seer every year, did you? Maybe this change would prove to be useful, bring the power of women,
seithr
and night magic, the compound itself, more under control.

Sturla One-hand wasn’t sure about that, and he couldn’t actually have traced with precision the thoughts or conversations that had led to any of these decisions. Events had moved quickly, he had been … riding them … the way longships rode a wave, or a leader on a battlefield rode the sweep of the fight, or a man rode his woman after dark.

She was young. What of it? All the old ones were dead. They could have sent for a woman across the water to Vinmark, even to Hlegest itself, but who knew what that might have brought them, or when? Better not draw the attention of increasingly ambitious men there, in any case. The girl had saved them from the effects of an angry spirit and seemed to have been already chosen by the snake. Men had been saying that, in the taverns. Sturla could read a rune-message if it was spelled out for him.

He did know her name by then. Anrid. They called her “the Serpent,” though, by summer’s end. She hadn’t come to him in the town again nor, in fact, did it occur to him to ask her to do so. There were enough girls about for a governor, no need to get entangled in
that
way with seers who kept snakes by their beds in the dark or wrapped them around their bodies to watch stones split flesh and crack bone in the morning light.

Jormsvik was more a fortress than a city.

For one thing, only the mercenaries themselves and their servants or slaves lived within the walls. The rope-makers,
sailmakers, armourers, tavern-keepers, carpenters, metalsmiths, fishermen, bakers, fortune-tellers all lived in the unruly town outside the walls. There were no women allowed inside Jormsvik, though prostitutes were scattered through the twisting streets and alleys just outside. There was money for a woman to make here, beside a large garrison.

You had to fight someone to become one of the men of Jormsvik, and fight steadily to stay in. Until you became a leader, when your battles might reasonably be expected to be all for hire and profit—if you stayed out of the tavern brawls.

For three generations the mercenaries of this fortress by the sea had been known and feared—and employed—through the world. They had fought at the triple walls of Sarantium (on both sides, at different times) and in Ferrieres and Moskav. They had been hired (and hired away) by feuding lords vying for eminence here in the Erling lands, as far north as the places where the sky flashed colours in the cold nights and the reindeer herds ran in the tens of thousands. One celebrated company had been in Batiara, joining a Karchite incursion towards fabled Rhodias forty years ago. Only six of them had returned—wealthy. You received your fee in advance, and shared it out beforehand, but then you divided the spoils of war among the survivors.

Survivors could do well.

First, you had to survive getting in. There were young men desperate or reckless enough to try each year, usually after the winter ended. Winter defined the northlands: its imminent arrival; the white, fierce hardness of the season; then the stirring of blood and rivers when it melted away.

Spring was busiest at the gates of Jormsvik. The procedure was known everywhere. Goatherds and slaves knew it.
You rode up or walked up to the walls. Shouted a name—sometimes even your real one—to the watch, issued a challenge to let you in. That same day, or the next morning, a man drawn by lot would come out to fight you.

The winner went to bed inside the walls. The loser was usually dead. He didn’t
have
to be, you could yield and be spared, but it wasn’t anything to count on. The core of Jormsvik’s reputation lay in being feared, and if you let farmboys challenge you and walk away to tell of it by a winter’s turf fire in some bog-beset place, you weren’t as fearsome as all that, were you?

Besides which, it made sense for those inside to deter challengers any way they could. Sometimes the sword rune could be drawn from the barrel on a morning by a fighter who’d been too enthusiastically engaged in the taverns all night, or with the women, or both, and sometimes it wasn’t just a farmboy at the gates.

Sometimes, someone came who knew what he was doing. They’d all gotten in that same way, hadn’t they? Sometimes you could die outside, and then the gate swung open and a new mercenary was welcomed under whatever name he gave—they didn’t care in Jormsvik,
everyone
had a story in his past. He’d be told where his pallet was, and his mess hall and captain. Same as the man he’d replaced, which could be unpleasant if the dead man had friends, which was usually the case. But this was a fortress for the hardest men in the world, not a warm meadhall among family.

You got to the meadhalls of Ingavin by dying with a weapon to hand. Time then for easiness, among ripe, sweet, willing maidens, and the gods. On this earth, you fought.

BERN WAS AWARE
that he’d made a mistake, almost immediately after stooping through the low door of the alehouse
outside the walls. It wasn’t a question of thieves—the fighting men of Jormsvik were their own brutal deterrent to bandits near their gates. It was the mercenaries themselves, and the way of things here.

A stranger, he thought, a young man arriving alone in summer with a sword at his side, could only be here for one reason. And if he was going to issue a challenge in the morning, it made nothing but sense for any man in this ill-lit room (which was nonetheless bright enough to expose him for what he was) to protect himself and his fellows in obvious ways against what might happen on the morrow.