The Last Light of the Sun (42 page)

“He
did
say that,” he replied, keeping his voice mild. The second question had so nicely taken him off the harder first one. “But he said that because the fair was just beginning—as you say—the king was leaving it to his stewards. That’s why I thought there’d be merchants to raid, with few to guard them, rich takings for brave men.”

“Just beginning?”

“As you said,” Ivarr murmured.

The young one, not as big a man as Leofson but well-enough made, began to laugh. Laughing at Ivarr. With others watching and listening. This was not permitted. He’d killed his sister for laughing like that, when she was twelve and he was nine.

“I will not be made mock of,” Ivarr snapped, a hotness in his brain.

“No?” said the other man. His amusement subsided. He had looked away before; he wasn’t doing so now. Lights had been hung on the ships’ railings, all five of
them, and at prow and stern. They were aglow, these ships on the water, marking the presence of mortal men on the wide, darkening sea. “I don’t think I’m mocking you, actually. Or not only that.”

“What are you saying, Bern?” asked Leofson, quietly.

Bern. The name. To be remembered.

“He’s still lying. Even now. You know the peasants’ saying.
To trap a fox, you let him trap himself.
He just did. Listen: this is the
third
year of the Esferth Fair, not the first. Every man we met on the road knew it. The city was thronged, Brand, overflowing. Tents in the fields. Guards everywhere, and the
fyrd.
I said ‘first year’ to see what this fox would do with it. And you heard. Don’t call him a maggot. He’s too dangerous.”

Ivarr cleared his throat. “So the ignorant peasant we captured was wrong about—”

“No,” said the one called Bern. “I planted that thought in your head, Ragnarson. You captured no watchman. You never put ashore here. You went straight to Brynnfell in Arberth, and failed. So you wanted to go back—there, nowhere else—for your own blood-hunger. Ingavin’s blind eye, sixty men are dead because you lied to us.”

“And he killed an earl we took,” someone shouted from the ship nearest to them. “An earl!” Voices echoed that.

Greed, thought Ivarr. They were driven by greed. And vanity. Both could be used, always. The hotness was making it harder to think clearly, though, to take back control of this. If the one named Bern would only shut his mouth. If he’d been on one of the other ships … such a small change in the world.

Ivarr looked at the man more closely. A ship on either side of theirs now, men lashing them together, practised ease. It had grown darker. His eyes worked better in this twilight with lanterns.
Ingavin’s blind eye.

Something slid into place with that phrase.

“Who is your father?” he said sharply, anger cracking through, with awareness. “I think I know—”

“He’s a Jormsviking!” snapped Brand, his voice crashing in, heavy as a smith’s hammer. “We are
born
when we pass through the walls into brotherhood. Our histories do not matter, we shed them. Even maggots like you know that of us.”

“Yes, yes! But I think I know … The way he speaks … I think his father was with—”

Brand struck him, a second time, harder than before, on the mouth. Ivarr went down on his back, spat blood, then a tooth. Someone laughed. The hotness went red. He reached towards the dagger in his boot, then stopped, controlling himself to control men. He could be killed here, going for a weapon. Sprawled on his back, he looked up at the big man over him, spat red again, to the side. Spread his hands, to show they were empty.

Saw a sword, then another one, both bright, as if flaming, torchlight upon them. He died there—astonished, it could be said—as Leofson’s heavy blade spitted him, biting deep into the deck beneath his body.

BERN REMINDED HIMSELF
to breathe. His arm, holding a sword, was at his side. Brand had knocked it away with his own before killing Ivarr with a thrust that had the full force of his body behind it.

Leofson levered his weapon free, with difficulty. There was a silence amid the lanterns, under the first stars. Brand turned to Bern, a curious expression on his scarred countenance.

“You’re too young,” he said unexpectedly. “Whatever else he was, this was the last of the Volgans. Too heavy a weight to carry all your life. Better it was me.”

Bern found it difficult to speak. He managed a nod, though he wasn’t sure he really understood what the older man was saying. There was a stillness, a sense of weight all about them, though. This was not an ordinary death.

“Put him overboard at the stern,” Brand said. “Attor, do the ‘Last Song,’ and properly. We don’t need any god angry tonight.”

Men moved to do his bidding. You put Erlings into the sea if they died on the water.
Last of the Volgans,
Bern thought. The phrase in his head kept repeating itself.

“He … he killed sixty men today. As if he’d done it himself.”

“True enough,” said Brand, almost indifferently.

He was moving on already, Bern realized. Leader of a raid, other things to consider, decisions to be made. He heard a splash. Attor’s voice rose. They would be able to hear it on the other boats.

Bern found that his hands were shaking. He looked at his sword, which he was still holding, and sheathed it. He went to the side of the ship, by his own oar, next to the roped ship beside them, and stood there listening as Attar sang, deep-voiced in the dark.

Bern looked down at the water and then away to the emerging stars, trying to keep his mind empty, to just
listen. But then it seemed he was thinking—found himself unable not to think—of his father again. In a stream with him under these same stars last night.

He had felt such anger moments ago, looking down at Ivarr Ragnarson, watching—
knowing
—what the man was doing. The need to kill had crashed over him like nothing in his life before; he’d had his sword out, and driving, before he’d realized what he was doing.

Was this the way it had happened for Thorkell—twice, ten years apart, in two taverns? Was this his father’s fury awakening inside him? And Bern was sober as death right now; light-headed with fatigue, but not so much as a beaker of ale since the tavern in Esferth the evening before. Yet even with that, rage had taken him.

If Brand had not been quicker, Bern would have killed the man on the deck and he knew it. His father had done that, twice, exiled for it the second time.
Ruining their lives was
what Bern had always thought, and his heart had been cold as a winter sea, bitter as winter foraging.

Ruining his father’s
own
life was more true, he thought now: Thorkell had turned himself, in a moment, from a settled landowner in a place where he had real stature into an exile, no longer young, without hearth or family. How had he felt that day, leaving the isle? And the next day, and in the nights that had followed, sleeping among strangers, or alone? Did he lie down and rise up with
heimthra,
the heart’s hard longing for home? Bern had never even put his mind to this.

Are you drunk?
he had said to Thorkell in the river. And been struck a blow for that. Open hand, he remembered; a father’s admonition.

The wind had died, but now a breeze came again from the east. The lashed ships swayed with it, lanterns bobbing. Jormsvik mariners, best in all the world. He was one of them. A new home, for him. The sky was dark now.

The song came to an end. His hands weren’t trembling any more. Thorkell was somewhere north in the night, having crossed the sea again, long past when he’d have thought himself done with raiding. It was a time for home and hearth, wood chopped and piled up for winter winds and snow. Land of his own, fences and tilled fields, tavern fires in town, companionship at night. Gone with one moment’s ale-soaked fury. And his youth long gone as well. Not a time of life to be starting again. What was a son—a grown son—to think about all of this?
No soul be lost without a home.

Bern reached into his tunic and touched the hammer on its silver chain. He shook his head slowly. Thorkell had actually saved
all
of the men here, sending Bern south at speed, with that added warning about Ivarr.

You needed to be strong enough to say these things to yourself, acknowledge them, even through bitterness. And there was more, another thing sliding into awareness now, the way the fainter stars slipped into sight against the darkened sky.
Don’t let Ivarr Ragnarson know you’re my son.

He hadn’t understood that. He’d asked; his father hadn’t answered. Not an answering sort of man. But Ragnarson’s pale eyes had seen something here on the deck, in Bern’s face by torchlight, or in something he’d said. Some kind of resemblance. He had thought through—fox’s mind—to a truth about Bern, and about Thorkell. He’d been about to say it, an accusation, when swords came out and he died.
I think his father was with—

“Brand! We’ve rowing to do, best set a course.” It was Isolf, at the helm of the ship tied to their starboard side.

“I say south first, head for Ferrieres coast, or Karch coast, whoever holds it this year.” That was Carsten, from the other side.

“Ferrieres,” said Brand absently. He walked past Bern towards the helm. Attor followed him.

“Aeldred’ll have ships in the water by now, certain as Ingavin carries a hammer.” Isolf again.

Someone laughed derisively. “They don’t know what they’re doing. Anglcyn, at sea?” Other voices joining in.

“He’ll use Erlings,” Brand said. The amusement subsided. “Believe it. Ingemar Svidrirson’s his ally here in Erlond, remember? Pays him tribute.”

“Fuck him, then!” someone shouted.

A sentiment that found much endorsement, even more crude. Bern stayed where he was, listening. He was too new, had no idea what their best course was. They’d lost almost a third of their company, could manage five ships, but if they ended up in a fight at sea …

“We’ll do that another time,” called Carsten Friddson. “Right now let’s just get home with all ships and bodies left. South’s best, say I, to the other coast, then we beat back east along it. Aeldred won’t venture so far from his own shore just on a chance of finding us at sea.”

It did make sense, Bern thought. The new Anglcyn ships at Drengest might be ready, but they wouldn’t have had any experience with them yet. And those ships—if they were even on the water—were all that lay between them and home. Surely they could slip past them?

He had a sudden, unexpectedly vivid image of Jormsvik. The walls, gate, barracks, the stony, wave-battered strand, the crooked town beside the fortress where he’d almost died the night before he won his way inside. He thought of Thira. His whore now. He’d killed Gurd, who’d laid claim to her before.

That was how it worked in Jormsvik. You bought your warmth in winter, one way or another. Whores, not wives, was the order of things. But there
was
warmth to be found, a fireside, companionship: he wasn’t alone, wasn’t a servant, might have a chance, if he was good
enough at killing and staying alive, to shape a name for himself in the world. Thorkell had done that.

And it was on that thought of his father that Bern heard Brand Leofson say, with what seemed an unnaturally precise, carrying clarity, “We’re not going home yet.”

A silence again, then, “What in Thünir’s name does that mean?” Garr Hoddson, shouting from the fourth ship.

Brand looked towards him across the other deck. They were all shapes in darkness now, voices, unless standing beside one of the lanterns. Bern had taken a step away from the rail.

“Means the snake said one thing true. Listen. This raid’s the worst we’ve had in years, any of us. It’s a bad time for that, with Vidurson making plans up north.”

“Vidurson? What of it?” Garr shouted. “Brand, we’ve lost a full boat of—”

“I know what we’ve lost! I want to
find,
now. We need to. Listen to me. We’re going to go west to get the Volgan’s sword back. Or to kill the man who took it. Or both. We’re going to that farm, whatever it’s called.”

“Brynnfell,” Bern heard himself saying. His voice sounded hollow.

“That’s it,” Brand Leofson said, nodding his head. “Ap Hywll’s farm. We run enough of us ashore, leave some to the ships, find the place, burn it down, there should be hostages.”

“How do we get home, after?” Carsten asking.

Bern could hear a new note in his voice: he was interested, engaged. This had been a disastrous raid, nothing to show for it but their own deaths. No man here wanted to spend a winter hearing about that.

“Decide that when we’re done. Back this way, or we go the north route—”

“Too late in the year,” Garr Hoddson said. He had stepped across to Carsten’s ship, Bern saw.

“Then back this way. Aeldred’ll be ashore by then. Or we overwinter west if need be. We’ve done that before, too. But we’ll
do
something before we show our faces home. And if we get that blade back, we have something to show Kjarten Vidurson, too, if that northerner gets ideas we don’t like. Anyone here actually decided we need a king, by the way?”

A shout of anger. Jormsvik had its views on this. Kings put limits on you, set taxes, liked to tear down walls that weren’t their own.

“Carsten?” Brand lifted his voice over the shouting.

“I’m for it.”

“Garr?”

“Do it. We’ve shipmates to avenge.”

But not in the west,
Bern thought.
Not there.
It didn’t matter. He felt, with genuine surprise, a quickening of his own heartbeat. His father hadn’t wanted them to go west, but Ivarr was dead, they weren’t listening to his tune, they didn’t have to listen to Thorkell’s, either.