Mother of Kings Read online

  “You got by him, then.” Seija snickered. “I daresay he went aside to squat.” Misgiving stirred. “He will see you come out.”

  Gunnhild tossed her head. “I’ll tell him that if he tells anybody, I’ll make him rue it.” Her father might learn anyhow, but if so, she’d cope with him.

  “Well, done is done. We’ll stay inside and talk softly. I am so happy you are here. Why are you carrying that kitten?”

  The small one had not liked the scramble through brush. Gunnhild had had a struggle and taken a few scratches. It calmed down after she was on the path. She handed it over. “For you. A friend to have. I’m keeping her sister. We’ll give them names that are alike.”

  A tear or two shone. “Oh, Gunnhild, you are—kind.” Seija cuddled it to her breast and cheek.

  Having set it on the floor, she hastened to fill bowls with water, curds, and scraps of meat. “Hark, she’s purring!” she laughed. Both sat on the floor to play with it.

  Darkness blotted the doorway. Seija screamed.

  A man sprang in, and a second. They were big men, but gaunt, ragged, filthy, faces nearly hidden by tangled, matted hair and beards. The stench of them hit Gunnhild in the belly. Each had a rolled-up bundle tied to his shoulders. One gripped an ax, the other a spear.

  “Ho-haw!” roared he. “What have we found here, Kol, hey?”

  “Something better to eat than we’ve got, I hope, and yonder’s a jug,” rasped the axman. Yellow snags of teeth glistened. “But first and later fun, yah, girls?”

  The outlaws, Gunnhild knew. This could not be real. She must rouse herself from the nightmare. It querned in her skull. But everything around was as before, the loom, the kitten’s bowls, the coals on the hearthstone, the hands she lifted. But the boy would have seen. He must be speeding on his way. How long to reach Ulfgard? How long for men to seize their weapons and dash back? It wasn’t so far; it couldn’t be far. Sweat burst cold over her skin. She shrank against the wall.

  Seija snatched up a bowl and threw it. The clay shattered on Kol’s nose. She cast herself at him and wrestled. “Gunnhild, get out!” she yelled.

  The spearman was sidling toward the maiden. The doorway stood free. She hurtled forward. The spearshaft slanted between her ankles. She went over. He made a stride across her. She stared at him looming in the way. “I’ve got her,” he said gleefully.

  Seija writhed in Kol’s hug. She clawed for his eyes. His free arm tore her loose. The hand cuffed her. She lurched back. “Keep watch at the door, Mörd,” he panted, and to Seija, “Behave yourself, bitch, or it’ll be the worse for you.” He wiped the blood on his nose and some snot that fell from it while he shook the ax at her.

  “I’ll bar the door, and we’ll have these chickens safe,” said Mörd.

  “No. Somebody could come by, and we’d be taken unawares. Be our lookout. I’ll spell you in a while.”

  The kitten mewed afright and crept near Gunnhild. She clasped it against her breast as she stumbled to her feet. Was it a child, was it a luck-charm, was it only something to hold?

  Kol lifted the ale jug and slurped greedily. “You always go first,” Mörd grumbled. “I’m thirsty too.”

  “You’ll have your time, I say.” Kol guffawed. “For you, looking on can be the start of the fun.”

  “Well, then, I’ll take first go in this pretty little heifer.” Mörd glared at Gunnhild. “You’ll be sweet to us, understand? Both of you. Otherwise—” He reached out and plucked the kitten from her arms. He dashed it to the floor and ground his heel down on its head. There was a tiny crunching sound. Brains and blood squirted from under the shoe.

  Gunnhild backed away to the wall. Piss trickled along her thighs, warm and wet. She fought not to throw up. The world wavered around her.

  “I won’t keep you waiting long,” Kol said. She heard it as a hollow ringing. “That farm wife wasn’t much, was she? This ought to be better.” He turned to Seija. “Down on the sheepskins, you.”

  The Finn-woman had regained her wits after the blow. She stood straight before him and answered almost steadily, “Why? You’ll kill us anyway, won’t you?”

  “Not soon, if we can stay awhile. No, not soon. Be good, and we might even take you along when we go. Be bad, and I’ll break a few bones before having you.”

  “I see. Yes, spare me and I’ll be good.” Seija drooped her eyelids. Her voice went throaty. “I can be very good. Don’t hurry with me. I’ll show you many things.”

  She was stalling for time, Gunnhild thought. Father’s men must soon be here, any heartbeat now, it wasn’t far, and they were stalwart men, swift on their feet, ready with their weapons. Soon, soon!

  “But I won’t stand waiting forever,” growled Mörd.

  “You’ll like watching,” Seija murmured at him. “Later we’ll do still other things, you and I.”

  “Don’t lose sight of the outside,” snapped Kol. “Nor gripe about it, when you’ll be first with the filly.”

  “Behold,” Seija breathed. “We begin thus.” She drew the shift over her head and let it drop. Gunnhild had never before seen those breasts, blue-veined under the snowy skin, nipples sunrise-pink, or the moist dark curls.

  “Hoo,” gusted from Kol, and “Yo-o-o” Mörd.

  Seija swung her hips. “What have you for me?”

  “I’m a bull,” Kol choked.

  Mörd leered at Gunnhild. “I am too. You’ll find out.”

  Kol let his ax fall to the floor. The wildness fleeted through Gunnhild that she could jump over there, grab it, and split his head. Then Mörd’s. As he had her kitten’s. No. It could not be. But Father’s men were on their way. Why was it taking them so long?

  Kol tugged at his belt and lowered his breeks. His prong strutted. Dizzily, Gunnhild recalled what she had a few times erstwhile glimpsed in the bushes, and thought that this was a stub. But enough, ghastly enough.

  Seija trod over to take it in her hand and stroke it. “Oh, yes, yes, yes,” she crooned.

  Kol gripped her bruisingly by the forearms. “Down, quick!”

  Seija sighed and, slowly, writhed her way onto the bedding. Kol knelt at her feet. He spread her legs. Mörd drooled. Where was Yngvar, where were the men?

  “A-a-ah.” Kol thrust in. He plumped his full weight on her. His buttocks began to move, faster and faster. She lay still, her fists clenched beside her.

  Kol whooped, shivered, and stopped. “Well,” Mörd barked, “are you done at last?”

  “For now.” Kol rose, pulled up his breeks, and belted them. “Your turn.” His shoe nudged Seija. “Off the fleece, you. Make way for the next.”

  Father, Yngvar, Odin and his valkyries, where, when?

  Kol took his stand in the doorway. Mörd went over to the jug and gulped from it. He set it back, belched, and crooked a finger at Gunnhild. “All right, you, let’s go.”

  Fear and bewilderment blew out of her. Wrath and hatred flared, swift as northlights, cold as wind off a winter sea. She shrieked, or she howled. Blindly, she seized the other bowl, broke it on the earth, and grasped a shard. It might gouge out an eye, at least, if she had any luck. She’d make him kill her. He’d have nothing but her lich to befoul. Afterward her ghost would give him no rest, grinning and clacking, whirling down woe after woe upon his sleeplessness. As he moved in on her, she crouched to leap.

  Kol reeled back from the doorway. An arrow quivered below his chest. He fell, yammered, and flailed about. Mörd yowled. He went after the spear he had leaned against the wall. Her head gone altogether clear, Gunnhild kicked it aside. As he stooped and groped for it, the doorway darkened once more. But it was Yngvar who sprang through, sword in hand.

  With a meaty thwack, he took Kol’s head half off. Blood spurted, then flowed in a tide. Men boiled behind him. Gunnhild could not see in the press of them what happened to Mörd, but it was short and it spilled his guts. More blood ran free, with the sharp reek of death.

  Özur’s men drew aside. Seija stepped forward. She had tak
en Mörd’s spear. She jabbed it into dead Kol, again and again.

  Yngvar caught Gunnhild to his breast. “We, we knew not you were here,” he stammered. “We knew not, I swear. Oh, but Hrapp will answer heavily, that he left his post, even for a little!”

  At the same time she passed by, flitted in the back of Gunnhild’s awareness. Could there have been a norn at work?

  But she would not weep. She would not. “Why didn’t you come sooner?” she gulped.

  “We never knew you were here, lady, lady. Else we’d have outsped the wind. It was your father’s bidding. If anything could draw the outlaws nigh, this shieling would, off by itself. Warned, we’d creep through the woods with, with stealth, till we had them ringed in, and so make sure of them.”

  “I—I see.” Gunnhild withdrew from him. She could understand, she thought dimly, she could forgive, and much of this had been her own doing. What Father and Mother would say— But later, later, she’d deal with everything later.

  She found herself in Seija’s arms. “Oh, my dear, how glad I am for you,” she heard.

  “D-didn’t you foresee?”

  “I never looked for this. And b-besides, my lore is scant.”

  “But you—for you—”

  Gunnhild felt the shrug. “I’ll put it behind me. No worse than—” Seija broke off. “But if you, Gunnhild, if you find you’re dwelling on it and your dreams become bad, seek me. I do know a few healing spells. I can lift it off you. Wrong would it be, wrong, if you bore scars for life from a happenstance like this, or lost wish for the love of men.”

  “I’ll bring you the other kitten” was all Gunnhild could think to say.

  Her tongue shaped the words almost of itself. Inwardly the knowledge was swelling in her: Father had used Seija, not only for a bedmate but as bait in a trap. So did the strong ever make use of the weak.

  She, Gunnhild, had today been among the weak. She would never again let that come about.

  What further witchcraft she could learn ought to give strength—strength of her own, which she might or might not choose to add to the strength of some good man. Over and above that, though, she would seek strength wherever and however it was to be had, and weave her webs to bind it to her.

  V

  Kraka Rögnvaldsdottir died next year in the fall. Her oldest housewomen cleaned her and laid her out. Her husband closed the eyes. Their children stood beside him. How strange she had become, the pain gone but also the lordliness and laughter, willfulness and warmth, nothing left but a waxen mask drawn tight over her skull. No breath moved the shrunken breasts. Were the cloth that bound those jaws undone, she still would not speak.

  She had better not. Gunnhild fought down a shudder. Bold Aalf and brash Eyvind seemed alike daunted. Father sat hunched throughout the night when they kept watch. In the guttering lamplight she marked with a slight astonishment how gray he had grown.

  Kraka’s death having been foreseen, the pyre was ready, the grave dug. Ulf had ordered himself buried whole in a ship with his weapons, the barrow raised where he could look seaward, and such was still usage in the South, but Northland folk oftenest burned their dead. Nevertheless she wore her best clothes, and behind the bier men carried things of gold, silver, and amber, together with everything from a distaff to a goblet of outland glass, which would go into the earth beside her bones. Boys hurried forth, bidding the whole neighborhood to a three days’ grave-ale. At that time Özur would kill a horse. So highly had he thought of his Kraka.

  Meanwhile Gunnhild stole away from Ulfgard and walked the mile or so back to its burial ground.

  Clouds scudded beneath a wan sky, their shadows hounding the heatless sunlight. A hawk wheeled far overhead; a gang of rooks winged murky just above the trees. Wind blustered, sent fallen leaves a-whirl and a-rattle, swayed the upper boughs of the pines. Nearly bare, birches stood like skeletons in sere brush. Grass around the charred leavings of the fire had gone sallow.

  Gunnhild stopped at the raw soil of the newest filled pit in the clearing. Her outer garment was only a woolen gown, but she was hardly aware of cold. The wind fluttered her skirt and the unbound hair of a maiden. For a span she stood dumb. Then she could whisper no more than “Mother.”

  She did not really know why she was here. To seek understanding? Even peace? In her last two years the illness made Kraka bitter. She would brook no rede or deed that was not her own will; she grasped after more than her share; she spat ill-wishings and bad names at the whole household. None but Özur could shout her into stillness, and he was more apt to storm out. His sons found things to do that kept them away. That was less easy for his daughter. She schooled herself to say nothing about it to anyone.

  “I should not have hated you, Mother,” she said at length, into the wind. “Often I did not; truly I did not. Had I known an herb or a spell to heal you, oh, I would swiftly have brought you back to what you once were. Did I know what witch or—or god wreaked this and had I the might, I would avenge you. Fearsomely would I avenge you.”

  Barren though the words were, they did not strike her as dangerous. Rather, they heartened. It was as if, through them, she called the woman’s haughtiness up into herself.

  Let her remember that Kraka was born to Rögnvald the Mighty, jarl, warrior, near friend of the great king. Remember what Mother had told of her half-brothers, Gunnhild’s uncles—among them Einar, who took the jarldom in Orkney and cut the blood eagle on the back of his father’s killer, though that man was a son of King Harald; and Hrolf, outlawed from Norway, who gathered a ship-host of Norse and Danes, roved and reaved widely, and won from the French king lordship over that land into which Northern settlers poured until now it was known as Normandy.

  Baneful was the night long ago when King Harald took Snaefrid to his bed. Her Norse name notwithstanding, she was a Finnish witch. Yet he loved her—too dearly. She bore him four sons before she died. Afterward her lich stayed as fair and fresh as ever in life, and the king would not have her buried, but swore she must surely soon live anew. Well it was that at last a wise man told him he should have fresh clothes put upon her; for when she was lifted, foulness and stench broke loose, and Harald was healed of his sorrow. Her sons grew up to be troublemakers, who lusted for higher standing than the king would give them. Haalfdan Longleg and Gudröd Gleam got many men together, ringed in a house where Jarl Rögnvald was, and burned it. Harald’s anger then made Haalfdan go in viking to Orkney, where Turf-Einar caught him. Feeling he must avenge this, King Harald fared overseas with a fleet, but in the end agreed to take sixty marks of gold as wergild.

  Today Gudröd dwelt unscathed in Agdir, Sigurd the Giant in Hringariki, Rögnvald Highbone in Hadaland, where they called him a black warlock.

  Gunnhild clenched her fists till the nails bit into the palms. Someday there would be a reckoning.

  A gust slapped her with chill. That and the stinging in her hands drew her thoughts back whence they had strayed. She had not come here to brood on things about which she could do nothing—yet.

  Nor should she be angry with King Harald. Father and Mother both had told of his many women, some wellborn, some lowly, some whom he wedded and some who were only lemans for years, months, days, a night or two. They had borne him no few sons and daughters. It behooved him to do well by these. Indeed, did he not, the sons, at least, would become wolves, preying on the kingdom. His masterful blood ran in them all.

  Year after year had he wrought and fought, beginning far south in Vikin, to which he was born, overcoming kings and jarls and chiefs, overawing yeomen, until at Hafrsfjord he smote the last great gathering of his foes and was king of all Norway.

  Along with much else, he took away freehold; henceforward, men had their land not of olden right but through him. Those who could not abide his harshness took ship. Many went to Orkney, Shetland, Ireland, or Normandy. Others sought to newly found Iceland.

  Most folk stayed home and were not unhappy with Harald Fairhair. When he was not crossed, he was openhanded t
o those who served him well, raising the foremost to high rank, giving handsome gifts to the rest, always setting an overflowing board. When he made the name of king mean little more than lordship over a shire, beneath his sway, he ended the endless wars between them. Though they might still fall out with each other, it was now their own followers who fought, not levies of yeomen who would rather tend their fields. He went after the vikings who harried the shores, scoured their strongholds, caught and killed them at sea, set ship-guards and coast-watch, until the land was free of them. Thereafter trade grew and grew; Norway opened fully to the outside world.

  True, Harald was not almighty. The jarl of Hladi, who headed the Thraand-law, was well-nigh on a footing with him. Beyond it and Naumdoelafylki stretched Haalogaland, where the king merely sent men each year to fetch the scot paid him by the Finns.

  Well, Gunnhild thought, that could be bettered.

  Not that she wanted Father made an underling. “No, no,” she cried to her whose ashes lay here and who maybe listened. But had not Grandfather Rognvald been Harald Fairhair’s staunchest waymate? Should not a worthier son carry the work onward?

  They said that Harald set nine wives aside when he wedded Ragnhild the Mighty. She was daughter to Eirik, a king in Jutland. Soon afterward, Gorm made himself king of all Denmark; but Ragnhild was kin to him also. The child she bore got the name of her father, Eirik. Later she died. This Eirik was the son whom Harald Fairhair loved the most and made his heir—Eirik, who once for a few wonderful days called at Ulfgard.

  “I will never yield,” Gunnhild said into the wind. “Through me, Mother, if none else, our blood shall flow greatly.”

  VI

  Özur was not long widowed. Ulfgard needed a lady. Geirmund Arnason was the man second most well-off in these parts. The oldest of his daughters not yet wedded was Helga. During the winter Özur asked for and got her.