Mother of Kings Read online

  When Gunnhild told Seija this, the woman’s eyes widened. She sat for a while thinking. Then, most softly, she said, “No. I am only one. How many of ours does he want to keep? My tribe would disown me. I would disown myself.”

  “Father will be angry,” Gunnhild warned.

  “Let him do what he likes. He may find that some deeds bring bad luck. On the other hand, the friendship of the Saami may be worth something.”

  “Was yours and mine worth nothing?” Gunnhild shouted, and raged out of the hut.

  Now she must wheedle Özur all over again. Further threats would be worse than useless. But surely he had not forgotten what she said that day at Ulf’s barrow. He soon yielded. She guessed Helga had had a word or two about that. Her stepmother had become much less shrewish toward her of late. Belike Helga did not wish to make trouble that might get in the way of her going. Yet Gunnhild could almost hear for herself man and wife in the warm darkness of their shut-bed: “She’s already sour at living here. If she does come back as a witch, what grief may we look for? Oh, she’s your daughter, she’d not willingly harm you, but headstrong was she ever. Best you find her a husband—in the South. She hankers yonder anyway. Why not handsel it this summer, down in the Thraandlaw?” Something like that would get his back up, Gunnhild thought.

  So she grinned to herself when Yngvar led a band of six off to dicker with those Finns. Her brother Eyvind went along. He was always eager for derring-do, the more so if he could brag about it afterward. They left on horseback, but homebound they mostly went on skis, leading their shaggy little long-maned horses, for snow fell early in the highlands they crossed. Meanwhile they had overnighted when they came on steadings, otherwise eaten their dried meat and hardtack and rolled up in their sleeping bags. They had had to ask where Seija’s tribe was—one of Özur’s Finns served as interpreter—but once they found it they were as well guested as such poor wanderers could do.

  The word they brought back was that both wizards agreed to be Gunnhild’s teachers for a year. If she then wished to go on with it, Özur must pay more than the handing over of a woman. They would meet Gunnhild right after the days began to wax longer than the nights, at a spot on the shore of the Stream-fjord, well north of Ulfgard.

  It was known to Özur and others, being indeed where he had gotten Seija. These were not Sea-Finns; they grazed their herds inland. However, their range was the nearest to that water. Some of them went there now and then to fish with hooks, stalk seal and walrus that hauled onto the strand, and trade with any outsiders who came by. They had built a house to keep folk and goods, weather being often foul and winter heaping high the snow.

  Gunnhild would be with the tribe until late fall, learning to ken the things she must use and give them names, as well as much else. Then as winter drew nigh, she and the two men would go back to the shore house. It was a wild and lonely stead, the more so when others would be forbidden to show themselves, but they must be untroubled while they schooled her in the spellcraft itself. To do it for a stranger like her was far harder than with someone who had grown up in Finnish ways. She would be safe. None of their own kind would dare come near, and Norse did not sail thereabouts in that season.

  Özur grumbled that he had nothing but their word for this. Gunnhild blazed at him that they would gain nothing and lose everything by letting her suffer hurt, and if she was ready to fare, did he have less manhood than her?

  It was a hard bargain for the tribe. They would be months without either of their shamans. Before then they must stock the house with all that was needful. As Seija had told Gunnhild, they gave this less for their kinswoman’s sake, however sorely they missed her, than in the hope of more goodwill among the Norse than they had hitherto met with, and a friend in Gunnhild, who might sometimes speak on their behalf after she went home.

  “I hate to think what goods they’ll want of me to keep you beyond the first year,” Özur growled. “Not that I believe you’ll choose to stay. They live like dogs. But, true, they’re a mare-hearted lot, who’d be afraid to lift hand against you.” He brooded. “Yet—maybe—what that witchcraft of theirs could slyly do—”

  “You had no fear of it when you were among them. Shall I, then?” Gunnhild answered.

  And in truth the runes he cast seemed to bode well, though he could not read what it was that lay in store for her.

  When she told Seija this, the Finn-woman was not overly glad. At last Seija said she too would seek knowledge. For her, that was through dreams. Long did she lie in that sleep. Afterward she would not tell Gunnhild what she learned, other than that Beings had spoken in riddles whose meanings were dark to her but that made her well-nigh wish undone the pact for her freedom.

  Gunnhild first yelled that such unfaith was worthy of a cut throat, then quickly smiled, hugged the other, and murmured words of cheer. Seija owned up to having no real skill at spaedom, Gunnhild said. How did she know that her dreams were not misleading or misunderstood? Were there a risk, would not her brother have had warnings and steered clear of the whole thing?

  “It is not myself I got forebodings about,” Seija sighed. “Nor you, dear. Whatever doom is on Vuokko and Aimo may have blinded them; they are not almighty.” Her head sank; she slumped and wiped her eyes.

  “All men are born fey,” Gunnhild said, “and all women too. But until the end—” She laughed. “—we can take whatever is within our grasp. This doing shall go well. Wait and see.”

  Seija did not try again. Whether or not it was another sign, she fell sick. At the worst, her brow was hot to the touch, her sweat rank, and she mumbled witlessly. She got over that but was long weak. At Gunnhild’s behest, a trustworthy serving woman stayed in the hut to tend her. Gunnhild herself never went to sleep before she had made her way there through the murk and snow of winter, bearing good food and good words. “Ever have you been kind to me,” Seija whispered more than once. Gunnhild smiled and stroked the damp hair. What a nasty trick of the gods or the trolls or whoever it was if this wretch died, she thought. An end to her soaring hopes!

  The Yuletide feast kept her at work beside Helga. They hardly had time to snap at each other. Men came from widely around to be at the offering, which Özur led, and spend a merry while with him. The ladies of the house oversaw the lodging of them, the cooking and cleaning, serving and clearing; they themselves bore filled horns to those whom he would honor; for his sake Gunnhild must be blithe and well spoken to the young swains who had lately become aware of her. Surely the daughter of a great man—a jarl or a king—had less toil and more fun, she thought. Nevertheless she got her father to kill a ewe, besides the horse, for Seija’s healing.

  He reckoned that was worth an old one unlikely to bear more lambs. Still, the meat, stewed with leeks and thyme, was fit to set on his board. Maybe it won the help of the elves. However that was, in the month or so that followed Seija won back her strength.

  But she stayed inwardly withdrawn, saying little and that only when spoken to. Her gaze seemed always to be elsewhere. After a while Gunnhild seldom called on her.

  IX

  The sun swung onward, higher and higher into the new year. Livestock began to bring forth young. Stormwinds hurled flights of chilly rain. Snow melted patch by patch; streamlets gurgled; mud squelped underfoot. Men spoke of plowing and seeding their meager croplands, of how much hay they might look for come summer, of harvesting the sea in earnest. Women longed to scrub the winter’s grime and stenches out of their homes, dry their washing in open air, get around in the neighborhood and swap talk with wives of the same standing. Children rollicked wild whenever they had no work to do, or played the games children had played since time beyond memory. Youths and maidens turned moony. Oldsters sat outdoors on every warm day, letting it soak into their marrow.

  Özur and Aalf saw to Thorgunna.

  The older son of the house loved the sea above all else. Never did he miss a chance to go on the water, be it merely in one of the dugouts the steading kept for small tasks.
As he grew up, he went with crews who cast nets beyond the fjords, then with sealers and whalers, then with his father a-trading. He quickly gained every skill there was. He hoarded whatever money he won, that he might buy a craft of his own. Already he bore the name Aalf the Shipman. Now Özur, who had too much else to do at this season, let him skipper the knarr to Streamfjord.

  “Be heedful,” Özur bade him. “Many of those straits are man-hungry. Listen to Skeggi.” That grizzled sailor knew the way, mostly from chasing narwhal and walrus in earlier years. “But make what haste you wisely can and don’t dawdle at the far end. We need the hands that go with you.”

  “I shall,” Aalf promised. He was a big man of eighteen winters, rugged-faced, fair-haired, gray-eyed, not much like his noisy brother. As yet he was unwed, making do with thrall women and the humblest freeborn at home, whores down south; he hoped for a better match than any among his neighbors. He chuckled. “Oh, the lads are happy to have an outing like this, but if we’re to miss the spring gathering, we’ll lust the more to drink and swive back here.”

  Özur barked a laugh.

  The knarr was a broad-beamed fifty-footer, painted black with red trim, gripping beasts chiseled into stemson and sternpost. Fore and aft were decks; otherwise the hull lay open. Toward each of these decks were two pairs of oar ports, eight altogether. A freighter was only rowed when needful, by men seated on their sea chests. Amidships reared the mast. Hauled aloft, its yard bore a great sail of homespun webbed with strengthening leather strips and dyed a now faded blue. This could be shortened if wind ran too high, or poled out for tacking; she answered her steering oar well. Faring in ballast as she was on this trip, she ought to make good speed for a merchantman. Homecoming would likely be slower, beating against the westerlies.

  Aalf meant to stand well out to sea on that leg. Carrying his sister, he chose the sheltered waters inside the Lofoten Islands, even if that made him and his men do more rowing. For this—and their weapons—he took a bigger crew along than erstwhile, fifteen besides himself and Skeggi, tough young fishers and sea hunters. It was a boisterous gang who boarded.

  The day sparkled when they caught an ebb tide and rode it from the Salt-fjord. Gunnhild stood at the prow, clutching the forestay to steady herself. Gladness sang in her.

  When they reached the sea and turned north, land, still snow-speckled but brightening with growth, fell away on the left. Starboard it sheered against heaven. Sunlight shimmered and glittered on gray-green whitecaps. They leaped in foam where they struck the skerries and holms strewn widely about. They rushed and whooshed around the ship, which rocked, surged, plunged forward. Timbers creaked; wind whistled past rigging; Gunnhild felt a throb in the stay and beneath her feet. The air blew cold, with a little sting of salt. Clouds scudded. Cormorants bobbed on the waves or flapped blackly aloft. Gulls soared and dipped. When any swept near, she heard the mewing as if it cried to her in a tongue she might someday understand.

  “Fair weather and a following wind,” said Aalf, who had taken the lookout’s post beside her. “We could ask for no better.” He glanced down at Seija. “Are her witch-kin helping her come to them? Then she’s paying.”

  The Finn-woman sat huddled below, knees drawn to chin. She shivered under a shaggy cloak Gunnhild had lent her. Already she had puked over the side. “I hope she’ll soon get her sea legs,” Gunnhild said, “or at least not reach Streamfjord too sallow and wasted.”

  “Whereas you’re born to this, same as me.” Aalf cupped his chin and thought. “But it would not be well for a woman to spend most of her life on ships.”

  Wontedly, the belowdecks were for gear and cargo best not stowed in the open. Now the forepeak had been left for Gunnhild and Seija, with a sailcloth strung across. Cramped though it was, it kept their things fairly dry and let them change clothes or use pot and hayballs unseen by the men. Seija cleaned the pot after each use. Once or twice a man started to mock at the sight, but a friend soon hushed him. Who knew what even a half-witch could lay on a fellow? However, it was Gunnhild from whose eyes they tried to shield their own overside doings.

  Toward evening they drew near a big island, lowered sail, and rowed into a wick that Skeggi remembered. Here they could anchor close in, put out a gangplank, and go ashore. Some bore firewood, seeing none worth cutting, and an iron box in which coals were kept alive. They boiled salt meat and herbs in a kettle, to eat with flatbread taken from a chest. Others set up a knockdown bed brought along for Gunnhild and raised a leather tent over it. She would sleep on sheepskins and feather pillow, wool blankets above. Seija got a hide and a sack on the ground next to her. Two armed men were to keep watch during the night. The rest would lie aboard ship. A line strung from stem to stern gave backbone to awnings fore and aft of the mast.

  Meanwhile they ate a meal scooped into wooden bowls. Aalf broached a firkin of ale; horns passed hand to hand. For Gunnhild he had a cup. She thought it wise to offer Seija a taste, where the Finn-woman crouched at the rim of firelight. Flames crackled, sparked, reddened the swirling, sweet-smelling smoke. Teeth, eyeballs, metal cast flickers back from shadow. Voices rolled slowly or burst into sudden laughter. It was man-talk, mostly everyday stuff and loutish banter, though when Aalf told something from his voyages his crew stilled and hearkened. Gunnhild choked down the wish to take part. What had she to say, a girl who had never before been this far from home? But when queens spoke, oh, then men gave heed!

  The night was wondrously clear. As the crew yawned and trudged off, Gunnhild stepped aside from the dying fire and gazed upward. Stars and stars and stars crowded the dark, more than she knew of, so that Thor’s Wain and Freyja’s Spindle were almost lost among them. The Winterway stretched like a frosty river above shouldering heights and glimmering water. What might this hugeness know of gods, worlds, men, and their dooms?

  The Lodestar gleamed and beckoned above a crest. Beyond waited Finnmörk. Gunnhild spent the night slipping in and out of eldritch dreams.

  Men rose at dawn, chewed cold food, and were off. Skeggi had well reckoned the tides. Thorgunna walked on oars from the wick and caught the morning breeze outside. She heeled in waves that sunrise silvered and ran with a bone in her teeth.

  Thus the days and nights passed. Aside from a few rainshowers, weather and wind stayed uncannily fair. Seija got over the worst of her sickness. Sometimes, when it was safe, Aalf let Gunnhild take the helm for a short spell. Meaningless though she knew this was, to have the steering in her grip made blood tingle.

  Mountains loomed skyward, snow on their stony heads, flanks begrown with wilderness where a waterfall did not tumble down a cliff, islands matching mainland. Thorgunna threaded the waters between. Awe of the loftiness to starboard and larboard quieted men. When a cloud passed above, it seemed as if those heights were toppling on them. They spied teeming life, seafowl, seals a-bask on rocks, whales like reefs afloat, cod and halibut they took on lines they trailed aft, bears and even elk that had come down to shore. Cries reached them from above, sometimes a bellow or a howl from inland. Of man they saw little—campfire smoke, huts for fishers and hunters later in the year, the bleached wreckage of a ship. Few Norse made their homes so far north, and no Finns showed themselves. This was not the time or place either for trade or for paying scot, and who knew what a craftful of strangers wanted?

  They did at Streamfjord.

  Soon after the knarr turned in there, it was sail down, oars out, and Skeggi at the tiller. The span between Whale Island to larboard and a jut of mainland to starboard was broad enough, but now Thorgunna hugged the latter while her crew peered after the landmarks. Shoals were many and riptides tugged. The land grew flatter, thickly wooded. Then a lookout shouted, men hurrahed, Skeggi put the helm over, and the sweating rowers gusted their own thanks.

  A stream flowed down to a strand against which fairly mild waves lapped. As the sailors dropped anchor, a half-score men ran from the woods. Seija reached forth her arms, called aloud, and burst into tears. Only Gunnhild, and
maybe Özur, had ever before seen her weep.

  The tide being high and Aalf not wholly trustful, he deemed it best not to ground but to lie where they were and wade ashore. He jumped out first, caught Gunnhild when she followed, and bore her to land. She thought this made her look helpless, but annoyance whirled away when she saw, close up, those who met her.

  Like most of their kind, they were short and stocky, with wide faces, saddle noses, big eyes that slanted a little. Under the weathering and smoke-smudges their skins were light, and the hair and sparse whiskers of some were even yellow. Their clothes were leather and fur, cloth of Norse weave mingled in. Aside from long knives, which they kept sheathed, they were unarmed. The sailors lowered their spears and axes.

  Two Finn-men trod ahead of the rest. Seija sped to one of them. He held her close and crooned. She laid her head at his breast and sobbed. He was of about thirty winters, strongly built, black-locked, his underslung jaw nearly beardless. The man beside him was the tallest of the band, somewhat older, lean, his eyes blue and bleak. He carried a wand made from a deer’s legbone.

  “Gunnhild,” said Aalf, “you can talk with them, no? The thrall woman’s blubbering too hard.”

  His sister swallowed. “Greeting,” she began, hearing her awkwardness with the tongue. “I am she whom you awaited.” Her heart thuttered.

  Seija stepped aside. Her voice was uneven, her cheeks wet, but she spoke clearly, in Norse. “Here is my brother Vuokko,” she said, and, waving at the other, “here my kinsman Aimo. They have come as plighted, and everything is ready.”