A tingle went through Gest, a chill along his backbone. “Was that Frodhi Fridhleifsson in Denmark? They say Starkadh was of his household. But he died lifetimes ago.”
“I am older than I seem,” answered Starkadh with renewed roughness. He shook himself. “After this day’s work, thirst is afire in me. Would you know where there is water?”
“I know how to find water, if you will come with me,” Gest told him. “But what of these dead men?”
Starkadh shrugged. “I’m no scaldcrow to pick them clean. Leave them for the ants.” Flies buzzed around blind eyes, parched tongues, clotting blood. Stenches hung heavy.
Gest had grown used to such sights, but he was ever happy to lay them behind him, and tried not dwell on thoughts of widows, children, mothers. The lives he had shared were short at best, the merest blink of years, and afterward, for most, a span hardly longer before they were wholly forgotten by all but him. He took his spear and led the way down the trail.
“Will you be returning to Denmark?” he asked.
“I think not,” rumbled Starkadh at his back. “Sigurdh will make sure the next king in Hleidhra is beholden to him, and that the under-kings are at odds with each other.”
“Chances for a fighting man.”
“But I’d mislike watching the realm fall asunder that Frodhi built and Harald War-Tooth rebuilt.”
Gest sighed. “From what I have heard, the seed of something great died at Bravellir. What will you do?”
“Take ships that I own, gather crews for them, and go in viking—eastward to Wendland and Gardhariki, I think. Is that a harp you bear above your pack?”
Gest nodded. “I’ve put my hand to sundry kinds of work, but mainly I am a skald.”
“Then come with me. When we reach a lord’s hall, make a drapa about what I wrought this day. I’ll reward you well.”
“We must talk about that.”
Silence fell between them. After a while Gest saw the signs he had been awaiting and took a side trail. It opened on a glade starred with clover. A spring bubbled up at the middle; water trickled off through the grass, to lose itself under the trees. They made a wall around, dark beneath, still golden-green on top where the last sunbeams touched them. The eastern sky was violet-blue. A flight of rooks winged homeward.
Starkadh cast himself belly down and drank with mighty slurps. When at length he raised his dripping beard, he saw Gest busy. The wanderer had lain down his cloak, opened his pack, spread things out. Now he gathered deadwood below the trees and bushes that surrounded the glade. “What are you doing?” Starkadh asked.
“Making ready for night,” Gest told him.
“Does nobody dwell nearby? A swineherd’s hut would do.”
“I know not, and belike darkness would overrun us while we searched. Besides, here is better rest than on a dirt floor breathing smoke and farts.”
“Oh, I’ve slept under the stars often enough, and gone hungry too. I see you’ve a little food with you. Will you share?”
Gest gave the warrior a close look. “You’d not simply take it from me?”
“No, no, you are neither foeman nor quite a stranger.” Starkadh laughed. “Nor a woman. Too bad.”
Gest smiled. “We’ll halve what there is, though it’s not much for a man your size. I’ll set snares. By morning, with luck, we’ll have voles to cook, or even a squirrel or hedgehog.” He paused. “Would you like to help me? If you’ll work as I show you, we can make ourselves snug before nightfall.”
Starkadh rose. “Do you think me a coalbiter? Of course I’ll take a hand. Are you a Finn, or have you dwelt among Finns, to know these woodsrunner’s tricks?”
“No, I was born in Denmark like you—a long time ago. But I learned the hunter’s craft in my boyhood.”
Gest found, unsurprised, that he must pick his words with care when giving orders. Starkadh’s haughtiness was likely to flare. Once he roared, “Am I a thrall?” and half drew blade. He resheathed it, smacked fist into palm, and did as he was bidden. For that moment, pain had twisted his face.
Daylight drained from the west. More and more stars glittered forth. When dusk had seeped upward to fill the glade, the men had their camp ready. A brushwood shelter, bracken and boughs heaped within, would allow rest free of dew, night mists, and rain if any fell. Turfs piled outside its mouth cast back into it the warmth of a fire that Gest had kindled with a drill. Besides nuts and berries, he had found pine cones, sedges, and roots to eke out the bread and cheese. After he had roasted them in the ways that were needful, he and Starkadh would bed down fairly full.
He hunkered at the fire, with his knife whittling a green stick into part of a cooking tool. It was a fire more low than the warrior would have built, softly sputtering, its slight smoke savory of resin. Though air cooled fast at this season, Starkadh learned he could stay comfortable by sitting close. The red and yellow flames cast wavery light over Gest’s cheekbones and nose; it glinted from his eyes and made shadows in the gray beard. “These are good skills you own,” Starkadh said. “Indeed you shall fare with me.”
“We will talk of that,” Gest answered, watching his work.
“Why? You told me you were in search of me.”
“Yes, I was.” Gest drew breath. “Long and long had I been away, until at last memories of the North overwhelmed me and I must come back to see if the aspens still quivered in the light nights of midsummer.” He did not speak of a woman who died after he and she fared thirty years together over the vast plains of the East with her herder tribesfolk. “I had lost hope in my quest, I had stopped seeking—until as I walked through the woods and over the heaths of Jutland and the old tongue reawakened in me, not too much changed since I left, I began to hear about Starkadh. Him I must meet! I followed word of him to Hleidhra, where they said he had gone across the Sound to join King Harald and thence onward to war. I followed that trail to Bravellir, and reached it at sunset when the day’s slaughter had ended. In the morning I found men who had seen him go from it, and I took the way they pointed, and here we are, Starkadh.”
The huge man shifted about. “What would you of me?” he growled uneasily.
“First I would ask for the tale of your life. Some of the stories I heard were wild.”
“You’re a news-greedy one.”
“I have sought knowledge throughout the world. M-m-m ... how shall a storyteller repay a night’s lodging or a skald make staves for chieftains, unless he have something word-worthy behind his teeth?”
Starkadh had unbuckled his sword, but dropped hand to knife. “Is this the beginning of witchcraft? Uncanny are you, Gest.”
The wanderer locked gaze with the warrior and answered, “I swear to cast no spell. What I am after is more strange than that.”
Starkadh quelled a shiver. As if charging at fear to trample it underfoot, he said in a rush: “What I have done is well known, though belike no man save me knows all of it. But sooth it is, wild and sometimes ugly tales have mushroomed over the years. I am not of Jotun birth. That’s old wives’ chatter. My father was a yeoman in the north of Zealand, my mother came of honest fisher folk, and they had other children who grew up, lived like anybody else, grew fold, and were laid in howe, those that battle or sickness or the sea had spared—also like anybody else.”
“How long have they lain in the earth?” Gest asked softly.
Starkadh ignored the question. “I was big and strong, as you see. From childhood I lacked wish to muck and plow the fields or haul nets full of stinking fish. Twelve years old, I went off in viking. Some neighborhood men had a ship in common. They met with other ships and harried a while along the Norse shores. When they went back for hay harvest, I stayed behind. I sought out a skipper who was going to stay the winter; and thereafter my fame waxed fast.