The five thegns cursed but felt duty bound to go to the aid of the peasants. Any one of them would have cut down a farmer for as much as a misplaced word, but faced with invaders it was their duty to defend the men that put food on their lord’s table. As they rushed in, the courage of the farmers broke and they ran out. The four raiders who had been hiding burst into this confusion. In the maelstrom of flailing limbs and weapons one thegn was felled by a peasant who mistook him for a raider. West Men stumbled and slipped and blocked their comrades’ blows as the Norsemen’s axes bit and spears stabbed. Some of the farmers managed to get away, but the warriors, beset on both sides, stood and died.
Authun swung the basket with the boys in it onto the longship and Varrin heaved their mother after them. The big man ached to join the fight. He had his orders but still held himself a coward for minding children while his kinsmen fought for their lives. Varrin looked at the woman. She had one of the boys out of the basket and was comforting him. As he watched, a feeling of disquiet came over him. It was as if the woods around the village had begun to seethe. Somehow he could sense the forest coming alive, that the foxes, the birds and above all the wolves had caught the scent of slaughter on the breeze and were hurrying to the feast. From deep in the trees he heard their howling, the dissonant call of welcome for the dead. He turned back towards the village, itching to go to his kinsmen’s aid. From somewhere above him, even over the din of battle, he heard a call, a sound, he thought, like the sky cracking. He glanced up to see a pair of ravens circling.
‘My lord!’ he said. ‘An omen. Odin is with us — he sends his intelligencers. Our men have carried the day, they will make the ship.’ His voice was full of admiration. What other leader could hack a victory from such unpromising odds?
Authun looked at him. ‘They will enter legend here.’
‘Leave them?’
‘Leave them.’
Varrin was stunned but he did as he was told, helping the king shove the boat out into the river. The two men leaped aboard.
On the river beach their kinsmen leaned on their axes. Hella bore a deep cut on his cheek, Arngeir a wound on his chest that stained his tunic red, but otherwise they were in good fighting shape.
‘He’s going,’ said Grani.
‘He has said we must die,’ said Vigi. ‘It’s foreseen.’
‘Varrin and the king are no poets,’ said Arngeir.
‘They will tell the tale to a poet,’ said Vigi. ‘The words will fit our glory.’
Down the grassy hill behind the houses horsemen were pouring. It was nearly an hour since the lord had seen the village beacons and he and his bodyguard had ridden hard. There were around twenty of them, at least two armoured in byrnies, four carrying swords, the rest spears and axes. The thegns had come, and in numbers.
‘They can begin work on our saga very shortly, I think,’ said Arngeir.
‘We will be remembered for ever,’ said Vigi.
A bowshot away from the raiders, the peasants had cut through the staves and five horses jumped down the small cliff onto the beach. The Norsemen’s advantage from holding the gap was gone and now they had enemies on two sides.
King Authun hailed his men from the ship. ‘You have played your part in the destiny of the world. You die as heroes.’
The raiders saluted him with their axes as three horsemen dismounted and drew their weapons. Two stayed in the saddle, charging into the river after the departing boat. One tried to jump onboard but lost his seat and crashed into the water, the other was forced to pull up by Authun’s flashing sword.
Caught by the turning tide, the boat rounded a bend and the beach drifted out of sight. Then the king and Varrin heard the sound of the thegns’ charge.
‘There will be many widows in this country tonight,’ said Authun.
‘And eight more in our own,’ said Varrin.
The king lowered his head. Before the end of the journey, he knew, there would be nine. Still, the fate of his entire race was in his hands. When he returned his wife would fall into a coma and the false pregnancy the witches had laid upon her would end. When she awoke she would have a son, the magic child, the wyrd child who would lead his people to conquer the earth. Authun would have a poet sing of the death of his warriors and then he could go into his next battle ready to die. He would face his kinsmen in Odin’s halls and they would know he had done the right thing. He had secured the futures of all their descendants. All he had to do was work out which child he needed to present to his wife.
Authun turned his attention to the boys in the basket. Their mother was bending over them, fussing. He wanted to look at them again but couldn’t bring himself to pull her away. There would be time enough to examine them, he thought.
He sat back in the boat and took off his byrnie as Varrin steered out to sea on the outgoing tide. Which child? The witches would know; they had always known so far. The witch queen would cast her magic and the true heir would be revealed. How much would that cost him? He took out the priests’ book and began to pick apart the jewels and precious metal with his knife. He had that and two ornate candlesticks. Would that be enough? The witch had an insatiable appetite for gold.
Authun was not just a fighter; a successful king needs to be a politician too. His whole experience and upbringing as a man, a king and a warrior, however, made it impossible for him to recognise his blind spot. He considered only how to fight, persuade, cajole and manage men. He might be skilled and subtle in his schemes, practised at bending others to his will — but so were the women of the mountain.
2
The dead had never meant anything to Authun before. Their separation from the living seemed to him so slight that mourning or grief had never come to him. Death was just life in another place.
The manner of death was a different thing. Varrin needed to die but he should die like a warrior. The secret of Authun’s new heir must be absolute, and while anyone who was party to it lived there was the risk that the truth might seep out to whisper from the shadows of the feasting halls, hum through the markets, sing with the wind beneath the sails of raiding ships. Authun, though, would not kill his friend. The king had been raised to believe that a kinslayer is cursed eternally. It wasn’t that he thought of killing Varrin and then discounted the idea. It didn’t even occur to him.
Varrin’s death was a problem that he would solve the only way he knew how — in consultation. The Norsemen placed great faith in the power of talk.
The land was in sight and the ship laboured across a current. Progress would have been difficult with a full haul of oars. With only the sail and a partly co-operative wind the going was very hard. It was Authun’s last chance, though. Varrin had to die now so his body would be taken down the whale road out to the north or there was a risk it could wash up on friendly shores, raising difficult questions.
‘Varrin.’
‘Lord, I know I cannot return.’ The old warrior knew his king well and, even facing death, sought to lift the burden from his shoulders.
Authun lowered his head.
Varrin said, ‘What shall they say of me, lord?’
‘Your friends loved you and your enemies feared you. Of all men on the earth, you were raised the least cowardly. Who could hope for more?’
‘Will they sing songs?’
‘They already sing songs of you, Varrin. In death they will unlock a word hoard to your memory.’