Kin (Helga Finnsdottir) Page 22

  Sigmar’s voice rang out. ‘I swear an oath on Midgard!’

  ‘MIDGARD!’ The men’s voices exploded into the sinking night.

  ‘I call forth the gods of Asgard to give us wisdom!’

  The whispering in the leaves above them gave a moment’s warning before the wind swept up out of nowhere, tugging at clothes and pushing hair out of place – and then it was gone again. Wherever she glanced, Helga could see eyes widen and looks being exchanged.

  The gods are listening.

  Sigmar drew a deep breath and shouted as loud as he could into the skies, ‘Tell us, Odin! Did you see Volund, son of Bjorn, murder his father and his father’s brother with a stolen blade?’

  The silence was absolute. One breath . . . two breaths . . .

  If anyone had made any sound, they would have missed it . . .

  . . . the sound of a drop, hitting a wet surface.

  ‘L-look!’ Hildigunnur shouted. ‘Odin!’

  All eyes went to the carved idol of the Allfather. A dark line had formed in the wood, leading straight down from the one uncovered eye.

  ‘He bleeds!’

  ‘He saw!’ That was Jorunn’s voice.

  ‘The gods have replied!’ Sigmar roared. ‘Asgard has spoken!’

  Beside Hildigunnur, Thyri burst into tears, and Runa and Agla turned to her at once, hugging the distraught woman.

  ‘My boy,’ she wailed, but any other words were muttered into her kinswomen’s shoulders.

  That’s right. Hide your face, woman. Helga was surprised at the heat in her breast. This was nothing but an elaborate song and dance to convince . . . who?

  She looked around. This was the work of her parents – her adoptive parents – of that there could be little doubt. The men of the valley would carry it to their neighbours, how the fey giant boy murdered his uncle and then his father. But Sigmar and Jorunn? Did they believe this? Did Runa? Did Aslak?

  Under Sigmar’s chanting, the skies looked as if they were darkening quicker than usual. When he thanked the gods for their wisdom, poured the blood at their feet and said the blessings for fertility and survival, a cold wind blew in from the north, making Helga shiver. It was almost as if the gods were listening to him going through with this – this whatever it was – and were not impressed.

  She felt woozy. It was all too much. Everyone and everything felt strange to her – Mother and Father were not like she’d ever seen them, and Einar . . . She felt a pang in her chest, then a wash of guilt as she remembered why they were there in the first place.

  Volund.

  What had happened to Bjorn? Who would tell her? What could she do?

  Ask him. The idea was there, like a bird landing on a branch. Ask the question. She didn’t move an inch; almost didn’t look at it. Yes. Something doesn’t add up. Ask Bjorn. Go and look at the body. Go – do it now. The urge to know almost pushed her off her feet and back down towards the shed where Bjorn rested, ready to be put in the ground the following morning.

  Almost, but not quite.

  Helga was still aware of taut muscles near her, of eyes trained on the gods far harder than they merited. She was becoming more and more certain that Volund hadn’t done it – and that meant the murderer still walked among them, and would most likely not be very happy about her going to find out more about the killings.

  She almost missed Sigmar concluding the ceremony. The silence lay heavy on the summer night, broken only by the occasional snark of a torch. Everyone knew what had to happen in the morning, but nobody was looking forward to it.

  ‘We will sit at sumbel to think on this,’ Unnthor said. ‘Come, friends. The gods have spoken, and it is for us to listen.’ He turned and led the way towards the longhouse. Farmers and Swedes alike looked all too happy to follow.

  Helga drifted along behind them. There would be things to do – and somehow, she had to get out and find more information before night turned into morning.

  *

  The sumbel slowly but very surely picked up pace as mead went down and spirits went up. Thyri had retreated to spend the night with Bjorn’s body, but the rest were happy to avail themselves of Unnthor’s mead. The barrel of strong had disappeared again – my mother really must be part witch, the way she can do that – but others had emerged in its place.

  Her back to the table as she methodically scraped left-over stew from the bowls into a bucket for later use, Helga let the words wash over her.

  ‘—King Eirik can’t avoid going west for ever—’

  ‘He will if he knows what’s best for him! The west is best left to the Danes. They’ll all disappear eventually, like Rollo.’ Laughter among the men.

  ‘Rollo just had the good sense to settle where the land is green, the women are soft and the men are both green and soft!’

  More laughter.

  The conversation flowed between the men; Jorunn and Agla participated, Gytha listened. Einar was somewhere else, and Helga found she didn’t mind that. The boy had looked like a boil-arsed bull since . . . since . . .

  Since Jorunn said she was pregnant?

  The door to the storeroom in her mind creaked open, and Helga stepped inside.

  Someone had killed Karl. And then someone had killed Bjorn. Most of them would have had a reason to kill the oldest brother – but only Karl would have had a good reason to kill Bjorn. So had Karl somehow reached out from beyond the grave? She chided herself and a voice suspiciously close to Hildigunnur’s whispered in the back of her mind, Don’t be stupid, girl. Think about what Thyri said. There had been not one but two voices outside. So who had been arguing with Bjorn? The work disappeared in her hands and Helga found herself with a head full of thoughts and nothing to do. As gently as she could, she drifted towards the door and ducked out.

  The cooler night air was refreshing and invigorating, with a gentle breeze drifting in from the river. She could almost taste the cold, fresh water on her tongue, imagine it flowing over the smoothly polished stones. There were other smells, too – tendrils of warm animal musk crossed the yard, lingering where a horse had rubbed up against a fence post, wafting from a corner where a dog had marked its territory.

  And, faintly, Helga could smell blood. Her heart thumped – not another one, please, no – but then she remembered the pillar with Odin’s face, weeping right next to the torch, carved features like a gaunt ghost in the blossoming dark.

  ‘What are you doing out?’

  She started at Jaki’s voice, but there was enough warmth in it to calm her down immediately. ‘Hello, old man.’ She could hear in her own voice how tense she was, and tried to breathe herself calmer.

  ‘It’s a good night.’ He must have been able to hear it too. Jaki’s voice was soothing, like when he dealt with skittish animals. ‘How are they getting on in there?’

  ‘I don’t know – and I don’t know that I care.’ The ease with which the truth flowed out surprised Helga, but she wasn’t lying. Suddenly, she didn’t care any more. So what if whoever it is kills all of us? We’ve all got to die sometime. The thought was equal parts thrilling, exhausting and sad. ‘They’re in there drinking, and they’ve just decided to slice open a boy’s throat tomorrow morning.’

  Jaki stepped closer, and Helga took a good look at him. How do our people become so old? Only last year you were impossibly big. She could see how Unnthor’s right-hand man must have been built like his son once, but old age had worn him down like water does the rock. He was sunken, somehow – almost all of his life spent, and on what? Lugging timber and mending tools.

  ‘The gods spoke.’

  ‘Of course they did,’ Helga all but spat. ‘And they gave exactly the answer that everyone wanted: we get to pick out the weakest in the group – the only one who can’t defend himself’ – her tears flowed free and hot – ‘and meanwhile whoever really killed Karl and Bjorn walks a
way. They walk away free, and everything goes back to the way it was.’

  ‘I know,’ Jaki murmured, comfortingly, ‘I know. They’re a funny lot, the Riverside folk.’ He looked around. ‘Come with me. We have some time – let’s sit and look at the water. It helps sometimes.’

  Helga felt the gentle, warm touch on her elbow as his heavy, leathery hand nudged her along. She fought the urge to dry her tears. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. For some reason, that became the most important thing in her world at that moment: that old Jaki didn’t think she was soft.

  ‘I love this river,’ Jaki said.

  ‘Why? It’s just a river.’

  ‘Maybe. But if you listen to it—’ He stopped talking, and they both focused on the rippling water. ‘Hear that? It’s laughing. The water is laughing at us as it floats past.’ He guided her to a well-worn spot on the riverbank and took a seat nearby. ‘And when I was young that used to make me angry. “How dare you laugh at me!” I’d growl, and I’d grip whatever tool I was using, real good, hard enough to smash a skull, and I’d work furiously. And then . . .’ The old man paused.

  I can hear him smiling. ‘Then what?’

  ‘I’d wake up in the morning, aching and sore, and the water would still be laughing at me.’ Below their feet there was a splash in the darkness as the river agreed. ‘And I thought to myself that maybe I mattered less than I thought. And if I did, maybe so did everybody else.’

  ‘So you’re saying Volund’s life doesn’t matter? Not really?’ Helga felt her throat tighten in fury.

  ‘No, no, no – I’m not saying that at all,’ the old man replied, with warmth in his voice. ‘I’m saying that sometimes you have to move on, regardless. There are always more things to get done.’ In the silence they could hear a muted shout from the longhouse, followed by a wave of laughter. ‘I’ll tell you a story, though. You came here, what? Five winters ago?’

  ‘Eleven,’ Helga said quietly.

  ‘Eleven! Loki’s balls but that is a long time,’ Jaki muttered. ‘Well. So this must have been a good fifteen summers back.

  ‘Jorunn was growing up to look exactly like her mother, so the old folks told me. A slice of summer, they always said. She was light on her feet then, too – and she had to be, because every boy in the valley and the next three over was finding some excuse to come here with various bits of nonsense – wood for the carts, hay for the horses, supplies for the household. Unnthor told me he remembered lending out about half of what was returned to him that summer. Even back then everyone thought highly of Unnthor of Riverside, and it would have been a great match for any family to have wed one of theirs to his daughter.’

  Try as she might, she struggled to imagine the guests as people her age, let alone her adoptive parents without white hair.

  ‘Anyway, his name was Dreyri. He was a horse trainer at Oakfell in Skidal, and a fine-looking specimen he was too: strong and lean, and blessed with a pretty face. They met at a market fair down on the plains, and Jorunn made her mind up pretty quickly that she wanted him, and because he had eyes in his head and half a brain to match, he wanted her.

  ‘Only the gods didn’t smile on the match. Jorunn asked her mother for counsel; she asked Unnthor, and Unnthor . . . well, he said no.’

  ‘Why?’ She was almost twitching with the need to hear the rest.

  Jaki smiled at her impatience. ‘Because the boy had no land, no family and no history. There was no sign that he could offer Jorunn any sort of life other than as a huskarl’s wife, and that at best, so Unnthor decided that it wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘Oh, there were tears and screams, and a hurled axe or two, but the old man stood firm: he said he made the rules, and that there would be no negotiating.

  ‘So Jorunn decided to take matters into her own hands.

  ‘The boy came here under cover of darkness, with two horses, and they stole away in the middle of the night. Unnthor was furious, of course, but nowhere near as mad as Hildigunnur – truly, I thought she’d kill us all. She didn’t say much – she never does when she’s that angry – but I made sure to stay well away.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Jorunn came back two days later, looking like she’d been in a fight – which she probably had, come to think of it. She didn’t want to talk about Dreyri – and neither did anybody else.’

  Helga frowned. ‘Why not?’

  ‘He was never found,’ Jaki said. ‘Not ever. And keep in mind that your father and mother know a lot of people in these parts. They’d certainly have heard about the passing of the man who almost stole their daughter.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Helga said.

  And it works both ways: every one of their friends in the area would hear of their wise solution to their minor murdering problem . . .

  ‘But I looked after the horses then, and I know that someone rode out after her.’

  Suddenly, Helga was more than aware of the cold on her skin and a growing heat around her neck where the rune-stones lay. Fragments of images flashed through her mind – a rider in moonlight, a hunter quietly stalking prey, screams, the face of a beautiful boy up close, terrified, and then broken. She felt the weight of him, dragging through the forest behind an unseen attacker. She saw the ground come closer as the hunter bent down and touched a paw-print.

  Left for the animals.

  ‘Jorunn was furious – she was her mother’s daughter, after all – and she swore she would never look at another man. Hildigunnur said fair enough, no doubt expecting time to heal the wounds. But now there were whispers,’ Jaki continued, ‘and some of Jorunn’s suitors were turning bitter at the constant rejections, and more and more fathers were seeing the lack of a wedding as a declaration that no one in the area was good enough for Riverside. Unnthor didn’t care – he was never much good at doing what other people wanted.’ She could hear the fondness in the old man’s voice.

  ‘Luckily, he married well. Hildigunnur could see the storm on the horizon, and so she pulled Karl aside and told him to find the girl a husband.’

  ‘And he did.’

  ‘What boy ever says no to his mother?’ Jaki said. ‘Of course he did. He left immediately to go a-Viking, without so much as a word to anyone. Cost him a wife of his own, too.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ Helga frowned, but didn’t reply, and Jaki said, ‘He was supposed to be married to Runa, but after she’d waited for him for half a year she decided on Aslak instead.’

  Helga could feel the cold air gently streaming into her wide-open mouth. Absent-mindedly, she reached up and pushed her mouth closed. Runa was—

  The thought crashed into all the others in her head, and she felt dizzy. ‘I did not know that,’ she managed.

  ‘Worked out well enough,’ Jaki said. ‘Hildigunnur played for time, bought a couple of friends in the valley and beyond with generous gifts come harvest-time. A few months later Karl arrived, talked to the parents, and off Jorunn went. You couldn’t argue with Swedish nobility, after all.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Couple of lines down, maybe, but Sigmar is second cousin to Eirik the Victorious.’

  ‘That . . .’ A small giggle burst out of her as she thought of all those self-important farmers of the valley, standing in the Riverside yard like landed fish. ‘You’re right, you can’t. And there are clearly many things I don’t know about the family.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Jaki said. ‘The family at Riverside rarely stops to dwell, not if they can move forward. Now, even though your kin are more dog than cat, and more wolf than dog, are you ready to go back inside?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Good.’ The old man paused. ‘You’ve got spirit, Helga of Riverside. I . . . I never had a daughter,’ he said, haltingly, ‘but if I had, I hope she’d have turned out like you.’

  Helga bit her teeth to
gether so hard that she half thought they’d crack in her mouth. Instead of speaking, she wrapped her arms around Jaki’s solid shoulders and squeezed him for all she was worth, absorbing the warmth and the smell of him, storing the comfort he had given in a locked box next to her heart. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, only reluctantly letting go before heading back towards the longhouse.

  When she was halfway there she looked over her shoulder, but he’d gone. There were always more things to get done.

  *

  After the darkness and the cold air of the riverbank, the warmth of the longhouse was stifling. The guests were not yet drunk, but they’d definitely increased both the speed of drinking and the volume since she’d gone out – and someone needed to refill their cups. Helga fell into her routine quickly, swooping in between men’s thick bodies to slosh the amber liquid in the mugs. She’d heard stories of girls having to keep one hand free to fend off grabbing paws at all times, but that kind of thing didn’t happen at Riverside. Mother would have their head. No, the men largely ignored her, just continuing talking among themselves.

  ‘—and I’ve heard that the Rus are moving further south.’

  ‘What? Again?’

  ‘Not enough space, they say.’

  ‘Maybe Vladivar has just finished fighting everyone he knows and needs a new friend,’ someone chimed in, and there was laughter at that, rough and choppy. She’d heard something about this Vladivar, she thought: a fierce warlord somewhere to the southeast. The men obviously found the idea of him having a friend very funny. The Swedes and the locals were mixing freely now, all tribal ties forgotten. Or that’s what it looks like, at least. These days it was increasingly hard to know when the knives would come out.

  On one side of the table, Jorunn had engaged two of Unnthor’s farmer friends in conversation. She couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but the old men were hanging on the young ­woman’s every word like dogs with their master. There: a moment – and then a loud bark of laughter from one, immediately followed by the other. They were practically eating out of her hand – but was there an ounce of truth in whatever she was telling them? Helga found that Jorunn’s lies sat uneasy with her. There was no doubt in her soul that the woman was lying – but why? Did the reason have anything to do with Karl?