A Mankind Witch (9 page)

But today, in an ill-fitting green dress of heavy brocade that she needed a thrall to get herself laced and buttoned into, she would sit through the chanting and drinking of blood oaths, and desperately wish herself elsewhere.

There was a polite knock on the door. Only the thrall Cair ever knocked like that. The other servants tended to be through the door by the time they'd finished knocking. Mind you, he was making headway there, too. At least they knocked now. She had decided it was probably best not to ask too closely about what her newest slave was doing to the lackwits, slackers, and her stepmother's spies who had been given to her as servitors. He was something of an enigma, this thrall.

Cair bowed, polite as always. "I have brought something for you, Princess." He took a neat cloth package out of his ragged pouch.

That pouch amused Signy. He was her thrall, and she'd given him permission to carry it. It was as grubby and ragged as any item a thrall might own. Yet she'd caught a glimpse of gold in it. And that certainly wasn't all it held. Signy had decided that the man was a magpie. He had anything from birds' eggs to bundles of old cloth containing gods alone knew what. He didn't need the pretense of a ragged pouch to keep the thralls' fingers from exploring it while he slept. They were all terrified of him, and especially that pouch. The house-thralls avoided him, pulling their skirts aside when he walked past, but he'd made her part of the stables shine. If he was a
seid
-witch, the more power to him. Cair was possibly the only person that Signy felt she didn't have to watch her tongue with. Since the snake incident, he'd had a few more whippings at Albruna's order. The queen always found some pretext, but basically it was because the queen did not approve of even a mere thrall treating Signy with deference. It hadn't appeared to worry him. Or change the way that he behaved.

Signy knew that the raid which had brought him here had been an utter failure, bringing back a bare handful of slaves. It had been in breach of the truce oath too: a shameful thing, even if Vortenbras claimed otherwise. So what if the Emperor was a Christian? An oath sworn on Odin's ring might not bind the Christian, but it ought to bind both Vortenbras and Telemark. But then Vortenbras had territorial ambitions and wasn't about to let an oath stop him. Some successful viking was needed to get a following. A great raid would have drawn every second son, every malcontent and troublemaker from across the thirteen kingdoms, and Sweden and Denmark, too, to Vortenbras's standard.

It had failed.

So, now the king was displaying piety instead.

Signy took the parcel from the thrall Vortenbras had rejected as too old, too sick, and unable to speak a civilized language. The more fool her half-brother. The man had learned Norse with the speed and eagerness of a salmon that wanted to spawn. His accent was a little odd, but he was fluent. And, she had to admit, he was as clever as a fox to boot.

She looked at the little bundle with a raised eyebrow. This new thrall was one of the few (if not the only) person, besides the dogs and horses to whom she could cheerfully say what she liked. "What's this, Cair? A potion to make me vomit on the queen? She'll have me whipped again."

Cair smiled crookedly. "But wouldn't it be worth the whipping, Princess? No. It is just some clean beeswax."

She looked quizzically at him. "To chew. Or to make candles from during the rites?"

He shook his head. "There is a story of a Greek hero who saved his ship from sirens—beautiful singers that lure sailors to their doom, Princess—by getting his crew to plug their ears with beeswax. The sounds distress you. With your hair braided as it is over your ears, no one will ever know. Even the queen will not notice."

"If she talks to me she will."

The slave-thrall shrugged. "She doesn't talk to you, Princess. She talks at you. Just nod and say yes. She'll never know the difference."

Signy had to smile. This thrall did that to her. He was nearly as good as a dog at it. He didn't seem to know his place, or care that he was of a lower order—but he treated her as if she deserved great respect. She'd have thought that as an outlander he was confused about her status, except—well, he certainly wasn't stupid. "The queen would have you whipped for that, Cair."

He tapped his forehead. "A good thing that I made sure that she wasn't listening, Princess. She is down in main hall. She's got long ears." He waggled his hands beside his head of odd, curly black hair. "But not that long," he said, stretching his arms up and waggling his hands at full stretch.

Signy found her smile had grown to a laugh. "Yes, but she has her spies. You'd better get away from here before Borgny comes to help me with my dress."

Cair assumed a look of deep sadness. "Borgny is very unwell. Little Gudrun is on her way up to assist you."

Borgny was one of the queen's pets, and one of Signy's worst tormentors. Little Gudrun was too timid to torment anyone. She was nearly as small as Signy. The princess looked suspiciously at the thrall. He smiled enigmatically.

Signy shook her head. "The queen will surely get rid of you," she said, quietly. "She always does. But if, as I have been led to expect, my marriage to that pig Hjorda of Rogaland is to come in the spring, I'm determined to take you along. You're too good a thrall to deserve less. I'll need at least one thrall for my pyre." She smiled at him. "And that would give you entry to Odin's halls, which no thrall can expect, otherwise."

He seemed a bit taken aback. But that was not really surprising. It was quite a privilege, normally only accorded to the servant of a lifetime.

Later, she sat with the royal household as the priest walked around Odinshof, flicking blood from the altar bowl with his
hlauttein
twig of mistletoe. The broad gold arm ring seemed almost too heavy for the old man. Well, it was said to be a harsh duty to have to wear the
draupnir
. It rested normally on the huge altar block, and was only taken up for the swearing of oaths and other stern duties like this.

And the beeswax seemed to have worked. This time it was her stepmother who looked a little sick, and pale. Signy hoped desperately that her stepmother would go off to her estates near the border to recover. Kingshall was always easier to survive when she was away.

Cair found what the little princess had just said one of the most puzzling things he'd yet encountered among these uncivilized primitives. If he'd understood it right she'd just, with the air of someone conveying a huge privilege, decided to have him on her pyre when she got married.

Weddings around these parts plainly involved more than just a little bed warming! So he took himself back to the stables and to Thjalfi. The thrall might be a few pieces short of a full set of chessmen in his head, but he was an invaluable source of information. And because he was more than a little slow, he was easy enough to pump unobtrusively.

"Brides get burned?" The thrall shook his head. "No, not unless the groom works too hard on his wedding night and dies. Then she may climb onto his pyre with him. Much honor to the wife. Very romantic," he said, dreamily. "Ancient heroines like Signy—she who was married against her will to King Siggeir, the King of Gautland, and then had her vengeance, and was burned beside him."

Cair swallowed, beginning to understand the context of this Signy's statements. "And who else? I mean . . . tell me about the way you would burn a great jarl or his lady."

Eagerly, the thrall began a lengthy description of the burial of King Olaf. Painstakingly he listed the grave goods and the food that even thralls had got to taste. Eventually he came to: "And, with the king we put six serving girls and six thralls. It is a great honor," he said, hopelessly wishful. "Thralls go to Odin's hall to serve there!"

It sounded like the sort of privilege that Cair felt he could go without. But he'd better learn to understand their religion and society. He'd been avoiding doing so previously. Looking back, he could see that he'd been stupid. Disdain was all very well, but you had to know your enemy.

Over the next week Cair tried to absorb the religion and culture of his captors. The more he learned the more he decided that these Norsemen were crazy. They believed everything had either a spirit, or a little gnome, or a troll occupying it. Giants made natural phenomena like storms or earthquakes happen. Ha. Stupidity. To someone like himself, a firm believer in real cause and effect, doubly so.

He'd even sneaked into the pagan's temple for a look around. Well, he'd bribed one of the door wardens. Even in a slave society there is some money floating around. Some of it inevitably found its way to a worker of charms. "We thralls don't go there! But Vilmut will let you sneak in in the early morning when he is on duty. Albrecht is always asleep then," one of the girls had told him. "He will let you in for a copper penny. Two if you want some of the holy ash."

"The holy ash?"

She giggled. "It's no use to you, outlander. You're a man. Or at least, we think so. It is powerful fertility magic. Especially from the Yule log. That is what the priests scatter on the fields at the Beltane feasts."

So, in the pale dawnlight he had gone and parted with a solitary copper penny. The ash from the kitchen hearths would do just as well for the things he needed ash for. He suspected the ash from there would do just as well for the foolish women, too. The crude soap he'd made with it might even help fertility. At least they might smell less and thus attract someone to assist with conception. Soap was still an imported luxury here.

This particular temple was dedicated to Odin. There were others around, but it appeared that the one-eyed god was the darling of the Norse ruling nobility. Thor held sway among the warriors, and was even venerated by the thralls. But Odinshof here was strictly for the nobility.

It was a pretty poor place for all that. Cair had looted far better. The only piece of gold in the place was a solitary, chunky, crudely engraved bracelet, rather like the ones that a fair number of the warriors wore just above the elbow. It lay, quite unguarded, on the middle of a huge slab of stone in the middle of the floor. An earth floor, yet! The rest of the place was wooden, and every surface was carved. The only exception was the back wall, where the fire burned—which was just the rock of the place. The image of their god was old and wooden, too. He might be the Lord of the Nobles, but Cair thought that he could use a dose of gold leaf. He looked more like a sneak thief than a god. Still, the monastic orders would pay for these idols. The monks believed them imbued with magical power. Cair treated that assertion with the scepticism it deserved, but, well, if they wanted to part with good money . . . He studied the carvings. The stains on the huge rock—it must weigh three hundredweight at least—suggested that blood sacrifice was practiced here. In the grove, on angled poles, he'd seen evidence of horse sacrifices, anyway. Skulls and hides. It seemed a waste of good animals, as he doubted that they'd have the common sense to give this Odin the unsound beasts.

They were remarkably gullible, he decided.

The other thing he decided was that Princess Signy needed his help. Badly.

He started working on a few suitable "miracles." And doing a little unobtrusive dyeing work on Signy's wedding robe, secretly looted from the kist in chambers. It would now change color with body heat . . . a simple trick that should convince both her and any others. As for the rest: he had been collecting sulphur from the dried-out ponds next to the mine up on the hill, and saltpeter was something that the horse-dung heaps had provided. And charcoal was easy enough. Making vitriol had been tricky—glassware or even glazed pottery was hard for a thrall to come by, even one such as himself. But the shed behind the tannery was now transformed into quite a laboratory. The thralls were all in terror of what he did there, and the smell of the tanning kept others away.

The only question was just how much time he actually had. He was an astute observer of people. He'd managed to keep the peace in a fleet of corsairs, to direct their internal pressures at an external foe. There were storm signals building up here. Vortenbras had added to his pack of hearthmen from across the petty Norse kingdoms—and beyond. He had a fair number of disaffected Danes and Svear, too. A bad lot, in Cair's judgment. At the moment Telemark appeared to have weaker enemies all around her. The small kingdom had a peace treaty with the Empire and the Danes, but was more or less at war with its neighbors. Only the fact that they all hated and distrusted each other stopped them from allying and destroying Telemark.

In the mountains of Norway, some trails lead where they appear to. Others lead nowhere. A few lead . . . elsewhere. Don't follow those if you wish to return. Miners digging copper and fine silver in the mountains of Telemark know that this also applies to unknown galleries that they break into from time to time. No miner would go wandering down those galleries. Instead, wisely, they block the holes with heavy stones, and look to follow the ore-body in another direction.

Sometimes something will shift the stones.

Then it's a good time to go delving elsewhere entirely.

Only a trail of mine-tailings in among the stunted trees, and on the rock slope above an old, lichen-encrusted bautarstein mark this spot. The driven stone is not a large one. But it is very, very old. And it is coarse-grained gabbro, while the rock around is a pale and fine-grained granite. It is well off the trail that leads through to the next valley. There is no trail to the hole in the rock wall, and its old spill of mine-tailings. But if you look carefully you will see the mark of bears. It is a dangerous place to wander.

In the misting rain the file of
björnhednar
had carried their mistress in through the mine and downward. Ever downward. Across the bridge that is called
Gjallarbru
, and out into her country. Bakrauf breathed the air of the place, drawing strength into herself from it. Much of her magic was derived from here and she needed to return from time to time. They marched across the river—a mere braiding on the sandbanks now, and onward to her castle. The pillars raised it and she was borne inward.