Brandewyne, Rebecca (4 page)

Bowing
to the Queen, Brynmawr strode to the doors of the great hall, taking several of
the housecarls with him to set about
fortifying the royal manor and the
palisade that bulwarked it, while Igraine and Rhowenna strove to save the
King's life, Igraine calling for more rushlights to be brought and placed upon
the table to drive away the shadows where Pendragon lay. Her hand trembling as
she took Brynmawr's knife from her mother, Rhowenna passed the blade through
the flames of the fire in the central hearth, as she had been taught by her
mother to do when using any kind of instrument to perform surgery upon an open
wound. When the knife glowed hot, she poured a small amount of wine upon it to
cool it. Then she handed the blade back to her mother, watching anxiously as,
setting her teeth against the pain she must cause her husband, Igraine grimly
pressed the knife point into the congealed blood and torn flesh around the
broken shaft of the arrow that protruded from just below Pendragon's
collarbone.

How
long they labored over the King's body, Rhowenna did not know, although it
seemed like forever. Daylight faded to dusk and then dusk to darkness as, back
and legs aching from standing motionless for so long, she bent over her father,
wiping the perspiration from his feverish brow and, with a cloth dipped in a
bowl of warm barley water, moistening his dry lips, hoping and praying
that he would
gain a little nourishment to sustain him through his ordeal. Now and then, at
her mother's direction, she felt his heart, which beat faintly and unsteadily
beneath her palm, and her eyes were huge and scared when they met her mother's.
More than once, as the King groaned and stirred restlessly at the Queen's
ministrations, his breath rasping and rattling in his throat, Rhowenna was
forced to press him down to hold him still. But to her relief, he did not
regain consciousness as, little by little, her mother dug from the wound the
iron barb that had caused it. Then, at last, grasping the broken shaft, Igraine
pulled the arrowhead free. Blood gushed from the gaping hole; Rhowenna gasped
as her father made a terrible choking sound. But the Queen did not falter,
mopping away the blood, while with boiling water, and a fresh cloth lathered
with soap from a medicinal plant, she cleaned the wound. After that, Rhowenna
poured wine into the injury to ensure that putrefaction did not set in. Then,
sweat beading her own brow, she pulled the jagged edges of her father's skin
together, while her mother carefully sewed the laceration shut with a needle
and thread. Despite the stitches that had closed it, the wound still bled, but
this Igraine stanched with a poultice of the mud and cob- webs she had earlier
sent Morgen to fetch. Then, folding one of the linens into a pad and tearing
the others into strips, the Queen bound the injury tightly. During the whole,
the King roused only briefly, then lapsed once more into an increasingly
delirious unconsciousness— not a good sign, Rhowenna knew.

At
her mother's direction, the warriors who had remained behind in the great hall
following Brynmawr's departure lifted the King's body and carried him into his
sleeping chamber, where they laid him upon his bed. After that, there was
nothing to do but to wait, to hope, and to pray. Her face grave with sorrow and
fear, Rhowenna sank upon a low stool by her mother at Pendragon's side, knowing
that the vigil would be long and its outcome uncertain. Somber-faced, talking
softly, earnestly, among themselves, the housecarls moved slowly to leave the
two women alone with the King. Feeling a quick, gentle touch, in passing, upon
her shoulder, Rhowenna glanced up to see Gwydion gazing back at her
reassuringly as he left the sleeping chamber, quietly closing the door behind
him. She had not realized until now that he had been one of those who had
stayed behind when Brynmawr had gone to gird the royal manor against a possible
assault. A wealth
of love and unspoken words had been in Gwydion's steady grey eyes; and now, the
cold knot of fear in Rhowenna's belly warmed and loosened a little at the
understanding that no matter what, her beloved kinsman would be at her side to
support and to defend her. She yearned to go and seek him out, to lay her head
upon his shoulder and to feel his arms hold her close against his hard young
body, loving and protecting her. But the memory of his hand upon her shoulder
must be enough to comfort her until she could slip away from her father's
bedside.

The
healer came at last, bled Pendragon copiously, then retired to the great hall,
declaring that the Queen's treatment had been exemplary and that there was
nothing more to be done. Hard on the healer's heels followed Father Cadwyr,
with his burning eyes and dark robes, to proclaim that whatever came to pass,
God's will would be done and that the two women must trust in Him— to which
Igraine retorted, rather sharply, that God helped those who helped themselves.
Still, she did consent to kneeling beside the priest while he lamented the
attack upon the King and prayed for Pendragon's swift recovery. But as
Rhowenna, too, knelt and bowed her head, she could not repress a shiver at the
thought that for all his pious
pronouncements and prayers, Father Cadwyr resembled
nothing so much as a huge carrion crow hovering over her father, waiting to
pick the flesh from his bones.

Loki's Wolf

The
Shores of the Skagerrak, the Northland, A.D. 865

Wulfgar
Lodbróksson was caught between two worlds. Neither
jarl
nor
thrœll,
he was the
bastard son of the great Ragnar Lodbrók, a powerful
konungr,
a king, of the
Northland, and a captive Saxon woman, Goscelin, whom Ragnar had brought home to
the Northland one year from a raid down the coasts of Caledonia, Britain,
Frisia, Normandy, and beyond. Ragnar had taken Wulfgar's mother as his
concubine, but, in truth, she had been nothing more than a slave, for he had
never deigned to marry her, since he already had more than one wife; and when,
presently, he had tired of her and cast her off, she had been reduced to
serving as a scullion in his kitchen and— as a result of her subsequent
lowly place in
his household— as a whore for his
jarlar
and
thegns.
Indeed,
there were many who doubted that Ragnar had actually fathered Wulfgar. The
first and foremost of those who cast aspersions upon Wulfgar's paternity were
Ragnar's three legitimate sons: Ivar, called the Boneless— not for his
shapelessness, but, rather, for his fluidity of movement— and Ubbi and Halfdan.
Yet because no one, least of all Ragnar and his sons, could ever really be
certain Ragnar was not, in fact, Wulfgar's father, Wulfgar was never compelled
to wear a thrall's collar. Instead, from the time he was born, he was a
bóndi,
a freedman. This alone was his salvation, the one thing to which he clung
ferociously against all odds; for in reality, his lot in life was little better
than his poor mother's had been.

As
a child, Wulfgar had been given to his half brothers and made to understand
that his livelihood, indeed his very existence, depended solely upon how well
he served them. Although once he had attained his manhood, he could, as a
freedman, have left them at any time, he had no means to do so, and he had,
besides, come to understand that out of sheer perversity and spite, his half
brothers would not have tolerated his breaking away. Being the true sons of
their father, they would
have found some foul manner of forcing Wulfgar's acceptance of their claims
upon him—or, worse, have seen him dead in his grave. Even Yelkei, the sly old
spaewife who had been his wet nurse, who had reared him when his mother had
died, and who in the past had fought like a she-wolf to protect him, could not
have stayed their hands against him then, Wulfgar thought. Whether he be driven
to subjugation or to death mattered not to his half brothers; but he must
continue to serve and to obey them because he dared to call himself their
father's son— and so held a claim, however tenuous and remote, to Ragnar's
kingdom and throne.

Of
his father and half brothers, it was Ivar whom Wulfgar most hated; for being
the oldest of Ragnar's three legitimate sons, Ivar was heir to Ragnar's vast
holdings, a prince of the Northland, and the handsomest of men, besides, while
Wulfgar was naught but a bastard and believed himself nothing uncommon to look
upon. But these things alone, although cause for jealousy, would not have
earned Ivar Wulfgar's enmity; there was one thing more: Ivar was also the
cruelest of Wulfgar's half brothers. Many times over the years had Wulfgar felt
the stabbing sting of Ivar's needle-sharp wit and scorn, an injury piercing
Wulfgar's pride and manhood more deeply
than the smart cuff to his ear or the
swift boot to his backside, which he often received from Ubbi or Halfdan.
Although those two were mighty warriors, as bold and bloodthirsty in battle, as
ambitious and hungry for power as their older brother, they were rougher,
simpler men, lacking the complexities and subtleties that made Ivar clever and
cruel. Unlike Ubbi and Halfdan, who cared not what any man thought— and even
less for a woman's feelings— Ivar made it his business to know the hopes and
dreams of all who served him; and Wulfgar, in his youth, had been foolish
enough, once, to blurt out his own aspirations during a heated quarrel, when
his ingrained wariness, forbearance, and plain common sense had fallen prey to
the fierce prick of Ivar's needling. Wulfgar had regretted ever since that evil
day when his own pride and temper had placed such a weapon in Ivar's ruthless
hands.

Ivar
would not, Wulfgar thought, have much grudged him the small farm that would
have been his by birthright had his father been a freedman and not Ragnar
Lodbrók, a king. Wulfgar would have been of little consequence then, merely one
of the many entitled to speak at the
Thing—
the assembly of all freemen:
bóndi, thegns,
and
jarlar
alike— who,
under the law that, a hundred years
later, would come to be part of the
great Frostathing Law, would have been permitted to acquire three thralls of
his own, provided he had also possessed no less than twelve cows and two
horses. But being no one's heir and so having little enough to his name,
Wulfgar called no square of land his. Nor would Ivar, knowing that it was
Wulfgar's one burning desire in life, agree to his half brother's joining the
ranks of the
thegns,
the warriors, and going a
-víking
in one of
the square-sailed longships that had made the Northmen the scourge of the seas
for over two centuries.

It
was for this prohibition most of all that Wulfgar hated Ivar.

So
it was that Wulfgar was little more than his half brothers' lackey, as was
proved this winter's day by his driving of their sledge, piled high with
equipment and supplies for the hunt upon which they had embarked earlier that
morn. It had snowed the night before, and the wind was raw, the air frigid.
Shivering a little, Wulfgar might have wished for the heat of the fire in
Ragnar's
skáli,
a
great mead hall, or at least for a heavier fur cloak; but he was accustomed to
the cold, having known naught else all his life. There was a stout, iron-ringed
barrel of mead on the sledge, and one, too, of
bjórr,
a highly
fermented fruit wine. Doubtless when the hunting party
paused to rest,
he would be given a cup of one or the other to warm him, its never before
having been his half brothers' whim that he should freeze to death. Meanwhile,
to take his mind off the day's chilliness, he dwelled on the strange warning
that Yelkei had given him earlier that morn. Since the two sturdy, yoked oxen
harnessed to the sledge were prone to plod placidly after the horses being
ridden and so had scant need of any real guidance, a low command, a gentle tug
on the reins now and then were all that were required to maintain the pace and
direction of the sledge, which left Wulfgar's mind free to wander where it
willed as he hunched on the seat, his bare blond head bent, his blue eyes
downcast to avoid notice, as was his habit. He had long ago learned that like a
slave, a freedman, if he were poor and wise, did not attract to himself the
attention of the
jarlar
and
konungrs
of the Northland— especially
of those who had reasons of their own for singling him out and wishing him ill.

Like
the thick snow clouds massed in the pale, sullen sky, the breath of the dogs,
oxen, and horses billowed and swirled, mingling with the fine clouds of powdery
snow churned up by paws and hooves alike, and with the white wisps of clammy
mist that curled and
drifted across the low-lying land, clinging to its wet hollows. Ahead, beyond
the wide stretch of wild, snowy plain and the icy edges of the still,
weed-grown mere, where swans and ducks could be flushed aplenty in the shorter
summer months and brought down by the great gyrfalcons of the
jarlar,
rose
the dark-forested hills that were the destination of the hunting party, cutting
a jagged oblique against the horizon. At the fore of the hunting party, the
dogs danced, yapping and straining at leashes held by the hunters; and beside
his father, Ivar rode, mounted upon a strong, spirited steed as white as the
new-fallen snow.

There
were in the Northland two kinds of men: those who were short and dark, and
those who were tall and fair. Ivar was one of these last. His long, flowing
mane of red-gold hair gleamed like flame-kissed wheat in the grey light of day,
reflecting the frosted rays of the dull sun in such a way that it seemed a halo
shone about his proud, handsome head. But he was no angel such as Wulfgar had
heard populated the heaven of those whose god was the Christ. In truth, Wulfgar
thought Ivar a demon, the personification of the giant Loki, who had insinuated
himself into Asgard, the realm of the gods, and who was the contriver of all
wickedness. Except when alight with malice or cruel
mirth, Ivar's
blue eyes were as hard and cold as ice— even stern Ragnar's had more warmth—
and as watchful as those of a predator alert for prey. His face was lean, the
bones finely molded, and in combination with his aquiline nose gave him a
fierce, hawkish appearance. As was customary, the ends of his long mustache
were neatly braided and his beard was short-cropped, both forming an elegant
frame for his sensual lips, habitually curved in a faint, arrogant sneer.