Brandewyne, Rebecca (9 page)

He
went very still at this last announcement. Despite all the priests' exhorting,
Gwydion was reluctant to accept that the old ways, the old gods, were false. He
believed in her vision, too.

"Your
dream is a strong and serious portent," he said after a long minute of
consideration. "But 'tis also only the shape and shadow of what
may
happen,
Rhowenna, not
necessarily what
will
be. Now that we have been blessed with warning of
it, we can change the future. If the Northmen do come, I need not perish as you
feared. I will be on my guard, and I will survive— as will Usk. Together, we
can surely think of some pretext that will alert the King and the Queen to the
possibility of danger from the Northland— perhaps we can claim that some
passing fisherman warned us that there have been several recent attacks along
the coast— without mentioning your dream or exposing you to denunciation by
Father Cadwyr."

"Aye,
'tis worth trying." Rhowenna brightened at the thought, feeling that
perhaps something good, after all, had come of this day.

"I
do
care
for you, you know." Gwydion spoke softly as his grey eyes met her violet
ones steadily. "Come what may, I will always be your kinsman and your
friend, Rhowenna."

"Aye."
She nodded, swallowing hard to choke back her tears and turning away to gaze
once more at the far horizon, which was barren and bleak— and bloodred.

The Festival of
Eostre

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

For
some unknown reason, Ivar had told Wulfgar he could, until the midspring
festival, remain in the hut he shared with Yelkei inside Ragnar's palisade. But
this apparently magnanimous offer, Yelkei had strenuously urged Wulfgar to
reject, reminding him that Ivar did nothing without an ulterior motive and that
whatever it was in this case, it surely boded no good for Wulfgar. Remembering
Yelkei's warning to him the dawn of the hunt and what had come to pass, Wulfgar
had reluctantly agreed; and gathering his few belongings, he had left the
relative protection of the palisade for a hut he built for himself
at the edge of
the forest, near the weed-grown mere, beyond the boundaries of Ragnar's
markland.

Until
Wulfgar completed the hut, he slept out in the open on the ground, beneath a
hastily constructed shelter of pine boughs. But for the first few nights, he
hardly closed his eyes, missing the security of the palisade, the familiarity
of the hut he had called his own there and Yelkei's comforting presence. He was
not accustomed to being alone and regretted that Yelkei had not been able to
come with him. But she was Ragnar's slave, and Wulfgar had lacked the means to
purchase her freedom; nor had either Ragnar or Ivar offered to let her go,
although they feared her and considered her of little use. Until he was on his
own, Wulfgar had not realized how much he had depended on her. In the
beginning, the sounds at night of the woods and of the heath unnerved him; he
started at the hoot of an owl or the howl of a wolf, and he longed for her to
chase away the shadows as she had done when he was small. More practically, he
missed her skill at cooking and sewing when his first attempts at those chores
produced poor results.

But
gradually, as the murky winter turned into spring, the anemones making their
appearance and the thunder of
islossning—
the
great cracking
and breaking of frozen rivers, which warned of impending floods— sounding, he
grew used to the calls of the night creatures, and he learned to cook and to
sew in a rudimentary way. Only his loneliness was constant, although it
gradually faded to a dull ache. He began to savor his freedom once he was past
his feeling of being lost without his half brothers to structure his days, and
he established, by trial and error, his own routine. He took pride in the hut
he erected, and his talent as a hunter burgeoned now that he was able to devote
so much of his time to the task. His proficiency with the weapons he had made
also mounted with his ceaseless practice; and Yelkei, whenever she managed to
slip away to visit him, cackled with delight when she saw him.

"Confess,
Wulfgar Bloodaxe!" she crowed in her raucous, rasping voice. "Despite
all the scraps I stole for you over the years, you never ate so well at
Ragnar's hearth as you do at your own. Look at you! You've become a fine figure
of a man now that you've a full belly when it suits you. You were always tall,
but now... now, by the gods, you've the weight for it, Wulfgar. Broad of
shoulder and chest, long and strong of limb. Aye, if there were those before
who doubted that you're Ragnar's own get, they'll question it
no more when
they see you again. Why, you're enough like Ivar the Boneless to pass for his
twin even with the sun at its zenith in a summer sky!"

Wulfgar
scowled darkly at her words.

"If
you thought to find favor with me with such flattery as that, why, then, you've
failed badly, old woman!" he growled, angry and offended. "What have
I done that such an insult should trip from your spiteful, worthless
tongue?"

"Spiteful?
Mayhap, when it suits my purpose, Wulfgar; for malice often proves a useful
weapon when keenly honed and properly wielded— as your nemesis, Ivar the
Boneless, could tell you, for he makes good use of it himself. But worthless?
Nay, I'll not abide that— for a Mongol king of the Eastlands once offered a
sackful of gold coins for this tongue of mine."

"Aye.
Aye, that I can well believe— were it cut clean from your head and delivered up
on a silver plate to him!"

"Why,
that might have been the way of it, in truth!" Yelkei admitted, and barked
with laughter. "But... do you observe that no man is the richer for my
tongue— save you, Wulfgar, to whom it has ever spoken the truth. If you doubt
me, why, you've only to take a look at your reflection in yonder
pond... or are
you afraid of what you might see?" The taunt stung, as was intended.

"Nay,
I fear naught but the gods and those creatures not human."

With
that boast, Wulfgar strode to the edge of the mere and, kneeling, parted the
slender yellow reeds that grew tall there, and gazed into the still water
shining silver in the sunlight. To his utter shock, it was indeed the handsome
bronze visage of his half brother Ivar who stared back at him, long mane of
gilded hair falling about finely molded bones set with deep, sky-blue eyes, an
aquiline nose, full, carnal lips framed by a silky mustache and beard, and a
strong jaw with an arrogant thrust. For a long moment, Wulfgar yearned
violently to claw at his face until it was unrecognizable. Then, he had another
thought. Leaping to his feet, he stalked to the hut he had built and went
inside, banging the door wrathfully behind him— although even that did not
silence the sound of Yelkei's mirth.

After
a time, she followed him inside, and screeched with fright to see him standing
there, naked to the waist, his face covered with lather, and a sharp knife in
his hand.

"Are
you mad?" she cried, sidling away
a little and peering at him intently in
the semidarkness.

"Nay,
I had a mad desire, at first, to cut my throat," Wulfgar said curtly,
indicating the blade and giving a snort of laughter at her alarm, glad to have
got a bit of his own back against her. "But I've thought better of it,
having no wish to wander the Shore of Corpses to the barred gates of Hel any
sooner than I must."

From
the cauldron on the hearth, he had ladled steaming-hot water into a bowl, which
he had set upon the hard-packed dirt floor. Now, using the water as a mirror,
he hunkered down over the bowl and began carefully with the whetted edge of the
knife to shave off his mustache and beard.

"What
are you doing?" Yelkei's normally inscrutable moon face, shocked and
appalled, peered down at him.

"Ridding
myself of some of my unfortunate resemblance to Ivar."

"But
a mustache and beard are the mark of a man!"

"Aye.
Even so, a man may still be a man without them— and if any man is so foolish as
to mistake me for less, why, then, I shall have the advantage of him and soon
teach him the error of his ways."

"Well,
do as you wish and suffer the
consequences," Yelkei said. Taking up a blade
of her own and hitching up her leather tunic a little, she squatted on the
earthen floor and deftly set to skinning and butchering a brace of fine, fat
hares Wulfgar had snared earlier that morning. "Still, you will miss all
that hair on your face, come next winter, I am thinking."

"Perhaps,"
Wulfgar conceded as he scraped at his beard, then rinsed his soapy knife off in
the bowl of hot water. "And then again, perhaps by then, I shall have gone
a-víking
in
a mighty longship down the Swan Road, to plunder the kingdoms of the
Southlands, and have carried away a lusty young Christian maid as my slave, to
keep me warm beneath my blankets of a cold winter's eve— instead of a shrewish
old woman who would sooner geld a man than bed him and who snores like a
drunken grey-beard in a corner, disturbing my slumber!"

"Why,
it gladdens my heart to learn how you have missed me, Wulfgar." Yelkei
chuckled as she tossed chunks of the hare meat into a pot and began to chop
fresh greens and roots she had brought in a basket. "Still, if 'tis a
flame for a Christian wench that burns between your legs, you'd have done well
to spare your mustache and beard until after the midspring
blót.
'Tis
no jarl
worth his salt
who
will be wanting to risk the wrath of Ragnar and his sons to take oath from a
maiden-faced
bóndi!"

"By
the four harts who bite the buds of Yggdrasill!" Wulfgar swore as he flung
away the cloth he had used to wipe the lather from his now-smooth face. He
jumped to his feet and began angrily to pace the hut. "So that's the way
of it, is it? Well, I expected that my father and half brothers would seek to
prevent my pledging oath as a
thegn.
But are you sure
that
no
jarl
is
brave enough to accept me, Yelkei?"

"Although
he is subject to the Jutish king across the Skagerrak, Ragnar is a power to be
reckoned with in the Northland, Wulfgar, and even Björn Ironside and Hasting,
bold and formidable men in their own right, dare defy him only so far and then
no further. But there is one who has the judgment of a fool and who drinks deep
of his cups, who could be persuaded to take you as his man."

"And
who is that?"

"Olaf
the Sea Bull."

"That
foul, mead-swilling old—"

"Aye,
he is all that you say, and more, Wulfgar. But listen to me, and heed my
counsel"— Yelkei's voice was stern and sharp now— "remembering that
to you alone, my tongue has always spoken truly. Did I not
warn you the
morn of the hunt that that day, you would decide your destiny? And did you not
that day do so by slaying your brother spirit, the wolf, who sought to protect
you by killing Ivar the Boneless?" Rising from the fire where she had put
the stew to cook, she gestured to Wulfgar to stand with her on the great
wolfskin spread upon the floor. Then she laid one yellow hand upon his arm, her
bony fingers digging like talons into his bare flesh. "Listen to me,
Wulfgar," she exhorted again. "Olaf the Sea Bull is no great
jarl,
'tis true. But his beard has been grey for many long, dark winters now, and
during the murky time just past, I heard Hela's death rattle in his bones. His
thegns
are brutes, grown as soft and slovenly and slack as their lord. But with a
strong leader at the rudder of Olaf's
Dragon's Fire,
they could be
turned to account once more. The Sea Bull's sons have all been carried home on
their shields, slain in battle; his wife is long dead; and the husbands of his
daughters have the spines of jellyfish. There is no one to follow in Olaf's
footsteps, Wulfgar; and so when the old Sea Bull dies, a man who is quick and
daring and clever enough may seize Olaf's markland for himself and claim the
right of
jarl
over it all!"

"Aye."
Wulfgar nodded slowly, as though
carefully considering the matter,
although his heart leaped with excitement at Yelkei's words. "It could be
that you are right. I will think hard on what you have said."

* * * * *

Until
Yelkei had spoken to him of Olaf the Sea Bull, Wulfgar had had in his mind some
vague notion of building a longship of his own, although he had known how
impossible that would be when he had neither the men nor the oxen, the sledges,
the cattle, nor the sheep required for such a massive undertaking. Preparing
for the day when he would have those essentials, he went out into the forest
with men who did. He watched them seek out the tallest and the strongest of the
oak trees to chop down with stout iron axes. He observed how they cut off the
tops and boughs of the felled oaks and stripped off the bark, then strapped the
great trunks to sledges pulled by several teams of oxen to be hauled to the
shores of the Skagerrak. There, upon the fjord-riddled sands, log rollers were
already in place for the building of the longships that had made the
Víkingrs
the scourge of
the seas for over two centuries.