King Hereafter (68 page)

‘Then,’ said Thorfinn, ‘since good advice is always worth listening to, and you have not the least objection to my boarding, will you let down your ladder before your fenders take harm, and give me more of it?’

And so, despite himself, he was sitting presently beside Earl Thorfinn drinking ale under his own stern shelter, with the horn cracking under his finger-bones as he gathered the strength to look into that tranquil, battle-marked face and defy it.

‘Did it seem to you,’ Thorfinn said, ‘when you swung the axe that killed King Olaf, that his half-brother Harald was pleased or otherwise? Naturally, you will have given this problem much thought, since if Rognvald wins, the King of Norway may still have to deny you that dear homeland of Egge that your wife brought you when you killed her first husband. But then, even so,
no doubt you have discussed with Rognvald what part of Orkney he will give you to farm under his rule when he is vassal for all the islands to Norway?’

Kalv Arnason took a quick drink, and his jaw set in the obstinate line that his cousin Thorkel would have recognised. ‘Under you, my dear nephew,’ he said, ‘I had a pittance in Caithness.’

‘Naturally,’ Thorfinn said. ‘With one-third of Orkney in my hands and my nephew Rognvald to battle against, I had nothing to spare. With all Orkney behind me, it would be different. I should owe Norway nothing. And especially I should need a strong man I could trust in the Western Isles.’

‘The Western Isles?’ said Groa’s uncle.

‘To gather the tribute and see it well guarded. The man I have at present is worthless. There are plenty of pickings in the islands,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And good land. As good as Egge, I believe. It might,’ said Thorfinn, ‘be worth considering, if a quiet life appeals to you. Because if an accident were to befall me, I don’t know who would worry you most: King Olaf’s kinsfolk or Thore Hund’s son, your nephew Siward of Northumbria …?’

Grágás
had finished unloading by the time the skiff came back from Kalv’s ship, and the mist was thin enough to see that Thorfinn was in it. Infuriatingly, he neither signalled nor said anything of significance until he was fully aboard and standing beside his foster-father, with the fifty men he had left crowding about him.

‘Well?’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘Is he for you or against you?’

‘Why, for us,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Did you ever doubt it? And if you will give him time, there are thirty men crossing over to fill up our row-benches so that we shall have no trouble in catching up with Earl Rognvald, once we see him. And by the look of the mist, we may not have so long to wait.… Have you drunk all the ale?’

Of the ninety ships who had met in conflict that afternoon off the west coast of Hoy, perhaps half survived the fight and the mist to be revealed one to another when, five hours later, the south-east wind lifted again and began to blow the vapour away.

They lay broached- to on the waves, scattered over the seas to the west, with the wreckage of those in collision and those overturned floating abandoned between them. The battle had cost them lives. But the exhaustion laid on them all by the sea hung over every ship like a shroud, so that, even when vision returned, the oars barely moved more than was required of them, and men looked about them sluggishly, with their hands empty of weapons.

Then, from the smallest ships, the cheering began, ragged and scattered, but enough to make Earl Rognvald pause from where he strode from bench to bench on the white flagship, joking, laughing, insulting, encouraging: stirring his hird to collect their fleet and prepare for battle again. He leaped to the prow and looked at the longships and where they were pointing.

Then he saw, as they had done, the six clean, striped sails skimming taut-bellied round Hoy towards him, led by a sail he saw in his dreams, sewn
with patterns of silk in gold and scarlet and white, with before it a high golden prow he knew as well, above the flash of red strakes at each curtsey.

The cheer, from Thorfinn’s men, was for Thorfinn, who had not deserted them. The silence he felt all around him was the silence of recognition and fear; for all his men knew the Arnmødling colours.

Kalv, the turncoat, had turned again, or been made to turn, by the disarming tongue, the schooled face, the unschooled eyes that had been his own downfall, or nearly.

Seven fresh ships against his weary ones, which were still more than twice that number. Odds good enough, surely, to make certain that, out of all those seven ships, one man at least should not live out the day.

Rognvald gave the order to row, and, signalling, drew his flock again under his command: some to join him, and the rest to move quickly against the lesser ships, and the weaker, before they could unite.

It was eight hours after midday, and the east-going tide, feeble now, squabbled under the wind, so that the oars dug into the waves and men lost their footing, a minor nuisance. Battle had begun. And there were two hours of daylight left, to see it finished.

All Rognvald’s men knew the Arnmødling colours. It was by no accident, then, that the six ships led by Kalv made straight for the longships that held Rognvald’s men and, with their strong bows and bright casting-spears, began to beat them into surrender.

From where they were occupied in their slaughter among the small ships of Thorfinn’s scattered flotilla, the big vessels from Norway noticed, and began to signal uneasily, one to the other.

Grágás
, the King’s flagship, paid no attention to any other ship on the sea, but, sail down, rowed on a ramming-course straight for the white dragon of Rognvald.

His heart eased, his eyes bright, Rognvald watched Thorfinn coming and saw, this time, that the black head was bare as his own, for no man there on either side could fail to recognise the two Earls, any more than any man there would lay a finger on either. As if magic enclosed them, they were sacrosanct, united by blood, and by the unique right of the kindred to kill its own members.

He saw Thorfinn’s prow turn, showing the carving, as it prepared to slide by and grapple for boarding, and he leaped, with his men, to their positions, and laughed aloud with the joy of it. It seemed unfair, then, that Thorfinn had used his encounter with Kalv to advantage, and that, just before the ships closed, a grid of cast steel should fall on Rognvald’s ship, clearing the first line of men and killing half of his oarsmen.

Because his discipline was good, and his planning, it took seconds to drag down the dead and replace them. But in those seconds another whickering cast scored the clouds, falling this time on their shields, but piercing as well, so that he had to raise his voice over the screaming and draw off, instead of clenching fast, as he’d meant, with the grappling-irons.

And even drawing off was hard enough, for the other boat, rowing freshly and well, let no space grow between them, but threw its own irons over his gunwales, so that he had to have them cut or uprooted and flung back.

The men on Thorfinn’s ship were jeering, and he let them. When he was ready, he would fight and they could mock him if they wished, from wherever their heads happened to fall. When he was ready, he shouted, and his men shouted in answer, and blew their horns as, this time, the two beams drove together and the cables flew, crossing from Rognvald’s side to Thorfinn’s and vice versa. Then, as the ropes landed, so the men jumped aboard with their axes and swords, some on one ship and some on the other, and opened the first steaming wounds, and caused the first dead man to clutter the footboards with his shield and his helm and his scabbard.

Smiling, Rognvald vaulted down from the stern and began to wade forward, cutting and hacking and looking half at what he was doing and half to where, more slowly, Thorfinn stepped down in his turn and, axe in hand, was crossing his vessel. ‘Well, uncle?’ said Rognvald. ‘Does your third of Orkney look good to you now?’

Thorfinn had stopped. ‘Only justice seems good,’ he said. He was frowning.

‘Justice?’ said Rognvald. ‘Then why not see justice done? Put it to the test. Why have you stopped? Three paces more, and we shall have a field of justice all our own. Don’t be afraid. My men will not touch you.’ Pushed by the struggle about him, he staggered a little. He was splashed with other men’s blood.

Thorfinn said quickly, ‘There is no need. It is clear who has won. Look about you. The Norse ships are leaving.’

Brusi’s son stood, smiling still, for he did not believe it. It was his men who looked round, in the thick of the fighting, and who began calling, so that at last Rognvald looked swiftly over his shoulder.

It was true. It was unbelievably true. The ships he had been given by Norway, the ships that had fought all afternoon at his side, had given up before the onslaught of Kalv Arnason and one by one were twisting out of the fighting, were laying inboard their oars and scrambling, were raising the sail that would help them run north, out of trouble.

Rognvald had seen only that when, with a crash, Kalv Arnason’s flagship hurled itself grappling against his opposite beam and the first of Kalv Arnason’s men began to throw themselves into his vessel.

Printed with longing, Rognvald’s face turned once towards where Thorfinn stood unmoving in, the midst of his own men and watching him.

There was no leap that would take him to Thorfinn’s side. There was no weapon made that would reach him. With hate and fury and still that unspeakable longing marring all his fair face, Rognvald threw what he had, his father’s great golden axe, towards the black, towering figure outfacing him, and then, with a gasp, wheeled and, killing and slashing, began to drive back these second invaders.

He meant, after that, to turn and renew the battle. It was his men who,
against all his threats and his orders, cut the shackles on either side and set themselves, with oar and then sail, to escape northwards after their fellows.

Kalv saw no reason to stop his assault, or to fall back, or to let his prey walk out free from so dainty a trap. It was Thorfinn’s instant disengagement that first drew Kalv’s startled attention, and then Kalv’s anger, and then Kalv’s stubborn back, until, racing in Rognvald’s wake, he became aware that
Grágás
, flying alongside, was firmly heading him off, and that he was not the only shipmaster giving play to his fury.

It was brought home to him, indeed, in a moment: when, with a whine and a thud, the golden axe of Rognvald’s father struck by his foot, thrown with venom by Brusi’s half-brother.

And across the darkening sea, as Rognvald’s ship fled on the tide and the wind towards freedom: ‘Sail where you will,’ said Thorfinn’s echoing voice. ‘Catch whom you can. But Rognvald is for me or for no one.’

‘And my thanks?’ Kalv Arnason bawled.

‘There is his axe,’ said Thorfinn. ‘And it not in your head. Be contented.’

ENTLY
…’
SAID
the King; and his wife laughed, and slackened her grasp.

‘Was it such a celebration? Yes, I can see that it was. Is that better?’

‘It is a little,’ said Thorfinn, ‘like Mael Duin’s voyage to the thirty-one islands: revolving ramparts of fire, through which beautiful people move to haunting music. Yes, that is better. And yes, it has been rather a long celebration. But with cause.’

They were alone in their chamber at Orphir, so that she could look at him, tracing the new scars with gentle fingers, and ask the questions one did not ask newly arrived on the jetty, with excited people about her, and her sons. She said, ‘So Rognvald is safely back in Norway, having lost most of the force he was given, and with no hope of another? And Kalv and his people have left for the Western Isles, and Eachmarcach is King of Dublin again? Now I think of it, I’m thankful to find you so human in your rejoicing. Otherwise, I should have feared for you.’

‘Oh, fear for me,’ Thorfinn said. ‘But not because I am less than human. What does Lulach say of it all?’

‘You know he never speaks when you are in danger,’ Groa said. She glanced at him. ‘He has taken to calling you the King of the Jutes. A new fancy.’

‘There was a famous prince everyone knows,’ Thorfinn said. ‘A mere six hundred years ago, give or take a decade. That one?’

‘His uncle. You never had a brother’s son of the same name as the prince?’ enquired Groa. She smiled.

‘The only brother’s son I have is called Rognvald, and is living quietly in Norway, far from where he can cause anyone harm. We have talked about him enough. Come and tell me how you are faring.’

‘I have come. I am telling you.’ She could hardly be closer.

‘But without so many warm garments between us,’ explained Thorfinn patiently; but his fingertips were not being patient at all.

After ten years, the Orkneys were his again. Rognvald’s hird, the men who had been with him in Norway and Russia, had gone back to Nídarós in his
company. The mercenaries, the dead, and the injured had been hunted for all through the islands the day after the battle, and, once found, had been killed or ransomed, nursed or buried, according to their destiny.

In a very short time, even then, Thorfinn knew that Brusi’s men would serve him in the end; and that very soon he could sit in Westray, as Rognvald had done, and men would come to him for advice and for justice, as they had come before Rognvald returned.