Secret Murder: Who Shall Judge? (19 page)

Otkel hasn’t Thorolf’s courage—

Shies from strong, and threatens weak.

Back in Surtsheim, Otkel’s sister

Married well, to hearth and lands.

But the husband of that sister

Found his death from unknown hands.

Otkel cares not for the women.

Sister’s husband lying dead,

Otkel slyly spread some silver,

Won his sister’s own homestead.

Thorolf cared much for Matilda;

Wooing sometimes goes astray.

Thorolf, living, might yet win her.

Otkel threatened her, that day.

Thorolf worked when work was needed

Otkel often wasn’t there.

But when silver was divided,

Otkel took an equal share.

Your band did some mighty trading

On the day of Thorolf ‘s doom.

Iron, dyestuffs, wine and glassware.

Then you had to haul it home.

Where was Otkel as this happened?

A Finn to me the story told.

On the Skraeling burial mound

Otkel raised an ill-made pole

Writ with strong runes poorly carven.

High Priest Gunnvald read the word.

“Bring me silver from the rich men.

I care not if they are cursed.”

Thorolf was a rich man truly

Open-handed, spread his wealth.

Till the day his life had ended.

Where’s his silver, where his pelf?

Otkel gave some to his Northmen,

Gained allegiance thus from them.

Gave more silver to the townsmen,

In the hope of buying friends.

Still and all, most of the silver

Ended up in Otkel’s lap.

But not the brooch of Snorri Crow,

Which was hid within my camp.

Otkel worked in hidden fashion.

Thus to throw the guilt on me.

Raise the rune-pole, hide the cloak-pin

Don’t get caught while doing these.

I say Otkel is a nithing

Dangerous in secret ways.

Scarcely harmful in the open

Once he’s dead, he’ll get no praise.

Otkel threatened, Thorolf calmed him,

Do men often change their ways?

Threats are certain, trouble surely

Follows Otkel all his days.

I have six years wanted Thorolf

Dead and buried, by my hand.

Now he’s dead, and burnt on pyre,

Now we cannot have our stand.

I have lost an honest foeman,

Gained a craven one instead.

Otkel tried to use the bailiff

Sent him hunting for my head.

I’ll take the man who tries to kill me

Brandish sword and shake the spear.

But the sneaking coward Otkel

Isn’t someone whom I fear.

So I call you, nithing Otkel,

Once with courage in your life

Come and meet me on an island,

Let us settle up our strife.

Where the laws of Northmen govern,

Bringing nothing but a knife.

Fate will see who leaves the island,

Fate will see who leaves their life.

If I triumph, I’m rid of you.

Thorolf will be spared the shame.

If you triumph, then these Northmen

Have a leader worth the name.

As Ragnar spoke, Otkel had flushed first red, then white, then gone from the window. They could see the faces of his men following him with their gaze: to the side of the room, then back near the window. Ragnar finished his poem, and there was a long silence.

Ragnar saw motion inside the window. An arrow flew out, aimed at him. He caught it on his shield. The arrow was so fiercely driven that the arrowhead penetrated completely. Ragnar could see that it was one of his making. The men inside grabbed Otkel, took the bow away from him.

“You have good taste in arrowheads, Otkel. I congratulate you. Good taste, or a sense of humor—and here I thought you had neither.” Ragnar walked carefully backwards, shield raised just in case. He reached the bailiff’s side without incident.

Ragnar looked at Gervase, pointed at the shaft. “Maple.”

They could see through the window that the men inside were agitated. Voices raised in argument, a dozen men shouting at once. Then somebody pulled the shutters closed with a crash. They heard a bar being slammed down inside to hold them shut.

Gervase looked at Ragnar in mild surprise. “Hm. Were all those things true? And did you just challenge Otkel to a fight to the death?”

“True, and only the half of it. A false weapon can bend or break when you use it. In a scorn poem, only truth will do. I think what happens to Otkel is now out of our hands. But if he comes through it all, I challenged him to holmgang. It’s a way Northmen settle the strongest of grudges. ‘Going to the island’ is how it might be said in English. Two men go to an island, bearing weapons; only one returns.”

The bailiff sighed. “I hope we don’t have to take them by siege. Nobody would like that. It would inconvenience the merchants, annoy the baron, and somebody might get hurt.”

“That probably won’t happen. Otkel is too new as their leader, and he pushed things much too far. When he backed off from threatening Matilda, he lost his authority. I don’t think Thorolf’s men will stand by him now.”

“He had that brooch hidden in your camp, you know.”

“I suspected that, strongly enough to put it in the poem. It’s the sort of thing he’d do, too clever by half. Thorolf would never have tried it. He was a straightforward enemy, was Thorolf.”

“I’m surprised to hear you saying good things about Thorolf.”

“Well, he was a strong, courageous leader. But he wanted to be leader of Surtsheim district, and Snorri Crow already had that position. So he and his men killed Snorri. I was one of Snorri’s men, and naturally, we got together and tried to kill Thorolf and his faction. That was quite a battle. Eventually those of us who were left ended up at the Althing, where Thorolf and his men were declared outlaws…hold on, something is happening.”

The gate of the warehouse creaked open, and twelve angry Northmen came out. They were wearing sheathed swords, and on their shoulders they carried chests and bags. Starkad wore his blanket as a cape. “If you need your blanket for a shroud, I’ll send it back to you,” he shouted hoarsely to somebody in the yard. The gate closed, and they heard it being barred.

They came up to Ragnar and the bailiff. Leif was in the lead, and spoke. “It now seems to all of us that Otkel was the sort to kill Thorolf for gain. In the days since Thorolf’s death, certainly, he’s done things—and had us do things—Thorolf would have scorned. He swore vengeance, by Odin, upon the man who shamed Thorolf. Right now, I think that’s Otkel. He was a traitor to Thorolf’s memory. Who knows how thoroughly he betrayed him in other ways?
Let
the vengeance fall upon him!

“But we gave Otkel our allegiance. It would have been against our word to seize him—and a violation of your law to kill him. We withdrew our allegiance, and left with our personal belongings. It’s now our duty to help you take him. And I’ll go to law on behalf of all us Northmen to gain our fair share of Thorolf’s goods.”

The three groups—the bailiff, Ragnar, Leif, and all the other men—surrounded the property. Nobody was going to leave.

“Open, in the name of the King!” Gervase bellowed. He pounded the knocker. “Open!”

They heard muttered voices on the other side of the gate. Otkel’s voice raised in curses, and there was the sound of a smack, a cry of pain. A peasant voice rose: “We didn’t hire on for this!” and other voices joined in. They could hear Otkel’s curses diminishing in the distance, and the sound of the gate being unbarred.

The servants rushed out. One of them was bleeding from his nose. The troopers surrounded them. One gave a small handful of wool to the man with the nosebleed. The other servants clustered around. “There’s nobody in there but Otkel,” one said. “I’m not going back,” another added, and “Thorolf was never like that!”

Leif, Dirk, and several of Thorolf’s men got the servants well away from the gate and settled them down. Dirk started interviewing them. Servants always know more than their masters realize.

The bailiff, the troopers, Ragnar and his men, and most of Thorolf’s men, drew their swords and went carefully through the gates. The yard was empty, and there were so many footprints that no particular set could be read. The bailiff and two troopers stayed by the gate to make sure nobody left that way, and he sent two more over to the side street to guard the windows.

Thorolf’s men went into the warehouse with Ragnar and most of his men. Thorolf’s men went up the stairs, and Ragnar’s men spread out through the dimness of the lower floor.

Shadows loomed everywhere, and exotic smells. There were shelves of cloth, shelves of spices, stacks of wood, bales of wool. There must have been a hundred places to hide. Ragnar, Gunnar, and Ari stayed near the doors to keep watch on the yard and the outbuildings.

Horses stamped and whickered from the horse-barn. “He might try to escape on a horse!” one of the troopers shouted. Ragnar and several men went to surround the barn. But Gunnar didn’t go with them. He thought he saw motion in one of the smaller outbuildings. He caught Ragnar’s eye, pointed at the shed. “I see motion. I’ll check if Otkel is in there.”

He went over to the outbuilding. As he was coming up to the window, Otkel thrust his spear out and took Gunnar in the stomach. Gunnar hacked down with his sword at the same instant, and cut through the shaft of the spear and the wrist of Otkel’s leading hand. The hand fell to the ground, and Gunnar pulled the spear out and dropped it to the ground also.

Gunnar walked back to the others, holding his belly and leaving a trail of blood. “Was Otkel there?” Ragnar asked him.

“That’s for you to find out. For sure his spear was in there.” Gunnar looked back at the ground by the window. “But if that is Otkel, you should be able to handle him, because I think he’s a bit short-handed right now.” With that, Gunnar fell to the ground and died. He looked almost as if he were sleeping.

“Right,” Ragnar said, looking at Gunnar’s body. “We’ve already lost one more man than we should have, and that’s not Otkel’s sword-hand on the ground. I don’t see any reason to go in there and give him a chance to kill any more of us. And only a nithing would set the building on fire.

“I saw great-axes in the warehouse. Let’s get them, and start cutting through the base of that building.” Five men got axes, and did so. Other men took up their swords and came along, because they were expecting Otkel to burst through the door at any moment. He didn’t.

While this was happening, Ragnar and several others were looking around. They found a longship mast stored on trestles above the ground, and carried it over to the outbuilding. They pushed it in the window, and then six of them pushed on the mast like sailors using a capstan to winch up the anchor.

Nothing happened. From inside they could hear a sword chopping. The mast was very thick, and nobody thought Otkel could cut it off in time. One of the men started singing a chantey. The others joined in. With every “Ho!” they surged against the mast.

The building creaked and swayed and twisted. The front wall, weakened at its base by the axes, broke outwards. The roof fell in with a crash and a cloud of dust.
Dust, even after the storm? It must have been a very good roof, to keep things dry enough for dust,
Ragnar thought. There was a muffled shout from inside, followed by a storm of coughs.

Men began hooking away the thatch of the roof with their great-axes. Soon Otkel was uncovered, quite alive and pinned by a roof-beam. He had dropped his sword and was clutching the stump of his left arm to stop the bleeding. He glared at them ferociously through dust-reddened eyes.

Ragnar stepped forward, and gestured in Gervase’s direction. “I think the bailiff still has things to discuss with you. I thought you ought to know.” He turned, and went back to Gunnar’s corpse.

Chapter 15

Thursday: Another Pyre

Merchants had rented most of Matilda’s horses earlier in the day. Matilda and Benedict had time for a happy argument about the similarities between horse traders and other merchants. That ended when Benedict noticed Ari and Atli riding across the bridge into the fairgrounds. “They’re riding two of my horses from town. I’d better find out what’s going on.” He rose, and strolled toward Ragnar’s booth.
They don’t look cheerful,
he thought.
I hope there isn’t trouble.

The two men dismounted slowly at the entrance to Ragnar’s booth. Olaf hurried over. Benedict arrived just as Atli was telling Olaf that “…Otkel killed Gunnar.”

“
What?
” cried Olaf.

“What?” asked Benedict.

“When we got there, the bailiff was already at Thorolf’s warehouse. Ragnar’s scorn-poem turned the other men against Otkel. They and the servants left, and there was nobody in the yard except Otkel. When Gunnar found where he was hiding, Otkel thrust his spear out and killed him.”

Olaf gritted between clenched teeth, “I’m going to get the rest of my men, and…”

“…and go there, and find the place locked and empty. The bailiff has Otkel and the warehouse, and our other men are preparing a funeral for Gunnar.”

With a bleak smile, Ari said, “Besides, Gunnar can be proud in Valhalla. He had the finest last words I’ve ever heard of.”

“Oh?”

“Ragnar told me to keep quiet on that until the funeral oration. Only he and I were close enough to hear.”

Then the brothers turned to Benedict. “Ragnar wants you to take this whole thing to law for us. If Northlanding had paid more respect to the laws of Surtsheim, we wouldn’t have had half this trouble, and Gunnar might still be alive.
Make
them pay respect.”

“And now…” Ari and Atli turned toward the booth, “…it’s time to gather grave-goods.” They went in the door behind the empty display table, and Olaf followed. Benedict stood for a moment looking after them, then went to rejoin Matilda.