Sigrun's Secret (26 page)

I woke with a splitting headache. The sun was bright in my face and the ground sickeningly unsteady. I couldn’t imagine where I was. I tried to move and noticed that I couldn’t. My wrists hurt. My head hurt. In fact, I hurt everywhere.

‘Sigrun?’ asked a soft voice. ‘Are you awake?’ A gentle hand was laid on my brow. It was unbelievably painful to open my eyes, but I did. I thought I could make out Maria next to me, but it was too bright, so I shut my eyes again. There was a pain in my feet too, and when I tried to move them I couldn’t.

‘Where am I?’ I asked, surprised at how faint my voice was.

‘We prisoners on bad man’s ship.’

Maria’s words made no sense to me. Who was a bad man and why would I be on his ship? I should be … where? In Jorvik. With my father.

With a sickening plunge of despair deep inside me, I remembered. Father was dead. Halfgrim had killed him. Maria was right to call him a bad man.

The grief rushed into me like the tide rushing onto the beach. Hot tears stung my sore eyes.

‘Father … ’

‘I’m so sorry, Sigrun,’ said Maria, softly, stroking my face.

I wept unrestrainedly, racked by the pain of loss, the sobs hard in my chest. When I wanted to wipe my eyes, I realized I couldn’t. My hands were bound.

‘Why?’ I asked, tugging uselessly at the cruel ropes.

‘You not stop scream and fight them,’ Maria told me. ‘We left Thrang’s house, you scream and scream. Everyone stare. So bad man hit you on head. Now we tied up.’

I struggled to remember. It was all a confused blur; being pulled away from father, being slung painfully over somebody’s shoulder, and jarred as he ran with me.

‘He hit you very hard,’ said Maria.

‘Why have they taken us? Where are we going?’ I asked. I struggled to sit up and see what was going on, but I was tied too tightly.

‘I not know,’ said Maria. ‘I think they take us to get out of house; so Leif not dare kill them. I afraid they throw us in sea.’

I went cold at Maria’s words. But there were other things worrying me too. ‘Was Leif hurt?’ I asked. ‘And what about Erik and my father’s other men? What about Thrang?’

‘Thrang and other men still away. I not see what happen Leif and Erik,’ said Maria sadly. She was tied only at the ankles, and unlike me, her hands were free. She stroked my hair soothingly.

I lay still on the heaving deck, wrestling with my sorrow and my fears. I was grateful for Maria’s affection, though for her sake I wished she wasn’t in this dangerous predicament with me. I imagined Leif, still weak from his time in prison, fearing for us and unable to do anything to help. I thought of my mother and her great sorrow when at the end of three years neither her husband nor her daughter returned. And who knew where Asgrim was and what he intended? Perhaps she would never know what became of any of us.

I remembered how Halfgrim had killed my father and the sorrow was so acute I was nearly sick. Despair was overwhelming me but I had to fight it somehow. Maria and I couldn’t simply succumb to our fate.

A shadow loomed over me. I opened my sore eyes and squinted up against the strong sunshine.

‘Ha, you’re awake at last, slave’s daughter,’ said Halfgrim. ‘I thought perhaps I’d done for you, and that would have been a waste. You’ll fetch a pretty penny at Hedeby market. You both look just like the slaves you are, so we won’t have any trouble.’ He bent over me, taking my chin in his cruel fingers and twisted my face towards him. ‘You’re a pretty thing, as far as slaves go. You’ll appeal, and so will the other one.’

He released me and I glared at him, loathing him. My hatred burned in my veins like poison.

‘My father kept the agreement you made. You broke it coming after us. You had no right to kill him. Breaking your word brings shame and dishonour,’ I cried furiously.

Halfgrim raised a hand threatening to strike me, and I couldn’t help flinching away from him.

‘You can talk about dishonour!’ Halfgrim shouted. ‘I found out the
godi
who negotiated that deal between us was your father’s blood brother! He wasn’t neutral. That made the agreement void.’

‘Helgi would always have been fair,’ I said. ‘And no one forced you to agree.’

Then I noticed Foe Biter hanging in a scabbard at his side and rage took hold of me. My father had given his sword to me. It was the last thing he’d done. I strained to get my hands free so that I could hit Halfgrim. I wanted to scratch him, bite him and hurt him in any way I could, but the ropes at my wrists might as well have been iron bands.

‘Such a shame your murdering dog of a slave-father won’t know his precious daughter was sold into slavery,’ Halfgrim said, watching my struggles with a detached satisfaction. ‘Perhaps death was too good for him after all.’ He walked away, chuckling at his own wit.

I opened my mouth to hurl abuse at him, but Maria laid a finger softly on my lips. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered. ‘He
want
to make you angry.’

I knew she was right and stayed silent, but inside my head I used every foul word I’d ever learned from my brother.

Much later that day as the sun was dropping towards the horizon, a man paused by us and offered a water-skin. Maria thanked him, accepted it, and helped me drink a little. The man squatted down.

‘I’d know how to treat a couple of pretty girls better than Halfgrim,’ he said with a smile. His words were kind enough, but I disliked the smile that accompanied them. As I finished drinking, I realized his hand was on my leg.

‘Get off me!’ I cried, trying to pull away, but unable to because the ropes were too tight.

‘Stop!’ said Maria, slapping the man’s hand. He ignored her, leering at me. And then abruptly he was plucked violently away from us and thrown to the deck. Halfgrim stood over him, one foot on his chest, drew his sword and held it to his throat.

‘If I catch anyone going near these two, for any reason,’ he said deliberately, ‘that person dies at my hand.’ He lifted his head and repeated his words for the whole ship to hear. ‘Do you understand me?’ he shouted.

There was a muttering of assent and the man who’d given us water crawled away looking furious. ‘No food and drink but from my hand, no speech and absolutely no touching,’ Halfgrim ordered.

He turned to us. ‘And don’t think I’m doing this from the kindness of my heart,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure I find the filthiest, foulest, most vicious old man in the whole of Hedeby market to sell you to. But I will have a good price.’

Maria and I huddled together, too frightened and miserable to speak. We took comfort in each other’s presence, but it was the only solace we had. The horrifying prospect of slavery loomed before us.

We sailed for several days and nights on the open sea. I lay bound most of the time, ropes chaffing my wrists and ankles, feeling nothing but misery and discomfort, only a bleak and uncertain future ahead of us. I lay on the hard deck in the cold and thought of Ingvar and the hopes I’d had that we would one day be together. They were gone now. I thought of poor Maria and hoped that her fate now would not be worse than the one I had snatched her from.

‘There’s a ship behind us,’ I said to Maria as I sat up, still bound by the ankles, one afternoon.

‘Yes, I see him yesterday also,’ said Maria, using her hand to shade her eyes from the bright light as she looked behind us.

‘This is probably a busy route,’ I sighed. ‘Jorvik to Hedeby: lots of ships must sail this way.’ For my own sake I tried to stifle the hope that Thrang might have arrived back in Jorvik in time to pursue us. It was impossible. He could have no idea where we were heading or what Halfgrim’s ship looked like.

Once or twice Halfgrim brought us food and drink. Mostly he didn’t bother. On the third day, both of us weak with hunger and lack of water, we beached on a broad sandy shore. Halfgrim ordered his men to carry us off the ship. They dropped us on the sand, laid a fire and went to barter for fresh food and drink.

‘Welcome to the Mark, slave girl,’ Halfgrim said, giving me a kick in the side. ‘We’ve made land just south of Hedeby, and we’ll move on at first light.’

‘Why are you bothering to tell me?’ I asked him, my hatred burning fiercely.

Halfgrim leered down at me. ‘I want you to be able to look forward to the morrow with a proper degree of dread.’ He looked me up and down. ‘I considered killing you,’ he said. ‘But I think this is more fitting.’

‘I’ve never harmed you,’ I said to him.

He grasped me by the hair, twisting it. ‘Oh, but you have,’ he said softly, his face very close to mine. ‘Your family stole my inheritance.’

‘That was before I was born. And from what I heard, your father had stolen most of it from others in the first place.’

His cold, dead-fish eyes looked into mine for a long moment.

‘Liar,’ he said at last.

I lay sleepless that night, as Halfgrim had intended, dreading the morning. The men had all drunk deeply, celebrating the success of their mission, my father’s death and being safely on land once more. My loathing of Halfgrim knew no bounds as he toasted ‘the stinking slave’s death’. Eventually they all grew so drunk they keeled over where they sat by the fire, forgetting even to post a guard, and snored heavily. Halfgrim lay next to me reeking sourly of mead, his breath like a latrine. I turned and wriggled a little to get away from him, but Maria lay on my other side, huddled close for warmth and shivering in the bitter chill of the spring night.

It was the darkest part of the night, and the fire had burned down to a faint glow, when I felt the shadow of a new presence among us. A creeping form, more impenetrable than the darkness, moved nearby. I tensed, unsure whether I should cry out and raise the alarm, or hope that whoever this was, they couldn’t be worse than Halfgrim.

I stayed silent, and nudged Maria softly. She nudged me back, her breathing soft, and I realized she was awake too. I hoped none of the men were. Halfgrim farted loudly beside me, disturbed himself by choking on a snore and rolled over, flinging one arm across me. I wrinkled my nose in disgust as the stench engulfed me and turned my head away.

The dark shape had frozen as Halfgrim had stirred, and I could no longer see it. I could still sense it though. I realized it wasn’t alone: men filled with tension, fear, and excitement were all around us. I prayed they were about to fall upon our enemy, and only hoped they would not kill us too. The shadow moved again, slowly. I strained my eyes in the darkness and thought it looked like a man carrying some bulky object.

Halfgrim was grunting piggy snores into my ear. I tried to ease myself away from him, but it was hard to move, bound at the wrists and ankles. My whole body was tensed with anticipation. A light touch on my arm almost made me scream. I swallowed the sound, and stared into the darkness trying to make something out. I could smell death and decay, which frightened me. For a moment I thought of trolls or ogres and had to repress the instinct to cry out.

A pale face loomed close and I recoiled, startled. The figure laid a finger gently on my lips and I understood I was to be silent. I felt the cold touch of steel at my wrist and tried to keep absolutely still as the rope was cut. Any movement of mine could alert Halfgrim.

Who was helping me? Was it a member of the crew? I didn’t think so. My hope was that somehow, incredibly, Leif and Thrang had come after us, but it seemed too good to be true.

The knife moved to my ankles and sliced through the rope there too. The stranger knew I was bound and where the ropes were. My limbs were free, but Halfgrim still snored beside me and I didn’t know how to get out from under his arm. When I tried to move, his hold tightened. I stared into the darkness, hoping the mysterious stranger would help me. The soft hiss of more rope being cut close by told me he was freeing Maria too.

The stranger bent over me and mouthed in my ear: ‘When I lift his arm, roll free.’ I did so, rolling into Maria, who clutched at me in the darkness, shivering with cold and fear.

Though there was no moon, the clouds had cleared a little from the stars and I could just make out the stranger as he held Halfgrim’s arm and then, with an effort, rolled a large, heavy object under his arm in my place. Whatever it was, it stank.

The stranger then rose and began to creep away, beckoning us to follow. I took one shaky step, but then turned back to Halfgrim. He had no right to Foe Biter. That had come to us through my mother’s family. Very carefully, very slowly, I knelt down and tried to draw my father’s sword from the scabbard, terrified that Halfgrim would wake at any second. He didn’t, but the movement disturbed him and he rolled over with a grunt. He was now lying on the sword.

Reluctantly, I gave up and tried to push myself upright, but my legs were numb and unresponsive from being tied so long. I realized with a shock that I couldn’t walk. Maria took my arm and tried to support me but she was unsteady herself. I stumbled again, and this time fell, narrowly missing a sleeping crew member.

The stranger appeared at my side again, scooped me up and carried me. I could hear Maria staggering next to us as she tried to pick her way through the sleeping figures. Another dark shape emerged from the shadows and picked her up too. It was almost dream-like, this fleeing in the darkness with strangers who could be friends or enemies: both exhilarating and terrifying. My overriding feeling was relief at escaping my bitterest enemy. As for the future: could it be worse than what we were fleeing from?

We were borne swiftly away from the camp, striding out into the darkness of the night, along the beach. I kept waiting to hear the sounds of men waking, of pursuit, but they didn’t come. I was both relieved and afraid. Who had taken us and why? Had we just allowed ourselves to be taken into another danger? To judge by the stench that still lingered on the man who carried me, these men certainly had no sense of hygiene. I’d hoped with all my heart it might be Leif, but I was no longer sure.

‘Who are you?’ I asked my companion at last.

‘Hush,’ he whispered. ‘I’m a friend, but we’re not safe yet.’

So saying, he threw me onto his shoulder and broke into a run. I clung to him and for the second time in a few days I was bumped and jarred over a man’s shoulder, the breath knocked from my body. I could hear other men running beside us in the darkness, and hoped Maria was all right.