The Dark Horse (10 page)

2

Longshank peered through the murk of smoke inside the great broch. The faces of the whole village stared back at him.

Everyone awaited the result of his deliberation over the law.

“Upon the death of the Lawspeaker,” he said, “the position shall be filled by the Lawspeaker’s son.”

There was a murmur.

Mouse saw Sif stare angrily through the fire.

“But Horn has no son,” Longshank continued, “in which case the position shall fall to his nearest male relative.”

There was another murmur.

“But Horn has no living male relative,” said Longshank.

“We know!” cried a voice from the back of the broch.

Longshank jerked his head round to stare at the place the voice had come from.

“Get on with it!” called out another voice.

“Very well,” Longshank said. “In this case the position returns to the last person to contest the fight with the dead Lawspeaker, unless anyone wishes to challenge
that
person to a trial.”

This had been the case with Olaf and Horn, but there was a further problem: Olaf had perished at Ragnald’s hand.

“But,” said Longshank, “since the challenger is no longer alive, either, the position falls to his son.”

There was a huge uproar in the broch.

“So,” said Longshank, though no one listened to him because they already knew what it meant, “the boy Sigurd shall be pronounced Lawspeaker, provided he passes his coming-of-age trial.”

The tumult continued.

Sigurd stared wildly about him. Why had no one told him this was possible? Surely someone other than Longshank knew the law.

Mouse felt her heart quicken.

Sif jumped to her feet.

The room quieted a little.

“Assuming,” said Longshank, taking the opportunity to finish, “that no one wishes to challenge the boy?”

He looked around the room, at all the grown men who had grumbled about Horn and about how he had ruled. But they all were quiet.

“No one challenges?” asked Longshank scornfully.

“Yes! I do!”

Everyone turned and stared at Sif.

“Yes,” she cried, “I do!”

3

And so we fought. Sif and I. No one could stop her; no one could challenge her right to fight me for the position of Lawspeaker. Though a few people tried to point out that she was a girl and that a girl could not be Lawspeaker, Longshank had to admit that this was not actually recorded in the law. It was no more than tradition.

And me?

After the shock, the shock of finding out I would be Lawspeaker, a desire began to grow in me.

It grew rapidly, and as I thought about my father, my
dead
father, and Horn, it grew even more. A desire to shake this tribe of stupid men and make something of them, despite it all.

So when Sif insisted, as the days passed, that she wanted to fight me, and as all the strong men of the village stared at me when I walked by, I became more and more determined to take her on.

Mouse didn’t want me to do it. I couldn’t find out exactly why she was so against it.

“Why?” she asked again and again.

I would look at her and shrug.

“No one else wants to do it,” I would say weakly.

But there was more to it than that.

“Why don’t you want me to?” I asked her.

Now it was her turn to be evasive.

“You said you’d be my brother,” she said. “Always.”

“But I’ll still be your brother,” I protested.

“You’ll be Lawspeaker,” she said, and then, when I pressed her, “There is danger with it.”

But she would say no more.

But before Sif and I fought, there was more disposing of dead to be done.

Ragnald’s body had lain under some sacking in the grain store, where he had fallen with Horn’s broken blade in his back. The sword that I had put there. Now it was time to do something about it.

This reminds me that a strange thing had happened when we covered Ragnald’s body with the sacking.

For the first time since Ragnald’s attack, I thought about the box. We had left it lying on the floor of the grain barn, where it had fallen from the stranger’s hands. It filled me with fear, and I wanted, if it was possible, to destroy it. It seemed to me that it must be full of evil magic. But while Freya was covering Ragnald’s body, I looked for the box. It was gone. I asked round the village, but no one claimed to have it.

And I seemed to be the only one bothered by this.

“A piece of magic like that,” people said, “so strong. It will have died with its owner. It must have vanished when Ragnald perished.”

I forgot about it; there was other work to do.

It was decided that the most fitting fate for a stranger who had come to try to harm us was to feed his body to the fish. So we prepared to take Ragnald’s body out into the bay in a boat.

An interesting thing had started to happen. Since it had been announced that I might be Lawspeaker, people had taken more notice of me. And of Freya and Mouse, too. But mostly of me.

Maybe because I had been the one to stick the sword into Ragnald. Maybe that had made people take notice of me. I had displayed bravery and strength, and those things were supposed to be important to us.

And now the men who had supported my father and me stood around and asked me what to do, while those who had ridiculed him seemed lost. As indeed they were, leaderless without Horn. There was no way these men would support Sif, a girl, in her claim to be Lawspeaker.

“Roll him up in the cloth,” I said, pointing at Ragnald’s corpse, “and get him into the boat. We don’t want his ghost haunting us here. The sooner the fish pick his bones clean, the better for all of us.”

And everyone agreed. He was obviously some kind of magician; he would be more likely than most to prove a troublesome spirit after death.

Mouse stood and watched with me as the men went about the work. We hadn’t spoken of that awful night since it had happened. Now I could not restrain my curiosity.

“What did he do to you?” I asked. “With the box—what was he doing?”

Mouse looked at me in her silent way.

“He hurt me,” she said in the voice that meant I would get no more out of her.

So we put Ragnald into the boat, rowed out to the waiting sea, and tipped him overboard.

4

“Sigurd Olafsson!” called Longshank.

“Yes,” the boy answered.

“Sif Hornsdaughter!” called the old man again.

“Yes,” answered the girl.

The pair stood opposite each other in a crudely marked circle of white pebbles on the black beach. The tribe watched from the high-tide line. Mouse held Freya’s hand. She didn’t know which of them was comforting the other.

Sif had continued to insist that she go through with her challenge to Sigurd’s right to become Lawspeaker.

“You know why you are here? You know the rules by which you must abide?” asked Longshank.

“Yes,” answered boy and girl together.

“Then begin!”

But the fight was over almost as soon as it started.

Sif was a tall, strong girl, but at sixteen Sigurd was bigger and stronger than some men ten years older.

She made the first move and charged at Sigurd, screaming loudly.

She made an impressive sight, and for a moment Sigurd was thrown by her aggression.

As she reached him he recovered himself, bouncing his body weight into his knees. A moment before she would have struck him, he shifted onto his left foot, and Sif flew past. As she did so he swung into her stomach with a tight fist.

Sif lay sprawling, winded, on the sand. Sigurd put his foot on her throat.

“Yield,” he said, but quietly and without show.

Sif tried to wriggle out, but Sigurd put more weight on her.

“Yield,” he said again, and then whispered so that no one at the beach could hear, “Your father would be proud.”

Sif stopped wriggling. After a long pause she raised a hand in submission.

A murmur came from the watching crowd.

Sif stood and glared at Sigurd, her nose just a few inches from his. Then she spat in his face and walked back to the brochs, her rage still twisting inside her.

Sigurd followed more slowly, and behind him walked Longshank, with due solemnity.

As Sigurd reached the people Longshank called out, “Hail to the new Lawspeaker!”

There was a shout, but it was subdued. As if for the first time, what was happening was sinking into everyone’s mind.

Sigurd met every gaze as he walked through the tribe, which parted to let him into his village.

All was total silence, apart from the whisk of the wind coming off the sea. Then a woman’s voice muttered, “Are we really to be ruled by a boy?”

Sigurd stopped in his tracks. He looked about him for the source of the voice.

“Yes,” he said. “Since no man is bold enough, you will be ruled by a boy.”

No one spoke.

Evening fell.

Inside his broch, with all the people hidden in their own dark homes, Sigurd shook and cried like a small child while Freya held him tight.

Mouse sat at his feet, quiet.

“Your father would be proud,” said Freya again.

5

Then Longshank decided that I should undergo my coming-of-age ordeal. In this way, he said, I would become a man, so the tribe would have a man for Lawspeaker after all, and not a boy.

I was not afraid either way. I wanted to do it.

So the morning after I had defeated Sif in the fight, they set up the arch made of turf on the grass between the village and the fields.

To complete the ordeal, all I had to do was walk under the arch. If it fell down while I did so, then my manhood would be a poor affair. If not, then I would prosper.

I walked under the low arch made of a single thick sod of grass curved up into the air. It held, and it was over.

I raised my hands.

“What now, Lawspeaker?” asked Longshank.

I remember how strange it felt to be called by my title.

I pointed at Bird Rock.

“To the hill,” I said. “We have bones to burn.”

We went to make the bone fire.