The Last Light of the Sun (41 page)

Ivarr hadn’t said anything about that. He’d wanted Mikkel’s raid to happen. His own reasons for going were so much simpler than his brother’s: he was bored, and he liked killing people. Vengeance and a raid made killing all right in the eyes of the world. With nothing to aspire to, no status to seek or favour to attain, Ivarr’s was an uncomplicated existence, in some ways.

When you looked only to yourself, decisions came more easily. People who harmed or crossed you were to be dealt with without exception. That now included those Cyngael at Brynnfell who had sent him fleeing through a night wood, then desperately back to the ships last spring. That also meant this maggot, Brand One-eye, right here, but only after he’d done what Ivarr needed him to do, which was get him back west.

There were deaths to be accomplished there first. And he still wanted to see if he could grasp and spread someone’s lungs out on the red, cracked-open cage of their ribs while they remained alive, bubbling, blood-soaked. It was a
hard
thing to do. You needed opportunities to practise before you could do something so delicate.

When your needs were uncomplicated, it was easy enough to spend a good part of the resources you had
(last of the Volgans, heir to all they possessed) buying two hundred mercenaries at the end of a summer.

If people had trouble looking at your face for long it was hardly difficult to lie to them. The Jormsvikings were smug, complacent, full of self-love, beefy and drunken, amusingly easy to deceive, for all their celebrated prowess on ship and in battle. They were what they were, Ivarr thought: tools.

He had dropped gold and silver onto a trestle table in a Jormsvik barracks hall, and told them that Aeldred’s coastal
burh
at Drengest was unfinished, under-defended, with ships they might seize for themselves and a newly dedicated sanctuary with too much gold.

He’d seen this, he said, when he and his brother went west in spring. And a watchman they’d taken and killed for information, along the coast, had told them before he died that the king and
fyrd
were spending the summer at Raedhill, hunting north of it, leaving Esferth exposed. Another lie, but Ivarr was good at lying.

Ale went round a smoke-filled room, then round again, and songs were sung about Jormsvik glories in days gone by. And then came another predictable song (Ivarr had heard it too many times, but made himself smile, as if in rue and remembrance) about Siggur Volganson and the great summer of twin assaults on Ferrieres and Karch, and the famous raid on the hidden sanctuary at Champieres, where he’d claimed his sword. More drinking during that, and after. Men asleep at the tables, heads down among spilled ale and guttered candles.

In the morning Ivarr formally paid the mercenaries to make it worth their while to sail, even if they should find little enough for the taking in the Anglcyn lands. He stung their pride—so easily—pointing out how long it had been since they’d challenged Aeldred on his own soil.

There was glory to be won, swords to be reddened, Ivarr said, before dark winter came to the northlands again and closed the wild sea. Make it sound like music, he’d found, and listeners would dance to your song—while not looking at your face.

Simple, really. Men were easy to deceive. You needed only to be clear in your mind about what you wanted them to do. Ivarr always had been, was even more so now. Brynn ap Hywll and any of his family found were to be staked out naked, alive, in the slop and mud of their own farmyard while Ivarr carved them one by one. Ap Hywll was fat as a summer hog, he’d need to cut deep. That was all right, it was not a difficulty.

The blood-eagle rite was a final act of vengeance for his slain brother and grandfather, he would say, sadly. A ritual done in honour of Ingavin’s ravens and eagles and in memory of the Volgan line, of which he was the last. After him, they would be no more. And men would hear it and look sorrowful. Would even honour him for it around winter fires.

Amusing. But to make it happen he had to get these ships to Cyngael shores. That was the only uncertain part, if you excepted the fortune that underlay his finding those merchants with a horse earlier today. That, he didn’t actually want to think about right now. He’d have missed the ships, otherwise, been left on a hostile coast alone. Perhaps he
should
think about it. Perhaps Ingavin or Thünir was showing his lordly countenance to a pale, small, crooked figure after all. And what could that mean, after so many years?

A distraction. For later. They had to go west, first. That had always been the delicate task. It would have made no sense for Brand Leofson or any other leader to take five ships so late in the year for the feeble returns a Cyngael raid offered these days. Ivarr had known that. So
you worked it another way: you told them they were going after Aeldred where he was rich and vulnerable. And when that proved—as you knew it would prove—not to be so after all, you relied on your tongue and their stupid hunger for Ingavin-glory to lure them a little farther west … since they’d already come this far, and it would be
such
a terrible loss of face to go back empty-handed.

It was a good plan. Would have been easy, in fact, if Burgred of Denferth hadn’t been with the accursed party they’d surprised in the night. The earl had been worth a ransom the raiders could grow fat upon, and they’d known it. Thick-witted and ale-sodden or not, they’d understood who this man was. Aeldred would have paid the taxes from ten cities and a hundred households to have his companion back. And then five Jormsvik ships would have turned around and rowed happily home into the wind, every man singing all the way.

It would have driven him mad.

He’d had no choice but to shoot the man.

An unsatisfying killing, done in haste, no pain involved—except his own when Skallson came near to killing him for it. Ivarr hadn’t actually been afraid—he couldn’t remember ever being afraid—but he hadn’t been ready to die, either.

For one thing, he didn’t expect eagles or ravens to escort his spirit to shining halls when death came for him. Ingavin and Thünir loved their tall warriors with bright axes and swords, not twisted, wry-mouthed misfits with death-white skin and eyes that saw better at twilight than in the day’s bright sun.

It was less bright now, in fact. They had been pulling steadily from the coast and now the sail was up. The sun was over west. Ivarr waited, as ever, for the evening shadows to come, changing the colour of the sea and sky.
He was happier then, happier in winter. Cold and darkness didn’t distress him; they felt like his proper place.

Men thought he was weak. Men were wrong, almost without exception fools beyond the telling. He wondered, sometimes, if his mighty grandfather—never seen or known, killed in Llywerth before Ivarr was born—might have thought the same way, crashing like a wave again and again upon peoples who could do nothing against him for year upon year, until it ended by that western sea.

The gods knew, he had reasons enough to kill Brynn ap Hywll. He would do the women first, Ivarr thought, let the fat man watch, bound and helpless, naked amidst the shit of his yard. It was a pleasing thought. You needed to hold it in mind, point towards it, let nothing distract or divert.

“You will stand up now,” said Brand Leofson. A bulky shape above him, suddenly. “Before the council begins you will explain your lies.”

He’d expected that. Men were easy to anticipate. All he ever
needed
was a chance to speak.

Ivarr rose slowly to his feet. Rubbed at his jaw where he’d been struck, though there wasn’t any pain to speak of now. It was good to look small, though, frail, no danger to anyone.

“I didn’t think you’d do what I needed done,” he mumbled. Kept his eyes down. Turned his head away, submissive as a beaten wolf. He’d watched wolves in winter snow, learned from them.

“What? You admit you lied?”

Gods! What had the ox-brain
expected
him to do? Deny it? They’d
seen
the finished walls and readied ships in Drengest, which he’d said was empty and exposed. Sixty of them in two parties had been slaughtered today by Aeldred and the
fyrd
out from Esferth—where he’d told them the king would not be.

He hadn’t expected those deaths—there was nothing good about losing so many men—but you couldn’t let such things affect what you’d had in mind for so long. This entire end-of-summer journey with the Jormsvikings was, after all, a second plan. He was supposed to have taken Brynnfell and the sword in spring, not had his sodden, stupid brother die with almost every man in that yard. Ivarr was all alone in the world now. Shouldn’t there be mournful music with that thought? All alone. He’d killed their sister when he was nine; now dear Mikkel had been cut down in an Arberthi farmyard.

Let the skalds make bad songs of it.
Sorrow for Siggur’s strong scions/Valour and vaunt among the Volgans …

He didn’t feel sorry for himself. What he felt was fury, endlessly, from first awareness of himself, a bent child in a warrior world.

“I lied because we have fallen so far in twenty-five years that even with the warriors of Jormsvik, I was unsure of us.”

“We? Us?”

“The Erlings of Vinmark, friend. Ingavin’s children of the middle-world.”

“What the one-eyed god does that drivel
mean,
you drip-nosed gutter spawn?”

He needed to kill this man. Had to be careful not to let it show. No distractions. Ivarr looked up, then ducked his head again, as if ashamed. Wiped at his nose, placatingly.

“My father died a coward, his own great father unavenged. My brother fell as a hero, trying to do so. I am the only one left. The only one. And Ingavin has seen fit to have me misshapen, unworthy in my poor self to take vengeance for our line and our people.”

Brand One-eye spat over the railing of his ship. “I still don’t know what raven-shit rubbish you are spewing. Speak plain and—”

“He means he planned to go to Arberth all along, Brand. Never had any thought of Anglcyn lands. He means he tricked us with lies about Aeldred to get us to sea.”

Ivarr was careful to keep his eyes lowered. He felt a pulsing in his head, however. This young one, whoever he was, had just become an irritant, and you needed to avoid showing that.

“That the truth?” Brand turned to him. He was a very big man.

Ivarr hadn’t wanted things to move this quickly, but part of the skill of these moments was adapting. “Jormsvik has its share of wisdom, even from the young ones who might not be expected to know so much. It is as the boy says.”

“Boy’s older than you think, maggot, and killed a Jormsvik captain in single combat,” said Leofson pompously. A beefy, thick-brained warrior. All he was. Ivarr held back a grimace: he’d made a mistake, these men were famously bound to each other.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Shut up, rodent. I’m thinking.”

The very halls of Ingavin tremble at such tidings
was what Ivarr wanted to say. He kept silent. Composed himself with an image of what he wanted, what he
needed:
the family of Brynn ap Hywll in their own yard—or maybe on a table in their hall under torches, for better light?—naked, all of them, the women soiling themselves with terror, exposed to his red, carving blade. Wife and daughters and the fat man himself. The goal. All else could come later.

“Why you want to get to Arberth so bad?”

They heard sounds across the water; the other ships, moving nearer for the council. They were out of sight of shore, darkness falling soon. Needed to be careful: ships could ram and gouge each other in the sea, riding so
nearly. They would rope them together, create a platform of ships, even in open water, in twilight. Jormsvik seamen. They knew how to do such things better than any men alive. A thought, there.

Ivarr took a breath, as if summoning courage. “Why Arberth? Because Kjarten Vidurson in Hlegest seems ready to be a king, and he should have the Volgan’s sword again. Or someone should.”

He let that last phrase linger, emphasized it just enough. He hadn’t
planned
to mention Vidurson, but it worked, it worked. He could feel it. There was a rhythm to these things as ideas came, a dance, as much as any single combat with weapons ever was.

“The sword?” repeated Brand, stupidly.

“My grandfather’s blade, taken when ap Hywll killed him. The death never avenged, to my shame—and our people’s.”

“That was twenty-five years ago! We’re mercenaries, for the great gods’ sake!”

Ivarr lifted his head, let his pale eyes seem to blaze in the torchlight. “How much glory do you think you’d gain, Brand Leofson, you and every man here, all of Jormsvik, if
you
were the ones to regain that sword?”

A satisfying silence on the deck, and across the water. He’d spoken loudly, ringing it out, that the other boats, approaching, might also hear. He pushed on, next part of the song. “And more: do you not think it might even give you, give all of us, some power and protection from Vidurson should he prove … other than some think he is?”

He hadn’t planned this, either. He was very happy with it.

“What does
that
mean?” Leofson snarled, now pacing like a bear on the deck.

Ivarr allowed himself to straighten, an equal speaking to an equal. It was necessary to have that status back.
“What does it mean? Tell me, men of Jormsvik, how joyously will a northern man who sets himself as king over all the Erlings—the first in four generations—look upon a walled fortress of fighting men in the south who answer only to themselves?” It was like music, a poem, he was shaping a—

“If this is so,” interrupted a voice again, “you might have raised it with us, and let us take counsel at home. You said no single word about Kjarten Vidurson. Or about Arberth, or the Volgan’s sword. Instead, tricked to sea with outright lies, sixty good men are dead.” It was the boy, the scarcely bearded one. He snorted. “Didn’t that watchman you say you captured in spring
tell
you about the new fair starting this year?”

Ivarr’s flaring anger calmed quickly. So easy, it was. They made it so easy. He wanted to laugh. They were fools, even when they weren’t.