Blood Feud Read online

  ‘Where, then?’

  I thought for a moment that Sitric was looking at me. Then I saw that his gaze had gone over my shoulder to someone coming up behind me; and a big man with a thrall-ring on his neck slouched past me into the torchlight. Thormod turned and saw him.

  ‘Ulf?’

  The thrall swallowed harshly. ‘They shouted – Anders shouted to me before they rode off – to tell anyone who asked, that the amber merchant must have some more good stories by now, and they were away to find him.’

  Sitric looked at his brother. ‘Does that have any meaning for you?’

  Thormod nodded. ‘Aye. Because it was meant for me.’

  ‘So? What meaning, then?’

  ‘That Anders and Herulf knew that I also would not settle for the Wyr Geld. They have set out for Miklagard.’

  ‘It’s not like those two to run,’ Sitric said.

  ‘Who spoke of running? No man sits twiddling his thumbs waiting for death under his own blazing thatch, if he can play the game another way. And they also had kin to think of. But they leave me word where to meet them.’

  ‘They leave us word,’ Sitric said, troubled but staunch.

  ‘Na, the message was for me. You are the eldest, and you have a wife; it is for you to bide here and hold the steading together. Our grandfather did not in-take it from the wild, that we should both take the road to Miklagard and leave it to go back to the wild again.’

  Sitric Sitricson was silent a moment, looking down at the stark face above the bearskin rug, as though he were uncertain. He would always be a little uncertain, I thought, one who needed time to make up his mind. ‘Aye well, we can quarrel as to that later,’ he said at last. ‘They are gathered to the Arval in the garth, and we should go out to them.’

  They turned towards the entrance aisle. Ulf was already gone, and I slipped out ahead of them quickly into the fading daylight, where the pine-knot torches had just been lit and were making a black resin-scented smoke that curled away sideways on the light wind, and folk were already crowding to the food and drink, while a blind harper who had wandered in from somewhere with his dog beside him, sat on the end of a bench, tuning his harp.

  Somewhere near at hand a cow was lowing, for it was past milking-time. And feeling myself a stranger among all these folk who were Thormod’s folk and none of mine. I turned in search of the cattle fold that was something familiar in an alien world.

  I was leaning over the hurdle gate, snuffing the warm comforting smell of the beasts, when I heard Thormod’s great shout raised above the voices and the harpsong behind me. ‘Sea Swallow! Sea Swallow! To me!’ And knew the call was for me.

  So I left the friendly cattle and went back into Thormod’s world, into the crowd and the flare of torches before the house-place door.

  And then Thormod’s arm was across my shoulders, and Thormod was swinging me round to the torchlit faces, saying, ‘Here he is – Jestyn, my shoulder-to-shoulder-man – come back with me from West-over-seas!’

  7 The Blood Brotherhood

  AFTERWARDS, THROUGH THE fog of next morning’s headache, I had very little memory of that funeral feast. Only one thing I remembered clearly: and that, when the night was already worn on a good way, was Thorn, the blind harper, getting to his feet, saying, ‘Now I will make a new song – a song for the two who go out from here with the mark of the Blood Feud on their foreheads. Two brothers against two brothers, who will not turn back before all be finished, and the Death songs sung for those who are to die.’ And I was vaguely wretched, and took no heed of the song at all.

  That day, the Master of Sitricstead was howe-laid among his kin, and the folk from other farms all went away. And in the dark of the following night I woke in the loft above the cattle stalls, and found Thormod missing from his hollow in the hay beside me.

  At first I thought that he had gone out to make water, and would soon be back; and I lay watching a white line of moonlight that slipped through a chink in the thatch, and waiting. But the white line moved to pick out a bent grass-stem, to a dry cloverhead, casting its tiny clear shadow below it; and he did not come. And then fear came upon me. I had taken it as a settled thing that I was going with Thormod on the road to Miklagard, but as it had been when the Sea Swallow was made ready for the homeward way, so it was now. No word actually spoken between us. And Dark Thorn had sung of two brothers . . . But that did not really fit, because it had been settled that Sitric was to bide with the steading . . . I was too much afraid to think straight, or I might have taken comfort from that.

  How if Thormod had sought to avoid all farewells by slipping away in the night and leaving us simply to wake in the morning and find him gone on his lonely road? If I had stopped to look about me, I would have seen that his few belongings were still where he had left them. But fear had me by the throat.

  I had lain down to sleep in the usual way in breeks and under-sark, and had only to pull on my raw-hide shoes and rough wadmal tunic, and stick in my belt the hunting-knife that was my only possession, and I stood ready to go.

  Then, torn between the need for speed and the need for silence, I slid over the edge of the loft floor, felt with my feet for the edge of the cattle stall beneath, and dropped as lightly as I could into the central aisle.

  In the living-place at the far end, I could just make out the red glow of the smoored fire. One of the dogs stirred and growled a little, though not much for they were used to night-time comings and goings, and Sitric cursed him without properly waking up, from the big box bed. I checked, holding my breath, and the dog subsided, grumbling; and I went on. The door was on the snib, as Thormod must have left it, and I opened it as silently as might be, and slipped out and across the sleeping steading-garth. The hurdle gate had been hauled aside. Thormod had certainly gone that way, but would he have left it open if he were not coming back? Doubt began to creep in beside the fear within me, but I had to know. I had to know.

  So I too stepped out on to the track, my moon-shadow running beside me. There was no one on the track so far as the ford or on the rising slope beyond it. But just across from the steading gate was the apple garth, the trees just breaking into blossom, small and wind-shaped, bent all one way. The kind whose apples are scarcely worth eating at harvest but withered and yellow and honey-sweet at Midwinter. The moon filled the place with dapplings and stripes of black and silver, and markings of a wildcat’s hide. Almost anything could have been among those trees, so long as it did not move. Then something, someone, did move, on the path that skirted the trees on its way down from the fellside. A moment more, and I saw that it was Thormod. He checked and looked back the way he had come, up towards the dark hummock on the open fell, where we had howe-laid the old Master of Sitricstead that morning. Then I knew that he had indeed been about his farewells; taking leave of his father, now, rather than in the daylight before the eyes of other men. Taking whatever vows he had to take, apart from the customary vows of vengeance that he had taken, half drunk, and bragging of its bloody splendour, at the Arval the night before. There are things that a man needs to do by himself, and I knew then that I should not have come. I was turning back, but my foot caught a loose stone in the side of the track and sent it rolling; and Thormond swung round.

  ‘Who? Jestyn, you again!’

  ‘I – it was a mistake –’ I stammered. ‘I’ll away back –’

  ‘No, but why did you come?’ Thormod came out on the track, and touched his breast, where the piece of amber hung beneath his sark. ‘I did not leave it behind me this time. Did you think I needed your shoulder against mine in this also?’

  ‘I was afraid you had gone without me.’ I sounded like a child in my own ears.

  ‘Do you think I would do that, not even telling you?’ he said, seriously.

  ‘I – no – but I woke and you were gone. Maybe I’m still stupid with ale – I’ve never had so much before. But – I come with you!’

  There was a moment’s pause, and I heard the faint stirring
of wind through the apple boughs. Then Thormod said. ‘Do you? I take up the Blood Feud for my father’s death, but there is no call for you to follow the same road.’

  ‘Your road is mine also. Two against two makes a fair fight.’

  ‘“Two brothers against two brothers.” So said Blind Thorn.’

  ‘I had all but forgotten that,’ I said.

  ‘Never forget what Thorn says. The eyes of his body do not see as other men see, but he has another kind of seeing.’ Thormod held out his hand. ‘You have your knife on you? Give it to me.’

  I pulled the knife from my belt, and he took it and turned his left hand palm upward. In the white fire of the moonlight I saw the paler skin inside his wrist, and the place where the blue veins branched as the veins of an iris petal. He drew the point of the knife across, leaving a line like a dark thread in its wake. A few beads of blood sprang out, black in the moonlight; and he gave me the knife. ‘Now you.’

  I made the same cut across my own wrist, and we rubbed the mouths of the two cuts together. A few drops spattered down and were lost in the long grass, and the thing was done.

  ‘Now we are one blood, you and I,’ Thormod said. ‘Two brothers against two brothers. Now the sign of the Blood Feud is on your forehead also, as Dark Thorn saw it, and my road is your road, to Miklagard and beyond.’

  So I took up the Death Feud, the Blood Feud for a man I had never seen living.

  And we went back to the warm darkness of the hayloft for the rest of the night. And next morning Thormod took leave of his kin, and we set out. We rode a couple of scrub ponies; and for the first time in my life I felt the slap of a sword against my thigh, the pull of the sword-strap over my shoulder. It was an old sword from the weapon kist, the wolfskin sheath worn almost bare in places, the wooden grip darkened by other men’s sweat, but the blade oiled and keen. I wondered how long it would be before the grip felt familiar in my hand, and the blade answered to my will.

  So we took the road to Miklagard.

  Some days later, we sold the ponies at Aarhus, where the Great Sound opens south into the Baltic Sea. And that same evening, while we sat in a waterside ale-shop under an old ship’s awning, with a pot of ale and a platter of pig-meat between us, a man turned in from the alleyway outside, spoke to the old one-legged pirate who kept the place, then came threading his way through the elbows and sprawling feet to the corner where we sat. He was rangy and loose-limbed, so tall that his rough sandy hair brushed the salt-stained canvas overhead, with a fair, freckled skin, and grey-green sea-water eyes.

  ‘Which of you is Thormod Sitricson?’ he asked.

  ‘I am,’ Thormod said.

  ‘So. You have been asking in the town, for two men.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Would there be a drink in it, for me?’

  ‘If you can tell me where they are, and if they are the right men, as much drink as you can hold without bursting like an old wine-skin.’

  The man hitched up a stool and sat down, leaning his elbows on the ale-stained trestle boards. ‘Anders and Herulf Herulfson, are their names; and one of them – Anders, it would be? – has a small scar on his cheek-bone, and odd eyes, one blue, one grey.’

  Thormod nodded. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I am thirsty,’ said the man, and grinned.

  Thormod looked at him a moment, then turned and shouted to the potboy, ‘Drink, here!’

  A brimming ale jug was brought, and the man hitched it towards him. ‘Drink heil!’ he said, and poured about half the jugful down his throat.

  ‘Wass heil!’ Thormod drank also. ‘Where are they?’

  The man set down the jug and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Not here.’

  ‘I did not think they would be.’ Thormod reached out and removed the jug. They were grinning at each other, enjoying every moment of the game. ‘And I’d no mind to waste my time hunting them through Aarhus, and them already away. When did they sail? And what ship?’

  ‘Three days ago.’ The man took back the jug, drank again, and set it down. ‘They came to us of the Red Witch first. Hakon Ketilson is gathering a crew for the Kiev voyage and on to Miklagard; but the Serpent was sailing a few days ahead of us; and they seemed eager to be away.’

  ‘They would be,’ Thormod said.

  The other cocked an eyebrow. ‘Friends of yours?’

  There was a small sharp silence. Then Thormod said, ‘Until my father killed theirs by mischance; and they cried Blood Feud, and killed mine.’

  ‘So-o! That is the way of it! Small wonder they took oar with the Serpent rather than wait for the Red Witch. Yet they took no pains to cover their tracks.’

  ‘They would not be hiding their tracks,’ said Thormod into the ale-pot, and passed it to me.

  The other stared at him a moment, then shrugged and turned again to his own drink. And in a little, Thormod said, ‘Would this Hakon Ketilson of yours be still gathering his crew?’

  ‘If it was me,’ said the man, ‘I’d appeal to the Judgement of the Thing, and accept their settlement as to Wyr Geld. Blood will not bring the old wolf back, and gold has always its uses.’

  Watching Thormod, I saw his eyes slowly widen, fixed on the other’s face, and the muscles stiffen in his neck. ‘Yet for the old wolf – blood may give him the better right to sit with his head high in Valhalla.’

  I was a Christian of sorts. I had thought of the Blood Feud as a matter of vengeance. It was not until that moment that I understood that for Thormod and his kind, it was a matter of a dead man’s honour. I was learning fast.

  ‘Each to his own way,’ the man said. ‘Yours, then, is to Kiev?’

  ‘And beyond to Miklagard if need be. Shall we go now and speak with this Ship-Chief of yours, while maybe he still has need of two more rowers?’

  ‘The lad comes with you, then?’ The man jerked his chin in my direction.

  ‘Jestyn, my blood-brother, comes with me. Aye.’

  ‘So, now we are getting to names. Thormod and Jestyn – and I am called Orm. Now we are name-friends, almost ship-mates. Another jug of ale, and we’ll drink to a fortunate river-faring, and a fine bloody end to your feuding, before we go.’

  So another jug of ale was brought, and we drank, passing it among the three of us. ‘Wass heil! Drink heil! Wass heil!’

  8 The River and the Trees

  IN THE DUSK of the short summer night, we ran Hakon Ketilson to earth in the ale-house where he was drinking with others of the Red Witch’s crew.

  A square, squat man, with a face that looked as though it had been hewn from old ship’s timbers, and only one eye, but that a very bright one that looked as though it did not miss much. He looked us over with it, and clearly he was one to pick his crews and not take any boat-strand garbage that drifted his way. But Orm claimed us for friends of his, forgetting to mention the fact that our friendship was barely an hour old. And so, in a little, we each took the knucklebone which Hakon produced out of a greasy pouch, and found ourselves part of the Red Witch’s crew; and together with the rest, we drank to good fortune and fair winds; and at last wavered our way down the boat-strand, with arms about each other’s shoulders, singing, to spend what was left of the night huddled under the Red Witch’s awning, where she lay ready for the launch.

  Two days later, with the stores and trade goods safely stowed in the narrow space beneath the deck planking, we ran her down into the water, and swung out the oars for Bornholm and the Baltic.

  But weather-luck was not with us. We ran into a northerly gale and spent five days storm-bound in the lea of Bornholm’s Western tip; and when we came at last into the broad mouth of the Dvina, with its trading post of wattle and tarred canvas sprawling among the river marshes, and stopped to water ship and take on last-minute stores, the Serpent was eleven days ahead of us.

  ‘Small matter,’ said Thormod. ‘It is a long road to Miklagard.’

  I remember two things chiefly of those first weeks of our river-faring: one is the
unceasing, back-breaking hard work, and the other is the forest – the black, whispering pine forest that crowded to the banks on either side, as though it would have engulfed and smothered the river and the Red Witch and us toiling rowers along with it.

  Sometimes the Dvina was wide enough for four vessels to pass abreast; and from time to time we met other ships making the return trip with embroidered linens and slave-girls and great jars of southern wine. When the river was broad so that the current slackened, if there was a following wind we would hoist the square sail and get a bit of help from that. But for the most part, it was just rowing, pulling up-river all day long against the current; day after day swinging to and fro to the oars, and the forest crawling by, black and unchanging so that it might have been the same stretch of trees every day.

  At night we landed, and pulled the Red Witch up the bank, and made camp. Most times we fished for our supper, fresh fish being better than dried meat that grew more maggoty every day. Once or twice, when we made camp early enough, some of us would go off hunting, but without much success, scarce anything moves in those forests except the great bearded wild oxen – not the kind of beast to be easily knocked over in a spare hour after the day’s work.

  And at night, too, beside the camp-fire, Thormod would get up and draw his sword – one did not go unarmed in that country, no matter how much the day’s work might be over and the time come for rest – and stand watching me until I got up and drew likewise. Then, however tired we were, we would fall to, cut and thrust and parry; the great sweeping strokes of the blades catching the light of fire and pine-knot torches. For it was on that long river-faring that he taught me, who had been a cowherd and a thrall, to be something of a fighting man.

  Aye, there was hard work enough, those long river weeks, even without the sword-training at the day’s end; and some of us muttered darkly as time went by, grumbling that Hakon Ship-Chief demanded too long at the oars each day. But there was a harder stretch to come.

  ‘When you come to the Great Portage, you’ll learn what work is,’ Hakon said to those of us who hadn’t made the trip before. And when we came to the Great Portage, we learned indeed.