SIXTEEN

Why wouldn’t Leif wake up? Astrid tugged at his tunic. She needed him.

Haralt was striding out of her old room, shouting at her to be quiet. She lost her head and ran in past him, slamming the door and flinging herself down on what used to be her bed. Ragged sobs escaped her as she heaved, and trembled, and seethed.

She bit her arm. Time passed. Slowly, she realised she wasn’t alone.

‘You know, princess, that is my bed now …’ Astrid sat up, startled. For the first time she could make out Folkmar, sitting across from her in a massive chair.

His scent was everywhere – heavy, sweet, not half so repellent as she had expected. He must wear musk, or oils, like Muslims were said to.

Folkmar chuckled. ‘I must say though, the bed fits you better! Me, my feet stick out, and my arms flop – thus.’ He lolled hugely in his chair, looking so truly ridiculous that she couldn’t help but giggle.

He scraped the chair closer. ‘That is more like it,’ he said. ‘You should not be crying, when God gives you such a face.’

Astrid paused. Her heart was still racing, but now, more in anger than terror. She needed a way to fight back, but more than that, she needed to know her own mind: to be more than a piece in other people’s games. In men’s games.

‘Folkmar,’ she said. ‘What does your Christ have to say about women?’

The huge man pursed his lips, scratched his pate.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘is quite a lot. You know two of his most important followers were being women, for beginnings.’

‘Just tell me one thing: can women marry for themselves? Here, a married woman may leave her man and keep her own wealth, but first we’re bargained for, like – like cattle.’ Her voice was bitter with emotion.

Folkmar rose, breathing hard with the effort. His glistening face grew animated. ‘Now, Astrid, you are talking of a question being very near to my heart: marriage.’

He reached out with a trembling hand towards her face. ‘Is anyone ever telling you, how beautiful you are being?’

‘Oh, by Njord’s fair feet, what is it with you men?!’ Astrid sprang up fast as a falcon, and ran from the room.

Leif found her in the herb garden, walled from the wind. Astrid lay among rows of rosemary, picking at the scurvy grass that grew in clumps along the rocky border. She was face down, nose buried in the turf.

‘Astrid?’

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she spoke into the soil. ‘Enjoyed your nap?’

‘I wasn’t asleep!’ he protested, stung. ‘I was being a mouse.’

At that, she looked up. Grass and mud clung to her red, wet face. ‘A mouse?’

‘I went into a trance to spy on your brother and Folkmar. They do have a plan. But you turned up before I found it out. Which reminds me. Why have you been crying?’

‘I wasn’t crying!’

He waited.

‘All right, I was. Leif, look at me a moment. What do you see?’

‘Mostly, dirt. And rage. And – a trick question?’

She sighed. ‘Well, at least you admit that I’ve got a mind of my own.’

‘Please, Astrid, tell me why you’re so upset.’

She gestured at a patch of ground beside her. He sat. She gave him a leaf of scurvy-grass. He nibbled it.

‘It’s very peppery,’ he offered.

She almost smiled. ‘This morning, Knut sent for me,’ she began. ‘He wanted me to take a message …’

That morning, Astrid had been put at work in the yard, preparing overwintered leeks for a stew.

Thunder-faced, Knut appeared, and shouted to his sister. ‘Astrid, take Hestur and ride over to Hellir. I’ve a message for Thorbjorn.’

‘To Hellir? But I’m not allowed …’

He waved her objections aside. ‘Tell Thorbjorn not to bring the men up to Jelling today. They’re to stay put, and I’ll join them for dinner. If he asks my reasons, tell him this: that the early summer heat prickles many men’s nerves, and Hellir is cooler than Jelling when tempers run hot.’

Astrid nodded – a ride was more fun than cooking – and made to leave.

‘Oh, and, Astrid,’ he called after her. ‘If Thorbjorn asks for anything else – anything, mind – be sure to let him have it.’

It was all very strange, but she saddled up eagerly enough. Knut must be trying to avoid a fight breaking out between his men and Haralt’s. As for his last words – well, who cared? It was sunny and she was free. She might as well enjoy the moment.

Hellir lay just east of Jelling, and was where Knut’s berserks lived when not at Gorm’s hall. Astrid had hardly ever been there, though it was so close. The place was out of bounds to all women and children … and in any case, she remembered, gasping, you smelt Hellir before you saw it. Hestur bridled as the stench of sweat, blood and worse things flooded their nostrils.

Alighting a safe distance from the camp, Astrid tethered Hestur to a branch. She knew too well the fate of horses left unattended within Hellir. Mustering her courage, she strode down the single dusty street. ‘Thorbjorn!’ she yelled.

The place seemed deserted. On either side ran squalid huts, roofed with turf, more like forest caves than proper houses. Not a door was open. Feeling very small, Astrid went up to one and knocked.

No reply.

She tried the handle; it didn’t budge. It felt as if a heavy object was wedged against the door from inside.

Now she thought about it, the whole place had the air of a camp under siege. And it was nearly noon – even warriors couldn’t be sleeping in this late …

A wheelbarrow, overturned, split apart. A battleaxe abandoned in the dust.

Smoke rising from a burnt-out hut, a pine tree toppled to lie in solitary ruin amid the embers, like a spear resting in the ribcage of the roof.

Just what had been going on here?

Too late, Astrid had the answer. And she began to run, to run for her life, as a shadow fell across the path, and behind her, she heard the beat of heavy wings.

It was here; the beast was here, now, coming closer. A single door lay ahead of her at the street’s end, and Astrid hurtled towards it, slamming her body against the cankered oak planks.

The planks held firm. The sound of wings grew louder. She could have wept.

‘Open up!’ she panted, breathless. ‘Please!’ She beat at the lock with her fist.

The wings were silent. In the sudden hush, Astrid dared to hope. Had it gone?

And then she heard the lazy tread of heavy feet, coming down the street towards her.

Think, she told herself. A lock: it must be Thorbjorn’s door, the best hut in Hellir. It was the lock that kept her out, nothing more.

If Leif were here, he would talk to it, ask it to open. She couldn’t do that. Could she?

Astrid opened her mouth, but found no words. The footsteps were nearer now.

No words – but a tune that rose unsought to her lips; that danced upon her tongue.

From behind her came a fierce heat, a harsh smell, a dryness. The beast was moments away.

And Astrid sang: a nervous, queer little melody – a rising scale with a quiver at the end. The sound of a secret almost told. She was searching for one final note to end the tune, to form the key …

And she had it! With a click and a creak, the lock turned, and the door swung.

A metallic rasping from behind her and a rushing of air, but she was through through through, and slamming the door behind her.

An inhuman shriek of fury from outside shook the hut. Frozen, Astrid listened, as the beast paced about, footfalls heavy in the dust. At last she heard the whump and whirr, as once more its wings churned the air, and then it faded, and faded, and the beast was gone.

She wouldn’t cry. Not yet. She still had a message to deliver.

‘Thorbjorn?’ she said.

The darkness in the hut was near total. It stank worse than outside, but there was a new note in the stench – honey, sickly sweet. Astrid peered into the black.

The smell came from young mushrooms, growing through the floor, bulbous pale heads thrusting up from fat white stems. She bent closer. Death caps, she decided, and shrunk away from the fleshy growths.

‘Who’s there?’ The growl came from the depths of the hut.

‘It’s me. Astrid.’ She crept further in. Something hard cracked under her foot. Bone? It flashed whitely as it rolled aside, into the gloom. She bit her lip.

‘Stay back,’ said the voice, thick and brown. ‘It isn’t safe.’

‘I know,’ she stammered. ‘The beast was right here! But it’s gone now. And I’ve … I’ve got a message for you, from Knut. Where are you?’

The smell now hung so thick it might have been grease in the air. Roof and walls were low and close, hemming her in, but she’d come this far. And squinting ahead, she thought she saw a figure, covered in furs.

Somewhere, flies were droning.

The figure turned its face to hers – except, it couldn’t be a face. It was too long, too heavy, too low down.

The thing – Thorbjorn? – growled again, enormously loud.

Not a man’s growl, but a bear’s.

A huge, furred limb reached out for her. She saw teeth, and she ran, ran, ran.

Everything she’d heard about berserkers had been true. She was out in the sun and racing to Hestur, and everywhere were bears, bears in doorways, bears in the street, but she was in the saddle and kicking away and Hellir was behind her, behind her.

‘And that’s why the beserkers were all in hiding. Men turning into bears – that’s just the sort of pagan magic Folkmar wants to stamp out. If the beast is following his orders, then no wonder it attacked Hellir,’ said Astrid.

‘It must have taken you for one of them. It’s a shame that you never saw the beast.’

‘You’d never have dared look either. Besides, there was no time.’ She glared. ‘So anyway, I came straight to you, and you were asleep, so I went to my bed. Folkmar was there –’

‘In your bed?’

‘In a chair. I was so mad at Knut for sending me that I asked all about Christ, and –’

‘Astrid, not you too? What were you thinking?’

‘You needn’t worry about that. Turns out Folkmar’s less interested in my “soul” than in … well … I swear, Haralt and Knut, they’re as bad as each other.’

‘I don’t understand … ‘

‘They’ve both been looking to get me married off to suit themselves. I see it now … parading me before their favourites like a prize mare. Thorbjorn or Folkmar: which is worse?’

‘Folkmar would never marry a pagan.’

‘But what if they win, Leif? What if they win, and we’re all made Christians? Or what if they lose, and I’m given to Thorbjorn instead?’

She was tearing up whole clumps of herbs, her arms shaking.

Leif went to her. ‘They use you. All of them. It’s what they do. Your brothers, Thyre – all they want is power.’

He was getting angry too. ‘These tall, pale lords, with blood upon their hands – they only care for keeping this land theirs.’

Astrid glared, but Leif didn’t notice. ‘And where are you and me in all of this? Just pieces on a board, moved on a whim.’ He remembered the ivory gaming piece, sent flying by Haralt’s fist.

‘That’s my family you’re talking about, Leif.’ Her words were slow, hard, measured.

‘I know – and do they act like it to you?’

‘I don’t care. You’ve no right to go casting slurs on those you’ve come to serve.’

‘Astrid, what is this –’

Furious, she cut across him. ‘No one’s going to sell me to another man against my will. But you, you’ve sold yourself already, to my father. Remember? You’re sworn to follow him; you eat at his bench. So don’t go biting the hand that feeds you, all right? What’ve you got against them anyway? The king’s not hurt you.’

‘In Iceland,’ Leif shot back, ‘they have no king. Just poets, traders, farmers – and it seems to work all right!’

‘Well why don’t you just GO to Iceland then!’

He had no answer.

‘I’ll tell you why –' she was shouting now – ‘because you love all this. The power. The importance. The courtliness. You say you don’t but you love it, because it makes you think this is where things happen, and it makes you feel like you’re a part of it all. You’re scared of Christians because they’ve no need of skalds – what’s the point of someone who can make up poems about gods no one believes in anyway – and you’re not going to leave Jelling, because so long as you are the king’s skald, you can say you matter!’

She wiped some grass-green spit from her mouth. ‘Besides, you’d never leave these silly stones until you’ve proved yourself somehow, which is, by the way, just like a boy and incredibly boring. And now you’re all agog with this big danger, and your sacred destiny – you get to make the choices, you’re going to save the trolls – and you know what, Leif? You know what? Good for you, but leave me out of it, because I do know what I want, and if anyone’s running off to Iceland, it’s me. So don’t pretend we’re in this together, because they may be my family, and your skin may be darker than ours, but you’re more one of them than I’ll ever be, and I’ve had enough!’

She stared at him, face flushed, daring him to bite back. There was a hush. Bees flitted round the rosemary.

‘You wouldn’t, though, would you?’ said Leif, at last. ‘Leave, I mean?’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Not now everything’s started to happen. Not until it’s over, one way or the other. I just wish …’

‘Yes?’

‘All this magic – I just wish it didn’t have to be so destructive. Bears, beasts, storms, fire – why can’t anything just be fun?’

Leif rose. ‘You know, that sounds like a challenge.’