CHAPTER THREE

Next morning, a breeze was blowing from the southwest.

Hakan decided this was the only good thing about the day since, instead of sleeping off the ill-effects of the night before, he was astride his horse.

His father had woken him with a kick, and told him to get dressed. When he’d shaken the sleep from his head and appeared in Haldan’s chamber, his father said he was sending him to Vindhaven, the small market harbour half a day’s ride south.

Officially, he was to report on the provisioning there: how trade had gone over the summer, what stores they had laid aside from harvest, the state of their flocks and herds, how they would fare through the coming winter, what levies in skins, amber and such like they meant to send north to Vendlagard.

Unofficially, his father ordered him south to cool his heels. ‘I don’t want to see you for a week,’ he growled. ‘Preferably two.’ After Vindhaven, Hakan was to head to Vestberg and then cut north to Hallstorp, before he came home. It wasn’t the first time he’d taken the brunt of his father’s wrath. But that morning, Hakan had to admit, Haldan was in a rare fury.

‘You and your bloody temper!’ Hakan had put at risk everything he had been building for fifteen years, he railed. Hakan knew a feud with the Karlungs wasn’t in their interest, and his scuffle with Konur had given Earl Karsten leverage against his father.

But he also suspected his father had woken with a few regrets of his own. He had gone too far last night with that business with the vala. Perhaps it had been the drink. That and Haldan’s steel-edged certainty of always knowing right from wrong. But Hakan suspected this time his father had acted without thinking. That was a rare thing. Whatever came of it, his father’s deed would win no one’s praise.

So Haldan was taking out his disgruntlement on his son. And here he was, under a sweltering sun, sweating through breeches too thick, with a stomach leaping about like a herring on a hook.

It was just before noon. Already he had stopped to nap in the shade of a wood to avoid tumbling from his saddle asleep and breaking his neck. He’d tried sticking his head in a stream a league back. Bliss while it lasted, but not enough to stop the pounding in his temples nor the sick feeling in his belly.

Sick and angry.

It was all well for his father to berate him for his short temper but it didn’t take a vala to know where that came from. Almost as long as he could remember, Hakan had had to answer the taunts of other boys. Cripple, they called him. And a cripple he was, thanks to his father.

He’d hardly been five winters old when Haldan took him for a walk down by the shores of the Juten Belt. There he had helped him climb to the top of a rock, as high as he’d ever climbed. Hakan thought they were playing a game. His father stood below, arms outstretched. ‘Jump!’ he’d said. ‘Jump and I’ll catch you. Come on, don’t you trust me?’ Of course, he had trusted him. Hakan had swallowed down his terror and jumped. And at the last moment, his father stepped aside. He meant for his son to land in the sand and take a tumble. But there had been another rock hidden under the sand. Hakan had landed right on it and cracked his ankle. After that he could walk only with a limp; run hardly at all. Not like the other boys anyway.

His mother had been furious. ‘What the Hel do you think you were doing?’ she had screamed.

‘Teaching him a lesson,’ replied Haldan.

She had sworn and asked what possible lesson that could be.

‘That you can’t trust anyone in this world,’ Haldan had replied. ‘The sooner he learns that the better.’

Well, Hakan had remembered the lesson. His ankle would hardly let him forget it. Of course, his father had been sorry. He hadn’t meant for him to be hurt. It was no honour to Haldan to have a son with a limp, after all. But in a twisted way, it had served Hakan. If you can’t run, you have to stand and fight.

He’d learned how to do that, and right well.

When the thumping in his head allowed, he spent the journey trying not to dwell on the words the vala had spoken over him. Easier said than done. They kept returning to his mind like the refrain in some unending song. With each repetition, they pushed further into his brain, roots burrowing deeper, never to be dislodged.

He tried to dispel them with happier daydreams of Inga. But these seemed to slew from sun-bathed visions of them as man and wife, an absurdly pretty child running about their feet, to recollections of their sweaty couplings, up against a barn or rolling around in the dry dirt of some wood. Neither of these achieved much besides leaving him simmering with frustration. And then he remembered seeing her across the feast, laughing at something Konur had said, the way he touched her elbow. And instead of his own body, writhing with hers in a slick of sweat, he pictured Konur’s, and jealousy bubbled bitter in his guts.

And yet, this was Inga. Maddening as she was, he had never been able to stay angry with her for long.

When the sun reached its highest, he came to the top of a hill and saw for the first time the inlet where Vindhaven lay. The settlement had grown up along the northern edge of Odd’s Sound, a shallow fjord that opened into the grey rollers of the Juten Belt. A small beech wood ran along the ridgeline, obscuring the village from view, but over the treetops he could see skeins of rising smoke.

He kicked his horse on towards the wood. But as he did, he sensed something was wrong.

On a summer’s morning, there would be fires. People had to cook; the smiths’ forges must keep burning. But so many? With smoke so black? Instead of a few wisps, dark billows stained the sky.

Reaching the wood, he slipped from his horse and guided it through the undergrowth. Suddenly he stopped. Some instinct told him to go on alone. Tethering the mare, he crept forward the last few yards.

At the treeline, he froze.

Vindhaven was burning.

Below, the ground fell away into meadows; beyond that, along the shoreline, were the barns and dwellings of Vindhaven. Every one was on fire.

Thatching snapped and cracked. The village was chaos. Men stalked about bristling with war-gear, menacing in their iron helms and mailshirts. Some went bare-chested, others wore wolf-skins. All of them carried evil-looking axes or crude butcher’s knives. Even from there, Hakan saw they were stained red with blood.

He shrank behind a blood-beech, fear drying his mouth. Screams and wails spiralled towards him on the breeze. The roof of the meet-hall, the heart of the little harbour, suddenly caved with a gush of soot and sparks.

He saw heaps of discarded clothing. Not heaps, but bodies, he realized. Vindhaven was not well defended. They had spears, axes, a few swords, and a handful of men who knew how to use them. But nothing to withstand these killers. The butchery must have hit them like a sea-squall.

There was worse to see.

In front of the meet-hall, a furnace was blazing. A few yards away was a line of villagers on their knees. Some sobbed; some writhed on the ground. Others pleaded with the big warriors. A few waited meek as lambs.

Within the furnace, darker shapes broiled. The stench of burning flesh floated like demon’s breath to his hiding place. And then the biggest of the wolf-warriors began his grisly work.

Schuck, schuck, schuck. The noise of his axe carried with the stench. Hakan watched, eyes riveted to the sight of head after head rolling on the ground like gaming-bones, painting the mud crimson. From that distance they might be rag dolls, heads plucked and tossed away – one child taunting another. Except dolls didn’t scream like that.

Suddenly, from one of the nearby houses, a boy appeared, not ten winters old, screaming like Hel’s own hound. He ran at the nearest raider – a squat killer, half-naked, face black with tattoos. The boy had a butcher’s knife.

Brave little bastard.

There was a streak of steel, and the killer’s axe opened him up from rib to spine. He crumpled into a shuddering heap of rag and bone.

Hakan tasted bile.

Something caught the tail of his eye and he looked east. An old woman broke from the lee of a smithy and ran for the slope. She was coming straight for him. He clenched his teeth, willing her on; but she was desperately slow.

She’d put maybe forty yards between her and the village before one of the wolf-warriors saw her. He sprang after her, and was on her in moments, knocking her down without even breaking stride. She rolled over, trying to fend him off, but he just ignored her puny fists, threw her on her face, and shoved up her skirts. Her wails faded to pitiful moans. When he was done, he pulled up his breeches, and, almost as an afterthought, pinioned her with his spear.

By now, most of his comrades were carrying chests or trestles loaded with pots and barrels and other goods. They wouldn’t find much of value among the meagre homes of Vindhaven. A little gold or silver hidden away if they were lucky. Bronze or glassware maybe, what they could carry of the harvest yields, a few weapons.

They wouldn’t leave empty handed, but it was hardly rich spoils.

Then Hakan looked further east, and through the drifting smoke he made out the lines of a ship. Even from there, he could see it was a true wolf of the sea: hull sleek and black, maybe thirty paces end to end; with a single mast, its sail furled out of the wind; a fierce prow. In the hold, lashed together and wretched as beggars, Hakan spied women – a dozen of them, heads drooped in fear.

Perhaps the raiders had done better than he thought. Thralls were valuable anywhere; thrall-girls more than most.

He was suddenly filled with fury. These were his people. They looked to his father for their protection. One day it would be him they looked to. Yet how these folk had been failed!

He felt ashamed and full of vengeance.

But what could he do? An unblooded warrior – against a whole raiding party? There must be forty, if a man.

He looked at them more closely. One nearest to him had a rusty beard; another, white-blond hair poking out from his helm. Many others had the same colouring. Most were of a hefty build. They weren’t Jutes. Nor even Danes. Truth was they could have come from anywhere around the East Sea. To Hakan, they looked like northerners, but then many lands lay to the north. Gotars or Finns. Estlanders perhaps, or Norskmen?

Whoever, the raid must be avenged if possible.

If he brought word to his father now, what use would that be with no clue as to where they went? So, settling down in the shadow of the wood, he decided to wait and see which course they set.

It was mid-afternoon before the raiders had loaded all they could, readied their ship and took up their oars to follow Odd’s Sound out to the open sea.

He swung into his saddle and rode for the shore. The wind was up, having wheeled to the west. Men were moving on deck, and then the great russet sail unfurled and caught the wind.

The ship leaned over, planks kicking up spray as they cut the waves. At first, the ship headed east, away from the land. Straight across the Juten Belt. Towards Gotarland.

But some way offshore, the prow swung north.

The course was set.

Northwards.

He rode up the beach, staying with them best he could until the ship built momentum and began to slip away.

‘Norskmen,’ he muttered. He thought he heard laughter chattering across the waves. ‘Laugh, if you will. But you’d better flee like the wind.’ The arm of his father’s vengeance was long, swift and crueller than Hel. He watched the stern of the Norskmen’s ship rise and fall with the swell.

‘We’re coming for you,’ he whispered, putting his heels to his horse’s flank. The mare took off in a spray of sand.

‘We’re coming for you!’