Days passed, their destination drawing ever closer, the autumn weather holding, thankfully. Bright days, with just a small chill in the air a reminder that cold times were coming. Finally, Thurstan announced that they had passed from French lands and into those controlled by the Norman lords, and even though that would not be the end of potential danger, and no one truly knew what to expect, there was still a tangible air of relief among the weary travellers.
One morning, as the sun blazed over the horizon at the small column, each wagon hooked up and ready for the day’s journey, Ulfr found himself whistling an old tune in an almost jolly manner as he walked around the women’s wagon and checked everything one last time. He could see Beatrix de Hauteville in some animated discussion with Thurstan and Halfdan by the lead wagon, and the murmur of the other three women issued from within.
He was not a man prone to eavesdropping, but it was hard not to hear as he climbed up to the driver’s bench and checked the reins, preparing for the off, the occupants only a few feet behind him through the canvas flap.
‘It was so vague. Have you tried again?’ Cassandra was saying.
‘No. That is the very point,’ Gunnhild replied with strained patience. ‘I am not sure that I need to.’
‘So what is it that you have seen now, without casting?’
There was a pensive, uncomfortable silence, and Ulfr found himself willing the conversation to restart. It sounded interesting, important. Finally, Gunnhild sighed.
‘It is not so much seen. I find it hard to describe, for I have not the words.’
‘Try,’ Anna urged.
‘I have told you of the divinings. Of the bones and the beads. Of walking with the goddess and of the lifting of my being into the world of prophecy. Of how it feels?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Cassandra.
‘This is not the same. When I cast bones, I will see a scene, or a tapestry of woven possibilities and certainties. It is rarely clear and requires some interpretation. But it is a visible thing, something that can be remembered and unpicked for the truth. This is different.’
Again there was a pause, and Ulfr wondered if he should be fetching Halfdan to hear this. But he didn’t have time – he might miss something if he left. As if to accentuate that, Gunnhild chose that moment to go on.
‘This is a feeling. A nebulous thing with no detail. But it is new. Something I cannot remember. All I know is that I have felt things and they have been borne out by events. Usually only small things of interest. I knew we would have a slow day, that day back in Burgundy when Ketil’s wagon broke a wheel. And we hardly moved that day. And now, I feel a growing trouble, rising like a cloud to envelop us. More than that, I cannot say.’
‘You are völva now,’ Anna said, discomfort tinting the word in her voice. ‘Perhaps this is because you have become something new?’
Again, a pause, then with a heavy breath, ‘I cannot rule that out, but I wonder in myself if this is not my punishment by the Norns. I defied them in Miklagarðr. I turned my back on that golden bear as he sailed away, and in doing so I cut the threads they had woven me. I have known from that moment that something would come of it. I would pay for my arrogance. I had thought that not being able to hear the goddess for a time was that punishment, but I suspect that was Freyja’s choice, not willing to walk with me in that strange southern world where your nailed god is all powerful. I wonder if the Norns are now punishing me with a taste of the weaving. If, perhaps, I am seeing their work even as they weave.’
‘Perhaps—’ Their conversation stopped suddenly, and the reason became clear in just moments as Beatrix appeared, climbing up to the wagon.
‘If you have no objection, I will ride here?’ she said.
Ulfr shrugged an answer. It mattered not to him. Halfdan might argue, for it would look strange to passers-by to find a noblewoman amid monks, but even if that could not be explained, Ulfr reasoned that he could easily shuffle her back inside through the canvas flap before anyone saw her.
Her expression was dark. It often was. If they had needed a visual confirmation that they had crossed into Norman lands, it was writ upon Beatrix’s face. The closer they came to their destination, the less content she became. She had been prickly these past few days, hard to deal with, much as she had been when they first left Melfi. Her darkening attitude had irritated Gunnhild sufficiently that the previous afternoon the völva had exploded and given the Norman noblewoman a piece of her mind, in very blunt and even insulting terms. Since then, Beatrix had kept herself away from the other women, and it was therefore no great surprise that she chose to ride up front.
Part of her decision might be Ulfr himself, though. He had, throughout the journey, found within himself an unexpected sympathy for her. Her plight was really none of their concern, beyond the business transacted between Halfdan and Iron Arm, and once they left her with her family, they would forget all about her. But enforced proximity over these months had led to an understanding of her situation for the middle-aged worker of wood who drove her wagon. She was not one of those shrinking, obedient wenches they seemed to like in the nailed-god lands of the south. She was proud and fierce, like a good woman of northern stone and ice, and yet her fate had been decided for her by her family. She was to be shackled in marriage to a man she had never met and did not want. There was nothing she could do to stop it, and the gods knew she had tried, so far even as to flee halfway across the world to the one brother she thought might intervene. And the Wolves were little more than her jailers, taking her back to face that fate. As such, Ulfr had made himself be as calming and as friendly as he could. Where everyone else became irritated with her, Ulfr had listened and nodded, soothing. It had cost him nothing, and he was a patient man. A shipbuilder had to be.
He listened to the general hum of the gathering as they prepared, Beatrix silent beside him. She almost radiated anger. Whatever she had been discussing with Halfdan and Thurstan had not pleased her – likely she had once again attempted to persuade them to a change of course. After a time, the call to move on was given, and the wagons began to roll and grind forward, those men on horseback walking their mounts steadily alongside. As usual, Ulfr’s was the fourth of the five wagons, with the ones before and after containing, as well as the gold, Thurstan’s soldiers. More of the Wolves brought up the rear. They may be dressed as monks, but each man was still armed in some manner and prepared for trouble. As well as Beatrix, they had another precious cargo, after all.
The morning wore on, with only occasional other road users, each time Beatrix ducking back into the cover of the wagon until they had passed.
Her anger slowly faded into the background irritation that seemed to be her natural state, yet whenever she turned to Ulfr, she managed a weak smile. She seemed to save them for him, which was perhaps understandable, given that he was the only one who seemed to hold a shred of sympathy for her.
‘Have you always been a teamster?’ she asked, out of the blue.
Ulfr’s brow creased. ‘Teamster?’
‘A wagoner. You handle both vehicle and animals so well it seems you were born to it. I would not know how to begin.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s an easy enough thing. Any vehicle can be learned, animals or not. I have driven wagons in my time, but they are not my life, my passion.’
There was the oddest of pauses, and when he looked round, Beatrix was giving him a strange look, almost as though she were trying to unpick the stitches that held him together.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Men do not have passions, in my experience. Or, at least, they have only basic ones. I have noted in all men I meet passion only for food and drink, for women and for war. Four basic loves of men.’
Ulfr almost laughed out loud. If anyone had asked him to describe Bjorn, that might well have been the perfect match. It had been something of a sweeping statement, but in many cases, she was right. The quintessential man of the North lived for such things. But not all men were the same.
‘You would not understand,’ he said, although not unkindly. She had enough troubles.
‘Test me, if you would.’
The road ahead was flat, straight, and of good quality, and the animal in the traces was content at a steady plod, so Ulfr wound the reins around the peg before him, anchoring them, and turned to her, folding his arms.
‘Your people were once of the North, like us – sons of Odin and of Thor. Once, your forebears raided the coastlines to survive, taking Hacksilver and thralls where you could. Wielding axes, and with beaded beards.’
She gave him a strange smile. ‘It sounds almost… desirable, poetic, the way you say it.’
‘There are few of us now who live that old life, and we cling to what made our people. And while we were born of grey rock and white ice, children of ash and elm, the whale road was our way, our path. We rode the ways in dragons.’
She frowned. ‘Whale road? You mean ships?’
He nodded. ‘You cannot understand. There is no feeling in the world like standing in the prow of a sleek dragon ship, the sail bellied with a following wind, skipping across the white waves, searching the unknown, hunting and journeying the whale road. It is a unique feeling, and one that cannot be found anywhere else, even if there is just the slightest echo of it in a wagon.’ He smiled, indicating the tied reins.
Beatrix de Hauteville snorted. ‘You think so little of us. You think that we are a weak and ordered people. That we have lost that which you describe.’
‘Not weak,’ Ulfr said. ‘Never weak.’
‘Still,’ she said, folding her own arms, mirroring him, ‘you believe truly that you are alone in your love of your whale road?’
He said nothing. He was a little lost with what she meant.
‘Would it surprise you,’ she went on, ‘to know that I know the thrill of a face battered by sea spray? Of the lurch and buck of a ship in high waves? And not the wide merchants they use in the south. My people still sail, and we know a little of that ancient world you describe. I know sleek hunter ships.’
‘You sail?’
Beatrix laughed, then. ‘I was brought up at Pirou, one of the family’s castles. Pirou is by the coast, built there to protect two harbours, to north and south. My father was always a sailor, even if his love of the ocean has been somewhat diluted among his sons. I spent my childhood with him at one harbour or another, at Fulquerville or at Givolli Fossa, and out on the waves. The family’s demesne covers a number of coastal towns, and it was usually quicker to visit our various lands by ship than by wagon.’
Ulfr nodded thoughtfully. Perhaps he had underestimated this woman. He had known her to have strength beneath her spiky exterior, but it sounded as though she truly understood the call of the whale road. He flourished a cheeky smile.
‘How do you lower the yard?’ he said.
Her eyebrows rose, and for a moment he thought he had caught her out. Then she snorted and tossed her hair, the braid at the back flicking like a whip. ‘Let out the halyard slowly. But there needs to be at least two of you, for your companion needs to keep on the other ropes and make sure the rakke does not spin, lest you be plucked from the deck and hurled into the water.’
‘Shit, girl, you know your ships. As a boy I suffered that very accident. Almost did for me. Held tight to the halyard and was smacked into the sheer strake. Broke three ribs on the way down to the water. Fortunately we were in the harbour in Sigtun when it happened, and Ran’s reach was insufficient to claim me.’
They fell silent, each contemplating the waves neither had seen for so long. As his thoughts wandered and struck upon the subject of her history once more, a thought occurred to him, and his eyes narrowed.
‘Is that why you do not want your marriage? Is this Eu place inland?’
She shrugged, though her face had darkened again at the reminder, and Ulfr regretted raising the subject. ‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘But the ring on my finger may as well be a shackle on my ankle. At Pirou I was never far from the water, and a week rarely passed without some sea journey or other. I cannot see that ever being my fate in Eu.’
He nodded. Again, it was really none of his business, once they had delivered her, but his sympathy deepened. He could not imagine any life in which he was taken from the sea and denied it. It would not be a life of any sort. If he were Beatrix, he, too, would have railed against such a fate.
He bit down hard on that, and forced himself back to a dispassionate view. He could hardly afford to be tied up in this. In just days, she would be gone and he would be looking for a new ship and a way back to the whale road.
They rode the rest of the day in silence, barring a few minor pleasantries. They stopped for lunch by a river, eating a simple snack of salted meat, cheese and bread. For the first time since the fight in the forest, Leif seemed back to his normal self. He had slept worryingly long and often, the first couple of days, and had even then been rather withdrawn, although the latter might be more the fault of Bjorn, who took every opportunity to prod the little Rus in his circular hammer wound and then waddle off, chortling. ‘Seven days,’ Thurstan estimated, until they reached Eu and the end of their journey.
There was a renewed sense of purpose when they rumbled on that afternoon. It had been the longest land-bound journey of their collective lives, and though they had made new friends along the way, in the form of Thurstan’s Normans, and had a few small adventures, had eaten surprisingly well, and suffered few real setbacks, every one of them would be grateful to move on, to look for a ship and to head north again.
Indeed, there was something of a festive atmosphere that night as they made camp, their journey almost at an end. Wine and beer were broken out in larger quantities than usual, knowing that soon they would be able to resupply properly. There was singing around the fire, with Leif playing the pipes and Bjorn belting out a song that sounded like a dangerously unlikely sex manual in a thoroughly unmusical voice. They were careful, despite everything, the memory of that attack in the woods fresh. Two men would stay on watch, and they limited their drinking to remain alert. Farlof sat at the edge of the firelight to one side of the camp, and Leif at the other, the little Rus still recovering his wits and happy not to overindulge on this occasion.
The night’s revelry ended later than usual, too, and it was easily past midnight when the travellers turned in. The men rolled in their blankets on the turf, Gunnhild and her women in their own little sub-camp, undisturbed by the men, Beatrix in the wagon, with Ulfr asleep on the bench seat as usual.
It was dark when his eyes snapped open, his hand going reflexively to the hilt of the sax at his belt. It stayed there as a cold hand closed on it and pushed the blade back into the sheath. He turned and looked up into the disconcertingly large and clear green eyes of Gunnhild. He blinked and, noticing movement out of the corner of his eye, looked past her to see Cassandra and Anna waiting, looking worried.
‘Where is the Hauteville woman?’ Gunnhild hissed.
Ulfr, frowning, thumbed at the wagon behind him, turning over. The flap was down, and Gunnhild moved then, like a wraith, fluid and strange, ripping open the canvas flap. Ulfr focused for a moment as he looked past her and felt his stomach lurch. The wagon was empty. Not entirely, of course, but certainly Beatrix was nowhere to be seen. Her personal bag, brought all the way from Melfi, was gone, as were two blankets, a cloak and a dagger. One of the caskets of gold had been levered open, too, and though there was no way to check swiftly, Ulfr would be willing to bet that a handful of coins had gone. The rear flap of the wagon was loose – her escape route, clearly.
He winced and rubbed his eyes as he sat up.
‘How did you know?’
Gunnhild gave him a withering look, and he returned a weak smile.
‘I have felt this coming for two days now,’ she snarled. ‘I have known there would be trouble, yet it was too vague for me, and I did not act upon it. Foolish. I should have anticipated every possible type of trouble. I should have scattered bones and walked with the goddess. I have been complacent.’
‘How long has she been gone?’ Ulfr said, stretching and looking about.
Gunnhild glared at him. ‘Perhaps we should ask the man who was dozing happily not five feet from her? How should I know when?’ she growled. ‘Some time in the last three hours, once everyone was abed. The question is not how long, but where has she gone.’
Gunnhild left him, then, storming across to where the men slept, though many were already waking with the commotion. She went straight to Halfdan to warn him. Guilt filling him for not having anticipated this, and certainly for not noticing her go, Ulfr clambered down from the wagon. Beatrix would have left camp, surely, but if so, why had she not been seen? One glance and he could see Farlof coming back into the diminished light of the camp, joining the others, learning the news. With a sinking feeling, Ulfr rounded the wagon and moved out into the darkness, where the last embers of the campfire failed to illuminate the surroundings. There, with pounding pulse, he found the rock upon which Leif had been sitting, and spotted the heap of a body nearby.
Shit. And he couldn’t blame Leif, as he had the Norman who’d failed to notice trouble in the woods a few days before. Leif had probably been perfectly alert, but would not expect to be jumped from behind by someone from their own camp. With an awful sense of déjà vu, he knelt over Leif and checked neck and nose. Breath and pulse were both present. The man was still alive – again. Lifting the unconscious man a little, he was aware of warm stickiness on his hand as he cradled the Rus’s head. The back of his hair was matted. There appeared to be no fracture, Ulfr ascertained with a little probing, but he’d been given a good thump. Almost directly opposite the hammer wound on his forehead, in fact. Leif had always been too quick-witted. Were jealous gods trying to thump the brains out of the man?
He looked around, but could find no other marks or trail. It was too dark and dry for that. Lifting the little man with ease, he swung Leif over his shoulder and began to walk back to the circle of firelight. Chaos reigned as everyone demanded or shouted, blamed or questioned, all wondering what had happened.
‘She has gone,’ Ulfr shouted over the top of them, his call drawing everyone’s attention. Anna turned and, seeing the shape on his shoulder, her hand flew to her mouth, eyes going wide.
Ulfr lifted his free hand, holding it out toward her. ‘He’s all right, Anna. Had his wits knocked clear again. He’ll be out for a few hours and have a day-long headache, but he’ll be fine. I think he was hit with a log this time, not a hammer.
‘Count the horses,’ Halfdan shouted, pointing at Farlof, then to Ketil. ‘Go to Leif’s position. Find her trail.’
As the two men hurried off to carry out those tasks, Halfdan, with Gunnhild at his side, stormed over to Ulfr. ‘How could you not notice her leave?’
Ulfr fixed his jarl with a defiant look. ‘You ask the impossible. Were there two of me, I could have slept at both ends of the wagon, I suppose. Perhaps a wise jarl would have assigned more guards?’
Halfdan, clearly taken aback by the vehemence of Ulfr’s reply, nodded. ‘Sorry, old friend.’ He turned to Thurstan instead.
Ulfr grabbed his shoulder. ‘Don’t. They were no more expecting this than we were. She’s a clever one. She’s lulled us over the weeks into thinking she had accepted her lot, and she waited until the night we were all tired and beer-addled. She must have been planning this for days.’
Gunnhild cleared her throat. ‘The fault lies with us all. We should have seen this coming, each of us. We can blame one another, but that does not solve the problem.’
‘Where will she have gone?’ Bjorn rumbled, joining them.
‘Not to Eu,’ Gunnhild said. ‘Escaping her fate at Eu is precisely what caused her to run. As though fate can be escaped,’ she added, with a hint of personal bitterness.
‘And not back the way we came,’ Halfdan added. ‘Last time she fled to her brother, she probably went by ship, and she cannot possibly risk travelling alone through French and Burgundian territory. She likely made for lands with which she is familiar. She took gold?’ he asked, looking across at Ulfr, who nodded. ‘Then she can probably afford to take ship.’
‘Pirou,’ Ulfr said, suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Pirou. It’s a family castle where she lived as a child, close to two harbours. She knows it well, knows the harbours, probably even the ships and their skippers.’
Halfdan breathed deep. ‘Sounds most likely then.’ He turned to Thurstan. ‘Do you know of Pirou?’
The man nodded. ‘It is on the coast on the Cotentin Peninsula beyond Coutances. A distance away, though. Eu is but sixty miles or so north, while Pirou must be over a hundred to the west.’
‘And she is moving fast,’ Farlof added, rejoining them. ‘One horse missing. The fastest, too. Your horse,’ he confirmed, looking at Halfdan, who quivered with irritation.
Ketil returned moments later, too, shaking his head. ‘I found faint hoof prints in places nearby, but even when the sun is up, her trail will be spotty at best. The ground is hard as a rock from weeks of dry sun, and there are plenty of gravel roads where horses have left other tracks.’
‘It matters not,’ Halfdan sighed. ‘We know where she is going. A hundred miles? Even resting the horse well, she could manage that in two days, even if she is not a good horsewoman.’
‘More,’ Thurstan said. ‘Noblewomen are not habitually taught to ride. She will be lucky if she is not thrown in the first mile.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Ulfr said. ‘She’s brighter and stronger than you think. She may be no practised horsewoman, but she will learn fast. Say three days.’
‘And how long will it take us?’ Ketil said, rubbing his missing eye out of habit.
‘If we travel from before sunrise until it is dark once more, and do not stop for meals,’ Ulfr said, ‘we could cover a hundred miles in four days. And that is without suitable time to rest the animals and not allowing for unexpected problems. I would allow five days. If we left the gold somewhere and came back for it, we could shave that down to three.’
Ketil shook his head avidly, Bjorn mirroring him. ‘No way we leave the gold.’
Ulfr nodded. ‘Or some of us ride ahead. We split the column.’
‘Dangerous in unknown lands,’ Halfdan said. He looked to Gunnhild – a silent question. She sighed, closed her eyes, and prepared. This would be the first time in their journey she’d had call to seek the wisdom of Freyja, and though Cassandra and Anna, the latter still clutching her unconscious man, watched with anticipation, Thurstan’s Normans crossed themselves and stepped back.
‘Is this…? Is she…?’ Thurstan tried.
Halfdan nodded as Gunnhild sank to a cross-legged position, issuing the most haunting melody in a quiet voice. ‘She walks with the goddess.’
The Normans watched, worried yet fascinated, unable to look away as Gunnhild’s song rose and fell like the waves of the sea, her arms winding shapes, her staff in one hand whirling glittering patterns in the dark. Suddenly she threw a handful of things across the dirt below her and her song wound to a close. Blinking, she gathered the bones, beads and silver, and dropped them back in her pouch, rising, using the staff for support.
She took a deep breath. ‘We do not need to hurry. Her thread remains bound to us in some way.’ She turned to Ulfr. ‘To one of us, in particular. Travel on as we have been, it matters not. Destiny remains the same, no matter the road we take to meet it.’
Halfdan looked relieved, nodding. ‘If need be, we will abandon her to fate. The gold and the Wolves are more important than the Hauteville woman. They are my prime concern. But I gave my oath to Iron Arm, and I do not like to break my oath. It is no small thing. If Beatrix can be retrieved and handed over, then we should do what we can to see that this happens.’
Everyone nodded at this. A man’s word was of great value, after all.
‘Pack everything. Regardless, we move as fast as we dare, and we may as well set off now, before the sun comes up.’
Men across the camp sprang to life, hurrying this way and that, preparing for the day’s journey. Gone was the frivolity of the past evening, each man consumed by the need to catch up with their quarry and retrieve her.
Ulfr sighed, and Halfdan gave out a few last-moment orders, watching as Farlof, Ketil, Bjorn and Thurstan hurried off to carry them out. Gunnhild had not moved, though.
‘What is it?’ the jarl asked her.
‘There is more, Halfdan,’ she said. ‘More. I saw lions and wolves before, but it becomes clear that there is a golden lion in this land, and I see him surrounded by wolves. And the dragon. I see the dragon now, close. We have another destiny in this place, beyond the Hauteville woman.’
Halfdan frowned, wearing a worried look. ‘And what of Loki?’
She shook that off. ‘No. Loki’s bindings hold for now. But the lion and the dragon await us.’
Ulfr watched as she walked off, considering her words. What was it with Gunnhild, Freyja and animals? Wolves and boars and bears in the east, but in the north, a lion. And dragons were not something he wanted to think too hard about, either. Surely the Byzantines and their dragon fire could not be at work this far north?
Whatever the coming days held, he felt sure they would be far from dull.