Kings of the North Read online

  He could not push his mind past that thought to see what it meant. If it meant anything. If he wasn’t just making it up, a patch of words over his ignorance. The day was coming on, and he had to get up and get going again. The dream slid into the back of his mind. More important was finding something to eat. He pushed his cloak aside and stood up.

  * * *

  With the last two onions and a turnip, they went up along the overgrown road that led north. The land was better here. As they left the last of the farmstead behind, a dozen hares leaped away across the open ground before them. Quickly they ate up the food. Laissa found some mushrooms; she saw wolf scat when she squatted in the bushes. The land was rising, and stands of trees grew up alongside the road, many standards, but new sprouting saplings too, the copses thick with dropped leaves and branches. Dense and dripping, these woods gave way suddenly to broad brown meadows. Deer grazed along the margins, and once they saw a flock of white sheep scattered across an open hillside.

  “Maybe there are people,” Laissa said, pointing. “Tending the sheep.”

  Raef shook his head. “There’s nobody for miles. Something up ahead, but days away.” But he stood staring at the sheep, and a strange look came over his face. He turned and looked widely all around them.

  “We need something to eat,” Leif said. “Before then.”

  Laissa’s stomach growled at the idea of food. The road led across the shoulder of a low hill, and as they reached the crest, the wintry trees and meadow beyond opened up before them. Rain began to fall, light at first. They went off the road, looking for shelter. There were more sheep at the far side of the meadows. Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled.

  * * *

  Night was coming. They went downhill into a little copse of trees near a trickle of a stream. They put branches up against the widest trunk, and laid their cloaks over the cone shape. Leif cleared out the wet leaves and built a little fire ring. Under the soaked fallen drift in the woods he found bits of dry wood, shaved it with his axe for tinder, got that lit, and carefully fed bigger wood into the flames until they had a fire going.

  Raef sat down with his back to the tree; the other two worked on their fire, ignoring him. He shut his eyes. After a moment his mind began to drift out across the light field.

  He widened, as he always had, like the ripple of a wave, but now he tried to pull his mind tight together, into a point that rode along the front of the wave. That was easier than he expected. He ranged across the rainy meadows, the bogs, and came on the sheep, huddled in a tight flock with their backs to the wind. A little way on, he found the wolf, stalking the sheep.

  The great light field spread all around him, singing with its wild music, but he tightened his interest on the wolf. For a while, with the beast moving, he could not separate it from the field around it, but then the wolf lay down, its tongue lolling out, and Raef sank into it.

  The warmth shocked him. The bloody tangle of muscle and bone, the gnawing appetite. He looked out through eyes that saw only grey and white and black, but that very well; the dark was like daylight. A growl curled his lips. He stood, stretched long from front to back, and trotted down closer to the sheep.

  * * *

  Leif said, “Is he out again? Damn him.”

  Laissa hunched her knees against her chest. Beside her Raef leaned against the tree, his eyes half-open, his hands slack. The little light of the fire flickered over them all. Out the narrow gap between the cloak wall and the tree she could see across the meadow, streaming rain. She said, “Leave him alone.” She was afraid to touch him. “I’m so hungry.”

  Leif said, “What if he doesn’t wake up this time? We have to go on, soon. We can’t carry him.”

  She hugged her knees to her chest and stared at him. Raef wasn’t asleep. Somehow, he wasn’t even there. “He’ll come back.”

  “What if he doesn’t?” Leif’s wide honest face turned toward her. His face seemed graven with the dust of every road they had walked together. He said, “We’re going farther and farther into this country none of us knows. He says he’s going to Jorvik, but he has no notion what he will do there. And this place is full of enemies – Sweyn Tjugas is not his friend, certainly the Jomsvikings are not, and the English, who knows? and there’s something worse.”

  Swiftly, Laissa said, “What?”

  “I don’t know. But he is afraid of something, and he is afraid neither of Sweyn nor the Jomsvikings nor the English. I have known him long enough to know that.”

  “Wait,” she said. “He’ll come back. He says he will marry me.” She glanced at the inert body beside her, the half-open, sightless eyes. “He’ll come back.”

  Leif’s face twisted, fretful, jealous, desperate. “Why should you marry him – you’ll be – we’ll all be wrecked together. One of us should live—”

  She turned her eyes out toward the meadow, not wanting to talk about this, and gave a startled yell. “Leif, look!” She pointed out the gap between the tree trunk and the cloak’s edge. “What’s that?”

  Down the meadow, streaming in the rain, a big white wolf trotted toward them, dragging something heavy in its jaws. Leif swore, grabbed his axe, and got between Laissa and the opening in the lean-to. The wolf stopped, out there, and Leif pushed out the opening and shouted and waved his axe.

  Beside Laissa, suddenly, Raef stirred. Leif went out into the rain; the wolf was running off.

  It had dropped what it was carrying. Raef said quietly, “Go get that,” and rose and went out, brushing by the Icelander.

  Leif grunted. His hand with the axe dropped to his side. Raef came back into the lean-to, carrying a dead lamb. One foreleg and the head and most of the lights were missing. He dumped the carcass on the ground and said, “Let’s eat.”

  They roasted the meat and ate it, saying little, tossing bones and pieces of wool out into the rain. Afterward, Laissa looked over at Raef, and said, “Your hair needs combing.”

  “Comb it, then,” he said.

  She took the comb she had brought along with her all the way from Constantinople and crept in behind him, between him and the tree trunk. With the comb and her fingers she began to untangle his hair. His hair was thick and wiry and some of the braids so old they had matted. The rain slackened a little. Inside the lean-to the fire burned down to coals. Leif slumped in the gloom, grim faced.

  She paid no heed to him. She heeded only Raef. She worked each hank of hair gently into its straight, separate strands. As she did she could feel Raef soften under her touch, as if she gathered him into her grasp. A thrill of excitement shook her. She realized she had some power over him.

  She said, “Were you the wolf?”

  His shoulders moved, putting that off. He made no answer. She stroked the comb through his hair, dividing it into parts. She remembered when she first met him. He had been strange then, but not like this. Something wild in him, deep and dark. Gunnhild had taught him, but she must have found something in him to start with. He had grown since she died, as if she had somehow laid her mantle on him. Or, alone, he had needed more and found it.

  She divided one long tress of his hair in three and began to braid them together. She said, “Where are we going now?”

  His head tilted slightly under her hands, following her touch. “There’s a city up ahead of us. I have kindred there.”

  “Who?”

  “My cousin’s aunt. My foster mother’s sister. Arre is her name; she is married to a merchant named Euan Woodwrightsson.”

  In her fingers the long thin plait came to an end; she wished she had a bead to hold it, but she could only twist it together. He sprawled back, almost lying upon her, his shoulders against her legs, his head in her hands. She knew she could ask him anything. Under her hands he felt yielding, submissive. She could not think how to ask the right questions: What would happen next? What should she do?

  Instead, she said, “When will we be married?”

  Through her arms a little tingle of warmth surged up f
rom his body. “When you agree. When we have two witnesses.”

  “Not me,” Leif said harshly. “I would not marry a wolf and a lamb.”

  Laissa had finished another braid. She said, “I have not agreed yet.” She twisted the ends of the long white hair together to hold her work.

  * * *

  They walked all the next day, slogging through the mud and puddles, eating the remains of the lamb and whatever they could find on the road. They came on two men hauling along a cart full of split wood, and Raef and Leif helped them in return for some bread. The rain had stopped. They slept that night bundled together in a field. In the morning, moving on, they were part of a little stream of people on the road, most moving north, a boy herding pigs, and now and again a man carrying a basket on his back.

  The road was better, broader, and in some places hardened with logs of wood laid across it. Toward the middle of the afternoon they reached a village, a thick crust of hovels and stables and houses around a marketplace, itself packed with people and wagons, barrels, strings of horses, and screaming pigs.

  Raef pulled them to the biggest building. This was an inn, Laissa saw, as she followed the two men into the yard. Behind the great front building was an open space and then a low kitchen house. Between was a huge stack of unsplit logs.

  She hung back; sometimes people drove them off when they wanted work. Leif went to the kitchen house and banged on the door and tried to talk, gesturing, with the man who came out, whose blood-splattered filthy apron made him out for a cook. Behind him through the door the light of the hearth shone red on the kitchen wall.

  This man spoke no French, no dansker, only an odd gabble Laissa had not heard before. After a few moments the cook came out of the kitchen, went by Leif and by her and Raef standing there, and climbed three steps into the big front house. Leif turned, his hands spread.

  “I can’t talk to him.”

  Raef cleared his throat. In a few moments the cook came back out with a spry, spindle-legged man in a fine hat, who stayed in the doorway behind Raef at the top of the steps. The cook left at once for his kitchen. Raef stared at the newcomer as if he could see into his skull, but he said nothing.

  Leif tried out his feeble French again, and then his dansker, and the man in the hat said some feeble French and shook off the dansker. Then Raef, suddenly, spoke in some new tongue.

  The man in the hat straightened and answered him. Raef spoke slowly, halting over the words, but the man in the hat understood him and nodded, agreeing. Raef turned to Leif and switched to dansker.

  “If we split all the wood we get fed.”

  Leif’s lips were pinched together. “Show me the axe.”

  Laissa followed them and stood by the foot of the steps. They had been doing this all along the road, and they had made it a practice; it was fun to watch. They moved together, one man setting and the other splitting. When the one turned for the next log the other stacked the split stuff, so they were always moving and the wood flew into its orderly pile.

  They switched places every fifteen or twenty strokes, so smoothly they kept the rhythm constant. Laissa heard a soft grunt behind her and turned and saw the innkeeper in the fine hat on the step above her, watching.

  He spoke to her in the other language, and she shook her head. Turning, he went inside, and soon kitchen boys set out a jug and a wooden board with a loaf and some cheese and a sausage on the lower step. The innkeeper came back and stood in the doorway watching the men work. Some other people had come in from the street to watch too.

  Leif split the last log, and Raef tossed the pieces on the top of the stack. They turned at once toward the food. The innkeeper called out something in his tongue, and Raef shrugged and answered, slow but sure with the words.

  He sat down on the step, reached for the bread, and broke off a piece. Turning to Laissa, he handed it to her. She took it, sitting down beside him, and said, “What language is this?”

  Raef waggled his head. “I don’t know. Theirs.”

  “How do you speak it?”

  He was chewing bread and cheese; his eyes looked at her through their corners. “They speak it,” he said, sounding surprised, as if she had to ask this.

  She gave up. She wondered again if she wanted to do what had come into her mind. She said, “What is the word for married?”

  His gaze flattened, seeing what she intended, and then swiftly he looked around at the small crowd still watching them. He swallowed the mouthful of food and said the word clearly, precisely, so she would remember it, although she did not understand it: mund—waed— something.

  She seized hold of his hand at once, before she forgot it, and cried, “I call you all to witness, we are married now.”

  She led up to the strange new word with dansker, but the onlookers understood at once. Already good humored, they threw up a ragged whoop of a cheer and began to clap. On Raef’s far side Leif’s jaw dropped, his eyes astonished. Raef smiled at Laissa. He rose to his feet, his wrist still in her grasp, and bent down and kissed her. More people were pushing into the wood yard, drawn by the excitement, hooting and chanting and yelling and kissing at them. Laissa kept her eyes down, her ears red; she heard the lewdness in their voices even without knowing the words.

  The kitchen boys came running out with a jug, which they passed around, and the innkeeper shouted something from the door of his hall. Raef turned to her.

  “He’s saying we can stay in a room in his inn. For the wedding night.”

  Leif said, “Do we have to cut more wood for it? Or does he just get to watch?”

  Raef gave him half a glance. Leif’s head sank down into his shoulders. Laissa had kept her hold of Raef since the beginning, and now she tugged on him.

  “Take me to it, then.”

  * * *

  Raef was jittery, climbing the ladder, Laissa just ahead of him with the lamp. She was so eager, she who he had thought would need coaxing, leading him up the narrow rungs to the top, under the eave, where a little door opened.

  The space behind was just big enough to lie down in. There was a fresh pallet laid down on it, sprinkled with herbs. At the foot of the stair the innkeeper was leading a wedding song full of explicit advice. Laissa crept into the space, set the lamp in the niche, and turned toward him. She was joyous as an angel, as if some dream had come true. He felt suddenly shy, left behind, confused. He followed her on hands and knees into the chamber and closed the door.

  * * *

  Mine, she thought. Mine now. She faced him, whom she had known so long, and now saw all new: hers.

  In his long bony face the blue eyes were wary. He said, “Do you wish this?”

  “Yes,” she said, “very much.” She unclasped her tunic; under the eave there was no room to stand, and he, being so tall, had to kneel and stoop to fit, but she pulled off her clothes, wanting him to see her. He looked down at her breasts, her belly, and she spread her knees apart to show him her hot part. His face sharpened with lust. She crept to him and straddled his thighs, put her arms around him, and kissed him.

  She had been with men when she was much younger but not in many years – not since they fled from the burning city, at the beginning of the long journey west. She knew what to do. But first she wanted to kiss him. A sudden tenderness welled up in her. It seemed she had wanted to kiss him for years. She put her mouth against his and shut her eyes.

  At first his mouth would not yield. She felt in this kiss the long hard habit of aloneness, his inwardness, his resistance to any power save his own, his bone-deep doubt of his own. She put her hands against his cheeks above his beard and tried to kiss him soft, open him to her. She felt him tremble against her. His hands stroked down over her buttocks and gripped her and she felt the sword of his cock against her thigh, but he did nothing to join them. He was heeding the kiss.

  She stroked his lips with her tongue, and a shudder went through him; he turned toward her, helpless as a child, toward what he had forgotten he needed or had never kno
wn. She put her tongue deep in his mouth, to be to him as he would be to her, and reaching down drew his cock into her body.

  She sobbed. She had forgotten how deep the penetration was, how gross and thick. His arms tightened around her. She turned again to the kiss, clung mouth to mouth with him while he rolled her down on her back. He knew exactly where to touch her. She yielded to him, trembled on the brink of a swollen desire; he held her there a moment and then took her with him in a hot mingling flood.

  He moved a little, withdrawing. She kept one arm around his neck. He gave her a sudden, shy look, and she smiled at him, pleased. Hers. She said, “Are you hungry? I brought some bread.”

  Chapter Five

  Raef lay with his eyes closed, pretending to sleep. He let his mind drift just a little way, enough to cover Laissa beside him.

  This was not what he had expected. He had thought to lead her, to master her, to have the use of her body, but he had not foreseen that anything else would change. But something had changed. None of his other women had lasted for more than a moment, not even Merike, in Rus. His hated father dead, his mother mad and strange to him. Conn he had loved as simply as a brother. Corban, always, a borrowed father. Then Conn died. Raef had grown cold, except for the chilly witch love of Gunnhild, steel and ice, justice and magic, all mind and no heart.

  Laissa was so soft. Aware, young, and sweet. And she loved him. The shock of this still sang in him. For all she knew of him she loved him. He drew himself back into his body and kissed her awake, to have her again in his arms.

  * * *

  Long before they came to the city they could see it ahead of them, crowds boiling along the road, buildings, walls, and side streets, brooks with little bridges and lowland swamps with boardwalks, a bustling, coming and going, everybody moving faster now, horses running along, people running, shouting, the rattle and bang of wheels. A wagon full of turnips had overturned in the middle of the road, and people were stealing them as fast as they could while the cursing drover cracked his whip helplessly at them. They passed by a shambles, yards and hanging sheds on either side of the road, pits of stinking offal, the stench of blood everywhere. As they got closer to the bridge over the river, both sides of the street were crowded with shops, people swarming around them trying to buy. Two men on blinkered, terrified horses and three others on foot carrying spears were dragging along a half-choked black bear by a rope around its neck. The bear’s claws left long furrows on the street. A dozen men jogged past on big muscular horses; they wore mail, these men, and their hair was cut short and they were clean shaven, like Richard of Normandy. On the south side of the river, houses stood thick along either side of the road to the bridge. At the foot of the bridge half a dozen beggars in rags were calling for mercy.