Vali almost laughed but the effort hurt.
‘Which of the king’s champions am I to face?’
‘Leikr,’ said Bragi. Vali swallowed. Forkbeard knew his business. He meant him to fight Adisla’s brother.
‘And you?’
‘The berserk in the pay of the Danes.’
‘He lived then?’
‘Yes. Forkbeard has promised him his freedom if he defeats me.’
Vali looked at Bragi. He was an old man, really, still useful in a shield wall or on a raid because of his experience; in personal combat he would be no match for the berserk. Bragi had his tricks, his skills and his willpower. The berserk was in his prime, a giant and a war leader. Still, Vali was pleased for Bragi. He would die the way he would have wanted.
Bragi read what was on Vali’s mind.
‘It was the best I could do. Better this way than the rope, eh?’
‘I won’t fight Adisla’s brother,’ said Vali.
‘Then he’ll kill you.’
‘Yes. I deserve that for what I’ve done.’
‘And she?’
‘He’ll look for her.’
‘No. Forkbeard won’t let him. He’s declared her nithing, a sorceress and a force for evil, for the bad luck she has brought.’
‘Adisla is no more a sorceress than I am.’
‘Forkbeard says she is, that she was so envious of his daughter that she bewitched you and turned you against the people who have been your hosts for so many years. Do you know she killed her mother? It was seen, as the Danes approached their farm. She cut her mother’s throat.’
Vali breathed out and leaned back. What must it have taken for Adisla to do that? Her mother must have asked her to do it to deny the Danes the satisfaction of her rape and murder. Again Vali felt no tears, just that hollow empty feeling that he knew he could only fill with Danish blood. He imagined little Manni with his seax at the door, trying to defend his mother and sister, struck down by people who could easily have disarmed him and sent him on his way with a kick up the backside. Vali had never known such a cold fury inside him.
‘Ma Disa couldn’t be moved and Adisla looked to spare her,’ said Vali.
‘That’s not how Forkbeard sees it. Or her brothers. They’ve forsworn her and are pledged to kill her, if ever she’s found. The girl’s hopes rest with you, which is to say she has none at all.’
Vali nodded. ‘Then I,’ he said, ‘must find a way to live.’
25
It was the brief night and the lonely voice of a wolf was in the hills, far away over the dark valleys, its howl testing the emptiness. It was almost as if Vali could understand what it was saying. ‘I am here,’ it said. ‘Where are you?’ A bright full moon lit the night sky, turning Vali’s skin to silver, even in the pit.
‘They sound hungry, don’t they? Don’t worry, little wolf, you won’t starve for long. We’ve got two juicy hunks of traitor flesh here in the pit for you.’
It was the voice of Ageirr, the rider who had taken Adisla, come to taunt him. Her brothers had come before of course, but they had said nothing. Leikr had looked down at him, and Vali had felt his friend’s anger and pain. He’d tried to talk to him, not to defend himself but to tell him his little brother had died a heroic death, but Leikr had just walked away.
Ageirr was not angry; he was there for fun. He pulled down his trousers and took a heavy piss into the dark of the pit. Neither Bragi nor Vali gave him the satisfaction of complaining.
‘I did it with your little girl, you know, Vali. She asked me to. She said you couldn’t do it properly and would a real man please her.’
‘You’ll have the same pox as me then,’ said Vali with difficulty. ‘I thought your piss smelled like mine.’
Bragi laughed like he might shake something loose. The old man’s arm-thumping appreciation of Vali’s wit almost made the prince wish he hadn’t bothered.
Ageirr chuckled under his breath. There was movement beside him. He had someone with him, it seemed, most likely some of his cronies from Forkbeard’s bodyguard. He poked his head over the side of the pit.
‘You don’t seem bothered by what I did. Is she such a slut?’
‘Adisla wouldn’t look at you, Jarl Ageirr; she prefers high-born men.’
Ageirr set his jaw. ‘I am a jarl and the same as you,’ he said.
‘Is a jarl the same as a prince of the line of Odin? Tell me, did your father grant your mother her freedom before or after he knocked her up with you? Or is it true what they say, that she loved the thrall Kobbi and that you are his child?’
‘Which Danish pig’s bastard will Adisla be fathering?’ said Ageirr. ‘She’ll have been ridden from here to Haithabyr by now, and when they sell her on she’ll be ridden from there to wherever she’s going.’
Vali had been trying to keep Adisla’s likely fate from his mind since she had been taken.
‘If you’ve anything behind those words, step into the pit and let’s debate them in the old-fashioned way,’ said Bragi.
‘Oh, do be quiet,’ said Ageirr. ‘I wouldn’t want you alerting anyone to the little present we’ve brought for you. No no, you’re far enough away that no one will hear.’
‘Where are the guards?’
‘We are the guards.’
There was a sound of dragging and then some conversation between Ageirr and the other man at the top.
‘Take the bag off its head as you throw it in. No, you idiot. Cut the ties on the legs but hold the muzzle, I don’t want the thing biting me.’
There was a low note of distress that Vali had heard before. He knew what they had. It was a wolf.
‘Forkbeard will want to know how that got in with us,’ said Vali.
‘It just fell in, I suppose. You know what wolves are like,’ said Ageirr. ‘They sneak up on even the most vigilant guards. If you kill it, we’ll just say it fell in. He’s hardly likely to believe a kinslayer.’
The word felt sharp as a spear to Vali. Ageirr could try to humiliate him in any way and he would ignore it as the spiteful rantings of a fool, but nothing was more bitter to him than the truth that he had murdered one of his own.
Vali heard a scrabbling at the side of the pit, saw a flicker as something moved across the sky above him, and then a body hit him, hard. Instinctively he flinched back, throwing up his hands to defend his face from the attack of the wolf, but nothing came.
He heard a shout and the sound of a sword coming free from a scabbard.
‘Who’s there? Who’s there? No, no! No!’
Something else, wetter, hit him.
The light was dim in the pit but Vali could see perfectly well. It was just that his mind was having difficulty coming to terms with what was in front of him. Across his legs was the body of Ageirr. He was dead.
With them in the pit was another body. It was Signiuti, one of Forkbeard’s bodyguards, pulsing blood from a huge wound at his neck. He had fallen flat on his back onto Bragi, his sword still in his hand. Vali saw he had no throat; it had been torn clean away. Vali pushed Aegirr’s corpse off him, the blood black and shiny on the white of his hands, light on darkness, life on death.
Then Bragi was on his feet, taking the sword from the corpse’s hand. A face looked down at them. At first Vali thought it was a wolf. Then his eyes adjusted to the light. It was his own face, framed by a wolf’s pelt.
‘Do you mind stopping throwing bodies at us?’ said Bragi, ‘second thoughts, chuck a few more down and we’ll
