They took another glancing blow. The boat careened the other way as the current sucked them forward. The noise of the spray and breakers filled their ears; the knarr was pitching all over like a child’s toy boat. Adalrik was on his knees, tying down what he could. Erlan glanced beside him at his ring-sword, Wrathling. Some instinct made him close his hand over its sheath. ‘Aska – to me!’ he called. The dog’s head turned, but beyond him the prow rose up like a rampant stallion. Aska’s bony shoulder blades braced; Leikr cried out.
‘Hold on!’ Erlan shouted, feeling his stomach lurch. For an instant everything hung motionless. . . still. . . then the bows plunged down with the force of Thor’s Hammer. Down and down as the waters thundered, a hurricane of blinding spray and crashing waves and cracking wood. Splinters spat in Erlan’s face and then he was flung into the seething river, whirling and spinning in a torrent of foam, smashed and buffeted till he’d lost all sense of up from down, and his lungs were screaming for air. . .
CHAPTER FOUR
Ringast was a week cold in his grave when his brother arrived. Word reached Lilla from the King’s Firth where Thrand’s ship anchored that misty morning.
It had been a long and lonely week, during which grief had sunk its sinuous roots deep into her heart. But she was ready for Thrand all the same.
She received him seated on her father’s old throne, swaddled in furs and dwarfed by the oak carvings adorning its high back.
‘Hail, sister!’ Thrand boomed, advancing up the Great Hall like a bear at the charge, several of his retinue in his wake. She recognized Haki Cut-Cheek and another, Toki the Fair. Not a pretty crew. ‘Gods in Asgard, you look like Frigg herself up there!’
Lilla had forgotten how deep Thrand’s voice was. Forgotten, too, the size of the man – like a lean bull-bear with his shag of oak-brown hair and beard as thick as gorse. He looked nothing like his brother. He strode up the hall so fast he was up on the platform and kneeling in front of her before the ice had thawed out of his beard.
‘Welcome to Uppsala, brother. Our hearth is yours. I trust your journey was—’
‘Miserable as Hel! But thank Ægir, it’s over now. Come, is this any way to greet your brother?’ Before she knew it, he’d plucked her from her high-seat and was crushing her against his chest. She smelled ale and musk.
Thrand finally set her down. ‘So how is the lad? We heard he was sick.’
She looked up at him, knowing her eyes must betray her, red-rimmed from her mourning. ‘He is dead.’
‘Dead?’ The blood drained from his ruddy cheekbones. ‘No.’ He shook his head, eyes staring like a child. ‘No. Ringast cannot die.’
‘He’s gone, brother. I’m sorry.’
Thrand’s mouth worked as though about to speak, but no words came.
‘He had been growing weaker all winter. When last you saw him was the strongest he has been since Bravik. But since the yule feasting. . .’ She squeezed his forearm, feeling the mass of brawn between her fingers. ‘He hung on for a long time.’
Thrand’s face stiffened into a leathern mask. ‘A bed-death, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘You should have summoned me sooner. I would have given him a proper death, even if I couldn’t help him.’
‘He would not have had it. He could not admit it even to himself until the very end.’
Thrand was staring past her, his big bear eyes hard as jet stone. Suddenly he buried his face in his hands, uttering a loud moan of despair so sorrowful Lilla’s own heart cracked again.
‘This is ill news, my lord.’ Haki Cut-Cheek had come up behind them. ‘Your brother was a great man.’
Thrand rounded on him. ‘What do you know of him? Hey?’ he bellowed, showering spittle over Haki’s ugly visage. ‘Clear out of here! Be gone, all of you! Do you hear?’ He slumped down heavily at the long-table, then put his head in his hands and wept.
Haki hesitated. The rest of his retinue exchanged glances.
‘I will take care of him,’ said Lilla quietly. ‘Take your men to the cookhouse. There’s ale and vittles enough to forget your hard voyage. Sletti will find you beds.’
Haki still delayed.
‘Go,’ she urged. ‘All will be well. I’ll look to him. Go!’
Haki nodded, the grim scar across his cheek twitching with acquiescence. He turned and ordered the rest of them from the hall.
Thrand’s huge shoulders were heaving with his sobs. ‘Brother.’ She laid a hand on him.
He peered up at her, his black eyes glistening.
‘I can take you to where we laid him. Will you come?’
There was a soft rain falling as she led Thrand past the three bulbous King Barrows towards the Kingswood beyond. Each barrow marked the resting place of a famous king of the Sveärs. Her father had told her they lived five or six generations back. It was they who gave Uppsala its royal dignity and power. But Ringast had never wanted to be buried amongst Sveär kings, nor to have his body borne on a fire-ship over the slate waters of the King’s Firth. His desire had been to be laid where Lilla would like to come. And so she had ordered his pyre burned and a haug thrown over him in one of the clearings in the Kingswood where she often came in springtime to pick yarrow and pink twinflowers.
The rain cleared. The wood was strangely quiet. No sounds of roosting pigeons or the evening caw of rooks, as if they knew to keep a respectful silence for this king so lately laid in his grave. The mound itself seemed out of place. The newly turned brown earth was only lightly covered with a dusting of snow, rising like a stranger above the clearing. Nine stones to the north, nine to the south, marked out the shape of a war-ship around
