A Burning Sea Read online

  They talked about many things – family, women, wars, their father and his travels. Some days they talked without drawing breath. Others, when the rays of the early spring sun warmed their faces, they just lay back like a pair of wolves on a rock and listened to the rush of bubbles under the hull.

  At night, around the fire, they badgered him for stories, about battles he’d fought, enemies he’d vanquished, kings he’d known, and offered up some of their own – mostly absurd escapades from their childhood which always ended with one or other of them getting a beating off their father.

  He was happy. They all were. He found he felt a lightness in his soul he hadn’t in a long while, for as long as he could remember – until the thought crept out of the shadows of his mind: that their journey was carrying him further and further away from Lilla.

  Maybe that was the best place for him. After all, why should she ever think of him? She was where she was meant to be, with the man whom fate had chosen for her. And he—

  ‘Hey, Erlan.’ Adalrik’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘Ever heard of a place called Miklagard?’

  ‘The name. Not much more.’ He remembered Sviggar mentioning it shortly before he was murdered. The Sveär king had been transported by grand visions of trade with this place called Miklagard. Alas, those plans had died with him.

  ‘Our father used to speak of it,’ said Leikr.

  ‘Has he been there?’

  ‘Not him. But he once met a merchant who had.’

  ‘Hasn’t everyone?’

  Adalrik flicked a piece of snot into the water. ‘He says it’s the greatest stronghold in the whole world.’

  ‘Aye – with temples so big they shut in the sky!’ agreed his brother. ‘Every one made of silver and gold and precious stones.’

  ‘Sounds like quite a place.’ Erlan yawned. ‘Pass that skin.’

  Adalrik tossed him the ale-skin and leaned forward. ‘I’ve been thinking about your king of kings.’

  ‘Oh, have you?’ Erlan took a swig, then wiped his lips dry. ‘And I suppose you’re reckoning this Miklagard is where we’ll find him. Only the king of kings could rule a place so wondrous? Huh?’

  ‘Exactly!’ Adalrik’s face was beaming.

  ‘Brilliant. So tell me, my friend – where is it?’

  Adalrik’s smile fell. ‘Well. . . I don’t know. But someone must—’

  ‘It’s beyond the great rivers,’ said Leikr. ‘That’s what Father says.’

  ‘And that’s where the Dnipar will take us. So we’ll find out. One way or another.’

  Erlan gazed out beyond the banks of the wide river. It had been nearly two weeks since the portage. The land it cut through was vast beyond imagining. He slouched against the tiller and tipped back his head, closing his eyes to the sun’s caress, letting his mind drift into dreams of golden halls and the king who ruled them. He inhaled the river air, its muddy scent mingling with the sweeter smell of pine sap drifting from the trees. It smelled like. . . freedom.

  He noticed a change under the hull. The bubbles running faster. He opened his eyes. The river was narrowing some distance ahead. He got to his feet, trying to see further.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Leikr, rolling his head over his shoulder towards the prow.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe nothing.’ He climbed onto his sea chest to get a better look, steadying himself against the mast. Aska pricked his ears.

  He could see the banks drawing closer, rocks breaking out along the shoreline. On the western bank, the tree line, normally a constant, came to an abrupt end. He swore, seeing why.

  The land was dropping away.

  ‘What is it?’ Adalrik scrambled to his feet.

  ‘Secure the gear.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Just do it!’ Erlan turned back to the tiller. But everything was moving faster now. The twins scrabbled to do as he said while he levered his way over the thwarts to the stern.

  ‘Lash it all down, whatever you can. There’s faster water ahead.’

  Leikr tossed his brother a coil of hemp rope and Adalrik squatted down to secure the sea chests and weapons. Before Erlan could reach the tiller, the boat slewed sideways. The force of the current against the strakes rolled it to larboard. Erlan lost his balance and stumbled, twisting his foot. Pain streaked up his leg from his crippled ankle like fire. Adalrik rolled, too, banging his head on a thwart and cursing.

  Erlan snatched the tiller. The noise was growing, the water roiling like the sea. Aska was standing in the bows. He barked and a roar of water answered him.

  ‘Hel,’ Erlan muttered. ‘We need to get to shore. Now.’ But it was too late. The banks were closing in, encasing them in high walls of rock. There was a bang and an angry scraping noise. The boat listed violently to larboard again.

  ‘Rocks!’ yelled Leikr.

  ‘Go forward and steer me round them. And get that bloody sail down!’

  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 lea
thern 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 Ringast’s resting place.

  Thrand’s deep breaths clouded in the gloom as blood-red sunbeams sank through the branches. For a while, neither said a word. Lilla thought of her husband, solid and dependable, the presence that she had learned to rely on. But instead of sadness, she felt anger, anger that he had left her all alone.

  ‘Did he speak of me?’ said Thrand hoarsely. ‘At the end?’

  ‘Aye.’ Though what, Lilla would never admit.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He. . . He wasn’t making much sense. By the end.’

  Thrand stooped down and scraped some loose dirt from the forest floor at his feet, then tossed it onto the mound. ‘Poor bloody brother. It would’ve been better if he’d died on that plain with a sword in his hand and his head held high. Ready to ride for Valhalla’s gates. Instead he got a stinking bed-death, coddled by a woman into the arms of Hel.’ He shook his head. ‘He deserved better.’

  ‘Better than dying with the taste of the woman he loved on his lips?’ Lilla snorted. ‘What does it matter whether he died with a blade in his guts or some wound-rot poisoning him by inches? He’s dead. And wherever he is, I hope he has found some peace.’

  Thrand raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘I meant not to offend.’

  ‘Yet you did.’ She stood taller, challenging him, but he only chuckled.

  ‘Forgive me, sister. I thought he might have made provision, that’s all. If he had so much time.’

  ‘Provision for what?’

  ‘His successor, of course. Far as I can see, there’s only one name to consider.’

  ‘He did consider only one name.’

  Thrand nodded, and she saw the beginnings of a smile creep into the corners of his mouth. She hated him for that.

  ‘Mine.’

  His big head turned sharply. ‘What?’

  ‘I am Queen of the Twin Kingdoms, High Ruler of Sveäland and King Sviggar’s only living offspring.’ Staffen had been murdered; Sigurd slain in battle. As for Saldas’s children. . . their fate was too cruel to contemplate.

  ‘Your father was a bastard, which makes your claim as false as his—’

  ‘How dare you.’

  ‘—And makes me sole male heir to both kingdoms. Or do you have a swelling beneath those robes the rest of us don’t know about?’

  She didn’t like the way his eyes lingered on her flat belly, nor the sneer in his voice. ‘My father may have been baseborn, but my grandsire Ívar Wide-Realm conferred on him true title, according to Sveär law. Your Danes may have slain five thousand of my people, but fifty thousand would stand in their place at a word from me.’

  ‘Horse shit! They wouldn’t lift a finger for you. You stood on our side of the field, Sviggarsdottír, remember? So don’t pretend you weren’t complicit in every Sveär death. You’re a traitor to your people. They know it. So do you.’

  That was no lie, although she had done her best to justify it, to herself if no one else. ‘I’ve no time to bandy words with you. There’s your brother. Make your peace with him. I must go back.’

  She turned to go but he snatched her arm. ‘You’re a conceited little bitch, aren’t you?’

  ‘Let go of me!’ Her reaction was pure instinct, her hand swinging with full force at him, cracking across his jaw. She felt her father’s ring smash against his teeth. For a second he was stunned, although his grip around her arm loosened not a whit, and slowly he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. It came away smeared red. ‘You fucking whore.’

  She made to scream but before any sound could escape the crook of two massive fingers jammed around her throat. Seeing the sudden wildness in his eye, a wave of panic rose in her. She tried to hit him again but her fist merely glanced off his chest. His wild look turned into a bloody grimace. ‘Let’s have some fun, eh? What do you say, sister? Any objections?’ His grip squeezed harder. A feeble gargle sounded in her throat. ‘No?’ He gave an ugly laugh. ‘Nice to see you’re as game with one brother as another.’

  Out of nowhere, the back of his fist struck her. Pain exploded through her skull like a starburst. She dropped onto the slope of her husband’s grave.

  Blood started streaming down her cheek. But before she could get up he had locked her neck in a grip as strong as Volund’s tongs. Her nose was buried in the loose earth. She tasted its metallic tang. In her panic to breathe she sucked lumps of it into her mouth. She felt him behind her, heard his panting and then the weight of him on her squashed her flat. His arms were so long that it was no trouble to crush her face in the mud while he kicked her legs aside. He threw her skirts up over her back. Cold air coiled up her calves and thighs. She screwed her eyes shut in a horror of anticipation, powerless to move. Thrand was laughing at her, tugging at his breeches, pinching her hips cruelly to tilt them forward. ‘Hold still, you silly bitch.’

  She screamed in her head but all it amounted to was a faint moan into the damp soil. Maybe Ringast could hear her, buried beneath her with his sword and his silver. No one else could.

  The red dusk was bleeding to grey. She felt fury and fear and pain and. . . suddenly every sense rushed to the outrage in her most secret parts. And all she could do was squeeze her eyes tighter shut and taste the iron earth. . .

  Afterwards, after he’d subsided, he bent low over her, his breath hot in her ear. ‘Whatever you have, Sviggarsdottír, I will take from you.’

  Then he shoved her and s
ent her sliding down the shoulder of the mound. She lay face down, not moving. Breathing, nothing more. She listened to the buckle of his belt, the pad of his footsteps growing fainter through the wood, and then the yammer of her outraged heart.

  When she was sure he had gone, she rolled onto her back and brushed away the mud that caked her cheek and lips. She gazed up through the treetops, unblinking, up into the thick darkness of night. She made a vow then, by that darkness, that no man would ever use her again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Erlan’s eyes opened.

  He felt a wet slobber in his ear and sat up with a start. Aska shied away from him.

  ‘Ugh! You filthy mutt.’ He palmed away saliva from the side of his face, then seeing the dog looked like a drowned stoat he relented and pulled his shaggy head towards him. ‘Good boy,’ he whispered, burying his nose in the dog’s muzzle. He shifted his weight. Mud squelched under his backside. At least he was on solid ground. His skull was throbbing like a war drum, his mouth tasted foul with river water, and his hand was clamped around something hard. He lifted it. Wrathling appeared out of the silty murk, still in its leather sheath.

  A dog and a sword, he thought. That was something.

  He suddenly felt around his neck, then breathed easier when he found his golden torc still there. It had been a gift from King Sviggar. A mark of honour. It was about the only thing of value he possessed, apart from his sword, and he was loath to lose it.

  He got to his feet and at once his shin snarled in protest. He looked down. Blood was streaming from a tear in his leggings to mingle with the river water lapping at his ankles. He bent down to inspect the wound. That was when he heard the screaming.

  ‘Oh, Hel,’ he said. The twins.

  It took him a while to reach them, hobbling along the bank as the river flooded past. By then, the screaming had subsided into a mournful, sobbing lament. One of the twins was slumped in the water cradling the head of the other in his lap.