Kitabı oku: «The Rule»

Prologue

I

In the midst of the darkness, Gunnarr’s eyes snapped open.

The hairs along his forearms stood raised like the hackles of a snarling wolf. Muffled voices were hissing at each other from somewhere across the room. Quietly, Gunnarr reached a hand out from the covers and felt the warm absence that his parents had left in the furs at his side. The air felt chilled, and thick with disquiet. Something had happened. He could sense it.

Closing his eyes, he lay very still and tried to listen to his parents’ words, but their voices were low and rushed, and he could follow only snatches.

‘… now they’ve decided they …’

‘… and you think death will solve …’

Gunnarr jolted as if shaken awake from a dream. Death, he thought, and a gleam of a smile spread across his lips. Gunnarr Folkvarrsson and his warrior father were no strangers to death.

The first time he had still been a boy, not yet five. He’d stumbled across a nameless corpse floating in a swell by the shoreline, staring up at the clouds. Of that he remembered mostly the queerness of the dead man’s face, all swollen like a sow, front lip eaten away up to the nose.

A year later, on a spring day with a biting breeze, he met death for a second time. Again he’d been down by the near-black sea, the freezing-cold surf roaring with anger at his feet. His grandmother was leading him across the coastal rocks, looking for shellfish, when she made a strange sound and collapsed. Gunnarr had waited patiently for her until the tide was almost in before someone came and carried him away.

His parents had quietened their voices to breathy whispers, perhaps fearing they might wake him. For a moment, Gunnarr contemplated going to his father’s side and declaring that he could soon find the old kindling axe and be ready for whatever might be needed of him. But his father, he had learnt, was quick to temper whenever he addressed the topic directly. He would call Gunnarr a child and tell him he knew nothing, but he was wrong. True, those encounters from his early childhood had been tame affairs; the first he had come upon too late, long after death had done its work, and the second was but the quiet expiry of life from an old and wasted body. The third, though, had burnt its way deep into his mind. For that was when he had seen the strike of death’s hand; the vicious snatch that rips a life away with the eyelids still blinking.

It was the first time he had been taken on a hunt with his father and uncle. Winter had come early that year, bitter and fierce. The grass had turned brown, and his mother had wrapped him in thick furs to guard against the searching wind. A group of seals they had stalked for most of the morning had become spooked and scattered into the waves when just yards out of range, so the group was returning to town unsuccessful, and in a black mood because of it, when they heard shouts from over by the smoke house.

Gunnarr did not see what had caused it, but he had never forgotten what followed. His father and the rest broke immediately into a run, sweeping Gunnarr along with them. He remembered his uncle screaming curses in a voice louder than thunder, and glancing up into the distance to see a man some twenty yards away hacking his sword double-handed into the half-turned neck of Agni Alvisson. Gasps went up like startled birds, and a crowd of onlookers swamped in and smothered Gunnarr’s view.

The rest was a mess of trampling feet and women’s screams. There had been one deafening clang of metal, which Gunnarr remembered well, and a rush of grunting movement almost bundled him over. When he recovered his balance, he found his father, uncle, and their friends facing down a group of frozen-eyed men who were cautiously backing away, leaving one of their number spluttering on the floor at his uncle’s feet, while a silenced crowd looked on.

That had been a real death. Almost too real, for the man had had time to say a lot of strange things before his wounds drained him, and his blood had smelt sickly as it steamed amidst the mud and rotting oak leaves. Agni Alvisson’s head, grinning up at the sky, lay a few feet to one side. Gunnarr’s friends told him it had continued to scream in agony even as it landed on the ground, some three yards away from its body.

There were other memories of death besides those, of course. The wails of his aunt and the silence of his father on the day that his uncle had died. The time he caught his father rinsing his sword in the stream, and the way Folkvarr had turned around and placed a sly finger to his lips and patted Gunnarr on the head as he walked inside. Countless other times where the only detail Gunnarr could recall was the billowing heat of the funeral pyre on his cheeks as he pushed and pointed with the other excitable children. Nothing that compared to those first three, though. Perhaps tonight, he thought eagerly, he would finally find something that could challenge them.

He might have lain there for longer in the dark, enjoying the mischievous sensation of hearing what he was not supposed to hear, of knowing about his father things he wasn’t supposed to know, but Gunnarr’s eyes jumped open again when he heard a new sound amid the rustles and the whispers: a sob from his mother, fearful and desperate.

A protective impulse drove a shiver across his shoulders, and his grin vanished. Casting his furs aside, he stared into the black until he found his parents standing beside the far wall. The wicker door of their single-roomed hut stood an arm’s width ajar, with a dull sheen of moonlight drawing a pale line across the floor. He thought he heard voices outside.

‘Father?’ he called into the gloom, and his parents’ conversation immediately hushed. As they looked across to face him, Gunnarr noticed that his mother was clinging very tightly to his father. Had it been lighter, he would have seen tears in her eyes.

‘Go back to sleep, Son,’ his father said, after a brief pause.

Gunnarr ignored him and rolled up onto his knees. ‘It’s almost dawn already,’ he said with enthusiasm. ‘I can get the fishing things ready.’

For some reason the words caused another sob to escape his mother’s lips, which she tried to suppress by clamping both hands over her mouth. Confused, Gunnarr saw her give his father a gentle push, and with a sigh the older man moved across the room to his son. As he stepped through the shard of light, Gunnarr noticed that his sword was at his waist.

‘Is there a battle?’ he gasped excitedly.

‘Go back to sleep,’ his father said again. ‘I’m only going out to check the traps.’

‘Let me come!’ Gunnarr urged, but his father shushed him and pushed him firmly back down into the furs. Gunnarr tensed against him, giggling playfully.

‘Do as I say, please,’ his father said gently. More gentle than he would normally have been. His eyes looked very big in the darkness. Then there came a booming voice from outside the walls.

‘Do it now or we fire the house. The choice is yours.’

It cut through the still night air, very close by. Gunnarr jumped, and his mother scurried across the room and dropped down beside them, again pressing herself against his father’s chest.

‘Who is that at this time?’ Gunnarr asked, scowling with mature disapproval.

‘Just drunken idiots on their way home,’ his father replied dismissively, and his mother did her best to nod with reassurance, but even her young son could see that her usually bright features were strained.

‘You’re a good boy, Son,’ his father added suddenly, and he brushed his lips across Gunnarr’s forehead, before standing to resume his rapid conversation with his wife.

That uncharacteristic show of affection numbed Gunnarr like a blow to the head. He looked up at his parents, and for the first time noticed the glimmer of moisture on his mother’s cheeks.

‘I’m going out there with you,’ she was saying passionately.

‘No my love, what about the boy?’ he heard his father reply.

Again Gunnarr found his eyes drawn to the crack of moonlight in the doorway. Rolling silently out of the covers, he crept his way towards it, leaving his parents in their oblivious embrace behind him. He inched the door further from its frame and peered into the shadowed clearing, feeling the night breeze tighten the pores across his face. Leaves whispered ominously in the trees swaying over his head.

‘Go back inside, lad,’ a voice called from the blackness, and Gunnarr could just make out their half-hidden forms, cloaked in shadow. Five of them.

‘Is it not a little late to be calling on my father?’ he asked tentatively, moving forward out of the doorway. ‘We’re to be fishing at dawn.’

One or two of the men laughed callously, and Gunnarr turned to them in confusion.

‘What do you want?’ he challenged.

‘Enough of this,’ an angrier voice growled from the right, and Gunnarr shuddered as one of the shapes moved briskly towards him. ‘I say we take the boy as well.’

‘No!’ shouted another, and rushed forward to intercept, restraining the aggressor with an arm across the chest. ‘That is not what is called for.’

Through a mist of uncertainty, Gunnarr realised that he recognised the voice. ‘Egil?’ he asked hesitantly.

‘Yes,’ Egil answered, with heavy reluctance. ‘Greetings, Gunnarr.’

‘Egil,’ Gunnarr began, ‘I’m sure if you wait until tomorrow we’ll be calling on you. I can play with Hákon and the boys—’ He stopped abruptly as he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, and turned to find his father standing calmly behind him.

Egil hurried forward and spoke with hushed urgency. ‘This time I cannot help you, old friend. It’s my own cousin’s name at stake.’

‘I know that,’ Gunnarr’s father replied, with a voice of indifference. ‘But you can protect my wife, and my son.’

‘Father, what is happening?’

‘Yes Folkvarr, I can,’ Egil responded, ignoring Gunnarr, ‘but there is a sword at your side. For every number of them you take, they will take one back from you.’

Again Folkvarr sighed heavily, and then he placed a hand on Egil’s shoulder. ‘Please, a moment with my boy?’

Egil’s face became regretful. ‘Of course.’ He retreated back into the gloom, deliberately avoiding Gunnarr’s searching gaze.

Folkvarr turned and dropped to a knee, so that he and his son’s eyes were level. Gunnarr was whimpering, his expression distraught.

‘Fight them, Father, don’t let them hurt you!’

‘Gunnarr—’

‘Or run, into the forest, please!’

‘Gunnarr, enough!’ his father said sternly, and he shook the little boy’s shoulders until he was silent. ‘I want you to take my sword inside, and go and hug your mother until she tells you to stop. Remember, she brought you into this world and protected you when you were weak. Now you are strong, it is your turn to protect her.’

Gunnarr’s mouth shot open, but then he felt the weight of his father’s instructing eyes and dropped it closed again. With practised, unquestioning obedience, he scrunched up his face and nodded silently.

There was a moment of still as the two of them looked at each other for a final time. Folkvarr’s eyes were wide, almost apologetic. Gunnarr bit his jaw closed and determinedly returned the gaze long enough for one stray tear to roll down to his chin. Then he turned dutifully and carried the heavy sword in both hands towards the house, feeling the snatched brush of his father’s fingertips across the back of his head before he stepped out of their longing reach.

Once inside, he located his mother’s whimpers in the darkness and, rather than crawling onto her lap and sinking into her breast, he sat upright beside her on the floor, placing an arm across her shoulders and letting her fall gratefully against his tiny frame. Together they flinched as they heard a brief flurry of sound, like stones being hurled against sand, and then a ruffled silence returned almost as soon as it had faltered.

After some moments, Gunnarr gently dislodged himself from his mother’s now feeble grip and crawled hesitantly over to the doorway. Egil was there still, standing patiently over a motionless shape on the floor.

‘Come here and help me carry him, Gunnarr. One day you will understand.’

II

She would always follow too closely, so eager was she not to be left behind. Perhaps in later years Gunnarr would recall that about her with a faint smile, but as a boy of twelve he was conscious of it only as the snatch of her fingers on his feet and the tickle of her breath against his calves as they crawled through the dew-laden grass.

It was a clouded spring morning, with still a touch of winter in the air. Together they worked their way along a tufted ridge that bordered a red-brown stream, following the rushing water up a gentle gradient inland. Gunnarr led, as he always did, eyes forward and alert, barely feeling the thistles that scratched across his knees as he went. Kelda followed gamely. She was weaker than the boys, and he could hear the determined little grunts that she let out as she struggled to keep pace. There were times when she would rise up onto her knees and peer back at the town walls as they receded further into the distance, but she would never voice the uncertainty that Gunnarr saw growing on her face.

After a short time of slithering down and scrabbling up the rises and falls of the riverbank, they reached the shelter of a thicket tangled with brambles, and lost sight of the stream. Gunnarr drew to an abrupt halt and cocked his ear skywards, feeling Kelda’s chin thump softly off the sole of his foot as he did so. She exclaimed aloud, but must have sensed his scowl even with his head turned, for she quickly fell silent again. Gunnarr listened to the wind once more and heard the voices clearly above the rush of the stream, one gruff and sounding in short, sharp bursts, the other quieter and less frequent.

He broke off and turned back to Kelda. She was watching him with her mouth ajar, brown eyes gleaming with excitement. Her teeth looked very small, and Gunnarr was reminded that she was much younger than he was. A ‘little girl’ the boys called her, and would name Gunnarr the same whenever they caught the two of them together. But the boys had wanted to stay in town and watch the dog fight, and Gunnarr was not the type to waste a day standing in one place. Whatever the others might say about her, Kelda would never let him down when there was adventure to be had.

‘Stay quiet,’ he warned her under his breath. ‘It will mean death if they find us.’

She smothered her smile instantly and locked her lips closed.

Gunnarr studied her with a stern expression. Her plait had come half undone and her hair was wisping around her head. It had been raining only a short time before dawn, and her woollen clothes were plastered with mud. ‘Your mum is going to be angry again.’

Kelda rolled her shoulders and smiled once more. ‘I don’t care.’

Gunnarr did not return her grin. ‘You remember the signal?’

She nodded quickly and rolled into a sitting position. Casting about briefly, she plucked up a blade of grass, stuffed it between two grubby thumbs, held it to her lips and blew. It made a blunt, hissing sound.

‘You can’t do it,’ Gunnarr complained.

‘I can,’ she insisted, and continued to blow into her hands, until Gunnarr reached out and snatched the grass away.

‘Just follow me and stay quiet.’

Through tunnels in the long grass he led her, weaving through the roots of the bushes on trails made by foxes and river rats. A few days past, Eiric had come home boasting of seeing a mother wolf and six cubs lying at the water’s edge. Gunnarr had left town that morning looking for burrows in the river bank, his aim being to take the pups and skin them so that his mother could make them all hats. He’d brought Kelda with him because he needed someone to snatch up the babes while he threw stones at the mother. But that plan had vanished when they’d heard people talking by the river, somewhere just upstream.

The low voice sounded once more, louder this time, and Gunnarr realised that they must be close. He turned and wriggled back to Kelda.

‘Who is it?’ she whispered. He could hear the breath rushing in and out of her chest.

‘A thieving band from the uplands, most like,’ he replied grimly. ‘Could be as many as twenty of them, waiting until nightfall to snatch any beast we don’t bring inside the walls.’

Kelda drew a sharp intake of breath. ‘What should we do?’

Gunnarr gave her a reckless look and patted the short skinning knife that hung at his waist. ‘If I have to fight them, their numbers will tell eventually. They’ll be starving, just like everyone else, so if I’m caught they’ll likely roast me over their fire. You they’ll carry off to bear their children.’

Kelda caught his hand. ‘Let’s go back.’

Gunnarr shook his head.

‘What then?’

‘Egil would want us to ambush them and drive them off.’ He reached across into the nearest bush and handed Kelda a stick about the length of her arm. ‘When I give the signal, you come out waving your sword and screaming as loud as you can. They’ll think us an army, and flee.’

Taking the stick, Kelda looked down at it in her hand and nodded hesitantly. Her eyes flashed a sparkle of enjoyment. Gunnarr smiled at her and fell forward onto his front to crawl off again.

Within a few yards he heard the low voice talking once more, and this time he could make out words.

‘Stupid, stupid …’ the voice was saying, over and over again. The words were punctuated by the sound of splashing footsteps as the man stamped about in the water somewhere below Gunnarr’s line of sight.

Gunnarr slowed his pace, his heart beating solidly against the ground beneath him. The undergrowth was thinning, but the sound of his limbs as he dragged them through the foliage seemed to be louder than ever. He realised that he could not hear Kelda. For once she had stayed back, watching as he pressed forward.

Within two more yards he breached the cover of the last bush. Once he did the long grass died away into tough, cropped shoots. His head and shoulders had emerged on an elevated ridge that overlooked the water, although from how high up he could not say. The men were still hidden from view somewhere beneath him, but the low voice continued to talk, almost incessantly.

‘Look at this, stupid, stupid …’

It was only when his face was barely inches from the edge of the bank that Gunnarr for the first time felt a stab of unease. He glanced backwards. Kelda was watching him from the bushes, her face frozen with anticipation. He shook away his thoughts and went on. Pushing with his toes, he eased himself forward until the grass parted from his vision and the bright water flashed up at him from below. His eyes swallowed in the scene, and his breath died upon his lips.

A man was standing below him at the edge of the water. He was facing the opposite direction, hands on his hips, as if deep in thought. Gunnarr was so close that he could see grains of dirt in the man’s scalp where his hair thinned at the back of his head. Though he was clad in a brown woollen tunic, the man’s shoulders were shaking as if through cold, and at intervals he would place his hands into his hair and clutch at it as if intending to pull it free.

It was not to him that Gunnarr’s eyes were drawn, though. Instead, he found himself looking in the same direction that the man was staring. There his gaze fell upon the second man, the high-voiced one, and the sight caused Gunnarr’s hands to clench involuntarily around fistfuls of grass.

The second man was nearer to being a boy. He could not have been much older than Gunnarr. He was lying on his back in a shallow point in the middle of the stream, naked, his pale skin very bright amidst the greyness of the river rocks. He could almost have been bathing, but the rushing water was surging against the crown of his head and pouring over into his open eyes and mouth, and the boy was not in the least bit conscious of it.

A splash of movement sounded from below, and Gunnarr almost jolted with shock as the man began to stride across to where the boy lay. For once the man’s lips had fallen silent, and the sound of the water sloshing around his feet was the only noise to mask that of Gunnarr’s heartbeat. The man came to stand over the boy’s body and stooped to peer down at it, like a hunter studying a paw print. He gazed at the corpse for a long while, his lips pursed questioningly, and then Gunnarr realised that a knife was in the man’s hand. With a sudden movement, he dropped to a knee in the water and began jerking his arm back and forth in a swift cutting motion.

The sight caused Gunnarr to lock rigid with shock. He clamped shut his jaw and tried to avert his eyes. And as soon as he did, he knew immediately that he had been found.

He must have made a sound. Some rustle of grass, or snap of a twig. With dread, he rolled his eyes back towards the scene, and found the man crouched frozen over the body, his head up and alert and his eyes roving slowly across the river bank directly below where Gunnarr lay. Gunnarr could see the man’s face for the first time. It was not one he recognised. It was the kind of drained, hollow face that displayed every bone, every muscle that moved beneath the skin. His complexion was the colour of week-old bruises, and his thin brown hair hung so closely to his face that his ears protruded through it. His eyes were creeping steadily upwards, seeking someone out. For a heartbeat Gunnarr was trapped with indecision. Then his muscles twitched and came alive again, and with a burst of sound he found himself bolting from his hiding place and scrambling back towards the bushes.

He found Kelda blocking his path, waiting for him, her face barely inches from his own.

‘Kelda, go back,’ he urged.

For a moment he saw a flicker of confusion pass across her face, the shadow of an uncertain smile giving way to a crease of concern.

Footsteps started splashing through the water down below.

‘Run back!’ he told her again, his voice almost a shout this time, and finally her eyes flicked past him and back again and she seemed to understand.

She clasped his hand. ‘Come on!’

But Gunnarr hesitated. The ground around them shook as a weight leapt against the bank beneath their feet. Kelda screamed and skittered backwards. She grabbed for Gunnarr’s arm again, but he shook free of her grasp and fixed his eyes on the edge of the bank.

With a thud, a hand snapped up over the side and clutched hold of the grass. It was trembling with effort, the nails clawing down into the soft earth. With a crack of broken branches, Kelda was gone, vanished into the undergrowth, but Gunnarr realised that he was not going to follow. Thoughts, or memories, were racing through his mind so fast that he did not know what they were, but he knew that he had to stay. He rose to his feet and stepped forward towards the river.

The man was halfway through hauling himself up over the bank, the top of his head cresting the side, but he must have heard Gunnarr’s movement and feared an attack raining down from above while he was helpless, for his hands pushed free of the bank and he crashed back down into the water.

Slowly, Gunnarr continued forward. As he leaned out cautiously over the side he found the man staring up at him from below, his body tensed, ready to spring forward or dart backwards at the slightest flinch. They studied each other’s eyes for a moment, and then the man’s features stretched into a twitching grin.

‘Greetings, little friend. What are you doing up there?’ His voice was speaking different words to his eyes.

Gunnarr placed a hand on the ground and came warily down the slope to the stream floor. The man watched every step, twisting his neck to follow the movement. Behind him, the body still lay in the water like a log. Gunnarr’s eyes must have flicked towards it, for the man also glanced quickly around at the sight, and then turned back to Gunnarr with a short awkward laugh.

‘I know you, I think,’ the man said, as Gunnarr reached the fine shale gravel that bordered the stream. ‘You’re an Egilsson.’

‘Folkvarr was my father,’ Gunnarr corrected instinctively, with such conviction that the man shrank his chin into his neck and gave a smirk.

‘That’s right, Folkvarr’s lad. Too fair to be Egil’s own. What are you doing up here, boy?’

Gunnarr glanced again at the pale figure lying in the water. Blood was bubbling out of a dark vent in his chest and rinsing down his thighs in long brown streaks. Gunnarr gathered his breath. ‘You should not have done that.’

The man glanced around at the body again and then eyed Gunnarr with a sideways look. ‘How long were you up there?’

Gunnarr offered no reply, so the man continued.

‘He’s my son, of sorts. I’ve fostered him as Egil has you, kept him fed when I’ve had scarcely enough for my own. He liked coming up here with me.’ He stopped there, as if that were explanation enough, and pressed a positive smile through closed lips.

‘You should not have done it,’ Gunnarr repeated.

Like water, the smile drained from the man’s face. His eyes hardened. ‘And who says so?’

Gunnarr answered without hesitation. ‘The rule.’

The man spat. ‘Egil’s rule.’ He seemed to be finished, and then the next words erupted as a shout. ‘And what’s that got to do with me? I never supported his claim. He was a man just like me once.’

Gunnarr shifted his weight. The temper had revealed itself, and now the man seemed to loom over Gunnarr, darkening like gathering storm clouds. The bloodied knife had appeared in his hand, apparently plucked from the air.

‘What were you doing to him?’ Gunnarr asked.

The man stared at Gunnarr for a moment and then turned over the knife in his hand, speaking more softly. ‘Opening his chest to the sky so that his spirit might escape, like the old ways for the dead. The old ways that all men of Helvik used to follow,’ he added in a louder voice. ‘Your father’s rule is taking that away from us as well.’

‘He’s not my fa—’ Gunnarr began, but that was all that he had time to say.

In a flash of movement the man sprang forward and snatched hold of Gunnarr’s arm. Gunnarr heard himself yelp and flailed out with his free fist, battering muscle, but the man dropped the knife and latched onto that arm as well. The wiry strength of his grip lifted Gunnarr from his feet, sapping his power away. The man’s face was ablaze with madness. His fingers drove so deep into Gunnarr’s arms that it felt like they were bending his bones. Agonised, Gunnarr twisted violently in the air, wriggling half loose, and from the side of his vision saw the stream rushing up to meet him. He hit the icy water with a clunk, and pain jarred through his bones as his hip came down upon a jutting rock.