“I’m afraid he did,” Ustain said.
Helga nodded slowly. “Good. Thank you.” She dug around and produced a small spike from somewhere in the folds of her skirt. Her eyes alighted on a piece of wood lying in the yard. She picked it up and carved three runes on it in swift, sure-handed slashes. “Give this to Audun. I will know if you don’t,” she said, handing it to Ustain.
Then she walked to the house and closed the door.
She did not watch Audun leave.
They’d gone about a mile when Ustain stopped Audun. “Here. She wanted you to have this,” he said, handing him a piece of wood.
Audun took it but made no attempt to communicate.
“Fine. Don’t mind. You don’t look like a storyteller, anyway. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’ll be joining Forkbeard’s army. He’s heading east to beat up the Svear, and he needs more spear-meat. We’ll be about ten days getting there, during which time we’ll pick up whatever we find. I’ve taken most of what there is to have around here, so there’ll mostly be kids, creeps, and criminals.”
Audun shrugged.
“Good.” Ustain looked at him. “Now . . . I don’t think you’ll be running anywhere, will you?” Audun still didn’t answer. A smile took hold in the recruiter’s face and warped his features in slow-blooming delight. “No . . . I don’t think you will. In fact, I think the king will like you. Come on, let’s get moving,” he said, walking along.
They’d walked another four miles when the silence was broken by loud barking. Something was coming toward them at high speed.
“Fucking country dogs,” Ustain said. “Ought to snap their necks.” The horse snorted beside him.
The big black-and-white dog stopped a good thirty yards from them and growled low, but did not come any closer. Instead it sniffed the air.
When it caught Audun’s scent, it let out a whining, keening sound and took off away from them at a dead run.
“What—? I’ve never seen them do . . .” Ustain’s voice trailed off. He looked at Audun, who kept walking south.
The king’s recruiter pulled his cloak a little tighter and directed his horse a couple of steps away from the broad-shouldered blacksmith.
Three days later there were five of them: a gap-toothed old horse thief, a sniffling youth who spoke with a slur, and a nervous young man who kept asking Ustain questions.
Audun marched on in silence and tried not to think, letting the endless questions of the man he’d named Mouthpiece wash over him.
“—and is it true that the king is nearly eight feet tall?”
“Yes,” said Ustain. “And he has three arms.”
“Really?”
“Indeed. And he speaks the language of the One God. But those who still worship the false gods see him only as a regular man, apparently. Can you imagine?”
“No,” Mouthpiece huffed. “I cannot. One cannot doubt the king.”
“No,” Ustain said. “One most certainly cannot.”
The old horse thief hawked and spat. “I don’t know what they want more gods for,” he muttered. “We were fine with the ones we had. Never seen this new one.”
“Oh, you will,” said Ustain. “You certainly will.”
They marched south with winter at their backs.
The wind snapped at their heels, buffeted their faces, and slipped in between the worn-out layers of old clothes, carrying a smell of salt and cold. The plains stretched out before them. Due south, the horizon thickened a little.
Ustain pointed. “There we are,” he said. “Hot stew, a blanket, and the word of the Lord. What more could you want?” He turned away and leaned into the wind.
Audun’s gut twisted with longing for Helga, and he bit down to stifle the growl. He could feel the warmth of the fury, but there was something different this time. He saw his forge in Stenvik, but the fire wasn’t consuming everything it touched. Instead it was
banked and ready to be used. Audun snarled at Ustain’s back, but he remained in control. He tried to imagine adding a little bit of wood to the fire.
His nostrils flared, and he felt dizzy; blood coursed through him, pounded in his ears, made his heart beat faster. He could feel his muscles tightening, but the sensation of helplessness, of being swept away on the tide . . . was gone.
His lips pursed in a sharp smile.
SWEYN
FORKBEARD’S
CAMP,
SOUTHEAST
JUTLAND
LATE
NOVEMBER,
AD
996
Ustain’s voice trailed off as they closed in on the camp. “What the—? Where the fuck is everybody?”
King Forkbeard’s mighty host consisted of a couple of tents and a handful of scarred fighters sitting around a campfire. Audun counted about twenty of them. A broad-faced man with ruddy cheeks rose to greet them when they came close enough. “Ustain! Shitface!” he shouted by way of greeting. “Back so soon? Did they not have any sheep to your liking?”
“What’s this?” Ustain shouted back.
“Left last week for Svealand. We’ve been waiting for you lot to come back with fresh meat.” The man calmly removed mailed gloves from their resting place near the fire and put them on. He was tall but walked with a bit of a stoop. Strands of thinning blond hair hung limply on his head.
“Well, here I fucking am, aren’t I?” Ustain snapped back. “Where are the others?”
“‘Not here’ would appear to be the answer,” said the man, grinning. “But then, they don’t have your charm and good looks.” This earned the man a giggle around the campfire. He proceeded to look critically at Ustain’s recruits, who stood in an awkward, squinting line behind him. “Is this it? And all dicks, too. Should have brought us something nice for our troubles,” he said. “Something that fights back this time.”
“This is all there is,” Ustain said, sighing as he dismounted. “There’s nothing much to be had anymore.”
“That’s true,” the broad-faced man conceded. “It’s a shame, too.”
“And he wouldn’t like it if I’d brought one in. Near had my head off with the last one,” Ustain said, mechanically grooming his horse.
“Where’s the king?” Mouthpiece squealed. “I was told there would be ceremonies!” The broad-faced man walked toward him, smiling, and punched him in the jaw. Mouthpiece dropped like a stone.
Beside him, the old horse thief made a point of studying his toes. The kid stared at Mouthpiece, lying still on the ground. Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth.
The broad-faced man turned toward Audun. “So what’s your story, stranger? You look solid enough. Why are you here?”
Audun didn’t answer.
The soldier’s eyes sparkled. “You’re not very well brought up,” he said. “You answer when you’re spoken to. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Audun said. The mailed gloves clinked as the soldier flexed his fingers. Behind the man he could glimpse the dull gleam of anticipation in his friends’ eyes.
“Good! Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. You a tough guy?” the soldier sneered, limbering up.
“Jomar, I don’t—”
“Shut your sick-meat mouth, Ustain,” Jomar snarled without taking his eyes off Audun. “I was talking to our friend here. Are you tough enough to be a member of King Sweyn Forkbeard’s army?”
Audun didn’t answer.
“
Are you?
” Jomar screamed, a hair’s breadth away from his face. “
Are you ready to kill?
”
At the edge of his vision, Audun registered more faces: men emerging from nearby tents. So he was to be tonight’s entertainment, then. He had to stifle a smile. They did not know where he was coming from.
Jomar pushed him, and Audun allowed himself to go with it. Flat hand, middle of the chest. Maybe half of the man’s strength.
His stance had changed ever so subtly, waiting for the flailing retaliation, no doubt. Instead, Audun simply regained his balance and looked straight ahead.
Jomar was on him again, pushing hard. “
What the fuck are you—some kind of pussy?
” he screamed in Audun’s face. Audun retreated and regained his balance.
“
I’m going to—
” Jomar stepped in and pushed harder. Audun shifted to the side, grabbed the man’s wrist, pulled and brought his knee up as hard as he could. The satisfying crunch of a snapped rib sent his pulse racing, but he remained in control.
Jomar sucked air back into his lungs with a pained wheeze, yanked his arm free, and clambered to his feet. “You’re fucking dead, you—”
Audun slapped him and felt skin split under his hand. Jomar staggered away from the force of the blow. “Shut up,” Audun said.
The broad-faced man howled in rage and launched himself forward, arms flailing—but he went in too quick; Audun’s heel took him in the hip bone and spun him around, and he hit the ground hard.
Audun walked to Jomar where he lay on the ground and knelt by his head. A terrified man well past his prime looked back up at him, eyes watering, mouth quivering.
A heavy straight right broke Jomar’s nose and drove the bone up into his brain.
A spasm—and he lay still.
Audun rose and found himself surrounded by a circle of stunned, wary faces. He scanned them all in turn but found no one likely to mount a challenge.
“Don’t just fucking stand there,” Ustain barked. “Do what needs doing.” No one moved. “Come on. You all knew this was coming. Just thank God the big bastard”—he gestured to Audun—“is on our side.”
The men around the campfire shuffled into action. Within moments, Jomar had been stripped of his valuables. As an afterthought, a couple of scrawny graybeards dragged him a short distance from the camp, where they dumped him unceremoniously.
Audun turned away from the fire. The old horse thief was looking him up and down from a safe distance. Satisfied, he shuffled a half-step closer and nodded at him. “Nice work. Now watch your back,” he mumbled as he moved toward where Mouthpiece lay crumpled in a heap on the ground.
The other recruiters arrived over the next three days. They brought tales, furs, and food, but few bodies. On the morning of the third day, Ustain gave the orders, and King Forkbeard’s reserves moved out. There were forty of them in all, men between the ages of eighteen and fifty, sparsely armed and barely fed. Ustain had assumed command, mostly because Audun didn’t.
Every single man in the party gave him a wide berth. In fact, he suspected that if he’d turned around and left, no one would have tried to stop him.
But where would he go?
In the days since he left Helga’s house, he’d been struggling to understand the world. There was something bigger at play here, a bigger purpose. When he and Ulfar had slain the woman on the boat they’d started something—something bigger than themselves. He was no longer the master of his own destiny, and in a way it felt oddly
freeing
. He didn’t need to
decide
anymore. He could just go where the blood was.
And following an army was as good a bet as any to do that.
Seagulls circled lazily in the distance.
“Can you smell it?” Mouthpiece mumbled. His face was still a fetching mix of purple and yellow, but the jaw was healing well. The old horse thief—Thormund, his name was—had put a brace on it and tied it in place with rags, then sat by his twitching, whimpering patient and held him down through the worst of the pain. Now Mouthpiece was slowly getting back the use of his jaw, which apparently wasn’t broken.
“Of course we can,” Thormund shot back. “We don’t have a nose full of blood after the welcoming committee.” Mouthpiece
glared at him, but the boy smiled. Once they’d accepted their fate, the three men very quickly started sounding like they’d always known each other.
“Never liked the sea,” the old horse thief muttered.
Ustain was busy talking to their newest recruit, a rider on a dappled horse who’d caught up with them as they neared the coast. For a moment, Audun thought the man had been staring at him, but he’d dismissed the thought quickly. He was miles and miles away from anyone he’d ever known and he wanted to keep it that way. The new man was just one of those people who was . . .
familiar
; that was the word.
“We can catch a boat,” Ustain shouted over their heads. “Ivar here says there’s an old twenty-bencher just over the hill. Only a handful of sailors waiting with it. Follow me!” he said, spurring his horse on. The new man turned and gave chase.
Thormund glanced at Mouthpiece. “Lucky us, boat just sitting there,” he said.
“Happens,” Mouthpiece mumbled. “Weather or something. One should always accept the gifts of God.”
“Judging by your face, that’s probably more of a guess for you,” Thormund said. “Ain’t that right, Boy?”
Boy giggled. He’d warmed to the old man from the first and had stayed close ever since Jomar had clouted Mouthpiece, but he had still not said a word. They’d named him Boy—he reacted to it, so it’d do until something better came up. Sometimes Audun thought he felt Boy’s eyes on him, but he never caught him looking.
So all he could do was march along next to the thief, the boy, and the blabbermouth. He smirked to himself. “Should have stayed with the Swede,” he said.
“What Swede?” Thormund said. Boy peered over his shoulder, eyes sparkling.
Audun shot them a dirty look and said, “Nothing,” with great finality, but the old man didn’t back down.
He ran Audun over with an appraising eye. “Nothing seems to be on your mind,” he said. “Care to tell us?”
Audun shook his head and veered away from the group, keeping pace but staying out of conversation range. They’d get absolutely nothing out of him.
The sea breeze hit them full in the face as they crested the hill. White-tipped waves crashed on the beach, where a worn-out old raiding boat had been dragged up onto the sand. The sad remains of the crew—Audun counted ten—huddled around a pathetic fire. Ustain and Ivar stood by, talking to a broad-shouldered man who was gesturing out to sea.
“That’s our boat all right,” said Thormund. “It’s a good thing we haven’t eaten much.”
“Mmph,” said Mouthpiece.
They side-footed their way down the steep sandbanks, and by the time they reached the fire, the men from the boat had made space for them and were sharing out dried beef. Ustain ambled toward them, chewing on a reddish-brown strip.