Chapter 25

Warlords and Chieftains.

O utside the sky was overcast but at least warmer than it had been on our journey. Brigid helped me back into my travelling cloak.

‘It has been wonderful to meet you, Lady Olith.’

I took both her hands in mine. ‘You must visit with us.’

She turned to her husband and hesitated at the sound of his cough. ‘In the spring, when he is well again. We will be travelling to sell our own produce. I will make sure we come to Byrgisey.’

‘You will be our guests,’ Sigurd shouted as he placed the heel of bread and cheese Brigid had insisted we take, into the leather pouch of the saddle.

‘We have fine healers, they could help with what ails your husband,’ I said.

‘I am grateful for the kind offer, Jarl Sigurd. We will be sure to visit in the spring.’

She did visit with me the following summer and brought a gift for Thorfinn, but I never saw Fergus again. The cough had taken him before the winter was out. During the summer months, I would often send thralls to do the heavier work on the farm and in the winter, she would come and stay.

Sigurd helped me into my saddle.

‘I shall settle the falcons,’ he said, taking each of them from their cages and casting them to the sky like tossed paper. ‘They can stretch their wings.’

He spurred his gelding on to a steady trot and I followed, leaving Brigid, her farmstead and the fleshmongers far behind us.

?

For a long way, the path remained straight beneath heavy clouds that had blown in from the sea. The damp air began to wrap itself around me. We had a day’s light ahead of us, although on our islands they seemed to be shorter and shorter.

We settled into a steady rhythm. I guided my mare with ease through the undulating tracks back towards our home. All the while I could feel the rush and roll of my unborn child. We travelled in easy silence. Each delighting in the others company. Soul-worn and heart-tired but grateful for the blessings of the gods.

The storm clouds thickened. Lying black and heavy against the midday sky. Drest and Freyja followed, although I had not seen them. I could not mistake their excited screeching.

‘I hear Thor in the thunder. The gods are pleased.’

‘If they are truly pleased, let us make it home before we are soaked through with rain. Is it much further?’

I stared skyward looking for some sign of Thor, but I could only feel the heaviness of the storm against my skin and the threatening squall about to make land.

‘No,’ he said, pointing into the distance. ‘Just a little further.’

Far ahead I could see a cluster of black flecks, dappled against the green of the small crest of a hill. I did not have much time. I had decided to state my intention to travel back to Alba before his warlords could make him think otherwise. ‘Sigurd,’ I said, trying to steady my nerves. ‘I know we said we would not speak of it again, but I have something I must ask you.’

He slowed his gelding to a lazy walk so that he might hear me better.

‘What is it?’ He kissed my hand. ‘Ask me anything.’

‘Before my father said he would marry Donada to Finnleik, he asked that we might travel to Atholl and take your warlords. He wanted to defend his borders.’

‘What he wants is my men to fight his battles and my ships to defend his rivers.’

‘Yes.’ That was the only answer for it. My father would use whatever he could however he could if it meant he would be the victor. ‘I know only too well what a brute he is. I have no doubt that the trouble with Finnleik is all his own doing.’

‘Finnleik is a dangerous man, but I do not doubt it. Before I agreed to the wedding, your father tried to have me killed.’

‘Killed?’

‘He did not stand a dog’s chance.’

‘And yet, you pledged yourself to his cause the day you agreed to marry one of his daughters?’

‘Best it is, for a man’s words to speak peace wherever possible. Having an allegiance with King Malcolm serves both of us well, and with his daughter at my side, I might have more chance of keeping my head firmly between my shoulders.’

‘Can we at least visit with him? At least see my sister before our bairn is born?’

‘Do not look so worried.’ He turned to me. ‘I will speak with the chieftains and ready the ships. We will visit with your father. I do not intend to get involved in any dispute he has with Finnleik, but I will hear what he has to say, will that please you?’

‘It would. It would be good to visit with my sisters before this bairn comes and be home before Christmastide.’

All I thought I had to do was to get Sigurd to Atholl, that once he saw my sister’s plight he would help. That we would take my sister and we would bring her home. How truly wrong I had been.

?

The next evening, I sat in the seat next to my husband in the Mead Hall. Ligach and Halldora had helped me into a gown of gold and green, with shoulders trimmed with grey furs. Most befitting of meeting Sigurd’s warlords. Around my eyes had been darkened with coal and my hair braided tightly, as was customary.

Outside the rain had begun to fall, but the room itself was comfortably warm. The fire-pits were filled with flames that almost licked the ceiling and rows of tallow candles that burned in the walls. Most of the heat came from the bodies, so tightly packed that I gazed over a sea of heads. My father, the Laird King, would never have allowed me to attend a meeting of his war council. To him, women were nothing more than an implement to beguile and flatter the sense but today, today I would hear it all.

Sigurd’s war chieftains were lined along the trestle tables. Those that could not be seated had spilled around the room and out through the open door. These were not the men from our village but the surrounding islands and further north. The noise from them rose and swelled, filling every nook and every crease in the thatch.

They drank our mead as though the whole of Byrgisey might run out. I had a lack of appetite but theirs were huge, feasting on roasted meats, sea trout and buttered roots. I picked at the meagre bowl of broth that Ligach had made for me, fixing a sewn-on smile upon my face.

Sigurd place his cup down, leaned forward and slammed his hand into the table for their attention.

‘I am grateful for your attendance,’ he said, shouting to be heard across the din.

A woman got to her feet. She had a leathered face and brown hair that hung loosely about her shoulders, unkempt and greying. ‘We are pleased to be here, but what is it that makes you call us here so urgently? Surely you are not to be wed again?’

That got them all laughing.

‘Agda Redaxe, it is a sure thing that it wouldn’t be you I was marrying,’ Sigurd told them, stilling their laughter. ‘We are to travel to Alba and meet with King Malcolm. He is frightened of Danes at his borders.’

‘So, he wants Danes to fight Danes?’ asked Agda suspiciously. ‘Does he not have enough men of his own? It would be faster for him to club them to death with a wet fish than it would be for us to sail to his coast and deal with them on his behalf.’

Again, the laughter rumbled.

‘It is only a meeting; I have agreed to nothing.’

It did not go unnoticed that he had not mentioned Finnleik.

‘If it is just a meeting, why do we need to be in attendance?’ said Agda.

‘It would be foolish to only sail with half our ships if we are to go to fight them.’

Loud protests rang out.

He carried on. ‘I did not say that we will, but if we need strike, left without our ships, without our men, it would end in failure. No matter how good our shield wall, we would be dead before your ships could reach us.’

Agda sneered. ‘Will he be providing us coin? And land? And enough food for our warriors? They will not march without it.’

The clamour grew louder.

‘Send your men,’ said Agda. ‘You will get none of mine. I swear fealty to you and no one else.’

‘I ask that my warlords come with me to Alba, to support me.’

‘Jarl Sigurd-.’

Before Agda could finish, I rose from my seat, touching Sigurd’s arm to silence him.

‘How many horns of ale have ye swallowed?’ I said, as loudly as I dared. ‘What I see before me are not warriors but a few lazy drunkards. Your Jarl is asking that you accompany us to Alba, as envoys of our lands. You will refuse him?’

The room fell silent.

I carried on. ‘You pledge no allegiance to Laird Malcolm, but here in my belly, I carry not only the heir to Orkney but an heir to the throne of Alba. We are united whether we like it or no. This.’ I pressed the pear shape of my growing child. ‘This is what ties us. The northern isles and Alba. If we needed it, the Laird King and his men would be on our shores standing shoulder to shoulder with us. It is our duty to do the same.’

All eyes were on me then, but I did not believe a word of it, but I was so consumed in trying to free Donada from my father’s clutches that I would have told them anything. Right then, I could hear every breath. Every heartbeat. The flicker of every flame. Sigurd stood proud beside me.

‘Will you give your fealty? Will you travel with us to Alba?’

My innards felt as though they were filled with beetles, trying to crawl their way out. I held my breath, waiting for someone, anyone to answer.

‘I will,’ said Agda, bending down on one knee. ‘You can have my men and you can have my ships.’

Shouts of agreement rang out across the Mead Hall. We had our warlords.