Library
Home / The Shadow of the Gods / Chapter Twenty-Three: Elvar

Chapter Twenty-Three: Elvar

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ELVAR

Elvar woke before dawn. For a moment she did not know where she was. The scent of mead and ale and urine helped her memory. She was in the hayloft of a tavern in Snakavik. Her head was full of memories and emotions, guilt, anger, pride, all swirling in her thought-cage as if caught in the current of a whirlpool. Rolling over she sat up, Grend close to her, his bulk a shadow as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. All about her lay the crammed, snoring bodies of the Battle-Grim. Pulling her boots on she stood, picked her rolled weapons belt up and made her way among them. A gentle glow showed her the opening to a steep ladder and she climbed down into the tavern.

Tables and benches were spread about a large room, the floor covered with dried rushes, dark patches of urine here and there, a flickering light coming from a hearth fire and an iron brazier of stinking whale oil.

Biórr and Thrud were down there and awake, Biórr stirring a pot of porridge over a small hearth fire and Thrud sitting with his legs stretched out, picking at his nails with a knife. Uspa and Bjarn were sitting on a bench in the corner of the room, a blanket across them both, a tafl board on the table in front of them. Bjarn smiled at her as she climbed down the ladder. So did Biórr.

There was a clatter of pots through a doorway and Elvar glimpsed the innkeeper and his wife.

“Porridge?” Biórr asked as she reached the ground and stretched. He was ladling some into two bowls, which he took over to Uspa and Bjarn. Elvar didn’t much feel like company; she had hoped to sit at a dark table alone and sift through her thoughts. But the smile of the lad, Bjarn, drew her to him.

The bench scraped as she pulled it out to sit with them, laying her weapons belt on the table beside the tafl board, sword, seax and axe looped in the belt. Thrud’s eyes rose from his nail-picking to follow her. He gave her a nod and a grunt, then went back to the dirt beneath his nails.

Biórr brought her a bowl and spoon, and put a clay jar of honey on the table, spooning some into Bjarn’s bowl.

“My thanks,” Uspa said to Biórr.

“Back to our game, then,” Biórr said, picking up a pair of bone-carved dice. “Your jarl will not escape my warriors,” he said, curling his lip in a false warrior-snarl.

“We shall see,” Bjarn said, fingers twitching, eager for his next move.

Elvar dipped her spoon and blew on her porridge, shifting her weight in her brynja. She had slept in her coat of mail. Although she was home, after almost four years of travelling with the Battle-Grim she did not feel safe here. Especially after her words with her father last night.

He had been shocked to see her, though only his eyes had betrayed him. Thorun, her elder brother, had been more vocal about it, while Silrið the Galdurwoman had been as unreadable and indifferent as always. The only one showing anything close to happiness at Elvar’s sudden return had been Hrung, the giant’s head. He had smiled warmly at her.

He remembers all the ale and mead I used to pour into his big mouth.

Thorun had told her she was a disgrace to leave as she had, and worse to return unannounced. Broðir, her younger brother, had mostly just stared at her, looking disappointed. When Thorun had stuttered into silence her father had spoken.

“Why have you returned?” he had asked her. “I doubt it was out of loyalty.”

If he had not added that last part, she would have stayed and talked. Instead she had turned on her heel and left, without uttering a single word. Closed the hall doors behind her to the renewed shouts of her eldest brother.

Strange, how we revert to the behaviour of our childhood, when back in the presence of our family.

I had so much to say: a fine speech planned.

But something about her father drove all rational thought from her mind. It had never been any different.

“Best eat it while it’s hot,” Biórr said to her.

“Huh?” Elvar grunted.

“The porridge. Best eat it while it’s hot. Tastes like whale glue when it’s cold.” He looked into his own bowl. “Maybe it is whale glue.”

Bjarn chuckled.

“You’ve tasted whale glue, then?” Elvar asked him.

“You’d be surprised what I’ve tasted. Starving does things to a man,” Biórr said with his bright smile. “I have not always been this fine, healthy and successful example of a man you see before you this morning.”

Elvar couldn’t stop the smile from cracking her lips. Her eyes strayed to the tavern windows, where the darkness was shifting towards grey.

Morning it is, then.

“Mama, where’s Papa?” Bjarn said, looking up from the tafl game, which he seemed to be winning.

Uspa looked down at him, her lips moving, but no words coming out.

“Your papa’s had to go away for a while,” Biórr said. “He’s asked us to look after you while he’s gone.”

Thrud tutted and Elvar looked at Biórr.

Better a hard truth than a soft lie, my father always said, Elvar thought, but looking at Bjarn’s face, and the tear running down Uspa’s cheek, Elvar found herself surprisingly moved by Biórr’s kindness.

Floorboards creaked above them and a form filled the hayloft’s hatch, boots climbing down the ladder.

“You should have woken me,” Grend said as he reached the ground, clicking his neck, buckling and looping his weapons belt, then stomping towards her. He looked at Uspa and Bjarn, then glowered at Biórr, who smiled back at him.

“Porridge?” Biórr said, starting to rise.

“I’ll get my own,” Grend grunted, walking to the pot over the hearth. He filled a bowl and sat down with them, filling the space between Elvar and Biórr.

More of the Battle-Grim were rising, figures climbing down the ladder and filling the tavern. The landlord and his wife appeared, bringing a fresh pot of oats to hang over the hearth fire, jugs of watered ale and horns and tankards to drink it from. Agnar came down the ladder, Kráka and the Hundur-thrall following him like faithful hounds. He looked at Elvar, nodded and walked to a table near the doorway. A muffled shout came from above and they looked up to see Sighvat’s bulk stuck in the loft-hatch. Someone must have pushed from above, because there was a tearing sound and he fell through, grabbing the ladder to stop himself falling.

“How did he get up there in the first place?” Elvar frowned.

“All things are possible with enough mead in your belly,” Biórr said. “At least, it feels so at the time. And mead is a fine killer of pain.”

She smiled again.

Grend grunted.

Sighvat dropped the distance to the ground and stood there, pulling his tunic straight.

“Stupid loft,” he muttered. “Must’ve been made for a dwarf.”

He helped himself to porridge, emptying the pot and calling out for more. The landlord and his wife brought more oats, stirring in milk and water as more of the Battle-Grim crawled out of the hayloft. Soon the tavern was close to full, warriors filling most of the tables. Elvar sat quietly, eating her porridge, while Biórr and Bjarn went back to their game of tafl. It looked like Bjarn’s bone-carved jarl and his remaining oathsworn were going to break through Biórr’s guardsmen.

Uspa shifted on her bench, moving closer to Elvar.

“What next for us?” she said to Elvar, almost a whisper.

Elvar looked at her, feeling a stab of sympathy for the woman. She was a Seiðr-witch, her husband Tainted, and her son too, but she had gone from a life of freedom with her kin to losing her husband and wearing a thrall-collar around her neck. Agnar and the Battle-Grim excelled at hunting down the Tainted and Elvar had always kept herself distant from their prisoners – she knew it was her living and her reputation – but this time she felt the twist of some emotion within her. Perhaps because of saving the boy from the serpent.

That was a business decision, she told herself. The boy will earn coin or be used as leverage against Uspa. A Seiðr-witch is a valuable asset.

But part of her could sniff out the lie in her own reasoning. She looked at Uspa and could not keep the pity from rising within her.

A hard truth or a soft lie?

“I do not know,” Elvar said, choosing the hard path. “Perhaps Agnar will sell you at the thrall-market, or keep you and sell Bjarn. Or sell you both, together or to different homes.” She shrugged. “I am not chief of the Battle-Grim to make such decisions.”

“But you are close to the chief,” she said, her eyes flickering to the troll tusk about Elvar’s neck, and the arm ring Agnar had gifted her.

Elvar just shrugged.

“We need to leave Snakavik,” Uspa said, with a flare of her eyes and nostrils.

She is afraid. But I would be afraid, if I were in her place.

“Why would you be in such a hurry to leave, with your husband a thrall of Jarl Störr? He will only leave Snakavik for battle. At least if you remain here you will be close to him: may even see him, occasionally.”

“We need to leave,” Uspa repeated, a hiss.

The tavern door swung open, letting in the grey light of Snakavik, and a warrior walked in, a woman in fine war gear, her brynja gleaming as if freshly scrubbed with sand. Her dark hair was braided, a scar running through one cheek into her upper lip. Elvar recognised her.

Gytha, father’s champion. Gytha’s battle-fame was known to most; even now the landlord appeared in the kitchen doorway and half-bowed to her.

Gytha looked around and saw Elvar, and Grend sitting beside her. She dipped her head to Grend.

“Welcome home,” she said to Elvar, though her eyes rested mostly on Grend.

Elvar nodded, not trusting the words her mouth might utter.

There was a moment’s silence, Grend silent as a stone, then Gytha looked over her shoulder and gestured. Two more warriors walked in, carrying a chest.

“For Agnar,” Gytha said.

The payment for Berak. My father spoke true, he pays well forBerserkir.

Agnar rose from his seat, where he had been hidden behind the tavern door. Elvar saw his hand drop from his sword hilt as he stood. He barked an order and Sighvat stepped forwards to take the chest from the two warriors.

“Jarl Störr is here to see his daughter,” Gytha said to Agnar and all in the room. She looked around. Confused faces stared back at her. Only Agnar and a few others knew of Elvar’s bloodline. Gytha’s eyes came to rest upon Elvar. “He wishes for some privacy.”

“A good time to take this to the Wave-Jarl, then,” Agnar said, slapping the chest. “Battle-Grim, with me,” he called as he walked through the tavern door. Sighvat followed him, and the rest of the Battle-Grim stood and filed out of the tavern.

Biórr looked at Elvar, noting that she made no move to leave the room. She could see the candle-light flickering to life in his thought-cage.

“That means you as well,” Grend told Biórr with a frown.

Biórr rose slowly.

“You will be… all right?” he asked Elvar. “I can stay.”

Grend snorted and put his hands on the table to rise.

Elvar touched Grend’s arm.

“I have earned my place in the Battle-Grim’s shield wall,” she scowled at Biórr, clutching the troll tusk at her neck. “Why would I need you to stay? You think me some niðing who needs protecting?”

He shrugged, holding his hands up, then gestured for Uspa and Bjarn to follow him. Thrud rose and put his knife away, falling in behind the woman and child. They were the last to leave.

More warriors entered the tavern: Jarl Störr’s oathsworn guard. They spread around the tavern, checking the room was empty. Two climbed the loft-ladder and shouted down that all was clear.

Jarl Störr entered the room. He saw Elvar and walked to her, figures filing in behind him: her brothers Thorun and Broðir, and finally Silrið, one of the few Galdurwomen in all of Vigrið, her necklace of animal skulls clinking as she walked. Jarl Störr sat down opposite Elvar, Thorun and Broðir either side of him. Silrið stood behind him.

“Daughter,” Jarl Störr said. He looked at her, a long and appraising look. Elvar felt like he was reading the secrets of her soul. “You should not have left,” he said into the silence.

Elvar curled her lip as she felt her anger building, a shapeless, bile-filled thing. She drew in a breath, trying to control it. Trying to break the patterns of her childhood where her father would admonish her and she would rage back at him, achieving nothing, always walking away feeling useless, and angry with herself, that she could not master her emotions and speak the truth of her heart.

“I do not regret leaving,” she eventually said. “I have earned my reputation, my battle-fame.”

“Battle-fame? In the employ of some merchant,” Jarl Störr said.

“Agnar and the Battle-Grim are great warriors, famed throughout all Vigrið, and in the wide world beyond. Places you have never set foot. Places where your name is not known,” Elvar said.

Her father sniffed. “He might be a capable warrior, but that does not change the fact that he makes his coin by dealing in flesh and blood. He is nothing more than a niðing merchant, a whore who will lie down for whoever shows him the most coin.”

Elvar felt her blood race, anger bubbling at the insults thrown at her chief. Again, she took a moment to master it and bite back the words that formed on her tongue like the first spears hurled in a battle.

“You are happy enough to pay him,” Elvar said instead. “What does that make you?”

“Sensible,” her father said with a shrug, “if he is selling something I want. But enough of Agnar and his band of mercenaries. I have come here to talk about you. About your kin, about your future.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “When you left, the way you did: it brought shame on me. You made people doubt me. The whisperers revelled in it. If he cannot control his own daughter, they said, how can he control the future of Snakavik?” He sighed. “I had to spill blood to regain my control of this realm. A lot of blood.”

“This is where you do not understand me,” Elvar said. “You do not control me. No one does, or ever will.”

“You are a jarl’s daughter,” her elder brother, Thorun exclaimed. “Father gave you everything, and in return you have responsibilities.”

“What, to be a pawn in his politics?” Elvar snapped. “To be traded, to be sold like some thrall-whore to a worthy husband for a piece of land? To lie back and be ploughed like a field, to have their seed sown in my belly and spend my life rearing little piglets like a fat sow?”

Thorun sucked in an angry breath.

“Yes,” he said, “if that is what Father wants.”

“I wonder if you would be so quick to agree if it were you that were being bartered, if it were you that would have to be humped by some sweating pig and turned into a brood bitch.”

“I would be happy to obey my father, whatever he asked,” Thorun snapped.

“Well, then you can wed Helka’s piglet and have a good humping, and I’ll lead the warband,” Elvar said.

Grend snorted, the closest he came to laughing, and Thorun frowned.

Jarl Störr gave a thin smile.

“Ahhh,” he sighed, leaning back in his chair, “it is harder managing my children than the rest of Snakavik and all my realm combined.” He shook his head. “I want you back with me, daughter. With us. It is where you should be.”

“I will not wed Hakon, just to spread your border a little wider.”

“A little?” Thorun said. “Father’s realm and Helka’s combined would cover more than half of all Vigrið.”

“I do not care,” Elvar shrugged. “I am born for the battle-storm and shield wall. I will make my own reputation, not be wed into someone else’s.”

“Reputation?” Thorun sneered. “You? More likely you are riding on Grend’s reputation. He stands at your shoulder in every conflict, I do not doubt, to protect you. He was ever mother’s hound, and now he is yours.”

Without realising it, Elvar was on her feet, her fist wrapping around her sword hilt.

“I will show you the sharp edge of my reputation, brother, and Grend can stay here sitting on his arse,” she said.

Thorun flushed red.

I had just seen my seventeenth name-day when I saw you last. You used to enjoy humiliating me in the practice court then. It would be different, now.

“Elvar fights her own battles,” Grend’s voice grated through the tension. “She has won her own renown, and is a name to be respected, and feared.”

Elvar looked at Grend and blinked. The old warrior rarely praised anyone or anything, and all in the room knew it.

Grend looked at Thorun. “I would sit down, if I were you.”

Thorun’s hand moved to the hilt of his sword.

Jarl Störr gave Thorun a dark look. “You will stop your bleating,” he said quietly, “or you will leave.”

Thorun’s glare flickered from Elvar to Grend to his father, finally withering, and he dropped his eyes.

“Good.” Jarl Störr fixed his heavy-lidded gaze on Elvar. “I came here to speak with you, daughter, of reconciliation. I would have you back at my side.” She opened her mouth, but he held a hand up, silencing her. “Perhaps a marriage alliance with Helka is not the only road to consider. There are other ways to fulfil our ambitions.” He shrugged, his eyes touching on Silrið.

“There is always more than one path through the forest,” Silrið said. “If one is brave enough to search for it, and perhaps strong enough to cut down a few trees.”

Jarl Störr grunted. “Either way,” he said, “I would have you with me, Elvar Störrsdottir. Perhaps it is time for you to be given your own drengrs, to lead your own warband.”

Elvar blinked at that, surprise washing away all her anger.

Her father stood.

“Think on that,” he said, “and come to me when you have an answer.”

Elvar stared dumbly at him.

He turned away and walked from the room, Thorun, Broðir, Silrið and his guards following. Broðir hesitated at the doorway, looking back at Elvar.

“Come back to us, sister,” he said, a shy smile spreading across his face. “Thorun’s an arseling, and I have missed you.” Then he was gone.

Gytha snapped an order and the remaining drengrs left the tavern room. She looking at Grend, then closed the tavern door behind her.

Elvar stared down at Grend. She sat down on abruptly weak legs, and then she started laughing.

Comments

0 Comments
Best Newest

Contents
Settings
  • T
  • T
  • T
  • T
Font

Welcome to FullEpub

Create or log into your account to access terrific novels and protect your data

Don’t Have an account?
Click above to create an account.

lf you continue, you are agreeing to the
Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy.