Straightening, finally, Shef picked the shield up, rotated it from side to side in his left hand, and reflected that what was hard even for his smithy-trained muscle would be light work for Cuthred. He turned and walked out of the borrowed booth. Found himself face to face with a newcomer. He rubbed the smoke from his eyes, blinking in the sunlight, and recognized a grinning Thorvin, Brand just behind him.
“I see you are yourself again,” said Thorvin, gripping his hand. “I told Brand that if you were well we need only head for the sound of the hammer.”
Chapter Nineteen
“When King Halvdan knew that his son was dead,” Thorvin explained an hour later, seated comfortably on a camp-stool with a mug of bought ale in his hand, “he went into a giant-rage. He told his mother that she had lived too long, put a rope round her neck, and told her to stab and hang herself at the same time as a sacrifice to Othin, so that little Harald might join the warriors in Valhalla. She did it willingly, or so I heard. Then he found that Brand was missing, and Shef’s men as well, and decided to take it out on Brand’s ship and crew. But they barricaded themselves in a hall in the college of the Way, and called on some of the rest of us to protect them. Valgrim sided with Halvdan, and many of his followers too, and for a while it seemed there might be civil war even within the college of the Way.
“But Halvdan did another thing. It could not be hidden from him that Shef had been on the island of Drottningsholm, and one of Stein’s guardsmen confessed that he had been invited there. So Halvdan had Ragnhild to blame as well, and swore that she should follow his mother into the mound for her disloyalty and carelessness over his son.”
“Well.” Thorvin took another pull at his ale. “He was dead the next day. Dead in his bed. Died a straw-death, like a worn-out thrall.”
“What symptoms did he show?” asked Hund, sitting close by on the ground.
“Ingulf said, henbane poisoning.” Karli, also allowed to listen to the informal council, rolled his eyes, opened his mouth to say something, shut it again as he caught Thorvin’s eye.
“So then there were men gathering everywhere, and oaths of vengeance on all sides. It was said that King Halvdan’s conquests would seize the chance to break free of the Westfold rule, Queen Ragnhild was supposed to be going back to her people to raise an army to send after the killers of her son, the skippers of the coast guardships all came into port to protect their own interests, Brand’s crew got back to the Walrus and asked me to take to flight along with them.”
“But you didn’t?” Shef guessed.
Thorvin shook his head. “There was Way business to settle first. Besides, everything quieted down suddenly. King Olaf then showed what was in his hand. Did you ever wonder,” Thorvin inquired, “why they call King Olaf Geirstatha-alfr, Elf-of-Geirstath?
The listeners shook their heads mutely. After a moment Cwicca volunteered, “Alfr is what we call alf. Like in Alfred or Alfwyn. One of the Hidden Folk, but not ugly or vicious like a fen-thurs or a mountain-troll. Elf-women mate with men sometimes, and the other way round, or so they say. They are wise, but they have no souls.”
“What happens to them when they die, then?” asked Thorvin. He looked round, observing the uncertain shrugs and headshakes of his listeners. “None of us knows, though some say they go to a world of their own, one of the nine worlds of which this is the midmost. But others say that they die. Die and then return again. And some say that the same may happen with men born of women. Now that is what King Olaf believed of himself. He said that he had been on this earth before, and that he would yet return in the person of one of his blood. Or if not—for now he has none of his blood or his brother’s living—then his life would pass into some other keeping.