The Half-Drowned King, page 27
“Yes,” said Ragnvald shortly.
Heming turned to face him. He had the look of a warrior from a saga, handsome and strong, in a way that made Ragnvald too aware of the way Solvi’s knife had twisted his own face, of how narrow and slight he was, compared to Heming’s muscled frame. Now Heming did not look so haughty, though, but a little bit lost.
“I thought that what is between you and your father might be better for some distance,” said Ragnvald diffidently. “Was I wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Heming shook his head. “I want him to think me a man, not a child.”
Ragnvald drew back, startled at this sudden confidence, and then worried that Heming only shared this because he planned on killing Ragnvald, so it did not matter what he told him. “He wants you to—”
“I know,” Heming cut him off. “He wants me to make a friend of Harald. What good can that do? My father is the most powerful king in the west. All friendship rests on that. What is there for me to do?”
“Well,” said Ragnvald, “there will be opportunity to fight bravely at Harald’s side, and skalds will sing of it.” He looked out over the river, and added, “Is that not why you wanted to sail against Hunthiof at Tafjord?”
“I should kill you for that betrayal,” said Heming, voice suddenly poisonous. Ragnvald stood and put his hand at his sword. He had hoped speaking of their conflict might take away its power, but he had chosen wrong—Heming would rather it not be spoken. Heming faced him, also fingering the grip of his sword. Fire-lit faces turned toward them.
“My father is Hunthiof’s ancient enemy and would—he should—thank me for planning Hunthiof’s death,” Heming added.
Some tension went out of Ragnvald—it seemed Heming still meant to talk, not attack. “Or he might mourn,” he said, “like the man in the tale who killed his enemy and then took to bed for a month because he would never more have a challenge like that. Perhaps your father is wise enough not to court such despair.” Ragnvald said the last sardonically, searching Heming’s face for some sign that he might be letting go of his anger.
“What do you know of it? You have not killed your enemy, this Olaf. If a man kills his enemy, he should not mourn, he should go out and find a new one.”
Ragnvald felt the anger Heming had been trying to stoke. He wanted to ask if he had done Heming a service in becoming his enemy, but he did not want to remind Heming of that, not when they both stood ready to fight.
“I am not your enemy unless you wish it,” he said instead. Heming made him feel the battle weariness that nerves had been keeping at bay. He had slept little over the past few days.
“No, you are my nursemaid and my father’s spy,” said Heming bitterly.
Ragnvald inclined his head. “As you say. I would sleep now.”
Heming did not answer, only glowered as Ragnvald turned to find the tent that he had set up to share with Oddi. Ragnvald woke when Oddi came in later in the night and could not fall asleep again, spending the night instead turning over the words he had spoken to Heming. He had grown proud of his ability to sway Hakon with advice and clever observations, but he had nothing of the same to offer Heming. If only Heming would see that doing well in Harald’s war would earn a measure of his father’s trust and admiration, he might hate Ragnvald a little less.
* * *
The next morning the combined armies pressed on. Guthorm’s goal was the great fort of King Eirik in the Hordaland uplands, but as they marched overland, up into the hills, the scouts heard news of Gudbrand.
For a few days the army chased rumors across the fields and forest. They marched south, then heard that King Gudbrand’s army was moving inland. The vast company could not find enough food. Deer and other game feared such a large group of humans and fled far before them. The men had emptied the first few farms, to much wailing of women and complaining from the farms’ owners, until Guthorm put a stop to the raiding. Now they went hungry save what the men could trap overnight.
Hakon and Guthorm met, and Hakon determined to take his force back to the fjordlands, to protect the land that they had already conquered. Ragnvald could see that this did not please Guthorm, but Hakon had reason and a hungry army on his side this time.
Finally Guthorm decided that it was not a good use of their resources to continue this pursuit, and they tracked east to King Eirik’s fort. Ragnvald had heard this fort sung of—the story went that before the gods drove the frost giants into the mountains, the giants had built it, their mighty hands, as hard as stone, carving out the earthwork ramps and ditches. It dominated a broad upland plain near the foothills of the Keel. Seeing the high-piled earth, the deep trenches reinforced with spikes, Ragnvald could well believe that giants had a hand in it. If those within were well provisioned and had enough men to guard the walls, it could withstand a long siege.
He was glad Guthorm had decided on some object, no matter what it was, for it meant a few days without marching. The bite wound the boy had given Ragnvald’s hand was not healing well. He examined it each morning and found the edges hot and suppurating, refusing to heal together. He washed it and covered the wound with cobwebs before wrapping a clean cloth around it, as he had been taught, yet it only hurt more and more each day.
Harald’s army camped in a grove out of bowshot of the fort, while Harald took Thorbrand, Ragnvald, Heming, and Oddi, as well as a few other captains, to scout around the fort and look for weaknesses. Their arrival had not escaped notice. Great wooden doors barred each of the four entrances. Guards patrolled the tops of the earthwork ridges.
“My uncle tells me it is double-walled, so that if an army makes it through the first wall, they can be slaughtered in the gulf between,” said Harald. The idea chilled Ragnvald’s blood, to be trapped there with death on all sides. “I must ask him how he means for us to take it.”
On the way back to the camp, Ragnvald fell behind with Oddi, out of earshot of Harald.
“It would be faster for his uncle simply to lead these men,” Ragnvald said. “It is foolish to pretend this boy can do more than stand up and make pretty speeches.” He was weary from the marching, from the pain in his hand, and from the haste with which the army moved.
“He is young,” said Oddi. “But I feel he will grow into a great king. His mother is a great sorceress, and she prophesied it. Would you prefer it if he made foolish decisions himself, rather than following his uncle’s counsel?”
“I would prefer it if I thought he was more than a particularly well trained dancing bear,” said Ragnvald. He did not know why Harald irritated him so much, except that he shone so bright, and had every advantage of strength and birth, yet these advantages seemed hollow. True, his skill with weapons, even at such a young age, had never been matched. He might make a worthy hero, but a hero needed different skills than a king. Some of Ragnvald’s dislike must come from envy—he knew himself enough to admit that. Harald had lost his father and now had an uncle who acted as a father to him—more than a father. Hakon was pleased to play father to his sons and men like Ragnvald, only as long as they could help him and did not outshine him. Harald had no brothers to compete with, and no sisters to worry over either.
“Bear, do you think?” Oddi asked, pulling Ragnvald out of his thoughts. “He puts me more in mind of a well-fed wolf. Be careful, Ragnvald.”
Ragnvald hurried to catch up with Harald’s long, loping strides. As soon as they returned to Guthorm’s tent, Harald said to his uncle, “It is indeed a mighty fort. How will we take it?”
“We hear they are not well provisioned,” said Guthorm. “We will lay siege for a few days, and ask for terms. If that does not work, we will fill in a section of the ditch, at night, so there will be less risk of arrow shot. Then rush the wall at that place. Some will die going over it, but most will not, and Eirik will not be able to keep us out.”
“I will go over,” said Thorbrand. “What of the inner wall?” Ragnvald was glad Thorbrand had asked, so he need not.
“We must bring planks to bridge the inner ditch,” said Guthorm. “And make sure not to block our retreat. Perhaps some swifter attacks at first, to confirm how things lie. We do not know enough about how they set their guards.”
It seemed the beginnings of a good plan, though Ragnvald did not know how Guthorm could be certain they were not well provisioned. He would like to try to lure one of the guards away from his post and question the man, but he did not think his suggestion would be welcome, not after Guthorm’s anger at him over the matter of the boy—the boy who punished him even now.
Ragnvald sat that night with Heming at dinner. Heming was never happy without an audience, so he had made friends with some of Harald’s finer warriors, the sons of rich raiders, men who knew enough to appreciate Heming’s graces but could not outshine them.
“How are you getting on with King Harald?” Ragnvald asked him. They dined on deer that Dagvith, one of Ragnvald’s tablemates from Yrjar, had taken in the afternoon.
“He is, as you say, a boy,” said Heming. Ragnvald immediately wanted to defend Harald, though he agreed with Heming. Heming did not bring out the best in Ragnvald, either. He must master the annoyance that festered from his hand into his heart, or he would become unwelcome at every hearth.
“And?” said Ragnvald. “Your father wishes you to be his companion.” He hoped Hakon would rejoin them soon.
“He is stocked full with companions. Perhaps if this Thorbrand does not survive the next battle . . .” Heming gave Ragnvald a speculative look. “My father did want you to help me.”
“Not with murder,” said Ragnvald firmly. He had not spent much time with Thorbrand, but thought he liked him, this small blustery man. The path to turn Heming into Harald’s companion would lie with Thorbrand, not over him. “Why don’t you volunteer to help build the ramp onto the wall instead?” he offered. “Harald will admire you for that.”
“It will be dangerous,” said Heming doubtfully.
Ragnvald sighed. “I will do it too,” said Ragnvald. There, now Heming’s competitiveness might help him.
* * *
After he had spent two nights building the ramp, Ragnvald’s hand could hardly hold the haft of a shovel. When his digging shift was done, and the other men crawled off to sleep, Ragnvald walked a little way into the forest. He sat down with his back against a tree, cradling his hand, trying to hold off despair at what must come next.
Dawn came on gray and rainy. He should wait for full daylight to tend the wound, when he would be able to see it best, but he feared to examine it too closely, and that someone else might watch him. He unwrapped the wound. Just a small double arc of teeth marks, yet it was red and hotter than it had been the day before. Running his finger over the flesh sent a thrill of pain up his arm and into his elbow.
Now that it had gone this far, he must cut open the wound to drain out the poison. Best to burn the wound with a hot poker, but Ragnvald did not think he could do that for himself, and he did not want anyone else to learn of his injury. A healer, seeing what Ragnvald saw now, the sickly shine of it, would probably want to cut his hand off.
Better he die than live without a sword hand. Oddi would help him to die gripping a sword if it came to that, so he could go as a warrior to the lands beyond death. Ragnvald found he could just bear to think of these things if he thought of them as happening to someone else. His hand too—he would cut the poison out of a friend’s hand, so now he could do it for himself.
He drew his dagger and tested the edge by rasping his thumb against it. It had been sharp enough to cut the meat at dinner, and what was he but meat?
He wiped the blade on his shirt. It would be better if he could wash it clean with sand, but they were far from a sand beach. He must not delay. He looked around to see if he was likely to be disturbed while he did this thing.
All slept at this hour; no one would stop him. He found a flat rock that he could use to steady himself, and pressed the back of his hand against it. The rock was cool—even the back of his hand was hot now from the infection. Cut it and let the blood and fluids run free, he told himself.
He pressed his blade to the edges of the wound, opening them where they had tried—and failed—to come together. The pain was like a punch in his stomach, far worse than Olaf’s sword in his thigh, or Solvi’s dagger to his cheek. Blackness gathered on the edges of his vision. He waited for it to fade, and swallowed down the bile in his throat. He must do this. He pressed harder now.
His hand bled freely, red blood that looked black in the gray dawn, mingling with the cloudy fluid of infection. He let it bleed for a dozen breaths. It did bring some relief, some lessening of the pressure, more than just the relief of no longer pressing a knife into his own flesh. He took another deep breath and cut the other half of the wound. That one was easier. The pain came in regular waves, and after each one crested, the trough felt almost pleasant. His hand now seemed as though it belonged to someone else in truth. A burning sensation suffused it, as though he had plunged it into ice water.
His stomach heaved. He looked away from the blood, from his mangled hand, at the quiet camp, the gray humps of leather tents, then back at the wound. Blood and pus, white, not clear. That was not good. Still, it did not smell putrefied yet, only like blood always smelled, of metal and ocean.
It seemed impossible that he could have done this without anyone noticing, for he had groaned with pain as he did it. He took up a small skin of ale with his left hand and splattered it over the wound, hardly feeling it. Then he took a clean strip of cloth that he had stolen for this purpose and wrapped it around his hand, binding tight, and biting off the knot with his teeth. He stood. The tents of Harald’s men wavered in his vision, as though he were looking at it through the mist. He emptied the ale skin into his throat.
By midafternoon, Ragnvald knew that his surgery had not worked. It seemed that he floated above the camp, watching Harald move between tents, shining like a torch, warming where he passed, turning all heads. This sensation came from fever, Ragnvald knew, a fever that detached him from his body and his cares. It touched him lightly for now, though he could feel its black shadow on the horizon.
Near afternoon, one of the scouts came running into the camp, breathless with exertion. He had to lie on the ground for a few minutes before he could speak well enough to be understood. Ragnvald had spent most of the day sitting near the leaders’ tents, at the foot of a tree, listening with half an ear to the conversation, while his fever ebbed and flowed. He knew he would feel better if he lay down in his tent, but feared that if he did, he might never stand up again.
“Gudbrand’s army assembles in the foothills to the south,” said the scout, finally. He gave counts of men and tents he had seen, drawing the shape of the land in the ash of the dead campfire.
“We should go to meet him there,” said Guthorm.
“They are well positioned at the top of a hill,” said Ragnvald, half to himself. “But if we draw them out, we may be crushed between them and Eirik’s fort.”
“We have more than twice their numbers,” said Guthorm. Ragnvald had not realized his voice had carried to Guthorm, but he supposed Guthorm might be alert for anyone arguing with his plan. “We can attack from below, and brace each other if necessary.”
Ragnvald frowned. His fever had robbed him of any self-control, it seemed. Harald looked at him inquisitively, and that was enough invitation for Ragnvald to stand, uncertainly, and join him at the fire. Strangely, the warmth from the flames made him feel colder, and he had to clamp his jaw to keep from shivering.
“What would you do, Ragnvald?” Harald asked.
“If you attack uphill, form a curve in the line, here. A dip.” He moved forward and sketched a line in the dirt with his left hand, keeping his right pinned to his thigh to keep it from being jarred into worse pain. The line bowed inward at the center of the slope. “They will think they are pushing you back. Then, let the middle of the line fail, and their men rush downhill, through the line. You must turn quickly after that, to meet them as they try to fight back up. But then you will have the advantage.”
“‘You’?” said Guthorm. “And where, in this fantasy, will you be?”
Dead, Ragnvald thought. “I will be in the middle, ready to fail and turn,” he said. “That is where the bravest will be.” He looked evenly at Guthorm when he said it, hoping he could not see Ragnvald’s pain and his desire to lie down, lie down and float away.
“If you came up with this plan, how do you know Gudbrand won’t see through it?” Guthorm asked.
“My father trusts Ragnvald,” said Heming.
Ragnvald did not even have the energy to give Heming a grateful look. He rested his head in his hand. “What can he do, even if he knows this? He could have more men hiding in the trees—that’s what I would do—and attack from above once we face downhill. We can guard against that—our force should be large enough to send a party into the forest to roust out anyone hiding. Let the outer edges of the shield wall take that task, after we turn.”
Guthorm and the captains fell to arguing about the plan, and Ragnvald drew back to the edge of the circle. He gathered his cloak around his shoulders. He did not care if they liked his plan or not. Perhaps someday, after it ceased to matter to him, they would see that it had been a good one. He listened with half an ear and started to doze. Oddi roused him some time later, with a hand on his arm.
“I think they will do it,” said Oddi. His mouth quirked. “Ragnvald the Wise.”
“I only spoke first,” said Ragnvald, shrugging. “If it is such a good plan, someone else would have come up with it.”
“You take the virtue of modesty too far sometimes.” Oddi sighed. “Clever boasting is a virtue too.”
“I cannot be clever, nor can I stop my mouth tonight. That is not so wise.” He did stop speaking then, though, for fear he would reveal to Oddi the reason.
