 
### Viking Hunter

### A War of Outlaws

### By Wulf Anson

### Volume III

### The Valkyr's Kiss

Text and Cover Copyright Wulf Anson and Wulf Publish 2016

Rights reserved

Distributed by Smashwords

Also Available

Viking Hunter Volume 1 Grab The Wolf

Viking Hunter Volume 2 Kill Them Twice

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Viking Hunter is a work of fiction set in the 13th Century. It is not meant to disparage today's Catholics, Jews, Gays, Native Americans, Savage Mastiffs or any other current sub-groupings. The prejudices within are historically well documented.

When Leif Erickson sailed home to Greenland from his trip to Markland and its mammoth forests his news was snatched up as if it was free silver. The few trees in Greenland grew no taller than man height. Fortunes had been made importing wood from Norway to Iceland and Greenland. Land, forests, fish and game waited just over the horizon. The news shot back to Iceland and from there to Norway and Denmark and the rush was on. The Swedes were too busy taking over Gardariki (Russia) to notice, much less care.

First stop was the island of Hellulandia, across the icy seaway from Markland.

Markland to Hellulandia's west then became a dumping ground for Outlaws exiled from Hellulandia by its Courts. These following events occurred in that part of Markland known as Skoggangurstrond, (Outlaws Strand) and New Tara (today's Chesapeake Bay) where many of the Irish, sick to their eye teeth of being invaded by everyone, had built their own enclave, in the years 1278 and 1279.

Note on names:

Before you dislocate your tongue trying to pronounce the Viking names in it, the Icelandic J is retained in them.

Pronounce it as either a Y, or a long E.

Jarnulf becomes Yarnulf.

Anja becomes Anya.

Kjartan becomes Kee-yartan.

Table of Contents

CXXXIV What's This Nonsense?

CXXXV I'm Afraid You're Wrong

CXXXVI A Trick Of The Light

CXXXVII A Bit Short Handed Today?

CXXXVIII Consider It Settled

CXL He's Mine

CXLI Rista Orn

CXLII You Knew, Didn't You?

CXLIII A Slinging Match

CXLIV Hnikarr?

CXLV Odinn's Promise

CXLVI His Ghost

CXLVII Your Father's Steel

CXLVIII Da'Hjael

CXLIX That's Not Fair

CL But She Tried To Kill Me

CLI Heavy Skot

CLII We'll Use My Weights

CLIII For My Friend

CLIV Beans Of Death

CLV Praise No Ice

CLVI His Remaining Share

CLVII Wordless And Farting

CLVIII Magic

CLIX The Worth Of Wolves

CLX Then We're Agreed

CLXI A Dice Pouch

CLXII That Makes Us Kin

CLXIII Your Fo'c'sulbitch

CLXIV A King Sized Helping

CLXV An Overly Suggestive Mood

CLXVI Hello Hel

CLXVII You Know How They Get

CLXVIII Any Claiming Jarnulf

CLXIX I Name Names

CLXX The Compensation Of Friends

CLXXI Hoskuld's Finest Mead

CLXXII Cats And Rats

CLXXIII Swimming To Norway

CLXXIV Starri's Best

CLXXV Make Way

CLXXVI The Kvidur

CLXXVII Win Or Lose Your Mine

CLXXVIII A Mind Boggling Perversion

CLXXIX You Didn't Have Any Trouble

CLXXX Who's Your Father

CLXXXI May A Curse Lite

CLXXXII I Wouldn't Get Too Close

CLXXXIII The Way I Heard It

CLXXXIV Friends And Perverts

CLXXXV Braggi's Daughter

CLXXXVI Gundfrieda's Accident

CLXXXVII A Three Day Old Bruise

CLXXXVIII The Last Word

CLXXXIX Under The Owls

CLXC The Luckiest Man I Ever Met

CLXCI One Bite At A Time

CLXCII This Whole Sordid Mess

CLXCIII It Would Be An Insult

CLXCIV It Does Creep Up On You

CLXCV Only Till

CLXCVI A Half Dozen Lobsters

CLXCVII Not Your Fault

CLXCVIII You Know

CLXCIX I Will Lay Heaven In Ashes

Vols 1 and 2 of the Viking Hunter Saga Also Available

CXXXIV What's This Nonsense?

Hrafnstadir's women, a furied, jostling mob, were raising a brown cloud into the graveyard oak's branches. Even the sun looked angry through that cloud glaring down into the mob's open, twenty foot eye. In its midst struggled Nacarr as Olaf and Da'hal gripped him beneath his shoulders. He was glaring murder at Jarnulf and Hroghar and behind them their horses, more mob, and the grave dragon atop the church's back wall.

The tortured lowings of a hundred cows from the barn next door were adding to the women's shrieks for Nacarr's death. It was mid afternoon and the cows had not been milked. No one rushed off to relieve them. They'd live longer than Nacarr and no one wanted to miss his end.

Jarnulf stared west over Nacarr's head but in his eye, the rat swung plain as day, suffocating as suspended from the rope around his neck he jerked, twirled, and gagged on his tongue. Nacarr had just collected a few more bruises as the hunters wrestled him to the ground and removed his mail. Without its added weight he'd strangle just that much slower.

Mirha, with Kolfinna in pursuit, struggled through the throng toward Jarnulf desperate to prove her worth in any way she might, and shove Rakel's truth back into her mind's darkest storeroom, the truth that she'd almost got Jarnulf killed. She had not landed a single blow or fired a shot through all of it.

Ref caught her from behind. She shared her fears with him. Ref pointed out the backs of three women heading into the shadows beyond the church, and on toward main. They were Aethle and Rakel, escorting Aerin.

"Aethle's lost her husband," Ref said. "and Aerin her best friends and herself. If you really want to make Jarnulf proud of you."

Mirha shot both fists to her cheeks. She ran off after them.

"I demand Holmganga." Nacarr bellowed at Hroghar. He was invoking the ancient right of trial by combat. Dueling had been Outlawed in old world Iceland back at the millennium, but this was not the old world.

"Found your spine worm?" Hroghar demanded, butting his axe's butt cap into Nacarr's chest.

"Not surprised," he added with a hasty nod up to the limb above them and then a second to Jarnulf, who was staring straight down at his feet and shaking his head laughing.

"Einvigi not good enough for you?" Jarnulf said. "You arrogant son of a bitch?"

Einvigi was two men just going at it till one granted the other peace or killed him. Nacarr had called for Holmgang, an affair of rules, seconds, and honor.

A cloak five ells square was to be staked at its corners to the ground. Three staked out spaces a foot wide surrounded it. Ropes were tied between the stakes. Each dueler took turns whacking the other's shield apart as his second guarded him with it. Combatants were allowed two replacement shields. At any point the worse wounded could admit guilt and release himself by paying a duel ransom of three marks, or in Nacarr's case a rope.

Stepping outside the line with one foot was retreating, with both feet, running. When the shields were used up the duelers were to fight on over the cloak with weapons only. The first whose blood fell onto the cloak lost. The man challenged had to strike the first blow.

"And," Jarnulf said. "you'll want me to hold your shield for you against Hroghar's axe, right?"

He caught up the trailer of Nacarr's noose and followed it back to Liv's saddle. She shied away from him as he untied it.

Nacarr fixed his cornered wolf glare back on Hroghar.

"I'll face any man here." Nacarr blustered. "Even you, you stinking Thurs."

There were three races of giants, and one common slander. 'Tall as a Risi, strong as a Jotun, and stupid as a Thurs.'

Jarnulf returned, holding out his coiled rope to Hroghar.

Hroghar swatted it away growling low, his gaze down upon Nacarr sharpening itself with a fine whetstone. The gentle humor his huge, hard lined, orange bearded face usually wore was as faded a memory as last week's mead. In its place thundered the granite sheared, battle grimed visage of some harbinger of the apocalypse. His broad set green eyes burned with a visible red. How much of it was lack of sleep and how much hellfire was anything but hard to say.

Nacarr wasn't a pretty sight either, even in his hammer burnished, rust free shirt of chain. Someone had spent a lot of time keeping it up, undoubtedly someone other than himself. His scarred and beaten face bore testament to how he'd achieved and held his position as Chieftain for thirty years. The blood from his fresh broken nose hadn't made his snaggled left incisor or his two broken off front teeth any more attractive either, coupled with the blue white scar running across his nose and off the side of his stubble under the bags beneath his eyes.

"It's my right." Nacarr said. "The law says."

Hroghar butted Nacarr's chest with his axe haft again.

"I'm aware of the law." Hroghar said.

Nacarr spit at him.

Hroghar spit back, rolled his shoulders and began clenching and unclenching his free hand.

A disheveled and spent but freshly haughty Eirika strode forth in her earth stained, borrowed buckskins. In one hand was her bow. In the other, the hilt of Hroald's hard worked sword, its bloody length laying back over her shoulder. From the look of her Jarnulf half thought she was minded to cheat the hangman herself.

Da'hal let go Nacarr's shoulder and grabbed Nacarr's hair. He leaned forward into Nacarr's face. Da'hal's eyes were still sulfur and brimstone as they'd been since Kolgrim handed Nacarr over at the field, and all the way back to town.

"There. Look." Da'hal commanded, wrenching Nacarr's face toward the train of nine horses with nine dead men and women draped over them, filing past the graveyard fence toward the church.

Hlif lay belly down over Ansvarr's roan. Da'hal had forbidden anyone else to move her, or touch her. Her long, loose brown hair hanging past her slender white wrists and hands rocked side to side in time with the horse's somber, knowing gait.

"There's the booty you took from us," Da'hal said. "and now you're going to recompense us."

"He has a point, you know." Eirika began, her enunciation exact and exaggerative as ever.

"We can't just hang him, now that we've left the scene of the action. We'll have to convene a Kvidur, and Outlaw him first."

Jarnulf started violently. His coiled rope slipped unknown from his hand. Eirika shushed him like an errant child. Hroghar licked the sweat and dust from his lips, tilted his head aside and spat it out.

"Oh, he's dead, I'll guarantee it, and damn soon." he said.

Mordach approached to poke Nacarr in the ribs with his bloody spear.

"Ever the problem, eh Nacarr?" Eirika said. "Since Hroald's murdered and Tore absent, I suppose I'll have to convene the Kvidur. We'll just make the best of this and muddle through, won't we."

She favored Jarnulf with a smile that drove daggers of ice through his scalp.

"I think we've twelve men left," she said. "whom you haven't murdered."

Hroghar turned on her.

"What's this nonsense, you old bird?" he laughed, corralling her under his tree trunk of an arm. He wasn't especially fond of her, but her observation that it really was all over, and the realization that he really did still have his son, had stuck him like a lightning bolt, a very giddy lightning bolt.

"It's called the law." she snipped, and rapped his knuckles with her bow.

"Can't go taking what isn't ours into our own hands now, can we?" she said.

He laughed it off and reached for her shoulder again, and she gave him a second rap.

"Can we?" she said, but with a lot more salt and bark in it this time.

"Perhaps not." he mumbled, sucking at his stinging knuckles.

She cast about, pointing and calling her Kvidur by name, Ref, Da'hal and Olaf, her Marshal, Hoskuld, Mordach, Gudrod, Thorarin, Andar, Kjartan, Hroghar, and finally little Frakki.

"Let's see." she said. "I suppose the Marshal owns the clearest claim against you in this suit, as you murdered his uncle."

"Fine." Jarnulf said. "Let's get it done."

"Can't just rush into this." she said. "Nacarr's a very well versed expert at law, having broken every one there is. He might win his defense if it's you prosecuting him."

Jarnulf regarded her narrowly. This morning had broken her mind.

"You'd best assign your case to me." she said.

"Women can't bring suits, you kerlinga skruka." Nacarr said.

Kerling meant hag, and skruka meant shrimp. Together they implied a hag as old and dried out as a shrimp's shell.

Her icy smile remained uncracked.

CXXXV I'm Afraid You're Wrong

"As I am the head of my household, I'm afraid your wrong, dead wrong." she said.

"I promise you," she told Jarnulf. "that he's not half the old law hag I am. No one is."

And for the first time in Jarnulf's life, and with all the warmth of an eagle on a corpse, she winked at him. Jarnulf thought it best to humor her. If she'd really lost her mind he could still take matters into his own hands and explain it to Tore later.

"Logmadur Eirika," Jarnulf said, warily. "I lawfully assign the prosecution of my suit against Nacarr to you."

Hroghar patted the top of Nacarr's head.

Nacarr spit at him again.

Again, Hroghar wiped it off and closely inspected Nacarr as if he couldn't decide whether to eat him whole or just take the hams and back straps. Hroghar's throbbing knuckles, the only wound he'd taken, had sobered the giddiness right out of him.

"Gawd, Hroghar." Eirika moaned. "Let's get this done."

That didn't sound like her either Jarnulf thought. She reveled in arguing minutia for days. She wasted one quick, and very annoyed frown up at Hroghar. She was still put out with his bizarre familiarity.

Nacarr's eyes darted from hunter to hunter. Bonfires blazed back at him from their eyes in those swirling green, brown and tanned faces. And those two young blood spattered bulls, the twins, were showing him their teeth, grunting and heaving their chests in and out gulping great breaths, as if readying themselves to charge. They all seemed furied enough already to award him his duel, each hoping for the honor despite the old hag's overweening confidence.

He fixed his glare back on Hroghar. That idiot pride and honor he cloaked himself in whenever he gazed at his son, the other giant crushing his arm, said he'd never let himself be hanged. He'd laugh in the face of a thousand and drown in their mingled blood first. The greatest legacy he could leave his son would be his own reputation.

"If," Nacarr said, glaring up at Hroghar as if he were a rat on a high pantry shelf. "you're not regi, like sonny boy here," with a sideways nod at Jarnulf, "I'll meet your challenge after."

Hroghar turned his sneer to Eirika.

"A very well versed expert?" he said, before fixing it back on Nacarr.

"You challenged me, meaning I get the first and only swing."

Eirika glared up at him as if they were married and she couldn't pry him out of the Mead Hall.

She started, wondering if she'd overreached. Jarnulf was livid, the knuckles of his hands white, strangling his hilts. And there wasn't a face among the others not icily demanding the vengeance honor for themselves.

She ordered Nacarr hauled inside and handed Hroald's sword off to Draeng, instructing him to open the church's shutters for their guests the Ottarrs. Da'hal yanked the rope tying Nacarr's elbows viciously upward, and he and Olaf frog marched the Nahri Chieftain toward the graveyard fence.

In the press crowding past the fence for the church door Eirika singled out Aud. She was still bearing Hroald's axe in both hands as if more Skraelings and Nahri might come swooping in on them at any moment.

"Are you all right?" Eirika said.

"No." Aud moaned. "Priest Hroald, and Tjorni, and what if wins his case and kills Hroghar too?

Eirika side stepped the axe and gathered Aud beneath her shoulder, just as Hroghar had earlier.

"I want to kill him myself." Aud shrieked.

Eirika drew her in closer.

CXXXVI A Trick Of The Light

The Hrafn's church hadn't changed since his last visit, Nacarr saw as he sat at the left claimant's bench feeling little pricks and pins in his tight tied hands, marooned here on this bench as his enemies dark, and bloody converse flooded past him.

Ref and Gudrod laid Ansvarr into the shroud of ruby and purple light from the stained glass windows draping the desk before him. The four dead women on the desk to their right were curtained briefly by Maeve and the fifth horse clomping out past him. The tread of its iron shoes boomed about the cavernous dim, and against his head, like the Thunderer's hammer.

Thirty feet before him rose the black, nine paneled desk. Langlif's two raven gavels perched atop its midst, stooping, their wings spread. Ten feet above the desk's ends roosted dead, Great Horned Owls glaring back at him with their dead, watery eyes as if he were a tidbit for their dead hatchlings.

In the open square's jumble of garish hues between him and the desk twirled Kolgrim and his two brothers, who'd broken his nose running him to ground, spinning about waving their arms before them and calling to each other as their arms changed colors. Empty sheaths were strapped to their backs. Weapons had all been shed on the porch before the door. The old witch's Marshal however, appeared exempt, still sporting his.

The Ottarrs had seen windows before, but not these shimmering sails of dream glass. Ref envied them dancing there in the corner of his eye, deigning the while to even glance at them. They'd feel it as he and any hunter, or their quarry, would. Odds were they'd pay it no heed, but he wasn't about to chance making them self conscious and spoiling the wonder of it for them.

Adis led Ansvarr's roan up the aisle with Hlif's body across it. Adis mien and bearing were twain, warring with each other. Her stern prosecutor ravening for vengeance commanded her eyes as the tearful, terrified babe trembled her lips, and then her demons would trade places on her face, over and again.

Da'hal stopped her. He beckoned Kjartan to take hold of Nacarr. Then the giant, gore drenched smith tenderly lifted the dead girl from the saddle and laid her in state, and reclosed her eyes. He unfastened his silver cross and hammer from his belt, and lifting her head, draped its thong round her neck, and gave her his first kiss.

As he returned no one but Nacarr dared meet his gaze. Da'hal lightly laid the stone knuckles of his huge fist against Nacarr's temple.

"If you look at me again," Da'hal said, quietly. "no one, will be able to stop me."

Nacarr looked away convinced it was some trick of the light. In the giant's eyes had flared the red of his smithy's kilns.

Eirika swept past them toward the desk, blinking first purple, and then blood and on through the splinters of a junk heap of shattered rainbows. Her Marshal and the massive red haired smith followed after her as the last of the dead men, Bror, was laid in state to his left. The Kvidur mounted the dais and seated themselves behind the desk with Jarnulf on her center right, Mordach her left, and Hroghar as Foreman, towering above Mordach's left. Ref sat the far right and Hoskuld the far left.

Olaf and Da'hal remained standing behind Nacarr's shoulders.

Kolgrim gave him a wry sneer as he strutted cock like by to join his Ottarrs in the church's rear. Kolgrim's brothers Rani and Raknar danced by on tiptoes clasping their hands behind their backs as they smiled at him, whistling a tuneless funeral dirge.

The bony backs of Eirika's white claws swept the oily, night blue ravens out to either side of her and she called the Court to order. The pained bellowings of a hundred cows in the barn next door swelled into the silence.

"I, Eirika Starkaddottir," she began. "name everyone in this church to witness that you, Gerard Beauvais, not only engaged in an illegal conspiracy to murder all of them, but that you actually did cause the deaths of these nine before us. I demand Full Outlawry, without ring payment, as the legal penalty."

Ring payment was a metaphor, an anachronism. Centuries ago the convicted Outlaw had paid a gold ring to the court for their sparing his life until his Outlawry began, no ring, no grace period. His immunity was forfeit the instant he left court. Jarnulf found himself not liking this a bit. She'd skipped all manner of prefatory legal rantings and recitings. Definitely not the Eirika he knew.

"You can't demand Outlawry without the grace period." Nacarr droned. "It's illegal."

"Take it, or the rope now, Gerard." she said. Nacarr winced like she'd slapped him with a hot poker.

"Untie me." he growled. "Chieftain Nacarr will not stand trussed like a trael before women."

"Then sit before them." Eirika said. "We've seen all too much of your back already today."

Nacarr winced again.

Da'hal and Olaf muscled him down onto the bench, and he glared acid back at Eirika over Galinn, dead on the desk before him.

"Did you not sign a pact and swear an oath of fealty with Tore?" she said.

"When he broke it I was unbound." Nacarr said.

She took a pinch of earlobe between her thumb and forefinger and pointed her face down at the knuckles of her free hand, nails drumming on the desk, before shooting him an up from under look.

"This should be rich." she said.

"We came for hostages against Tore's treachery." he said.

Eirika waited it out rather than compete with the outrage roaring through the church.

"I suppose you've had dreams, or auguries divined of whatever he and Skjalg are embroiled in. Or perhaps Tore's, treachery, revealed itself to you somewhere in the entrails of a chicken?" she said.

"Got it all from Hrorik, four days ago." Nacarr said.

Twenty Ottarrs in the church's rear shot to their feet as one. Most cupped hands to their ears.

"That's unfortunate." she said. "As Hrorik's dead. And hearsay is not admissible before this Kvidur."

"And you needed sixty of Lalghar's stinking fugumadur to kidnap little girls?" Hroghar said. Fugumadur were Outlaws so excessively perverse that no one would harbor them except as hired killers.

Hroghar owned no voice at this point in the proceedings, but Eirika let it go. She was feeling somewhat guilty over rapping him the first time, though he'd had the second one coming.

"Had to." Nacarr said. "Thidrandri and Eikinn were going to murder my Thingmen and Morrow's while Tore's double crossing Skjalg and Humach."

Kolgrim's bellow railed above the din ordering his men to stand down off the benches and shut up. They were guests here. They were not at home.

CXXXVII A Bit Short Handed Today?

"And your evidence of this is?" Eirika said.

"I told you I got it from," Nacarr started.

Eirika snatched a desktop raven and gaveled the base of its perch down hard onto the desk.

"Unless there are at least four others in this Court," she said. "at this moment, who will swear an oath to God before confirming your words, they are deception at law."

"So that's how it is." Nacarr said. "I'll kill any of your woods rats in a stand up fight and you know it. You're just itching to bury the truth along with me."

Nacarr noted with satisfaction that Hroghar was not looking at all pleased as he sat there stretching his arms, limbering up. The snotbag on her other side was positively fuming. Nacarr fixed his sneer on first Jarnulf and then Hroghar.

"I don't seem to remember," Hroghar said, combing his fingers through the bottom of his orange beard. "any of your scum offering us terms if we laid down our weapons. At least not the, oh God, I can't remember how many I cut down. Or maybe it just slipped their minds in their hurry to get past us and onto our women with all those swords and axes."

"Don't any of you fools have the guts to put a stop to this?" Nacarr said.

Hroghar drilled him with a stare that made the crow's feet beside his eyes a foot deep. Eirika turned her hand back and studied a fingernail.

"You've put us to considerable trouble already today, Gerard." she said. "If you've anything even approaching exonerative you'd best fart it out before your judges vote."

"How much did it cost you?" Nacarr said, sneering up at her over Galinn's boots.

"Are you blind?" she said.

"How much did you pay Eikinn to back out on us and join you?" Nacarr said.

Kolgrim let his Ottarrs go at it in full voice this time.

"While that doesn't explain Morrow and his Skraelings," Eirika said. "It does you. The memories of your fifty years of murderings and perversions have finally driven you mad."

She gaveled her raven again and asked her Kvidur if they were ready to vote.

"So none of you mewling pukes dare face me?" Nacarr said. "You're going to just hang me like a dog?"

"We shoot dogs that foam at the mouth." Hroghar said. "But in your case, . ."

"And here I was thinking you were some great warrior." Nacarr said, the white scar across his nose and cheek wrinkling in disdain.

"What the hell did you think you were going to do," Hroghar said. "even with your sheep shit hostages, when the rest of our men got back?"

"We'd have given them a dozen of ours and kept the peace." Nacarr said.

Eirika pressed the tips of her fingers and thumbs together forming an open cage of them before her mouth. She propped her chin on her thumbs and her elbows on the desk.

"I suspect you'd have found them far more trouble than they were worth." she said.

"Ninety of our little ladies," Hroghar said. "a dozen hunters, and one smith killed a hundred of your great warriors even before the Ottarrs got there. Every time you open your mouth my nose tells me you're straining and groaning across from me in the outhouse."

Jarnulf stabbed his finger out at Nacarr.

"You've been stealing off our table and laying to murder my men and their fathers since before I was born." Jarnulf said.

"You're brave enough with forty bows at your back." Nacarr said. "Can you fight without your women?"

Eirika gaveled her raven thrice and demanded the issue put to a vote if all Nacarr had left were slanders. Jarnulf quickly scribbled his down and handed it over to Hroghar.

"Hmmm." Hroghar said as the others passed theirs along toward him. Ref stepped down to ask Olaf and Da'hal for theirs.

"Tie it in the tree and let it rot." Olaf said.

Ref smiled up at Da'hal.

Da'hal yanked Nacarr's head back eye to eye. Da'hal showed Nacarr his teeth, and again the light from the windows flared red in his eyes.

"I'd chew your face off if it were half as pretty as Baldwin's." Da'hal said.

Baldwin had been King of Jerusalem. He had been eaten up and killed by leprosy.

Foreman Hroghar unfolded the votes and read them in silence. He rose to his full and awesome height behind the desk.

"Ten for Outlawry." Hroghar said. "And mine makes it eleven."

Eirika buried her face in her hands.

"You unmanly bitch." Nacarr yelled, wrestling and squirming in Da'hal's grip.

"I'm no happier about it than you." Hroghar said. "Your blood might soften the Nahri filth that's already dried on my steel. I'll just have to work a bit harder to clean it off."

"Then why?" Nacarr shouted.

Hroghar bent forward and slammed a fist onto the desk. The raven gavel gave a tiny hop forward. The fist of Hroghar's other huge, corded arm snapped out its middle finger at Nacarr.

"You swore an oath with Tore," he said, his deep basso building as it rolled through the church.

"And through him to every Hrafn. Every Hrafn." he bellowed, sweeping the finger across those lying on their backs to either side of Nacarr. "Holmganga belongs to all free men. An oath breaker is no man, and the law speaks not for Wurms."

"You spineless ass Vikings." Nacarr snarled. "Isn't there one of you man enough to try steel with me before you all prance off to take turns being the woman for each other?"

At this there were rutchings of benches behind the desk and hands clapped to its edge as men readied themselves to rise.

Eirika threw her arms wide, high, and then down, ordering them to remain seated.

"She order all of you around like that in bed too?" Nacarr said.

"There's no bottom to your bag of parting gifts." she said, fighting her grin as fifteen wintered Frakki spit clean over the desk toward Nacarr.

"I'll be honored to skull you with my axe." Frakki said.

"What you get is nothing, kid." Nacarr said. "Unless you get better than this shit verdict out of the Fifth Court this summer."

"Hroghar?" Eirika said.

"Yes?" he said.

"I'm sorry about rapping you so hard with my bow earlier." she said.

"That should be the worst I ever get." he said.

"If," she said. "I give you your asking price later today, to weld the nicks in my dear friend Hroald's sword," and paused to point at Hroald, dead on his back, "you'd still be able to count up the pennies correctly, despite your hellish, and distracting pain from my raps, right?"

"Yes?" Hroghar said.

"Then why the hell can't you count votes?" she said.

She got up from her bench and swooped in on him for a private conference.

Hroghar made a show of rereading the votes and decided he was having trouble reading Frakki's vote. He asked the youth to come read it to him. Frakki said his vote was plain as day.

"Get your ass over here." Hroghar said.

"Look," he told the boy in undertones. "we're in for a hot time with the Law Council as it is over this no grace period crap. It will be on everyone's lips. We can't reject every forth man of those judges until we're in open Court. We'd have to bribe all forty eight of them. You know how dangerous and expensive that would be?"

"Why yes." Frakki said, quite loudly. "See, it's right here. It says Outlawry. It must be the extra words I added, here, saying, and I hope the Devil likes his new bitch, that makes it hard to read."

"Now I see it." Hroghar said, holding Frakki's vote out at arm's length and squinting at it.

Then he smiled sweetly to Eirika.

"Can't go taking the law into our own hands now, can we?" he said.

"I dare say not." she said.

"I speak a verdict of Outlawry, and it is a lawful verdict, I think." he said.

"You think?" Nacarr said. "You don't even know? You think?"

Eirika tilted her head to one side, raised her palms up as if supplicating the Divine, and smiled past her shoulder back to Jarnulf.

"See what I mean?" she said. "He'll have everything hanged up quibbling over votes not going through a scriptorium when it goes his way, and then ignore the requirement that members of the Kvidur are not to be held liable for their good faith belief that they think their verdict is what the law requires."

"You've already read your goddamn verdict and it's unlawful as it's divided." Nacarr yelled at her.

"Then I suppose," she said. "you're welcome to assemble your own twenty witnesses and serve summons on me for it. What's that Gerard? I can't seem to hear you. You're a bit short handed today?"

Then she favored Jarnulf with that same hair freezing smile she'd had for him under the oak.

"Marshal?" she said.

CXXXVIII Consider It Settled

Jarnulf rose from behind the desk and walked slowly to the dead woman at the far end of the nine lying on the desks. Hlidareth was all aglow, her head pillowed on her long golden hair as she lay still, bathed in the muted amber from a panel of the stained glass above the head of its Saint, cradling a lamb.

Jarnulf placed his right hand on her forehead and calling her by name, told her he'd miss her and wished her well. Reverently he placed his hand on her breast, covering one of her ghastly wounds, and drew it back red, and sticky. He moved to Brenn, dead beside her, repeated his acts, and then to each of his friends in turn. He told Hroald, lying beside Bror, that he would try to remember everything Hroald had taught him. He asked Hroald to look after them all.

The sun slanting across the room onto Bror through the window fell white and cold through the silver byrnie of St. Michael, a great blonde warrior with wings, helmetless, transfixing with his lance the rearing, scaled, blue green dragon. There was little blood around the arrow stump in Bror's shirt. Jarnulf put his hand inside the shirt and felt around the arrow before he bent forward and kissed Bror's forehead.

He straightened and stalked back throttling his hilts to glare into Nacarr's face. In the blue green light of Saint Michael's dragon Nacarr's face showed purple and earthen. Jarnulf thrust his left palm out, red fingers spread wide and trembling. His right hand drew his sheathed longsword from between his belt and buckskins.

"Marshal, we're in Court." Eirika said, warning him.

Jarnulf's thumb clamped the guard of his sword into its sheath as he held up its foot long, ivory, dragon hilt between his face and Nacarr's.

Back between his hilt and outstretched, red hand Jarnulf's bronzed grimace showed square, his bones sharp in wry fury. To the roots of his matted, brown hair his furied troll visage was a swirl of black and green. Beneath his murder brow, sockets deep shadowed in umber showed. Set in those sockets were circles of blue gray ice ringing black voids wherein comets promised, hurtling as yet unseen from their depths.

"As a murderer you deserve the rope," Jarnulf said. "as a liar the point, a poacher, the edge. As a coward who sent his men to war on women and then ran away from them, the pommel."

"I should have killed your father thirty years ago," Nacarr said. "before he whelped you, instead of waiting, and leaving him for that bear."

Nacarr's back and shoulders again knew searing pain as Da'hal yanked him skyward almost off the floor by the rope tying his elbows. The ivory hilt before Nacarr's eyes, its pommel the dragon's head with nostrils flaring, and rows of bas relief daggers in its open maw, began to quiver.

Eons later Jarnulf's eye found Olaf jerking and convulsing beside Nacarr. Olaf's head leaned sideways onto his shoulder and his tongue stuck out clamped hard between his teeth. His amber eyes bugged out and he was grunting and snuffling like a pig. Jarnulf's inner eye snapped back to again see Nacarr slowly strangling at the end of the rope, kicking and turning blue.

"You?" Jarnulf asked. "Killing a real man? Where would you find the time, busy raping those little,"

Eirika cut him off.

"I wasn't aware there were witnesses to his littles." she said. "And unless they're here, . . ."

"I could have been your father," Nacarr said to Jarnulf. "that night at Thing, but I wouldn't have the sloppy night gamer after Skjalg and his brothers finished with her."

Jarnulf wrapped his blood stained left hand around his hilt's yellowed ivory.

"Jarnulf!" Eirika screamed.

"Liar." Jarnulf yelled at Nacarr.

"Thyre was pure as her golden hair when she married Ulf."

Three benches behind Nacarr and at the aisle end, gray, grandmother Thyre, a brunette in her youth, leaned out into the aisle and craned forward.

"I was there when she dropped for drink." Nacarr said.

Eirika shot to her feet.

"Da'hal, Stop him!" she shrieked.

Jarnulf slid his hand down his hilt, smearing the blood of his friends into the cracks in its age yellowed, terrible dragon.

And the dragon writhed in his soul, ravenous, shrieking to him, Hurry, his kin, his friends, cut down that blue green horror and reach them before it's too late. Another tiny voice within him cried out against its pleas. Not here, not now, not in Court.

It writhed in his hands and he thrust them together hard, caging its bite. He nodded to Olaf and Da'hal. Da'hal did not see him. Da'hal's blue eyes were elsewhere, ablaze, locked down onto Jarnulf's hands gripping his hilt.

"Hold his head." Jarnulf said.

Olaf spared one hand for Nacarr's hair, but kept tight rein on the Outlaw with his other. Da'hal kept his own right fist, now clenched tight at his side to himself and released Nacarr to snatch at his head. Nacarr twisted forward toward Jarnulf. Da'hal near broke Nacarr's neck yanking his head back.

Jarnulf thrust his dragon forward and swiped it down both of Nacarr's cheeks. Nacarr spit in his face. Jarnulf shoved his dragon still sheathed, back between his belt and buckskins and wiped the spittle off on his sleeve.

Eirika collapsed back onto her bench.

"Drag him out." she said.

"Consider it settled." Jarnulf growled into Nacarr's face. "We'll speak no more on it, son."

Jarnulf jerked Nacarr's head toward the open door. Above that door Langlif's Great Horned Owls stared down through their glass eyes, welcoming Nacarr to hell as Olaf and Da'hal dragged him toward it.

Eirika hung back, still seated, pinching the bridge of her nose and gazing shut eyed up into the rafters.

"Consider it settled, son." Eirika whispered, and shuddered, as the lowing of the cows from the barn next door swelled into the quiet the crowd was leaving behind it.

CXL He's Mine

Nacarr and his retainers headed the parade out past the graveyard fence with Nacarr gushing necrotic curses on one and all, struggling, spitting, and accusing Thyre of every imaginable perversion.

Da'hal offered to gag him. Thyre shouldn't have to listen to another word. Ref pitched the rope up over a stout limb of the oak.

Thyre took a stand beside Jarnulf. The eyes in her seventy wintered face were those of a mischievous five year old. Nacarr damned her for a witch and commanded her be gone before asking her who the hell she was.

"Eh, heh, heh." Thyre laughed before planting a kiss on Jarnulf's cheek and saying she wished she'd had a quarter that much fun."

Eirika rolled her eyes and turned away.

Thyre drew close to Nacarr and blew him a kiss. Nacarr wrinkled his nose and winced. Even at seventy Thyre spent a lot of time working in the tanning shieling and no amount of steaming and scrubbing could completely erase its stink.

"And to think I could have had a Chieftain." Thyre said. "I'd no idea you thought so much of me, in that way."

Eirika retrained her needle glare on Nacarr.

"Since you're so set on trying your luck with Odinn, death by steel and all that offal," she said. "I'm going to give it to you."

Jarnulf, Olaf and Hroghar stared dumbstruck. Every other man but Mordach raised their voices shouting for the duel honor.

"You can't be serious." Jarnulf howled.

"We owe him nothing." Hroghar yelled.

"Aud." Eirika said, extending her thin, brown spattered, buckskinned arm. Aud approached and handed her Hroald's axe.

"He's mine." Eirika said.

Nacarr was seized by a fit of laughter.

"Just loose me." Nacarr said. "I won't need a sword for this."

Eirika shook her head violently from side to side, commanding Olaf and Da'hal to do no such thing. She stared Nacarr down, wringing the axe's haft in her hands.

Jarnulf leapt between them.

"This madness has gone far enough." he said. "It's my suit and I'm hanging him."

"Young man," she said. "do not cross me."

"Give me the axe, Logmadur." Jarnulf said, slowly, "There'll be no dueling today."

"Christ." she groaned. "When are you going to start paying attention? I said nothing about any goddamn duel. Now stand aside."

Jarnulf refused to budge. The Eirika he knew would choke and drop dead before taking the Lord's name in vain. Da'hal, with his blasphemous oathings, had heard oceans more about them than he wanted to many times.

She side stepped Jarnulf to address Nacarr.

"I began my study of the law," she began, again flat, frigid, and at least feigning sanity, "thirty years ago Gerard, just after you murdered your way to the bottom of that Nahri cesspool."

"And you still don't know shit about it." Nacarr growled.

"I had a son named Ari, then." she continued, unperturbed, "He was eleven. Ari was an apprentice woods rat. My cousin Thjostolf was the woods rat Ari was apprenticed to. It hadn't been a good season for the woods rats. We were all off at Thing. Thjostolf and Ari stayed behind, hunting to fill the smokehouse. The other woods rats found my kinsman Thjostolf. He'd been murdered, hacked to bits. They never found Ari, but,"

"People disappear in the woods all the time," Nacarr yelled. "They're lousy with Skraelings, and bears, and wolves."

"They never found Ari," she said. "but they followed his tracks, and those of three men, back to your border."

"You're insane!" Nacarr bellowed.

"This my fault?" she said. "The law has been cold comfort in lieu of my son and cousin. For years I'd dreamed I'd actually get to prosecute you, someday. But eventually, time just dragged on. Funny how things work out, isn't it?"

CXLI Rista Orn

"For you," she continued. "the Rista Orn." and kept smiling sweetly as Nacarr's eyes became abysses of lunacy, gaping into hers and finding in them only the owls above the church door.

She skirted Da'hal and planted herself facing Nacarr's back. She extended the axe, measuring the perfect distance.

"You can't kill a man without his grace period." Nacarr yelled. "The Law Council will eat you alive."

"You and I, Gerard," she said. "are still at the place of action."

"What?" he said.

"You accused me," she said. "in Court, of bedding all your judges. Your immunity is forfeit for that here and now."

"In the name of God." Nacarr said.

"But his delight is in the law of the Lord," she said. "and in his law doth he meditate day and night. The fool hath said in his heart there is no God. Thou hast given him his heart's desire."

Nacarr begged his retainers to loose him or run him through.

Eirika's eyes flared an unholy blue green as if Vallhol had filled her with its supernatural corpse light. Her perpetually unwrinkled face was now a mask of deep furrowed hell fury. Still mired beneath the grime of battle, her long silver hair hung like a hanged witch's, tangled and matted.

Ref grinned most approvingly. Hroghar, after naming her ogress and troll woman departed claiming he'd not be a party to this.

The blood spattered young bulls, the twins, rushed in and added their iron grips to Da'hal's and Olaf's on his wrists, and Olaf sliced the bindings from him. The four pulled away to either side, readying his back, and cursing, he spit at Olaf, the demon with those yellow green eyes, hissing through those white teeth from that morbific, demon painted maw still brown with the blood of his Thingmen.

Now, now he understood them, those nightmares, decades filled with those awful yellow green ghost eyes floating ever closer through the black brambles in that moonlit marsh, those hideous tortoise faces black, green and brown, craning their necks and slavering jaws toward him, those giant snapping turtle jaws tearing great gobbets of the flesh from his bones as he struggled mired to his knees in the rotten fish mists of that stinking, choking, midnight Hel bog.

Behind him, the baleful old witch, who weighed little more than Mirha, wrestled the huge axe up over her head.

Jarnulf gaped, adrift, at the depths of Eirika's depravity.

In her eyes boiled all the acid and venom of the void distilled and concentrated into universes of negation, elysiums of scalding annihilation. She was neither ogress nor troll woman. She was the truth behind the myth, not a wondrous deliverer of the fallen, wrapped in youth's bloom, but the withered and fell chooser of the slain, cold death and night eternal, hatred, ancient, millennia old. She was the Valkyr.

Hroald's axe descended, and Nacarr shuddered forward, shrieking.

The Valkyr raised up the axe again. Bright droplets fell from it onto her white brow and tangled hair. Again the axe fell. Nacarr's gurgling shrieks cut through the pained lowings from the barn.

This could not be what Bror had met. Angels of God had come for Bror and the others. No one could depart so willingly, so eagerly, with such. Bror had told of beauty so wondrous it brought tears to his eyes.

She was nightmare, humanity's dark mirror, dried and shriven, an elf, a hell sprite, a fen stalker who rode her wolf with bridle and reins of living snakes beneath the moon, ancient beyond any law rememberanced save one, the slaughter law that was before even the vengeance law, a birth daughter of the Valfoder avenging herself blindly against all for his rape of her mother.

Eirika cut down again, and Nacarr, limp in his captor's grips, shuddered in silence. Bright red bubbles frothed between his broken, white teeth and down over his chin. He still lived, but barely.

"Damnit." she said. "I seem to be all done in from this last night's exertions."

Mordach shot forward bearing his hand axe.

"Allow me, Logmadur." he said, and leaning close, delivered two deft strokes with the hand axe before casting it aside to take a more hands on approach. A slurry of red vomit gushed from Nacarr's mouth and his dying eyes shot open. In them burned the agonies of the pit which Hroald had tried so hard to save his beloved from, and they understood, those few who had not averted their eyes.

When Mordach had finished, Eirika commanded Jarnulf to put the noose around the Outlaw's neck, and quickly. She shot her bony, trembling hand out to Ref, Gudrod, and Thorarin signing them to pull hard before all life had fled from Nacarr, and they hoisted him up into the oak.

Nacarr gave up a final, feeble convulsion, and twisting slightly, died on the gallows. Mordach's face, chest, and arms were drowned in blood, right up to the little fellow's shoulders.

Nacarr's ribs had been hacked through. Mordach had completed the Rista Orn, the Carved Eagle, by delving his hands deep to pull Nacarr's lungs out through the openings. If Nacarr somehow wound up in Vallhol he'd arrived as a trael, not one of the Einheirjar, having been ritually sacrificed to Odinn.

The Valkyr beckoned to Aud, who came forward shielding her horrified gaze from Nacarr.

"Feeling any better, now?" she asked Aud in a voice that was curiously Eirika's but soft with concern and compassion.

"I don't think I know." Aud said.

"Well, we've both taken at least a step in that direction." The Valkyr said, handing her the axe. The Valkyr raised up her gaze to heaven, and pressed her thin, shaking blue hands flat together, upright before her chin.

"Finally," she said. "it's settled, my son."

Aud retreated two paces, waiting for Eirika to finish her now silent prayers. Aud darted dumb, mute looks at the instrument of Hroald's vengeance in her hands. Eirika's finger caught her up beneath her chin.

"We've both been robbed of a very dear friend." Eirika said. "He'd want you to have it."

Aud wasn't sure she wanted it. It would haunt her with the awful sacrifice he'd made for her.

"Hang it above your hearth," Eirika insisted. "as his sword will hang above mine beside my husband's."

"I'd rather read his Bible, if Anja will teach me." Aud said.

"He said he'd save us all yet," Eirika said. "and he'll be inexpressibly proud to see you Marshaling our little parade. I'll teach you to read it, at your table where it will stay."

Aud excused herself, and handing the axe back to Eirika she made off for the barn, chasing the crowd off to milk their cows.

Jarnulf returned inside the church minded to talk one last time with his friends but there were dozens there ahead of him, sitting silent in the church's rear, waiting their turn as the red haired blacksmith leaned heavily against the table, cradling Hroald's cheek in his palm. Jarnulf pulled the last bench back against the wall, sat down and leaned back to wait.

CXLII You Knew, Didn't You?

When he awoke, lying beneath a blanket in the cresset lit church, a brunette in her forties sat the bench beyond his feet, her arms folded and eyes closed as she leaned back against the wall. He gained his feet slowly, trying not to wake her.

"I'm so sorry." Bryn said.

"Hello mother." he said.

"It's almost worse than burying your father." Bryn said. "At least the last time I saw him his eyes were open and he was smiling."

She offered a nod to the front of the church where Gyda was sharing memories from thirty years ago with Ansvarr.

"Like theirs were yesterday. When I think, of the times Ulf and I had with them."

"Don't." Jarnulf said. "It's too soon."

She stared up into the dark ceiling and away from him. She trembled out a smile.

At the front of the church beside Gyda knelt Aud before Hroald's head like a dog at its master's death bed. Her eyes were shut and her hands clasped before her bowed face. Kveldalf sat the bench behind the hunter's bier.

"I've tried to speak to Aud twice." Bryn said. "It's useless.

Kveldalf said she's been here all day and won't leave till she's certain Hroald's going to be all right. Says he was the guardian of her soul and she misjudged him."

"That doesn't surprise me." Jarnulf said.

"Mordach's doing a whale of a business." Bryn said. "Harald, Thidrandri and sixty more. I was sure my mare was going to burst her heart or break my neck. She's still steaming and so is Astrid. She can't serve them fast enough. They've got Hroghar, Da'hal, and half the Hall stinking drunk already, forcing drinks on them, slapping their backs, and howling some idiot verse they keep revising as they go. It started out with every girl in town at least ten feet tall and twenty tables in Vallhol with runes on them reading Hrafn Thingi, reserved. By now Odinn's probably serving drinks, Frey's clearing tables, and Thor's washing plates. I don't know where the hell they're all going to sleep tonight."

"Mirha and I'll use the bed closet." Jarnulf said.

"No." she said. "We'll stay with Marnee. I could never sleep in that bed with another man."

She lowered her eyes to meet his.

"Your father was right." she said. "I finally thanked Bror for all those bruises he gave you."

Her smile was crumbling. He pulled her to her feet and hugged her. She pushed away from him to wipe at her eyes.

"I wanted to kill Harald when he first told me." she said.

"Oh God." she wailed, startling Gyda and Kveldalf at the far end of the church. Aud didn't hear her.

"If only we'd come sooner."

"Couldn't be helped." he said. "You came as soon as you knew."

"He knew." she said, clenching her teeth and almost spitting.

Jarnulf knew he'd seen that look on her face somewhere before, but no, it had not been on her face. It had never been on her face. It had been on a cornered wolf bitch with cubs just before he shot it.

"They all knew," she hissed. "Thidrandri, Harald, Eikinn, Tore, Starri, the bastards all knew, two years ago."

"Hell of a detail to miss." Jarnulf said, steering her toward the door. "Don't be so hard on Harald. We'll go collect him. This place is too full of Jesus for what I'm feeling."

"No, I'm going to Marnee's." she said. "He can sleep under a table at Mordach's or in the goddamn gutter for all I care. And I hope his hangover lasts him a week."

In the street between the church and Mordach's boisterous Thunderers, Ottarrs and Hrafn women noisily came and went bearing torches. Every porch had two or three horses tied to its beams. Soft, yellow gold halos surrounded the torches at the far ends of the street. From the west in the woods carried back a mournful chorus of wolves. He swiped his knuckle through both eyes and the torch halos disappeared.

He bid his mother goodnight at Mordach's door and determined he'd stay just long enough to fetch Mirha and pay his respects to Thidrandri. Well, maybe a candle or two longer. There were worse things in life than being hailed as a hero by a bunch of drunks.

He opened the door and Eirika almost ran him over on her way out. The Valkyr had returned to wherever it came from and she was all Eirika again, spotless, smug, and her own blood Royal ambassador from the paradisiac cloud kingdom of the elocutionists.

"I shouldn't go in there if I were you." she said, tugging the door shut behind her. "They're a desperate and dangerous lot. Even I have turned down two horse rides home, three walks along the beach, a night in the barn and an offer of marriage."

"Tore said you were always beating them off with a stick." Jarnulf said.

She suspected she was being baited, though it was true, and refrained from her usual 'Piss on that horny old goat.'

"Six of them carried Hroghar 'round the Hall on their shoulders twice when they heard he was Foreman of the Kvidur on Nacarr." she said. "They dropped him, coming down the stairs the second time."

Jarnulf blinked his eyes closed hard and groaned out a deep, breathy 'ooooo'.

"Oh don't worry about him." she said. "He's still going strong, won't feel a thing till tomorrow. That bilious windbag Harald, was about to remind them it was I who took vengeance."

"Well, a lady is due her dignity." Jarnulf said.

She examined him as if she didn't know what he was, much less who he was, searching for any trace of facetiousness. Discovering none, her eyes commanded his back to the door.

"You'll wish you hadn't." she said.

"Speaking of our graveyard honor guard," Jarnulf said. "do you think there's any chance he actually murdered my father, too?"

She wrinkled her face and pursed her lips before flapping a sigh through them like a horse.

"Gods but you're gullible." she groaned.

"Wasting your histrionics and perorations on such as Nacarr. Ulf's death was an accident. They would not have lied to you, even to spare your feelings. When Galinn found him, and later when the others combed the place, the only boot prints they found were your father's. For one so thick, you seem to be possessed of a remarkable streak of luck. I was afraid for a moment Da'hal was going to knock a few of your teeth out this afternoon."

He said nothing, but she read the start in his eyes.

"I'm not surprised you missed that fist he had waiting for you," she said. "with Olaf flopping about like a gigged frog. You're very fortunate to have both of them, such as they are, as friends. With you, possessed as you were, by that, thing, you were shaking in Nacarr's face."

His fingers slipped sideways from his pommel and he hooked his thumb into his belt.

"You owe them both a great debt, as do I." she said.

"I wish Olaf hadn't killed Hrorik." he said. "I'd loved to have seen him and Nacarr turn on each other this afternoon. Don't you wonder just what they'd have had to say to each other."

"Pish." she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "They'd have found someone else to blame it on."

"Just what," Jarnulf said. "do you suppose Nacarr hoped to gain with that crack about us paying Eikinn to back out on him?"

"I should think that would be obvious." she said. "Hoping to push you and Hroghar into defending both Hrafn and Ottarr honor by letting one of you have at him in that, asinine Holmganga."

"Still," Jarnulf said "did you have to cut him off," he paused, visibly embarrassed. It was the sort of gaff only Olaf would amuse himself with. "so quick?"

"I suppose you'd rather be sitting even now in the church with that wretch, trying to out sneer each other." Eirika said and turned to leave.

"Other people have needs?" Jarnulf asked her back.

She stopped, stock still and silent for what seemed a very long moment before continuing off into the night.

He let go Mordach's latch and turned away, heading for Marnee's instead to see if Mirha was there. If she wasn't he'd have her sent for. That vision of Hroghar sailing through the air and crashing headlong into the floor at the foot of the stairs, if that were Hroghar's reward for voting to Outlaw Nacarr, how, he wondered, would Thidrandri's drunken Thunderers top themselves in honoring the hangman?

CXLIII A Slinging Match

Marnee, Kolfinna, his mother, Mirha and Adis gossiped long faced across his Aunt's table. Off by her fire sat Aethle, Hlif's mother, and Aerin staring blind through those at the table.

Hlif's mother rose, sensing his need. She thanked him for all the kindnesses that he and Da'hal had shown the girls. He held her, wondering when the true horror would crush her.

Aerin's hands lay limp on her knees. Her beautiful, long, red hair was tied back. It appeared a most cruel joke. Aerin had been robbed of more than her virginity. Jarnulf asked Aethle.

"She tied it herself." Aethle said. "after Rakel and Mirha and I tended her injuries, and bathed and dressed her. She still hasn't spoken a word, or perhaps heard one.

Jarnulf called her name softly. Aerin remained dumb and mute. He pressed two fingers to his lips and gently touched them to an unbruised spot on her forehead. He took her limp fingers in his.

"I'm sorry Aerin." he whispered. "Come home. We need you."

He started to release her hands and she gripped his. Her eyes, and only her eyes, moved, searching up into his. He fell to his knees, pulling mountains of blame down upon himself. Her eyes never left his. A single tear rolled down her cheek. He wiped it away and kissed that same unbruised spot of her forehead.

She released his hands, and slowly reached up to wipe a tear from his cheek. Then she retreated back into her private hell. He minded himself of those men he had killed in vengeance for her this morning, believing her murdered.

They were not enough. There would be more. How bitterly he envied Gudrod and Thorarin.

Three knocks sounded at the door. He opened it. Without stood Eirika and for the first time in his memory she seemed truly distraught.

"Bring a torch." she said.

Jarnulf turned back to Aethle, lost for words.

"Go." Aethle said. "It's all right. I'm not alone here."

He gathered her in his arms and held her before kindling a torch.

"Where?" he demanded.

"Hroald's." she said and strode quickly off as if daring him to catch her. Considering that she'd probably not even had what little sleep he'd stolen, and how fired up she seemed, he figured he could just as well have given her his promise here on the porch and saved her the trouble.

He lit the candles on Hroald's table, stealing memories of laughs between them now never to come again. Even with the torch and the two candles Eirika's eyes across the table seemed cold and bottomless, as if they were sucking in all the light.

He pushed Hroald's Bible to one side and seated himself. He ran his fingers over the table's edge, caressing idly the tiny scallops where the boards had been trimmed with an axe.

"Tell the person who told you what you know to forget they know it." she said. "Nacarr and Morrow weren't the end of this. More Skraelings have been arriving from somewhere inland for years now. They're assembling along Ivar and Thidrandri and Lalghar's borders.

They're planning to drive us all into the sea. I don't know how Nacarr planned to weather that once he got rid of us, but he and Morrow weren't all of it.

Eikinn, Thidrandri and Tore took separate oaths with Nacarr. Eikinn broke his by secretly allying himself with Nacarr and Morrow to destroy us.

Nacarr and Morrow were going to send for Eikinn and his Thingmen when they met in our back yard on his border. Eikinn, meanwhile, would delay them and send riders to Thidrandri, who would join his Ottarrs, and together, they would wipe out Nacarr and Morrow.

Nacarr would take the blame for it, having broken his oath. Somehow, Hrorik found out about it, and his obsession with Rakel murdered his father.

When only Hrorik and his renegades showed up, Morrow realized that the Ottarrs weren't coming.

"Uh huh." Jarnulf said. "And none of them saw Hrorik that night at Thing when Da'hal beat him off of Rakel."

"It must be an awesome burden," she said. "being so perfect in every respect."

"I'm sure the nine killed today will forgive me," he snapped back. "because of my awesome burden of dropping turds that don't stink."

"Do you want answers or a turd slinging match?" she said. "Yes, they saw Hrorik but none of us believed he'd murder his own father and drag Lalghar into it just for a woman who already despised him."

"Yes," he said. "some women do have that effect on men."

"Tell me," she said. "since you know so much more about women and their wiles than I do."

"All right," he said. "turd for turd."

"Lalghar," she said. "appears to be why Nacarr and Morrow were out there in our forest, waiting for their riders to return with him. You, or one of the others might have stumbled into them but they were willing to take the chance. It's a blessing it was Olaf and not Gunnarr, or Hroald who found their scouts. Or we might never have known. And Ivar's forty would have been chewed into pieces by them before they turned on us."

"This couldn't have been taken up at Althing? Two years ago?" Jarnulf said. "To have them deal with it?"

"What for?" she said. "Power loves a hole. At most we'd have got Nacarr and maybe six or eight more. With what his Thingmen were accustomed to that hole would have been filled by others just like them.

Or would you rather those monsters were still there? Hanging nine boys every fifth year? While the rest of us waited here, knowing, and shivering in our bones, that some night, before dawn, Morrow and Nacarr would come howling down around our ears and butcher the lot of us? And after Nacarr sang his song at Althing he'd be where we are now, unable to ever open the closet door lest the hangman leap out at him.

This summer Tore will join Thidrandri in a strike inland along the coast west of Thunder Thingi. The Ottarrs will strike the western Beothuk and Mic Mac behind them and together we will drive them back, we hope, for a hundred miles or more. The money they have, all of it, with the treasuries of Nacarr and Morrow, should get us a number of Chieftain Skallabjarnar Red Axe's younger Thingmen, from Hellulandia for a season. Once the Skraelings are driven off it the land will be theirs for being our new buffer."

"Why are you telling me this?" Jarnulf said, feigning the ignorant.

"Because should I not," she said. "You are going to keep snooping around until the others hear of it."

"That's ridiculous." Jarnulf said.

"You are not privy to everything decided around here." she said. "What has been spoken of must never be spoken of again. And while it would grieve Tore greatly, you will leave his Chieftain no choice. If you ever speak of this again, it may come back to the first person who so foolishly confided it to you. The Law Council might depose Tore in spite of our wishes. Buying the crooked bastards is out of the question.

Beyond what he shipped back from New Tara we're broke. They might even outlaw Starri, Adam and myself for conspiracy. You'd have to dig up Hroald and rebury him in unconsecrated ground. If you think keeping the women in line is a chore try adding a hundred sailors.

Hroghar's very capable, but I doubt that even he, along with you and your remaining hunters are up to it."

Jarnulf stared dazed, for a moment, and then extended his hand. She examined it as if it were a snake. Tore's Marshal knew what was what but he needed to be threatened. That fool Harald never could keep his mouth shut.

"You have my oath." Jarnulf said.

"Considering," she said, and then composed herself and took his hand.

"Do you understand now," she said. "Hroald's never ending baptisms of his brother? They weren't going to kill just the worst. They worked at this for years to kill all of them."

"Well," he said. "after today's doings what you're going to do with the Law Council is beyond me."

She dithered a moment as her vanity wrestled her better sense into a headlock.

"Tell me," she said. "if someone wanted to be a hunter, could you write it all down for them in one book, or even ten?"

She read his bemused silence. He'd heard this joke before but he'd let her get to the punch line anyway.

"I found myself right where you are now," she said. "when those two armies came out of the trees across the field.

If even one of Nacarr's rats escaped and is fool enough to squeak, . . . and another on Hellulandia fool enough to take up the case, . . .

An awful lot of this is going to be there ahead of us. There will be enough speculating about things remembered here as it is. Don't go jogging memories by asking questions or filling in details. Not for anyone.

Law's the same. Write down all the rules you want. They're the bare bones, the skeleton. To put meat on them you still need the forest.

The Law Council is my forest, where the books end, what can't be written out."

"Hmmm." he said as his eyes told her she had a rather overblown opinion of herself.

"What did you think I did in all those years I've been going to Althing?" she said. "Just sit in our Booth, law book in lap?"

At this he perked right up.

"How did you know where all the traps in your own forest were?" she said. "I know where they are at the Fifth Court because I've dug more than a few, between helping others dig theirs."

CXLIV Hnikarr?

"Gerard?" Jarnulf said. "He was a Gerard?"

"His given name." Eirika groaned. "His big secret. With all the people he's murdered, he was afraid one day he might kill the wrong one. One who really did have the power to damn him to torment ever- lasting. If, they knew his real name. Nacarr? Hnikarr? (Spear Thruster)

Imagine the reward of a man whose dying words damned the Father of the Gods, and all his children, by using one of Odinn's countless pseudonyms. In Nacarr's mind at least they would all have to stand and explain themselves, to Odinn. I'd think the one he sacrificed so many innocents to would not look kindly upon a fool presumptuous enough to send those souls to him, cursing him, in his own name. I shouldn't like to be Gerard Beauvais at the moment, wherever he is."

Jarnulf said nothing as he sat staring into the blue of the torch between them, his mind's eye questing along the threads of her suppositions as Nacarr groveled, explaining himself to Hel, Satan, or Odinn. She took his glassy stare for confusion.

He chewed over her words, in silence, for a bit.

"But you don't believe in any of that claptrap about Odinn, do you?" he said.

"I don't know that Nacarr did, either." she said. "When enough people believe something exists, it gathers a force unto itself. Nacarr kept his Outlaws, women, and kids terrified witless of himself for thirty years through Odinn."

"Funny," Jarnulf said. "I'd never have figured you for any but a true Christian."

"I am," she said. "I said it, and something. Satan and Lucifer have had their fingers in our pie for a long time. How do you think they got there? By telling everyone who they really were, and what they really wanted?"

"Hmmm." Jarnulf said.

"Around sundown, while you were asleep, Ivar dragged in your Storm Thingi hostage." she said.

"Why wasn't I told?" Jarnulf said. "Where is he?"

"There's still a few of us left who aren't complete bumblers." she said. "Hroghar shortened a set of hobbles for him. They won't come off without a chisel. Then they pitched him into Mordach's outhouse. Will and Frakki are serving him burnt mead, lots of it, regularly.

I doubt he could even stagger to the barn to steal a horse. And speaking of devils, you have behaved like a perfect troll to Rakel. It's time you mended fences with her. Starri will probably be home a lot sooner than you'd like. And you owe her a thank you on top of it."

"I suppose." Jarnulf said.

"If you only suppose then you're still in the dark." she said.

"Rakel saved Mirha's life this morning, and yours too. Mirha, as usual, went looking for a fight, with her axe, at your side just before you cut down your first three Outlaws at the woods edge. Rakel went after her and lay out flat on top of her, shielding Mirha with her own hide."

"And Olaf, and Ref, and," he said. His mind stumbled. He couldn't look at those visions. He'd seen too many of his own dead already today.

"Yes," Eirika said. "all of them."

She toyed with her ear for a long, silent moment, while dredging up the courage to go for broke.

"You do realize that she still thinks a lot of you?" she said.

"Please." he groaned.

"Suit yourself." she said, putting on an 'it's none of my business' mask, which told him she thought exactly otherwise. Everything was her business. Leaving seemed a good idea, before she told him what else was best for him. But she'd just shared twenty years worth of familiarity, by her lights, with him.

"I don't know how you're still on your feet." he said. "I'll take you home on Ulf's roan."

"Run along." she said. "I'm going to stay a while, and I and my memories will pray for my old friend, and perhaps he'll answer us, here, tonight."

"You give him my best," he said, heading for the door.

"You already did that yourself," she said. "this morning."

"It wasn't enough." he said.

She waved him down.

"It's only when you believe you have Jarnulf," she said. "that you'll know you haven't."

CXLV Odinn's Promise

He headed back towards Marnee's and Aethle. Most of his people still drew breath. Their lives and his would settle back into its dull, bickering routine in a month or two, and the death of Gunnarr, the others and Sigrid too, would dull from his memory over the next four or five years.

All those women always after him, nagging him with their petty nonsense, those magnificent women, what he wouldn't give to have all of them and their endless, petty bickerings back as they'd been yesterday, and his men, always ready to leap between them when his back was turned.

He wanted to turn back and run from steading to steading to hug each of those angelic warriors and have this horrid emptiness burned from within him, consumed in the furnace of their courage.

This was the other awesome truth of Odinn's promise, the price of overlooking any detail, of playing fast and free with the law, the price of not killing a man who'd gone begging for it, a man who'd willfully forfeited his immunity, Hrorik the rapist. Odinn, that old devil, had prosecuted him for his crime of arrogantly misplaced mercy to Eikinn by taking from him as compensation his world, his friends and kin. And that brought someone else to mind.

Where was Liv? Certainly someone had stabled her? He dashed headlong back for the barn. Draeng met him within, and told him Liv had been groomed, but was listless, shivering, off her feed and wouldn't drink.

Men's minds live in two divorced times, sleeping and waking. Jarnulf's waking time wasn't far from where he'd left it, his edges hewn in a berserk rapture through countless living men making them mirrors of the damned in hell, and then the Valkyr slaughtering the devil.

Liv heard him call repeatedly, and then his dreadful ghost loomed into the langeldur's flicker. She recoiled back into her stall. Him, her reason for being, wasn't angry with her anymore, but he was still dying, or dead.

That lay down smell of all those others, the cold ones who had stopped moving, he reeked of it. His ghost kept making pleading, soothing sounds, probably saying goodbye, like the others who had come. At least he'd finally come. She almost wished he hadn't.

His ghost pushed alongside her deeper into the stall, and produced an apple, and stroked her neck. Its hand was warm. It hugged her, stroking her neck, ears and cheeks for a long time while cooing out more comforting sounds, and gave her more apples before going away.

She stared after it greatly perplexed. It pulsed and was as warm as if he were still alive, and the apples tasted real enough. She wondered if he'd ever come back, and if he did would his ghost smell and that awful fury eating him up ever go away.

He closed Marnee's door, and scratching his stubbled chin he wended homeward with Mirha who was again hiding beneath her rusted, oversize helmet, and toting her woods axe.

Sharing his memories of Gunnarr with his widow might have helped her, but it hadn't helped him. It felt as though he was surrendering something exclusively his, Gunnarr's endless worries about her when she was pregnant with his son, Gunnarr's this and Gunnarr's that.

She knew some of them, but others seemed to be news, and he couldn't tell whether it helped her, or made her miss him the more. And her revelations of his uncle's confidences, all the worries, and the pride Ansvarr had owned for Jarnulf himself, but never told him.

And unspoken except through that pull of their eyes on each other's was that terrible pleading, each begging the other to say that it wasn't true, it hadn't really happened, Gunnarr, and Ansvarr weren't gone. He felt more alone than he had ever been.

How, he wondered, can anyone tell a woman whose husband fell in battle before her eyes, only this noon that somehow she'll get through this? And knowing that he could have prevented it all by just killing one, stinking, drunken rapist.

The stars were all in their proper places, voicing the lie that the world remained unshattered, unchanged, and uncaring. Within heartbeats he was strangling his hilts as if they were the necks of those who'd raped his friends away, and he might visit vengeance upon them yet again. Mirha tried several times to console him. He heard not a word.

Wolves chorused their feast song miles away to the west. They'd come to the banquet his friends bought them at such precious, and unholy price. Jarnulf stopped, turned west, and howled back at them. To him Mirha had ceased to exist. He begged the Thunderer for strength. It was not forthcoming.

He damned the mist distorting his sight, and that awful, womanish lump in his throat choking him. His friends had fallen nobly, heroes carried to Vallhol to carouse, and slay, again and again, to train endlessly for that final battle against evil. They would certainly not dishonor him with tears. But the question of Hroald remained. Who, or what, had come for Hroald?

And tomorrow when he begged God to receive his friends, he would be discovered, and judged wanting, and shamed not only before his people, but before God.

Perhaps God might listen, and forgive his pride and arrogance if only for the ocean deeps of his humility and need for his friends. Did priests suffer such doubts? Tearing at their souls as they strove toward a piety and purity acceptable to Him, when they beseeched Him?

Eirika's hideous vengeance upon Nacarr had not been enough. It could never be enough. In the black pit of his soul's well burned crimson a hatred hot enough to consume the world. How he longed to take Bror's stallion from the barn and race into the Nahri village, cleaving every last bitch and brat there to drown that filthy shit hole in their vile, accursed blood. They should have kept their men at home. And still the hunger would not be lessened as he stomped about through their mutilated, bleeding corpses, firing hovel after hovel.

Thor again ignored him, or more likely was disgusted with him. Jarnulf again howled at the wolves, this time for all he was worth, scaring Mirha out of her wits. And then weak in every fiber as with the ague, he collapsed onto his knees in the field and prayed to Jesus. Tears drowned his cheeks. Mirha waited silent for what seemed to her an eternity.

He stood, his eyes still closed. He drew his swords. They had felt so alive, so hungry this morning. Now they were cold, dead.

Crossing them before him he bowed westward, deeply, to his friends. He threw his face up to the heavens and opening his eyes stared dumbstruck. The uncountable stars were all still where they belonged, but each and every one had been transformed into a tiny, diamond bright, fiery white cross, and the gentle, forgiving, night wind set them all a sparkle.

Though he held Mirha tight beneath his shoulder all the way home it was another who held him beneath His shoulder, and kept his feet from stumbling through that awful, devil wrent night, as the owls shrieked out their triumph, mocking his pain from deep within the black of the forest.

CXLVI His Ghost

Kneeling at his hearth Jarnulf nursed the tiny flame fingers before him. Mirha, to his astonishment uncorked a jug, poured out a full cup of burnt wine, and holding her nose she gulped it straight, which set her gagging, crying, and coughing so fiercely he had to slap her back to start her breathing again. She sat on the hearth burying her face in her hands too spent to even remove her rusted helmet.

"I'm sorry about your friends." she said.

Jarnulf lifted the helmet from her and dropped it into the tinder box. He took her cheeks in his hands. The dried blood of his uncle, and Bror, and the others still flecked his left palm and fingers.

"They were your friends too." he whispered.

"I know," she whispered. "I know."

He snatched her up and held her, as she trembled, sobbing and shrieking like a little child fresh awakened, but still trapped in her nightmare, and the liquor atop this last night and day's horrors slowly, mercifully, overmastered her. He carried her to bed, and gulped down a cupful himself, before dragging the jug along out onto his porch to have a word with Ulf, and God, and those precious, departed others. Most of it was a litany of self blame. The remainder was his heartfelt wishes for their happiness, up there.

It was almost noon. Jarnulf turned into the barn worried sick about Liv. He had scrubbed himself, and dressed in his black linens for the funeral, after his hurried hand at the ship sheds as a coffin builder.

Draeng lay sleeping beside the langeldur, wrapped in bear hides. Jarnulf didn't wake him. Liv too was asleep on her feet. Draeng had topped off her blankets over her back with his own. Even so, Liv shivered beneath them all. Her feed and water bucket were still untouched.

His voice dragged her out from swirling, fractured vistas of endless dead men. Screams still rang, echoing in her ears, the screams of her other friend from across the aisle in the barn. She started, into his fresh shaven smile, and knew that he had come for her in this somewhere else, somewhere far from the horror. She felt very cold, and still. Perhaps this place was where the others who were cold and still went. He kissed her shivering muzzle. His ghost smell was gone. For once, he let her slobber him to her heart's content. Then he edged past her to her crate of treats up on the shelf behind her.

Another familiar voice came to her.

"Will she be all right?" Aud said.

"I couldn't take losing her too." he said.

The voice's face appeared, and she blinked. This one hadn't had that terrifying, never move again smell yesterday.

She squealed and bucked as if lightning blasted, and Jarnulf barely made it out of the stall. She lunged clumsily after him, tongue first, and backed him almost into the fire, licking and sniffing him all over.

Six dried apples, an eternity of hugs, pettings and soothing sounds later he put her off, laughing, and went to wash his face from her water bucket. That water smelled as good as he did. She dove in and drank deep. Then he tied her oat bag on, played with her ears, and went off across the aisle to look in on her other friend's cow. She studied him intently, munching away and almost sold on it. But there was still something otherwhere about these oats. None she knew of tasted this good.

She wished her other friend would come. Then she'd be certain this was real.

Somehow he'd stumbled through the funeral, the eulogy, the burials, his mind completely severed from the words he was speaking, God and the Savior shoved aside, stuck in Thrudheim, Strength World, the abode of the Thunderer, pagan and blasphemous, utterly self absorbed with his own blasted, selfish, self image.

There'd been no tears before the women. But there'd be self condemnation by the bucket to come. He'd drown in it for months, maybe years whenever no one was looking. And through it all he'd felt weak, tiny, cold, and afraid even of his own shadow, like his hangover after he blew the week following Ulf's death, too drunk to even stand.

Eirika had been right. She invariably was. Damn her too. If he'd been paying more attention and doing his damn job, Right about what? Whales and the law?

Those God awful images, his friends wrapped in white linen, lowered into their coffins, his last sight of them, tossing shovel after shovel of dirt down on top of them. And the wailing of all those women. Was there no bottom to this shit pile?

The monsters responsible hadn't begun to pay for it. But they would. They'd shriek themselves into Hel witnessing their babies butchered and themselves dragged screaming to be burned at the stake.

That night they'd all run off to Hroghar's shieling at the bog after Hjalti's killing seemed a million years ago. He wondered if he'd ever be able to enter the place again. At least that night they'd all been there for each other. Now, and ever after only five ghosts, and four more.

CXLVII Your Father's Steel

The next afternoon found him and Olaf and his men tabled at Mordach's, surrounded by Thidrandri and Ivar's men. His hunters were all sipping away at the hair of last night's dog. Kveldalf came, quiet and long faced amid the revelers to their table.

"They're back." she said. "Thidrandri's ships, and the kids."

"Somebody's got to tell Arnor and the other little ones." Jarnulf said, rising pained from his bench, across from Olaf. "He wants so much to be a man. And now I've got to serve him his first awful plate of it. If only I'd listened to you that night at Hrorik's."

"You might as well blame the wind." Olaf said.

"It doesn't matter." Jarnulf said. "It's my job."

He made for Mordach's door, with Olaf and the others following.

At the barn he saddled Ulf's roan. It seemed appropriate to ride a dead man's horse. Ahead of him on the path through the field streamed every woman in town, supported in silence by eighty Thunder and Ottarr men. At the sheds he dismounted and walked foremost to the beach. Hroghar, Da'hal, Ref, Olaf, Gudrod, Thorarin, the twins and Hoskuld formed a line behind him as the ships ground ashore.

Mordach alone hadn't come. The gruff, leathery ancient shook off Astrid, saying he'd work to do.

The kids, wide eyed and chattering, clambered eagerly into the surf, searching out family and neighbors to share their wondrous adventure with. Thidrandri's sailors looked pensive to Jarnulf's handful of men, and their own sad eyed neighbors, gently shaking their heads, behind the hunters. Arnor sought out his Chieftain.

Jarnulf dropped onto one knee before the boy. Arnor read it all in his eyes, before Jarnulf spoke.

"Your father's steel, is now yours." Jarnulf said. "We will teach you to wield it."

Arnor bit his lip, willing back his tears. He gazed up at his mother. Aethle nodded her sorrowful assent. She made to hug him but he forbid her, jerking angrily away. Jarnulf gazed around through the confused, tearstained little faces, staring back at him uncomprehending, their tiny lives ripped to shreds. This was worse even than burying his friends had been. Hlidareth's four wintered daughter Alvhild could not understand why her mother wasn't here, or why the giant Da'hal man was so quiet when he snatched her up to hug her against his beard scratchy, wet cheek.

Arnor folded his arms, and returning defiance to the cruel fate befallen his house he threw his head back, proud and angry, and clenched his teeth.

Jarnulf riveted his attention wholly on Arnor, to save himself from drowning in any unmanly display. Six wintered, and made seemingly of adamant he'd sink straight into hell and burn there before he'd shed a single tear in front of the others.

"Come." Jarnulf said. "We will go to the church and pray for them, and then place stones on their cairns to honor them."

Among the mounded stones and crosses in the graveyard, when that awful business was near done and Jarnulf with condolences had made his rounds he found himself at Gunnarr's grave with Aethle, Arnor, and Alvhild. Arnor placed his ninth and final stone atop his father's cairn. Arnor looked up into Jarnulf's eyes and then cast his diamond hard, fierce gaze at Nacarr's gruesome remains hanging beneath the oak. Three great black ravens were flapping noisily about in the dirt beneath Nacarr, gorged and still stuffing themselves.

"Chieftain?" Arnor said. "There really are trolls, aren't there?"

"Yes," Jarnulf said. "my brave young friend, there really are. And men like you and your father, with the courage of dragons, will have to hunt them, and kill them, till the world ends."

"When will you teach me how?" Arnor said. The hunters rarely took apprentices before their eighth or ninth winter but of this magnificent child's iron request Jarnulf could no more refuse than he could pluck out his own eyes.

"We're going to be awful busy for a bit." Jarnulf said. "Can you wait till mid summer, on my promise? Arnor nodded solemnly, and then took his mother's hand.

"We will go home now mother." he said with a dignity befitting a Chieftain, let alone a six year old.

"Arnor." Jarnulf called after him. "It is not unmanly to cry for our fallen, with our families and friends, as I have done, and will again."

Arnor nodded again and Aethle thanked him and they walked away. Jarnulf knew he'd never seen anything so inspiring as Gunnarr's proud little boy leading his mother in one hand and a lost little girl in his other into the shadows beyond the corner of the church. He begged God never to force before his eyes anything approaching it again. God seemed deaf to him, as he again winced at the sight of Aud, praying and trembling beside Tjorni's grave.

It came to him that he'd been asking God for a lot lately, sincerely and with all of his heart.

Hroald's insistence that God proved himself only through faith suddenly made a lot more sense. Jarnulf added another stone to Hroald's cairn and thanked him before adding another to Ulf's.

CXLVIII Da'Hjael

Da'hal stood before Hlif's cairn with his head bowed, towering above Ref, clasping his cross and hammer. Throughout the children's service his face had remained impassive and unreadable. The nine cairns were barely knee high atop the fresh earth. Tomorrow wagons would be gleaning the fields for stones to finish them, though Da'hal doubted they'd stop growing for some time. The crosses, also of granite, would come later, after they'd been chiseled and inscribed.

At the end, as the little mourners departed like so many shades he strode away toward the oak at graveyard's end where two of Odinn's familiars perched on Nacarr's shoulders, sharing their caresses and not so secret intelligences with him.

Da'hal bent, seized a stone the size of his huge hand, and hurled it with great force at Nacarr's head, smashing the corpse's right cheek, and the head of a raven pecking at it. Da'hal cursed vilely, first his aim, and then his luck as the other raven with thunderous flapping and cawing retreated from the corpse into the oak's branches above. He hadn't meant to hit the bird.

Kveldalf went after him. Rakel followed her. Kveldalf tugged at his elbow, beckoning him out of his gloom, and Rakel idly tossed a stone at Nacarr, and then another and another, whipping herself into a whirlwind of tear streaked profanity. Her aim, as ever, was excellent.

Da'hal caught her up in both arms and hugged her midnight tresses against his buckskinned shoulder, telling her that Nacarr had to stay up there at least until Tore got home. At the rate she was going, Nacarr would shortly fall free. Da'hal gathered both women under his shoulders and urged them back toward the Mead Hall.

The black flyers behind them, regardless of their fallen comrade in the dirt beneath Nacarr swooped down from the oak to fight out their claims on their now eyeless Chieftain of the Nahri.

In the street Da'hal hugged the girls tighter.

"Da'hal?" Rakel said.

"My name, is Da'Hjael." Da'hal said.

At the change in his voice her step and heart faltered. It was now all the crashing growl of stones tide tossed in a vast and lightless cave. She had awoken terrified on many nights when the church dragon threatened her with that voice.

Jarnulf found himself alone in the graveyard but for Mirha, and Aud still praying and trembling at Tjorni's grave. He took Aud up under his arm.

"His vengeance is stern." she said.

Jarnulf told her again that this wasn't her fault, and that God had not taken any of the fallen as punishment for anything she'd ever done as he and Adis and the others had been telling her over and again.

Mirha, feeling guiltier and more unwanted than ever, wandered off after Da'hal, Kveldalf, and even Rakel.

"We were not reconciled." Aud said and it cut Jarnulf again. The shears he had got from Kolfinna to reconcile Aud's dispute with Tjorni still lay forgot at home, on his workbench. He'd even failed at that.

Tjorni and Hlif were dead because he'd let them ride along to ambush the Skraelings, and they'd thought themselves up to attacking men on the hill, after seeing himself and his men do it, earlier. He kissed Aud's temple.

"Tjorni gave her life for her friend." he said. "Not someone she was unreconciled with."

"I wish I could trade mine for her's." Aud said.

"I know." Jarnulf said. "I know."

She took his hand and pressed something into it and closed his fingers around it, before walking away, head bowed, back toward town.

It was his silver cross, and hammer.

CXLIX That's Not Fair

Jarnulf started awake to his door being battered and Tore beyond it demanding to know if he was all right. Gudrod scuttled out of the back bed closet half asleep, cocking his bow.

Jarnulf waved him down and unbarred his door. Adam barged in at Tore's heels. Adam wanted to know where Jarnulf's girl friend was. Jarnulf peered out into the dream light from the clouds glowing silver against the purple black from the moon, hiding behind the western trees.

Forty mailed sailors crowded his porch, and spilled off it into his yard, all bristling with weapons. He stepped out among them motioning Tore to follow.

"Nacarr attacked us." Jarnulf said.

Howling murder threats filled his yard.

Tore roared them back to silence.

"That stinking son of a bitch." Tore growled. "His men pulled the same, double crossing shit on us in New Tara."

Jarnulf sighed and swiped a hand through his hair. Tore thought he'd seen corpses with more life in their eyes than Jarnulf's.

"Nine of my friends are dead, five days now." Jarnulf said.

Shouts of who are they rang out in his yard. Jarnulf turned back to Tore. Tore's grip tightened on Jarnulf's shoulder. Tore didn't need telling. He knew.

"I am sorry, Chieftain Tore." Jarnulf said. "Your brother, my friend, lays among the fallen."

Though the sailors did not speak through his namings, at each there was an intake of breath as of a spear thrust, and then a convocation of hushed prayers.

Tore squeezed Jarnulf's shoulders in his hands and looked him in the eyes.

Tore turned to Adam.

"We'll finish the Nahri now and Morrow's scum the day after." he said.

"There's no one to finish." Jarnulf said. "Ivar Sigurdson came with Ottarrs on horse and they're already dead. Three dozen of Thidrandri's men are in Morrow's lodges and a like number of Ivar's at Nacarr's. It's just women, kids, and a few youths running the woods. Mirha's at Marnee and Kolfinna's. Gudrod's here against runners burning me."

When the cheers finally died down Tore told Jarnulf to come with them to the ship yard. Jarnulf begged off, dead tired.

"Humor an old man." Tore said. "We've a gift for you."

Jarnulf sought out Hraerek Sigrundson, Adam's fo'c'sulman and Sigrid's uncle. It was easy. Fo'c'sulmen, as a rule, stood out in any crowd. They were bigger than just big, heavy with muscle, light on their feet and full of arrogance. Hraerek, with his square, black bearded jaw and that 'stand aside or you'll wish you had' glare proved the rule.

Hraerek disapproved stridently of his niece's perversity and had been amused with Jarnulf's handling of her obnoxious public episodes. Jarnulf had always ignored Sigrid until she got good and drunk and started hitting people. And then he only threatened her, or at worst escorted her out of the Hall.

Jarnulf wished he'd brought his swords. He felt naked, respectfully telling Hraerek of Sigrid's killing, offering his condolences, and explaining his own and Mirha's unwilling involvement. He assured Hraerek that he'd neither engineered it nor wished it.

"I can't tell you how sorry I am to hear this." Hraerek said.

At the ship sheds Jarnulf feared his back and shoulders would be blue tomorrow. They'd taken an awful, if well meant pounding along the way. The yard was empty but for the star shadowed sheds, traps, salt ovens, and the three ships drawn a quarter way ashore. Their striped red and white sails hung luffing before their masts in the breeze, and their dragon stems had not been taken down. Jarnulf asked Asgrim if Dalla had got lost again.

"No, but it's a safe bet he's wishing he had." Asgrim said and at that moment into the muted grays and silvers from the black beneath the trees strode another forty evilly grinning sailors.

Weapons dangled limp in their hands as they shuffled their way through the sand past the traps and saw horsed faerings. They arrayed themselves in a half circle facing Tore's forty. Dalla, for once, wasn't pretending to be joined at the hip to Starri. There was a good twenty yards between them, and Dalla was burnt and wounded. None of his men appeared similarly afflicted. Perhaps Dalla might have dug himself deep enough not to start a fight over his own set to with Rakel.

Starri dragged Humach into the circle's midst and cuffed the back of Humach's head, naming him a worm and commanding him to stand up straight.

"Now now now." Tore chided. "That's no way to treat the new head Skraeling."

Jarnulf retold his tale but at Tore's earlier insistence, left out Thidrandri's occupation of Humach's village.

Humach again sputtered on about Morrow and Quiniquesh and Skjalg, pitching the blame for his hand in it everywhere but at the silvered clouds above. Tore clapped his arm round Humach's bony shoulders.

"Problem solved." Tore said. "The guilty have been punished, and now you're in charge, and you want to be our friend. I'm sure we can deal with you. Right?"

Humach grinned back like a sheep, hoping against hope.

"Lots of pretty girls," Tore continued. "real young ones, just starting to grow those little titties, waiting back at home, without any men."

Tore gave Humach a lewd, conspiratorial wink as he hugged the Skraeling up under his huge shoulder.

"But then a man of the world, like yourself, probably likes them even younger." Tore said, breaking into an idiot leer like a long lost, evil brother.

"Come on now, admit it, Don't 'cha?" he said. Humach's nervous smile said he didn't think admitting anything concerning anything would be in his interest.

"I bet you'd like to go home and cuddle them all right now, wouldn't you?" Tore said.

Tore seemed quite eager.

Humach snickered.

Tore released him and spun him so they were face to face.

"But I've got five dead men, and four dead women here on top of my dead fo'c'sulman in New Tara." Tore said like a tired grandfather, trying to patch up a family feud. "And all I've got to show for them is you."

Tore raised his axe, slowly, between them and laid the back of its head up between his squirrel tail brows. He peered down at Humach, his great gray eyes aglow like late summer moons on the horizon, seen through the vapors swirling above a pestilent marsh.

"My brother lies among those murdered." Tore hissed. "You can have the little boys too, if you make it past me."

He tapped Humach's forehead playfully, with his axe's flat.

Humach went bug eyed staring back at Tore and his axe, swinging pendulum like between them as Tore shifted it from hand to hand. Humach gawked around at the eighty sniggering, gray blue Norsemen with thumbs thrust in their belts, leaning forward on axe hafts, or cradling crossbows at port arms, and Starri with his scarred, corded arms crossed, glaring one eyed at him.

"But, but that's not fair." Humach said. "I don't have a sword."

"You know," Tore said. "for once, you're right."

"Karl." Tore bellowed with a nod at the shed door. "Make it fair."

Karl disappeared inside and quickly returned with his hands full. He handed Humach a three foot long, inch and a half round shaft of ash. Sweated onto one end was the head of a twenty pound mallet. Tore handed Karl his axe and took another mallet from him just like Humach's. Tore set it at his feet and balled his fists into his palms, cracking his star silvered knuckles, before hefting the mallet.

"Now," Tore bellowed, cocking his mallet high behind him. "you troll possessed maggot, it's fair."

CL But She Tried To Kill Me

"Thanks for the gift." Jarnulf chuckled. "But you should have saved it for tomorrow. The girls are going to feel cheated. We've got one for you too. Nacarr's out at the end of the graveyard."

Tore whipped about still in a half crouch and still throttling his mallet. Crimson flamed in his gray eyes.

"In Our, Graveyard?" he bellowed. "You didn't bury that piece of shit in our graveyard?"

Jarnulf tossed his hands high in surrender, shaking his head and laughing.

"With a rope," Jarnulf choked out. "about three feet up in the air."

Tore clamped his lips tight and brrrted out a sound like a wet beer fart between them as he dropped the mallet and slapped his thighs.

"After," Jarnulf continued. "Eirika and Mordach axed an eagle into his back."

Tore's laughter died as dead, and almost as agonizingly, as Humach had.

"Odinn's arse." he groaned. "I'd always suspected she had it in her."

Ten feet behind Tore, Starri broke into a grin that said even he was pleased with Jarnulf, but he kept shifting nervously from foot to foot.

"Starri." Jarnulf called. "When you see Rakel tomorrow, tell her you're proud of her. When we went after them she earned it, with bow, and blade."

"And you let her go with you?" Starri demanded. His neck swelled.

"Maybe you can tell her what to do but I sure as hell can't." Jarnulf said.

It was the perfect retort, effectively muzzling Starri, who had to admit that for some time now she hadn't paid much mind to him either.

The sailors, anxious for drink, were already hard at work ferrying their sea lockers into the shed, singly over shoulder or six at a time in the carts. Badger approached Tore's back, with Caoimhe at his heels.

"Excuse me Skipper, but what are we going to do with her?" Badger said, nodding at Caoimhe.

Tore offered her an indifferent, over the shoulder peek. She scurried behind Badger, quaking like a cat cornered mouse as she peered back over Badger's shoulder at the huge, murdering savage leering down at her.

"You wanted her." Tore said. "You put her up."

"But she tried to kill me, with an axe." Badger said.

"That sweet little thing?" Tore said. "I don't believe it."

Then he winked at her.

Starri's fo'c'sulman, the twins father Bardi, approached Jarnulf. There was a hitch in his swagger. He covered it with even more bristle and bluster than usual.

"You did not name my sons among the fallen." Bardi said.

"Where they too drunk to fight?"

"No, they were not drunk." Jarnulf said, staring down to avoid Bardi's gaze, and enjoying Bardi's anxieties.

"Well," Bardi muttered. "Did they fight well?"

"Not, not well," Jarnulf sighed sadly, shaking his head from side to side, and pushing his luck. Bardi, as Starri's friend, had cared far less for Jarnulf than he had for his own sons. He had long held that Jarnulf the Lecher's debased example had seduced his sons into their own lives of sloth and criminal debauchery. Bardi started a bearish rumble in his throat and Jarnulf raised up onto his toes to glare defiance into Bardi's eyes.

"They fought like men out of Hel." Jarnulf roared at him. "The names of Andar and Kjartan Bardisons are not spoken in Hrafnstadir until the name Hero has first been spoken."

Bardi rocked back on his heels. Sailors with lockers on their shoulders froze in mid step, slavering for the first telling of a tale of heroes, Hrafn heroes.

"First they killed fourteen Outlaws," Jarnulf announced loudly to all. "with bows, sacrificing their horses. I know because Da'hal and I went back later and counted the dead. Then they led the Ottarrs to us, and killed probably that many again on foot with sword and knife."

At that moment a feather could have knocked Bardi flat.

"Why are you so surprised?" Starri called to him. "They've had enough practice, beating on each other for years."

"No," Bardi blustered, recovering smartly. "it's just that those nags were all they truly seemed to care for."

Many sailors rushed up, crowding Bardi, and treating him to more, and even rougher, shoulder pummeling than Jarnulf had just suffered. Bardi also heard much of his neighbor's jealousies. Dalla's ship might have gone out, but Bardi's had just come in. To sire such doughty and fearsome fighters who brought such renown to a man's household, what clearer sign of God's favor could there be?

As Badger and Karl, with Caoimhe in tow, marched past what remained of Humach, folded into a barrel of rotting bait fish, on their way to town Badger gave the barrel a hearty slap.

"He'll make the girls happy." Badger said.

"Hmmm?" Karl said.

"Save them a days' worth of fishing. Bait bag's the best place for a baby raper." Badger said. Karl laughed in agreement.

Mordach cursed, dashed his towel atop the bar, and set the tankard he'd just washed beside it. He yelled back at his front door.

"We're closed. Go home or go to hell."

The banging on his door resumed, and this time it sounded like a half dozen beyond it. Gawd, did those idiots of Thidrandri's get lost on their way home? He'd just got rid of them this afternoon. Both stair railings, a bench and a table needed replacing as one Havard Roarer, Thunderer size extra large, upon spying an axe with an illustrious pedigree hanging on his wall, had gotten carried away with his all too literal retelling of the saga of Ingvar Longchin, his grandfather, and Ragi, Tore's great uncle, both mighty warriors then yet in their teens, and their part in the sinking of the church's tax fleet. Thidrandri recompensed Mordach handsomely for the damages.

"We're here to make you rich, you stingy old termite." A muffled voice beyond the door bellowed.

"I'm already rich. I want to be alone and asleep." Mordach yelled back, arming himself with another axe as he headed for his door. The haft of Ragi's axe hadn't fared as well on Havard's go round as it had the last time it cleared a prow of Rome's myrmidons. Which was a good thing. It offered Da'hal and the other six an opening to tackle the berserk bastard on his way back to the wall for a replacement.

CLI Heavy Skot

The mid morning sun fell bright and glaring on Mordach's twenty holer. In the shadows beside the Hall, Galinn's twelve wintered apprentice Armod leaned forward off the mead keg he was sitting on. He plucked his knife hilt first from the dirt. It was getting harder to make the point in his throwing game. Beside him lay Gudrod stretched out napping.

They were bored motherless at having nothing more to do than keep trudging into the outhouse and forcing booze down their prisoner's gullet. At the sight of Tore, Asgrim, and Hroghar headed their way Armod kicked Gudrod's boot. Gudrod scrambled upright struggling to look innocent. Asgrim was carrying a wet bucket, and Hroghar a hammer and chisel.

"Drag him out." Tore said.

Tore was in a testy mood having just caught hell from his wife and a few other women over cramming their barrel of dead bait fish with that dead Skraeling.

Armod leapt to his feet to sling Tore a sloppy salute and offer him a jaunty "Aye, Skipper."

Tore leaned close for a whiff of Armod's breath.

"You watch yourself." Tore said. "Or I'll lock you in there for a dose of the same."

"Yes, Chieftain Tore." Armod snapped out, in a far meeker tone.

"And don't go home till tonight." Tore said.

Gudrod and Armod disappeared into the outhouse. Moments later an emaciated, blear eyed youth staggered into the sunlight ahead of them and shielding his eyes from the glare collapsed over sideways.

Tore edged away from him holding his nose. Hroghar dragged the lad's feet back over a flagstone in the path.

The flagstone pave between the Hall and outhouse was a rarity, but with the shape most of Mordach's patrons were in at night, a necessity. Mordach even had the snow shoveled off it in winter. The moon and starlight on it kept his cross eyed clients pennies from getting lost on their way back to his strongbox.

Hroghar hammered his chisel through the hobble's chain. Asgrim doused the captive with his bucket of water. The lad opened one eye and offered up a feeble, pained grin. Tore ordered Asgrim and Gudrod to drag the sot to the steam house. Armod tried to slink off. Tore ordered him to escort the prisoner within, and accompany him for a steam.

When Asgrim dragged the prisoner back into Mordach's later, he was still staggering but the grin was gone. In its place was a glare of abject terror. Despite Asgrim's assurances that they wouldn't bother to clean him up if they were going to kill or torture him he was being a hard sell.

Tore sat sharing a table with Starri and Adam and Hroghar.

Asgrim plunked the trembling youth down hard on the bench beside Hroghar, and across from Tore. The four grizzled, Hrafn patriarchs rested their elbows on the table and leaned forward into his face, their eyes glinting like hungry eagles. Tore's top lip was curled back and he was running a thumbnail between his teeth, chasing out a tiny string of venison.

"You want to go home?" he muttered, around his thumb. The lad didn't need a second asking. His groveling eyes were so fixed into Tore's that he didn't even see the plate of steaming meat and the tankard of water Astrid set before him.

"Your Chieftain Lalghar's an unmanly pervert." Tore drawled. "You tell him I said so. This stunt's going to cost him a whole lot more than the sixty of your mares we killed. A thousand silver Marks, and a hundred more in gold, for starters. He's to bring it here, himself, in four days, and I don't give a shit where he has to get it from."

Tore folded his thumb into his palm and thrust his hand out, fingers spread wide.

"Four days, no more, or we'll come see you, and Ottarr and Thunder will be with us."

He pointed down at the plate between them.

The youth followed Tore's finger and discovered his pile of daymeal. At his second bite his bowels began quaking and he exploded in a cold sweat, shuddering and clenching. Being force fed the strongest, most concentrated of meads, and water for five days while locked in a reeking outhouse was guaranteed to wreck any man. Asgrim hurried the prisoner back outside. The lad danced out on his tip toes, his back arched and hips jutting forward.

"We'll have to put him up for another night." Hroghar sighed. "Or he'll be off that horse squatting and squirting before he makes it half way across the field, if he don't fall off it first."

Starri laid a hand on Hroghar's forearm.

"Now about that," Starri said.

"God Damnit." Hroghar barked down at him. "I'm up to my back teeth in work as it is. I'll get started on your new sword as soon as I can."

Starri unhanded Hroghar and shut his mouth. People rarely got away with barking at him but in Hroghar's case, if he wanted his new sword before the fall harvest, ...

At the tanning shieling, half the morning later, an uneasy silence was thickening between Starri and Jarnulf. Together they were muscling the third barrel of salt into a cart that Jarnulf had already stuffed a dozen sheaves of crossbow bolts into. Tore arrived with an empty sail bag rolled up and tied, over his shoulder. Starri was anxious to be off and somewhat upset that they were on foot. Jarnulf promised him that the place was crawling with bears and wolves, and he didn't intend to risk any more horses than the one needed to pull the cart.

Four days passed.

The sun was nearing the zenith. The day was bright, clear and cool. Adam's wife left off worrying her bone sword through her loom, groaned herself erect and answered her door. Asgrim barged in.

"Lalghar and his twenty just popped out of the woods." Asgrim said.

CLII We'll Use My Weights

She shook her husband awake. Adam struggled into his boots asking if Tore had been told and grumbling that they could have waited until a decent hour. His wife replied somewhat curtly that it was almost noon, again.

In the red bowels of Hroghar's smithy stood Da'hal, shirtless, grimy, and raining hammer blows down onto a rod of white iron. He was welding a cracked plow that Hlif had told him two weeks ago needed mending.

Olaf's silhouette darkened the shieling's doorway glare. Olaf was armed with sword and warbow. Da'hal seemed oblivious to the sparks that burned his hands and chest. Olaf had never before seen him working without his leather apron, mitts and cap.

"Lalghar's here." Olaf said.

Da'hal returned him a sigh weary with dejection as he stopped hammering, straightened, and then booted the entire plow, clanking and rattling, sideways from his anvil. He tromped forward toward Olaf and the sunlight offering up a grin that Lucifer would have blenched from, his hammer still throttled forgotten in his huge fist.

Olaf snatched up Da'hal's sword on its belt by the door, and backing a step, offered it to Da'hal. Da'hal swatted it aside, blaspheming vilely. Tore wouldn't like what he'd do with it. Olaf slung the sword belt over his own shoulder and he and Da'hal made for the bridge on main.

Adam and Asgrim arrived at the bridge to find fifty Hrafns at arms assembled on its near, north side. More came at the run, with bared blades and loaded crossbows.

Lalghar and his twenty rode their mounts at the walk north along main, toward the bridge, and the Hrafns beyond it. Lalghar and his Thingmen were mailed and heavily armed. Their faces were hard and fierce lined, etched with the gall of bending their knee to those who had cloaked them in the fury of frustrated murder lust. Their bloodlines had been dried up, black, reeking and clotted in the Hrafn woods, their sons, brothers and fathers issue sustaining, and succoring now only wolf, eagle, and fly.

Their mounts boasted noble and warlike spirit. They were the pick of Storm Thingi's remaining horses. Lalghar rode in the lead. Beneath his mail he was a huge and well formed man of ruddy hue, almost as tall as Hroghar, in his mid fifties with flat cheekbones beneath close set, piggish black eyes. The wolf, as ever, prowled, snarling in them. But even with his unkempt, coarse, black hair, and blocky face, he'd been a not unhandsome man except for his ears which opened aside his snarl like barn doors thrown wide. Immediately behind him rode his remaining son and three of his Councilors.

Badger and Karl towed a cart out of the barn. In the cart were Tore's weighing scales and sail bag from the battlefield. Karl propped and blocked the cart level, and Badger set up the scales and weights, in it. The Stormers crossed the bridge and reined in.

"You leave us no future." Lalghar said to Tore. "Half a hundred of my Thingmen are dead. If we pay your tribute there will be nothing left to give more to join us. And the Skraelings will take us all."

Starri leaned into the wagon and hefted Tore's bag out. Starri dumped the bag out before Lalghar's bay. The horse reared back from the stench. Lalghar and his men groaned and jerked their faces away, retching.

Five days of being pecked by birds and another four behind the tanning shieling had left the ten heads, Lalghar's son Orlyg among them, barely recognizable.

"There's your future." Tore bellowed. "Or."

He pointed his axe toward the scales. The Stormers clutched hilts. Fifty Hrafn bows drew down on them. Lalghar ordered his twenty to stand down. Lalghar cautioned the Hrafn Chieftain, he and his would brook no more. They'd die, but it would cost Tore dearly.

Abreast Lalghar and twenty yards safely beyond Tore's reach, Jarnulf and Ref shoved their way forward through the sailors. Neither bore bows as their hands were too full of hilts. Most of the women had by now arrived and were also brandishing bows and muttering dark threats behind their men.

"Mark us well," Jarnulf growled. "so your nightmares will have faces. You can reconcile with Chieftain Tore, with your blood money, but you will never be reconciled with us."

Tore bellowed at Jarnulf to shut up.

Lalghar promised Jarnulf and Ref that they'd regret this someday.

Ref told Lalghar that he already regretted it. He and his friends should have descended on Lalghar's village and finished the work before Chieftain Tore returned.

Lalghar spit into the dirt before Ref's boots.

"I'll pay." Lalghar said to Tore. "But we'll use my weights, not yours."

Tore bent down and seized the hair of Orlyg's rotting head. Tore plunked the eyeless, lipless head into the pan containing his Hrafn's weights.

"You'll pay this, now." Tore said. He swept his axe, pointing, to the other nine heads.

"Or that," he continued, spitting. "when Starri and I, and Thidrandri and Ivar, see you next. And you call yourselves Stormers. Where? In the outhouse?"

Lalghar yanked his sword out and pointed it at Tore and the wagon and scales twenty yards before him.

"Enough!" Lalghar bellowed.

"This is the ninth night," Jarnulf yelled up to him. "since you murdered my kin and friends. Don't let me catch you in my woods tonight catching each other."

Lalghar jerked upright in his stirrups readying his sword and heeling his mount toward Jarnulf, and a bare chested, grimed giant burst running from the Hrafn mob hurling his square, black, smithy's hammer through the noon sun straight into Lalghar's cheek, and Lalghar pitched backwards, slammed from his horse, into the street.

Still at full tilt Da'hal vaulted skyward toward the rider behind Lalghar's mount. He hit his man like a thunderbolt and together they toppled over the horse's far quarter. Two roans, a dapple gray and a chestnut stallion lurched forward at the bite of spurs toward Da'hal and their riders drew steel.

Ref dove to his knees with a sweeping sword cut, taking the forelegs of one of the roans from under him, and its rider hurled onto his face.

Olaf, with his bow at full draw, stomped on the back of the man's neck, and then shot another from his saddle.

Da'hal fell atop his man and dragging him to his feet smote his jaw a yard deep, lightning jab, hammering his man back to earth. The impact sounded even above the yelling and stamping hooves of the surrounded horses. The man on the gray swooped in on Da'hal with his sword raised and Da'hal smashed man and mount aside with a left cross to the horse's eye. The horse staggered sideways toward Jarnulf and then sat back on its haunches. Its rider leapt from his saddle, and in mid leap Jarnulf's longsword stole the rider's face.

Da'hal roared down to his man to get up and fight, but it was useless. The man was dead. His neck was broken.

CLIII For My Friend

In the end it needed Asgrim, Hroghar, Starri, Bardi, and Hraerek to drag Da'hal away bellowing and struggling like a scalded demon in their grips. Those remaining Stormers had better pick up their whole damn village and run because he was coming, and neither God nor the devil could save them now. Olaf found himself relieved that Da'hal hadn't wanted his sword earlier.

When it was all over, and the seven living Stormers had paid up and departed with their dead, little Arnor retrieved Da'hal's hammer from the street, and carried it off to Mordach's. Within, Da'hal in the aisle was still being quite a handful as Chieftain Tore ripped him and Jarnulf a new one.

Lalghar was a known quantity. There was no telling what to expect from his Outlaws now.

Da'hal promised Tore that he'd no worries there, as Da'hal himself was going to personally cancel the entire Storm Thingi's lease. Tore corrected him. There'd be no raids into Storm village without his say so. Those vermin were to be kept alive and bled for tribute.

"Apparently," Ref sneered. "Lalghar and his brood mares weren't known well enough, to some."

Tore impaled him with a needle glare, and taking Ref's arm, steered him off toward a quiet corner for a word.

Arnor climbed up onto Da'hal's table so that he could get a look past Asgrim, Starri, Hroghar, and the dozens more surrounding Da'hal in the aisle. Everyone was telling Da'hal to sit down and shut up and he wasn't having any of it. Da'hal glimpsed the boy, over the heads of his retainers. He quit bellowing and raised his arms high to shush them.

Arnor stood cradling that forge grimed hammer in both hands as reverently as if it were a sacred chalice made of nothing more substantial than cobwebs and moonbeams. Da'hal asked him what in the world he was doing with that filthy thing. He'd ruin his clothes with it.

"It's a noble hammer." Arnor said. "A Chieftain hammer. You should hang it above your mantle."

Arnor darted a sneer down at ten year old Raud, his nemesis.

"I wanted to be sure you got it back before it got hung over someone else's mantle."

Hroghar let out a great laugh and took the hammer from the boy, and Da'hal ordered his father to give it back to Arnor.

"Hang it above your own mantle," Da'hal said. "and I'll bring you nine more just like it, once I've collected them for my friend Gunnarr."

Arnor thanked Da'hal for his wondrous gift, saying his father would like that, and all found it touching.

"I would rather it stay here then," Arnor said. "so everyone can see it, and we can tell strangers when they ask, of your vengeance for my father."

And so saying Arnor solemnly hung his hammer in the pegs which had long held the axe of Ragi, now laying on Jarnulf's workbench, its broken haft being repaired. If the crowd was touched before, they were stunned now. Hjortgren stepped up upon the bench beside the boy and folding Arnor's fingers into a fist, Hjortgren raised it high.

"To a hero who left us too soon," Hjortgren roared. "and two more who still tower among us."

The Hall exploded in cheers, and Aethle trembled with pride.

Arnor's three tormentors, ten wintered Raud, Hall and Vigbjod held a quick conference. Their standing, not to mention their hides, would be better served by being seen chumming around with Arnor instead of picking on him. Once they got to actually know the little fellow the four grew to be friends as close, and in time, as God awful a nightmare to provoke as Jarnulf and his friends.

The grimy, bare chested giant smiled grim and proud at Arnor, and at the first of Hlif's ten hammers on the wall behind him. Tore seemed the only one discountenanced by the whole affair. Ref had returned his ass chewing with scornful silence, and seemed undaunted at his threats, and Da'hal, Christ! Now they'd both be sneaking off on poaching forays into Storm turf collecting hammers.

Later that day Tore chased down both Da'hal and Ref, threatening them again to stay in Hrafnstadir and out of Storm's woods, and Jarnulf got after Mirha and Elsa to get a move on boiling salt. And then Jarnulf, Tore and Starri returned to the battlefield.

Four more days passed.

CLIV Beans Of Death

It was early afternoon at Mordach's. Most of Hrafnstadir had wandered off back into their gray mournings at the loss of their neighbors, and the awful poundings they'd taken celebrating yet again at Lalghar's demise. Enough remained however to find a delighted Mordach still with his purse plumping fatter than usual during woman season.

Astrid was off abed and Mordach was up to one of his favorite pranks, cooking a huge cauldron of his beans of death. Unlike Mordach, Astrid always soaked them overnight first to de gas them. Astrid failed to see the humor in it the next day when Mordach quipped that folks got over one trouble only by suffering another.

The last table on the left beneath the landing found Dalla, who'd already put in two recuperating weeks at home, seated and swaying, with an idiot grin. His speech was slurred, and he seemed oblivious to his wounds. Rakel had tended his every want, and each of her own, with an eager promptitude which satiated him well beyond no end. But with all the bouncing around she'd put him to his arrowed leg needed a break.

He'd headed for the Hall and a respite from her delightful ministrations. Asbjorn and Hring, across the table from him, had been generously underwriting his pain ease.

Perched at the table across the aisle from them, like vultures over a lamb in a snow bank, were four close closeted females, Rakel's mother Langlif, Sigrid's mother Stienunn, Hjortgren's mother Ranveig and his sister Gundfrieda.

Dalla glared up cross eyed over his table at Hring, who'd burned his ship, and stuck him in Tore's outhouse. Hring and Asbjorn were still, for want of better, his mates and supporters. They had just muscled their fifth flagon of Mordach's best against his tongue to wrest its weather edge away from them and back where it belonged, onto the Leif shore.

Asbjorn's frayed, yellow green tunic sported faded smatterings of purple wine stains. He was, as usual, toying with one tip of his collar length blonde moustache, and hard at work darting lustful glances across the aisle at Gundfrieda's gifts as they jiggled, delightfully, across her table each time she jerked forward to underscore her dark suppositions with a finger and hag like scowl. Nattering away, she returned his leer with her wrinkliest opprobrium.

Hjortgren approached, and plunked down beside Dalla, across from Asbjorn, unwilling to foul that taut line anchoring Asbjorn's eyes to Gundfrieda's bosom. Asbjorn was rarely this overt but the drink topping Hring's blusterings over how thrilled Thurid had been with his homecoming had Asbjorn drowning in his own delightful meditations. A man could dream, couldn't he? Hjortgren grinned within himself, two birds with one stone.

Asbjorn hoped Gundfrieda might appreciate his pitch to her of something juicier to carp on.

"Sigrid's friend," Asbjorn drawled. "even tagged after the Marshal out to the tanner's shieling yesterday. Damn strange, considering."

Gundfrieda's blonde brows raised. Nobody went willingly to the tanner's. The chicken crap reek within was a gagger.

Ranveig 'hmmphed' and tossed her chisel chin high, but bit back her tongue. Stienunn and Aesolf's deepening scorn of Aud as the root of Sigrid's death had burrowed all the way down into the cellar of Aud and Jarnulf conspiring in it aforehand. As gossip, it would make a grand nugget to toss before her table mates, but Ranveig's standing demanded more. They'd stare, lightning blasted for a moment, and then hoot her out into the street. Her table mates pounced on Asbjorn's prompting as if it were a hundred weight of gold.

Speculations, and insinuating leers exploded surrounding the Marshal's threats of carving up Dalla's betrothed and his hand in her friend Sigrid's murder.

Hring's ears blistered. Dalla's grumblings that he, Hring, deserved no less, after burning his ship, had been anything but subtle. The Marshal presented a perfect target to deflect his Skipper's spleen onto.

Asbjorn listened again, attentively to Mother Ranveig's sulfurous, burning sore over Hjortgren's unfulfilled duty to avenge his brother Ketil's killing at the Marshal's hands. Hjortgren's sister might trade in the scowl she usually favored him with for a smile once that were set aright.

"Oh there you are, my little needle." Ranveig said, finally acknowledging her son with a sneer. "You will, be home for nightmeal?"

Hring determined himself more than ever to mix a mischief for the Marshal, fatal, if not immediately, then in the end. Mother Ranveig's imputation of her son as cowering in her wool basket was poison enough to kill ten men.

Hring had heard enough. All would be better than well if only this precious cusp were seized.

Asbjorn's bladder must need bailing. Hring's own surely did.

They excused themselves. Hjortgren followed after them. His own road to salvation was soon to be at least half traveled. And his drunk and blistered Skipper was in good hands, or mercifully out, of Rakel's better ones for the moment, even in the talons of those double breasted vultures. They were too busy pecking at Jarnulf and Aud to turn on Dalla.

Hjortgren held Mordach's door open, with a bow to Asbjorn.

"I've a gift for you, old friend," Hjortgren confided. "at home. You'll look splendid in scarlet tonight at nightmeal. My sister will be quite impressed with you. It's her favorite color."

Asbjorn gaped, stupefied.

"You sure we're talking about the same Gundfreida?" he said.

"Oh, that." Hjortgren said. "Women. I'll never figure them out either. That's just because you've not asked me for her hand yet."

Asbjorn said that he was hot enough at the prospect, but didn't see much hope for it considering how cold she'd been to him.

Hring begged a bit of privacy for himself and Asbjorn first. Deeds, oh, they were of the most honorable, wanted doing, first. Hjortgren snickered.

"Stafnbui Skelderson's not about to have himself a fire, is he?" Hjortgren said.

"The less you know." Hring said.

Hjortgren promised to hand deliver Asbjorn's engagement suit to Asbjorn's porch.

Gundfrieda would straighten out his debauched friend in short order after Asbjorn, God Bless him, had squirreled her out from under his own roof. Now if he could just arrange a match for Mother Ranveig.

Mirha skipped south along main toward the church tootling a microtonal reel. There wasn't a cloud in the late afternoon sky but still she'd found one to plant her head in. Kolfinna trudged at her side, somewhat less buoyant.

Mirha cracked a pensive smile up to Jarnulf's church dragon. It was still massive and hideous as ever, perhaps more than ever, but its gaze no longer daggered her with scorn. Its eyes of black and yellow glass gleamed onyx and amber, its scales of green copper had become a mantlet of unworked amethysts. Its dorsal spikes of oranged iron were now builded all of red gold and its fangs of gray bone gleamed like ancient ivory, lustrous as those magnificent dragons on Jarnulf's hilts.

She was soon to become rich beyond her wildest dreams. Well, maybe not her wildest. And that forest of tiny, tattered, black weathered serpents above each steading's porch roof seemed no longer sneering down upon her but stately rather, an honor guard, respectful of her impending rise through society. Kolfinna told her that if she got any farther ahead of herself she'd stumble and break her neck.

Mirha had just paid her first visit to Adis. Adis taught her two board game strategies so devious that they were practically cheating, but it was Adis workbench that stole her breath. All those gold and silver brooches, rings, necklaces, belt buckles and even a sword laid out there, and those adorable little tools, and the fascinating things she did with them, dragons and birds and faces and, well it certainly had boiling and scraping salt beat.

Tore had delivered to Jarnulf a very hefty bag of silver and gold coin, Stormer's coin, in compensation for his uncle. There were any number of kids who'd be thrilled to have her job with her turning Jarnulf's compensation into a bigger one as jewelry. Just imagine herself offering Jarnulf the price of her freedom. That'd set him back on his heels. He might even beg her to marry him, rather than risk losing her.

Then again he'd probably tell her to keep her money. He seemed to like things the way they were. She might buy her own trael and not have to pay anyone. Wouldn't that be something, a trael owning a trael. It could happen. She'd heard stories. She spit out the tip of her orange ponytail wondering why she'd been chewing on it in the first place.

Mordach's door squealed in on its rusted hinges. Asbjorn and Hring blinked their way out into the late afternoon sun. Hring spotted Mirha and Kolfinna heading south. He watched them until Kolfinna disappeared into her steading, and Mirha struck out through the field on her own. He elbowed Asbjorn's ribs.

"Perfect." Hring said.

CLV Praise No Ice

All the way to Leif's steading he kept reassuring Asbjorn that Hjortgren had indeed said 'engagement'.

Asbjorn, two and a half sheets to weather, twirled his mustachios, squared his shoulders, puffed out his chest, and reflected that perhaps he, was more manly even than Starri. He sucked in his gut wondering would Gundfrieda prove a moaner or a screamer? Either way, gods but his moustache felt reassuring, it was good to be such a manly man on such a victory day as this.

Within Leif's drafty hovel his fire flared as he tossed another handful of Knut's mattress into it. Knut hadn't been holding out. There wasn't any money hidden in it, just that pair of shears Knut had lifted from the barn. Between Badger's blackmailing him and what Asbjorn cheated him of at dice he was penniless. Skjalg's gold hilted sword and dagger were worth a pile, but worth far more to his standing. Knut could usually find something to steal and keep them afloat but there wouldn't be any help from that quarter again. At least he wouldn't have to share the rye. There wasn't much of that left either. Someone knocked thrice on his door. He opened it.

"I told you I don't have it. It's going to be a couple of weeks." he said.

Asbjorn invited himself in telling Leif not to worry. Leif wrote off Asbjorn's unfocused leer to the booze on his breath. Leif started to close the door and a squat, hairy, oak stump forced its way in behind Asbjorn.

Leif whined to Hring that it wasn't his fault. Hring grunted that it was all right. It was, after all, his axe that cut the halyards. Leif backed, panic glinting in his ferret eyes, fearing that the squealing tenor of his hollow threats would terrify himself even more, and wishing he'd the guts to at least leap for Skjalg's sword lying atop his bed. Hring took hold of his own ear and pulled his head down onto his shoulder by it, pursing his wrinkled, flat face into a gargoyle leer.

"If, I was going to murder you," Hring said. "I'd wait till after you paid me off."

That, Leif thought, sounded more like Hring.

Asbjorn drifted aimlessly around the room, occasionally groping the air before him, and muttering to himself about sex. Leif wasn't certain he liked Asbjorn's more than odd behavior. Asbjorn was no ladies' man. Asbjorn's love life had been almost as bleak as his own.

"Too bad you didn't lose anyone here." Hring said. "Tore's compensated them that did quite handsome with Lalghar's gold. The Marshal got his, for his uncle, along with a long hundred of silver as a bonus."

"And I'm certain," Leif sneered. "he'll be by shortly, to share it out."

"Doubt it," Hring said. "He took off again with Tore and Starri out to the battlefield. Ain't no one at the Marshal's steading, just all that lonesome coin. Knut would have known what needed doing, being in debt and all."

Hring made for Leif's hearth and plucked a smoldering log from it, to toy with. Leif knew better than to even consider a protest.

"What about that little red head?" Leif said.

"Hjortgren saw her take off with Olaf's wife." Hring said. "They'll be up half the night spending the bonuses their men earned. After the Marshal's Outlawed, the Confiscation Court will award his property, including her, to Aesolf and Sigrid's mother. They won't want her around. A thinking man would be certain he can be top bidder."

Leif's chagrin billowed out over his weasel visage like a ship's sail.

"Starri isn't happy till he's killing something," Hring continued. "and Tore won't be satisfied till he's personally counted every corpse out there. They're still angry we showed up too late to get in on it. They'll be shooting wolves all night. You don't think they're going to let that punk just walk away from murdering Sigrid, do you?"

"And you're sure of that?" Leif said.

"Sigrid's mother, and Rakel's, told Dalla some interesting news." Hring said. "The redhead should have been yours anyway, or are you forgetting how Adam and the Marshal cheated you out of her in the first place?"

Asbjorn, whose pig grunts and elk groans had been growing louder from the start, announced that right now he was horny enough to mount the Mare. Leif near jumped out of his skin. The Mare was an evil ghost, an ancient hag. She came to men in the night in their bed, riding them and bringing evil dreams, suffocation, and convulsions.

Death by steel seemed a bargain if that was what this twisted, womanless freak had in mind. Hring finally correctly read, and seized the panic in Leif's shudder. He leaned aside past Leif, and blew Asbjorn a kiss. Leif leapt from between them for his sword.

Asbjorn, oblivious to all but his fancied visions of Gundfrieda, offering him her marriage night temptations, grabbed himself grinning and moaning.

"As I recall," Hring said. "the ninth night, since you burned our ship is long past."

Hring collared the delirious Asbjorn and dragged him toward Leif's door. Hring offered Leif a parting wink.

"Seems you're about to get lucky." he said, and pulled shut the door after them.

Leif swiped a cold, greasy sweat from his nape. Being named Regi before his crew was nightmare enough. Being made the unwilling truth of it, by Asbjorn, was not going to happen. And besides, the redhead had snubbed and slandered him even before Tore's Marshal quit trying to sell her. Working that prim little snot through her paces, the beatings and bed closet disciplinings would be all the sweeter for it.

In the street Asbjorn slaggered along over how heavenly his life had become now that those mammoth founts of every man's desire were to become his own bed warmers. Hring, who'd been danced well round the marriage bush with Thurid, told Asbjorn it were wise not to praise the ice till after he'd crossed it.

CLVI His Remaining Share

The sun speared atop the western trees was bronzing the day's browns and gold leafing the greens, leaving every shadow cut clear and deep with mysterious, formless, dark blue promises, painting all in colors from the borderland between sleep and dreams, colors that taunted children with life's adventurous promise anxious to be plundered, if only they could hurry things along and get grown up.

Nobody in Hrafnstadir felt the blueness of that promise more urgently than the fresh shaven, stocky young sailor knocking, unanswered at Hildirid's door.

Badger swiped his long, red gold hair out of his face, bounded from the porch of her steading three streets west of main, licked his lips, and rubbing his hands together whistled his way back towards main. He was bursting with luck tonight, certain that he was about to share a stiff infusion of it with some pretty girl. If Hildirid wasn't home, there were Thorara, Asgerd, Ragnleif, and a host of others.

It was good to be home again even if it had been a nothing season with as little to show for it. At least the broke part wouldn't last long. There'd be work soon building another ship to replace the one Dalla burned.

He wished he'd heeded his father and apprenticed under any of the seven prow carpenters when he was a child. They made twice what the other men did. Maybe it still wasn't too late. He'd have all summer to learn the tricks and be ready for the next ship Dalla would sink.

Lost in a reverie of skirts, tickles and coy giggles he hugged the next steading's wall, a habit deep ingrained in any ambitious sailor, and snatched away a strip of bark for naught but the sheer exuberance of it. In the corner of his eye a youth a hand taller than himself but a good forty pounds lighter, dressed in a deer hide vest, pants and a gray woolen shirt, quick marched through the intersection heading south. Was young cousin Frakki back already?

Badger was tempted to call out to him but a twinge beneath his sternum urged him to duck instead, and he quickened his step to the building's edge. When that twinge beckoned unpleasant things were usually in the offing, like sharp steel speeding toward him. He dropped to his belly before peering around the corner and over the porch floor. It wasn't Frakki. There was no mistaking that sword's gold hilt, even from behind. It was Leif Skelderson.

Badger darted after him, ducking behind corner after corner. Leif kept glancing back over his shoulder. Leif quickened his step as he passed Gyda's at the edge of town and cut over to the trail through the field.

There's nothing south of town but the ship sheds Badger thought. There were a handful of sea lockers still there but Leif's went down with the ship. It wasn't a stretch to imagine him pilfering them. The sheds, and Jarnulf's steading.

Jarnulf had less than no use for him. He wouldn't be going there. And even if he was Jarnulf was out with Tore and Starri at the battlefield. That left Mirha. She might be in town somewhere, or not.

Enough light remained to make ghosting the slug over the three miles of open field impossible. And it would be far more fun, and lucrative, to catch him red handed than just scare him off.

Badger headed for the beach trail at a trot and soon found himself enmeshed in a fantasy so delightful it physically hurt. Buxom, blonde, blue eyed Ingibjorg, jogging toward him along the stony, beach trail clad only in her alabaster skin and white gold gossamer curls, sailing, twisting, bouncing through the air in slow motion as she leapt high over the rocks laughing that 'catch me, catch me' laugh of hers.

Her tears, teeth gnashing and hair tearing at news of Halldor's death had been most fetching. The poor thing was probably sitting at home right now with her face buried in her hands and boo hooing a waterfall down onto her great big pair of perfect, where it trickled all the way down to her pink, rose petal delicate, full Mark sized, . .

Badger grinned, remembering that evening last winter at the Hall after she'd gotten a punch in the nose from another girl earlier in the day and Mirha sneered at her and asked if she'd tripped over those things again.

Ingibjorg, now there was a girl who needed, and was worth, an expensive night out and then back in, once he'd squeezed his remaining half share out of Leif to pay for it.

CLVII Wordless And Farting

At the beach before the sheds Mirha shoved the forth tray into its rack in the salt oven. Ten trips to the beach later she'd filled it with twenty gallons of sea water. She warmed her hands at the coals before shoveling her firepot full and plopping its lid in place. She banked the coals with a half night's worth of split oak thinking that there were any number of kids who'd love to have this job, once she'd started turning Jarnulf's compensation into a bigger one as jewelry.

Between helping Kolfinna turn Jarnulf's hides into saleable goods, boiling off endless kegs of salt, and fixing boats and traps to tying nets, life with her father the tanner seemed a fairy tale of luxury and ease. She wished he could see her now. She'd grown a full hand taller and put on twenty pounds. And those drunken boys at home with their rude remarks to her and Aisli, she'd even given Rakel a beating, would they ever sing a different tune. What she wouldn't give to take Jarnulf home and show him off.

The butterflies in her stomach writhed again, as the shells on the pave crunched beneath her shoes again, right here where Sigrid died. Still it was a relief not to be looking over her shoulder for that crazed pervert and wondering what twisted mood she'd be in.

At Jarnulf's door Leif swallowed his breath and knocked thrice. It would be worth his life to just stroll in and surprise the master. If they'd set him up, he'd just ask Marshal Jarnulf to talk to Asbjorn about some loaded dice. He called and knocked again. He crept to one end of the porch and then the other, carefully scanning the steading's sides and the path before trying the latch. Inside, nothing had changed. He and Knut had both been dragged out here more than once.

Badger helped himself to a torch and kindled it at the salt ovens before opening the shed's back door. Beyond it was black as the innards of a coffin and almost as quiet. Badger hesitated a moment before pulling the torch in after him around the door jamb. What if there were more than one of them, waiting, hiding in the dark? He snorted out a laugh, announcing himself. Knut was dead and Leif had been armed with a sword, not a bow.

"Get out here you," Badger called. "and save yourself a beating or three."

Echoes alone answered him. He worked his way through the dark, thrusting his torch behind the barrels beneath the lumber racks while further blackening the shed's dark with yet more colorful challenges.

He opened the first of the lockers, and his hackles raised.

Jarnulf's fire was out and the steading choked with purple black. Leif dropped to his knees beside the rug. At least that damn cat pacing about on the table's edge above him had quieted down after giving him vocal hell and a royal lacing when he made a grab for it. Beneath the rug was the trapdoor and beneath that, the box. The weapons and jewelry his fingers blindly fondled wouldn't get him anything but caught, too easy to recognize, but the heavy bag of coin, . . .

Out on the porch footsteps creaked doorward, and his heart stuttered. His hand leapt to hilt.

The latch lifted, the door squealed inward and Mirha stared into the dark over his head calling out to Hunter as she felt her way around the foot of the bed on her way to the hearth. She groped about atop the mantle for a heavy pot holder and then upended her firepot's coals into the hearth and tossed shavings and scraps from the kindling box atop them. Behind her on the table Hunter hacked out a hair raising challenge and the floor beyond the table creaked. She shot upright grabbing for Jarnulf's longsword above the mantle.

The plans Leif had had for the Marshal's redhead were shot to hell. Even in the failing light beyond the door she'd recognize him.

She had the sword half drawn when he slammed into her back, both of them with hands high above their heads fighting for it. He forced the blade back into its sheath as she cursed and kicked at his shins. She twisted sideways between him and the fireplace. In the kindling's flickering light disgust was added to her terror as she recognized his sick, rabid skunk eyes above that straw yellow, dead moss beard.

Leif forced out a nervous laugh and bruised her lips, cutting her upper, with his teeth. Her fingers let go Jarnulf's sword and went for Leif's eyes. In the struggle her elbow brushed the hilt of Skjalg's sword, jutting between them, as Leif held Jarnulf's above them. She grabbed Leif's gold hilt. Leif slammed Jarnulf's scabbard hard against her temple. She staggered, pulling at Leif's hilt.

Leif let go the scabbard and clutched at his own hilt. He missed.

What he got was a real good grip on Skjalg's blade as Mirha yanked it out of his sheath. He screamed and grabbed the front of her dress, smearing it with his blood, and with Jarnulf's dragon stiffening his fist, dealt her a hard right. Mirha crumpled to the hearth, laid out on her side. He resheathed Skjalg's sword. Stunned and groggy she clawed at the hearth stones to drag herself away from him. He planted a boot on her chest and drew Jarnulf's sword.

Once again Leif's plans changed as Badger hurtled through the door with sword in hand, roaring about Leif's mother and incest. Leif sprang sideways for the back door waving Jarnulf's sword between them. Wordless, he dropped it at the lintel and squirted out through the door, ducking and farting with Badger's thrown knife whizzing past his ear.

"Fiends take you!" Badger roared after him.

Mirha was up on hip and elbow. Badger slipped a curse louder even than his first. He was too late. Plummeting to his knees he put his palm to her bloody breast. Her heart was still beating strong.

Cross eyed, she stared up into his pale, terror stricken gaze.

"Quit yelling." she mumbled.

He ripped her dress open from neck to navel, and groped frantically about for the cut which had pumped out that blood. On top of Leif's assault, this newest outrage snapped her right around, slapping his hands away, clutching at her dress, and insisting that she was all right.

"No you're not." he said, again groping and inspecting the undersides of her treasures. She slapped his hands away again.

"I owe you." she said. "But there are limits."

CLVIII Magic

Above the tanner's shieling most of the stars were already frisking about in the crystal eve.

Starri and Jarnulf began unloading bales of salted pelts from their cart. Tore caught up the horse's reins before catching up Draeng and Frakki with his voice. A faint onshore breeze was wafting inland. Tore stepped into it upwind of the boys. This had been his second trip to the battlefield and he was hoping the steam house would contain some magic to get him into bed tonight with his wife.

"After the barn, both of you," he ordered. "home for fresh clothes before the steam house."

Frakki reached out to pat the old mare's cheek and steady her down.

"Just, trail her behind you, out of your wind." Tore said.

The pair had been skulking and hiding throughout the four acres of dead men. It had taken orders and almost taken rough hands to drag them out of it. The corpses were well beyond ripe and if they remained any longer they'd join them.

Nevertheless they were beaming, having picked up what was to them a fortune, one third of all the pelts they'd shot.

Arnor came rushing up with grandmother Thyre at his heels. Her torch lit the trio of huge, fearsome fighters in all the glory of old, outlawed Thor and Odinn. Her woolen bag of knives added its muted steel clinks, a chorus sealing their authenticity as savage, godlike heroes.

Arnor gaped, all eyes, hurried questions and congratulations to his Chieftain. Tore escorted him aside. Jarnulf and Skipper Starri had business to sort out. Thyre tried to coax Arnor inside the shed with her, there was work to do for silver to be paid, but Arnor remained breathless and agog at all those big, bushy, beautiful wolf pelts in the wagon. Thyre shrugged, ghosted off into the shed and lit three more torches within before dragging a bale to her bench at the shed's far end.

"I have heard that you killed a wolf." Tore said.

Arnor nailed his gaze on Tore's boots.

"I guess maybe Raud was right, after all." Arnor said. "It's not much of a wolf.

Tore's sneer raised close beside his nose, an old woman's sneer.

"Raud?" Tore growled. "What's he know? Let's go have a look."

Arnor couldn't believe his ears. Somebody, and not just anybody, but Chieftain Tore himself wanted to see his wolf. Arnor fought down his urge to run into the shieling, pointing and calling, but instead dogged Tore's heels determined to herd his Chieftain on ahead if Tore changed his mind.

Arnor's pelt was rolled up and tied, hanging on the side wall where he and Gunnarr had hung it a week ago, after flensing and salting it. Tore cleared off a table before fetching it down and untying it saying that it was probably due for another salting. It wasn't. Olaf and Ref had seen to it daily in Arnor's absence.

Tore drew his knife and scraped this morning's salt from its backside anyway. He flipped it over and traced his fingers through the forest of old scars along its flanks, and healed over fang punctures on its neck and back.

Arnor's glance darted between his wolf and the bales clogging the doorway, again awed and humbled at all those silky, silvery pelts Starri and Jarnulf had dragged in, and how much more beautiful they were than his piebald old flea bag.

"I'd say you shot him just in the nick of time." Tore said.

"Hall said he would have starved to death in three days anyway." Arnor mumbled.

"Hall?" Tore snorted. "He's no goddamn brighter than Raud."

"Maybe I could line a cape with him, a small cape?" Arnor said.

"Why on earth," Tore said. "would you waste a wall hanger like this, on that?"

Again Arnor had trouble believing his ears. His sorry ass wolf appeared anything but a trophy.

"He looks like the other wolves beat him up pretty bad." Arnor said.

"Yes." Tore said. "He's been in some fights, real tough ones. What makes you think he lost them? How do you think he got to be so old? By being a nice, polite, sissy wolf, who minded his manners and waited his turn at the deer table?"

"Maybe he's not such a bad wolf, after all?" Arnor said.

"He was a whole lot worse of a wolf," Tore laughed. "before you killed the thieving murderer clean out of him."

Tore bent deep reaching into the near empty salt barrel by the table and scooped up a double handful, and then together they salted Arnor's trophy.

"Arnor," Tore said. "there's no more dangerous wolf in this world than an old, half starved one, like yours here, 'cause he'll balk at nothing to get what he wants. He can't, or won't, see to his own business anymore, which is deer, so he comes sneaking around town looking for something easier like one of your little neighbors, maybe Alvhild, to wander off."

"That's what my father, and the other hunters said when Raud slandered my wolf." Arnor said."

Tore swallowed up Arnor's little shoulder in his huge hand.

"I always believed whatever your father told me," Tore said. "over whatever a lot of other men told me. I may not have liked all of it but it was always the truth. And you tell Raud and Hall that I said they can go shit in their hats."

CLIX The Worth Of Wolves

Jarnulf hurled a bale through the shed's door and bent back into the wagon, face to face with Starri, for another. A feeling like mixing wine with ale sickened him as the lads and cart mare went clopping off towards the barn.

At the battlefield Tore had made a hell of a fuss over him but Starri hadn't a word for him, or even a look all the way there and back. Not that that was unusual. Starri rarely had more than three or four words for him. Jarnulf braced himself, for what he knew not.

Starri had been all over Rakel, fussing and making a scene. Not that Jarnulf expected Starri to take a swing at him, and it certainly wouldn't come to weapons. All those men he'd shot, or dismembered with swords hadn't really been men. They'd been solid enough, but still they were things, exercises Bror had taught him, objects he'd trained himself for through endless practice, to deal with. Starri on the other hand, they didn't come any realer. Jarnulf swiped a hand over his chin's stubble.

"Uhh, Starri," he said. "We had a bit of trouble here while you were gone."

Starri let a roaring laugh into the gathering purple.

"If we could manage that kind of trouble, without losing anyone that is, we ought to have it every year." he said, dragging a roll of six gray pelts out of the wagon and tossing it a dozen feet through the shed's door.

"We made half as much out there as Tore and I sailed to New Tara for."

Starri leaned back into the wagon for another bale.

"Not that, something else." Jarnulf said, breaking to stand nervously before Starri with his hands limp at his sides.

"My buildings are still up, and nothing else burnt down. Couldn't have been that bad." Starri said, tossing the bale past Jarnulf and into the shed.

Jarnulf swallowed hard. Unbelievable as it seemed, Starri mustn't have heard about his to do with Rakel yet, or at least not the juicier bits.

"Me and Rakel, had us a nasty argument. I rode her pretty hard." he said.

Starri bent to his task with a renewed vigor.

"Started out I was just keeping the peace, but it got out of hand." Jarnulf said.

"I thought you were full of shit, a week ago," Starri said, pitching two sixty pound bales underhand. "when you loaded up that salt."

Jarnulf screwed up his nerve.

"I wanted you to hear my side of it." Jarnulf said.

Starri jerked his gaze from the door past Jarnulf and back into the wagon as if he'd just remembered some engagement he was late for. He accelerated his pace even further, hurling bale after bale through the door, having some race with himself.

"Can you slow down and listen to me?" Jarnulf said.

"What for?" Starri said.

"Can't get past the bales in the door now." Jarnulf said.

Starri left off his wolf tossing and raised the brow over his single eye. It was encouraging. When Starri wanted to intimidate someone he'd raise both brows and let them stare into his empty socket.

"She's still got both arms and legs." Starri said as if Jarnulf's run in with his niece were no more newsworthy than a complaint about the stink in Mordach's outhouse.

Starri crawled into the wagon on hands and knees rummaging for the two big bear pelts he'd shot last night. God had he heard about it. He'd been tempted to threaten his own sister, Rakel's mother, with the same before he finally tossed her out of his living room still screaming. Rakel hadn't said a word about it to him. Not that it would have mattered if she had.

Starri had talked to a lot of women when he first arrived home. But when he actually strode the line, gruff and sere through the corpses, reading their story as a scholar would a child's poem, where Jarnulf had held the enemy's advance and begun the rout, turning their flank and collapsing it in on itself, and the open field beyond the hillsides, strewn with another hundred, black with a thousand crows pecking away between the knots of wolves and his two bears working the dead horses at the lip of the stream's cut, he'd learned much more than he'd thought there was to know. And not only had Ulfson snuck her out of Hrorik's shieling, he'd commandeered the swine as a riding mare for her.

"I was going to have a word with her after we got done here." Jarnulf said.

Starri turned and sat on his hip to shoot him a vacant, perplexed look, one utterly devoid of the malice Jarnulf had expected.

"What for?" Starri grunted, covering his hope that perhaps something had changed in his absence.

"She saved Mirha's life out there, stuck her own neck out." Jarnulf said. "I owe her."

Starri shook his head.

"Women, go figure." Starri said before turning back to his rooting under the wolf hides and mumbling that he knew he'd put the damn things in here somewhere this afternoon.

Tore rolled up and tied Arnor's pelt. He set it across the boy's shoulder.

"Take him home," Tore said. "before he gets lost in here with all these sissy wolves."

He led Arnor back out into the night, and Arnor's elation stumbled.

Jarnulf was gone.

They marched through the gloaming toward town with Tore reliving to himself the first wolf he'd shot with his father Styrkar, and how much that ratty old pelt decorating his wall through the years had meant to him, exhaling its perfumed memories of his night's wondrous, sacred magic.

Tore missed owning his wolf but Maeve made him pack it away in a trunk, out of sight when they were married where it had moldered, and rotted. At least no one watched him dig it a moonlit grave, or overheard his sloppy thank you to Styrkar.

Grimkel had been right. That other scarred up old wolf hung slaughtered at graveyard's end, how he wished he'd butchered it ages ago. He again set to praising Arnor's blood drinking, demon wolf.

CLX Then We're Agreed

Jarnulf knocked and Rakel ordered him in without asking who it was. She sounded bored and irritated. She was alone at her table decked out in her seductive, black finest. Before her in the tables' candle lit adze scallops lay five small, dark cherry wood lozenges. Runes of silver were inlaid into them. They were spread out in Thor's cross, a configuration he'd watched her consult endlessly about their love life. She was idly teasing one with a ruby painted fingernail.

She flashed him a brief, startled look, and her long, supple fingers curled around and swept them off the table into her left hand before dropping them into a leather pouch. She rose, a bit stiffly, and offered him an equally stiff hello while fumbling with the pouch's drawstring.

She showed him her backside and cantered bouncing to the fireplace to deposit the bag on the mantle. Her girlish, surprised innocence blind sided him. How alluring he'd found that look, in the beginning. She stood before the fire with her back turned to him, chafing her hands. In a heartbeat his mind's eye had her naked.

"I came to thank you." He blurted into the rosy fog of his dangerous reminiscences.

"Oh, what for?" she said, still looking away from him, down into the flames.

"For saving Mirha's life. Eirika told me, days ago, but I've been busy." he said.

She turned, alight with a dignity that was come hither and disdainful all at once. It was a look he knew too well, one that always left him wondering in what proportions the two were mixed. He started toward her. Standing rooted at her door like a beggar afraid to presume on his host was not the tone he intended. Still he felt possessed and crazy, as if she were a mantis waiting to devour him. He barked his thigh on a corner of her table.

"I didn't do it for her." she said, lowering her gaze to the rug and pretending she hadn't caught his clumsiness.

She pushed a knee forward, the one Mirha'd kicked, and leaned heavily on her other hip. She covered her mouth to stifle an affected yawn. It too was a vision of her he knew well. Memories of the bed closet eyes she used to cap it with broke her enchantment and he arrested his step. She looked up to him and still he drifted, wondering whether the gold and red gleams in those big doe eyes were from the fire or from within her.

"Why does she mean so much to you?" Rakel said. "She's never brought you anything but headaches and fights."

"Well, thanks." he stammered.

Starri had been right. He'd been an idiot to come here.

Resting on the black calf skin between her breasts lay a fine silver chain. Her little silver cross and hammer hung from it. She pursed them between thumb and fingertips and absently rubbed them.

"She'd have got in your way." Rakel said, swallowing her urge to add 'like always'. "And got you killed. And the rest of us might not have got off so lucky."

His thumb found his pommel and he drew back from it to fold his arms before him. She kissed her talismans and craned her head back, closing her eyes to the rafters.

"I miss them so much." she whispered.

He choked and again steeled himself to his task, cherishing his father's admonition whenever he put off emptying the outhouse bucket.

"I owe you an apology, I misjudged you." he said.

It zipped clean through her guard. She dipped her startled gaze back to him. She was on the verge of tears. At least this time there was a reason for it.

"It's my fault Jarnulf," she whispered, afraid to speak it aloud. "If Hrorik, ... "

"Never, Never, say that again." he said.

His eyes grew dark, commanding, as of old, before. Rakel's gut churned. She sighed to cover it. Her Modi, her Thorsson, his eyes always deepened like that, just before their make up sex. But there'd be none of that, damn the prideful, selfish bastard.

"Hrorik was a minor part of it." he said. "It would have happened anyway, and turned out just the same without him."

Inwardly he begged God to forever blind her to that single, horrible truth. Rakel had been born, blessed or cursed, to haunt men's dreams. She'd had no say, or guilt, in it.

"Bror was the most cunning fighter I've ever known." he said. "His entire game was a lightning storm of lies, an absolute master of deceit, misdirection, and treachery. And knowing that, could you ever accuse him of being a liar?"

"How can you say such a thing?" she said, her eyes filling with the despair of a dying deer. "Bror was one of the finest men I've ever known."

"Then we're agreed." he said.

She gaped moon eyed, back lit by her fire, mouth open, as a sleepwalker shocked awake.

"At the end," he said. "Bror was speaking with someone none of us could see, as the dying often do, and there was no madness in him. He told me that she said we'd all meet up, again. I'd put as much faith in that as everything else he taught me."

And in that instant, his world dissolved before her in that amber, quarter light, her huge brown eyes radiant with infinite atomies of heaven's furnace, blinding his reason, her skin as sunlight seen through the thinnest and whitest of horn, all of her alight with a beauty that grew more irresistible and terrifying with every blink as he stared, tingling with a warmth long forgotten as of homecoming after sunset in the frozen dead of a troll's winter, when he was a child.

His reserve was shot. He made for her door and banged into her table again.

"Jarnulf, be careful." she said. "She'll get you killed yet."

While the message was Rakel, for once the tone wasn't. She'd sounded truly concerned.

He forced himself in silence out through her door and closed it quietly before he found her in his arms again, with her head on his shoulder, crying, and himself growing ever drunker on the perfume of her, stroking her blacker than black tresses, assuring her it would be all right, and then more, everything more.

Rakel's was a beauty men would die for, as Hrorik had, heart stilling as a comet at the starry zenith, its blaze eclipsing all lesser stars as crowds gazed up in wonder, their breath held at its awful passage, a beauty to drench nations in red cataclysms. And he had possessed her before, and could again as envious men plotted murders and treacheries to wrest her from him.

CLXI A Dice Pouch

And two more lives would be destroyed. His redheaded elf, and either Dalla or himself, would surely join Bror and the others in the grave. And even with that, it would last maybe a month until she manufactured something to fight over.

Freya indeed. The Goddess Freya's second job had been leading the Valkyrs to choose the deaths of men on the fields of battle.

Rakel stared at her door closing behind him. She thought briefly of dragging Dalla out of Mordach's but it was still early. He'd resent it. She hoped his men wouldn't drop him off so drunk that she'd get stuck mothering his cross eyed, leg shot self off to sleep. Damn men, the instant you bedded any of them you went from being a jewel beyond price to a cook pot on a leash.

At least Jarnulf had never told her what to do, or forbid her anything, but his surly little looks and barbed silences were almost as hurtful as Dalla's insufferable jealousies. A certain portion of jealousy was expected, nay, demanded of a man. How else was a girl to be sure he really cared without constant little tests? But Dalla took it to extremes, even implying her own standing should stand in line behind his.

That exchange must have cost Jarnulf dearly. Jarnulf's neck was so stiff it might break in a sharp wind. She stared blankly at her door again and a great loneliness welled up in her breast. She snatched at it to throttle it, missed, and turned back for the mantle and her bag of runes. She'd get a lucky reading if it took her all night.

And then cursing herself, she threw herself on the table and wept bitterly. If Hrorik hadn't murdered his father because of her Eikinn would have come sooner, and Jarnulf's and her friends would be celebrating with the living.

Jarnulf wondered to himself why indeed? Mirha brought him countless headaches, but so had Rakel. And then it struck him, with almost the same wrenching sense of meaningless waste the death of his friends had.

He was a rather strongish brute and she was a woman. And he'd always taken her with somewhat more restraint than a stallion offers a mare, except of course their makeup, Christ but you infuriate me love fests. That, was the root of all those fights she forever started with him. Yes, I love you Rakel, I adore you, I'm sorry too, take that you bitch, sex. That was the way she wanted it. And he'd thrown her over for that?

His head reeled. God damn women. Why couldn't they just come out and say what they wanted? At the moment he knew just what he wanted more than anything, and quickened his pace homeward before he succumbed to it.

Her and her goddamn teary eyed apologies, and lying promises that she'd be a good girl from now on, and that hurt look in her eyes. He'd gleefully, ecstatically entertain her black and blue, morning, noon, and night if she'd just stop fighting with him. But that was her game, her little charade, and he'd never divorce her from it. Life with Rakel would never be dull, at least until one of them killed the other.

Jarnulf pushed his own door open and Mirha and Badger at his table looked up from a walnut Tafl board between them. Eight clear, dark blue figures and three green ones rested in holes within the square's raised, vine carved borders. Another dozen lolled about on the table beside the board. Mirha's king was only three moves from reaching a corner and victory. Dirty plates and glasses sat stacked on the table beyond it. Hunter's cat tongue was cleaning the top plate.

Jarnulf glared mock anger at Badger.

"Goddamn sailors." he said. "Haven't been home two weeks and already they're stealing our women."

Badger returned him that same 'I know something naughty' smirk Kolfinna was so fond of. Jarnulf stalked past the foot of his bed headed for the sideboard and a stiff drink.

"Can you blame me?" Badger said.

Badger snatched Mirha's hand and made a show of kissing the back of it while staring up past her wrist like a moonstruck dog. Laughing, Mirha planted the heel of her other dainty, freckled hand on his forehead and pushed him away. Jarnulf's answering chortle stuck between his teeth as he discovered the fresh, red welt over Mirha's left eye.

Best to wait and let her spin out her version of it later, after she'd bit the rough edges off it. All confronting her ever bought him was a cold shoulder. He un-stoppered the jug and filled a glass.

"You were right about sailors." Badger said. "Had to toss one out over the rail earlier."

Badger plucked Mirha's torn and bloodied dress off of the far bench and held it up for Jarnulf's inspection.

Jarnulf's green, day's end glass dangled forgotten in his hand as Mirha accompanied her version of Leif's attack with an animated pantomime. Badger struck up a friendly game of catch my finger with her cat. Badger lost.

As Mirha flailed her way toward her climax she kept interrupting herself to spit out Gaelic words and phrases like hot knives. She was going too fast for Jarnulf to make sense of half of them.

Badger needed no interpreter. He'd been called all of them and more in his career as a sailor. His own account he punctuated with awkward pauses to suck at his bleeding finger.

Through all of his fury Jarnulf drifted lost on an uncharted sea. Leif couldn't have worked himself up to it without help. He might have been tempted to lay it on Rakel before she stuck her own neck out to save Mirha's. But then how would she have gotten Leif involved? Whenever Leif was around she'd look right through him as if he were invisible.

Had it just been a robbery, a punitive fine, he'd have suspected Starri. But having a girl murdered wasn't at all him. Neither did it square with his promoting the little pervert or his comments at the shed. Besides, Starri had far better materials to work with than Leif. Had it been Starri he'd have done it right.

Jarnulf's eyes hardened flint like, seizing upon the master moron who'd set it all up.

"Dalla." Jarnulf said, strangling his hilt. "I'm going to make a dice pouch of your balls."

CLXII That Makes Us Kin

He set his drink atop the mantle and laid his arm alongside it, thrumming his fingers.

"My silver's on Hring." Badger said. "He tried to axe the little nanny goat. Wound up burning Dalla's ship. Right now he's deep under Dalla's outhouse, blaming Leif and hoping you'd gut him."

"Another genius." Jarnulf snorted. "But this isn't his style. He'd just wait and set fire to Leif's shieling some night."

"The pervert." Badger said. "He owes me his other half share and I was about to collect it till this."

Jarnulf left off his promises of murder and smirked.

"Ask Frakki for a loan." he laughed. "All the way home he and Draeng kept asking each other what they were going to do with all that silver. Of course it's going to be a few days, the way they stink, before they can get close enough to anyone to spend it."

He slipped his elbow off the mantle and backing from it turned to lean heavily against it on both hands. He stared down between his elbows into the fire. Dalla's phantom leered back up at him from the flames, laughing. He spit into its eyes.

"Now, we'll have to see about this, won't we Dalla?" he muttered.

Mirha asked what he was going on about. It was Leif who wanted prosecuting, not Dalla.

Jarnulf straightened and snatched his longsword from above the mantle. Court could go to hell. Mirha was a trael and she hadn't actually been murdered. If he prosecuted his suit and won it the only justice he'd get, even if Mirha had actually been raped and killed, would be three silver marks from Leif for assaulting his property, and good luck collecting it. And she, or himself, would be damn lucky if they survived Dalla's next attempt. One sure way showed of preventing it.

Wordless, Jarnulf made for the door and Badger got up to follow him. Mirha begged Badger to stop him. Badger tossed her a quick over his shoulder smile. An insouciant fatalism was written all over it.

"Mirha, he and I are sworn brothers. That makes us kin." he said.

At Mordach's door Tore told Arnor to cache his wolf somewhere extra safe. He'd come back tomorrow and together they'd finish tanning it. Arnor had heard more than a distracted, self addressed mumble or two from Chieftain Tore about magic and wolves.

"A magic wolf?" Arnor said.

"Oh yes." Tore said, stroking Arnor's pelt, "He's bursting with magic, and every time you look at him, or touch him, he'll fill you full of that magic. Your father would want that. You keep them both, forever, and treasure their magic. It's all right here, whenever you need it."

"Would you keep him for me, Chieftain Tore?" Arnor said.

"Don't you want him?" Tore said.

"No," Arnor said. "because I'll use up all the magic tonight, and then there won't be any left when I really need it."

Tore's gut soured and he loathed his job and the further heartbreak he had to pile on this lost little fellow.

"You can't use it up." Tore said. "This magic is like your arm. The more you use it, the stronger it will get."

He put Mordach's aside for the moment to steer Arnor homeward.

"And Arnor," Tore said. "don't use him for a blanket just yet, till we get the fleas off him tomorrow."

Aethle invited Tore to stay for the nightmeal. Hlidareth's daughter Alvhild, Arnor's new fostor sister, was delighted at her friend Tore's appearance. Alvhild's two greyhounds were delighted that he'd brought them a wolf skin. Tore stashed Arnor's wolf safely up on Aethle's mantle saying he was sorry but he had things to straighten out yet with Adam.

"I'm too old," Tore said to Arnor. "to become your foster father, but could you use a foster grand father?"

Arnor forgot his manly dignity, and hugged Tore for all he was worth before seeing him out.

Arnor sat down to eat, swatting at the fleas biting his wrist while gazing in a rapture at his wolf. He had been stroking it for some time now, since Tore left. It was truly a magic wolf to draw such a great man as Chieftain Tore to him, and the magic was indeed growing stronger, but Arnor wasn't sure the magic was all good. It made him want to cry.

CLXIII Your Fo'c'sulbitch

Badger opened Mordach's door and a huge black mastiff glared up at him looking as if it wanted to snarl but had forgotten how. Half of its left ear was missing. It was grayed and getting on in years, but still quite formidable to all but Olaf who it would shrink from whimpering whenever Olaf made to pet it. A spider web of drool hung from its lower jaw.

Badger backed aside with an exaggerated bow as the monster weaved past. Five feet beyond the door the dog lifted its leg against an invisible tree, and fell over.

The victory celebration's marathon was still staggering along. The first morning had dawned somber and subdued, in respect of the fallen. It had gotten rowdier. Mordach hired three more girls to buy himself and Astrid some sleep.

Jarnulf followed Badger within. He was beyond rage. Another man might have breathed a calming breath or two, but he was too busy juggling first strike stratagems. You didn't kill a fo'c'sulman by thinking twice. That got you killed. Jarnulf pulled the door shut behind him. His name and a squealing burst of crimson Gaelic carried through it. Remembering Mirha he reopened the door for her.

The place was a different world with the sailors home. The cressets above every table, rather than every third, flickered their anxious gold down onto a room packed with blonde, red, and brown bearded sailors, half of them still in their best herringbones of purple, emerald and vermillion. Tendrils of resinous, black smoke from the cressets slithered up into the darkened roof peak like so many spirit snakes. There'd be another chasing them out through the roof shutters shortly, Jarnulf promised himself, toward Vallhol.

Half of the women called it quits two nights ago. What remained were most of the hell raisers, the want to be's, and a third of Hrafnstadir's women. Here and there men were sleeping it off, stretched out on the benches.

Beneath the third table on his right lay Starri's man Throttolf Einarson, on his back beneath his cloak, his mastiff's beer bowl beside him.

The table at the foot of the steps, Rakel and her friends, was mobbed. Jarnulf spotted Adis and pointed Mirha at her as Mirha kept begging him to drop the horrid idea and come back home.

"There." he ordered. "Stay."

Cutlery on plate clattered through slurred boastings. Scabbards of stained oxblood beneath long hilts and pommels plain or gold angled over backs at every bench. At the last table, lower left, were Hring and Asbjorn and oh yes, the back of the devil's burnt head. Across from Dalla at the aisle end slumped one of his younger misfits, face down, snoring into his puddled drool. Two more teens at the wall end weren't far behind.

Whole, roasting boars were crackling and spitting in each of the fireplaces but all he could smell at the foot of the stairs was the mead and ale the floor had been drinking for decades. The stink recalled Ketil, the first man he'd killed, here, seven years ago, and his throat tasted bitter.

Only an idiot would start a feud like this without expecting immediate and violent retaliation. Dalla would be ready for it, relishing it, with his crew.

At the foot of the stairs Aud missed his and Badger's entrance but sighting their backs she dashed after them eager for whatever fun was in the offing. She caught Badger's shoulder and came within an inch of having her teeth knocked out as he whipped about. She'd never seen anyone so furious and embarrassed at once.

"Go, sit." Badger ordered as Jarnulf marched heavily past them.

At the back wall Asgrim bellowed for another drink. Mordach ignored him and ducked beneath his counter. Bending forward, Asgrim fished about under it for the gray dwarf while lustily cursing him. Mordach resurfaced out of reach speeding toward the counter's end bearing his axe. Asgrim checked his cursing and groping, and his gaze tracked the old gnome scuttling off toward the stair railing.

Badger palmed his knife, laying its blade up behind his forearm as he and Jarnulf breasted Dalla's table. They rounded the table. Jarnulf forced himself between Hring and Asbjorn. He leaned forward over the table and into Dalla's face.

"Hello?" Dalla said, wondering what Rakel's ex, he hoped, suitor, could want. Dalla's homecoming had not been to his liking. All Hrafnstadir was loudly praising Jarnulf and his remaining hunters, while his own reputation had sunk as low as his ship.

Behind Hring Badger laid a hand on Hring's shoulder and the point of his knife beneath Hring's hair at the base of his skull.

"Hello Dalla, you," Jarnulf said before lunging across the table and locking both hands in Dalla's ragged, coal black hair.

"Bitch!" Jarnulf roared, jerking back and slamming Dalla's face down into the table.

Dalla's hands shot out clutching at Jarnulf's wrists. Jarnulf yanked Dalla's head up and slammed it down again before standing back to swipe his hands against each other with a resounding slap.

Asbjorn leapt to his feet with a handful of hilt.

Every other sound in Mordach's held its breath.

Dalla shoved himself straight and gained his feet in a single lunge despite his wounded leg. The bench behind him crashed sideways to the floor.

"You're a dead man!" Dalla roared, blood flying from his nose.

Jarnulf shot an accusing, right finger forward, distracting Dalla from his left hand, closing around the mouth of his scabbard, as he shouldered Asbjorn aside and raced around the table to face Dalla. Jarnulf called him a number of ugly slanders.

Astrid and dozens more at the near tables scattered.

Ten feet behind Jarnulf old Mordach's wheeze thunder clapped through the silence.

"Take it outside." he ordered, brandishing his axe high before him.

Olaf and Ref left Anja gaping as they leapt from their table to join another half dozen of Jarnulf's partisans, mostly from Tore's crew, in a threatening wall behind Jarnulf. An equal number of Dalla's supporters behind him faced them down. Folks rushed to the railing on the upper deck. Da'hal, at his table near the wall under the elk antlers, grabbed an axe from beside them and bowled over two of Dalla's crew on his way through them to join Jarnulf's.

Bodvar, a doughty six footer Da'hal's age, he was one of Adam's crew, leapt from his table after Da'hal. Bodvar's father in law Hoskuld One Hand was already clamoring at Ref's back to stand aside and let him through.

Harald and Odd Mordson were among Dalla's supporters. Odd was bellowing that only a coward would pick a fight with a wounded man.

Many remembered that business of Bodvar giving Odd's father Mord a gizzard full of spear. It appeared both sides figured this for as good a time as any to bury the axe in each other's heads.

Tore thundered obscenities from the top of the stairs, demanding to know what was going on. Everyone ignored him.

"You sicked your fo'c'sul bitch on my wife, you mare's anus." Jarnulf bellowed at Dalla.

To Dalla it came as almost as skewed a shock as getting slammed into the table. And somehow, shouting back at a raving lunatic that he was a raving lunatic seemed not only pointless, but demeaning to himself.

"You're still dead." Dalla pronounced, all incredulous contempt and finality.

The drunk teen across from Dalla, roused, staggering erect, reaching for his hilt. Olaf helped him along with a hand behind his bent knee, flipping him flatback onto the floor.

"Bad idea." Olaf said, putting his boot on the youth's neck, and stealing his sword.

At Aud's table beneath the landing she and Mirha, having called a truce, supported each other on tip toes, peering over the crowd's heads. Mirha gasped. Wife? This was hardly the marriage proposal she'd envisioned. Aud gave her arm a knuckled congratulation as a forest of gawkers sprang up atop the tables before them. Bets were being taken everywhere.

"Fat lot of good that'll do me if he gets himself killed." Mirha said.

"Are you challenging me?" Jarnulf said. "Einvigi? Siegdull?"

Asbjorn added his slanders to the others'. His sword dropped back into its scabbard as Ref's knife tickled his kidney.

Jarnulf drilled his eyes into Dalla's face, an inch beneath Dalla's eyes. With them nailed there you could rattle the other man's nerves, while tracking his intent without the drain of a contest of wills. Dalla knew this trick too. Bror had taught them both, but as he'd grumbled Jarnulf's new standing and his own, down into his cups, and into an unbelievably meritless streak of luck going both ways, he sold Jarnulf short.

"Oh yes," Dalla said. "Let's make this nice and legal."

"Done." Jarnulf said.

CLXIV A King Sized Helping

Both caught their hilts on the instant. Dalla's leather scabbard was strapped across his back. Jarnulf's wooden scabbard was not. Jarnulf sprang off his right foot and punched out his sword, scabbard and all with his left, his right closed on the hilt. Dalla's point hadn't cleared leather as Jarnulf's pommel caught him hard beneath his heart. Dalla staggered back roaring, and finished his draw.

Jarnulf lunged after him dropping onto one knee, ducking as Dalla's sword whistled through the air above his shoulders. Jarnulf struck Dalla again, in the same place, but harder. Dalla lurched backward again tripping over the bench and crashing heavily onto his back. His sword clanked to the floor and he clutched at his heart gasping for breath. Jarnulf rose, pushed his scabbard back and drew his blade.

Asbjorn stared, motionless and horrorstricken, as Jarnulf straddled Dalla with his hilt in a double hand reverse. Jarnulf centered his point above Dalla's heart.

Einvigi had been offered and accepted. Even without Ref's knife in his back, Asbjorn could no more interfere than if he'd been a thousand miles away. Hring winced as Badger's point reminded him to stay put.

Dalla's supporters were raising an unholy racket with cries of Regi, murderer, and woods rat. Jarnulf's crowd was doing its best to drown them out. A big fellow, one of Dalla's, in a blue cape with a scar cleft blond beard took two steps towards Jarnulf's back, raising his sword. He stopped just short of the edge of Da'hal's borrowed axe.

"Get away!" the giant grunted, prodding him none too gently with it.

Jarnulf stood above Dalla, on the hillside, in a whirl of black vengeance need, with his friends and kin fresh murdered. In his brain rang Olaf's yell to stop before he murdered Hoskuld, and Jarnulf stayed his thrust. More of his friends could get their death in the armed brawl that would explode.

Dalla's blistered face rocked violently from side to side but his eyes never left Jarnulf's. Between them, as Dalla choked and turned blue, raged a volcanic torrent. Dalla's struggles grew weaker by degrees. Jarnulf prodded Dalla's ribs with his boot again, but Dalla lay still.

Badger released Hring and stepped sprightly back from him, again laying the blade of his knife up behind his forearm. Hring whipped around with at least a dozen murders burning in his eyes.

"It's nothing personal." Badger said, wagging a finger before his nose at Hring as he backed swiftly behind Asbjorn and out into the aisle, out of reach.

"Hel's legs it ain't." Hring growled.

Tore's voice sounded soft and low from a dozen feet behind them.

"You'd best have one hell of an explanation." Tore said.

Jarnulf again ignored him, turning on Hring.

"You'd better pray I don't hunt down your hand in this." he snarled and then turned for the door determined to find Leif even if he had to turn forty acres of woods inside out, in the dark, and cut the whole sordid truth out of him.

Still in a blind rage he grabbed Odd Mordson and hurled him aside, stretching Odd flat on his back on a table. With blade bared and murder ablaze in his eyes, all made way for him.

Tore gaped speechless, staring at Jarnulf's back, taking the stairs two at a time. It had been thirty years and more since anyone dared turn their back on him.

Mirha called out to Jarnulf as he swept past but he was deaf to her. She strained to run after him but Aud and Adis wouldn't let go of her as they kept pummeling her back and congratulating her. Badger and Olaf bounded up the stairs after Jarnulf.

What Jarnulf had just done to Dalla was legal, sort of. While Jarnulf had assaulted Dalla, giving Dalla the right to kill him on the spot, or a suit to have him Outlawed, Dalla had stupidly thrown it away by letting Jarnulf suck him into offering a duel. No one, however, would believe any such niceties had been observed if Leif's corpse turned up.

Da'hal started after Badger and Olaf with the axe face high before him in his ham sized, white knuckled fist, mostly to avoid nicking an innocent leg.

Dalla's supporters parted as he barreled through them. Ref followed close behind, grinning, as he skipped and twirled about for leers in all directions. Jarnulf was in a fey mood. He'd bare close watching till it drained out of him.

Mordach cursed and swatted his way through those thronging the loser. He upended a bucket of ale into Dalla's face and Astrid poured a second onto Dalla's chest. Astrid straddled him and dropping to her knees she slapped Dalla's still, ash blue cheeks silly. Dalla groaned and grabbed at Astrid's legs, reaching for his aching chest.

Tore's furied eye spotted Mirha fidgeting with Aud and Adis on the far table. Tore bulled his way through the crowd toward her. Odd Mordson garnered the ill luck of gaining his feet directly in Tore's path. Tore straight armed Odd flat out again back onto the table without a glance. When Mirha'd filled him in Tore sucked in a soft whistle.

"I'd hate to be in Leif's boots." he said, leering sourly as he folded his arms. He turned back and fixed his grim glare upon Dalla who was now sitting back up on his bench, and at Hring and Asbjorn vowing to Dalla that this wouldn't be an end of it. In the press behind the rail on the upper landing stood Hjortgren, looking down simultaneously horrified and murderous at the three of them.

Dalla already had a king sized helping of shit on his plate after losing his ship. The thought that he'd go out looking for a side order of it with Jarnulf didn't fit. Tore turned back to the girls and pointed a stern finger at Mirha.

"Don't you let him skimp on your wedding dress or the feast." he said.

Then he ambled slowly up the stairs and out. Throttolf's black mastiff lurched in and clunked down the stairs on its chin.

In the cool, clear, evening beyond Tore hooked his thumbs into his belt and in a rolling, tiller deck gait he headed for Starri's, chuckling softly, and many might have said evilly, to himself.

Back inside the dog staggered to its still sleeping master and licked his face, whining piteously. Its bowl was empty.

CLXV An Overly Suggestive Mood

Olaf and Ref caught up to Jarnulf before the darkened and locked front door of Leif's tiny steading. Jarnulf was bellowing Da'hal's Frankish blasphemies at the door while trying to kick it in.

"You don't think he's really in there, do you?" Olaf said.

"Come out of there you worm." Jarnulf yelled at the door. "You just bought the house a round in Vallhol."

"Odinn is not going to thank you for this." Ref said. "Having to take him in after you carve him up."

"He can go sit on his spear." Jarnulf snapped back, leaning back for another kick.

"He's over there." Olaf said, pointing insistently south across the field. "Squatting in the treeline chewing on his heart, staring back here at town and wondering what to do. If you cut him down with only us as witnesses, we'll never be able to sell it as a duel. Everyone knows he's spineless."

"He'll be missing more than that when I get through with him." Jarnulf said.

Ref snatched at Jarnulf's shoulder telling him to forget it. Leif would show up in a day or two. Jarnulf shook him off, drew his sword and began pounding the door with its pommel. Ref took hold of him again and Jarnulf whipped about cocking his blade high in the air above Ref's head, yelling that he was going to gut that little pervert.

"Jarnulf Stop!" Olaf yelled. Who are you going to kill? Ref? Leif's not here."

A visible shudder ran through Jarnulf and some curtain only he could see drew back within his mind. He dropped his sword into a clump of weeds beside Ref and shrank back from it pleading with Ref to forgive him. He'd no idea what had come over him.

"Jesus." Ref said. There was a decided shiver in it.

Olaf ordered Jarnulf to put his sword back in his belt and get hold of himself. He'd every right save one, the legal right, to hack the little worm into bloody chunks. If he'd just let it simmer for a couple of days they'd snare Leif into that pot for him too. Jarnulf hardly heard him.

"Eirika," he gasped. "She was,"

"Oh, sheep shit." Olaf groaned, greatly annoyed. "The only thing haunted here is you, and that temper of yours. It's going to get you killed unless you kill it first."

Jarnulf stood rooted to the spot, shivering, remembering the hill, and how he'd almost murdered Hoskuld.

Olaf stooped between him and Ref saying that that was too fine a sword to let it get wet and go to rust. As his fingers closed around its ivory carvings a strange and fey shock, a horrid tableaux of turning on his friends with it, flashed through his mind. He dismissed it as the naggings of an overly suggestive mood and handed the sword to Jarnulf.

"Now if you promise not to kill him, we can go have some fun with Mr. Spineless son." he said.

"Can't see beyond your nose inside the trees." Badger said. "If he just sits tight we'll walk right past him."

"Oh, he'll get up and crash around some." Olaf said. "If there's big, bad, scary bears growling and woofing after him."

Da'hal barked out a deep, basso woof in agreement.

"It's too bad Ansvarr isn't here." Ref said. "He had that snuffling whine they do down cold."

"Yeah, well, he isn't." Olaf said and then tilted his head back for a quick gaze up into the heavens before the five of them headed back towards the beach trail to sneak up on Leif through the woods behind him.

As they jogged past Tore and Maeve's steading with Jarnulf and Badger in the lead, who were busy pyramiding refinements atop their proposed merriment, Ref asked Olaf if he thought Eirika's nonsense about Jarnulf's blades might not have an ounce of truth in them. Olaf again snorted that the old woman was full of it. Da'hal with the axe, thudding heavily along behind them in the dark, interrupted his practice woofs and growls to add his voice to Olaf's.

"Spooks and curses and witches." Da'hal said. "What a load of crap."

Three woofs later he silently cursed himself as he realized that the thumb and forefinger of his free hand were absently caressing the little cross on the thong at his neck. He whipped his huge, corded arm down to his side, hoping no one had caught him at it.

Rakel shifted uneasy on her bench, staring glassy eyed at her runes, drowning in teary eyed recriminations. At least she'd been spared the horror on the hillside of seeing her friends murdered. And Jarnulf's trael, it was growing less easy to truly hate her after the little pin head flat out ignored her scowls at Aerin's and turned herself inside out comforting Aethle, between running errands at the double quick.

Again came the door knocks and she leapt wincing, and relieved, toward it. Sex of itself ran a poor second to love.

Dalla stumped in with Hring supporting him. Dalla was grunting, wheezing, sweat greasy beneath his blue black stubble, and reeking of ale. He was soaked in it. Had he been tasting again, with Hoskuld, and fallen into a vat, again?

At least he wouldn't be in the mood, again. Whatever he'd been brewing swept that off the table anyway. Enraged, wounded, humiliated, burnt, blistered, chilled and soaked, he exuded rage like some black and greasy blue, thunderhead. Whatever gripped him had burnt the drunk clean out of him.

"Give me a hand," Hring said. "he needs,"

Dalla turned on Hring with a frightening lucidity.

What Dalla needed was something undone which Hring himself had done, something beyond undoing.

It wasn't that he hadn't felt both Hring and Asbjorn's hand in this ball bruising Marshal madness, or that he didn't care. Dalla's unblinking loyalty to his friends was a byword, and one which Rakel was hard put to understand. Dalla himself often found it incomprehensible, but it seemed to work for Starri. The fact that Starri never left himself open to being crossed, however, was beyond Dalla's ability to mimic.

"Goddamn Marshal blind sided him." Hring said.

Each of Rakel's wistful, golden moted, cuddly memories of nights now years gone by, shot off squealing like a dog from a switch. She moored her heart strings to her wounded suitor, all sympathy and insistent quizzing about what, how, and why.

"Insane Bastard." Dalla said. "That puke Skelderson attacked his wife."

The love lights in her eyes plummeted as horrifyingly as his boom had, and burst afire with accusation. Dalla, unprepared for this newest assault, vented a thunderclap 'Brrrat'. Rakel took a step back, and refrained from pinching her nose. Dalla's dinner of Mordach's beans on top of all that syrupy sweet mead needing venting as badly as his rage did.

"And he accused me," Dalla continued. "of setting it up."

The counter punch in his gaze bobbled her unspoken accusation into a mask of concern. Dalla's eyes, and nostrils, widened further.

"Wife?" she begged.

Her whine split the air like lightning, cracking in Dalla's ears just like his rails had. Credulity usurped his fury. It was as if they'd glimpsed plague in each other's eyes and were reflexively withdrawing. His brows arched, and grew even blacker as she ruefully tracked her query through his pupils, bottomless and cold as the winter sea.

Hring's heart sounded deep, and soured. No blacker iniquity breathed than to be held the hammerer of this wedge between his Skipper and his trophy, the stiffening of every man's fantasy. Her lower lip was a tremble, and her eyes were taking on water. Any sane man would have yielded ground before Dalla's fierce, blue glare, but Rakel was not a man.

She burst into tears and threw herself into his arms, burying her face in his neck. He shoved her away with a trenchant oath, groaning and gnashing from his cracked rib.

"It's all right," he said, knowing it wasn't. "I'll live, longer than he will."

He punctuated his threat with an unwilling 'Pssst' of bean gas.

The hairy anvil beside him quailed, gaping into the chasm yawning between his Skipper and Rakel. First he'd cost Dalla his ship, and now his shot at compensating Dalla was headed for the same ocean depths in fiery ruin. And as so often happens to those who stew in one devious plot after another, the obvious eluded him.

"It hadn't been a duel at all." he said. "That unmanly back shooter had taken Dalla unawares in another of his coward's ambushes."

"You idiot." she shrieked, and spinning away, dashed to her bed closet to leap face down upon her bed, clamping her pillow tight over her head, which poured flaming oil upon Dalla's already blazing humiliations, and conclusively illumined his blackest suspicions. Not only had that deranged pissant suckered and humiliated him, he'd been bedding Rakel.

Dalla stormed back out, slamming her door into Hring's face behind him, and with the daggers of his manifold injuries pricking his rage, stumped off through the starlight toward patriarch Aesolf's steading.

Hring quickly caught up to him, determined that whatever Dalla was up to he'd redeem himself on this, his third try, with both believing Rakel had named himself the idiot.

Hring assured Dalla of his support whatever ill wind they were headed into.

Dalla only thunder cracked out another agonizingly overheld 'SquerrrRat' in reply.

Rakel wailed away consumed with Dalla's petulant sulkings at Jarnulf's having far more than his share of luck. Suspicion burrowed into the back of her mind and chewed away like a rat in the granary. Dalla had lied to her before. When Jarnulf got his hands on Leif it certainly wouldn't be any duel. Tore couldn't openly ignore criminal murder. The law was the law. And Dalla's pride had had both its ears rammed full of her own set to with Jarnulf by Stienunn, Ranveig, and Gundfrieda.

Kveldalf, amazingly, had avoided Dalla which must have been hell on the gossip in her. Dalla had been trying to lose Leif and Knut for years, even before Grimkel made him his fo'c'sulman. Loath Mirha though she might sicking that rat on any girl was beyond the pale. That sonofabitch had lied to her again.

Rakel again bawled her eyes out, cursing another pinhead, that idiot Freya. The goddess of love dispensed her blessings from a chariot drawn by cats. Try telling a cat where to go.

CLXVI Hello Hel

In the forest edge a hundred, purple black yards from the trail lurked Leif, where Olaf said he'd be.

Olaf whispered into Badger's ear to stay put along with Da'hal until he and Ref had the pimpled pervert surrounded. Stealth wouldn't matter at that point. In fact it would be better if Badger dragged his feet through the brush as he closed in. Badger asked if he might moan and groan as well. Badger waited and waited with no reply. He again asked Olaf, still invisible and unheard in the dark.

Forty yards west and well beyond Leif, a black bear growled loud and long, which scattered a dozen drowsy bats into panicked flight from the oaks above. This time it was Da'hal's whisper that filled his ear.

"There's your answer, and your Olaf." Da'hal said.

Out in the star lit field to Leif's north, where Leif could plainly see him, Jarnulf called out in a mocking, child's singsong.

"You might as well come out and meet your maaay, ker."

Leif crunched off through the dark, directly toward Badger. Beside him, Da'hal's cavernous woof exploded into the closet dark. The footsteps stopped. Badger cupped hands to mouth and shook his head as he built up a low, tortured moan and began shuffling off southwest away from Da'hal, deeper into the forest. The footsteps crunched into a run heading dead south. Forty yards ahead of them the clicking thud of a large rock slamming against another stopped them. Jarnulf's chant called out in the field again, this time in a woman's falsetto.

"It's time to come home Leif, and go to slee, eep, for ev, er."

Badger scuffed his feet and discovered a few more twigs to break on his way toward Ref. Leif dashed along the treeline for the spot he'd just left. Da'hal, drawn by a multitude of innocuous, soft peepings, had stationed himself beneath a hoary old oak dripping with fruit bats. On his hands and knees Da'hal crashed around in the brush beneath the oak grunting out deep, barking growls. A hundred bats squealed and shrieked off into the black, straight into Leif's face.

Badger snickered. He could hear the little rat panting like a winded mastiff. If this was the kind of fun the hunters got up to, perhaps he should rethink his own career plans.

Again he cupped his shaking mouth and started a moan. He held this one twice as long, building and twisting it into a brittle shriek, then holding his breath to listen as it echoed off into the black, beneath the unseen trees.

The Olaf bear reminded Leif that it hadn't gone anywhere and Ref struck up his best rendition of Ansvarr's masterful snuffling bear whine as he scraped his rocks against the corrugated bark of a fir tree. These guys were good, Badger thought. It sure sounded like claws being sharpened.

"Aww come on Leif." Jarnulf whined. "I promise it won't hurt, much."

Leif had gone to ground. Badger moaned and shuffled in toward him. Knut's voice was an easy one. Badger had mimicked and mocked him often enough in the past, although he'd never quite nailed that bitchy, girly snarl of Knut's. Whatever rough edges his impersonation had would likely go unnoticed given the setting and the mind Leif was in.

"Leif?" Knut's draugar called softly. "Leeef?" (smooth glissando up through an octave) "Why?" (a long, pained, hoarse, rasp) then a silence. "Why didn't you come?" (a broken hearted lover begging), another long silence.

In the dark ahead of him sounded a soft scuffling through last fall's dead leaves heading away west. Further west a pair of bear's jaws snapped together popping its teeth, again halting their quarry's flight. That, thought Badger, was one trick he had to see Olaf do. It was so loud. His teeth hurt just thinking about it.

Leif squatted back against a tree and tried to make himself smaller, pushing against it even harder. His legs had fallen asleep. He shot his millionth terrified gaze back out at Jarnulf standing like a nightmare in the cold blue starlight with his fists on his hips, waiting. Leif prayed that this was only the first, taunting visitation from Knut and his spirit bears. And that they'd delay wreaking their final vengeance on him for at least a few more nights. Knut's sniveling whine razored into Leif's bowels through the dark.

"I'm so cold, and hungry, and all the snakes (voice shivering, short pause, shriek of agony)." Da'hal, still on his knees, ripped up a small shrub, roots and all, and snuffled out a few more hungry grunts. Badger noisily scuffed his way a few yards closer to Leif. "Why did you doom me here? I miss you (confused whine)."

Jarnulf stood his ground though it grieved him greatly, wishing he could sneak to within a rabbit's jump behind Leif to savor every terrified twitch and gasp the wretch made but if he did Leif would certainly make a run for it. In the woods to the west bear teeth snapped and Olaf woofed again. Ref scraped a bit more bark off of another fir, much closer in.

In a muscle locking panic Leif's mind flitted, unfocused, from one terror to another. Would being sworded by his comrade's wight qualify as a death in battle, and earn him a bench in Vallhol? Probably not. The way his luck ran Knut would just rend him with his teeth and nails, or laugh as the bears ate him. Hello Hel.

And what if it wasn't really Knut's ghost, but only the hunters, laughing at him, as he trembled here, cowering, pretending he wasn't here and knowing all the while they knew he was? The farther he bounced back through his hall of mirrors He knew they knew they knew he knew the tighter his throat got and the harder his heart pounded. While feelings of inferiority and self loathing were nothing new, people went out of their way to heap it on him, this was a plunge into the icy, undreamt ocean depths of humiliation. Knut had another question for him.

"Did I hurt you, bent over, down on your knees (apologetic, seeking forgiveness)?"

That settled it for Leif. Up to now he'd been almost convinced it was Knut's ghost, blaming him for leaving him to that leopard. He and Knut had always displayed that better part of valor known as discretion. And to some minds that had made them seem unmanly. But they weren't queer. Hiding from that little slut's master had been humiliating enough but the growing certainty that they had all been laughing at him from the start.

Steeling what passed for courage in his own mind he struggled erect, drew Skjalg's sword, and dashed northwest into the field waving it high, torch like, between Jarnulf and whatever was in the trees between them, determined to live and redeem his manhood another day, or at least go down swinging.

Growls, woofs and ghostly shrieks broke out in the woods behind him before erupting into peals of derisive hooting. Jarnulf simply stood there adding his own whoops and howls as Leif sprinted off in search of his heroic destiny somewhere out in the vast emptiness of the stubbled, star lit field.

CLXVII You Know How They Get

Hunters and Badger laughed their way back toward town, strung in a crescent abreast.

The breeze shifted, carrying the sea's misting fog in with it.

Jarnulf descended into a morose fog of his own, envisioning Rakel hearing that Dalla was dead and that he'd killed him. His dreams were surely sendings from the devil. Rakel wouldn't be running back contrite and cured for his saving her from the brute. After this she'd claw his eyes out.

Dalla hadn't left him any choice but God only knew what she'd stir up over it. He gritted his teeth envisioning the hornet's nest he'd kicked at Mordach's, the angry swarm he was walking right back into. Mirha needed retrieving. Blood nights were always the worst. His friends and Dalla's would be bristling at each other with surly looks and worse, for years. Tore would not be pleased.

Olaf offered Jarnulf his congratulations. Badger and Ref quickly climbed aboard pummeling his shoulders and wishing him and Mirha the best. Da'hal rewrapped himself in his cloak of gloom over Hlif.

"Oh she'll be fine tonight." Jarnulf muttered, flailing about in his newest funk. "There's tons of folks around to keep an eye on her."

"Pervert." Ref said. "I wouldn't want them all around watching on my wedding night."

Jarnulf, preoccupied with keeping Mirha out of Rakel's reach now more than ever, barely heard him.

"Neither would I." he said.

"Then you better take her home." Ref said, occasioning a round of laughs.

"Don't you even remember?" Olaf said. "Announcing to the whole place, just before you did in that broiled dimwit, that you'd taken Mirha to wife?"

Jarnulf hauled up dead in his tracks, believing he knew, in that instant, exactly what Leif had been feeling a little earlier.

"I better go fetch her." he groaned. "You know how they get, once they got, you."

"I certainly do not." Olaf said, seeming indignant.

"Night's young." Badger said. "There's got to be something else we can start somewhere. Leif won't be in shape for dueling for a couple of weeks, being wounded with the sniffles after tonight, which will give you time," and here he knuckled Olaf's arm, "to show me that jaw snap. It was so loud."

Olaf snatched Ref up tight under his shoulder.

"Yes, Ref." Olaf said, making a question of it. "How did you manage that?"

Ref's wide, brown eyes echoed his question right back.

"But I thought, oh shit." Ref moaned. "Here we go again. Back to those goddamn bug pile blinds and bear baits."

"That bastard's going to have a lot of explaining to do," Jarnulf said. "if he beats me to Leif.

Andar struggled into his shirt and snatched down one of his door spears, growling at whoever was outside pounding away that they'd better just go away. Hiding beneath his bed, a young blonde named Thorelf prayed with all her still virgin heart, that it wasn't her father. Andar lifted his bar and Kveldalf almost knocked him down in her rush inside.

Nightmeal at Hjortgren's was concluded, and on the porch in the dark Asbjorn finally got his kiss from Gundfrieda, and a slap when his fingers tried for more.

"That," Gundfrieda said. "you get afterwards, and only, afterwards."

"I promise, my dearest, darling, my Gundfrieda." he said and went for another kiss. She turned her cheek aside in proper maidenly fashion, and then scurried back indoors to slam the door in his face, and clasp her hands across her heaving bosom.

Mother Ranveig hmmphed most disagreeably across the table to her son Hjortgren, as she snatched the mead jug from him. Dinner had been dry in honor of Asbjorn's brand new temperance.

"Sober my ass." Ranveig muttered, rising to clear the table.

CLXVIII Any Claiming Jarnulf

Mirha fumed and fumbled at her loom as Jarnulf's annoyed finger flipped page after page of Ulf's law books. He'd just missed Dalla the resurrected at Mordach's, retrieving Mirha. She'd bubbled with enthusiasm. She'd be the most wonderful wife any man could ever hope for. He handed her a distracted 'Huh?' at every third promise.

Dalla might have returned from the dead, but his ship would return from the deep before Leif could be humiliated into a duel, legally.

There had to be some twist in these pages Eirika had never bored him with. Vengeance could only be taken for a trael woman by her husband if he too was a trael. A freeman was prohibited from killing over his concubine. The laws, being Christian, encouraged marriage.

Outside, a single horse crunched up the pave toward his door. Jarnulf's ears knew that horse. It was Ulf's roan. It couldn't be Dalla. Dalla would want his retribution public, not out here in the dark, without witnesses to make it legal.

Still, he cocked Ulf's crossbow and laid it back on the table, pointing it at the door before ordering the footsteps on his porch to come in. A blond bearded wall of heavily muscled fo'c'sulman barged in with axe at port arms.

"I left Dalla at the ship sheds." Asgrim said. "He'll be here shortly."

"Good." Jarnulf barked, leaning across the table for his longsword, beyond Ulf's bow.

"The hell it is." Asgrim said. "He's coming to summons you for Sigrid's murder."

Jarnulf froze, thunderstruck.

"He's still carrying a torch for her?" Jarnulf said.

"Doubt it." Asgrim said. "It's humiliating enough being dumped for another man, but she threw him over for a woman."

"Well for once, my luck's beat someone's." Jarnulf said. "A summons isn't legal with less than twenty men to witness it."

"I caught his whole crew heading for the barn." Asgrim said. "They stole a horse for him, because of his leg. Then Asbjorn, Hring and the others decided they'd ride out here as well, instead of walking."

"Whose horses?" Jarnulf said. "They don't own any."

"Our friends," Asgrim said. "sleeping in the graveyard. I ran half of Dalla's crew off. You should have seen the scramble when I bellowed into Mordach's 'Any claiming Jarnulf as kin, he's being summonsed.' They're keeping an eye on his so all that will fly here will be words."

"We'll see about this." Jarnulf said, shoving both swords through his belt before hefting Ulf's bow.

"The bitch is going to prosecute you for burying Bror, too, of all people, in the graveyard." Asgrim said.

"Like I said, we'll see about this." Jarnulf said as the sound of twenty horses filing into his yard thudded through his open door.

"I borrowed your father's horse." Asgrim said. "I figured you'd have an accident if they got here first."

"Good thing." Jarnulf said. "Liv would have bit you."

"She tried." Asgrim said as he followed Jarnulf outside.

Mirha scurried after them and Jarnulf pushed her back inside, protesting as usual, before drawing the door closed behind him. Being a back lit target for twenty who'd love to have him dead wasn't wise.

Dalla's men reined in twenty yards from his porch, strung in a crescent across his nighted yard. His own friends and distant kin detached themselves from the crowd and rode forward. There went Karl nodding to him astride Da'hal's worn out old roan, and Badger looking nervous atop Olaf's hell stallion. In that pale, diamond light, as Asgrim's men rode aside, one horse and rider beside Dalla snared Jarnulf's gaze. His and Asgrim's supporters reined back around, turning to face Dalla's men.

The sorrel bore a white cross between its eyes. Its rider had slender shoulders and a long, almost belt length, curly brown beard, and the horror of burying Gunnarr again sickened Jarnulf. But there was worse.

Dalla had helped himself to Bror's stallion, Baleyg.

Grimkel had chosen Dalla as his fo'c'sulman. Dalla had merited it above all Grimkel's crew. Dalla had once pulled off a stunt that not one in forty could achieve. Running the oars, as the men held them out straight and level was a regular, homecoming amusement, but he'd leapt from the rail out onto the sternmost oar, while the men were rowing, and run from oar to oar to the prow and back. Even wounded, burnt and blistered, he was still more than ready to leap through the air into another ship and the axes of ten men and make them wish he hadn't.

"Get off my horse." Jarnulf said, his every word enunciated with a forced, and frigid clarity, like Eirika. "Bror left him to me, as he died in Olaf's arms."

Dalla snorted derision.

"The animal belongs to no one." Dalla said. "Skoggangsmadur can't own property."

"Do as he tells you." Asgrim said. "Then say your piece and leave. There's too many of us here to fight. My father will personally skin whoever lives through it."

Dalla crossed his hands on the saddle's pommel and leaned forward. Grimacing, he straightened. The cracked rib Jarnulf'd given him had his eyes almost glowing in the dark.

CLXIX I Name Names

"I name names," Dalla began. He punctuated his screed with numerous pauses to catch his breath. "Asbjorn Asgeirson, Hring Eyvindson, Hjortgren Bjorgilson, Thorfinn Cleft Lip, and Ari Halfdane and more to witness that I, Dalla Helgason, summon Jarnulf Ulfson before a Kvidur of his neighbors, at Althing, to pay for four crimes.

One, that Jarnulf Ulfson refused to convey the body of Sigrid, daughter of Sigrelf, to the church in a timely fashion, and I demand a lawful penalty of three marks. Two, that he did convey the prohibited body of Bror Borgarson, Skoggangsmadur, into our church and three, that he did also bury the prohibited body of Bror Borgarson, Skoggangsmadur, in our church graveyard, and the lawful penalty for each offence, which I demand, is Lesser Outlawry. And four, that he did commit Secret Murder upon the person of Sigrid Sigrelfsdottir.

The penalty for Secret Murder is Full Outlawry. Two Lesser Outlawries demand Full Outlawry, and another Full Outlawry for Secret Murder. I, Dalla Helgason, demand a penalty of Skoggangur without ring payment, as you, Jarnulf Ulfson, cannot possibly spend two eternities outside the Law."

Asgrim and his men all laughed back in Dalla's face.

"You can't deny a man his grace period." Karl yelled.

"Logmadur Eirika would not have done it to Nacarr, unless it was legal." Dalla said.

"That's charitable of you, Daela." Jarnulf sneered. "You're not prosecuting me for breaking your nose, and shaming you too?"

"Enjoy your little joke Wurmson." Dalla said. "If somehow you escape Outlawry, you won't escape me."

Dalla wrapped his arrogance tighter about himself and nudged Bror's mount with his heel, turning to leave.

"Bishop!" Jarnulf yelled.

Bror's stallion reared back on its haunches and leapt high into the night searching for an enemy to pash with its hooves. Fortunately there was no one immediately before it. Dalla pitched back out of Bror's saddle to crash onto his shoulder in the pave.

Asbjorn jerked up his bow, his eyes drilling into Jarnulf's heart, just beneath the broadhead on Jarnulf's bow, drilling back into his eyes. Asbjorn howled and dropped his weapon, clutching at his bloody shoulder where Jarnulf's bolt had nicked it on its flight toward the sea.

Dalla struggled to his feet grunting a slurry of unholy curses. Then turning his back in contempt on Jarnulf, he limped toward the horse, clutching his hilt.

"Stop!" Jarnulf barked. "If you touch my horse, thief, I'll murder you here and now, and there will be nothing secret about it."
"Hel take you!" Dalla roared, and drawing steel he whipped about intending to attack Jarnulf.

Hjortgren drove Gunnarr's horse between them as both side's supporters drew bows on the other. Hjortgren kicked Dalla's chest, wrenching a choked grunt from him.

"You're in no shape to fight." Hjortgren said. "Your leg's stiff as a keel and your rib's broke. If you're so determined to kill him, wait until you can."

"Stay out of this." Dalla yelled and his cracked rib again wrote itself into his features. Dalla's rage rallied again and Hjortgren nailed his point home again, none too gently, with his boot. Hjortgren dismounted and bullied Dalla up aboard Gunnarr's horse in his stead.

"Our business here is done. Go," Hjortgren yelled to his mates, "before there are more killings on both sides, and summonsings."

"Asbjorn." Jarnulf yelled. "That horse too belongs to me. Get off it."

"Trying to kill me isn't enough?" Asbjorn asked in shock and disbelief. "You expect me to walk back to town like this?"

His right arm was drenched in blood, and his wound flowed freely.

"I gave you your life. Don't expect me to do it twice." Jarnulf said.

Asbjorn dismounted and slinging his bow over his shoulder, departed on foot, clamping his wound shut with his left hand.

Hjortgren stayed, watching them leave. Then he turned back to Jarnulf and Asgrim, and Tore's crew. Hjortgren, standing in the star washed path with his bow hanging loose at his side, looked weary unto death. His long, hooked nose, his longer, drooping brown beard and his loose, thin frame again reminded Jarnulf disquietingly of Gunnarr. Hjortgren raised his head slowly.

"I don't know whether to thank you for stopping him or not." Jarnulf said.

"I doubt we'll ever be friends, considering." Hjortgren said. "But I'm sorry about this. I don't envy you."

"It's not your fault, you're just a called witness." Jarnulf said.

"No." Hjortgren said, raising his palm, enjoining Jarnulf to silence.

"Ten faces I've known my whole life are vanished. Most were dear friends of yours, and mine. You had to bury them. And Dalla, is still my friend. I've no wish to see any more of my friends buried. I don't want to see you buried either.

If not for you, and Bror, my mother would be dead, and sister Gundfrieda's actually quite pretty behind that troll's leer of hers. I shudder to think what those savages would have put her through. May your luck see you through this."

Then he turned to leave.

Jarnulf called after him.

"If you ever need support, send word."

Hjortgren stopped and turned at the main path.

"Ketil was my brother." he said. "He was also a great bully. And vicious and overbearing when drunk. His luck deserted him long before you killed him."

Then he walked off into the night.

"He deserves better than those disaster prone idiots." Jarnulf said to Asgrim.

"My mind says that he'll get them," Karl said. "and that mother Ranveig and sister Gundfrieda are going to get themselves one ass chewing from Hel tonight."

"You're taking this all rather calmly." Asgrim said.

Jarnulf raised his voice to address Badger, Karl, and their shipmates.

"Dalla's suits are spoilt and void already." he said. "And they'll stay void so long as all of you keep your mouths shut so he can't save them. The prosecution of Sigrid's killing lies with Aesolf as the principle in the case. Dalla didn't state that Aesolf lawfully assigned his prosecution to him. You just testify to exactly what you witnessed and the Kvidur will dismiss his suits, and fine him, heavily I hope, for presenting a flawed summons."

"That's fine for the murder action but what about Bror?" Asgrim said.

"Wrong penalties." Jarnulf said. "Prohibited bodies into church are three Marks to the Court and another three to the Church, after the Kvidur grants me a clearing verdict that I believed Bror was entitled to church burial. How many neighbors here are going to admit, at Althing, to harboring a known Skoggangsmadur, especially Bror, and then get themselves Outlawed for it? The burial's also three Marks. It's only Outlawry if I refuse to remove Bror's body at least a bowshot from the graveyard."

"And my father's all worried that you don't know the law." Asgrim said.

"You," Jarnulf said. "have no idea what its like living in constant terror of being ambushed by Eirika. She's going to freeze to death some night, skulking behind a corner, waiting, in the snow, sharpening her tongue. No matter whose door I go in, when I come out she just happens to be strolling past. She's never headed anywhere. She's just strolling by."

"You were most generous to Asbjorn, just winging him, in the dark." Asgrim said. "You might have missed."

Jarnulf grinned sourly and then gently laid his fingertip into the hollow at the base of Asgrim's throat.

"I did miss." he said. "I was a bit rattled. Or hadn't you heard? I'm not used to a standup fight. I'm a back shooting coward."

He invited Asgrim and all his fellows in. Dalla's useless summons needed transcribing. There had to be enough mead for at least a couple of glasses for each. They didn't need a second asking. He detained Asgrim as the others crowded in noisy jubilation through his door, and Mirha found herself repeatedly hugged breathless.

"But it comes to me now, that none of that even matters." Jarnulf said. "There's no such person as Dalla Helgason. His legal name is Sigdul."

Asgrim started a guffaw.

"And he's a bastard." Jarnulf said. "Literally, illegitimate, with no rights to summons anyone."

Once within, as Jarnulf stood atop his table reaching down jugs from his rafter shelves. Asgrim ordered his men to silence.

Jarnulf's door crashed inward and Da'hal rushed in, panting and sweating with axe at the ready chest high before him. He glared Hel murder through the mob within, and began a booming, evil laugh. It was cut short as first Olaf, and then Ref shoved him aside and almost ran him over, all with weapons drawn and slaughter in their eyes. Outside, on his porch, Andar and Kjartan and Gudrod and Thorarin set up an unholy racket, demanding Ref get out of their way.

In their furied dash out here they had run into Dalla and his men on their return to town. The air around the ship sheds resounded with blasphemies and accusations, and Dalla was now walking, or rather stumping, back to town after all. Da'hal seemed mystified at Jarnulf's concern for Hjortgren's safety. They hadn't even seen Hjortgren.

Karl said of course they hadn't. Hjortgren wasn't some damn fool. Jarnulf ordered everybody out into the yard.

And then with great regret he handed down two precious jugs of Hoskuld's finest mead, ones he hadn't intended to share earlier.

"Your confidence," Asgrim said. "may prove misplaced. I have never known Dalla to back down. Your dumping him on his head here after already knocking him on his ass is heavier on him than even your promise to kill him. It might just drag him back here, with us all indoors. I'm not fond of running back out if he and his idiots return to burn us.

"He's right." Ref said. "Look at how many of us are here. Who will be left to deal with him after he shoots most of us coming out the door one at a time?"

In the blue starlight, as Jarnulf's liquor was quickly consumed, Badger hit up Olaf to apologize for riding Stigandi. Stealing a man's horse, or even riding it behind his back, was worth thirty six ounces of silver and Lesser, or even Full, Outlawry.

"I don't think he likes me." Badger said. "I rode him out here at a walk, and I don't think I want to do even that again.

"Oh he likes you fine." Olaf said. Confidence beamed broadly in his smile. "Else he'd have thrown you, and stomped your head and the rest of you in."

Olaf called, and the huge, black brute came to him eagerly as a greyhound, and nuzzled his ear.

"You like Badger, don't you boy?" Olaf said, taking the horse's head in his hands and turning it toward Badger.

Stigandi showed Badger his teeth, and snorted, but he kept his ears erect.

Jarnulf cornered a dark chinned man in his thirties, of average height and build, a man he'd barely noticed before, hardly spoken to. The fellow passed him one of Hoskuld's jugs, and wiped his lips.

"Being Tore's Marshal must pay well if you can pass this stuff around." the man said, grinning.

"Are we kinsmen Thorodd?" Jarnulf said.

"I'm not sure either." Thorodd said. "Maybe sixth or seventh cousins. Better safe than sorry."

Jarnulf nodded a deathly serious agreement. Kin was covenant, and you stuck your neck out for each other no matter how far distant you had to stick it.

"Bror did Hoskuld a favor two weeks ago." Jarnulf said. "And you could do me another, by stopping by and thanking Bror. Perhaps adding a stone or two to his cairn."

"I already have." Thorodd said, joining in Jarnulf's solemnity. "Jarnulf, you don't have children. Ten days at sea. I crapped every color but blue. My Signy just weathered her sixth winter. I was sure I'd lost her forever. I've been to see Bror, and Hroald, and the others, on my knees. Two stones for each, every Sunsday, till someone else is putting them on mine."

CLXX The Compensation Of Friends

After Asgrim and his fellows departed Jarnulf ordered his hunters in. He fished out his two final jugs of Hoskuld's finest from the cobwebs behind Mirha's loom. First the good stuff, while they could appreciate it. Then they'd kill the other nine stashed in the bed closet.

Under Law, as the accused, he was forbidden to attend his trial. He might intimidate witnesses with looks, gestures, or not so thinly veiled threats. The Law took no note of mitigating circumstances.

The sole issue was whether the crime had been committed.

From the outraged eight who were all ready to spit Dalla themselves Jarnulf named his defense lawyer. They agreed that Dalla's disgrace would grow tenfold when Jarnulf's choice identified Dalla as an idiot before the Kvidur, and witnesses, and demanded half personal compensation for each, fifty ounces of silver, for insulting them. Olaf thought it the cream of the jest, and said so repeatedly, as Jarnulf gathered quill, ink, and parchment to transcribe Dalla's termite tunneled summons. When he'd finished, he wrote out a bill of sale. Mirha thought he was joking.

"All right, who's going to take her?" he said, nodding towards Mirha. Her reply again reminded him of his mother's feeding a mob of squirrels on his porch.

"What does it look like?" he said. "I'm selling you."

"But you named me your wife." she said. "I'm a free woman."

"Not legally," he said. "until you're led into the Law by Chieftain Tore. You're only a spade freedman, free from being worked to death with a shovel. I still own you which means after the Confiscation Court, unless you become someone else's trael first, Aesolf will own you. Marnee and Kolfinna might end up dispossessed too. They're part of my household. Outlaws can't own or dispose of property, so this has to be done before the verdict."

"But, you can't, ..." she began.

"How many times have I warned you of what you were courting, with your contempt for the law?" he said. "Well here it is, and if this goes wrong I'll die a lot easier than you would at that barbarian's hands. He'll take hours, maybe days, probably thumb out your eyes first."

He thrust the quill out toward Olaf, commanding him to sign the document.

"That's no good." Olaf said. "He'll just take her from my widow."

"The hell you will." Jarnulf roared at him.

"The hell I won't." Olaf said.

The penalty for assisting an Outlaw, from the moment his Outlawry began, was to share it with him.

Jarnulf daggered his gaze in turn into the eyes of each of his friends surrounding him, as he offered the quill to each in turn, and each declined, signaling their intent to take up arms and Outlawry with him. Gudrod alone hung back from them at the hearth. Shame's agony, the false stain of cowardice, writhed upon his features. Then he pushed between Ref and Kjartan and took the quill to sign as Mirha's owner.

"How can you do this?" Andar said.

"Gudrod's life belongs to his unborn son and Kolfinna. He's man enough to know it." Ref said.

Gudrod, like a whipped dog, slunk out into the night.

"Now I know she has chosen the right husband." Jarnulf said.

He rose and followed Gudrod.

"What have we done, for God to visit this upon us?" Gudrod said.

"He hasn't visited anything on us, yet." Jarnulf said. "But I need something far worse from you. There's nowhere to send Mirha. Not even off to my mother or Olaf's father. They'd have to send her right back. Don't ask. I can't tell you why."

"You are worried, aren't you?" Gudrod said.

"Yes," Jarnulf said. "and if, just don't ever go nosing into it, afterwards."

"If it comes to that," Gudrod said. "Aesolf will never lay hands on her."

Gudrod hefted his axe ever so slightly, and bowing his head, with his free hand, he tapped the back of his head, lightly.

"She'll never know. It will be quick." he whispered.

"I really do love her, you know." Jarnulf said.

"Not this," Gudrod said. "please not this."

Within Eirika's steading Tore leaned against her mantle and with his boot fudged a log up higher onto her fire, complaining that as usual, it was too damn dark in here. Then he reseated himself across from her.

"Just how much does he actually know?" Tore said.

"I wouldn't know." Eirika said, affecting a languorous vacuity, and raising her cup.

"You're a consummate, conniving liar, woman, a true lawyer." Tore said.

"And what makes you so certain?" she said.

His eyes flashed the gray of a gale wracked, winter sea.

"You're hiding behind your cup again." he said, soft and deadly. "Table it and tell me the truth."

She set it down and hardened her chin, but the eagle in her eyes blenched.

"Damnit, why can't you just have a little faith in people, for once?" she said.

"Because it's my job to keep them all alive," he said. "by never trusting anyone completely."

"And have you shared your philosophy with Maeve?" Eirika said. "I'm certain she'd sleep better at night, knowing how much safer she is because her husband doesn't trust anyone."

"Stick to the point." Tore growled. He wasn't stumbling into that.

"What does he know, and how much of it's your doing?" he said.

"Nothing any damn fool," she said. "hasn't already figured out for themselves. Perhaps if you'd trusted all of this to Jarnulf and the others they'd all still be alive."

He slammed her door, cursing the day he'd let them elect him Chieftain and headed home.

Maeve offered him pointed words. She'd kept nightmeal waiting. He'd grumbled and picked his way through half of it when three knocks at his door served up what he'd been scrabbling tooth and nail for, a chance to yell at someone, anyone. Even that was denied him initially as Hrafn patriarch Aesolf, who'd been young crewman, and then fo'c'sulman Tore's own Skipper, entered with Dalla at his heels. Now what? Aesolf loathed Dalla. That shit head had deflowered Aesolf's shit disturbing granddaughter Sigrid, the dead one.

"Chieftain Tore Bjorn Styrkarson," Aesolf croaked. "I summon you to empanel a Kvidur of twelve to Outlaw Jarnulf Ulfson for his secret murder of my granddaughter."

Dalla, behind Aesolf's shoulder, grinned a 'don't worry, we've got it covered' self-assurance back at Tore's seeming stupefaction. Tore was indeed stupefied, wondering how he'd explain it after axing them both on the spot. The blistered dunce must have read his mind, Tore thought, as Dalla reeled out the names of his crew standing outside as witnesses to their summonsing.

"My granddaughter was no common trollop," Aesolf said. "to lie murdered in her grave, unavenged."

"I'll say." Tore said. "It takes real talent to keep two hundred people so pissed off that they all want to kill you."

"I'll have my rights," Aesolf snarled. "the blood of her butcher, at Althing if you force me to it."

"He slandered my betrothed and threatened her with even worse." Dalla said."

"That ship you burned," Tore said. "belonged to Eirika. How would you like to pay her for its replacement?"

Dalla looked as if he'd just swallowed a boiled egg, whole.

"I thought not." Tore said. He turned on Aesolf. Dalla 'Brrrated' out another of Mordach's eye watering methane gaggers.

"If I promise you justice," Tore said. "the man you accuse prosecuted, will you be satisfied, and not go causing us all kinds of hell blabbing about it at Althing?"

"The blood of my child's murderer will keep all Hellulandia from hearing many things about Hrafnstadir." Aesolf said.

"Then we will settle this here, at a Husthing." Tore said. "You two curdle my guts. If only I could just go sit in the outhouse and squirt you out. Get out of my steading."

As his door closed behind Aesolf, Tore sat back down to dinner and glared off into space. Then with an insane roar he hurled his plate into the flames in his hearth, grabbed his bow, quiver, cloak, and axe, and stomped out into the night lustily cursing whatever insane, idiot god had dumped this damn job on him. It was no wonder neither Starri nor Adam wanted it. They had surely been more cunning than himself all along.

CLXXI Hoskuld's Finest Mead

Hoskuld's finest mead had long since cascaded into the pit of Jarnulf's outhouse. Seven hunters lolled at his table with speech slurring and eyes crossing as Ref weaved unsteadily toward them from the bed closet, clutching two more jugs. Seven empties stood picket duty on the floor surrounding the table.

Upon the heels of Dalla's departure Jarnulf's hunters had plotted his defense in every particular, bolting shut all doors which might open onto a conviction. After crafting a mountain of insults to bury Dalla under in court, they'd soared beyond to Jarnulf's vengeance, designing to squeeze Leif into admitting that Dalla had sent him to attack Mirha.

Outside, the horses nickered and whinnied, and eight hunters staggered toward their weapons atop Jarnulf's bed.

Tore's second sight, discerning what lurked within, stopped him short thirty feet from the porch before loudly announcing himself.

Da'hal had been grumbling through the past week over Eirika's depriving him of wrenching Nacarr limb from limb. Two full candles worth of gulping Jarnulf's liquor had Dalla, Nacarr, and Saladin indistinguishable in Da'hal Couer de Lion's bottomless mead vat of a mind. In full, Norman War Lord mode he lurched unsteadily to Jarnulf's bow racks, and hurled bows at his mates while bellowing about filthy Saracens and their damned tricks. Ref weaved after him, tripped on the platform edge, caught himself on a roof pillar and swung in a half circle round it to the floor.

"Deus Volt." (God wills it.) Ref laughed to Jarnulf's floor. Olaf ordered Da'hal to stand down, and Ref to stand up. If it was a trick, they wouldn't announce themselves. They'd merely burn Jarnulf's steading. And it had sounded like Tore.

Jarnulf weaved doorward grinning, but paused nevertheless to snatch up Ulf's crossbow from his bed. Tore filled the doorway, casting his wary, condescending gaze through the drunks. Then he stood his axe and bow against Jarnulf's table.

Jarnulf demanded someone fetch Chieftain Tore a clean cup. Five were already waiting, three of which were overflowing onto the table, and still being filled. Mirha, sober and greatly put out over this evening's every event, reached him first with her full cup. Tore appeared as mightily angered as the hunters were.

"Youth." he grumbled. "I wish I could still handle the hangovers you'll have tomorrow."

Tore filled them in on Aesolf and Dalla's ruination of his dinner. Chieftain Tore used the word asshole repeatedly, garnering roaring cheers from the sots.

"Jarnulf," Tore summed up. "Tell me you didn't shoot her, or at least that no one saw you."

Jarnulf assented vehemently. He still had no idea who had killed Sigrid. Tore looked relieved, knowing his Marshal was lying to him. Tore continued.

"If you will agree to my rules we can completely dispense with this farce at a Husthing. Dalla will be greatly disgraced, and your standing will be greatly increased. Take as long as you need to prepare your defense."

The hunters raucously assured their Chieftain that it was in the bag. They had already doomed Dalla to become Hrafnstadir's laughingstock. Tore cast his deprecatory gaze again through the weaving, cross eyed revelers.

"Wait a couple of days, and then come tell me again." he said.

"That might not be wise, Chieftain Tore," Olaf said. "If we give Dalla time to stumble about, he might stub his toe on certain rocks, rocks I've already turned over."

Tore inhaled deeply through his nose, before thumb nailing the lip of his empty cup, and then staring up from its depths into Olaf's bland smile.

"I can see you're set on having your way." Tore said.

The others were too drunk but Olaf caught the flash of black lightning deep behind Tore's eyes. Still, Tore talked them into putting it off for a week before he departed grumbling to himself that they might be sober by then.

Da'hal, and Olaf who was holding him upright, staggered about on Jarnulf's porch. Stigandi, tied to the left porch beam, strained at his bridle toward Da'hal. Olaf took Da'hal's axe from him, untied the horse, and helped the huge smith up into the saddle. Da'hal slobbered kisses down between Stigandi's ears. The stallion cooed back at him like a dove.

"He seems to like you more than me." Olaf said. "He's yours."

To Jarnulf there seemed more than a trace of bitterness in it. Da'hal protested. He could not accept such a gift. There was only one such prize in all creation. Olaf's friendship meant far more to him than Stigandi.

"He's no damn use to me now with his loyalties split." Olaf said.

Olaf knew, though Da'hal would never openly speak of his grief. Still, any horse was small compensation, and distraction.

Olaf tried to deliver Da'hal to his steading, but Da'hal fought him, insisting he'd sleep in the barn with Stigandi. Daybreak and Kjartan however found Da'hal passed out in the graveyard sprawled atop Hlif's cairn. Luckily Da'hal was still too drunk to put up much fight as Kjartan coaxed him home.

Jarnulf invested the following week's evenings with Aud, trying to relieve her misplaced guilt.

Kjartan and Andar borrowed Bror and Galinn's horses. They were off to go bury their own. Da'hal warned them they'd get their deaths of it. Those animals had been dead two weeks, but the twins would not be dissuaded.

CLXXII Cats And Rats

Up in the rafters of the showiest steading in Hrafnstadir, a fat old skoggkatt claw raked his beam while eying intently a smarmy looking rat at the beam's far end who was eying him, and the hams and cheeses hanging beneath them, back.

The beam beyond the rat dead ended at the juncture of roof and wall. The cat settled in, waiting. His advancing gut and years had severely limited his options. Both Starri and Rakel fed him all too often.

Thirty feet below, Starri, Tore, and Adam sat round a long and massy table of dark walnut. The table's candle surrounded center piece was that demon board game from the Holy Land, Skak Tafl.

The neck of an emerald jug beckoned to Tore, and he settled his black bishop back onto its square without committing to his move, before reaching over it to retrieve the jug.

"Well," Tore sighed. "there's that leaky old knarr they left at Morrow's village. It'll have to do, for him."

Knarrs were cargo ships, half the length of the Hrafn ships, and with broader beams and higher rails. A fleet of knarrs would've been far more practical for sailing timber to Greenland, but against the King's ships they'd have been a fleet of coffins.

"Jesus." Starri grunted up to his cat. "Get off your lazy ass and get that bastard."

He'd named the cat expressly to have a poke at Hroald, who'd naturally been fourteen shades of outraged over it.

"We'll see how our cousins' younger sons fight." Tore said. "The ones worth keeping will have their heads and silver for a start when it's over. Those the Skraelings don't kill."

"You sure you want to wet nurse that many of them, all from Hellulandia?" Adam said.

Hellulandia hadn't seen a Skraeling in three generations.

"Of course not." Tore said. "Thidrandri's got three more ships to put them in than we do, and thirty times more experience fighting Skraelings. We've got too many women and more land than we know what to do with. If we don't put someone on both of them yesterday, someone else will. Skallabjarnar's Thingmen are already calling themselves Hrafns anyway."

"That'll make Thidrandri's day." Adam said.

"That's his goddamn problem." Tore said. Three knocks sounded at Starri's door and Starri got up to open it. In the drizzling mist stood Badger. His right hand clutched tight a tiny leather pouch closed with a rawhide thong.

"Tore here?" he said, unable to see beyond Starri filling the doorway.

"Get in here." Starri said, dragging Badger half off his feet and inside. "I just got this barn warmed up."

Badger shot a quick glance around the room and caught his breath.

The fireplace twenty feet back along the right wall was big enough to lie down in. Huge tapestries covering four fifths of the walls blazed with blinding colors as hunters and beasts of the chase alternated with haloed Saints. Between them hung swords mirror polished, inlaid with swirling gilt work.

Miniatures of saints made of marble or costly woods alternated with others of naked women on pedestals and corner tables. There wasn't a floor plank visible. The whole was carpeted with thick, woven rugs almost as fancy as the tapestries. From the door to the scroll worked table spread a runway of bearskins.

"Close your mouth and come sit." Starri said. Badger did as told and Starri retrieved another glass cup from his sideboard. Starri caught up a fresh emerald jug from beneath the table. He poured the cup full with a dark burgundy wine. As Badger lifted it to his lips Tore pointed his uplifted and still unplanted castle, like an admonitory finger, at him.

"Give it time to tell your tongue its tale." Tore said.

As the drink cleared Badger's lips and rioted on his tongue he knew it wasn't wine. This had to be what they served in Vallhol. It tasted like the glow of midmorning summer sun after a rainy night on a frozen deck in a wet, leather sleeping bag. Lingering there, it revealed ever more subtle complexities like a silvered dreamscape shifting moonlit under racing clouds. No, that wasn't it either. It was more the embrace of a squirming girl after a sweaty, hearth side ride on a winter eve. Starri seemed to be enjoying himself, watching.

"You didn't think I'd sell the real stuff at Mordach's did you?" he said.

Tore asked Badger his business.

"Got to settle accounts." Badger said, wondering how he could get a jug of this stuff. Starri's obsession with the best was a by word. A jug of this might help poor, bereaved Ingibjorg get unbereaved. He dumped his pouch's contents onto the table.

Tore shot it a glance and divided it before pushing half of it back.

"I said one part in ten, not two." Tore said.

"That is one in ten of a share." Badger said.

"And two in ten of a half, Leif's, half share." Tore said. That queasy feeling roiled in Badger's gut again, the one he'd got when Tore first demanded his one in ten, and again later when Karl told him the going rate was five."

"It's the least I could do." Badger said.

"No, it's not." Tore said, leaning forward into his palm and tugging down one lower eyelid with middle finger.

"Is there something you'd like to tell me? About some loaded dice?"

"Uhh, what dice?" Badger said.

Tore fixed him with a stare like he couldn't decide whether to eat him or slap him on the back.

"Tightlipped, aren't you?" Tore said, and let it hang for a profoundly uncomfortable moment. Badger's gut did half a dozen flip flops, and then Starri's throaty laugh shattered the ice forming in his boots. Starri, resting his clenched left fist on the table, leaned over it toward him. In his right was yet a third, identical green jug.

"Save it for a special night." Starri said. Badger took the jug promising favors yet to be named.

"Get out of here." Tore said.

Badger made for the door and Starri called him back.

"You going to let that go to waste?" he said, pointing at the cup. Badger snatched up the cup replying he'd sooner smash a stained glass window.

He closed the door behind him in the drizzle and savored another sip. That jug alone was worth a hundred times what he'd given Tore, not Starri. Starri was known to be generous to his friends, but usually after they'd done something for him.

Whatever those two had in mind, he knew he'd pay for the jug, and then some.

He checked his initial rush toward Mordach's and Ingibjorg. It was one thing to offer a girl a bribe but waving it under her nose in front of everyone was another. He headed home instead to squirrel it away, now more determined than ever.

CLXXIII Swimming To Norway

"And Eikinn's Thingmen?" Adam said.

"They installed Ivar Sigurdson." Tore said. "the day after Eirika cut the eagle in Nacarr. Kolgrim sent them his crew's proxy. It was unanimous. When Thidrandri left here, he went straight there to fill Ivar in."

"What are we going to do with your Logmadur?" Adam said. "She's going to fight us over this."

"Yes, she will." Tore sighed. "I'm going to miss my Marshal, he's been quite useful around here."

Starri, stone faced, plucked at his square chin's stubble in an equally stoney silence.

Tore loosed the lacings of his sleeveless jerkin, and from it withdrew a half sheet of bone hued parchment with a broken seal of red wax on it. The seal bore no insignia. He made to refill Starri's cup. Starri waved him off. Tore contradicted him with a tiny shake of his lowered head and raised brow, and brimmed the cup full before handing Starri the parchment. Inspiration seized him, and he committed his black castle to a square different from his original plan.

"Thidrandri left this with Eirika." Tore said. "He had it a week ago."

Starri spread the parchment out, and without looking at his own white queen, shoved it halfway across the board.

"It's not headed or signed, as usual." Starri said. "But this time it's not even in his own hand."

Tore pushed Starri's cup to the parchment's edge.

"You'll wish it was the burned stuff." Tore said.

Starri quickly scanned the note, his single blue orb growing wider and paler with each line.

'Your proposition intrigues me. Please consider any small assistance I may render merely a favor between friends.

We will speak further, and warmly, when I see you again, unless it cannot wait. Then by all means come visit, or at least send word.

And who knows? By then some insignificant, niggling little matter may have arisen, which you may wish to assist me with. And if you're really that low, I would be only too glad to lend you whatever you need to tide you over, as well.'

"Satan's arsehole." Starri groaned.

He snatched up his cup, drained it at a draught and seized the jug for another before shoving the parchment toward Adam.

"I could almost wish we had Nacarr and Morrow back. All nine of his Chieftains won't even say good morning to each other without checking with him first. I shudder to think what insignificant little matter he's hatched, and means to entangle us in."

"Indeed, we're in it now." Tore said, his brow furrowed like a section of freshly planted cabbages.

"Can't just tell Chieftain Skallabjarnar Red Axe that we've thought it over and changed our minds."

"I'd swim to Norway and back first." Starri said.

"Thidrandri said the same thing," Tore replied sourly. "except he was going one way."

Tore pinched up his remaining knight, and realizing he'd been had, dropped it, with an even more-sour sigh feet first onto the head of Starri's queen.

"God, I hate this game." he said. "Every shit pile I leap out of lands me in one that stinks even worse.

CLXXIV Starri's Best

Badger strutted out through Mordach's door into the night feeling bigger than Asgrim and randier than a rutting elk. Even the dung heaps behind the steadings had a clear and acrid smell to them in the night air. Since Jarnulf was getting married, there wasn't a chance Ingibjorg would ever take another look at him. It had taken an eternity of consoling and fawning. Dinner and that bottle from Odinn's own cellar. And then that heavenly little assemblage of curves and giggles and, ... . Now to hire Ref to cook a nightmeal and find a place to dump his steading guest for the night.

He opened his door and horror suffocated him. Slumped over his table before the fire was Caoimhe dressed only in one of his buckskin shirts. On the table before her sat a cup, and beyond that, his bottle, uncorked. He slammed the door. She leered up at him sideways.

The fire's gold gleamed on the wet drool decorating her chin. He glared blue murder back, torn between throttling, or just paddling her.

"Take my shirt off." he grunted.

She staggered up smiling cross eyed. Facing him she wriggled halfway out of the shirt and fell backwards onto the rug to lay sprawled akimbo with one dainty leg pointing up in the air at him. He yanked her back up as she asked the floor how her Bladgie was. He ripped his shirt off her and tossed it before quick marching her out onto the porch. He uncovered his water barrel and filled a bucket full.

Oblivious to all but her Badger's need to finally have her, she wrapped herself around him. He poured the bucket's icy contents over her head. She shrieked, lost her balance again and fell off the porch. He doused her with a second bucket, in the dirt, and then a third to clean her off before dragging her back inside.

He planted her hands on his table's edge. He fished out a towel and draped it over her neck. She started on her hair, cursing him between her chattering teeth, and landed back on her butt. He dragged her up onto the bench before pulling out the one across from her. He snatched his jug up to give it a shake. She was drunker than he'd thought. That was a gallon and there was only a third of it left. As she fumbled with the towel he fetched a pitcher of water, poured her a cup and forced it on her. She protested, it was too cold.

"Shiver, damn you." he said.

When he turned back from the hearth she was staring through him cross eyed and still. Her lips were blue. He toweled her off and dragged her stumbling round the room twice before sitting her on the hearth and vigorously rubbing her face, arms and back. If he didn't get her blood flowing quick, she might just die on him. It soon showed that sterner measures were needed.

He blanket wrapped her, snatched a long handled wooden spoon, and dragged her back outside. He pried her jaws open and pushed the spoon back into her mouth until she gagged on it and flailed away. He held her by the back of her neck as she swatted at him, chewing on the spoon. She doubled forward and puked out off the porch. He cleaned her off and hauled her back in. She stumbled off toward his bed, rather than her own mattress.

"Not yet." he said and began forcing water into her. He set the pitcher between them and then slammed a loaf of bread down beside it.

"I'll be peeing all night." she said as he pushed the forth cup at her.

"If you're really lucky." he growled, staring longingly at his raped jug. He poured out a cup of his irreplaceable wine and wet only his lips. His evening with Ingibjorg might be a loss, but he'd be damned if he'd let the rest of his wine go flat. At his third cup and her forth, she mumbled something about being hot and slipped her blanket off. She began rubbing herself, all over.

He was almost through with his drink before he realized he was staring. Dragging his jug with him, he dropped an empty bucket beside her mattress and headed back for his bed to put the last gasps of a beautiful dream out of his misery, telling himself that the little shit wasn't anywhere near that cute even when she was sober.

Ingibjorg probably hadn't ever tasted Starri's best anyway. Ref must have something squirreled away and Ingi'd never know the difference.

CLXXV Make Way

Bright was the hour between dawn and midmorning. Jarnulf and Mirha approached the church. Tiny steams from the church dragon wafted heavenward as the sun cooked off the morning's dew.

Jarnulf within his black linens was all blue white fury. The yellowed dragons at his belt looked anxious against his black, as he felt them straining up to their spirit sire on the roof pole. Mirha wore a dress of apple green linen and what jewelry Jarnulf had lavished on her. It amounted to a goodly sum. Over her new dress she wore her favorite, the shortened one of emerald and gold bandings that Hunter had her remodel. She was not common. She was the betrothed of the Marshal, a man of great standing, a hero, and she too was in a full, flat out furor at the blasphemy of this farce.

Da'hal stood waiting for them in the street, wearing his ruined, stained, battle buckskins. His hands were red. A bucket of fresh pig's blood sat the porch steps. Behind it, ranged against the wall beneath the roof, leaned a long hundred of swords, spears, and axes. Two dozen bows and quivers kept them company.

"I don't care what you all agreed on." Jarnulf said. "If they Outlaw me, ... ."

Da'hal waved his red hands back and forth between them to silence Jarnulf. Da'hal scrunched his bony, sunburned face into a scowl. He pointed up toward the dragon, high above them, which glared back seeming as furied at Dalla and Aesolf's brain fart as Da'hal himself was.

"It will look better painted red anyway." Da'hal said. "Tore has ordered everyone to attend, including you."

Jarnulf's mind backed like a restive horse.

"You're not here as Marshal." Da'hal said. "You have to leave your swords."

"Oh, why not?" Jarnulf groaned. "If this all goes to hell, ... " he continued, pulling sheathed swords from belt while relishing in his mind's eye the look on Dalla's face as he flew over the desk at him to thumb his eyes out. That was insane. Tore would not play him false.

They made for the door and his step faltered as Eirika's warning that night in Hroald's steading returned to him. There was a chance, a slim one that Tore might have figured he had to shut him up. Jarnulf wished he'd paid more attention to her snide, never ending lectures. At least he'd seen to it that Dalla was hot enough to spit rivets. Dalla would certainly take the bit between his teeth and gallop off into some procedural bear pit before it was over, voiding his suit.

Da'hal stopped to again bathe his hands in the bucket.

Within, beneath the owls above the door, were Olaf, Ref, Thorarin, Andar, and Kjartan, waiting for them. They too were all wearing their grease and gore stained buckskins with their hands drenched in pig's blood. Gasps of amaze and outrage rocked the church. Dalla turned to look and leapt to his feet yelling.

"I demand he be removed, now." Dalla shouted.

"Shut up." Tore bellowed. "You agreed to my rules. I have ordered the accused to be here so we won't be delayed by all this scurrying back and forth between his lawyer and himself."

Aesolf and Stienunn loudly echoed Dalla's complaint. Aesolf claimed that he had been tricked and had agreed to no such thing.

"Neither of you," Tore said. "have any voice before this Kvidur. You have assigned your case to Dalla Helgason. Be silent."

Jarnulf and Da'hal led the procession through the gloom toward the garish light from the stained glass. Their lockstep tread was stiff, and heavy with arrogance, voicelessly shouting their contempt. The floor boards thundered, many thought too heavily for the march of only seven.

A palpable chill swept up the aisle after them, pricking nape hairs. The sailors felt it simply as the hunter's open avowal of defiance, a clearing verdict, or war, but the women sensed the truth.

Jarnulf gazed about, looking in his memories for Bror and Hroald, and Ansvarr, Galinn and Gunnarr, and Brenn, and Hlif, Tjorni and Hlidareth. His boots felt loose, and his feet cold and clammy. He knew it would be a while before he stopped looking for them here, or at Mordach's, or his table, and around every corner, but he hoped it would be a very long time before he stopped looking for them. And at the nightmarish vulgarity of it all, a quiet, and dark something began seeping into, and fulminating within him.

The church was packed. Chieftain Tore wanted no second guessing afterward. They came dressed in their richest finery. The hunters red handed warning was missed by no one. If Jarnulf was Outlawed civil war would bite the verdict's heels.

On the aisle four rows back from the square sat a nineteen wintered brunette in a blue dress, turning anxiously toward their approach, biting back her tears and wringing her hands in her lap.

Kadlin was a different and starkly sober faced young woman. The blue dress Thorarin had given her for Christmas was very well scrubbed and freshly cared for. She stood and took him aside in passing. She begged him to come sit beside her. If he wouldn't let himself be talked out of this, please, just come and sit with her one last time, and she'd tell him, here in church, just how sorry she was about a lot of things.

Thorarin hugged her and told her she'd nothing to be sorry for. He asked her to place a single stone on his cairn, and then forget him.

Fo'c'sulman Hraerek turned with his gut soured to give the approaching hunters his cool, admiring appraisal, and he regretted greatly his kinship with Aesolf and its inexorable demand.

CLXXVI The Kvidur

At the far end of the church high behind the council desk, in a phantasmagoria of jumbled hues from the sun pierced southern windows, sat the Kvidur.

Jarnulf thought Tore had a hell of a nerve seating Starri and Adam. Their personal despite of him was well known. Hoskuld, Mordach, and Hroghar were there to their left. Testimony be damned, their votes were his. Most of the others were of Tore's own crew.

Nearest the south windows sat Skapti Thordson, in his mid forties, square jawed and taciturn with high bridged nose, dark brown eyes and a broad, low, unlined forehead. He was well dressed in scarlet linen, but seemed naked without his halberd. Skapti was a fair hand with any weapon but he preferred his ten foot halberd. Jarnulf thought Skapti's eyes seemed void of any remembrance of his own seduction of Isleif, Skapti's niece.

Next sat Vikar Alofson, a slender reddish blonde his own age with a penchant for knives in the dark. Vikar's sister Herbjorg had been very discreet, even after she called him a disgusting pervert and slapped him out of her bed.

To Vikar's right sat a man Jarnulf's own size and whipcord build. His jerkin was the hue of weathered bronze. His hair and beard were fiery red as Mirha's.

Ljot Konalson and Ulf had been close, being of an age and similar temperament, both returning smiles for insults, especially to drunks whom either could easily have bested. People often went to Ljot for his advice which he gave freely. He was considered a farseeing man, farseeing enough to vote acquittal no matter what harebrained crap Dalla dragged out.

Ljot was also glaringly ineligible to serve on this Kvidur. Ljot meant ugly. It was a name he'd earned, shortened, and wore proudly, from Gremja Ljot, which meant ugly to provoke.

To Ljot's right sat black haired and black garbed Hakon Half troll, a big man with arms and thighs that rippled like a plow horse pulling a harrow. Hakon was always cheerfully first when heavy work, like hauling a ship ashore, beckoned. He had a handsome and winning smile except when he parted his lips. Hakon owned too many teeth and they crowded each other growing sideways, scaring the crap out of strangers.

To Hakon's right sat a lean, brown bearded bruiser, Guthorm Frodeson, one of Starri's men, fidgeting with his fingernails.

Guthorm wore emerald linen and heavy gold and black enameled bracelets, like Aesolf. He was lean, quite sturdy and possessed plenty of vitality. With Guthorm there was never any telling. He'd smile and say goodnight and then take a man down from behind as he turned to leave. And there remained that embarrassing stunt Jarnulf had pulled seven years ago, breaking Guthorm's sword with his own. Guthorm's sister Arnfrid was not discreet like Skapti's.

Guthorm, like Ljot, was ineligible thank God.

Rounding out the Kvidur's dozen between Guthorm and Tore sat Vestmar Ofeigson in white, a sad eyed man who seemed all bones, with a veined, knife nose, a rabbit chin, and hollowed cheeks.

Vestmar looked like the corpse of a shop keep, but for his freakishly wide shoulders. He was a crack shot with the warbow. He was often called upon for sniping. He was also one of the few whom Bror hadn't needed to coach. In white he looked like the angel of death. Jarnulf breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Vestmar hadn't any female relatives.

Guthorm and Vestmar's gloom was counterbalanced by the two crossbow armed guards, an unheard of oddity at any Court, before either end of the desk, beneath Langlif's owls, and Jarnulf laughed quietly. Mirha tugged at his arm and said she didn't see anything funny at all about this. Jarnulf ordered her off to his defendant's bench on the left side of the aisle and did not wink at Karl with his bow beneath Skapti. Chieftain Tore addressed the church.

"Despite the prohibition against bearing weapons to Court, I'm certain there are at least fifty knives snuggled into boots, here. These two," he pointed to Karl and Asgrim, the second guard at the other end of the bench beneath Hroghar, "will shoot any man who draws one."

Asgrim, drooping his bow toward the floor, gazed off over the prosecutor's bench and the heads of Dalla and Aesolf behind it. Jarnulf knew what Asgrim was thinking, and if their eyes met they'd both break out laughing, reliving that bitter, snowy night when he and Asgrim, after three weeks of carving it, had hauled Leif's scorn pole into the street out in front here.

Jarnulf picked Marnee and Kolfinna out into the aisle and ordered both of them to silence.

Da'hal continued past him, storming like a siege catapult into the judging square, and demanding everyone vacate the first bench behind Jarnulf's.

"The fallen stand with us." Da'hal roared, gesticulating wildly. "Make way for them."

The eight of Tore's fighters seated there, all witnesses to Jarnulf's summonsing, departed silent with heads bowed, causing a great, visible commotion behind them as row after row rose and leapfrogged back one bench. Da'hal had prearranged it. The first skirmish in the war of intimidation and insults had been won. The crowd's cheering sympathies were unmistakably with Jarnulf's hunters, and the prosecution across the aisle had been slapped by the back of scorn's bitter hand.

Jarnulf took his Aunt's shoulders. Marnee was blanching white as Maeve's departed gander.

"They're going to kill you, you fool." she whined. Marnee was sober and an utter wreck. She had the shakes.

"Not unless you open your mouth." Jarnulf said.

"They'll have to believe us." Kolfinna said. "We'll make them."

"I put the food on your table, clothes on your back," he said and locked eyes with his aunt. "and the liquor in your jug. Do as I tell you."

Then he stomped off toward his lawyer's desk where, on the aisle now sat his lawyer, Olaf. Mirha sat at Olaf's side.

CLXXVII Win Or Lose You're Mine

Beneath the south windows on the raised platform at the witness seat were Kveldalf, Adis, cousin Astrid, and Aud. Kveldalf wore a pale blue dress with proper high neckline. A silver chain with a fist sized, cross of silver lay between her slender breasts. A fresh, ruby, bee string decorated her left brow. Adis wore purple, and a slather of her jeweler's inventory, all of it gold and precious stones as if every ounce counterbalanced the more any doubt of her testimony.

Astrid sat straight and rigid as a scorn pole, in her proper gown of unadorned purple. Her teal eyes were ringed with the white of lightning, and beaming thunder and derision across the square upon Dalla and Aesolf.

Aud wore a dress of plain, brown homespun, and was utterly unadorned but still she stole the show. Her rag picker's hair had been trimmed very short and neatly slicked back, not a strand out of place. She could have been any man's dream bride.

As Jarnulf reflected upon his hopes that she would become so yet, a commotion in hushed undertones swept up the aisle at his back and his Rakel paraded past, wearing a neck to toe gown of bridal white. The neck, tight cuffs below their puffed out sleeves, and hem, were banded in matching white broidery. A cross dangled between her breasts. It was smaller than Kveldalf's and of gold, plain and unjeweled. She stepped up to the bench. She hesitated a moment, scowling, before plunking down onto the only open spot on the bench, where she fidgeted bathed in a searing, harlot crimson from the stained glass above.

From the gloom behind the Council desk Tore glowered across to her, saying he was glad she could finally make it.

Across the square at the opposing platform were first Maeve in gown the hue of April sky, and then Eirika in purple as ever. Beside Eirika in their black funeral gowns were Ranveig and Stienunn. Both women were weighted down beneath every scrap of gold necklaces, rings and bracelets they owned. Jarnulf thought they looked like crows who'd just burgled a jeweler's booth. Beside them sat Gundfrieda in scarlet, and most oddly, damned little of it.

Dalla heaved himself erect and raised up a noisy stink that Anja had failed to appear. He and his witnesses had legally summonsed her, and if that didn't prove something, ... well.

"We'll have all the proof we need," Olaf told him. "that you're who you are before this is over."

Jarnulf took his seat beside Olaf, where Nacarr had sat. Before him atop the desk, in his mind's eye, were Galinn's boots, and Galinn, and his other friends, all obscenely mutilated, and dead.

Crowding onto the bench behind Dalla were his summonsing witnesses. Hring sat the aisle end mugging a self assurance he felt none of. If this turned into a balls up, with himself at the root of it, he was going down.

On the bench behind Hring's crowd, like so many scorn poles of pig iron, sat fo'c'sulman Hraerek, Sigrid's uncle, and seven more of her kin with arms folded and brows knitted. Dag Haemundson, Trand Sigrelfson, Bark Grjotgardson, Brynjulv Olvirson, and Gellir Gautson were among them. Evidence and testimony could go to the devil. Aesolf's idiot jabberings had already set them on blood vengeance.

On the aisle at the forth bench, behind them, bolt upright and aquiver for action, sat nineteen wintered Aslak Hraerekson who was a champion swimmer, and perennial winner at the winter ball games when the stream froze. Aslak had heard more than an endless earful about the Hero Andar from his lovely neighbor Thorelf whenever Thorelf wasn't fawning after the goddamn hero and clinging to his arm.

Hjortgren sat at Aslak's side smiling and chatting with him, and his guts aroil at the desperate terror of what he might do with the knife in his boot. Beyond Hjortgren sat Asbjorn whose shoulder it seemed, after Gundfrieda had sewed it up and poulticed it, would recover.

The remainder of Adam and Dalla's crews were spread, with their wives and families, among the women behind them, as were those of Tore and Starri's crews across the aisle behind Jarnulf.

Among Jarnulf's supporters on the aisle end of the third bench towered Valthjof Toreson, almost as tall as Hroghar and at least as heavy with muscle. As Asgrim had outshone his brother Valthjof in suicidal recklessness Asgrim had won the fo'c'sulman's honor over him, barely.

Next came Kalv Ketelson, Arne Snorrason, Gelli Eyjolfson, and a Swede named Ingemund Ingjaldson, who like Hroghar before he'd fled Rouen, had stumbled into a misunderstanding with the Templars. Ingemund however had not done the order a service, and the Templars viewed the five of their dead brothers as unforgivable.

Beside them sat the brothers Kjotvi, Kodran, and Kormak Kjarlisons, who owned a penchant for taking in strange pets and leading them about on leashes. It had cost Throttolf Einarson a surety of two silver Marks the night his mastiff shit on Mordach's floor to let the dog back in, but the Kjarlisons' bear, muzzled or not, had been barred from the start.

In Jarnulf's childhood their father took in an orphaned moose, and when it grew too large to be let into the steading at night it kept the whole town awake for weeks crying and howling on their porch.

Jarnulf missed that moose, even though it scared some of the women half to death, stumbling into it roaming the streets at night.

Across the aisle from Aslak Hraerekson, on the forth bench behind Jarnulf sat Badger with Caoimhe and her 'Oh God, just please let me die' hangover.

In the reseating commotion for the hunters in their ruined buckskins, Aslak rose, uncoiling languid from his bench, and Hjortgren's fingers chased his heart down into his boot.

"Win or lose," Aslak growled to Andar. "You're mine."

CLXXVIII A Mind Boggling Perversion

Andar's knuckles put off Hjortgren's boot knife dilemma by crashing Aslak heavily first across Hjortgren's knees, and then slumping him out flat at Hjortgren's feet. Badger leapt to drag Andar bodily behind him, and seat him on the bench with Badger seating himself quickly between Andar and the groggy, staggering Aslak.

Asbjorn went for his boot knife and Hjortgren wrapped his arm around Asbjorn's shoulders, squeezing Asbjorn's wound tight.

"Would you even have my sister to marry if it weren't for them?" Hjortgren said.

Asbjorn, grimacing as he pried Hjortgren's grip free, bitched that he'd promised Gundfrieda.

"Idiot." Hjortgren hissed. "Get her a puppy, and get her pregnant. She'll get over it, or this time you won't be worth sewing up."

Asbjorn quested a nod toward Hring and Dalla's backs before him, begging in a whisper 'but what about,'

"They set fire to their own bed," Hjortgren said. "let them entertain each other in it."

Badger had been most upset that his buckskins didn't match the hunter's. He had assured Da'hal that he and Karl and Asgrim would stand with them. It would be even odds, Aesolf's eleven against their own. Da'hal in turn had told Badger he needn't worry. His buckskins would match theirs before it was over, and they would all be Outlawed and kicked out of town for kicking Sigrid's kin right over the rainbow.

Tore stood.

"Marshal Jarnulf Ulfson Nacarrsbane." Tore droned.

"An action for secret murder is brought against you in the death of Sigrid Sigrelfsdottir of the house of Aesolf Bloodaxe, father of Sigrund Weaving axe, sire of Sigrelf Couragecup who sired Sigrid, daughter of Couragecup and Stienunn Longtooth. The action has been lawfully assigned to Sigdul Freystool Thorson by Aesolf Bloodaxe."

Dalla nodded his bald head gravely, puffing with pride at being heralded before all as a known ladies man and doughty warrior.

Thor's brother Frey brought peace and great joy to all men as a God of fertility. Such a God sized task required god sized equipment. Frey had it, and then some. To many in the church Dalla didn't just have it, Dalla was it.

Dalla had no lineage to boast. His mother Helga had never figured out who his father was. In such cases it was common for sons to append surnames claiming descent from the Thunderer, whose righteous arm and mighty hammer made light work of the enemies of mortal men, but any number of slanders might lurk in the subtext.

Thor had been soundly trounced in word games by both Odinn and Loki. Thor's father Odinn owned a universe sized, satyr like libido and in the most bizarre coupling ever chronicled, Odinn, unable to restrain himself, had jumped on Fjorgyn, Mother Earth, rocks, trees, and mud. Thor had been the issue of that mind boggling perversion.

CLXXIX You Didn't Have Any Trouble

"We will hear challenges to the Kvidur." Tore said. "We'll begin with your accuser."

Dalla stood and stumped stiffly through the square's jumbled rainbows up to the desk.

"Ljot Konalson," Dalla growled. "I dismiss you from this Kvidur on grounds of spiritual kinship. You were present at Ulfson's baptism."

"That is true, and lawful." Ljot said and excused himself to join the gallery.

Dalla then strode back to stand before Tore.

"And Chieftain Tore Bjorn Styrkarson, I dismiss you for the same reason." Dalla said.

"Your challenge is void." Tore said.

"As the Chieftain called upon to seat this panel I am required by law to be the twelfth member of it. I name Hnaef Manison to replace Ljot Konalson. Do you wish to challenge him?"

Dalla said that he did not and Hnaef, another fortyish member of Tore's crew, with broad shoulders, heavy with muscle, a low forehead, gray hair, a great hooked nose and a crow's oily black eyes, tromped loudly across the square, up onto the dais behind the bench, and seated himself.

Jarnulf smiled wanly up to Ljot in passing and told him he was sorry he'd lost his vote.

"You have lost nothing." Ljot said.

Jarnulf told Ljot that he could not afford to be his man in this. Ljot had a wife and two daughters to see to.

"What would my women think," Ljot said. "if I abandoned my godson to the wolves?"

Behind Dalla, square jawed, black bearded Hraerek, who wasn't quite as tall as Asgrim, but wasn't at all short on courage or arrogance, shook his clenched fist towards Ljot.

"Stay out of this." Hraerek growled.

"There isn't anything to stay out of, yet." Ljot returned. "And if I were you, I'd pray that nothing crops up."

For all of Ljot's quiet demeanor, in his green eyes roiled a hard won battlefield's worth of smoking red.

"If you're through." Tore said to Dalla.

Olaf wasted no time in approaching the bench. Guthorm's blue eyes fixed ferret like on Olaf's approach. Olaf daggered his bronzed middle finger up to Guthorm. Olaf thought he'd seen Guthorm's face on any number of foxes sneaking around hen houses.

"Guthorm Frodeson," Olaf said. "I dismiss you from this Kvidur on the grounds that you are the prosecutor's second cousin on his mother's side."

Upon conviction the Outlawed's property was forfeited through a confiscation court. That type of gain could easily buy a judge's vote. And then Olaf, unlike Dalla, correctly called by name upon four of Dalla's crew to corroborate his accusation. They stood and grudgingly admitted that it was true. Lying to a Kvidur would summons their own suits, and Lesser Outlawry.

"The law is the law." Guthorm said and departed.

Tore asked Olaf and Dalla if either objected to Hlodvir the Stout as Guthorm's replacement. They did not, and Hlodvir stomped forward, all two hundred and sixty pounds of him. Fat he was, but it was no disadvantage to him. Eight years ago in the fight with the Norwegians that cost Starri his eye, Hlodvir, with a broken sword, found himself hard pressed. With a Norwegian anvil weighing half as much as himself Hlodvir bashed in two men's skulls.

"If that's all." Tore said.

Olaf said that it was most definitely not all.

Olaf whipped right and passing up Vestmar and Tore, Olaf clapped his big, bony hands on the bench's lip above him before Starri and Adam.

"I dismiss Skipper Starri Rikr and Skipper Adam Paulson from this Kvidur on the grounds of their grievances with Marshal Jarnulf." Olaf said.

"And what might those grievances be?" Tore growled. "Would you mind filling me in?"

Olaf choked. Jarnulf's seductions of Starri's niece and Adam's daughter were indeed well known, but slapping Starri's and Adam's faces with it, in open court, would demand two follow up suits from them for wrongful intercourse. Each was a Lesser Outlawry conviction. Two Lesser Outlawries became Full Outlawry.

"I withdraw my challenge," Olaf said. "I was mistaken."

"Uh huh." Tore said.

Dalla and Aesolf found it amusing. They'd lost Guthorm but they still had Starri and Adam. Dalla stood, with the gravity of a bilge full of ballast stones in his face.

"I name names named," Dalla snarled, and reeled off all twenty. "to witness that I, Dalla Helgason, have summonsed Jarnulf Ulfson before a Kvidur of his neighbors to be Outlawed for four crimes. One. that Jarnulf Ulfson refused to convey the body of Sigrid, daughter of Sigrelf, to the church in a timely fashion, and I demand a lawful penalty of three marks. Two. That he did convey the prohibited body of Bror Borgarson, Skoggangsmadur, into our church and Three, that he did also bury the prohibited body of Bror Borgarson, Skoggangsmadur, in our church graveyard, and the lawful penalty for each offence, which I demand, is Lesser Outlawry. And Four, that he did commit the crime of Secret Murder upon the person of Sigrid Sigrelfsdottir. And the penalty for Secret Murder is Full Outlawry. Two Lesser Outlawrys demand Full Outlawry, and another Full Outlawry for Secret Murder. I, Dalla Helgason, demand Full Outlawry with no ring payment, as Ulfson, cannot spend two eternities outside the Law."

If Aesolf won his suit Jarnulf's Outlawry began at the church door, with Aesolf and Sigrid's kin in hot pursuit, just like Nacarr's had.

Eirika stood and wearily pronounced that Outlawry could not be imposed without the grace period.

"You didn't have any trouble with it," Tore said. "right here, with Nacarr."

"Sonofabitch." Rakel moaned. They'd set Jarnulf up.

Kveldalf whispered a confidence to her, and Rakel's face went whiter than her crimson lit gown.

CLXXX Who's Your Father?

"By Forseti's balls." Eirika cursed, startling even Tore. Forseti, 'the Chairman', was the old god of the law. Oaths sworn in his name were habitual with those hailed into court, as you could always be hailed back later for something else. Luck be damned you didn't beg Forseti's blessing and then piss in his beard by lying. He'd get even with you at some point.

"Do not, cross me on this." Eirika continued to Tore. "Or I promise you that I'll prosecute you myself, at Althing."

"And I promise you, you won't." Tore said. She gaped back shocked at Tore's threat, and then marched stiff necked to Jarnulf's desk. Da'hal, with his endless impieties, and her endless upbraidings, had formerly loved her less than even Jarnulf had. He towered up from the bench, grinning, to offer her a sweeping bow and his seat there.

"Olaf, assign me your case and stand aside." she said.

"Putting yourself between Chieftain Tore and justice is not wise," Olaf said. "and I will not stand aside."

"Damnit," she said. "If you don't win this, ... ."

"There will be much bloodshed and death." Olaf said. "And yours won't be part of it."

"You can't win this." she said.

"Neither can you." Olaf said.

Behind her Tore's voice boomed out.

"You're my lawyer, not his. Go sit down." he said.

"So now I get to see the real Olaf." she said. "You're not a fool, you're an idiot."

She marched instead to the Council desk and stood glaring up at Tore, directly in front of him. The acid in her eyes would have curdled an entire longship full of butter.

Those of Dalla's crew he had named stood, behind him, and told the Kvidur that Dalla had indeed summoned the accused thusly. Tore nodded and they sat down.

Olaf stood and informed the Kvidur that he, as Jarnulf's lawyer, would now put an end to Dalla's hurricane of farts. Dalla's guffaws boomed through the church's silence. The charges, and penalty demanded were no laughing matter, and Olaf, despite his amazing share of luck was unknown as an expert at anything, much less the law.

Olaf summonsed Badger and four more to witness that Dalla's summonsing of Jarnulf was indeed as it had been spoken before Jarnulf's door.

They stood, swore oaths, and confirmed. Olaf pounded his desk.

"Any prosecution of Sigrid's killing," Olaf said. "lies with Aesolf as the principle in the case. Helgason did not state that Aesolf lawfully assigned his prosecution to him. His second and third charges are also void as he demanded inappropriate, and unlawful penalties. Bearing prohibited bodies into church is a penalty of three Marks to the Court and another three to the Church, ... After, the Kvidur grants the accused their clearing verdict because he believed the body was entitled to church burial. The burial itself is also a fine of three Marks. It's only Outlawry if the accused refuses to remove the body at least a bowshot from the graveyard. His forth charge of secret murder is void as there are no witnesses to the killing unless he has bribed someone to lie and bring Outlawry down upon their own head."

Eirika pointed her slender, white, finger directly at Tore's nose. Her eyes still blazed with flaming naptha.

"Olaf Asmundarson is correct in every point of law." she said. "Helgason's summonses are all void."

Dalla gasped, and Aesolf named him an idiot.

"The law is the law." Olaf said. "I demand this Kvidur grant Jarnulf Ulfson his clearing verdict, now."

"I'm overruling your challenges." Tore said.

Pandemonium erupted in the church. Muscled men, dark tanned and bearded blonde, brown, and red, and cleft with white sword and axe scars gained their feet as one, a wave, their outrage crashing through the church's rafters and rattling its leaded windows. Tore bellowed them back to silence.

"Because if I don't," he said, pointing at Aesolf. "this one will have someone else summon his case correctly. It will only delay it."

Jarnulf's supporters, including most of Tore's own crew, berated their Chieftain with hoots and catcalls. Olaf stalked with clenched fists to the far side of the desk where Dalla sat. Olaf slammed his fists down atop it and leaned forward almost nose to nose in Dalla's face.

"Who's your father?" Olaf said.

Dalla swung at him. Olaf blocked it, and smote Dalla's jaw a punishing right cross, staggering Dalla sideways into Aesolf seated beside him.

"Bastard," Olaf shouted. "I command you depart this Court. You have lain outside the law since the whore dropped you."

"I'll use you like the bitch you are." Dalla roared back, scrambling over the desk to get at Olaf.

Half of each sides' supporters swarmed into the aisle to assault each other as the remainder sought to separate them.

"I warned you." Eirika yelled at Tore over the din. "The law prohibits anyone from bringing more than ten supporters to Court."

"Shut up." Tore yelled at her.

Half of Dalla's crew, most of Tore's and the remaining hunters raced toward Dalla and Olaf as the pair had at it with fists and such blasphemies as the church had never before witnessed. Fortunately, Olaf's supporters outnumbered Dalla's, and they separated the two. Tore issued his ruling.

"The second blow paid the first." he said. "There will be no action for assault from any of you."

Dalla demanded Olaf be Outlawed for such brazen slander.

"Truth is not slander." Tore said.

Most of the Kvidur were now on their feet, and staring angrily dumbstruck at Tore. Calling another man a bitch, whore, or brood mare, especially in Court, was worth full compensation and Full Outlawry on the spot, to say nothing of the caller's very life the instant they were out of Court.

"You're right." Olaf said. "Eject that bastard, and issue Jarnulf his clearing verdict."

"You two," Tore said. "both agreed to my rules. We will not waste another breath on any more of these quibblings. This will be resolved here and now. It will not go on to Althing."

Eirika warned Tore that he was already over the edge should the Law Council at Althing learn of his flagrant violations. They would forcibly depose him.

"Damn the Law." Tore bellowed at her. "This is about justice."

Da'hal, reseated beside Mirha, thought that a great deal more than they should have to put up with. He again stood.

"Justice my ass." he bellowed at Tore, and grabbing up the hundred pound desk, he headed with it, above his head, toward Dalla.

CLXXXI May A Curse Lite

Eirika shouted him out of it. Jarnulf hadn't been Outlawed yet, but Da'hal surely would be if he used the desk as a weapon in Court.

Da'hal slammed it back down, pointing at Dalla.

"I demand this moron be Outlawed for insulting all of us with his asinine, shit pile of a summons." he thundered.

"You hazard your life slandering me, Jotun." Dalla yelled at him.

"I hazard nothing," Da'hal roared back. "but saving Rakel the disgrace of marrying a known idiot."

Tore snatched up one of the ravens atop his desk and gaveled it to pieces.

"The penalty for Assembly Balking any Court is Lesser Outlawry." Tore said.

Da'hal ignored him, and continued goading Dalla with his blackest and vilest scorn. Hroghar rose and strode from behind the Council desk toward his son. He appeared so hot it seemed his orange beard might explode into flames.

"Get out if you can't be still. Go." Hroghar said.

"By Dunstan's, ... ." Da'hal roared, and choked in mid curse, startling even Eirika.

Da'hal had never yet profaned Dunstan, who had once furiously nailed undersize shoes onto the Devil's hooves and sent him off howling. He was the patron Saint of blacksmiths and musicians.

"And may a curse light on he who hesitates." Hroghar said.

A few in the gallery thought it strange, coming from Hroghar. He was not given to such prosody when sober, and while vaguely familiar, his phrase had been awkwardly put.

Da'hal shut his mouth, and beamed his wolfish smile up to Kveldalf at her witness bench, for an eternity long moment. There wasn't any need for it. She knew what was expected of her. She prayed he'd forgive her. Her trunks were packed, and waiting to follow him.

Da'hal turned on heel and stomped heavily back down the aisle toward the door, muttering vile curses by the private parts of various Saints. He paused at the door for a desultory sneer back, and for once it wasn't the wolf that threatened in his eyes, but the owls above the door, and their promises of unblinking night. His father had muscled himself back down onto the bench immediately to Starri's left.

Sigrid's kin would rise as one just before the verdict was spoken. They would make for the door, and their weapons beyond it to prevent Jarnulf from reaching his first.

If Starri made himself part of Jarnulf's Outlawry, he would never rise from that bench again. Hroghar would break his neck.

Throttolf Einarson, six benches behind Olaf and Jarnulf, swallowed his pride. Da'hal was right. This was exceeding unjust and beyond forbearing, even if there had been bad blood between himself and Olaf from the start.

Throttolf strode boldly to Jarnulf's side at the accused's desk.

Olaf regarded him most curiously, his eyes filling with his memory of the blood streaming from Throttolf's startled nose that night, and Throttolf, who'd been unconscious when it happened, imagining Olaf lying on his side, in the street, chewing the ear off of his beloved mastiff.

Tore bellowed at Throttolf to sit his ass back down. Throttolf ignored his Chieftain, turning to glare green murder across the aisle at Hraerek. Throttolf spit before Hraerek's boots, before turning round to extend his hand to Olaf.

"You have my support." Throttolf roared to him. "Even if everyone else's balls are too frozen to the bench to rip them free and stand up."

"I knew we'd be friends." Olaf laughed, extending his hand.

"In this world or hell." Throttolf said, accepting Olaf's proffer, over Jarnulf's astonished head. Throttolf retreated to the forth bench back, and muscled himself down between Caoimhe and Andar.

Andar sneered that he didn't need Throttolf to protect him from those vermin across the aisle. Throttolf, who was a bit bigger than Andar, laughed.

"Beginner's luck." Throttolf said, winking at Andar, and then clasped Andar's hand to paint his with the pig's blood on Andar's.

Jarnulf shut his eyes striving to recall those unearthly hues he had visited at the battle, those aurorial hues in the heavens of alien and infinite brilliance, the fires of Vallhol, as his men were dying beneath those fires. His strivings were in vain but he might see them again, soon. In the face of this it was easy to see how men could revel in eternal slaughter, in the hope that it might never end, here, or in Vallhol. Either place, it didn't matter. He bitterly missed his dragons, outside on the porch seething in their own rage where Tore's order had Outlawed them.

And Da'hal's laughter, God, it had been glorious. That too he might hear again in all its chilling majesty. And together they might rise to those eternal fires in the heavens, or those of hell, it didn't matter.

He and his brother, and his friends, in their towering, eternally unforgiving rage would master Hel and collar the bitch. And Dalla and that senile fool Aesolf would writhe screaming at each drip of venom from the serpents of his Hall, Hel's hall, burning the flesh from their souls.

And somehow, in that confused nether time beyond the grave, they would undo this and the fallen would not have fallen, and they would march proudly back up to the land of the living.

Outside, leaning against the building, Da'hal wolf snarled his guttural worst, fondling his sword, and axe.

Eighty years earlier King Richard the Lion Heart had cried hot tears watching Jerusalem slip through his fingers. His Kingdom on both sides of the Aenglish channel was being stolen by his brother, Prince John, and Phillip Augustus, King of the Franks. Da'hal could not even imagine Richard's agony. In the broiling heat his army could not besiege Jerusalem for even a week. The infidels had poisoned every well for miles. The fight was done, the prize forfeit. Eleven of every twelve who had come with Richard to the Holy Land were dead. Eighty knights and four hundred infantry remained to him.

They were in Acre preparing to depart with a large fleet of Genovese and Pisan merchants when news came that Jaffa was under siege and falling. Richard ordered course for Jaffa in such haste that he bounded aboard ship bootless.

They arrived to find a sea of blood mad Saracens everywhere. The cause was hopeless. They watched, and from one of the city's towers a figure plummeted from an incredible height. The man survived and swam out to Richard's ship, which flew the royal banner. Infidels had taken all but the citadel where the surviving Christians had massed. Richard's men beseeched him to sail on. They could do nothing for those wretched souls who hadn't already been butchered.

"Please God then," he bellowed. "by whose guidance we have come, we will die with our brave brothers in arms. And may a curse light on he who hesitates."

Richard ordered his ships run aground into the Saracen horde. And then he leaped first over the side, with axe, into the surf. The odds were indeed impossible, fifty, perhaps a hundred to one. Richard smote so many, so furiously, that the haft of his axe shattered and then he killed many more with only his mailed arms and fists. Two thousand sailors and merchants were so emboldened by Richard's terrible courage that they joined the battle. Richard then relieved Jaffa's Templars and led them on an horrific rampage through the streets. They relieved the citadel's defenders. Saladin's horde fled from them, obsessed utterly with their terror of that single man.

Da'hal grinned down to porch floor. His father might be wanting his own axe in a hurry. Da'hal darted a glance about for it and chuckled again. It, and his father's sword, were right behind him, a foot from the door. A small boy's anxious voice, at his ribs, called him down out of his musings.

"I knew you would not desert Chieftain Jarnulf." Arnor said. "They cannot do this. Can they?"

"They'll wish to God they hadn't." Da'hal mumbled.

Arnor glanced up at the huge, fearsome weapons in Da'hal's iron, smith hands, his heavy, ice blue axe and sword. Arnor had seen them before but the lions, gold graven into the axe looked particularly hungry today, here, at the door of the church. Two crouched rampant on each of its faces. A forest of bright file scars glinted along both of his carrion makers' edges. Parchment dropped against either would halve itself. Arnor smiled broadly, and dashed around the huge brute. Arnor snatched up the biggest of the swords.

"I stand with you." Arnor declaimed.

Da'hal was struck dumb for a moment.

Then the wolf stole back into his black stubbled grin.

"Your father must be so proud of you." Da'hal said. "But here's what you must do instead, to help Chieftain Jarnulf."

When Arnor had finished he returned still bearing his chosen sword. Da'hal forbid him.

"Your courage is undoubted." Da'hal said. "But we will all be Outlawed. Who will take care of your mother?"

Arnor's distress at his newest dilemma writhed across his young features. He leaned the sword back against the wall, hanging his head, and slumping his young shoulders forward in despair.

"My father always said it is best to face your fears, no matter how dark, and dispel them." Arnor said. "I will hear the verdict. May victory luck be yours, Da'hal. If not, I will take vengeance for you someday."

He made for the church door, wiping at his eyes.

"God grant me such sons as you." Da'hal said, knowing it impossible to dissuade Arnor.

Da'hal snatched up a second sword, one in its sheath, on a belt. He looped the belt over his shoulder and across his chest. This lunacy would not claim Gunnarr's boy, ever. Many things were about to be destroyed, heads, arms, legs, swords and maybe axes. Unlike Richard he was not going to run out of tools before the work was finished.

CLXXXII I Wouldn't Get Too Close

Dalla left off his ginger scratchings through his new beard, leaned forward on his desk, and pulled himself up to balance unsteadily on his good leg. He hooked his thumbs into his vest's armpits and shot his shoulders back. The burns healing beneath his beard made shaving, which Rakel insisted on, impossible. His new beard was longer than his hair. Rakel had sheared away his burnt strands and kept evening what remained almost to his scalp.

He swept his sneer, starting with Rakel, left to right about the square, through the Kvidur and on to the right witness bench, readying a wink to Gundfrieda. His wink faltered.

Most of Gundfrieda's twin white mountains were shockingly displayed almost down to their rosy tips. She looked as though she couldn't wait for the wedding and had been snared from Asbjorn's bed closet on the very verge of her unmaidening.

"Esteemed Kvidur," Dalla began, unable to tear his gaze from Gundfrieda's treasures. "After Ulfson's trael assaulted Rakel, he broke into her bed closet and promised he'd stick a sword up her, ..."

Dalla choked, skewered on the daggers in Eirika's eyes.

From three benches behind Jarnulf. Throttolf Einarson bellowed his insights out to the Kvidur.

"Show me a dog that won't snarl at another making for his meat." Throttolf yelled.

Starri told Throttolf that if he heard another word about dogs or meat Throttolf would regret it. Rakel only grimaced. She'd been called worse. Starri demanded to know what started the fight, this time.

"The trael spoke a most vile verse," Dalla said, now grinning down at his desk. "slandering my betrothed, before at least forty witnesses." Dalla recited Mirha's verse, and Rakel flushed red as a blooded sword.

Mirha started an embarrassed giggle and Jarnulf pinched her leg. She let go a strangled eow and fell quiet.

"I, Dalla Helgason," Dalla said. "name Asbjorn Asgeirson, Hring Eyvindson, Hjortgren Bjorgilson, Thorfinn Cleft Lip, and Ari Halfdane, to witness that I, Dalla Helgason, summon Maeve Revdottir to attest to the trael's criminal slander and assault of Rakel Langleifdottir."

Maeve stepped down in her blue dress of fine linen with hem, cuffs and bodice of very ornate gold stitchings. She wore a necklace of gold and emeralds. Many thought she looked uneasy in her unaccustomed finery. Dalla asked her to corroborate the trael's verse speaking. Maeve shot him one of Eirika's favorite up from under looks.

"Rumor has it," Maeve said. "that there was some versifying, between some girls."

Dalla pursed his lips tight, laid a thumb on his desk and drum rolled his fingertips.

"You were right there," he said from between clenched teeth. "not ten feet from the trael when she slandered Rakel from across the stream."

"I can't imagine," Maeve said. "what could have provoked Mirha into speaking slanderous verse, unless there's more to this than I seem to recall."

Dalla vented a disgusted groan and rolled his eyes, and admitted that Rakel had poked some innocent little fun at the trael's owner, first. Maeve said she didn't recall that either, but she might be able to help him out if he could just remind her just how innocent that little fun had been. Dalla recited Rakel's verse.

Dames, find Ulf's pup strange,

Fleeing their disputes, owl's

Bane would glory, obtain

Save stroke, of antlered shame.

"Does that help?" he said.

"Die into Hel." Maeve said. "I'll have no part in sharing your Outlawry for this. If you were half the expert you think you are, you'd know that even repeating or acknowledging such verse, anywhere, even here in Court, is worth full compensation to the victims, or your life from the victims, of such verses."

Eirika leapt to her feet to inform the Kvidur that Maeve had nailed the coffin lid shut on Dalla with her correct statement of the law. Tore angrily waved her to silence.

Up behind the council desk Starri leaned forward into his hand, and closed his eye, groaning as if he'd found a pebble in his bread the hard way. Dalla asked Maeve why she and Astrid had allowed the little snake to so criminally assault Rakel after knocking her down. They'd even prevented Sigrid from stopping it.

"Because Rakel slandered Jarnulf first," Maeve said. "and then struck Mirha first. She'd forfeited her immunity twice over. With all the enemies Jarnulf's made killing Nacarr's poachers, whoever shot Sigrid must have been one of their kin, who'd come looking to kill Jarnulf. But after Mirha got away from him, he probably chased her right up to the door, he lost his nerve."

"I find it hard to believe," Dalla said.

Eirika swooped in on him and craned forward into his face with her right arm back and high as if she were about to slap him.

"Your beliefs are neither facts nor relevant." she said. "If you're tacking off on some time wasting fishing trip, we'll never get through this."

Jarnulf found her tone sharper even than his swords.

Dalla protested that he hadn't started yet. Eirika reminded him of the penalty for Assembly Balking. Dalla asked her why he'd balk his own case. Tore seconded Eirika, asking Dalla why, indeed? Dalla excused Maeve, and named his names and summonsed Ranveig.

Maeve strode with queenly dignity down the aisle to join her neighbors Marnee and Kolfinna.

Ranveig stood in her funeral reeds and marched out through the jumbled lights. She stopped before Dalla's desk, her four necklaces tinkling faintly as they swayed to a halt. The family resemblance to her son Hjortgren was glaring, the slight droop to the eyelids, the longish nose and thin chin. But the woman's eyes were pits of burning brimstone. Dalla bowed with his hands extended, palms up, to Ranveig. The floor was her's.

"We were looking at the killer's shoe prints around Sigrid's blood," Ranveig said, snapping out an accusatory finger at Jarnulf. "when his friend Ref ran us all off with some bald faced lie about leaving them to figure it out."

Dalla wanted to hear about what they figured out.

"Nothing they shared with any of us." Ranveig said. "They just wiped out the tracks that he left behind."

Up behind the Council desk Hakon Half Troll yawned without covering his wrecking yard full of teeth. The rest of the Kvidur didn't seem any more interested than Hakon. Ranveig's enduring hatred of Jarnulf for killing her son Ketil was well known. Dalla dismissed her.

Behind Jarnulf, Andar offered Dalla his shouted scorn.

"I'd like to watch you match prints after twenty more have trampled all over them." he said.

Dalla ignored Andar, and again named his names and summonsed Stienunn. She stood, looking as shattered and atremble as she had at the shipshed, and then Sigrid's grave. Her gait was halting and her graying head, and shoulders, slumped as she approached Dalla's desk.

Even despite the fact that she wanted him dead, Jarnulf might have felt for her, but at her despicable treatment of Aud, he curled back his top lip, and spit. Dalla beckoned Stienunn to begin with the same, smirking show he'd offered Ranveig.

"That son of a bitch," Stienunn said. "looked like a dog with the chicken in its mouth when he slunk up to us at the shipshed, and my daughter lying murdered by him, inside. Not only did he have her knife with him, but he swiped her necklace too, one with an emerald in it. He's so stupid he left it hanging from his pocket for all to see."

She whipped about to lock eyes with Jarnulf.

"I told my kinsmen to carve you slow," she said. "and not till I get there to watch."

Jarnulf stared back with all the warmth of Langlif's dead owls, gripping his biceps tight.

"I wouldn't get too close if I were you." Ref yelled.

CLXXXIII The Way I Heard It

"And that one." Stienunn howled, pointing to Ref. "After they butchered my baby, he scorned my grandfather, said he was too decrepit to crawl back home. You won't be crawling anywhere after this, none of you."

At the Council desk Tore took Vestmar's wrist and told him to stop picking his nose and pay attention.

Dalla dismissed her, named his names, and called on Rakel.

Stienunn seated herself beside Aesolf at Dalla's bench. Rakel lifted her head, and stared back at Dalla with her cheeks still red and her eyes diamonds of determination. Dalla assured her that justice would be done, and she needn't fear, or hold anything back.

Rakel promised herself that justice would indeed be done. Mirha's verse was well known by all. Dalla had humiliated her with it yet again. After he'd summonsed Jarnulf, he'd marched his morons right back to her door as the first of his summonsed witnesses.

As crushed as she was at Jarnulf's threatened marriage, divorces were common, all it took was public declamation from either that they'd had enough, and if that scatterbrain exercised all her rights as a free woman Jarnulf might toss her onto the porch some night after a blistering spanking. He couldn't have really meant it.

He'd needed some pretense, flimsy as it was, to attack Dalla, who deserved it for sicking Leif on any girl, even that nitwit. Dalla called her to testify to Mirha's slander. Rakel spared Jarnulf another gut churning glance.

She knew her Modi, her son of the Thunderer, better than anyone. And this was all wrong. All in black he sat with arms folded, stolid and reserved, haughty, sneering. Olaf seemed equally unperturbed. This was beyond unsettling. It was hair raising. His swords were outside, and yet he was clutching his arms, fighting back his urge to fondle them.

Rakel shot Kveldalf beside her one quick, worried look. The eyes in Kveldalf's returning smile were a troll winter's blizzard. Rakel stood and pulled her tight, scarlet lit gown down straight, which got her a handful of lewd whistles.

"It's true." Rakel said, and was assailed with rude laughter from the gallery.

"Not the verse, you idiots," she yelled. "but she did speak it, to half the town."

"That's three years Outlawry." Dalla said.

"After I slandered Marshal Jarnulf." Rakel said. "His trael was returning one blow for another."

Dalla told Rakel that her innocuous little poem was not relevant to his case. Rakel replied that it most certainly was. She'd only been paid back in her own coin.

"It is common knowledge that Ulfson's trael, " Dalla began.

"Wife." Mirha shouted.

Jarnulf again pinched her.

"Trael," Dalla said. "has started numerous fights with you."

"That has nothing to do with anything." Rakel said.

Rakel ran her fingers through the hair at her temples and shoved it back behind her shoulders so that everyone could read the depths of her scorn.

"You, challenged Jarnulf to a duel." she said. "When he called you on having his trael attacked."

Dalla protested that he'd had no part or knowledge of that disgrace. Rakel called him a lying bastard. Starri felt a great load lift from his shoulders. The wedding was off again.

Dalla dismissed Rakel. Rakel insisted that she hadn't even started yet. Mirha said that Rakel had started more than enough already. Tore told them both that neither were to start anything more.

Dalla named his names and called on Kveldalf.

Behind Jarnulf, Ref cleared his throat.

Kveldalf glanced quickly at the door before glaring murder back at Dalla. Da'hal's parting grin told her she had done the right thing, no matter how horrifying it was here and now.

In the three days following the battle Hrafnstadir was overrun with Ottarrs and Thunderers. Celebrating had them drinking and talking, which had her listening.

Adis found herself an admirer named Kolgrim. Kolgrim's brother Rani was married to Olaf's sister. He seemed surprised that Olaf was still playing the fool. He'd worn out that act in Ottarrstadir years ago. Kolgrim and Rani both said it was a given that Ivar Sigurdson would replace Eikinn as Chieftain. Ivar and Olaf were closer than kin. They were sworn brothers.

Upon the publishing of Dalla's suit against Jarnulf she'd had words with Kjartan. And the next day Kjartan and Andar had gone and had words with their new friends, Ivar Sigurdson and Ulfkel Thormodson.

Kveldalf darted glances up into the rafters, down at the floor, or at the stained glass across the room, anywhere but up to Tore.

Dalla insisted on hearing all about the trael stealing Rakel's knife and attacking her with it. All six four of Kveldalf, raised up another foot higher upon the witness platform, quivered as if readying herself to jump through one of the windows, anything but remaining trapped here. Kveldalf said she'd been crowded back behind the mob, the instant the fight began.

"All right." Dalla said. "Since you, obviously, couldn't see over anyone's head, tell us how Ulfson forced his way into Rakel's. And promised you he'd knock you down if you didn't stand aside."

"He knocked on the door." Kveldalf said. "I invited him in."

"The way I heard it," Dalla said.

CLXXXIV Friends And Perverts

"We'd like," Tore said. "to hear it from someone who was actually there."

What the Kvidur did hear sounded more like a marriage proposal at a sunny picnic than the hurricane that blew through Rakel's bed closet.

Dalla cross examined Kveldalf's story with the thoroughness of a fresh sharpened harrow. He'd heard it all, the way she'd first told it all around town, and couldn't stop telling it. He promised her a suit for deception. Kveldalf quivered away, her stomach soured, and she silently wished Dalla his own cairn.

"For someone who sees everything that goes on behind your back," Dalla said. "you see damn little that happens right before your eyes. Perhaps if they weren't so full of the Marshal's friend Hrogharson."

"Friend Hell." Kveldalf snapped back. "They're sworn brothers."

She received the same derisive hootings Rakel had got. Jarnulf and Olaf studiously avoided any hint of a snicker and Mirha earned herself another pinched thigh when she started one. Tore reminded Dalla that Kveldalf was known to embellish her stories around town, but he doubted she'd be so brazen as to lie to a Kvidur and risk Outlawry. More rude titters swept through the church. Kveldalf blushed, bit her tongue, and refused to let Tore dismiss her.

"Why don't you ask us something that matters?" Kveldalf asked Dalla, "Like how Bror threatened to kill her at Mordach's after Astrid tried to?"

Dalla said that he was prosecuting Ulfson, and he didn't give a bull's field goings about Bror or Astrid. Aesolf told Dalla he'd better give one and add a charge of conspiracy to do an unlawful killing to Ulfson, just in case. Dalla chewed it over and informed the Kvidur of his additional charge.

"What's next?" Eirika groaned. "Its been two weeks and more. Are you going to prosecute the whole damn town for vagrancy, for living off the smokehouse?"

Honor expected those of means to provide travelers with food and lodging for three nights, but those who mooched aimlessly from household to household for more than two weeks were guilty of criminal vagrancy. Being a bum was one thing, but a moocher pretending to be an equal, and therefore owed anything, was another. They were legally gelded.

"For Christ's sake," Kveldalf said. "Everyone was toting bows that night after Rakel and Aud were stolen. Even Eirika was armed, out roaming the streets looking for, whatever."

"I understand," Dalla said. "that on the very night before the battle you witnessed the trael displaying her skill with a bow as she tried to shoot Bera through her door, in the dark."

Kveldalf thought it over. Dalla had summonsed cousin Gundfrieda, and Gundfrieda had made quite a stink over Mirha's shooting already. Gundfrieda was hopping mad at Jarnulf for wounding her darling, that drunk Asbjorn. Kveldalf admitted that yes, Mirha had shown a passing familiarity with a bow, probably some freakish, beginner's luck.

Across the square Gundfrieda shot to her feet yelling that the trael was no beginner. She too had witnessed Mirha's murder prowess with a bow. Eirika told Gundfrieda that she'd be the first to hear of it when anyone wanted her opinions. Dalla dismissed Kveldalf, named his names, and called on Adis.

Adis rose from her bench, back lit in midnight blue from the window behind her. She crossed her arms, displaying a fortune in gemmed, gold bracelets. Such wealth bespoke character and unimpeachable breeding, which must surely weight her testimony's veracity, and perhaps sell a piece or two of it.

And how could her own mistaken shot at Jarnulf through that hay bale be of interest to anyone, anyway? All she had was hearsay until Sigrid's last night at Mordach's. She regarded Dalla with the imperious, unblinking innocence of a kitten on its throne of fresh laundry.

Dalla demanded her version of the carryings on at Mordach's on the night of the crime.

No one had yet said a word about Jarnulf's uncle chasing Sigrid with his bow after Bror kicked her out, though many had witnessed it. Dalla needed the foot in his mouth kept there to keep questions about it blocked there.

"First off," Adis said, to Stienunn. "The necklace wasn't Sigrid's, it's Aud's. I gave it to her."

"I knew my daughter had to get those nasty ideas, from some pervert." Stienunn said.

"If being friends makes us perverts, then we're all guilty," Adis said. "except you of course, as I can't imagine anyone wanting to be your friend."

Dalla reminded her that it was his business they were here about, not the business of her jewelry.

"Mirha seemed a bit jealous," Adis said. "That Jarnulf was off after Rakel."

"Ah ha!" Dalla said.

Adis asked him if he had something stuck in his throat.

"Sigrid was spoiling for a fight," Adis said. "with anyone. She knocked Astrid right on her ass before Bror threw her out, drunk."

"And everyone heard Ulfson's kinswoman threaten to murder her," Dalla said. "and Bror promise her the same."

Adis balked. She hadn't meant to walk into that one. Dalla pounded on his desk and ordered her to retell the whole scene word for word.

"Yes," Adis said. "Bror promised to teach her how much that trouble would cost if she started any more."

Dalla said the Kvidur needed to know what time she'd left the Hall, and what she'd done after. Adis told him she'd gone to Sigrid's, to reassure her, but that Sigrid wasn't home, so she went home to bed.

"Ah Ha!" Dalla said.

Adis asked if it was his arrogance or lack of breeding that he'd got stuck in his throat. Dalla seemed to swell to twice his not inconsiderable size in his rage at her reminder that he was a bastard.

"We have heard," Dalla said. "that the Marshal's lawyer came to see you biting the heels of the discovery of his crime. What did he want you to keep silent about?"

Adis eyes shot Olaf a questing. Olaf returned her a smirk, and told her to give the fool what he wanted, all of it.

"He came to ask about my trial piece," Adis said. "a carving on bone, and he seemed interested in my shoes, and my quiver. I got the quiver from my bed closet to let him go through it."

"What was he doing with your trial piece?" Dalla said. Adis shot Olaf another nervous glance, and Olaf nodded.

"Sigrid dropped it," Adis said. "on the beach trail that night, chasing after Mirha."

"Oh really?" Dalla said. "And what was your quiver doing in your bed closet?"

Adis wasn't normally one for bearding bears, but emboldened by the free shots the others had hurled, her spite rallied like a kid in a mob stoning a witch. She seized Dalla's glare in her own minded to see him flinch.

"And what did he find, in your quiver?" Dalla said.

"He didn't say." Adis said.

"What color are your fletchings?" Dalla said.

"Green and gray." Adis said.

Dalla whipped about in a rage upon Olaf demanding to know what color Jarnulf's fletchings were. In silence Olaf returned him only Ref's favorite gesture, stroking his forearm beneath the back of his upraised fist.

Ranveig leapt from her bench pointing to the multicolored windows above Kveldalf.

"He's a bowyer." Ranveig said. "He owns every color fletching there is."

"What colors were in Sigrid's back?" Dalla asked Olaf. Dalla was now standing right where Nacarr had stood in that ghastly patch of blue green.

"This is your suit." Olaf sneered. "Make your own damn case, expert."

Rakel, at her witness bench, again knew that she'd never heard a dirtier word. Olaf had once more defined the true depths of obscenity with his pronunciation of the word expert.

"You," Dalla sneered. "after the Marshal or with him, you're mine."

"Why not?" Olaf said. "I've butchered Skraelings and Outlaws, morons are just a step below them."

Tore reminded Dalla that he was questioning Adis, not Olaf.

Jarnulf glared boiling sulfur up to Dalla. It wasn't enough that this dunce was after his own life. Dalla was hell bent on taking down Adis and everyone else too. Dalla's, or Nacarr's, face became that other troll's, that big, blue green Nahri troll he'd killed in his rush toward Ansvarr and Gunnarr, as they were dying, Nagrind's key straight down through skull to throat, and the look in its eyes as they fell each to one side, ... .

Dalla felt that gaze and returned it. There, staring back against the wine dark gallery loomed Ulfson the Lecher, the root of everything despicable and corrupting leering owl like at him.

Rakel at her witness bench felt her heart seize. If Eirika was right, and she invariably was, and this was fixed, ... . Jarnulf was building to one of his rages. She would know having provoked so many of them. His trael was becoming more agitated by the eye blink, but Jarnulf was fixedly, intently examining Dalla like a Christmas goose, deciding just where and how to start carving him.

"For someone as lovely as yourself," Dalla said to Adis, "I'd wonder that you'd need your quiver in your bed closet."

That decided it for Adis. The distracting he needed had just invited itself in before everyone.

She yanked off a bracelet and hurled it at him. He ducked and caught it square on his forehead. Adis told him that since her divorce she was well used to looking after herself, unlike some unmarried girls who carried on with misroeda prone criminals like himself.

Rakel flinched and Starri groaned. Misroeda was a law term for unmarried bed sports. Consensual or not it was Lesser Outlawry.

"All right, hand over your shoes." Dalla said.

"In your dreams." Adis said. "I wouldn't take my clothes off for you even if we were married."

The women at both witness benches pulled their dresses down. This ankle ogling pervert had walked out of his wits if he thought he was going to browbeat them into a free gape. Eirika didn't budge, daring him to stare. He dismissed Adis.

Dalla named his names and called Astrid, and with long, and haughty strides she strode smartly across the square. As she passed Jarnulf's desk she scratched a slender forefinger between her brows. She minded him of Eirika dressed in dark purple with her tall, slender self snapped ruler straight. The length of her braided ponytail swayed like a blonde snake making for its dinner. She slowed her march at the aisle, shifting back and forth, side to side as if summing up just what manner of idiot stood before her before screaming at it.

CLXXXV Braggi's Daughter

Astrid's finger however, was her real interest. After watching the horrid caricatures the stained glass made of her neighbors she took her stand when her finger shone white. She turned sharply on her heel to scorn Dalla from the top of her pale blue eyes down to her upthrust chin.

"How's your ribs, Skipper Laufeyson?" Astrid said. Laufey was Loki's mother. Rude chuckles and sniggers gusted through the church.

Dalla, after watching both his ship and his suit so far, go up in flames, was Skippering the outhouse. He wished he'd borne down harder on Rakel. Her bed closet gaspings and moanings had not been for himself, but Ulfson. Astrid was not getting away with humiliating him as Rakel had. He stood, a fo'c'sulman's bluster in every line of him, and stumped stiffly around his desk to stand before her while lightly punching his right fist into his left palm.

"Now," he said.

"I don't know why I bothered to revive you." Astrid said. There was a mile of sand in it.

"You threatened to murder Sigrid yourself, on that very night." Dalla said.

"No." Astrid said. "I tried to kill the bitch, and if Ansvarr hadn't stopped me I would have."

"Ah ha!" he said again.

"Don't," Eirika barked. "put us through the business of summonsing the dead, to establish that the dead, had forfeited her immunity by attacking your witness."

Eirika turned her pruned grimace up to Tore. She threw her hands high in disgust.

"Not that it matters either way." she said. "This farce is summonsing everything but the law."

"You, got right up in Sigrid's face." Dalla said.

"Yes." Astrid said. "Sigrid was there with Kveldalf and Adis. She was a wreck, rude, and making free with others good names as usual. Her tongue kept chasing itself in a tight little circle. Jarnulf and Olaf had murdered Rakel and Aud, and if the men came back, they'd all be murdered next. She was drunk, as usual. After she attacked me, Bror gave her the boot."

"After you," Dalla said. "tried to kill her."

"Yes, Damnit!" Astrid said. "And if my kinsman Ansvarr hadn't robbed me of my legal vengeance I'd be serving you your fifth mead right now, you drunk, instead of this plate of scorn."

"Which I'll stand for no more of." he replied, puffing up like a bull sea lion.

"The hell you won't." she said. "I'll have you know that this, was your asinine idea and while I'll put up with my kinsmen ordering me around, you, can shove your bald head up your ass."

"Blood will always lie for blood." Dalla yelled, before ordering her to continue and reminding her of the penalty for deception.

Whatever she had to say would surely implicate her in their conspiracy too. If not, his follow up witnesses would prove her a liar.

"Kveldalf left long before I closed up." Astrid said, utterly nonplussed. "Kolfinna left soon after and Mirha remained, with Elsa and Anja. Anja left just before closing. They spent the whole night at board games, minding their own business. At closing I gave Mirha a torch, locked up and went to bed."

"How convenient." Dalla said. "By yourself?"

Astrid's eyes narrowed. Snakes slithered into them. She took two steps forward and poked Dalla's aching ribs. Dalla retreated, wincing. Astrid snapped out a hurried verse, her first ever.

'All goodly sense now gone

Gives insults in rivers

Delusions shine darkly

Drunk on love's ash, skunk spoke

Once full of bloody fight

Found dragon, now, ground down

The skipper of sinkings

Sunk, from linden's bunk ban'

"You've braided your hair for years." Dalla countered, feigning insuperable confidence as if he'd just won his case, and the Kvidur was about to pronounce its death sentence.

Behind Jarnulf, Ref clutched Valthjof's arm, begging to know if Valthjof had actually heard that. Mere goddesses were everywhere, but this poetess was a true daughter of Aesir Braggi. Valthjof, who'd been divorced twice and was being threatened with his third replied that only an idiot mortgaged his heart to any woman, and especially one smarter than himself.

Astrid snatched her long ponytail from over her shoulder, and flicked it at Dalla, like a whip.

"Would you rather have it dropping into your mead, loser?" Astrid said.

"We need to confirm your alibi." Dalla said. Mordach popped up from behind the Council desk and told Dalla that he needed to confine his drinking to anywhere else too.

"You," Eirika said to Dalla. "have brought suit against Marshal Jarnulf. Insinuating that someone else killed Sigrid speaks volumes of the weakness of your case, and your desperate, personal feud against the Marshal over the humiliating beating he gave you."

Tore left off his bored, finger drumming on his desk and told Eirika that she was to rule only on matters of law. She, exasperated, told him that if this wasn't a point of law nothing was.

Astrid made for her bench seeming exceeding pleased with herself. She beamed down at Jarnulf on her way by, as if to say 'cousin'. Jarnulf hadn't seen such smugness since Sigrid. Hoskuld's mead had been wasted. All that thunder his hunters had drank into blue white word lightning was being stolen by the women.

Dalla leaned forward heavily onto his desk, grumbling muted curses before again naming his names and summonsing Anja, hoping he'd get to Outlaw at least one of the conspirators as she still hadn't shown.

Anja had purposely arrived late and seated herself in the church's rear. As she came forward another commotion in hushed undertones followed her. She, like Rakel, was attired in a tight gown of white linen and she was well decorated with Olaf's presents of gold and jewels.

Ref sucked in a muted whistle as she passed. Anja was making sure that everyone paid rapt attention to her.

Dalla readied a question and Anja stomped on it as if it were a snake's head.

"You've thoroughly disgraced yourself." Anja said. "You know damn well Jarnulf isn't any murderer. If he'd been there Sigrid would have got a slap and then had the sense to keep quiet about her abominable behavior. Jarnulf wouldn't let my husband take legal vengeance against Hrorik Eikinnson, because it might start a war. Why would he start one right here with Sigrid's kin?"

Dalla told her that she was the witness, and he'd ask the questions. His first half dozen led her to confirm Astrid's testimony about the Mead Hall.

"You didn't run into Logmadur Eirika on your way home, did you?" he said.

Anja said that she hadn't.

"Or your husband?" he said.

"Olaf was home in bed, asleep." Anja said.

"And you didn't wake him, to go look in on his friend Ref, after Ref's steading was wrecked by that bear?"

"It was standing fine when I went by." she said.

"Hmmm." Dalla said. "And what color are your fletchings?

"The same as Adis." Anja said.

"Might I see one of your shoes?" Dalla said.

Olaf across the aisle promised Dalla a good look at the bottom of his. His wife was not going to show off her ankles to satisfy his filthy lusts. Eirika seconded Olaf's injunction. Clothing would not be stripped off the witnesses here in Court. Dalla dismissed Anja, who had already dismissed him. She seated herself beside Mirha at Jarnulf and Olaf's bench.

Dalla named his names and summonsed Ref, who told him to die into Hel. Dalla hadn't previously, legally, summonsed him to testify. Tore told Ref that didn't matter. Anyone present at any Court could legally be called to testify.

Ref snickered. Dalla reminded him of that big, bald bastard on the hill, the one he hadn't seen till too late, and that look in that bastard's left eye as he clawed at Anja's fletchings in his right. Ref stomped across the aisle and took his stand before Dalla, in the aisle. Ref showed Dalla his teeth.

"So that's how your steading got wrecked." Dalla said. "You weren't at home. Where were you that night?"

"Out." Ref said.

Dalla ordered Ref to say just where that out had been.

"Doesn't matter." Ref said. "Hang this on any of us and before sunset you'll be skippering a serving tray in Hell."

Adis shot to her feet from her bench.

"He was with me." Adis yelled, and Ref showed Dalla his knuckles.

"Misroeda prone criminals indeed." Dalla sneered, fixing his gaze on Adis. "Perhaps I should publish another suit, for perjury."

Eirika told him to be very careful about starting any more fires lest the wind change on him, especially over perjury where a girl's honor was involved. Tore ordered Ref to back down, and sit his ass back down. Another massed brawl was mere heartbeats away.

Seated beside Dalla, Aesolf's eyes never left Eirika's. He poked Dalla's ribs, and ordered him to do his duty as prosecutor. Dalla turned, bowels clenching, toward Eirika.

"Logmadur Eirika," he said. "I, Dalla Helgason, name names named.

"Ohh," she groaned, with all the warmth of a ghost hiding in a grave. "You'll wish you hadn't."

Outside, unseen even by Da'hal, Kolgrim crept back from his last peer over Starri's porch floor. He stood, unsheathed his sword, and laying it over shoulder casually strode west to grave yard's end. Just beyond the oak and Nacarr's rotting remains he lifted his sword and waved it high to the western trees.

CLXXXVI Gundfrieda's Accident

Rakel had never been a giggler, so it came as a surprise to her when Kveldalf said that it was unseemly. Unknown only to herself, Rakel's mounting hysteria and flooding relief had her warbling away.

Dalla had just scuppered his suit. Eirika would stop this no matter what lunacy Tore was about. Another glance at Jarnulf and Dalla however, told her that nothing, not even Eirika, was going to stop anything. Verdict be damned they were going to kill each other.

"Will you please tell us, .. " Dalla started.

"Yes, I was out that night." Eirika said. "Armed, and I met the Marshal, his lawyer, and the girls upon their return. They'd both been through the wringer. Aud promised to see Rakel through the night, as Rakel was still crippled from her brawl. So I started home, but instead went to tell Sigrid that they were back. Sigrid wasn't home. So I went to bed."

"You were armed?" Dalla said gingerly, dreading a company of spears in return for his indelicate probing. "With a bow?"

"As you well know," she snapped at him. "your former Skipper, my husband Grimkel, shot fletchings of green and gray."

"With all due respect, Logmadur," Dalla pinched out, quailing beneath her raptor's glare.

"Is there anyone who, ... "

"Due respect?" she demanded. Her indignance was a quartet of onward rushing axemen. A glacier grew in the small of Dalla's back.

"I'll let you in on our little secret." she sneered. "I, and Maeve, and Thyre, and every woman in town met again at Mordach's, sorry Astrid, where we all stripped naked, got stinking drunk and went for a swim in the ocean. Then we returned to our cups and pleasured Mordach and each other silly till dawn."

Dalla excused her, desperate to shut her up.

"What did you think we did here all summer," Eirika demanded. "every year, while men like you were off burning my ship?"

She paused, the eagles in her glare daring Dalla to put his boot back in his mouth.

"That will do." Tore said.

Eirika whipped about, facing him, and in her eyes boiled all the venom she'd owned axing the eagle into Nacarr. She shot out her bony right hand towards him in a gesture of imperious, judicial finality. Every fiber of that thin old woman was ablaze with the hauteur of the devil himself. Tore took her command, and shut up.

She turned back on Dalla, slowly, straightening herself, and squaring her shoulders, and all held their breath, heart stricken by the awful majesty of her.

It poleaxed even Jarnulf's mounting rage as he reeled, seeing in some supernatural clarity his antagonist, his persecutor, his never ending nuisance for the first time as God had made her and set her upon him for his own damn good.

Her dignity and beauty, marked but unbent by time, filled the entire judging square. No man had ever, or in a hundred lifetimes could, master her. Grimkel had owned the good sense not to even try. And in the corner of his eye sat Rakel, who could have been his partner had he not been such a prideful ass, equally humbled and startled.

Someday, perhaps. His own grandsons might curse Rakel behind her back while in public giving ground before her. And in that moment he wanted Rakel more than he'd ever wanted her, even more than he wanted his friends back.

"While," Eirika said to Dalla. "our real men were here, doing the fighting, and the dying."

Dalla told her that that would be more than enough. She assured him that he'd not the faintest inkling of how much was enough, but that he'd find out, soon enough.

She returned back toward her bench beneath the window muttering to herself about his turgid pretensions.

Dalla bethought himself that that burning sail hadn't been half as blistering. Miming a smug grin at her departing back, he quickly named names and summonsed Gundfrieda, before the old witch retrained her withering ire upon him. He and Gundfrieda had rehearsed her testimony to the nines, though her attire hadn't been part of it.

Gundfrieda's brother Hjortgren had handed her a marriage proposal from Asbjorn Asgeirson. Gundfrieda laughed herself blue. How on earth could she ever consider a bum like Asbjorn? What did he have to offer? Hjortgren patiently explained that that bum Asbjorn had a hundred times more to offer than any of her other, nonexistent suitors had, or had ever had. And that, awful, humiliating reality crucified her laughter with nails of ice.

Then on that very night, shortly after her blushing, stuttering acceptance, that whoreson Ulfson, who had already murdered her brother, tried to murder her darling Asbjorn. True, after dinner, on her porch, she had privately wrangled a promise from Asbjorn to take blood vengeance on Jarnulf for killing her brother Ketil as a prenuptial.

Gundfrieda marched into the square, for once with head high and shoulders squared. She swung about, and Hring told Asbjorn to pull his tongue back in. Gundfrieda's scarlet gown was scandalously low cut. She'd made certain that everyone knew of her marriage arrangement. And every man of them deserved to be tortured with a good glimpse of what they'd missed out on.

"Gundfrieda Bjorgildottir." Dalla said.

"Yes!" Gundfrieda said, stooping and scowling in Nacarr's patch of purple light, glaring at Mirha.

"I heard every criminal slander, that," she hissed, daggering out a finger at Mirha. "pinheaded troll attacked Rakel with and it certainly wasn't any defense of her owner. She was out for blood."

Virgin Gundfrieda's long, loose blonde locks had by now completely obscured her view. She straightened, tossing her head back to get them out of her hellcat eyes. The natural, though unintended consequence was that her enormous gifts jigged out a nasty, lewd dance for her audience.

Asbjorn goggled at his soon to be bed partners, and as stiffening a sight as two of them were the rest of his betrothed was something else. Marriage to Gundfrieda suddenly loomed as sobering as the book of Revelations.

"And she got it!" Gundfrieda continued, shrieking. "She smashed Rakel's knee, and nose, and then beat poor Rakel almost to death with her bare hands before Astrid and Maeve finally dragged her off."

Gundfrieda cackled maniacally and again set her bosom capering about, punching and swinging her fists in the air, illustrating Mirha's murderous ferocity.

Rakel snapped a spiteful glare at Jarnulf's redheaded titmouse, and then another at the madwoman swirling in the square's panoply of reds, greens, blues, and ambers. Rakel shot Gundfrieda's name to the top of her list. Mirha hadn't near the strength to break either her nose or knee but she'd certainly taken an axe to her pride and her heart. Rakel had just picked out the perfect wedding gift for dear Gundfrieda, perhaps she'd present it to her tonight. A broken nose, huh?

"But that, wasn't the end of it." Gundfrieda said. She snatched at her belt, as if drawing a knife, and then cocking that unseen knife high over her shoulder, let go another rattling cackle.

"The trael stole Rakel's knife," Gundfrieda screamed. "and tried to stab her to death with it. Like this."

Gundfrieda then slashed and hacked the empty air before her to shreds with her invisible knife. Mirha leapt to her feet, and started a screaming contest with Gundfrieda, each yelling liar at the other. Anja clamped a hand over Mirha's mouth and dragged her back to her bench. This was Gundfrieda's show. Mirha would get her hearing in turn.

Jarnulf seemed oblivious to everyone but Dalla, and if Rakel could have seen his eyes, she and she alone would have seen them literally glowing red.

Hjortgren gaped horrified up at the Kvidur. It was his fault. For the first time, in this endless parade of wet hornets his own sister had the Kvidur, who hadn't actually seen a bit of it, fascinated. Most were craning forward over the desk, and some to the side for a better view, as men will, hoping Gundfrieda might launch herself into a wardrobe accident. She had everyone's rapt attention excepting Rakel's, fixed as it was on Jarnulf. Something, some cloud of darkness, and thunder was gathering deep inside him, one that even Rakel had never glimpsed.

Behind both claimants desks the rutchings and squeals of benches and boots overrode the sea of murmurs filling the church and what Mirha saw over her shoulder gagged her with dread. Two distinct camps were forming as old friends shifted life long alliances, and crossed the aisle to join Tore and Starri's men, or Dalla and Adam's.

Gundfrieda paid it no mind, nor Tore's furious bellowings for order. Instead she fitted an invisible arrow to an invisible bow, and drew it straight down onto Mirha's nose.

"And on the night before the battle," Gundfrieda said. "the trael made a perfect shot in the dark into Bera's door, more than well enough to murder Sigrid. She's been shooting for years."

"Careful you don't slice it right off this time." Adis sniggered from her witness bench.

In Gundfrieda's whole life she'd fired just one shot from a warbow, and the eye watering welt its string slapped onto her huge breast taught her to never shoot another.

Adis told the Kvidur that she hadn't seen any such shooting by Mirha, nor had anyone else. The two women who had, with Kveldalf and Gundfrieda that night, had both had their own run ins with Sigrid, and even if Mirha or Jarnulf had murdered her, it wasn't worth Outlawing anyone over.

"And no one saw her fire a single shot at the battle." Kveldalf shouted.

Sitting uneasy beside Anja, Mirha's innards shriveled.

Dalla thanked Gundfrieda and beaming as if he'd just reconquered Jerusalem, dismissed her. She swept bouncing and jiggling between the desks toward her Asbjorn, sneering at Jarnulf just like Kolgrim's brothers had sneered down to Nacarr, sitting at this bench.

At her passing Jarnulf kicked the desk's leg, sideways, cracking it and surprising Olaf greatly. It was an awkward move. The desk leg was wrist thick, and made of elm. Even Da'hal could not have broken it like that. Gundfrieda plunked her barely clad, shameless self down between Asbjorn and Hjortgren, and sniggered.

Olaf summoned Anja to again address the Court.

"Is Gundfreida Bjorgildottir's testimony of what started the fight between Mirha and Rakel all this Kvidur needs to hear concerning the matter?" he said.

Anja launched a very unlady like guffaw and stepped back into the square.

"Bullshit on tits," she said. "no matter how much cheese it's covered with and cheek it's served with is still bullshit. In public, with twenty women there, before Mirha said anything, Rakel challenged Mirha with slanderous callings that everyone heard. I know they heard them because they all turned to look. Mirha bore them in silence until Rakel claimed the only love Mirha had for Jarnulf was the food he put on her plate by naming her meat love."

"If Mirha had intended to kill Rakel she had plenty of time to use Rakel's own knife on her. But it was already in the stream where she threw it even before Astrid and Maeve stopped Sigrid from dragging her off Rakel."

"Are there four more witnesses in this Court to swear to your testimony?" he said.

Anja named them, and they stood and swore oaths on it.

CLXXXVII A Three Day Old Bruise

Dalla smiled feigned warmth at Aud. Aud sneered back at him as if there were a crossbow between them, and she was taking aim on the bridge of his nose. This would have been better, Dalla thought, if Aesolf and Stienunn hadn't already treated Aud so despicably. Then too, there remained his disgraceful hand in throwing her and Sigrid together. As desperately as he needed Aud, still he leapt into it with both feet.

"Aud Hallfreddottir," he began, forgetting how thoroughly Aud despised her father.

"Bugger off, asshole." she said.

Tore gently corrected her. She had been legally summoned as a witness and was only to answer questions, not offer instructions to the prosecutor or her opinions of him.

Dalla choked, and named his names.

Aud stood, drawing a finer bead on him.

"You knew Sigrid better than anyone." Dalla said. "Please tell us how Ulfson's trael continually provoked her with her endless, scurrilous slanders?"

"It only happened twice." Aud said. "After Rakel started it, and Sigrid gave Mirha a beating both times. To Sigrid, that was the end of it."

Dalla swallowed hard.

"We have heard that Sigrid was terrified of Ulfson," he said. "on that rainy night he murdered her."

"I never saw her afraid of anyone or anything." Aud said. "She was one tough bitch."

Stienunn voiced her complaint loudly at her daughter's being slandered thusly by a pervert. Aud offered Stienunn a shocking suggestion involving the stallions in the barn as no men had shown any interest in her aside from her silver for years. Tore roared the church's laughter back to silence. Dalla, growing redder by the instant, steeled himself for another question but Aesolf beside him banged on the desk, startling him.

"It was not raining." Aesolf shouted.

"With what she'd drank," Aud said. "She should have been in bed snoring. And that was just what she had after the Hall."

"How do you know how much she'd had?" Dalla said.

"It was a fresh jug. She put a hefty dent in it." Aud said.

Stienunn leapt to her feet and shook an accusatory finger at Aud. Her baby Sigrid, for all her faults, had not been a common, snoring drunk.

"She must have had company, and shared it with them." Stienunn said.

"There was only one cup on the table when I went home." Aud said.

Dalla, desperate for Aud's sympathy, began pussyfooting delicately around the dung heap his reputation was plunging into. Losing this suit against Ulfson would assure him of the whole town's ridicule for years.

"Most of her traps haven't been laid out yet," Dalla said. "It is obvious she wanted to get caught up, and was out there to get an early start."

"Sigrid never went to work in the middle of the night," Aud said. "in her best clothes, in the rain, with her father's knife. She always took a pair of work knives fishing with her. And she wasn't even working her traps, didn't have time. With Rakel laid up Sigrid was minding the store, and her. Sigrid was drunk that night and up to no good."

Dalla cringed. His drunken groping of Aud years earlier flashed before his eyes, and hung there, as if on display for all, leering back at him.

"But Sigrid was terrified of that animal. Everyone was witness to it." Dalla said.

"Bullshit." Aud said. "She was a troll raiser. Who do you think shoved Astrid off the bluff, and knocked you sideways with that axe haft?"

Aesolf pounded on the table again and struggled to his feet, his knees cracking and popping like kindling, the hair in his nose blowing in and out in time with his rage.

"That little trollop was always shooting her mouth off." Aesolf yelled, pointing to Mirha.

Tore ordered him to shut up. He'd have his say soon enough.

Aesolf said that if Dalla didn't stop asking horse shit questions he'd be dead in his grave before they got to him. He started to sit down again and changed his mind, thinking he might keel over in a fit of apoplexy before he got to be heard. His face flushed purple as a day old bruise.

"He stabbed her in her own steading," Aesolf bellowed. "And then put her over his horse and dragged her out there!"

Tore drew a deep breath but before he could start Aud vented on Aesolf.

"How would you like to spend a hundred miles in the saddle and then carry Rakel inside, her knee was killing her, and build two fires, and lay out dinner? I don't think you'd be in any mood to go looking for a fight. Sigrid wasn't any weakling, even dead drunk she was still one mean bitch. I'm surprised Jarnulf had enough left in him to walk home."

Aesolf's purple darkened to a three day old bruise.

"How can you stick up for him? Your, friend," the word stuck, galling and hateful in his throat, "my child, Sigrid, was murdered." he said.

"Yes and I got beaten and raped." Aud yelled. She broke down in tears. "And I don't blame him for that because he didn't do that either."

Jarnulf and Olaf both choked. It had been their doing, as they waited for dark, before safely retrieving her and Rakel.

"Why did they stick their necks out to come get us?" Aud said. "They didn't have to. If Jarnulf wanted anyone out of his hair it wasn't Sigrid."

Rakel's guts shriveled. Sigrid's death too had been her fault.

"Because it's his job." Aesolf yelled.

Aud advanced a step toward him, like a mastiff straining chained on the family porch, greeting a visitor it knew, and nothing to the good.

"It's not his job to be shot," Aud said. "miles past our border at night, breaking into the steading of another Chieftain's son. They could have waited till next day and gone to see Eikinn, not knowing what he'd do, and we might both still be there with that pervert using us."

Aud's grief enveloped her, and shrank into a knot in her chest. To her it would have been more than just if the roof collapsed at that moment onto Aesolf, Stienunn and Dalla.

Olaf, at his bench beside Jarnulf, laced his fingers together, and stretched, extending his palms up toward the roof. Closing his eyes he drew a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. Behind his lids was an angular face pale beneath its earth toned greases and strands of sweat plastered, coarse black hair. Two black and lifeless eyes stared out from that face, through him and on through heaven's empty, noon bright azure across the blood soaked, corpse strewn field, chasing Brenn, and the others.

"Forgive me." Olaf whispered to himself. He rose to address Dalla.

CLXXXVIII The Last Word

"Have you brought forward your prosecution to the extent you think sufficient?" Olaf said.

"Unless your defense reveals something I need." Dalla said.

Eirika nodded her assent.

"Finally," Olaf said. "An end of this fart storm. I know who shot Sigrid."

Jarnulf started violently, feeling his nape hairs prick.

"The hell you do. Nobody does." he bellowed at Olaf.

"The accused owns no voice." Tore yelled. "Be silent."

"It was Bror Borgarson." Olaf said.

Stunned, his world careering comet like through the void, Jarnulf could not restrain himself.

"How dare you tell such a lie? Bror was a brother to you." he said as yells of liar erupted behind him throughout the church.

Tore shot to his feet, bellowing over them all.

"He told me as he lay dying, with his last breath." Olaf said.

"I," Jarnulf said. "had Bror's last words."

"No you didn't." Olaf said. "He confessed it to me as you took vengeance on corpses."

Olaf spun on his heel and shot out his arm, pointing to Ref. Ref stood and bellowed into the cacophony that it was true. He also had heard it from Bror's dying lips.

Aesolf's voice cracked through the church's thunderstorm and Tore's furious gavelings demanding that the filthy Skoggangsmadur be removed from the graveyard and that his suit be awarded him on the instant. Olaf folded his arms, and waited for Tore to restore order. It took some time.

"This is the first I've heard of Bror being Skoggangsmadur." Olaf said.

"Bullshit." Dalla bellowed. "Everyone has known it for years."

Olaf strode swiftly toward Dalla, and cocked both fists before him.

"If your lying tongue doesn't choke you Daela, the law will." he roared. "Bearing false testimony to a Kvidur demands Outlawry."

The church held its breath, as did the Kvidur.

"I will bring witnesses before Althing, if you force me." Aesolf yelled.

"Shut up, old man." Olaf barked at him. "You have no voice in this Court. You have lawfully assigned your case's prosecution to this," He pointed at Dalla. "Liar. I will be spoken to only by it."

"How dare you, you stupid oaf." Dalla yelled at Olaf.

Olaf's clenched fist slammed into Dalla's ear, staggering him, and again there was a rush to separate them.

"Slander me?" Olaf yelled, his arms now caught fast by four sailors, "And damage my reputation, before everyone? Be thankful I don't hit you again and again, and kick your ribs in and sue you for full compensation."

Olaf turned his wrath back on Aesolf, yelling at the old man loud enough to shake the windows so that everyone in the church understood his instruction.

"For every liar you bring before Althing," Olaf bellowed. "I will bring fifty men of God, from this church, to denounce them, and have you all Outlawed."

Jarnulf and Bror's friends, and they were many, began applauding Olaf's theatrics. Tore ordered them to be silent.

"For a pagan who denies God what difference does it make to you, where Bror resides?" Tore said.

"As much difference as it will make to the Fifth Court unless he is removed." Aesolf said.

"You arrogant old goat." Tore bellowed. "You demand too much. There is no dealing with you."

He sucked in a deep breath to continue but Starri restrained him.

"And if the murdering Skoggangsmadur," Starri said. "is removed, will you consider this matter resolved, and not pursue it further?"

"That depends on which murderer." Aesolf said, glaring across the aisle at Jarnulf.

Starri quivered in his wrath at this newest impertinence. Aesolf didn't give a damn about anyone or anything. He'd already lost his Sigrid, his whole reason for living. If Jarnulf wasn't Outlawed and butchered, by this Court, he'd destroy countless other lives to have it done before all at Althing.

Silence deafened the church, choking and heart stilling like the silence in a midnight sick room at the merciful death of a long suffering child.

Olaf locked his amber cat eyes into Aesolf's, and Olaf's hiss, low, and cold destroyed that silence.

"Skipper Starri, he must mean me, for a murder that hasn't been committed, yet." Olaf said.

Aesolf struggled erect. He craned his gaunt and hollowed face back, grimacing under the weight of his years and gazed up into the rafters. He raised his hands as if supplicating the roof beams.

"Finally." he cried out. "You keep faith with me." He turned his clouded, nearly blind blue eyes back to Olaf.

"Einvigi, Friend Ottarr? My sword waits beyond the door." he said.

His Sigrid was in Vallhol. Odinn would not allow him to join her there if he died in bed.

Tore and his Kvidur gaped, silent, shocked by the pride, and all consuming piety of that once terrible warrior.

Dalla loudly forbid Aesolf to commit suicide. He himself would trade swords with Olaf.

"Shut up, you bungling idiot, this is between men." Aesolf snarled at him.

Stienunn clutched at him, pleading with him not to do this, as Olaf glared defiance across the desk to Aesolf.

Olaf drew deep from within him all the venom and hatred he continually repressed, for a lifetime of friends fallen, for every injustice the world had wrought which he could do nothing but bear heart slashed witness to. And to his loathing and despite of this withered, murdering savage Olaf added that noxious stew, and with it, painted his face. In his amber eyes boiled an entire company of Furies lusting for bloody and awful vengeances long frustrated, and the infliction of pain and terror transformed into a beatific wonder, an all possessing night black ecstasy.

Olaf leaned forward on the heels of his fists, across the desk, into Aesolf's face.

There between his fists, lay the face of little Brenn, with all her horrible red wounds, cut up and slashed, dead, between the horrible red wounds of Hlif and Hlidareth, and Tjorni.

"I wasn't referring to you, old man, or today." Olaf said in that same, low, cold, and deadly voice, and then Olaf turned his baleful, lion eyes down, past Brenn's unseeing eyes, upon Stienunn, sitting beside Aesolf.

Stienunn shrank from Olaf, clutching at her silver cross and screaming to Asgrim to shoot this madman or drag him away.

Neither Asgrim nor Karl even blinked.

Aesolf ignored her.

And Rakel saw none of it. She could not tear her eyes from Jarnulf, silent at his desk with eyes narrowed, strangling his arms. Her unease tottered toward hysteria as the rage breathing from him enfolded him ever darker. The very air felt heavy and smothering, as it did before a late summer lightning storm, one so close and violent that it drove everyone indoors, and each thunder peal shook the steading.

The floor beneath her thrummed and the windows rattled faintly in their casements, and this time she was not alone in feeling it. Even the rafters seemed to quiver, and everyone in the church drank down some sickening portion of her disease and shuddering bewilderment.

Their last night together returned to her. Now, she could finally draw back her mind curtains to view in all its horror what had so terrified her, smarting naked and contrite on his porch. It had returned a thousand times over, that dull, pulsing, crimson glow behind her lord and master's wolf eyes. She was hopelessly, irredeemiably, in love with Lucifer.

"You are the cruelest Viking I have ever known." Aesolf said to Olaf. "You steal my beautiful child, not even for yourself, but to throw her away. My honor, you wipe your ass with, and now at the end, you even steal the end."

"There is no dishonor in this." Olaf said, his voice steadily rising, challenging, into a commanding yell. "You have your blood vengeance for your child, it was even delivered by an arrow, as her death was. A wise man would go home and remain there, properly grateful, and properly silent."

Behind Olaf, Tore cleared his throat, and asked if Olaf had completed his refutation of Dalla's suit. Olaf said that he had.

Behind Aesolf, Hraerek and Sigrid's other kinsmen got to their feet and made for the church door, muttering angrily that this whole business was bullshit. To the man they ignored their Chieftain's commands. No one was to leave or take up weapons until this Husthing was concluded.

Behind Jarnulf his supporters gained their feet grimly determined to lay their hands at the very least on Hraerek's men. Badger made a snatch at Aslak Hraerekson and Throttolf Einarson hurled him aside in hot pursuit of Sigrid's kin, with Bardi joining hard on Throttolf's heels.

At her bench beneath the window Rakel's eyes filled with Jarnulf alone, and his eyes filled with her. She imprisoned her scream behind one hand and shot the other out before her, as she had on the hill on her knees before Galinn, to close her Jarnulf's eyes. Mirha was clutching at him and shrieking, but he was blind to the trael, as if all creation encompassed only herself.

Jarnulf glared redly back at her clawing madly through his own mind curtains as if the last three years had been some abhorrent witch's trance.

Her gown was nacreant pearl, and endless God lights shifted all about her, topaz and fire emeralds, ambers and soft blazing rubies. But that was as nothing to her face, outshining even the promise of heaven, or perhaps some comet of terrible bale, blazing forth from those nighted tresses framing it. Unable to tear his gaze from his Freya, as a man blind and dumb, he was desperate and knew himself unable to glimpse even the millionth part of her beauty.

Rakel was welcome to smash his glassware, destroy everything he owned, stick one saddle burr after another up his ass and argue with him till they fought the steading right down around their ears, and then God, Oh God yes. This time, and every time after, they would truly smash the bed to pieces, and the floor beneath it, making up.

Anja had been all so concerned about Mirha. Well Anja, or Dalla for that matter, could have the little shit raker. If love was war Mirha was a continent to conquer, but Rakel remained the world. And Dalla behind him, smirking up from his desk. That big evil sonofabitch had been pawing and plowing his Rakel.

God, or Lucifer, had made her for himself and himself alone, and if he lived through this he wasn't going to disappoint whichever of them had dreamed her up. Something alien within him peeled back layer upon layer of the mind gauze before his eyes, and he covered them with his hands at the searing brilliance and terrible truth of her, roaring in the agony of his need.

CLXXXIX Under The Owls

Kveldalf gained her feet in a rage, screaming at the Kvidur to clear Jarnulf. Many had witnessed her royal snits before but this was something beyond new, and poisonously spiteful, even for her.

Sanity quickly reclaimed her and she shut her mouth. Threatening Chieftain Tore was an idea with no upside in it whatever happened next.

Tore hurriedly summoned his Kvidur, with obscenities, back into the shadows behind their desk for a vote.

Throughout the church old bench friends traded nervous, frightened looks as they decided which side they would stand with, and offered heartfelt goodbyes to each other. In the coming fight there would be much blood shed and little quarter. Three more of Adam's men crossed the aisle to join Tore's as two of Starri's went the other way.

Hraerek made it to the door with five of his kinsmen. Bardi, Throttolf, Badger and the hunters had laid out four of his rear most, unconscious in the aisle. Beneath the owls in the doorway's bright glare before Hraerek loomed the dark specter of a Jotun with its axe and sword in the air before it.

Da'hal's mind's eye filled with another black bearded foeman, also charging him, on the hillside, and that foeman's blue eyes as his axe shore away that foeman's shoulder, and then its butt cap took his teeth.

"What's your rush?" Da'hal demanded. "The end, is almost upon you."

Kjartan sprang upon Trand Sigrelfson's back, wrapping his arm around Trand's throat and trying to throttle him. Trand, a well seasoned veteran, merely turned round to let Viglief clout Kjartan away from behind. Trand took Thorarin's fist across his jaw, swayed, and returned Thorarin's knuckles with his own knocking Thorarin aside, out cold. Throttolf's fist stamped a similar paid to Trand's debt of kinship. Bardi caught up Viglief by his crotch and collar, and hurled him from the aisle into the benches.

Hraerek knew better than to charge headlong and unarmed into an axe, especially Da'hal's axe. He and his remaining three had grabbed up a bench, and were readying it as a battering ram against Da'hal.

The aisle behind them was now choked with sailors anxious to prove their honor and though fists flew down the length of it none had drawn the knives from their boots, all hoping that some miracle might still avoid this before they reached the porch and their weapons and the slaying.

"We have verdicts!" Tore bellowed above the fray.

Silence, and a calm like the eye of a hurricane enveloped his Thingmen in the aisle, though many fists remained cocked in the air at their shoulders. Even Hraerek at the head of his battering bench halted, but that wasn't Tore's doing. Hraerek had seen beyond Da'hal, out into the street. It was a sight to give even a fo'c'sulman pause.

"This Kvidur imposes Lesser Outlawry," Tore said and Dalla yelled back that he could not alter sentences, only pronounce them. It was Full Outlawry, twice, without ring payment. Tore, in a berserk fury, snatched up the body of the raven he'd gaveled the wings off of and hurled it at Dalla. It struck Stienunn, who shrieked out curses back at Tore who in turn threatened to Outlaw her and Dalla for Assembly Balking. Aesolf got Stienunn quieted down and reseated.

"Gundfrieda Bjorgildottir," Tore droned again. "you have committed deception at law. The penalty is Lesser Outlawry."

Gundfrieda blanched whiter than a corpse's linen, and clutching at Asbjorn's sewn up shoulder for support, wrenched a yelp from him.

"Marshal Jarnulf," Tore said. "you are granted a clearing verdict provided you remove the body of the Skoggangsmadur from the graveyard within ten days."

At the church door Hraerek dropped his bench again muttering that this whole thing was bullshit. Bardi offered Hraerek an uneasy grin, and said he was sorry that he'd clouted two of Hraerek's cousins unconscious.

"Skip it." Hraerek grunted, pointing beyond Da'hal, out the door.

"Holy shit." Bardi said.

"We're not through here yet." Da'hal warned them.

Hraerek and Bardi gave him their sour grimaces, and threw their hands up in disgust before plodding off, together, back to their benches.

"Standard arrangement," Tore said to Gundfrieda. "no head price or Confiscation Court so long as you quit Hrafn Thingi for three years within three years. You get three safe houses, choose them wisely."

Tore dismissed the Kvidur, saying that what business remained did not require them.

"The hell it doesn't." Jarnulf said.

Once, as a child, Rakel had surprised a wolf sneaking around a pig sty. She had never forgotten its glare, and the grating, stony malevolence in its snarl. Jarnulf had them both. What she saw next, and she alone saw, would darken her mind days for months, and her dreams forever.

Jarnulf slammed both fists down onto his desk, and its inch thick planks of elm shattered. He rose, and as he rose, something black and unutterably hateful rose with him. It were as if he were gathering every shade of evening about himself and they held nothing of day's end repose but only the dark, and an owl haunted malignity.

In an eye blink he stood before the Kvidur, and his master predator in all its feral, bestial sullenness, exploded into the square as if pouncing from a brush pile upon a poacher. With it came an audible hissing, and crackling, as of distant summer lightning. He clenched his fists before his belt, mind filling them with his missing dragons.

"I, Jarnulf Ulfson," he pronounced, with a smirk to out devil even Da'hal. "summons Olaf Asmundarson, Ref Thorliekson, Da'hal Hrogharson, and everyone here, to witness that I, Jarnulf Ulfson summons Leif Skelderson for his attack upon a woman of my household, Mirha Briansdottir, and his attempted robbery of my goods and weapons. I demand a legal compensation of twelve ounces for his first crime, and Lesser Outlawry for his second."

"What?" Mirha shrieked. "Your sword is worth more than I am?"

Many in the church would have told her that it was to them, but didn't.

"And," Jarnulf said. "I lawfully, and joyfully, summons Sigdul Helgason. I demand the legal penalty of Lesser Outlawry for his crime of conspiring with Leif Skelderson to do an illegal killing, and thirty six ounces for his crime of riding my stallion."

Dalla's entire crew had no small time of it catching and restraining him.

Rakel knew she was going mad. Jarnulf's desk was undamaged but his eyes were ovals all of glowing blood. He turned their wolf glower back upon her, and abhorrence averted her eyes up to St. Michael, begging his holy intercession. The eyes of God's Marshal burned back into her rubied as did those of her own Marshal, with the fires of hell. The blue green wurm, transfixed and bloodied upon Michael's lance, laughed at her. Her terror seized her unhinged gaze upon first Asgrim, and then Karl, and the owls above them both returned her silent pleadings with their own reprobatory, crimson glares.

She'd known her Jarnulf in all his brutish passion, and he had raped her senses aghast at its excesses in battle, but this raged against the very foundations of sanity. Whatever this was, it wasn't Jarnulf.

Da'hal's enemies might have told her what it was, but those who had seen it in Da'hal had not survived it.

CLXC The Luckiest Man I Ever Met

Tore motioned his Kvidur to reseat themselves.

Leif had avoided his steading, the steam house, and most meals.

He was skeletal, filthy, and stank like he'd been at sea a month.

Jarnulf had tracked him down three times to taunt him at each new hiding place but Badger had been there every night save one, growling and woofing in the dark, and hurling rocks while imitating Knut. Leif was so miserable by week's end he almost wished someone would kill him.

Asbjorn had nightly turned him away, and had been in a vile taking anyway between nursing the wound Jarnulf gave him and his heroic, and by week's end near berserk, stab at sobriety.

Gundfrieda had been bustling about agog with preparations for her wedding and long fancied unmaidening. A whale's leavings of good that would do her, now. It had been her of all people, after sewing them both up, and her vow that that awful Marshal would get his due which finally dragged his life sick feet into the church to witness Jarnulf's end.

At the moment Leif was wishing he should have Gundfrieda's luck of three years and three.

"All right, maggot." Jarnulf said, and Rakel again covered her ears, and that was as far as Jarnulf got.

"What happened to your hand?" Starri said.

"That crazy bitch, the trael, cut me." Leif howled, pointing at Mirha. "With a sword. I demand my rights."

His rights, to Leif, were death, Outlawry, lashings, or anything else a dying rat might inflict on its killer. Starri was about to ask Leif where it had happened when Hroghar beat him to it, rising from his bench.

"And what were you doing at Jarnulf's?" he said.

"I've debts." Leif said. "It wasn't a great season, and Jarnulf always seems to have a purse full. I thought maybe he might lend me a bit, till I get back on my feet again."

"Oh you did? Did you?" Tore said. "And what debts might these be? Which the rest of us don't have?"

Badger minded himself with a smile of the clink Leif's coins had made dropping into his strongbox. Leif had offered Skjalg's sword up as surety to borrow even those few eighth Marks.

Leif sidestepped Tore's demand by restating his own that the trael who'd broken the law be punished. Tore angrily waved him to silence and turned to Eirika for an exact statement of the Law.

"A trael in their master's home," Eirika solemnly intoned. "or on his property, may use any and all means they deem necessary in defense of their master or said home and property. The trael has broken no law."

"And how did you acquire these debts?" Hroghar said, thinking Leif resembled a worm being stuck on a fish hook.

"I was doing pretty well." Leif said. "Had a pile, till Asbjorn palmed the dice."

"Who, palmed what dice?" Starri said. Starri was intimidating enough wearing a dead pan, but with his jaw jutting forward, his cut, scarred up face frozen tight into a snarl and his brows thrown high opening his empty eye socket, ... .

Jarnulf howled about his rights as Tore's Thingman, and how after having them so soundly trampled on already the least they could do was to shut up and let him have Leif. Starri assured him they'd get round to that, in a bit.

"Where did this game," Starri demanded of Leif. "where your shipmate Asbjorn, who you accuse of cheating you with loaded dice take place? Not aboard ship, was it?"

Asbjorn, across the aisle from Badger, promised himself he'd personally kill Leif as his fingernails dug eight, deep dents into the underside of the bench. The fine for gambling aboard ship was ten Marks, enough to break most men, but loaded dice was theft and Outlawry.

Badger wished he'd seen that one coming. Thorodd, sitting in front of him, provided a perfect screen from Tore for his hand. Badger shot Asbjorn a sidelong glance while rubbing the ball of his thumb back and forth across the tips of his fingers.

"Badger," Starri said. "what about this gambling aboard ship?"

"It's nothing I'd swear to, in Court, today." Badger said.

Asbjorn held up the backs of two fingers low and close to his chest. Badger returned the gesture, holding three. Asbjorn returned him a circle of thumb and forefinger, the other three extended, relieved at not getting five. Three parts of every ten was cheap.

"You're the luckiest man I ever met." Tore growled at Leif.

Jarnulf bellowed out his naming of names before someone else cut him off and called Mirha to tell the Kvidur of Leif's attack. Leif yelled in a panic that as a trael she had no voice in Court. Tore offered Eirika the look, and Jarnulf extended his hands toward Leif, palms up, beckoning with his fingers. 'Come, pitch yourself into my grasp, and be transformed into something dead.'

Leif gaped back in a tremble sweat, as the Marshal's fingers grew talons, the same talons Knut must have seen as that nightmare leopard came for him. Jarnulf thought Leif looked like a weasel he'd once grabbed in Marnee's chicken coop.

"I'd just banked the hearth when I heard someone in the dark." Mirha said. "It wasn't Jarnulf so I grabbed his sword and this pimpled dog dropping tried to kill me."

"Liar." Leif yelled. "I just got to the door and someone kicked in the back. I rushed in to defend you."

Jarnulf guffawed at him and Rakel's hair stood on end. A hundred closets could not have contained the darkness his laughter spilled forth.

"With my sword?" Jarnulf said. "when you were wearing that gold pimp sticker?"

Jarnulf whipped out his names and a finger at Badger, demanding he corroborate Mirha's tale.

"Oh yes," Badger said. "he was defending himself valiantly against an unconscious girl, standing over her, preparing to run her through with Jarnulf's sword. But when I challenged him with steel he ran from me, wordless and farting."

A black, wool garbed bulk lumbered up behind Leif, clutching at his shoulder, and Leif gave it a look that minded Badger of the one Leif had given him as he rushed through Jarnulf's door.

Quibbles and titters passed between Leif and Luta.

Jarnulf didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Leif was his, but it looked like he was going to inflict Luta's sweating corpulence on himself first. Luta opened her fat mouth to address the Kvidur.

CLXCI One Bite At A Time

"Chieftain Tore," she squealed, breathless with anticipation. "Leif Skelderson has lawfully assigned his case to me, Luta Storolfsdottir.

And as it is unlawful to publish suits before a Court after the Kvidur has been seated, I demand that Marshal Jarnulf's suit be voided."

"He's been hiding, scurrying about in the damn woods." Jarnulf said.

"You couldn't find him?" Tore said.

Jarnulf grimaced queerly back, and laying his head on his shoulder, slapped it lightly, three times, as though he might knock something out of his ear which had no business being in it.

"You've had all week to summons him, and publish your charges." Tore said.

Jarnulf turned to Eirika who was already on her feet again.

"Suits concerning the maintenance of dependents," she started.

"Marshall Jarnulf," Tore said. "did not assign his interests to you. So shut the hell up."

"Do something, God, damnit." Jarnulf begged her.

Eirika looked like she was tasting the same rage flooding himself. Her most indefatigable student, Luta, the marriage minded whale, had harpooned him, and Tore let her get away with it.

"Your summonses are void, Marshal." Tore said.

Jarnulf stood trembling, glaring rage up at Tore as he strangled his arms, gulping down deep draughts and heaving them out like some berserk about to bite the first someone who got within reach.

"After what you just dragged me through?" he said.

His voice left upon everyone the impression of a heavy door opening upon a rusted hinge.

Rakel pinched herself, repeatedly, hoping to awake. Heaven's stained glass champions, the six rainbowed flanking the square, darkened as if they too were now cast down in rebellion and become themselves angels only of the apostasy. Through those leaded windows like clouds billowing from a spilled coal bin, a soul sickening blackness roiled into the square, and gathered itself into Jarnulf, and he kept breathing it back in all its foulness into the church.

Rakel gagged, filling with the death stench of the hillside.

Leif considered turning the tables on Jarnulf and having him Outlawed for bringing a flawed suit against him. There were numerous instances of such action succeeding. However, one quick look at Olaf and Ref, and the awful thought of Da'hal at the door, killed that idea. To hell with sunset. They'd kill him before noon.

Jarnulf snapped a lightning bolt glare at Dalla, sniggering behind his desk, and regretted bitterly not having nailed him to Mordach's floor. And then at Rakel, hiding her face behind her cupped hands as she stared straight down at her knees. And then back over his shoulder at Leif, scrambling over Asbjorn to reseat himself two rows behind Dalla.

Jarnulf fixed his eyes on Da'hal at the door at the far end of the aisle and made for him. Tore's angry voice chased after him ordering his immediate return. Jarnulf kept his eyes nailed to Da'hal darkening the doorway.

Leif, terrified to meet those eyes turned babbling to Gundfrieda beside him, who wasn't in any mood for conversation, or sanity, having just been Outlawed.

Starri caught Tore's arm.

"Da'hal will stop him." Starri said.

At the moment Tore wasn't sure that even Da'hal could keep Jarnulf from his swords.

Jarnulf stopped hard and pivoted snap left beside Asbjorn, and Asbjorn slapped a hand to his boot. Jarnulf backhanded him off the bench and locked his fingers in Leif's hair, and dragged him screaming over Asbjorn's struggling knees into the aisle. Jarnulf hurled Leif toward the judging square. Leif staggered forward and caught himself on one hand. Jarnulf kicked him in the ass to flatten him prostrate.

"Marshal!" Luta squealed. "We are in Court. You can not,"

"That's assault." Tore yelled, drowning her out.

Leif struggled erect to face Jarnulf.

"You can't challenge me." Leif said. "Tore just ruled that."

Jarnulf slapped Leif backhand across his cheek, hard, but without drawing blood. Luta raced waddling across the square for Asgrim's help. She might as well have asked for Jarnulf's.

"I'll have my monies worth." Jarnulf said.

Dalla, detesting them equally prayed that both would go for a boot knife. Jarnulf slapped Leif again. Leif bent reaching for his knife.

Jarnulf slapped him a third time.

The church held its breath but for the desperate cries of Luta begging Leif to stop. Many got up to stand atop their benches.

Jarnulf hunched forward, throwing his arms out wide before Leif. To Leif he loomed darker and bigger even than that monster at the door blocking his escape.

"Please. I'm unarmed." Jarnulf begged, shaking his arms.

Leif straightened and looked up again to the Kvidur, desperate for sympathy. Hakon alone offered him a friendly grin with his awful row of troll's teeth on display. Leif put up his fists and Jarnulf threw up his right boot lifting him clean off the floor with it. Leif landed on hip and elbow, and curled up clutching himself and groaning. Jarnulf took one bounding leap toward Luta and Asgrim's frightened eyes told him that that would be a very bad idea. Leif, maybe, but no further.

"That one was for you." Jarnulf roared at Luta, before bending back, down on one knee, to seize Leif's hair.

Leif averted his eyes, babbling out pleas to the floor for his life.

'Jarnulf's woman was still his, his sword and his silver were still his.'

Jarnulf yanked him screaming face to face. And Leif shared with Rakel the only thing he had ever shared with her, or ever would, what she had seen gathering in all its awful horror from the very start in Jarnulf.

Lightning crawled crackling through the furrows of his brow. In the crimson cauldrons of his wolf eyes piled up mountain upon mountain of ever redder, roiling clouds. And then the comets that had promised in those eyes to Nacarr blazed forth from those clouds, blinding in their ghastly, rotting corpse hues, rocketing toward him. The blood clouds behind them whirled, swelling out into all consuming chaos, and whispering their fury to Leif, they out thundered the hurricane.

Leif, still screaming, covered his ears, trembling and pissing himself.

"You have no idea what you have stolen from me," Jarnulf whispered. "twice."

Aesir Thor did not come into men at their beggings. What summonsed him was beyond the wildest surmises of any man even approaching sane.

Jarnulf slammed Leif's head into the floor.

Behind him, Tore's bitter sigh summonsed him, and dropping Leif he stood, turning back to face Tore. As Eirika's mind blinding dignity and beauty had filled the entire square, so now did his silent fury.

In Rakel's terrified eyes the black lightning leapt all about him, and crawled up and down the leaded bars of the windows. Rakel held her breath, expecting those violently shaking windows to explode.

"Leif owes you one Mark and Mirha another," Tore said, affecting to sound bored.

Jarnulf strode furious toward his desk and Mirha. To Rakel his eyes were a maelstrom of molten iron. He burned their wolf lust into her. She could not meet it. He turned his back to Rakel, and pointing to Mirha, he glared the whirlwind up to Tore.

"That lying Trickster did this." he bellowed, and Rakel saw rivers of tiny dust flecks cascade down from the rafters.

The Kvidur wondered what they were supposed to see. It had been a week and Mirha's swollen lip and black eye were well healed.

"And you, Marshal, owe this Court one Mark." Tore said. "For contempt, and the three Marks you claim for the unlawful riding of your horse are cancelled by those you owe Dalla Helgason, for the crime of Averki. You broke his nose before any challenge was even issued."

"By my father's missing eye." Jarnulf roared back, startling Starri greatly.

Again he burned his awful gaze back into Rakel, cringing from him through her fingers, dreading that he would take her here and now before all. He whipped about shooting his fists back toward Dalla, who started at his gaze, perhaps having glimpsed just who was really behind it. And then he stormed off for the Trickster, squirming on the floor, dragged toward Leif by Jarnulf's trembling white knuckles.

Rakel alone saw the smoke rising from those hot, white iron hammers, and heard the floor boards splitting and cracking beneath his boots.

"Both of you." he roared at Leif and Dalla. "One bite at a time, I'm going to feed you to the owls."

CLXCII This Whole Sordid Mess

Tore's Kvidur, and his crew in the gallery, were already on their feet and rushing toward Jarnulf and whatever possessed him. And perhaps it was his infernal rage which had him unable to decide whether to kill Leif or Dalla first that allowed Hakon and Skapti to grab his arms before he could start on either of them. Then Vestmar leapt upon his back.

Jarnulf did not fight them. He did not know they were there. But even those three could not stop him from seizing up Leif as Bardi had seized up Viglief by crotch and collar. Jarnulf hurled Leif at Luta and then Bardi and Throttolf and Valthjof also laid hold of him and all six dragged him away. It looked, and sounded, much as it had when they dragged Da'hal away from the Stormers he had not yet killed.

Even those six were unable to force him back onto his bench, as if they were muscling a sail in a hurricane, and losing. His ragings and cursings thundered through the church blacker and with worse sacrilege than even Da'hal's.

Dalla boasted that he'd trade compensations with Jarnulf himself.

"The hell you will." Tore roared at him. "You're barred from Mordach's and if Jarnulf wasn't Marshal I'd ban him too. You aren't to get within a mile of each other."

Ordinarily, Tore thought, and it grieved him greatly, he'd have invented some way to give Leif the lashes he richly deserved for this stunt, but it would have killed the little coal biter and he needed every hand he could lay a hand on.

Tore called a quick conference of his Kvidur and they rose to retire again into the black behind the desk.

Rakel remained blind to all but Jarnulf struggling with his retainers as some portion of his rage drained out of him and into Bardi and Valthjof, who with no small difficulty or bruises, got him reseated.

The Kvidur returned in mere heartbeats.

"Now, Thunderbolt," Tore barked at Dalla. "Skipper Starri will be leaving with his crew in the morning for the Beothuk village. They will dig up whatever treasure Morrow's women and kids have still hidden away from Thidrandri's Thingmen. He will be staying after the Thunderers leave to keep our Skraelings out of mischief. You will replace him as their Chieftain after you and your crew have laid up the Logmadur's new ship."

Dalla's eyes shot wide and he protested that it was an honor way beyond his merits. Tore barked him back to silence.

"The ship you lost, as you, were lying pissed while Hring, stinking drunk along with you, broke her back and burnt her. After Starri has straightened out that Skraeling outhouse, you'll take Hring, and Mr. and Mrs. Asbjorn," Tore paused for a quick, and very smug glance at Luta bending over Leif who was again curled up and moaning.

"And Mr. and Mrs. Leif, along with you." he continued. "See if you can keep from burning the whole damn village down."

Rakel breathed her own sigh of relief. Though she detested Mirha, the thought of sicking that crotch kicked vermin on any girl was too horrible for even her worst enemy. Dalla had done it and lied to her. Then he'd set up Jarnulf for it. Even without all of that there was no way she was going to live among those bug eating savages.

"Audun Thorgilson." Tore intoned.

Badger sat with his head cocked onto his shoulder, scratching the side of his nose and clucking to himself over Dalla's promotion.

"Audun Thorgilson." Tore called out again. There was a decided edge in it this time. Andar elbowed Badger and he leapt to his feet. It had been so long since anyone had called Badger by his given name he'd near forgot it.

"Due to the Inestimable service," Tore droned. "you have done us, in saving the life of Skipper, and Chieftain Helgason at the risk of your own, I'm appointing you to Skipper the Logmadur's new ship since Chieftain Helgason will be too busy to see to anything else, for years."

Badger cringed at Tore's peculiar turn of self evident phrase. His life was certainly at risk among them.

Asbjorn and Hring traded questing stares. Skraeling land even if Leif came with it seemed almost a bargain compared to Skipper Audun. Serving under Dalla never cost them money no matter what he caught them at but Badger's avarice was growing like a spring toadstool and knuckles to straighten him out was no longer an option. Dalla had thrown his weight around at first but they speedily convinced him that he didn't want his own dirty laundry aired. And out of town off in Beothuk land made digging up something to hold over his head near impossible.

"Marshal Jarnulf." Tore droned. "You are now Chieftain of the Nahri. As that is a Full Chieftaincy, you're also a member of the Law Council at Althing. You will uphold the law in our new southern village. You will root out Nacarr's remaining conspirators and punish them."

Jarnulf stood, leaning heavily forward on his desk, staring down at it, and Rakel caught the red blazings return in his eyes. One handed, he loudly ripped up a board from its top, cracking it in two. This time it truly broke and everyone heard it.

Kveldalf's heart skipped a number of beats. Jarnulf wouldn't be leaving by himself. With Hlif dead she had a real shot at the man of her dreams. But then with what she'd stirred up, following Da'hal, or better yet running off ahead of him to Nahristadir seemed a good idea.

"Chieftain Jarnulf." Tore said. "The Nahri's interests must be tied to ours immediately before somebody else moves in on them. You and your men will see to it starting in two weeks."

"And four hundred here, are going to just do without venison, huh?" Jarnulf said.

"Some goddamn hunter you are." Tore said. "You couldn't even find Leif in your own woods. And if I heard rightly, and I did, Frakki alone was willing to fight an Holmganga with Nacarr. He's certainly man enough to show sailors how to shake deer out of the trees."

Eirika figured now that business was done, and Tore no longer needed his composure, would be the right time. She approached the desk and her eyes seized on Hroghar, sitting where Hroald should be. Grimkel had deferred to her every whim and doted on her endlessly, but still that old knot chilled her between her breasts, and she missed Hroald. Her mind lurched unsteady through its hall of self accusatory reflections, wondering how it would sort out between them all, on the other side. She should have married him, but Hroald, the damn fool, never thought he had enough money to do more than worship her from afar. She should have straightened him out forty years ago.

At least she'd got Anja straightened out. She'd done everything short of physically hurling her into Olaf's lap at Thing. Perhaps that would be her own punishment, to spend eternity being hurled and torn between Grimkel and Hroald.

"Bror's not going anywhere," Eirika said to Tore. "as I claimed, and lawfully reported to Marshal Jarnulf on that very evening, my killing of the Outlaw Gerard Beauvais for the lawful reprieve of Bror's Skoggangur. As a Lesser Outlaw Bror is lawfully entitled to the church burial he's had, and he's keeping it."

Tore bitterly regretted hurling his wingless gavel at Dalla, as he now didn't have it to hurl at her. Tore ordered Aesolf to sit back down and not start up again.

"That cannot be resolved by this Husthing." Tore said. "Outlawry can only be rescinded by the Court which imposed it."

"If you insist." Eirika said. "We'll just untangle this whole, sordid mess," and she let it hang for an awful moment, "at the proper Court, on Hellulandia, this summer."

Despite Tore's fury Starri remained unruffled. If Tore couldn't set Aesolf straight Mordach would see to it that the old bastard just up and died, apparently, of a broken heart. Aud's father Hallfred had been one big, mean pervert, big enough to have given Gunnarr more trouble than he had if Mordach hadn't got him first. Mordach was a veritable adept at invisibly poisoning insoluble problems.

CLXCIII It Would Be An Insult

Olaf and Ref howled like Throttolf's mastiff when its beer bowl was empty, drowning each other out with a hundred reasons why they were needed here at home. Tore said that Jarnulf needed them, and that was it. Hundreds of Nahri women and kids would starve without them. Nacarr's witch had to be hunted down. Asgrim and his crew would mind the village for them. Frakki and the apprentices would show Adam's twenty where the deer were.

Kadlin felt Thorarin droop, limp in her grasp. Gudrod sighed to Thorarin that their luck had just run off. Kjartan told Gudrod that this was a God sized piece of luck. Jarnulf had never done more than roll his eyes and groan at any of them, except for Kveldalf's bear. At their new posting, under Jarnulf, there were twenty women for every man. Kjartan reminded Gudrod why they'd become hunters instead of sailors in the first place. Gudrod told Kjartan he'd completely left his senses, those women wanted to kill them.

"Lack wit." Kjartan said. "In two weeks Asgrim will have dealt with the worst. The rest will be so lonely they'll be killing each other over us, and besides, they'll all kill you one way or another, in the end."

Kadlin called him a pig and then reached across Gudrod's chest to slap Kjartan's face.

"See?" he asked Gudrod. Gudrod returned him a look of inexpressible melancholy as he explained that he and Kolfinna were about to become parents.

"So?" Kjartan said.

Kadlin slapped him again.

At Badger's side Caoimhe shivered away at every hint of a raised voice.

Badger hoped her hangover would last a month. He shuddered, looking at the back Jarnulf's head. Mirha clutched greedily at Jarnulf's arm, whispering in his ear. His friend since childhood who'd been with him that day he'd won his name in their eighth winter. The day sixteen wintered Karl had been bullying them and he'd nailed Karl in the head with that rock, knocking him out cold. Karl was still wearing the scar. And how when Starri heard of it he'd laughed and said "Kid's a regular little Badger, ain't he."

Caoimhe moaned again. This was how it started with Jarnulf. An unwanted girl under his roof. Jarnulf was ruined, finished, his life was over. They might as well have Outlawed and killed him, banished from his folk, exiled in Nahri land. The only law he'd have to protect him there would be sword, axe, and rope.

Caoimhe scrambled over his knees and dashed for the door, clamping both hands over her mouth. Badger scuttled after her dreading that Tore would dump Jarnulf's headache as Marshal on him too.

Throughout the church folk were gaining their feet, wearied by their expectations of disaster and giddy with relief at its dissipation.

Tore bellowed at them all to remain seated until he and his Kvidur were out the door ahead of them. There would be no fights outside.

His every instinct screamed within him to run. Instead he screwed his features into a scowl at having his precious morning wasted as he and Starri clambered down from behind the bench and thundered down the aisle. He was still boiling at the oar Eirika pitched into his stew, wondering what to do with Aesolf now. Olaf hustled Jarnulf along after them, hot at their heels, with Mirha at theirs, lest there be new murder charges to answer. At the door Da'hal stepped aside and Tore's outrage trebled.

In the street the horizon was horses, everywhere, at least sixty, magnificent, stamping and chafing chargers, their hooves crushing and raising a salt white cloud from the shellfish pave. Their riders were buckskinned and all bore huge, razor lances. None were smiling. The Ottarrs had camped four miles out, and then ridden in at Kolgrim's signal. They knew better than to ride the Hrafn woods at night.

Tore glared venom up to Ivar.

"What are you doing here?" Tore yelled at him.

Chieftain Ivar Sigurdson leaned forward over his stallion's ears.

"It would be an insult," Ivar said. "not to come to the wedding of such a distinguished man as Jarnulf, son of Ulf."

Ivar's Thingmen remained stolid and unremitting in their silent menace. Ivar turned round to offer them his brown glare, and they exploded in a deafening chorus of whoops, hurrahs, and lances shaken high, wishing Jarnulf well. Jarnulf's eyes flared crimson again. He had been robbed a third time.

"Will somebody please, just, kill me?" he begged the porch roof.

This was the final, distinguishing, insult. There'd be no slinking out of it now. He would truly be married, by sunset, on top of buying a wedding feast for this mob. And there was no reason to suppose they couldn't drink just like his own neighbors, especially when someone else was paying for it.

Kjartan caught Jarnulf's eyes, and searching for Kveldalf, discovered her willowy, sky blue back in headlong flight between two white starred roans. Kjartan dashed off after her, and Starri groaned. Now Rakel would raise ten times the hell she ever had.

CLXCIV It Does Creep Up On You

Badger seemed oblivious to the Ottarrs, and Da'hal and Kolgrim joking on the porch beside him, while showering compliments on, making puppy eyes at, and puffing his chest out to a stacked blonde cherub whose every returning shake and giggle fairly screamed that she was on the edge from the pleasure of making him squirm and beg.

In the corner of Tore's left eye quivered a mousy little brunette bent double at the end of the landing. Tore breathed a disgusted sigh and clomped off toward Caoimhe wondering whatever had possessed him to want the job of Chieftain. There was no end of it.

Ten dismounted Ottarrs led the hunters' saddled horses back to the barn. The correct verdict had been reached. A hunter exodus under guard and Ivar's later reconciliation with Chieftain Tore would not be needed. The remaining Ottarrs tried to kidnap Jarnulf into the Mead Hall but Ivar ordered them to wait. Tore might not be through with him just yet.

Shouts and howls rang out at the door as more men came through it. Hjortgren calmed them as best he could, and directed them to the granary beyond the barn where Arnor and Kolgrim had carted off and stowed all of their weapons, excepting those of the hunters.

Sweating, shaking and greener than green, Caoimhe was in the midst of her forth attack of dry heaves when a hand the size of a barrel top landed gently on her shoulder from behind. She turned and sheer terror put her hangover on ice. It was the Chieftain, the monster who couldn't stop laughing that night at the beach as he'd hammered that Skraeling to death and then well beyond, amidst the ghastly whoops and howls from his men.

"Come along." Tore said pushing her gently before him towards Badger and Ingibjorg.

By now the church was emptying out. Tore ignored the outraged stares from the more brazen. Ingi saw Caoimhe coming, and attempting to mask her fury at sharing even a portion of her stage before Badger she botched it wholesale. Caoimhe stopped short but Tore shoved her smack between them.

"You sly dog." he said, winking at Badger. "But did you have to keep pouring it into her afterwards? This poor girl's not used to drinking all night, like some."

He thought about shooting Ingibjorg a look but figured that would be overdoing it.

"And that stuff of Starri's, it does creep up on you." he sighed.

"Oh Badger." Ingi giggled, reaching around Caoimhe to touch the tip of his nose and jerk her hand back as if she'd burned it. "I have to go. Maybe I'll see you around."

Tore felt the dry heaves mounting in his own gut at Ingi's simpering, my turds don't stink smile, wrapped around the eyes of a copperhead. Ingi turned left as a wind up and then snapped about right, setting her ample bosom into a motion to give any man whiplash, and then swinging her butt like a swayback mare sashayed off toward Mordach's with her own train of Ottarr admirers in pursuit and leaving Badger with his own heady draught of Jarnulf's recent rage.

"I knew you two would hit it off." Tore said, gathering Caoimhe and Badger beneath his shoulders. "But you, young lady, don't be getting him drunk every night, he's got real responsibilities now."

Badger decided he'd liked Tore a lot better before the old man started looking after his interests.

Hrafns continued streaming out of the church past them to mill about with the Ottarrs, discussing Jarnulf's surprise wedding.

Jarnulf made to retrieve his swords. Caoimhe's quivering hand shot out to lock itself onto his black sleeve.

"You're still the Marshal, aren't you?" Caoimhe said.

Mirha gave Jarnulf a kiss on the cheek before trotting on to gab with Kolfinna and Adis in the street.

"Who the hell are you?" Jarnulf said. The last thing he wanted was to be dragged into another girl's lunatic life or death drama, especially some girl he didn't know.

"I want to lodge a complaint," she said. "against this Badger fellow. He tried to drown me last night. I have rights."

"Oh, it's you." Jarnulf said. "You don't look drowned to me. And even if he had drowned you, there's nothing I could do about it. You're his trael. Your rights protect you from everyone but him."

"But all I did was have a sip of his wine." she said.

Jarnulf's eyes begged Badger for help.

"It was a gallon of Starri's best." Badger said. "They almost killed each other."

"Be thankful he didn't whip you." Jarnulf snorted at her, and stormed off.

"Chieftain Jarnulf, a word." Tore said and beckoning Jarnulf to follow, headed for the far end of the porch. Badger gave Caoimhe a haughty, annoyed sneer and chased off after Ingibjorg. Tore offered Jarnulf his warm, grandfather smile.

"Why, did you let Olaf get away with that?" Jarnulf said. "They'd never have Outlawed me on Dalla's pile of offal."

"It's best," Tore said. "that Sigrid's kin sharpen their hate against a man already dead, a man with no kin hereabouts. They need someone to take vengeance on, if only in their minds."

"It's not right." Jarnulf said.

"No, it's not," Tore said. "but it works. Sorry about Leif. If I don't kill him first building Eirika's ship, help yourself. And do you think your mother can keep a secret?"

"I've no idea what you mean." Jarnulf said.

"Yes you do." Tore said. "And you're taking ten days to go make certain she does, before you go straighten out the Nahri."

"It's only four days there and back." Jarnulf said.

"After two weeks," Tore said. "those bitches and their brats might be less inclined to murder you after you've rescued them from Asgrim and Valthjof and the rest of my crew, who are going to jump on them with all forty of their feet."

In his grey eyes sparked that same mirth Humach had quailed beneath, as he hefted his mallet for the first swing.

"I'm glad we understand each other." he said and ambled off back to the new girl.

Olaf, long faced and somber, approached from the doorway.

"How could you?" Jarnulf said. "This damn world stole everything he had, his home, his family, his life, and now even his name."

"That's what I said to Tore," Olaf said. "when he told me to do it. And he said that's just the way it is. It often falls on the least deserving, like those Gaels. And he said that he'd just have to pay up when his time comes and piss in the devil's eye, instead of have all our times come now."

"But to be remembered as a murderer?" Jarnulf said.

"What difference does it make," Olaf said. "what fools think of him? We're all excommunicate anyway. Our graveyard isn't even legally consecrated ground. Bror is with God. God knows his heart. What else matters? Without a killer, Aesolf would have gone to Althing. Would you want Aud Outlawed, or the rest of us, for openly tolerating her and Sigrid's perversity?"

"I'm sorry." Jarnulf said. "It just all tastes like shit."

"Yes, it does," Olaf said. "and I'm going home now, to sit on my porch and get stinking, motherless, drunk, till it gets dark. And I'm going to stay out there, in the dark and the cold. I want to look up into the stars, while I'm staying stinking, motherless, drunk, and begging my friend to forgive me."

"Tell him I'll try to pay him what I owe him, somehow." Jarnulf said.

Olaf swept his arm in a broad arc out over the street filled with horses, Ottarr forest men, Hrafn sailors blustering at each other, and their women and kids chiding them.

"What would Bror want you to do, about Dalla?" Olaf said and departed, north and homeward.

Ottarrs, Olaf's friends and former neighbors, crowded him. Ivar, Ulfkel and his brother in law Rani were foremost but he respectfully shook them off, unable to bear anyone's company. It was all that much harder as he could not tell them why. Within ten paces the crowd, horses, and this day were no more to him, and his mind was again at Mordach's cherishing that sun bright memory in his heart of his first real meeting with Bror and those other beloved ghosts.

CLXCV Only Till

He'd been in Hrafnstadir, and married, only three days.

That evening at Mordach's was moderately thick with sailors and their families. Straying elk hounds, greyhounds and two mastiffs ran loose, bumming, and receiving here a bone and there a cuff, from table to table. Little children wandered about loose, away from their parents, chasing the dogs.

There wasn't any horse trade in Hrafnstadir and he needed work, at the only other thing he really knew, hunting. Anja might divorce him if she discovered he'd lied to her and was broke. A year passed before she confessed she'd known all along. If he needed the fiction, that was fine with her. She'd chosen him over others with trunks full of money.

Bror, Ansvarr, Galinn, and Gunnarr at their usual table, were washing down dinner with mead. For the last three days he'd kept them all in the corners of his eyes marking their every breath while playing the idiot. Any Thingi's hunters were a tight knit brotherhood who didn't welcome outsiders. Getting in was one thing, but tipping his hand another. He'd shower his bride with gifts and wealth, whatever it took to keep such a magnificent, irreplaceable woman.

He joined the hunters. He was wearing a number of fresh, red scratches on his face, and forearms.

"Didn't I tell you not to go petting other folks' dogs?" Ansvarr said. "Some of them bite."

"Only till they get to know you." Olaf laughed. Ansvarr, Galinn, and Gunnarr smiled polite and short at his stalest jokes but little Bror snubbed him. Through three slow cups Bror seemed busy biting back insult after insult. Then Bror looked up straight into his face, still stoic and stolid.

"All right." Bror said. "If that's your game, we're in, all of us, with a condition."

Then Bror pointed only with his eyes and chin across the aisle, three tables up, to eighteen wintered Jarnulf's back. Da'hal sat beside Jarnulf and Ref across from him, but Jarnulf was clearly by himself, nursing a tankard, and occasionally muttering half snarls to the few who spoke to him.

"He needs a friend." Bror said.

And Olaf flushed, remembering how embarrassed he'd been later, realizing how he'd stuck his foot in his mouth, pushing his luck.

"I don't know." he'd replied. "He looks very arrogant, and quarrelsome."

"He buried his father two months ago," Bror said. "along with the best half of himself. Help him dig it back up."

"Aren't you his friends?" he'd asked.

"Since he was born." Gunnarr said. "Right now he's busy showing us what a good job we did raising him, proving what a tough and determined man he is."

Galinn, sitting beside Gunnarr, nudged him, and with a mischievous, conspiratorial wink, raised his voice above the Hall's clatter.

"Go on you, if it's cold and lonely at your hearth, don't come asking me to cut wood."

They'd seen his game a mile off. Still unknown to himself was their converse after he'd gone to manufacture his luck with Jarnulf.

Ansvarr asked Bror if he was sure they'd done the right thing. Bror just pointed with his chin again, but grinning sly, and Ansvarr glanced back over his shoulder.

Hopping about on the bench beside Olaf, and almost in his lap, stood four wintered Isrid. She was giggling up a storm and tugging on Olaf's ear, her straying greyhound forgot. She erupted in another squeal of baby laughter as he tickled her, dividing his attention between her and Jarnulf, and telling her silly jokes.

"So he likes kids." Ansvarr said.

"Seen Throttolf today?" Gunnarr said. Irony twinkled in his dark brown eyes like reflections of the noon sun on a clear, rushing brook.

"Not since last night," Ansvarr said. "when he called our new friend a stupid oaf and shoved him away. I'd have handed him his teeth."

"And Olaf said he was sorry," Galinn said. "he was trying to grow out of being a stupid oaf, and as Throttolf was such a smart man, he hoped he wouldn't mind if he talked to him again sometime, to see how much smarter he'd got."

Bror laid his chin on his chest, pinching an eyebrow and puckering his lips.

"Astrid said Throttolf was in this morning," Bror said. "and he was wearing his nose on the other side of his face."

Ansvarr started a laugh and Galinn cuffed the back of his head.

"What?" Galinn said. "Did you think our Anja would have married a coward or a fool?"

"Didn't Throttolf have that big, black, son of a bitch bear hound with him last night?" Ansvarr said.

"Had him this morning too." Bror said. "Astrid said it was walking mighty strange, and Throttolf too for that matter. Its balls were all swollen up, bright red, and something, bit half its left ear off."

"Hmmm." Ansvarr said before sneaking a second look over his shoulder through very different eyes at Olaf.

After a while Galinn asked Bror if he wasn't afraid that Olaf and Jarnulf might kill each other before they got to know each other.

"See those yellow green eyes?" Bror said.

"Guess you're right, good deal of the snake in them." Galinn said. "Real crafty, he'll figure out Jarnulf quick enough."

"I was thinking more of the heron." Bror said. "Big, goofy, sleepy looking things. You'd never believe they could fly till you see them do it. Sees clear to the bottom, and he don't dive in and get wet till he's found exactly what he's looking for, the best, like our Anja."

Across the aisle and three tables away Jarnulf let out a roaring guffaw at some joke Olaf had crafted for little Isrid.

"We haven't pried one of those from him since we buried Ulf, God love him." Galinn said.

"Okay." Ansvarr said, his voice rising, querulous, still unsold, "But can that Ottarr hunt?"

"Probably." Gunnarr said. "If he can't, we'll teach him."

Olaf smiled, bittersweet, as he strode past the last steading in town, on his way. Bror had known. He'd thanked Bror many times for ordering him off that evening toward Jarnulf.

Jarnulf spotted Aethle, standing alone, in the path between the church and the barn. He ran to her.

"Where's Arnor?" he begged, "I," he faltered, lost.

"Out there," Aethle said, nodding toward the graveyard. She looked as if a sword was twisting in her guts. "Talking to his father. He wanted to be alone. He ran out when Tore made you a Chieftain. I've only seen him cry once. He was so beside himself. He was red with fury. He tried and tried, but just couldn't cock his father's crossbow. He was using bad language, and saying over and over that he was going to kill all the trolls. He won't even let me near him. He's so alone."

Jarnulf, suffocating with frustration, bolted westward.

CLXCVI A Half Dozen Lobsters

The enormity of Caoimhe's plight crushed her and she quaked, mumbling to herself, cursing the night she'd laid eyes on that awful Viking. She stared shaking at Badger's retreating back wondering where she might get hold of some painless poison and do away with her brokenhearted self.

"You're barking up the wrong tree." Tore said.

"But is it true?" she whined. "Am I his, trael?"

"That it is Missy." Tore said, giving her another wink. "There's ways out of it, and nobody here cares anyway."

Eirika peeled herself from the column streaming into the street and planted herself at Tore's side, beyond furious.

"You know full damn well," she said. "that suits concerning the maintainance of dependents may be published to any court after the judges have been seated."

"Weak." Tore said. "And it came to me that I actually have a use for that little prick, killing him with a mallet splitting planks for your new ship. Dalla hates him even worse than Jarnulf does. Wait till he gets to cleaning up Morrow's village with the idiot who put him there right under his heel."

"Oh." she said.

"What am I supposed to do?" Caoimhe said.

Tore pointed out Mirha, gossiping with Kolfinna and Adis.

"If I were you," Tore said. "I wouldn't bother the Marshal again. I'd go make friends with his wife."

"Tore," Eirika said. "tell Maeve a half dozen lobsters will cover it."

Then taking his arm she dragged him off towards Mordach's to share a few refinements to add to Dalla's Outlawry among the Skraelings.

They left Caoimhe with her mouth open and feeling sicker than ever. If what she'd just seen of that farce of a trial were any indication of life and death here, that beautiful princess in the snow white gown, the one with the blacker than black hair, she had been terrified witless by that murdering Marshal. Caoimhe felt more than a pang or two of guilt over busting that young guy's head with her hand axe. His shipmates had cheated him, and then that awful Marshal, his friend the murderer, had lied like a rug and kicked him in the balls. And that other girl with the short hair, the victim's best friend, they'd obviously threatened her with the same, the way she stood up for them. Caoimhe figured she'd have to watch her step around here.

Maybe the princess would be the place to start, or better yet the murdered girl's friend. But what could she possibly have to offer her to gain her confidence? As she stood there feeling as if her shoes were tarred to the floor, the freakishly muscled red bearded giant tromped out the door past her to hug the one eyed demon up under his shoulder.

"Give me this afternoon to wrap the hilt. You can have it tonight." Hroghar said.

"Really?" Starri said.

"Now when, has my best client, and dearest friend, ever had to wait in line?" Hroghar said. He leaned close. "Especially when he's made good on certain promises?"

Hroghar wasn't however, about to tell Starri about the four more swords he'd built expressly for him, and hidden away last winter.

Tore shed himself of Eirika and headed toward the barn for a horse to take him out to his ship shed. Surveying the lumber and stores for Eirika's new ship was the perfect excuse to ride out of reach of any questions concerning his rulings.

Mirha'd set that new kid straight. What was her name, Caoimhe?

Badger had better things to do than panting after that roving bed closet jumper. Had at him with an axe had she? She'd straighten his ass out.

Behind Tore, in the street, Aslak Hraerekson again grabbed Andar, determined to grab some renown for himself. Aslak didn't regain consciousness until almost sundown, and the ringing in his ears lasted three days.

Aesolf and Stienunn made their exit with Dalla stumping stiffly at their heels, now in everyone's doghouse. Few looked at them, and those who did, did so past the ends of their noses.

Mirha spotted Rakel coming through the door and started toward her like a five year old hungering to pull the wings off of a fly. Considering that murder glare and berserker roar Jarnulf had given Rakel, just before he went for Leif, and all those Ottarrs here for the wedding, he was finally all hers. She was not just a free woman and the Marshal's wife. She was a Chieftain's wife.

Adis and Kolfinna grabbed her. Kolfinna promised Mirha that she'd personally blacken both her eyes if she went anywhere near Rakel. Adis told Mirha to watch her step. She wasn't actually married yet.

Eirika watched the three girls and cursed Gorm. She'd almost got Rakel straightened out until Gorm ruined everything by dropping Mirha into it. Oh well, with Jarnulf off to Nahristadir she'd be up to her eyes reconciling neighbors, and Mirha and Rakel would certainly be first among them. A word here, a word there and she'd get Rakel straightened out yet. Someone had to keep straightening Jarnulf out after she was gone.

CLXCVII Not Your Fault

Arnor was on his knees bending over Gunnarr's grave, leaning against the cairn on one hand. His eyes were closed and his lips moved feebly. Arnor's free hand was clutching tight the silver cross and hammer on his necklace. Jarnulf stopped short at the foot of his friend's grave.

"Who's there?" Arnor said.

"Arnor, I'm so sorry." Jarnulf said. Arnor jerked his face away, westward.

"My mother says it's not your fault, sometimes, people can't keep promises." Arnor said.

"I don't know where to begin." Jarnulf said.

"When you called me your brave friend, did you really mean it?" Arnor asked, still facing away from Jarnulf with his eyes tight shut.

"I meant every word I said." Jarnulf said. "And I meant it forever."

"Good," Arnor replied, finally turning his face toward Jarnulf's, and opening his brimmed young brown eyes. "It would be unmanly, to cry before you."

"God forgive me." Jarnulf cried out, and snatched Arnor to his feet and hugged him.

"It's not your fault." Arnor sobbed, hugging him back. "It's not your fault."

It was a long moment before Jarnulf could find his voice. When he did, it came strained and broken.

"I must go to Thunderstadir for ten days first." Jarnulf said. "I would be very much honored to have such a brave, and dear friend as you come with me."

Arnor assented, burying his face deep into Jarnulf's ribs, and then together in the bright noon sun, they wept openly and unashamed.

Back by the north corner of the church Aud shooed the curious away while Aethle stood watch at the south corner.

"Did my father die well?" Arnor said. Jarnulf let Arnor go and dropped to his knees to speak through their eyes.

"I got there too late," Jarnulf said. "but many others witnessed it. Share your grief. They too cry for him. They will tell you, all of them, that the name of Gunnarrson will demand you hold your head high. Your father was a lion. In the end it was an arrow. No man's blade touched him. Seven lay dead before him from his sword and knife, and none know how many more fled his fury, screaming in terror, seeing only their own onrushing death from the terrible wounds he dealt them."

"I miss my father." Arnor said.

"So do I." Jarnulf said, and noticing Aud headed his way, headed his own toward her.

CLXCVIII You Know

"You know who killed her." she said.

He locked eyes with her in silence for a long time, wishing she were anyone else and that he wasn't so fond of her. After this newest disaster he was dying to tell someone off but it had been as hard for her as himself. He wanted to at least take her shoulders in his hands but there were still too many loose tongues about who'd gossip it into some vile conspiracy between them.

He spoke to her in undertones, loud enough for her alone to hear.

"When Hroald told Ivar to delay prosecuting Hrorik and keep him in chains, he couldn't tell you why. Hrorik and his supporters, outlawed or not, would have disappeared and gone off to raise God knew what kind of hell behind our backs. He couldn't be killed out of hand after we'd left the scene of the action and he couldn't be let out of sight."

"He had to have known he would be outlawed for what he did, which meant he had already struck a bargain with someone to harbor him. It wasn't Nacarr because he wanted Rakel and Nacarr would take her from him. So it had to be Lalghar."

"Lalghar and Nacarr together could have easily over run us. And you couldn't be allowed to know any of that because if you breathed a word of it, panic would have spread like fire, and it would have got out and back to them, and they would have changed their approach, and we would have all died."

"If you want to really know that Bror was who you thought he was, go home and hold the needles he made for you."

Hold his gifts with Ansvarr's of all that the animals told you. They were as brothers. Remember them that way.

"And my father?" she said.

"You're set on wringing everything out of me, aren't you?" he said.

"Remember what Galinn told you after Sigrid's funeral? Put that in your sewing box too. Because he did believe it. He was a truth teller. It was a compulsion with him. It's just the way he was. That's why he and Gunnar stopped coming together when they came to see you at your Aunt's."

"Gunnar found out what your father had been doing to you. He did what needed to be done."

"It wasn't that Galinn had any qualms about it or blame for Gunnar when he found out. It just made his truth teller uneasy being there with both of you at the same time."

"I'm sorry they kicked you out of your sewing box." she said, pointing and rolling her eyes west toward the forest."

She transferred a kiss from her fingertips to his lips.

He took her free hand and curled her fingers around what he placed in it before turning and walking away in silence. Without looking down she replaced the bear tooth bracelet Hroald had presented her back on her wrist.

CLXCIX I Will Lay Heaven In Ashes

Asgrim and Karl stood joking and snickering with Da'hal in the street, watching Badger chase after Ingibjorg. Tore, at the barn doors, turned back to them, ordering them off to make sure that Jarnulf and Dalla continued off in different directions.

Maeve caught up to her husband.

"I don't envy Jarnulf." Tore sighed. "That goddamn friend of his, someday, is going to be as big a pain in his ass as Starri has been in mine."

"Olaf is nothing like Starri." Maeve said.

"Not him. Your son." Tore said. "Asgrim's a grand fo'c'sulman. Couldn't ask for a better man in a fight, but he can't think more than two moves ahead. I sometimes wish I could store him in the shed over the winter along with the ships. Why do you think I stuck him with a bow out where I could see him? He'd have crippled, at the very least, a couple of Sigrid's kin. And then he'd be sorry, afterwards. Damn berserk's convinced he's invincible, and that makes him a law unto himself."

Maeve giggled.

"You're being most unfair." she said, smiling coyly up to him.

"I'm sure I'd have heard if he'd taken to shield biting."

"I'm waiting for it." Tore groaned. "Damnit, is there never an end of the sins I must commit? Bror deserves better."

"Come along," she said, taking his arm. "You'll get it straightened out, in time, like you always do."

"You did the right thing," he said. "not coming forward.

"Aesolf would never have accepted compensation and been reconciled. I'd have had to kill him, and his kin would have leapt on it. It would have finished us, destroyed us all."

"I almost didn't go," Maeve said. "when the gander got me back up, and I took my bow out looking for some fox or toy wolf, and I saw Sigrid heading toward the beach trail, and Mirha out in the field with that cresset, screaming. It was awful hard Tore, but she was going to gut Mirha. It's not like Mirha hasn't gone out begging for it often enough. But I know Jarnulf, and when he found her all cut up and dead, he'd have gone berserk butchering Sigrid anyway, and perhaps even Kveldalf. And then where would we be?"

"I should have taken the necklace. Then we could have shoved it onto Nacarr's poachers, but Tore, it was Sigrid. How many times have we sat at Aesolf's table, and how many times have I looked after her as she was growing up? I can't tell you how hard it was pulling that arrow out of her in the dark."

Tore hooked his huge finger gently under her chin to coax her tear misted eyes up into his.

"You always were better than I deserved." he said.

"Damn right!" she said.

He wrapped his arm around her and guided her faltering steps homeward. To hell with the ship sheds.

The moon rose, grew old, and fell into the west.

Within Mordach's a very drunken Da'hal tabled his new axe and distractedly patted the sharpening stone on the table before him. Skapti understood him perfectly. Just drop his sword off in the morning. Da'hal would see to it in turn, after the other six he'd just contracted to weld a few nicks out of and resharpen.

Da'hal took up his new, old axe again in one hand and cup in the other. Jarnulf had repaired its haft and returned it to Mordach. And in an amazingly rare display of sentiment Mordach had gifted the axe of Ragi to Da'hal. Like Olaf's gift of Stigandi, though none voiced it, all knew it was in compensation for his loss.

Astrid shook off Ref and pried the axe from Da'hal as he made to shave another few hairs from his forearm. Too drunk to protest he staggered erect, seized down Hlif's first hammer, and dumbly set about stoning an edge onto it.

Jarnulf looked about the steading he'd been born and raised in. He swallowed back the lump in his throat, hoping all its memories would stay with him as it fell apart, and took on that haunted look, and the little children avoided it when Mirha finally moved out to join him.

Kolfinna would have a baby of her own by midwinter. And then there'd be those idiot sailors of Adam's, running around shooting everything right out of his Hrafn woods. He'd figure out some way of greasing it past Tore and onto Gudrod, and promoting him back here. But then Marnee and Gudrod would kill each other if they had to live under the same roof.

He smiled off into the dark above his rafters.

Ulf, and in the morning his unborn, smoke brothers, would be pleased to see Kolfinna and her husband living here. Then he thought long and melancholy on his Aunt. He hadn't thought much of her in years. He hoped her elves wouldn't turn mean on her. He stopped at the door to snatch a gaze at his sleeping wife, and counted himself a lucky man despite it all.

He shuffled to his porch's edge and gazed up into the stars above the eastern sea and told Ulf all about it. That lump was back, in his throat again as he thought of Ulf, and his brother Ansvarr, and his friends Hroald, and Bror and Gunnarr and Galinn, together again. And he knew there'd be many another Hrafn out late this night, and for many to come, when no one was watching, talking to them up there among the stars.

His hunters had all come to dinner, here, this night. Ref made his celebrated sausages. Hunter alone gave voice to the undercurrents they were all trying so desperately to evade. He'd not accepted a bite of sausage from anyone, instead making for the door and howling piteously.

As Jarnulf gazed, a phantasm gathered itself between him and those stars, her sable tresses streaming darker against the dark, her miles deep, doe brown eyes teared, turned heavenward with an immitigable, gray sadness, her pouty red lips a tremble. He wished her well, and he watched a long time until she disappeared.

He tossed away his trousers and got beneath the blankets with his wife. Mirha snuggled her nude bum into his lap, and he laughed a silent curse, remembering the night Sigrid mooned the Hall, and how he missed her too, something terribly.

He was soon at his table drinking heavily and staring into the flames in his hearth, and those big doe brown eyes leering back, knowing they would always haunt him from the flames no matter where he made his hearth.

"I will lay heaven itself in ashes, but you will be mine." he whispered to them, while idly raking his cup's lip with his comb and wondering how he was going to pull it off short of strangling Mirha.

In the south storm clouds were gathering, rolling north toward Nahri and Storm Thingis, and on toward Hrafnstadir. Within them an old and Outlawed god chuckled darkly to himself.

We have heard no more of this saga, as yet

END

Volume III

If you enjoyed this book the author would appreciate a positive review at the retailer you purchased it from.

Thank You for reading.

There will be more. I can't say when but it's in the works.

Previous Volumes In The Viking Hunter Saga

Viking Hunter Vol 1 Grab The Wolf

Viking Hunter Vol 2 Kill Them Twice

Visit my author blog for real Vikings, links to original 800 year old Sagas and Tales in Old Norse and Modern translations, learning their language, sword making, fighting techniques, their laws, courts, and more.

http//:www.wulfanson.blogspot.com

