Читать книгу The Rule - Jack Colman, Jack Colman - Страница 8

On the bench in the master’s chamber of the longhall of Helvik, the oil lamp began to flicker.

Sitting alone on his wooden sleeping berth, Egil lifted his eyes from the packed-earth floor and stared across at the flame. It was dying, spluttering weakly for breath, and the wash of orange light that it cast out into the gloom was slowly shrinking inwards. Egil glanced up through the smoke-hole in the roof, and saw a lighter shade of black. Beyond the walls he could hear the waves falling back out to sea. Dawn, he thought. He put on his cloak, and ducked through the partition door.

On quiet feet, he passed through the dim main hall, listening to the gentle sounds of the sleepers on his right. The logs in the central fire pit were charred black bones with red bellies, as grey on the tops as the heads of old men. He stooped to pick up a fresh piece of wood and dropped it onto the ashes. His two wolfhounds lay on their sides in the glow of the flames. They were motionless apart from their uppermost ears, which lifted to follow his progress.

Night had rolled in beneath an empty sky, the stars twinkling with cold. As Egil slipped out through the doorway, the last of them were fading and the black horizon was faltering to the east. He hitched his cloak closer about his shoulders, and headed towards the light.

His men had not trusted the word of Olaf Gudrødsson, and for the second night in succession they had slept out upon the walls, but Egil had elected not to join them, and sequestered himself in the longhall instead. It sat upon a thin strip of land that reached out into the seawater to form the western arm of the bay, secluded from the rest of the town. Egil wandered down the narrow causeway and turned left along the stony beach, until he reached the place where the town walls met the shore.

Up on the battlements, the air was brisk, a breeze coming in off the sea. Only the sentries were awake, roving their heads back and forth through the blackness. The rest of the men lay doubled up beneath layers of blankets at their feet, steaming like piles of old leaves. Silence hung in the air like a low fog. Only the waves made a sound.

Egil found Eiric and Bjọrn within the first fifty yards. He might have been able to locate them by the sound of their snoring alone, for they drowned out any man nearby. They were lying beneath the same few sheepskins, sprawled out carelessly like drunkards. Crouching, Egil shook them with increasing vigour until they came awake squint-eyed and confused. He mumbled something in their ears, and they dragged themselves up and made for the nearest steps. Egil straightened, and continued on his way.

He went slowly, studying the sleeping faces of those that he passed by the weak light of the torches that blazed at distant intervals. Each man he recognised. The sentries muttered simple greetings as he passed, keeping their eyes forward, and he stopped to share hushed conversations with some. They all professed a yearning to put their spears to use. Egil wondered if they could still say the same with the light of day upon their features.

As he crossed over the footbridge that ran along the top of the main gates, he noticed someone stir in the shadows at his feet. By the light of the torches he saw that it was Gunnarr. He was staring up at Egil, eyes wide and alert, a questioning look upon his face. Egil smiled as he made out another form huddled beneath Gunnarr’s cloak and realised that Kelda had come up onto the walls to spend the night out in the cold beside her husband. She was sleeping with her head against his chest, her hair covering most of her face. The bump in her belly was so large that he could see its smooth contours even through the thick rolls of bedding. Egil remembered when he married them in his hall, on a night in midsummer when they were barely more than children, and felt all the more glad that he hadn’t denied them.

Gunnarr drew his arms out from the covers and made as if to rise, but Egil quickly shook his head to stay the movement. He smiled at the pair again as Gunnarr dug himself back down into the blankets and closed his eyes, and passed on into the dark.

Fafrir was the last to be found. Together he and Egil walked back towards the longhall beneath the greying sky, and by the time that they arrived the other three were already waiting, huddled inside the small antechamber beyond the outer door.

‘Why can’t we go inside?’ Eiric asked irritably.

‘I didn’t think you’d want to wake your wives,’ his father replied.

‘Nonsense!’ Eiric declared. ‘It’s about time they were up. These women will sleep all day if you let them.’

He pushed his way through the inner door, and led the rest of them into the hall. The log that Egil had tossed on the fire was bathed in bright new flame, and the room seemed to sway in the vague and murky light. Two identical sets of benches ran parallel to the walls on either side, with raised berths behind them, upon the west of which the women were huddled in slumber. Eiric and Bjọrn set about lifting the trestles and table top down from the cross-beams overhead, making little effort to dampen their noise. Hákon lounged in the chair at the head of the table, the flames dancing behind his back.

‘Isn’t that my seat?’ Egil reminded him, and Hákon smiled and slid onto the bench beside his brothers.

‘Since we’re here together, how about some ale?’ Eiric suggested, flashing his teeth with a grin.

Egil came around the table to his chair. ‘I’m told there’s one cask of ale left for the whole town.’

‘And judging by your face, this might be our final chance to drink it.’

Egil smiled wearily at his young son’s bravado. ‘Save it,’ he said, ‘for when we have something to celebrate. What I have to say now won’t keep you long.’ He draped his cloak over the back of his chair and then, rather than bothering to sit, rested against the shoulder of it as he made to begin. Before he could start, Bjọrn spoke up from his left.

‘Shouldn’t we wait until Gunnarr arrives?’

Hákon huffed. ‘I’m certain we’ll manage without him.’

Egil flashed his son a disappointed look. ‘I didn’t ask Gunnarr to join us. At this moment, his wife has far more need of him than I do.’

Eiric ruffled with mock offence. ‘Well, you could say the same thing about mine.’

‘Except Brynja, unlike Kelda, isn’t fit to burst with child.’

‘About bloody time too,’ Eiric muttered, and he and Bjọrn sniggered together. They were boys still in Egil’s eyes, but each had already succeeded in adding to his bloodline. Their children lay beside their mothers in the shadows to Egil’s right. Gunnarr and Kelda had been hoping for some time, Egil knew, but Kelda was a slight thing, and the lack of food went harder on her than most.

Without speaking, Egil walked a few paces to the gloom near the back of the room and bent down to lift something with a heave of exertion. When he returned to the light, he was carrying a large trunk made from pine wood and leather. He held it for a moment before the eyes of his sons, and then dropped it onto the table top with a bang.

‘There you have it,’ he said.

All of his sons came to their feet at once, and stared at the trunk as if they’d never before seen such an object. One of the women tossed in the bedding and muttered some complaint about the noise, but none of the men seemed to hear it. Their silence drew out for a few waiting breaths, and then Fafrir voiced what they all must have been thinking.

‘That’s it?’

Egil nodded. ‘I gathered it myself.’

Fafrir was shaking his head. ‘They will say it’s not enough.’

‘They can say what they like, that’s all that there is,’ Egil growled, his voice rising in volume. Helvik had never been a place of any magnitude. Its wealth was its freedom, nothing more. What meagre treasures it did possess were scattered around the dusty alcoves of the longhall, odd trinkets and relics from days gone by. Egil had spent the evening going around with the lamp and sweeping up every last one.

With a dubious expression, Hákon lifted the lid of the trunk and stared down at the shadows inside. ‘We should ask the men,’ he said after a moment. ‘Get them each to contribute whatever they have.’

Egil was shaking his head before his son had even finished the suggestion. ‘Life here for them is miserable enough. I won’t have them give up what small sources of joy they might have, only to buy more of the same.’

‘They wouldn’t agree to it anyway,’ Bjọrn stated, slinging himself back down onto the bench with a thump. ‘It’s a glorious fight they want. This paying off our enemies doesn’t sit well with them.’

‘Nor I,’ Egil responded, ‘but we have no need for such fancies. If all these invaders want is plunder, they are welcome to it. I will not seek out bloodshed for the sake of a few bits of metal.’

He sat back down heavily and glowered at the trunk as if it were the cause of his problems. One after the other, his sons did the same, apart from Hákon, who remained on his feet. He stared down at the contents for a moment longer, and then dropped the lid closed.

‘I will fetch someone to carry it to them,’ he said, and set off towards the door.

Egil let him go a few steps before he stopped him. ‘Hákon,’ he called reluctantly, and his son must have sensed something in his tone, for he drew up just as sharply as if he’d reached the end of a tether. He turned back around, his lips apart with query. Egil sighed, and leaned forward in his seat. ‘I have found someone to carry it,’ he said.

Hákon hesitated for a moment, and looked to his brothers. They were all watching their father, brows wrinkled with concern. In the gloom of the sleeping berths someone shifted beneath the blankets, as if rolling over so as to hear better. The hounds by the fire had lifted their heads, ears pricked in anticipation.

‘Father,’ Hákon sighed, coming back towards the table, ‘you cannot. If they capture you—’

‘I wasn’t speaking about myself, Hákon,’ Egil said, with heaviness. ‘I want you to be the one to take it to them.’

Hákon stopped in his tracks once again. ‘Me?’ He glanced towards his brothers, and released a breath of hesitant laughter. ‘And what might I have done to deserve such an honour above all others?’

Egil felt the familiar tug of sympathy, and did his utmost to suppress it. ‘Sometimes as a ruler,’ he explained, ‘you must demonstrate to your people that you serve them more than they serve you. I will not have any more mutterings that I stood back and sent Meili to his death. But, as you say, if I ride up there myself there is a risk that I may be offering our enemies a gift that they cannot resist. That is why I wish for you to go in my stead.’

Hákon was leaning one hand on the table, his face becoming slowly more drawn. ‘And is the risk not nearly as great if I go? I am your eldest son, the next in line to be ruler—’

‘I do not recall having named my favoured successor yet,’ Egil cut in, and his voice had an edge of reproach to it.

‘But still,’ Hákon spluttered, ‘surely someone else, like Gunnarr perhaps—’

‘For the love of the Gods,’ Eiric groaned, standing up from the bench, ‘I’ll bloody take it if you’re so scared of losing your eyeballs.’

‘No,’ Egil said firmly. ‘The rest of you have families. I won’t put your wives and children through that kind of torment. But that is not why I chose you, Hákon,’ he added quickly, seeing his son’s face become hurt. ‘As you say, you are my oldest son. You are an important figure in this town, and I know that I can trust you as much as any other person in it. Let our adversaries see that we are taking them seriously, but let them also see that no Egilsson is afraid to look his enemies in the eye. You are always asking me for greater responsibilities. Let this be your first of many.’

Hákon shifted his feet on the earth-and-ash floor, and fell silent. His face was downturned, but he was nodding very faintly, so that his tawny hair trembled about his ears. The other boys were watching their brother awkwardly. Behind their exteriors, Egil could see their worry, and as he ran his eyes across them he felt the creep of guilt returning. Their mother would have killed him if she’d seen what he’d just done. But she was long dead, taken by a sickness one morning when the boys were still children, without showing the slightest sign of ill-health. Before her there’d been another one, more children, but they were all gone too, and it seemed like more than a lifetime ago now. His sons were all that Egil had left. And now he was sending one of them into the very heart of danger.

‘Come,’ he said quietly, climbing to his feet. ‘Let us not keep them waiting.’

There were only a handful of horses in Helvik, most of which belonged to Egil’s household. They strapped the wooden trunk onto the old bay pony that the boys had learnt to ride on, and gave Hákon a separate mount to lead it up the hill. The sun had risen from behind the headland, and the higher it rose the quieter Hákon seemed to become, but he managed some swagger as he bade farewell to his brothers. As he came finally to his father, Egil slapped him on the back and boosted him up into the saddle.

‘Make sure that they know this is everything we have. Tell them that we require nothing in return other than that they move on from this place. And if they don’t appear willing to do that, then you remain calm but firm. Say that we have no wish for bloodshed, but at the same time, these are our lands and always have been. We will not sit idle while they’re taken from us.’

Hákon gathered his reins, and gave a stern nod from the saddle. ‘I’ll make you proud, Father,’ he promised.

‘You did that long ago,’ Egil told him. ‘Now off you go, and we’ll speak when you’re back.’

By the time he rode out from the town, all the men were awake and watching Hákon from the walls. Egil climbed up to the battlements to join them, and stood above the gates until his son had meandered up into the cloud and disappeared from sight.

When he returned to the longhall, the women were up and squatting around the fire, frying flat barley bread on battered old pans. Egil took his with one of his grandchildren on his lap, but he found he had scant appetite, and the child devoured most of it. Bjọrn was snoozing on one of the cots, sitting up against the wicker wall with his mouth hanging open. Egil thought to pass the time by doing the same, and retired to the walled-off section at the south end of the hut that was reserved for him and his woman, should he ever find another. It had its own fire pit, but it wasn’t yet cold enough to light it. For a time, Egil thrashed about upon the sheepskins in his berth, but the waves outside sounded almost deafening, and there was too much light coming in through the smoke-hole for him to properly close his eyes.

Midday came, and Hákon did not return. The women were busying themselves on the work benches that ran along the east wall of the room, rolling wicks for the lamps from cottongrass gathered earlier in the year. Fafrir, Eiric and Bjọrn sat murmuring in low voices around the table. Egil tried to join them, but their conversation felt trivial and forced. He went outside again and spent a while watching Fafrir’s son leading Eiric’s son and Bjọrn’s daughter, both still young enough to be tottering on their feet, from rock pool to rock pool. He hoped they were as oblivious as they looked.

For the second half of the afternoon, he returned to the wall above the gates and stood staring up into the hills. Come evening, he was still there. The wind had forced a chill into his bones. The wild sky was orange in the west and darkening to soot in the east, like iron lifted out from the coals, and still Hákon didn’t come home. Egil’s men seemed to sense his emotion, and left him to himself. Before long, he was standing alone in the dark.

He returned to the longhall, and found his sons standing anxiously by the doorway inside. Gunnarr had joined them. The women were sitting very still and quiet, and when the children spoke too loudly they shushed them.

‘Will you come with me?’ Egil asked.

‘Yes,’ Gunnarr answered for his brothers. ‘But Egil, fighting in this dark …’

‘I do not go to fight today,’ Egil said quietly. ‘I fear that the horse may have wandered off the path.’

They took no light, in case it was seen. Egil led them, almost running in his haste and intent on maintaining that pace all the way up the slope. But as soon as they pushed through the gates, Eiric gave a shout. Egil looked up, and saw a flame floating down the mountain in the blackness.

‘Hákon,’ he gasped.

Gunnarr clutched his arm. ‘We cannot know that,’ he warned, but Egil shook himself free and hastened up the road.

The going was difficult. He had to rely on his feet to distinguish between the hard stone of the path and the soft grass when he strayed. Unseen rocks rolled beneath his feet, and his old legs stumbled many times. He could hear his sons following behind, labouring to keep up.

When he was twenty yards away, he looked up and found that the flame had halted. It glowed from a ridge above his eye line, spitting sparks into the air. A horse gave a whicker, and shifted its feet nervously in the gravel. Egil squatted down and placed a hand over his mouth, his ragged breath racing through his fingers.

‘Who’s there?’ a halting voice called.

‘Hákon!’ Egil cried.

‘Father!’

They came together in the darkness, and Egil dragged Hákon from the saddle and wrapped him into an embrace. The other boys raced up to be alongside. Egil squeezed his son fiercely with relief, and then thrust him back to study him in the torchlight.

‘I did it, Father,’ Hákon said, and there was a glimmer of pride on his face. ‘I won us more time.’

Egil was so overjoyed that he hugged his son again before he really heard the words. He drew back suddenly. ‘More time? What do you mean, more time?’

Hákon’s cheeks fell slowly. He worked his throat as if swallowing a mouthful. ‘They want more payment, Father.’

‘More? Well they can go and find their own. They’ve had all that they’re getting.’

Hákon clutched his father’s hands. ‘You haven’t seen their army. Or heard the things they’ve done to other towns, and will do to us too. We cannot hope to withstand them.’

The joy was gone from Egil’s face. ‘But that was all there was. We have nothing left to give.’

‘Then we must find someone who does,’ Hákon said, and his eyes were wide with fear.