19

Mihran took over.

He hoisted himself on his forearms, swung both legs over the gunwale, stood up on the deck, and commanded everyone to get back into the boat; he ordered Bruni and Slothi to sit to their oars. He helped Edwin drag Sineus back from the rock ledge, screaming with pain, and he instructed Torsten to steady the boat until everyone was aboard, then to push off and grab the steering paddle as soon as he had tumbled in over the stern.

At once the nearest of the swift, dark streams clutched the boat. The silken water sucked at her, straightened her up, and Solveig saw the boat quickening, quickening until she was racing between rocks and boulders. For a moment, it seemed as if she were no longer floating but flying, rapid and silent, like some great seabird, just above the surface of the water.

But then the boat slewed sideways, and Torsten dug his paddle into the stream and tried to swing her around again.

He wasn’t to know a submerged rock was lying in wait. The paddle crunched and smashed, Torsten was pitched onto his face, and the boat swung right around and was carried downstream stern first.

Then Solveig saw the river was widening. The soaring cliffs stepped back, and the water slackened. It snuffled and chuckled around them, and Solveig grasped the gunwale, light-headed.

She felt an arm being planted firmly around her shoulders. It was Edwin, and for a while the two of them stood side by side and gazed at the almost dawdling water.

“As if it had never been,” Edwin said slowly.

But they both knew it had, all of it, the arrow through Red Ottar’s windpipe, Sineus’s wound, the seventh terrifying cataract, and they knew nothing could be the same again.

Solveig turned to Edwin. “Sineus?” she asked.

“I snapped the shaft and pushed the arrow right through,” he said, gravely crossing himself. “Thy will be done.”

Ashen-faced and without further bidding from Mihran, the crew went quietly to their stations. Bruni and Slothi repositioned their chests and manned their heavy oars, Torsten lowered himself into the hold to search for his spare steering paddle, Odindisa knelt at the side of another stricken young man, Bergdis unhooked her swinging cooking pot and stared grimly into it . . .

“You were in the bows,” Edwin said to Solveig. “What happened?”

But Solveig had only just begun to tell him when they saw a body, spread-eagled, lying in the arms of an oak tree that had fallen into the river. It was Red Ottar. The Pecheneg arrow was still sticking out of his mouth.

Edwin and Solveig called out, they pointed, and it was as if they’d woken their companions from a sliding dream. Bruni and Slothi back-paddled fiercely, and Odindisa and Solveig sat to the second pair of oars. The four of them swung the boat right around again, Brita and Bard ran to the bows, and Bergdis reached out her arms and held them there as if she were a goddess welcoming Red Ottar to Asgard.

The oarsmen rammed the boat right into the heart of the tree, and the thicket of branches stayed her just as they had cradled and stayed Red Ottar’s body. Torsten and Mihran both went over the side, and, keeping their balance on the slimy trunk, they edged toward Red Ottar and grabbed him under each shoulder.

Many hands reached down, many pulled him up.

What now? thought Solveig. What next? What are we going to do?

For a while the companions stood shoulder to shoulder around their leader’s corpse. Everyone was silent. Everyone felt unguarded and uncertain. They felt naked and afraid.

“Row,” Mihran told them, “row and keep rowing. Now water is calm, but Pechenegs still . . .” Quickly he checked each bank, and so did all the crew. “We row until dark, then we’ll be safe, we can tie up.”

“We must build his pyre,” Bergdis told them that evening in a husky voice. “We must set Red Ottar free.” Then she landed a heavy, scaly hand on Edith’s left shoulder. “Poor girl!” she said.

Edith gave a start; then she gulped.

“Saint Gregorios,” announced Mihran.

“What?” asked Bergdis.

“The most holy island.”

“A Christian island?”

Mihran shook his head. “The emperor of Miklagard calls it that. It is most holy because all the Rus and the Vikings make sacrifices there.”

“Where is it?” asked Bergdis.

“Two days from here.”

Bergdis looked around at the circle of her companions.

“There’s a great oak tree,” Mihran told them. “As old as this world, almost. All travelers make sacrifices there.”

“A sacrifice of our own leader,” muttered Bruni.

And for once Torsten agreed with him. “Yes, that’s a sacrifice too many.”

“We’re like-minded, then,” said Bergdis. “We must wrap him in skins and lay him in the hold.”

“Away from the flies,” Odindisa said.

“Is it safe on the island?” Brita asked.

“No more Pechenegs,” Mihran told her. “They are behind us. All the Pechenegs are behind us.”

“But what’s ahead of us?” asked Edith, shaking her head.

Bergdis stared at her. “Our fates,” she replied.

“At such times,” said Torsten, “it’s unwise to scan the horizon. We’d do better to be sure of the next stretch.”

“From Saint Gregorios,” Mihran told them, “is only four days to reach the Black Sea, and from there . . .”

Bergdis swiped his words away. “Who says we’re going on?” she demanded. “Many of us believed it was a mistake to sail south from Kiev.” Once again, she closed her hand over Edith’s shoulder. “Torsten’s right. First things first.”

Several of the crew averted their gaze and stared at their own feet, as if they knew what she was about to say.

“I will not ask who wishes to die with Red Ottar,” announced Bergdis in a stony voice. “I will not ask . . .”

Torsten gave a heavy sigh and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“. . . because there is no choice.”

“What do you mean?” asked Solveig.

“I mean,” said Bergdis in an expressionless voice, “that Red Ottar had only one slave.”

Solveig turned to Edith. She stepped right over Red Ottar’s body.

“Your shadow!” cried Odindisa. “Keep away from him!”

Solveig gazed lovingly at Edith: her cheeks rosy as apples, her dark eyes rounded, glistening like blackberries. She thought of the baby kicking inside her.

Solveig grasped Bergdis’s right hand and removed it from Edith’s shoulder.

No one said anything. Not one word.

Solveig rounded on her companions. “Torsten! You, Bruni! Slothi!”

“Quiet, girl!” said Bergdis in a cold, rasping voice.

“Aren’t you going to stop her?” Solveig demanded. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“This is how it is,” Bergdis said. “This is how it has always been.”

“Who says so?” Solveig challenged her.

Then Brita bravely crept up to Solveig and clutched her right hand.

“Who?” wailed Solveig.

Bergdis gave Brita a freezing look. “From now on,” she told her, “you must wash Edith’s feet. You, Odindisa, you must ready her clothes for the pyre. You, men. You know how it is. Each of you must say to this . . . slave woman: ‘Tell your master this is because of my love for him.’”

Solveig listened, horrified.

“Slothi!” she screeched. “You’re a Christian. You can’t just stand by.”

“Solveig,” hissed Bergdis.

Solveig took no notice. “Edwin!” she wailed.

Edwin at once raised both hands. “You are Norsemen,” he said. “I am not.” Then he fixed Solveig with a long, calm, meaningful stare.

“Edith’s English,” said Solveig rather more calmly. “You’re English. She’s Christian and you’re Christian.”

Now Edwin gave Solveig a warning look.

“Gag her!” rasped Bergdis. “How dare you speak against me and against the gods?”

But just as no one had spoken up for Edith, no one moved against Solveig.

“Men!” said Bergdis contemptuously. “You’re not men. You’re half men.”

Still no one moved.

“Unless,” said Bergdis slowly, “Solveig wishes to take Edith’s place.”

In the branches of the fallen oak, little birds twittered.

“Or to die with her.”

“No,” said Torsten. “That’s not right. Solveig’s the daughter of a freeman; she’s not a slave.”

Bergdis thrust up her chin and turned her grisly attention back to Edith.

“Men,” she said, “you Torsten and Bruni, Slothi, Mihran . . .”

“Not me,” said Mihran.

“Edwin.”

The Englishman shook his head. “Not I,” he said.

Bergdis snorted. “Sineus! He’s groaning down in the hold. You then, Bard. Be a man! All of you, grip each other’s hands so the slave woman can stand on them. I’ll give her the words to say.”

The three men and Bard did as Bergdis ordered them, and so did Edith.

She’s like a sleepwalker, thought Solveig. Like her own ghost already.

When Edith repeated the words that Bergdis gave to her, she sounded as if her voice came from the Otherworld.

“Look!” she intoned. “I see my mother and father.”

And then: “Look! I see my master sitting in Asgard. How green it is, how beautiful. Men and young boys are sitting there with him. Red Ottar has summoned me, so let me go and serve him.”

“Put her down!” Bergdis ordered, and Bard at once scuttled back to his mother’s side.

“What was that?” asked Solveig in a woeful voice.

“What do you think?” Bergdis retorted.

Solveig just trembled.

“She was looking from this world into the next,” Bergdis told her.

That was when Solveig saw that Bergdis was wearing the same bracelet—the one made of the bones of little fingers—that she had worn when she sacrificed the chicken after they’d escaped from the ghost ship and the night storm.

Solveig gulped and sobbed. She turned away, but Edwin caught her by the elbow.

“Comfort Edith,” he said in a low voice. “Yes, comfort her. But don’t challenge Bergdis. She’s very dangerous.”

Then the Englishman guided Solveig back to the circle standing around Red Ottar.

“Raise your eyes!” commanded Bergdis in a harsh voice. So Solveig lifted her heavy lids, but Bergdis was speaking to Edith. “Raise your eyes to Asgard, where your master awaits you.”

Edith obediently raised her eyes.

Why, thought Solveig, her heart banging in her chest, it’s not now, is it?

But then she remembered they were going to build a pyre . . . She remembered the most holy island . . . two days downstream.

Around Solveig, her companions were already beginning to go about their business. Torsten went over the side and unlashed the remains of the smashed steering paddle and fixed a new one in its place. Brita and Bard halfheartedly bailed out the hold. Edwin and Odindisa were kneeling on either side of Sineus. And before long, Bruni and Slothi pushed out the boat from its green cradle and then sat to their oars.

This life, thought Solveig. So sweet. So fearsome. So painful. What was it Edith said about expecting the worst and grasping whatever joys there are?

She stared at the dizzy little whirlpools made by the end of Slothi’s oar each time he pulled it through the water, and then she looked up at the lamb cloud almost immediately above her head. She breathed in the fragrant scent of the linden blossom, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

When Solveig went to sit in the bows, Edith was as cheerful as she was subdued.

I couldn’t be brave like that, thought Solveig. Not if I was going to die. How can she be? She can’t escape. Not in this wilderness. Where could she go? Or does she suppose we’ll be able to save her? Why did the men say nothing? Slothi’s a coward—he doesn’t believe Edith should be burned, even if the others do. But they don’t, anyhow. I think they’re afraid of Bergdis.

A cataract of thoughts tumbled and raged through Solveig’s head while Edith sat beside her and told her how she wouldn’t have to cook another meal in her life; and how she believed she would see her own husband and not Red Ottar in the afterworld; and how she was going to ask Edwin, if ever he went back to England, to find Wulf and Emma and tell them everything that had happened; and how she knew a woman who could actually have conversations with birds. And Edith pointed out all the bride-white blossoms and blood-red berries and death-dark yew trees they passed on their way downstream.

During that day and the next, more reasonable now but no less troubled, Solveig sometimes talked quietly to her companions.

She asked Bruni, then Odindisa, and then Torsten how it could be right to sacrifice Edith. She told them she understood men died in battle for their beliefs or to follow their leader, as so many had done at Stiklestad. She said she knew women and children often got caught up in a fight between men, as Edith herself had been when Swedes raided a Danish village in England.

She said that if a man had been killed for no good reason, it was right for his family to avenge his death. But why, asked Solveig, why is it right, how can it be right to put someone to death who has done no wrong?

“How will Edith’s death help Red Ottar? He was so pleased . . . Wouldn’t he have wanted Edith to mother his child? Edith’s innocent. How can it be right?”

Again and again Solveig asked her companions, but answers came there none.

“It’s the good and bad Red Ottar did in his life that matters to the gods,” Solveig declared. “Isn’t it? How can Edith’s death help him? How can it?”

Slothi agreed with Solveig. “It’s wrong,” he said. “It’s against God’s law. The Bible tells us ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but Edith’s blameless.”

“You said nothing,” Solveig accused him. “Not one word.”

Slothi nodded. “You were brave,” he said. “Maybe braver than you realize.”

“I said what I felt,” Solveig replied.

“Exactly,” said Slothi. “But Solveig, you must learn what you can do. And can’t do.”

Solveig didn’t reply.

“You can do nothing for Edith,” Slothi told her. “Accept. You have to accept. That doesn’t mean you think it’s right.”

Solveig shook her head furiously.

Then she talked to Edwin.

“I’ve seen this before,” he told her. “You haven’t.”

“What happens?” asked Solveig in a small voice.

Edwin shook his head. “There’s no need for you to know,” he said calmly. “It is foul.”

Solveig started to tremble.

“To take away a life—that’s sometimes necessary. In England as in Norway, there are laws, and to commit the worst crimes means you must die. But no, not like this. Never like this.”

“Tell me,” said Solveig, shuddering.

Edwin put his hands on both her shoulders. “Torsten and Bruni . . . the men may have heard about it,” he confided in her, “but I could see by their faces they’ve never witnessed it. Never taken part in it. If they knew what they’ve got to do . . .” Edwin paused. “I’ll tell you again, Solveig. Beware of your own life. Beware of Bergdis.”

Solveig nodded, and Edwin raised a forefinger to her left cheek and wiped away a tear.

“The Angel of Death,” he said very deliberately.

Solveig gave a start.

“With her bracelet. Her filleting knife. You understand?”

Solveig nodded.

“You must leave her to me.”

Bergdis was the first to disembark at the island of Saint Gregorios. She marched everyone to the massive old oak tree, and there, with Edith standing next to her, she told them, “The oak tree rises, the oak tree falls. Here and now, it’s our duty to build the pyre at once, to make our sacrifice and set Red Ottar free.”

Edith gave Solveig a fond look. A lingering look.

She’s giving me her strength, thought Solveig. It should be the other way around. She swallowed loudly. My name is Sun-Strong, but I’m not.

But then Solveig saw Edith give her fellow countryman a wild look, a flicker of sheer terror, as if she could see her death and the manner of it. Edith put her hands to her throat, then slid them to her ribs.

Edwin drew in his breath. He lurched forward. He pushed his bulky body between Edith and Bergdis.

Bergdis’s eyes glittered.

“No!” said Edwin very clearly, very loudly. “Red Ottar can make his own peace with the gods.”

Bergdis hissed.

“He needs no help from this woman. This blameless woman. This loyal woman, with Red Ottar’s own baby leaping in her womb.”

Bergdis stared wildly around her. “Men!” she barked, beckoning them with both hands. “Silence him! This stranger. In the name of Red Ottar! In the name of the gods!”

“This blameless woman,” repeated Edwin, his voice rising. “Your companion. Your friend.”

Bergdis reached for her belt. She grasped her knife, but Edwin at once gripped and stayed her hand.

Then the Angel of Death screamed. She kicked Edwin’s shins; she banged her head and left fist against his broad chest.

But Edwin refused to let her go. He gritted his teeth. He tightened his grip, and she was helpless.