She wasn’t innocent, not living here. There was no furniture to speak of. Her bed, where she worked, was a pallet on the floor in a corner, the coverings spread over it neatly enough. A bundle against the wall beside it would be her clothing, another pile of cooking things, and food. That shouldn’t be on the floor, he thought. There’d be rats. A basin, a chamber pot, both on the floor as well. Two wooden stools. A black pot hooked on an iron bar stretched across the fireplace he’d seen from outside. Firewood by that wall. The candle on the window ledge.
She went to the window, took the candle, put it on one of the stools. She sank down on the bedding, crossed her legs, looked up at him. Said nothing, waiting.
Bern said, after a moment, “Why hasn’t anyone fixed that stair?”
She shrugged. “We don’t pay enough? I like it. If someone wants to come up they need to know the hole’s there. No surprises.”
He nodded. Cleared his throat. “No one else in here?”
“They will be later. In and out. Told you. Both of ’em at the taverns.”
“Why … aren’t you?”
The same shrug. “I’m new. We go later, after the others start their night. They don’t like it if we get there too soon. Beat us up, make scars, you know … ”
He didn’t, not really. “So … you’ll go out soon?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Why? Got a man here, don’t I?”
He swallowed. “I can’t be found, you know that.”
“’Course I know. Gurd’ll kill you for fun of it.”
“Do … any of them … just come up?”
“Sometimes,” she said, failing to reassure.
“Why did you help me?” He wasn’t used to talking. Not since leaving the isle.
She shrugged again. “Don’t know. You want me? What can you pay?”
What could he pay? Bern reached into his trousers and took the purse looped inside them, around his waist. He tossed it to her. “All I have,” he said.
He’d had it off the careless merchant north of here. Perhaps the gods would look kindly on his giving it to her.
That vague, new-formed idea that had come to him on the roof was still teasing at the edges of his mind. No use or meaning to it, unless he survived tonight.
She was opening the purse, emptied it on the bedding. Looked up at him.
First glimmering of youth, of surprise, in her. “This is too much,” she said.
“All I have,” he repeated. “Hide me till morning.”
“Doing it anyhow,” she said. “Why’d I bring you?”
Bern grinned suddenly, a kind of light-headedness. “I don’t know. You haven’t told me.”
She was looking at the coins on her bed. “Too much,” she said again.
“Maybe you’re the best whore in Jormsvik,” he said.
She looked up quickly. “I’m not,” she said, defensively.
“A jest. I’m too afraid right now to take a woman, anyhow.”
He doubted she was used to hearing that from the fighters in Jormsvik. She looked at him. “You going to challenge in the morning?”
He nodded. “That’s why I came. Made a mistake, going to an inn tonight.”
She stared at him, didn’t smile. “That’s Ingavin’s truest truth, it is. Why’d you?”
He tilted the sword back, sat carefully on the stool. It held his weight. “Wasn’t thinking. Wanted a drink. A last drink?”
She appeared to be thinking about that. “They don’t always kill, in the challenges.”
“Me they will,” he said glumly.
She nodded. “That’s a truth, I guess. After tonight, you mean?”
He nodded. “So you might as well have the purse.”
“Oh. That’s why?”
He shrugged.
“I should at least do you then, shouldn’t I?”
“Hide me,” Bern said. “It’s enough.”
She looked at him. “It’s a long night. You hungry?”
He shook his head.
She laughed, for the first time. A girl, somewhere in there with the Jormsvik whore. “You want to sit and talk all night?” She grinned, and began untying the knotted belt that held her tunic. “Come here,” she said. “You’re pretty enough for me. I can earn some of this.”
Bern had thought, actually, that fear would strip away desire. Watching her begin to undress, seeing that unexpected, amused expression, he discovered that this was wrong. It had been, he thought, a long time since he’d had a woman. And the last one had been Iord, the volur, in her cabin on the isle. The serpent coiling somewhere in the room. Not a good memory.
It’s a long night. After a moment, he started to remove his sword-belt.
He was later to consider—sometimes soberly, sometimes not so—how a man’s life could turn on extremely small things. Had he turned up another alley when he’d left that tavern, found a different roof to climb. Had they begun to disrobe even a little sooner …
“Thira!” they heard, from downstairs. “You still up there?”
He knew that voice now. Gurd’ll kill you for fun of it, she had said.
“In the fireplace!” she whispered urgently now. “Push up a ways. Hurry!”
“You can turn me in,” he said, surprising himself.
“No to that,” she said, retying her belt quickly. “Get in there!” Turning to the door, she shouted, “Gurd! Watch fourth step!”
“I know!” Bern heard.
He hurried to the chimney space, bending down and stepping over the rod that held the black pot. Awkward, especially with the stolen sword. He scraped his shoulder on the rough stone, swore. He straightened up inside, cautiously. It was pitch black and very tight. He was sweating again, heart hammering. Should he have stayed in the room, fought the man when he came up? Gurd would kill him, or simply step back and call for friends. Bern would have nowhere to go.
And the girl would die, as well, if he was found here. A bad death, with these men. Should he care about that, if he wanted to be a Jormsvik mercenary? No matter, too late now.
The chimney widened a little, higher up, more than he’d thought. He reached overhead with both hands, scrabbling at stone. Pebbles fell, rattling. He found places to grip, levered himself, got his boots on either side of the bar that stretched across, pushed the sword to hang straight down. He needed to get higher but couldn’t see a thing in the blackness of the chimney, no way to check for footholds. He put his boots right to the edges, pressing against the stone. The bar held. For how long, he didn’t know, or want to think. Imagined himself crashing down, unable to move in the chimney, spitted like a squealing pig by the man in the room. A glorious death.
Gurd banged on the door; the girl crossed and opened it. He hoped—abruptly—that she’d thought to hide the purse.
He heard her voice. “Gurd, I didn’t think you’d—”
“Out of the way. I want your window, not your skinny bones.”
“What?”
“No one’s seen him in the streets, there’s ten of us looking. Shit-smeared goatboy may be on a roof.”
“I’d have seen him, Gurd.” Bern heard her footsteps cross behind the mercenary’s to the window. “Come to bed?”
“You’d see nothing but one of us to screw. Ingavin’s blood, it pisses me to have a farmhand escape us!”
“Let me make you feel better, then,” the girl named Thira said in a wheedling voice. “Long as you’re here, Gurd.”
“Slipped coins, all you want. Whore.”
“Not all I want slipped, Gurd,” she said. Bern heard her laugh softly and knew it wasn’t real.
“Not now. I might come back later if you’re dying for it. No money, though. I’d be doing you a favour.”
“No to that,” said Thira sharply. “I’ll be down in Hrati’s getting a man who takes care of a girl.”
Bern heard a blow, a gasp. “Decent tongue in your head, whore. Remember it.”
There was a silence. Then, “Why would you cheat me, Gurd? A
man oughtn’t do that. What I do bad to you? Do me and pay me for it.”
Bern felt a cramping in his arms, held almost straight over his head, clutching the stone wall. If the man in the room turned to the fire and looked, he’d see two boots, one on either side of the cooking pot.
The man in the room said, to the woman, “Get your tunic up, don’t take it off. Turn over, on your knees.”
Thira made a small sound. “Two coins, Gurd. You know it. Why cheat me for two coins? I need to eat.”
The mercenary swore. Bern heard money land on the floor and roll. Thira said, “I knowed you was a good man, Gurd. I knowed it. Who you want me be? A princess from Ferrieres? You captured me? Now you got me?”
“Cyngael,” the man grunted. Bern heard a sword drop. “Cyngael bitch, proud as a goddess. But not any more. Not now. Put your face down. You’re in the mud. In the … field. I got you. Like. This.” He grunted, so did the girl. Bern heard shifting sounds where the pallet was.
“Ah!” Thira cried. “Someone save me!” She screamed, but kept it soft.
“All dead, bitch!” Gurd growled. Bern heard the sounds of their movements, a hard slap on skin, the man grunting again. He stayed where he was, eyes closed, though it didn’t matter in this blackness. Heard the mercenary again, breath rasping now: “All carved up. Your men. Now you find … what an Erling’s like, cow! Then you die.” Another slap.
“No!” cried Thira. “Save me!”
Gurd grunted again, then groaned loudly, then the sounds ceased. After a moment, Bern heard him stand up again.
“Worth a coin, not more’n that, Ingavin knows,” Gurd of Jormsvik, a captain there, said. “I’ll take the other back, whore.” He laughed.
Thira said nothing. Bern heard the sword being picked up, boots crossing the floor again to the door. “You see anyone on a roof, you shout. Hear?”
Thira made a muffled sound. The door opened, closed. Bern heard boots on the stairs, then a clatter, and swearing. Gurd had forgotten the fourth stair. A brief, necessary flicker of pleasure at that. Then gone.
He waited a few more moments, then stepped carefully down from the bar, stooped almost double, and squeezed out from the chimney. He scraped his back this time.
The girl was on the pallet, face down, hidden by her hair. The candle burned on the stool.
“He hurt you?” Bern asked.
She didn’t move, or turn. “He took a coin back. He oughtn’t cheat me.”
Bern shrugged, though she couldn’t see him. “You have a full purse from me. What’s a coin matter?”
She still didn’t turn. “I earned it. You can’t understand that, can you?” She said it into the rough blanket of the pallet.
“No,” said Bern, “I guess I can’t.” It was true, he didn’t understand. But why should he?
She turned then, sat up, and quickly put a hand to her mouth—a girl’s gesture again. Began to laugh. “Ingavin’s eye! Look at you! You’re black as a southern desert man.”
Bern looked down at his tunic. Ash and soot from the fireplace were all over him. He turned up his hands. His palms were coal black from the fireplace walls.
He shook his head ruefully. “Maybe I’ll scare them in the morning.”
She was still laughing. “Not them, but sit down, I’ll wash you.” She got up, arranged her tunic, and went to a basin by the other wall.
It was a long time since a woman had tended him. Not since they’d had servants, before his father had killed his second man in an inn fight and been exiled, ruining the world. Bern sat on the stool as she bade him, and a whore by the walls of Jormsvik cleaned and groomed him the way the virgins in Ingavin’s halls were said to minister to the warriors there.
Later, without speaking, she lay down on the pallet again and took off her tunic and he made love to her, distracted a little now by the noisy sounds of other lovemaking in the two rooms below. With a memory of what he’d heard from within the fireplace, he actually tried to be gentle with her, but afterwards he didn’t think it had mattered. He’d given her a purse, and she was earning it, in the way she did that.
She fell asleep, after. The candle on the stool burned down. Bern lay in the darkness of that small, high room, looking out the unshuttered window at the summer night, waiting for first light. Before that came, he heard voices and drunken laughter in the street below: the mercenaries going back to their barracks. They slept there, always, whatever they did out here in the nights.
Her window faced east, away from the fortress and the sea. Watching, listening to the girl breathe beside him, he caught the first hint of dawn. He rose and dressed. Thira didn’t move. He unbarred the door and went softly down the stairs, stepping over the fourth one from the bottom, and came out into the empty street.
He walked north—not running, on this morning that might be the last of his unimportant life—and passed the final straggling wooden structures, out into fields beyond. A chill, grey hour, before sunrise. He came to the wood. Gyllir was where he’d left him. The horse would be as hungry as he was, but there was nothing to be done about that. If they killed Bern they’d take the stallion, treat him well: he was a magnificent creature. He rubbed the animal’s muzzle, whispered a greeting.
More light now. Sunrise, a bright day, it would be warm later. Bern mounted, left the wood. He rode slowly through the fields towards the main gates of Jormsvik. No reason to hurry now. He saw a hare at the edge of the trees, alert, watching him. It crossed his mind to curse his father again, for what Thorkell had done to bring him here, to this, but in the end he didn’t do that, though he wasn’t sure why. It also occurred to him to pray, and that he did do.
There were guards on the ramparts above the gates, Bern saw. He reined the horse to a halt. Sat silently a moment. The sun was up, to his left, the sea on the other side, beyond a stony strand. There were boats—the dragon-headed ships—pulled up on the shore, a long, long row of them. He looked at those, the brightly painted prows, and at the grey, surging sea. Then he turned back to the walls and issued a challenge to be admitted to the company of Jormsvik, offering to prove his worth against any man sent out to him.
A CHALLENGE COULD BE entertaining, though usually only briefly so. The mercenaries prided themselves on dealing briskly with country lads and their delusions of being warriors. A trivial, routine aspect of their life. Draw the rune with a sword on it, ride out, cut someone up, come back for food and ale. If a man took too long to handle his lot-drawn task he could expect to be a source of amusement to his fellows for a time. Indeed, the likeliest way to ensure being killed—for a challenger—was to put up too much of a fight.
But why come all the way to Jormsvik-on-the-sea at the bottom of Vinmark just to surrender easily, in the (probably vain) hope of having your life spared? There might be some small measure of accomplishment back home for a farmer in having fought before these walls and come away alive, but not that much, in truth.
Only a few of the mercenaries would bother to climb the ramparts to watch, mostly companions of the one who’d drawn the sword-lot. On the other hand, for the artisans and fishermen and merchants of the town sprawling outside the walls, daily life offered little enough in the way of recreation, so it was generally the case that they’d suspend activity and come watch when a challenger was reported.
They wagered, of course—Erlings always wagered—usually on how long it would take for the newest victim to be unhorsed or disarmed, and whether he’d be killed or allowed to limp away.
If the challenge came early in the morning—as today—the whores were usually asleep, but with word shouted through the lanes and streets many of them would drag themselves out to see a fight.
You could always go back to bed after watching a fool killed, maybe even win a coin or two. You might even take a carpenter or sailmaker back with you before he returned to his shop, make another coin that way. Fighting excited the men sometimes.
The girl called Thira (at least partly Waleskan, by her colouring) was amo
ng those who came down towards the gates and the strand when word ran round that a challenge had been issued. She was one of the newer whores, having arrived from the east with a trading party in spring. She had taken one of the rickety, fire-prone upper-level rooms in the town. She was too bony and too sharp-tongued (and inclined to use it) to have any real reason to expect a rise in her fortunes, or enough money to lower her bed to a ground-floor room.
These girls came and went, or died in winter. It was a waste of time feeling sorry for them. Life was hard for everyone. If the girl was fool enough to put a silver coin on the latest farmer who’d shown up to challenge, all you wanted to do was bite the coin, ensure it was real, and be quick as you could to cover part of the wager—even at the odds proposed.
How she got the coin was not at issue—all the girls stole. A silver piece was a week’s work on back or belly for a girl like Thira, and not much less than that, at harder labour, for the craftsmen of the town. It took several of them, mingling coins, to match the wager. The money was placed, as usual, with the blacksmith, who had a reputation for honesty and a good memory, and who was also a very large man.
“Why you doing this?” one of the other girls asked Thira.
It had created a stir. You didn’t bet on challengers to win.
“They spent half last night trying to find him. Gurd and the others. He was in Hrati’s and they went for him. I figure if he can dodge a dozen of them for a night, he might handle one in a fight.”
“Not the same thing,” said one of the older women. “You can’t hide out here.”
Thira shrugged. “If he loses, take my money.”
“Well aren’t you the easy one with silver?” the other woman sniffed. “What happens if Gurd come out his self, to finish what he couldn’t?”
“Won’t. Gurd’s a captain. I ought to know. He comes to me now.”
“Hah! He come up those broken stairs to you only when someone he wants is busy. Don’t get ideas, girl.”
“He was with me last night,” Thira said, defensively. “I know him. He won’t fight … it’s beneath him. As a captain and all.”