The Freedom of a King

King Ivar Deepfathom tugged at his beard thoughtfully, and nodded at the news. “Good lad,” he said at last, clapping the messenger on the shoulder hard enough to make the man to stagger a step. “Must have been a long, hard ride. Come, find a seat, join the feast. I may have a task for you tomorrow. Now, let’s drink, eh?” He propelled the man into the hall with another battering-ram blow.

Ivar did not follow immediately, but stood at the doorway to his hall, listening to the sounds of drinking and singing within. His smile faded into a long, furrowed frown. The ground outside was still damp, the shadowed grass glistening in the moonlight, and in the darkened skies the barred clouds reluctantly gave way before the Stormfather’s winds.

The king’s hall stood at the crown of the hill, overlooking the town of Koenugard beneath. It was his town, in more than just name. ‘King’s town,’ it had sprouted from the earth around his hall in the years since he had overthrown King Gorm, and would return to mud when he was dead. The Stormfather’s rains would wash away the dike, level the hill, and even the memory of the place would die. But not yet. Between now and then, both he and the town lived. For now, there was his hall, his hill, his town beneath.

Wooden houses surrounded by fences stood cheek to cheek, the bristling edges of the overhanging roofs nearly meeting in the middle above the narrow, wood-paved lanes between them. It was quiet, the doors to the steep-roofed houses shut, the freemen and thralls having long since found their beds. There was, however, a faint creaking, from the great ash tree that stood by the Stormfather’s temple. In preparation for this summer’s raid, Asgeir, the law-speaker and priest, had cut the throat of a thrall and hung him upside down from a branch, so that his blood might water its roots. The wind blew the body, swinging it like a pendulum, serenading Ivar with its scratchy, skittering song.

It reminded Ivar of an insect trapped in a spider’s web. The life sucked out of it.

“Trapped,” he muttered, and raised his eyes skyward. “Still hungry are you, old man? Couldn’t you have left us in peace, if only for a little while?”

In answer, a voice came crashing from inside the hall.

“Oi, where’s that bastard who calls himself king?”

Ivar closed his eyes slowly, lowered his head and sighed.

“Run out of his own feast, has he? That fucker has fewer balls than my wife!”

A faint, slightly resigned smile crossed Ivar’s face. He opened his eyes, squared his shoulders, and then turned into the long tongue of light spilling from the doorway like mead, back into his hall and the feast.

“Hvatr!” the king roared as he entered the hall with a voice that shook the walls. “Hvatr, you goat, the cold has gotten to your wits and your prick. Bend over and I’ll show you how many balls I’ve still got!”

A great fire in a stone hearth burned down the center of the long wooden hall, and arranged in a rectangle around it stood long benches groaning under heaping mounds of salted herring, pork, venison and boar, wooden cups, goblets and horns of wine, ale and mead. Intricate, interlaced carvings chased one another up the stout timbers that held up the roof, their tops lost in the thickening smoke of the hearth fire.

Queen Silfreyja sat at one end in a high, carved chair, and the great jarls and thanes of Northrike were packed around the other sides, some standing, some sitting, but nearly all drunk. Even old Asgeir had a horn in hand. To the left of the queen, Ivar’s eldest son Halvar looked around with the owlish seriousness of a man desperately trying to act sober, while to her right his younger son Steinvar poked boredly at his food with a wooden spoon. Thralls from Gardarike, Vatnheim and Austrvegr stirred cauldrons of stew over the hearth, and moved among the guests with pitchers of wine and ale.

Only the Shayathid envoy, Mahdad, stood apart from the feast without expression, watching everything, as unblinking as an owl. He’d be drinking buttermilk or water, like a child; the man refused to touch alcohol. A thane stood at the envoy’s elbow, to dissuade any of the more boisterous guests from having a bit of fun with the man. Northman jests could easily end with broken bones, or worse.

A tall man, black-haired, black-bearded, with a livid scar running from top lip to the bottom of his right eye came striding from the crowd. “Hear that?” he shouted. “Call me a goat! A goat, is it? Our great king admits he fucks animals. Ivar Deepfathom? More like Ivar Sheepfather!”

“What?” the king strode up to the man until they stood face to face, noses nearly touching. “At least I can fuck a sheep. You’ve been living in Veborg so long the ice has frozen your privates and turned you into a woman. Hvatr the Fearless? Hvatr the Dickless!”

The king mimed a blow at Hvatr, then clasped Hvatr’s forearm with a bellowing laugh when the man flinched back. They stood there a moment in a kind of tug of war, each trying to pull the other off-balance by jerking or pushing the other’s arm.

Hvatr let go first, making a joke of it by mock-staggering back from the king. “I can’t compete with these cloven-hoofed lovers of yours, great king. Be gentle!”

“Looks like we’ve found one thing you do fear!” retorted the king, grabbing himself between the thighs with a laugh. He threw his other arm around Hvatr’s shoulder and guided him back to the tables. “Come, I’ve just the thing to put some fire in your belly again. Wine from Gardarike, from last summer’s raid.”

Ivar reached down to pick up an elaborately decorated glass-studded flagon, and caught his wife’s tight smile, the narrow line between her brows. He rolled his eyes and gave her a wink before splashing wine into a silver goblet and handing it to Hvatr.

“Good to know I can count on you, Hvatr,” the king said in a quieter voice.

“Oh?” Hvatr said with an eyebrow raised, catching the king’s tone. He watched the Ivar over the rim of his cup as he took a long drink.

“Just heard: Baldr’s dead, his son too. Killed by one of his thanes, it was said, but neither of us is stupid enough to believe that. Don’t frown, make it look like we’re just trading bullshit as usual.” The king raised his own cup. “Skol.”

Hvatr took another drink, nodding appreciatively. “It’s good wine,” he conceded. “Who then? Valhjalmar? Eirik? Can’t trust the Vikkir. I lost two brothers to that storm-cursed berserker of theirs at the Shallows. Should have butchered the whole bloody lot of them when we won, you know.”

The king kept smiling, but his eyes were granite. “Don’t fucking second-guess me.”

“Ivar—”

“I’m King Ivar now, Hvatr. The king.” The king slapped his thigh, took a deep, steadying breath. “I have more than enough people telling me what I should or shouldn’t have done a year ago. I’m not the Blind God, to know both past and future. Valhjalmar, Eirik and the rest of the Kvivik jarls are no better or worse than any others. I needed peace and I bought it with their lives. They’ll support me if I seem strong, turn on me if I seem weak. Same goes for the jarls of Northrike, Vestreyjar or the Utlands. That’s why I need loyalty, Hvatr, real loyalty, true friends. I need to know I can count on you if this business with Baldr goes bad.”

“You think it will?” Hvatr asked, before catching the king’s pitying look. “Of course. Of course. Side by side, just like old times. Whatever you need. Just say the word.”

“Good,” the king smiled. He poured more wine. “Good. Stay with me, Hvatr, and there will be more than wine. Land, women, slaves, silver. You know I stand by my friends.”

“Just as you say, King Ivar,” agreed Hvatr, his expression hidden by this cup as he drank.

“Ah, don’t give me that,” the king growled. “So we’ll have to delay the raid on Nithavellir until next year, so what? There’ll be plenty of spoils to share if some of the jarls get unruly, and the Nithafolk will still be there next year. We’ll sail next summer, Stormfather willing.”

“Stormfather willing,” nodded Hvatr. “He’s a moody, fickle bastard sometimes, isn’t he?”

One of the guests struck up a high, wailing tune on a wooden flute, and the sound reminded Ivar of a rope swinging from a great ash tree.

 

Across the hall, Mahdad the Shayathid watched the king lean in to confide in the loud, foul-mouthed jarl. When Mahdad had first arrived on these frozen, godless shores, Ivar had been new on his throne, the embers of the old king’s funeral pyre not yet cool. A people as cold and pitiless as the mountains that birthed them, he had thought, and three years had not changed that impression. He would be glad to go, in summer, sail away and never come here again in this life, or in any other life if he could manage it.

Mahdad was tired. Tired of the cold, of the Northmen’s jaw-breaking tongue, bland food and filthy habits, of the swallow-swift flight of the daylight sun and the lumbering, lingering darkness that followed day after day, of the merciless march of fog, rain and mist, of the blood and death that inhabited every curve and corner of life here.

Three years. The Xsayathiya Xsayathiyanam had decreed he should live among these people for three years, and report back all he found. It was a miracle, truly a miracle worthy of Ayush, that he had lived more than six months.

Music was playing, if you could call it that, a high reedy sound from a lone wooden pipe. Even so, that single voice, soon lost in the heat and haze and noise, gave him a pang of homesickness.

The thane who served as his shadow suddenly stiffened, drawing Mahdad’s attention away from tomorrow, back to the now. The queen approached, flanked by her two sons.

“Mahdad,” she greeted him, loudly over the storm of conversation and laughter. “I believe you know my boys? Halvar and Steinvar.” The two princes made no greeting, merely watched Mahdad the way one would a new insect.

“May they both grow to be as big and brave as their father,” Mahdad replied, or he thought that’s what he’d said. How he longed for someone who he could speak with normally. The queen frowned, the boys remained expressionless. Ah well. There had been four children when he arrived, three boys and a daughter, but a spring fever had taken the youngest two, and nearly the queen as well. Perhaps the children’s health was a topic best not discussed.

“They would like to learn more about your homeland,” the queen continued, as if he had not spoken.

“Is it true you all wear skirts like women?” the younger, Steinvar, burst out without waiting for Mahdad to reply.

He smiled thinly. “It is hot. You would boil if you wore your wool and furs.” Tried to make it a joke, but none of them laughed. A few more moons, and he would be gone, he reminded himself. Just a few more moons.

The next question was Halvar’s: “Where does your king live?”

“You call it Miklagard. It is a very great city. This whole town would fit in one wing of the king’s palace.”

Halvar snorted at that. “One day, my father will sail south and burn your towns, and give you all to the Stormfather,” he said, and his brother nodded eagerly. The queen, he noticed, said nothing, but studied his reaction.

“But he is not sailing south this summer,” Mahdad pointed out, quite pleased he could answer so calmly. Shahan Xsayathiya Xsayathiyanam commanded armies a hundred times, a thousand times greater than this so-called king up here in this barren, cast-off land. If they came south, they would be slaughtered. The prospect did not seem such a bad one to him.

“No,” interrupted the queen. “He isn’t. He sails west. For the Utlands and Nithavellir.”

Halvar nodded. “The Nithafolk have been raiding Jarl Einulf and Black Kjell’s lands.”

“They’re ugly monsters, but my father will kill them all,” said Steinvar proudly.

Mahdad suspected his ideas of who the ugly monsters in this situation were would be different from those of the king’s sons. “Are they so very terrible?”

“They worship death,” the queen said simply.

“And you do not?” The tart question slipped out before he could stop himself. Just that morning, they had cut a man’s throat and hung him from a tree. And now they talked scornfully of worshipping death. Home was just a few more moons away. Just a few more.

“No,” she ruffled the two boys’ hair, much to the elder one’s disgust. “We worship life, here. I have been given a …” there was a long pause, her words and fingers lost in the young boys’ hair. “A gift. I shall not squander it.” She released her sons, who immediately tried to pat their hair back into shape. “You will leave us soon?”

Mahdad merely nodded.

“Then you, too, shall have a gift.” The queen unclasped a necklace from her throat, and held it out towards Mahdad. He held out his palm and she dropped the necklace into it. “A gift,” she repeated.

It was a smooth lump of honey-gold amber, Mahdad saw, ringed in silver and fitted with a silver chain. The color, however, was marred by a small black speck in the center, which on close inspection revealed itself to be the mummified, entombed body of a spider.

He was suddenly filled with a wave of affection for the queen, her family, this hall, even this land.

“Speak kindly of us when you return,” the queen admonished. “If they love the ivory, furs and thralls from the north, remind them that trade depends on a strong king. A king like my husband.”

“I will,” Mahdad found himself nodding, surprised at the depth of his own feeling. “I will.” The amber felt warm in his hand.

 

Asgeir Stonejaw, Asgeir the Law-speaker, the priest of the Stormfather, put down the cup, which he had raised to his lips many times without drinking. He saw the queen speaking with the outsider, the unbeliever from the south with his poison words and poison god. He saw the false king whispering with jarl, and he alone knew what that meant. Not just that. The meaning of the queen’s gift, too. For he had gifts of his own, and had already given some to those in the right places.

The Northmen had been a great people once, years ago, before everything had gone wrong. Ruled by fearless jarls and heroes of legend, they had been the Stormfather’s axe, his lightning from the skies, falling upon the weak and dissolute lands to the south. But then one jarl had made himself king. One king begat a whole line of kings, each interested only in their own wealth and comfort instead of glory, in trade with the soft weaklings of Logarike, Vatnheim and Gardarike, in battles between brothers. That was a grief, a deep one, but one he would soon mend.

First though, there was the matter of Jarl Baldr’s death to attend to. Already rumors would be spreading, and that was good, but silence would be a weapon, too. A gift had been given; now it was time to call the debt due.

 

When the fire was gone to embers, the singing and music to silence and the guests to sleep, King Ivar Deepfathom massaged his weary eyes with the palms of his hands and sat with a long sigh at the edge of his bed. The queen, Silfreyja, was already in bed, resting her back against a silk Shayathid cushion, the furs pulled up to her chest, hands clasped over her lap. A short candle stood by the bed, its short flame throwing tired light and tall shadows across the room.

“Please tell me you don’t trust that drunken sack of pig’s testicles,” said Silfreyja behind him.

“Who, Hvatr?” Ivar said without turning. “Can we not do this now?”

“Of course. Putting off unpleasant things. That’s how one becomes a strong king.”

Ivar winced. “He stood with us against Gorm, and Sweyn as well. Hvatr’s always been a stout fighter and a good friend.”

“Because he’s always profited from your friendship.”

“That’s the way of it, Silfreyja,” Ivar replied, letting a note of exasperation creep into his voice. He unbuckled his belt, hanging it from one of the bed’s posts, and began to unlace the neck of his tunic. “If I can give the jarls lands, treasure and glory, they will stay loyal to me—to us. Our family. If I can’t, they’ll find someone else who they think can.”

“That’s the way of it,” she agreed bitterly. On the one hand, it was these ways that had made her queen and her husband king; old King Gorm had been lethargic and miserly, giving Ivar the chance to seize the throne for himself. On the other hand, the same ways had meant death for Gorm and his sons, and would mean death for her and her children if ever Ivar faltered. “The kingdom’s a leaking drakkar, and we’ll all drown the moment you stop bailing. Perhaps there are better ways.”

“Ah,” Ivar grunted, hiking up his tunic.

“Mahdad says the Shayathiya love and fear their king, as the chosen of their one god, and every man, woman and child is willing to die at his word.”

“You want me to covert to his god? He also thinks we should ban pork, beer and wine, wipe our arses with our left hands, and that you should cover your face and not attend my feasts or councils.”

“There are other ways, that is all.” Silfreyja touched her throat, where a silver wheel on a chain nestled at the hollow of her throat. “Who do you think was behind Baldr’s death?”

“What?” asked Ivar, the tunic halfway over his head.

The queen waited until he finally wriggled free. Beneath his tunic, Ivar Deepfathom, king of Northrike, Kvivik, Vestreyjar and the Utlands was, she thought, just a man. A touch of grey in his beard, face more deeply lined, skin a little less taut. Dragon, troll, raven, wolf and eagle tattoos on his chest and arms were beginning to blur and fade into mottled grey. There was an old scar on his back from a Gardarike arrow, a fresher one across his shoulder from an axe-blow. This was the knot that held the kingdom together, these bones tied together with scars like strings, and if it came undone it would be the unraveling of both the kingdom and her life.

“I asked, who really killed Baldr?”

“Ah. You heard about that?”

“I have ears,” she tutted. “Well?”

He looked up at the ceiling, at the rafters in shadow, as though trying to pierce through and see the skies outside. “Better I don’t say,” he answered at last. “You’re right, we’re on a leaky ship with a half-drunk crew. Survival or drowning, it’s a choice as narrow as a serpent’s tail. This could be the wave that carries us to safety, or smashes us on the rocks. I have my suspicions, but there will be questions later, so it’s better I don’t say, better you don’t know.”

Silfreyja sniffed. “Horse shit,” she said, quietly enough that Ivar could pretend not to hear. “Anyway, I’d wager it was his wife. Sweyn’s wife. Poor woman’s been passed through more hands than a Shayathid coin.”

“If she hated him so much she could have refused the marriage,” her husband observed. “She’s a free woman.”

“Free to die if she objected. It’s a funny kind of freedom, that.” In theory, women could fight in the line of battle, inherit from their father or brother, could divorce her husband any time they wished, but what was it worth, when it all depended on the power of men to accept or reject?

“Free to die if she makes the wrong choice. That makes her as free as a king,” Ivar said, and blew out the candle and crawled under the furs, trying to find a comfortable position on the straw-filled bed.

“You’ll have to name a new jarl.”

“I will.”

Ivar rolled on his side, towards his wife. Her outline visible only as grey against black.

“It will mean war, either way.”

“It will.”

He shifted again, onto his back. No position was comfortable. But it was the best you could do, and you had to sleep, eventually.

It was as dark as the outerworld within the hall, without even stars, the ones they called the World-Serpent’s scales. One day they would grow brighter and brighter and blot out the sun, on the day the World-Serpent broke its chains and came to crush the world between its coils. If they had sacrificed well and often enough, spilled enough blood beneath ash trees, then the Stormfather would be strong enough to slay it, and from the serpent’s body create a new world.

But between now and then, you had to sleep. On a hard, lumpy mattress with your fate hanging like a sacrifice from the god’s ash tree, you had to sleep.

“I wonder who helped her?”

“Maybe the gods,” he replied. And slept.