The Rule

Wordlessly, his youngest son detached himself from the group and started back down the rutted road towards town. Egil could hear the other men muttering under their breaths, and waited for Hákon to speak. In fact, it was Fafrir who responded.

‘Father,’ he queried gently, ‘one man against what some say is the largest army ever to have marched?’

Egil crunched around to face them, and opened his hands. ‘One man against thousands is a poor contest,’ he agreed. ‘But sending a hundred against the same number would gain us little, and lose us much.’

While they waited, Egil studied their faces. Uncertainty lingered in some of their eyes, but they were all loyal men who trusted his experience and remembered how he’d served them in the past. Yet in truth, he thought, what do I know? This was as new to him as to any of them. No invading force ever bothered with Helvik, even if they did find a waystone that acknowledged it. Theirs was a realm that had not needed to raise an army in living memory. And yet Helvik had seen no shortage of blood.

Egil ran his eyes along the group standing before him, remembering then that most of the good men, the truly good men who he would want by his side at a time such as this, were already dead. They may not have had food for their children, but the soldiers of Helvik had always had their pride. A history of feuding clans had savaged the population, until it became ingrained within the culture of the town. Year upon year, the slightest of insults against family honour were ruthlessly punished. Blood paid for blood. Brother avenged brother, cousin avenged cousin. There was always someone owed vengeance. Helvik had seemed intent on becoming a town of widows.

Thoughts of those days, of the decimation of his generation, brought the same memory they always did to Egil’s mind. He glanced to his right and found where Gunnarr Folkvarrsson stood nearby, keeping a respectful silence. So tall he was now, white-blond hair and a broad face of wind-weathered skin. Folkvarr’s sword was under his arm, and Egil looked at it and remembered the night when blood ties had forced him to watch his truest friend slain before the eyes of his wife and only son. It had been the last that Egil could tolerate; as soon as he was named ruler of Helvik, he made one desperate bid to preserve his people.

As an isolated realm, raging sea on one side and towering mountains the other, Helvik had developed a society far different from the other kingdoms occupying the same sprawling continent. Its inhabitants had always been free to live as they chose. If they wanted to steal from each other, they could steal. If they wanted to fight each other, they could fight. Men chose their own culprits and their own punishments, and any attempts by the people to live in harmony had no other basis than the unfortunate need for coexistence. Rulers like Egil were followed purely because they had proven themselves most fit to lead. There were no noblemen, no peasants, no slaves. No restraining principles determined by any power that claimed to have greater authority than that of the ordinary autonomous man. No rules. That was, until Egil imposed one upon them.

It was a single rule, known by the townsfolk simply as ‘the rule’, and every inhabitant had agreed to either leave or submit to its governance. It was simple, self-implementing, requiring no detail, no interpretation, no single enforcer. Its wording was plain: ‘No person of Helvik may kill another person of Helvik. Any person who breaks this rule is no longer a person of Helvik.’

From that day forward, a line was drawn under the events of the past. When old grievances surfaced and the call of the sword was too strong, the rule stopped the blight of vengeance from spreading. Those who broke the rule lost their place in society, and so became liable to be struck down in retribution by any person wishing to claim it; for the rule said nothing against taking the lives of those who were not persons of Helvik. Thus, such punishers were protected from recrimination, for in the eyes of the rule they had done nothing wrong, and any who wished to retaliate against them would have to break the rule themselves in order to do so.

It was Egil’s proudest achievement. The years that had passed since that day had not been enough to rebuild a broken population, especially when that time had seen only a handful of decent harvests, but nevertheless Egil had felt that, since the inception of the rule, Helvik had finally begun to pull together. It had started to fight back against the curse that had gripped it for so long.

Yet now it was faced with complete extinction.

The rumours had existed for many moons. Any tradesman who still saw reason to battle his way over the mountains to Helvik carried tales of vast armies sweeping across the northern lands. They were the soldiers of Hálfdanr Svarti, branded ‘the Black’ by virtue of a mane of hair so dark amongst the fair heads of the north that he resembled a rook among doves, though others claimed his name befit the colour of his heart. Ruler of the neighbouring kingdom of Agóir, he had set about growing his holdings to north and east, and his armies had sacked every stronghold they had come across in a relentless surge of slaughter. Those that resisted were butchered and thrown onto bonfires, their women wrenched to their feet and shackled into slavery. Already the kingdoms of Vestfold and Raumariki, along with great swathes of Vingulmörk and vast Heiómọrk, had been added to his dominion. Now his nose had sniffed something in the air to the west, and one of his armies had arrived at the doors of Helvik.

A familiar voice dragged Egil from his thoughts.

‘I say we strike at them now. They’re unprepared, weary from the march.’

Eiric. Egil’s second youngest, wilful as ever. Egil looked back down the slope to the gates of the town, and saw Bjọrn re-emerge with the tall figure of Meili at his side, donning his armour as he walked.

‘No,’ he murmured. ‘First let us see if words can do what iron cannot.’

When Meili arrived, Egil took him aside and held a brief whispered conference, before sending him alone into the hills on Torleik’s stumbling horse. Though he was old now, and had to drink more than was good for him to keep the chill from his bones, Meili was still the town’s most famous sword. As a youth, he had left Helvik to fight as a mercenary in all the greatest battles of the age, and soon word of his exploits had spread from the sea in the south to the ice-lands in the north. That he had managed to survive was a surprise; even more so was that, once it was over, he had chosen to return to his damp and miserable home, when all the world knew songs that mentioned his name. Whoever the invaders might be, they would surely have heard of Meili. And when faced with him, Egil was certain, they would either feel fear or respect.

He was out of sight beyond the ridge for only a short time. Then the horse carried him back down again with his throat hanging open and his blood drained over his chest. Sheep shit had been forced down his ears. His eyes they had cut out and stuffed into his cheeks like plums.

Egil’s arms were shaking as he lifted the old man’s body from the saddle. ‘To the walls,’ he ordered grimly, and his men rushed to obey.

As night fell, all the men of Helvik stood lined along the town’s spiked parapet, wrapped in thick felts, watching the northern horizon glow orange with the camp fires of the enemy. They had made a fire of their own too, on which they settled the body of Meili to sizzle and hiss by the water’s edge. Not one of them expected to see dawn. Yet the sun rose the following morning and the mountain road lay empty as the mist cleared. Egil sent some boys out to bring the rest of the livestock inside the walls, and then the gates were barred and bolstered.

They came that same morning, though not in the manner that Egil expected. One of the younger men gave a shout, and as Egil craned against the parapet he picked out a solitary figure ambling down the mountain track. The stranger took his time, stopping often as if to take in the sea view, until he came down off the heights and made his way right up to the gates. He drew to a halt well within the range of a spear, and called up at the walls, barely bothering to raise his voice.

‘I’ll see the leader of this place, please.’ Then he settled down on the damp earth to wait.

Many of Helvik’s men offered to gut the stranger and take his eyes, but Egil came down off the walltop and ordered the gates unbolstered. The man who paced easily through the entrance had the look of no stranger to battle. He had a barrel chest and sturdy gut, scarred forearms naked to the wind, a wild beard that almost buried his mouth. The only armour that he wore was a faded leather kirtle, but he must have had wealth, for it reached almost down to his knees.

Helvik’s soldiers gathered menacingly about him, but the man didn’t so much as glance at them. He nodded a greeting to Egil, thanked him for granting an audience, and then spoke plainly to all that could hear.

‘My name is Olaf Gudrødsson, ruler of that portion of Vestfold that men now call Geirstad. I share the same blood as Hálfdanr Svarti, and that is my army on your hilltop. Your settlement is the smallest I have faced on my journey, and I’ve enough men at my back to sack a place ten times the size. We are footsore from days of marching, but if you insist we will attack with all haste, and be clearing away your bodies before the tides change. Should you wish to avoid that fate, have every single thing of value, every scrap of precious stone or metal in this village, loaded up and delivered to me before midday tomorrow.’

Finished, he did not wait for a reply. He turned and walked himself out of the gates again, whistling a tune through his teeth.

Chapter Two

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.