SNAFU: Hunters

Again, the arguments raged with much shouting, until the king decided one would go while the other stayed behind. It satisfied none, but mollified enough, and so the matter was settled. The king then had them draw lots. Udr was chosen to ride.

He rode with a handful of others selected by the earls and from the king’s own guard. They set out for Pedham, back-tracking the route Kjarstan should most likely have taken. On rare occasion they ran across spies or scouts from Gunnleif’s army, dispatching them with ruthless efficiency of sword and spear.

Now they had reached the high-hill river valley, and something was not at all right. A strange mood crept over them, a strange apprehension. Talk died away. Men tensed in their saddles and twitched alert at every bird-call or noise. More than one checked to see his blade rested loose in the scabbard, ready to be drawn.

Udr himself felt uncommonly jumpy; his sack tight, his skin crawling. Nothing he could see, hear, or smell gave any reason for such skittishness.

The valley ahead lay peaceful, dusted fine green from the new-growing grass. The river flowed smooth in its course, disturbed only by the silvery leap-flicker and splashing of fish rising to snap at skate-flies.

Still, his palms clutched, sweating at the reins as he guided his horse through the random scatter of stones. He found himself wishing the lots had drawn differently, with him the one to stay behind at the war-camp where it was safe.

Which was no sort of thought for a warrior… a wrong sort of thought in more ways than one… and he could not say why.

Further on, one of Jorfyn’s men gave a shout of discovery. When the others neared him, they saw he’d found a horse. Udr recognized it as one of the horses from Pedham, wandering saddled and bridled but riderless among tall grey standing stones, nosing at the tender green shoots to graze on the new grass.

“It bears no wounds, nor bloodstains,” someone said. “Where is its rider?”

“Look, there’s another, by the river there, drinking.”

“Riderless as well, with panniers and packs untouched.”

“Why would they abandon their horses yet laden?”

“They did not abandon their horses,” Udr said. “They must have been attacked.”

“Well, if they were, why would the attackers not have–?”

“Here!” called another man, amid a jumble of stones. “See this.”

They rode to him as he stood over a bright splash of crimson that Udr first took for blood then he recognized it as a crumple of cloth, white on red. A white sword on a red field, attached to its pole but lying forsaken on the ground.

Udr sprang down and bent to it. “Stefnir never would have let drop his uncle’s banner.”

“Then where is he? Where are they?”

“Dismount. Spread out and search.”

They did so, anxiously, their former apprehension creeping again along their nerves.

“I see a shield.” A man pointed. “And a spear beside it.”

“Broken?”

“No, not broken, not so much as scratched.”

Without any order given, they gathered together, forming a defensive circle as if in anticipation of attack. Udr shivered, and by no means was the only man to do so. The air had gained a sudden chill.

And when had the sunshine given way to this fog?

* * *

The war-camp of King Jorfyn consisted of tents and huts surrounded by trenches, thorn-brambles, and angled rows of stakes hewn to crude points. The banner of the king – three white serpents interlocked on a triangular green field – flew accompanied by the banners of other earls and battle-chieftains.

Njoth, Jorfyn’s skald, brought Hreyth and Egil into the makeshift wittan-hall, where gathered the king and his advisers.

It was a small assembly, a half-dozen earls and war-lords seated on benches by a stone-ringed central hearth-fire. Apart from them stood a young man with a dark beard; he was unarmed and his posture declared his resentment of that fact.

The king himself – of middle years, greying but not wrinkled, hale and hearty – wore a tunic of green wool with white wyrm-work embroidery at collar, cuffs and hem. He held across his knees a scepter, a long whetstone below topped by a piece of whale-ivory carved into entwined serpents. His cautious, intelligent, war-weary gaze fell upon the newcomers.

Two other women were also in attendance. One, red-haired and curvaceous, sat near the king’s side, nursing a babe at a plump, freckled breast.

The other, immense and imposing in shining battle-glory, stepped to block Hreyth’s way. The sword strapped across her back must have measured four feet in the blade. Its grip-worn leather hilt proclaimed it was by no means just for show.

“I am Valhild,” she said. Her helm hung on a strap at her side, leaving her bare-headed with myriad thin, close-woven blonde braids. A scar sliced her chin. “First among the king’s guard.”

“Hreyth of the Grey Cloak.”

“So, you are the rune-witch Njoth’s been going on about?”

“I am.”

“Hmf. I expected some haggard old crone.”

“It seems we are both of a sort to defy expectations.”