Blood Eagle: A riveting historical thriller Page 16

  “By Thor, do you think I’m stupid?” I yelled into his face. “Don’t you think I can see the sword that you brought? No messenger needs a sword like that. I’m going to give you one more chance to tell me the truth before I cut off your throat. Now tell me: Why are you here?”

  The petrified man gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Then he said, “I came because Loke

  Jarlabanke told me to! If I came here and cut the head off a woman called Hilda, he’d give me thirty silver coins… I don’t know more than this, I swear!”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is…is Markus.”

  I lightened the pressure of the knife so the man could speak with more ease.

  “I came here from the West Coast and got a job as a blacksmith with the Jarlabankes last week. Late last night Loke came up to me and told me he needed this job done. It was very important and I would be paid well as long as I went back to the West Coast afterwards. I already have the money in my pocket. You can have them, just please don’t kill me, Master. I just really needed all that money for my family back home. They are starving. Please believe me...”

  “Tell me all that you know and I will let you off alive.”

  “But I hardly know anything else, Master. I don’t even know who you are!”

  I realized that the desperate man was likely telling the truth. If he’d come into the province long after both Hilda and I had disappeared from everyday life, why would he know who we were? This man was just some poor scoundrel who had been tempted by all the silver Loke had offered him in exchange for a simple murder that no one would ever found out he had committed. He wasn’t the real problem.

  “What were the instructions that Loke gave you?” I asked him.

  “He told me to walk over to the Blackhair farm and wait until the rooster called, then to knock on the door of your house. I should tell whoever answered that I had a message for Hilda from her father and that I had to see her alone. When I had her alone, I was to cut off her head with the sword, and then run off and throw the head in the river. That was all. I promise!”

  “What about Bjorn Jarlabanke? Is he involved in this, too?”

  “No. He fell down the stairs in the main dwelling this evening. He broke his neck and died.”

  A muffled scream sounded close to me. I turned around and saw that Hilda and everybody else in my family were standing around me and the man. I removed the knife from the man’s neck and stood up slowly.

  “Leave our premises now, you thug,” I said, staring coldly at the man. “And if I ever see you again, I swear that I will kill you with my bare hands.” I spat next to the man’s feet. “Do you understand?”

  The man nodded mutely, his eyes still wide with terror as he struggled to get into a standing position. When he got up, he turned around and took off into the woods with feet that moved fast yet so stumblingly he nearly tripped himself. I watched him disappear. Then I bent down and picked up the long sword the man had dropped on the ground. Having it right in front of my eyes now, I studied the beautifully ornamented silver hilt. It sure was one of the Jarlabanke clan’s swords, just like I had thought at first sight. Turning around, I gave it to Orvar and told him to hold onto it. Orvar was still looking after the man despite that, by now, the many trees had long since engulfed him. There was an apprehensive expression on my friend’s face.

  “Don’t you worry, Orvar,” I said reassuringly. “We will never see that man again, you can be certain of that. I know Loke: If he finds out that the man failed his mission, he will not make life easy for him. It doesn’t take many days of work for anybody to understand this about Loke. He is not a lad you want to make unhappy. No, this man will try his best to get back to the West Coast. That was why I left him with the thirty silver coins. He will need them to get back.”

  Then I looked around for Nils, the traitor.

  27

  When I couldn’t see Nils anywhere, I figured the traitor must have taken off like the other man, for certainly he understood that it was all over for him now. I turned to Hilda, who was weeping quietly against Elsa’s full bosom. I walked over to them and signaled to Elsa that I was to take over from here. Gently, Elsa moved Hilda into my open arms. Embracing her shivering body, I stroked her hair and let her cry against my shoulder. The others, one by one, filed back inside the house.

  We didn’t stand there for long when rapid steps approached behind us. Then Nils’s excited voice yelled, “Leif, what was that man all about? He ran past me just as I had finished pissing behind a tree. He looked like he couldn’t get away fast enough.”

  I whispered into Hilda’s ear to go inside with the others. She obeyed immediately. I turned around slowly to meet the delicately built man. I could feel myself tremble with anger, but I made an effort to control myself until Nils had reached me. The gall of this creep… He must think I was so stupid that I still hadn’t realized he was two-timing us.

  When Nils stood face to face with me, a sycophantic smile spread over his veal-colored lips. But before he could say anything my fist landed in the middle of his face, smashing one of his teeth. Nils’s hand flew up to his mouth as though he needed to make sure he had not imagined what had just happened. In that instant, another of my fist connected with Nils’s body, this time with his solar plexus. Nils doubled over, his head nearly between his legs. He was gasping for air as he held up a hand for me to stop. Then he threw up on the ground.

  “I want to know everything, every little detail of what you did from the moment we came back to Karlsby,” I hissed at the folded man. “And don’t you dare giving me any lies! What did you do? You told Loke yesterday, didn’t you?”

  When he didn’t answer, I gave him another blow, right over the nose. There was a crunching sound telling me that I had broken it. Nils held up both his hands in a vain attempt to defend himself. He opened his mouth and began to speak. At first I couldn’t understand what the little man was telling me, but soon the words became more intelligible:

  “Please stop, please… I will tell you everything if only you stop hitting me… Yes, I told Loke! As soon as I got into the estate I sought him out. I told him that Hilda was alive and wanted to speak to Bjorn about reversing your sentence and make Ragnar pay the Blackhairs for what he had done to them. I told him that if he rewarded me well, I would tell him when and where Hilda would meet her father so that he could take care of her. No one would ever find out that she had still been alive and the Blackhairs wouldn’t have a case. I wouldn’t say anything as long as I was rewarded appropriately.” Nils stopped and gave me a hesitant glance.

  “Continue,” I hissed between clenched teeth. Nils took a deep breath that must have been painful, for he jerked. Then he made himself continue. “But just as I had handed over the wooden plate and Hilda’s necklace and was about to leave, Bjorn came around the corner. He came up and saw the necklace and the plate right away. He recognized the necklace and began accusing me of having robbed Hilda’s grave. It wasn’t until he started beating me that I told him it wasn’t true. Then he demanded to know how come I was standing with his dead daughter’s necklace in my hand. So I had to tell him that she wasn’t dead, and that she had given it to me herself. We had to tell him the rest then.”

  Nils got quiet again. I pushed him hard. “Then what did you do?” I urged him. “You went back to Loke later in the night, didn’t you? When you said that you were going to pick up your knife, you really went to the Jarlabanke estate, didn’t you?” I was almost screaming by now.

  Nils whimpered, “Yes, yes, I did… I did go back.” Suddenly, his demeanor changed. Instead of looking scared, his face twisted with anger. “And, yes, I did tell him to send someone over to kill Hilda as soon as possible. If it happened this night, the Jarlabankes’ properties would still be safe. For Odin, why shouldn’t I do that? Loke would make me rich for saving him.” He became mocking. “Do you really think that you will win a retrial in the Assembly just because Hilda is alive? It doesn’t matter. H
er testimony will never be worth as much as the ones of the Jarlabanke men. Loke Jarlabanke can get 36 oath-helpers to back up his brother’s denial. And if we had managed to get rid of Hilda, you certainly will not won. I was the one who came up with the brilliant idea to cut off her head so that no one would be able to identify her. Loke was so grateful.”

  I stared at the little man with the blue eyes before me, this man with the deceptive appearance, not able to believe what I was hearing at first. Moments later, when I had digested his words, I knew what had to be done. I took a firm hold of Nils’s tunic and pulled out the knife that I had put back into my right boot. Nils must have realized what I was about to do because he opened his mouth to beg for mercy, but I had slit his throat before any sound managed to come out. Nils died at once, his wide eyes even wider, leaving him with a look of either immense surprise or deep terror. I called for Orvar to come join me. Orvar came within moments. I looked at him, still holding onto the body and said, “We need to get rid of this piece of trash. Throw him in the river. I will send Egin to help you carry him. I will explain later.”

  Orvar held up hand. “We all heard what he said from inside the house. And I had the same suspicions as you all along.”

  “Good,” I nodded. Then I left Nils with Orvar.

  I walked back inside the longhouse and told Egin to go out and help Orvar with Nils. Egin went immediately. Elsa came up and gave me a wet cloth with which to wipe off my bloodied hands. When I was clean, I turned to Hilda, who was standing to the side, watching me quietly. She was no longer weeping. I walked up to her. She looked at me for a while without saying anything. Then she took both my hands in hers and bent her head and kissed them.

  “I’m so sorry for doubting you, Leif. The brothers and I were sure of Nils’s trustworthiness. We made a big mistake. You saved my life.”

  I let go of her hands and took her in my arms. “It’s all right. I wasn’t completely sure about it until this morning either. We should try to get some sleep now. We have a lot to discuss and we need to have fresh minds when we do so.”

  Hilda nodded. “Yes. We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

  28

  I woke up shortly after midday. Everybody on our farm except for my sisters and Elsa were still sleeping. I decided to let them continue sleeping; after all, there were several hours left of the day. I went outside to get some fresh air and clear my mind.

  It was a nice day. The air was clean and crisp and the sun shone with blinding intensity despite a hazy sky. A vague breeze moved through the couple of barns that were built on either side of our longhouse, carrying with it a smell of wet earth. I walked over to the opening of the wooden fence through which our farm’s acres and meadows were accessed. I continued out onto the acres. When I reached the middle of the first, the one in which we grew barley, I sank down onto my haunches and grabbed a fistful of the dark brown soil.

  I looked at the heap of brown in my hand for a long moment. Then I smelled it. It had a sharp odor. Spreading my fingers, I let the dirt slip slowly back to where it belonged. An image of my father appeared in my mind. Instead of forcing it away like I usually did, I let the image be, and then turn into others. Pictures from my early childhood emerged, occasions during which my father and I went fishing on our own, hunting for hare, he showing me how to put together a bow. I remembered how we had been laughing together then, how we had competed who could run the fastest into the woods, how we had sung songs and told each other stories. Nobody was bigger or stronger or more clever than my father. But as I grew older and my scope of the world expanded, incidents occurred, incidents that disintegrated this glorified view.

  One in particular had shattered it.

  It happened during a mild evening toward the end of my seventh summer. My big brother, our father, and I had been to the market in Valstad where we spent the day bartering newly harvested barley and rye and fresh butter for fur and deer antlers. Yakoube got some beautiful red silk from Byzantium for our mother to make a dress and a small wooden sword for me. We couldn’t really afford the sword, but he had bought it anyway, maybe to put a lid on my constant nagging. He was well aware of how much I loved sword play, but since his skills in wood whittling were not even close to those of his own father’s—who had produced a wooden sword for Yakoube when Yakoube was a child—simple branches of birch or maple had had to suffice for his own sons. Tree branches were not as much fun as wooden swords of course, so I kept on badgering him to let me use the one my grandfather had given him instead. Not wanting to risk breaking his precious sword, it was easier to just buy me my own.

  As the three of us were on our way back home, two men walked toward us. They stopped in front of our cart. The road was narrow and edged by ditches, then firs, which grew densely like tall hedges by the road, all of it making it just on impossible for us to get around the men. So we had to stop as well.

  “What do you have to give us, brother?” the larger of the two asked my father in a calm voice. Neither of them was tall nor very strong-looking, yet there was something distinctively menacing about their appearance, something that demanded to be taken serious.

  “Ehhh… I have nothing…” my father mumbled, instantly frazzled.

  The bigger man gave his friend a meaningful glance and both of them laughed. He pointed at the rich bear fur and red silk in our cart that were clearly visible behind my father and said, “Then what is that?” Staring hard at my father, the man pulled out a long knife from his belt beneath his cloak. The silvery blade glimmered fiercely in the fading sunlight.

  “Ehh, listen,” Yakoube began, smiling cooperatively. “Why don’t I give you this nice fur and then you let us pass?” He patted the smooth brown bear pelt next to him. “It is great bear fur, rich and warm for the winter.”

  I looked at my father, mystified. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing: Was he just going to give these two scoundrels our new, much needed bear fur? Without so much as giving up a fight?

  The two men looked at each other again and laughed. Then they threw themselves over my father. From that moment on, everything went so fast that I had a hard time remembering exactly what happened. Only one scene had stuck to my memory, one in which my father was lying on the ground, the two men kicking and pounding him hard. Having crouched together like a terrified animal, my father refused to even attempt defending himself. When the two men had tired of beating him, they turned their attention to the cart and its contents. My brother and I tried to make ourselves invisible as the men unloaded all our painstakingly chosen, indispensable merchandise. It wasn’t until the first man got a hold of my new wooden sword that I reacted.

  “No! Don’t take that! That’s mine!” I screamed at the man, tears springing up in my eyes. Now that I had finally gotten a real sword to train with, I couldn’t bear losing it. “I need that!”

  I looked over at my father, who was still down on the ground, rivulets of blood snaking its way from his face. “Father, tell him not to take my sword!”

  At the sound of my call, Yakoube turned his head and looked at the cart. Placing his palms on the ground, he tried to push himself up. But just as he was about to reach a sitting position, his arms gave out and he fell back onto the dirty road like a fragile house suddenly crumbling. The man looked first at the heap of my father beneath the cart, and then back at me. Letting out a scornful laugh, he broke the wooden sword in two. “Your father is a good for nothing, boy!” he jeered at me and threw the broken parts far into the woods. Then he and his friend left the cart with all of its goods in their arms and disappeared behind the many trees.

  I wasn’t sure how long I sat there out on the fields pondering my father, but eventually my thoughts were interrupted. Egin was calling me from the opening of the fence. “Are you going to be out there all day, Leif?” he asked. I stood up. My legs were stiff and achy from the unusual position they had been in for such long time. I walked over to my brother and the two of us walked into the longhouse together.

/>   Everybody was awake now and the deep, dark room was full of life. Elsa cooked something in a big black cauldron over the hearth and thick, rich-smelling steam evaporated from it. Hilda cut bread on a board that she had placed in her lap, while Anna and Inga got wooden bowls ready to be filled with food. The Russian brothers walked back and forth carrying firewood into the house. They informed me that Petter and the two field hands had gone outside to feed our remaining animals.

  I walked up to Hilda and asked her how she was doing. She turned to me and smiled. “Not so bad, I think,” she said. “Considering the circumstances. When it is all over, I will mourn Father properly. But I’m a little mad at myself. I should have seen it coming.”

  I looked at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I should have warned Father that Loke would be very unhappy when he heard how Father wanted to handle everything. Maybe then he would have been alive today. I don’t believe for a moment that Father simply fell down the stairs. No, Loke must have been behind it.”

  “Yes, I agree that Loke must have had something to do with his death. It’s too convenient. But how could you have known what Loke was up to?”

  Hilda patted the bench on which she sat. “Sit down. What I am going to tell you may take a while.”

  I did as I was told and eagerly awaited Hilda’s story.

  29

  “Ever since we were little,” Hilda began, “Loke has had this dream of us Jarlabankes becoming the next royal family of Sweden. He always talked about it to everyone who wanted to listen. And to those who didn’t, too…” She rolled her eyes. “‘We can take them! We can take them!’ he ran around yelling, referring to King Holmstein and his court. He was obsessed with the thought of our family ruling the country. But Father didn’t see it the same way. He was happy with our current status. He tried to explain to Loke that ruling the country wasn’t worth all the bloodshed it would surely cost our family to overtake the Holmsteins. Father must have thought this was nothing more than youthful caprice on Loke’s part, for Loke eventually stopped talking about us becoming the next royal family.”