Blood Eagle: A riveting historical thriller Page 21
My eyes met Loke’s pale-blue ones, which were, just like his stony face, so free of emotion he might as well be dead. As he bent forward, ready to take me on, he reminded me of an ox, big and ugly. I also bent forward so that we were face to face again. Both of us removed our swords from the scabbards attached to our belts. One of the judges came over to us and raised his hand up into the air. He turned his head toward the sky to verify that the sun had reached zenith, which took him a while because of the thick layer of gray clouds. At last the judge’s hand dropped.
The Holmganga had begun.
37
I let Loke make the first move. In all the years that I had fought with swords, I had learned that this was the wisest initial tactic. Also, I still needed time to center myself; that special feeling of invincibility was still eluding me. Loke rushed forward, focusing all his might on one powerful thrust with his sword. Right as he was about to reach me, I stepped to the side, just barely avoiding his attack. I didn’t move as fast as I usually did. Even though my joints had loosened up, my reflexes remained sluggish.
Loke came at me again, and this time he brushed my arm with the sharp blade of his sword. My heart skipped a beat, but I didn’t feel any pain. A swift glance at my shirt sleeve told me that he had only managed to slit open the brown material; the skin underneath was intact, so no blood could fall on the sheet. I let out an audible sigh of relief. But then, as I took another step to the side, I tripped and fell backwards onto the ground. Loke flew on top of me, dropping his sword in the process. He nailed the hand with which I held the sword firmly to the ground with his knee. Turning his body slightly, he reached for his sword that had landed just a few steps away from him. In order to get a hold of it, though, he had to ease the pressure on my wrist. I managed to wriggle free.
Rolling swiftly to the side, I got to my feet, my sword remaining on the ground. Loke, too, was back on his feet, but, unlike me, armed with his sword. He lunged at me, clearly furious at having missed settling the Holmganga so swiftly. I tried stepping to the side a third time, but my feet suddenly refused to obey me. Twisting sharply to the side instead, I managed to closely avoid Loke’s slash.
His sword might not have reached me, but his shoulder did, hitting me hard in the middle of my chest. A pain so severe I lost my breath exploded throughout my trunk. Running to the other side of the sheet, I grabbed my stomach area, gasping for air. People were booing around me, but I had no choice but to avoid Loke for now. I needed to compose myself, which seemed impossible with all the distracting emotions of inevitable defeat that grew within me.
I had to find a way to lose them.
I closed my eyes, concentrating hard to make the pain recede and catch my breath. Having recovered somewhat, I straightened up, right in time to see Loke coming at me with his sword pointed in my direction. Squatting rapidly, I kicked at the hand with the sword and the man lost his weapon once more, leaving us both unarmed. Losing it didn’t make him as perturbed this time around, however, and he tackled me hard instead. I fell like a heavy log onto the ground, facing the sky. He threw himself over me and nailed me by the neck with his leg. It didn’t take him much effort to control me, as I was still weak from the blow to my chest. He pushed harder against my neck. My limbs got weaker as I fought for air and I got dizzy. Everything suddenly felt unreal.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see how Loke had gotten a hold of his sword with his free hand. He raised the sword high above his head. As if in a dream, I watched how he turned it so that its tip was aimed at my heart. The long blade glimmered in the intermittent sunlight above us.
With what was left of my strength, I raised my legs behind Loke’s back, and then, swiftly, I brought them over his head. Enclosing my feet around the man’s neck, I pulled him backwards toward the ground, all of it going so fast that Loke lost his sword again. Undoing myself from Loke, I threw myself to the side and staggered up to my feet. I felt like I was about to faint. I caught sight of Hilda in that moment. Her face was whiter than the sheet beneath me, and her eyes had become round and huge as she was staring at me. Having brought her hands to her face to cover her mouth, she was gnawing at her knuckles. Her entire body was trembling. I didn’t think that I had ever seen fear spelled out so clearly in anybody, and I knew then that I had to win this game. I had too much to live for to let go now, too many people depending on me. I couldn’t fail Hilda twice. At last that indispensable sensation of invincibility filled me, and every part of my body felt strong again.
I turned around and looked straight at Loke, who was standing in front of me, his sword back in his hand. He lifted the weapon up into the air. I was determined not to let him take another swipe at me, though; my time to take a swipe at him had come. Of course, before that could happen, I needed to get a hold of my sword. I spotted it on the sheet a few steps behind Loke. I bent forward, pretending to be about to take a lunge at him so that I could pick it up. Loke stepped to the side, while chopping violently with his sword into the space where he obviously expected me to end up. Losing balance, he tripped and fell backward onto the sheet. His large body hit the ground so hard the people who stood closest to him must have felt the field reverberating.
Loke lay immobile on the ground. Everybody held their breaths, waiting for him to rebound. But he didn’t move. Instead, blood began spindling out from his head in every imaginable direction. The empty, glazed-over look in Loke’s eyes as they stared up into the sky told me that he was already dead. The lines of blood merged into each other, forming a stain so dark it looked black around his head.
I remained in a squatting position, just staring at the large man. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and met the gaze of one of the judges.
“You can stand up now, Leif,” the man said. “He is dead. You have won the first game.”
The judge bent down to examine Loke, whose head fell to the side, revealing the reason to his sudden death: His head had hit a stone that was bulging out of the ground. The blooded sheet clung closely to the stone, clearly displaying its shape and size now.
Barely able to understand what had happened, I forced my legs to move. As I turned around and looked at the crowds that surrounded me, I heard applause and cheers
I had made the first round… I had killed Loke without even having intended for it to happen. I could only wish that I would be as lucky with Ragnar.
I turned around and looked for my former friend. I didn’t have to search for long; Ragnar was standing between Rolle and Ricko, his younger twin brothers. His short but massive frame seemed to have shrunk, and he cowered at the sight of my eyes on him. Or maybe it just seemed like that because I was tired and hoping that my next opponent would be as easy to defeat.
Ragnar walked onto the white sheet, in the midst of three men removing his brother’s body from it. When the men left, all that remained of Loke was a huge stain of blood in the center of the sheet, a stain that had taken on the curious shape of the letter J. I stood with my legs wide apart, waiting for Ragnar to come closer to me so our fight could begin.
We were soon in front of each other. I willed myself to focus, bracing myself for an even tougher fight this time around. The judge next to us signaled that the game was on.
I felt the blood pumping loudly in my ears, as I awaited Ragnar’s first move. But Ragnar didn’t move. Instead, he insisted on staring down into the sheet under us. Then, all of a sudden, he thrust his sword at me, just like he must have seen Loke do earlier. But, unlike his brother, who had been in complete control of his movements, Ragnar acted blindly, keeping his head down like a bull attacking. It was not the action of a skilled swordsman.
Surprised, I easily evaded Ragnar’s clumsy thrust by simply stepping to the side. Stumbling to regain his balance, he turned around. Then he took a run in preparation for another attack, his head remaining down. As he ran toward me, faster and harder this time, I moved to the side once more. Ragnar fell forward, landing on the ground on his knees and
hands. He struggled up into a standing position, his sword still in his hand. I got ready to make my first move.
But as I was about to lunge forward, I changed my mind. I suddenly felt certain that Ragnar would make a third attempt to get at me. Maybe he would trip like Loke. So I waited.
I was right. Ragnar did make another run for me. And this time his aim was so bad that I didn’t even have to step to the side to avoid him. Ragnar hadn’t even bothered to look up to see where I was before he had taken off. The short, wide lad crashed headlong onto the sheet.
Ragnar flipped around as rapidly as he could so that he was facing the sky again. He fought to get up to his feet, but it was too late; I was there already. Standing above Ragnar, I placed one foot on his chest to keep him pinned to the ground. In my hand, I held the sword, ready to finish the game. For the first time since it had started, our eyes met. The sun that shone into Ragnar’s squinting eyes made the tears that crowded them sparkle. As he lifted a hand to shade his eyes and blinked a couple times, some of the tears streamed down the sides of his face, onto his ears. I finally understood what had made Ragnar attack me so blindly. All those tears in his eyes must have made him unable to see much of anything well.
I bent my legs so that both my knees ended up on Ragnar’s chest. To my surprise, he didn’t even attempt to defend himself. My victory, not yet consummated, hung heavily in the air around us. I brought the sword to Ragnar’s arm and made a swift slit through the woolen tunic that covered it. Blood sipped forth immediately, trickling onto the sheet beneath us. As the masses around us saw this, they began cheering loudly, applauding and screaming my name, much like the men around my grandfather must have done after he had killed all those wolves decades ago: “Leif the Jarlabanke-killer, Leif the Jarlabanke-killer!” The chants grew louder, fiercer, urging me to kill the lad under me.
Moved by the rising emotions around me, the repetitive chants sounded like beating drums, hypnotizing me. I lifted the sword high up into the air, ready to drive it into Ragnar. But as I looked down, about to let it sink into his chest, our eyes met again, and I saw the pain that mixed with terror in his gaze. He suddenly seemed like a small, helpless child. I realized then that I was no longer angry with him. All I could feel was an intense sorrow for the sick person under me, this lad who was my foster brother, who used to be my friend. Letting the sword drop to the side, I took one last look at Ragnar. Then I stood up and walked away. It was over now.
All of it.
38
The People’s Assembly gave the Jarlabanke clan thirty days from the day of the Holmganga to leave their estate. After that, my family could move in and take over what had now become our property. I offered Astrid Jarlabanke, the new head of the Jarlabanke family, to let the Jarlabanke clan stay in an empty tenant farm nearby. She accepted the offer. Before the month was over, all of the members of the Jarlabanke clan except for Hilda’s mother, Menja, a Jarlabanke slave caught in Russia many years ago, and her little brother Jon were to have moved in there. Menja and Jon were to stay with the rest of my family in the main building as from now on they were part of the Blackhair family, not the Jarlabankes.
Ragnar wouldn’t be moving in with the rest of his family. When I spared his life, Ragnar automatically became a forest man. He was allowed to take refuge inside the woods without anyone chasing him after he had gathered his belongings and entered it. I suppose that, after having seen how poorly he defended himself and his family’s honor in the Holmganga, people must have assumed there was no point in going after him; someone like that wouldn’t last long in the forest anyway. His sentence took effect as soon as the fight was over.
For the first time in a really long while did I feel as though I could let my guard down completely. I had become free at last—and I was also very rich. The only matter still darkening my mood was my father’s unexpected passing and my failure to do everything possible to save him. But there was nothing I could do about it now, so I did my best to push the uncomfortable thoughts aside, hard as it was. Maybe one day, they wouldn’t bother me any longer.
I had scheduled his burial for ten days after his death, in accordance with tradition. He would be buried next to my mother, and we would mark his grave with a large mound of earth on which we could plant flowers, just like we had done with hers. We would celebrate the burial with a grand feast.
I was glad that we were now able to afford putting his body in a ship, the same one in which Hilda had been buried, together with food and drink, weapons and clothes, some silver, a dead goat, a dead cow, and our two remaining horses. The horses would pull the wagon that we had included in the grave so that he would arrive to the afterlife in style. No slaves were to go with him, however, partly because we didn’t own slaves yet, but mostly because neither I nor my father believed this particular part of the burial custom to be necessary. When the thirty days had passed and all of what used to belong to the Jarlabankes would belong to us, including their eighty slaves, I would set them free and ask them to continue their tasks in exchange for payment. Like both my father and my grandfather liked to say, no man deserved to be another’s carthorse.
Shortly after the Holmganga, I required a gathering at the Valstad Assembly so that I could discuss an indemnity to the family of Sigfrid the Wise of Rodeby for Orvar. Both Orvar and I had long since concluded that it was wiser to keep Sigfrid’s perverse nature a secret; otherwise, years of feuding and unnecessary bloodshed might take place, ending the row of relatively peaceful years the province had enjoyed as of late. And it wasn’t like I couldn’t afford to pay Sigfrid’s family a rather sizeable indemnity now.
I would serve as Orvar’s representative at the gathering. As such, I would suggest an appropriate sum to the brothers of Sigfrid that would redeem the loss of their brother, making Orvar free of guilt. Then I would purchase Orvar and his family from them and set them free. The gathering was approved by the People’s Assembly and was scheduled to take place a week later. The day of it had arrived.
Sigfrid the Wise’s four brothers were already sitting at the opposite side of the People’s Assembly when Egin and I entered the building. I could immediately notice a difference in the way they looked at me, as we walked up to our side of the seats. There was an air of respect mixed with awe in their eyes, for they, as well as every other man in the province, had seen or heard about the Holmganga that I had won. Their reverent glances made me feel good, very good, especially since this way, it was unlikely that I would be bothered with questions why I was in contact with and choosing to defend a criminal like Orvar in the first place. If people feared and respected me enough, no one would dare asking. Before taking a seat, I turned around and gave the Sigfrid brothers a brief nod in salutation. They responded right away.
Few men had come to see what would transpire at the Assembly this day. Many were not even aware that it was open for business, as the gathering was only taking place to deal with this particular issue. Considered a routine matter, neither was it something that was of much interest to the public. All that could happen, really, was that the brothers rejected or accepted my offer on behalf of Orvar.
The Law Speaker entered the room and took a seat behind his elevated table. Scanning the room, the old man found my eyes. They stayed there just long enough for me to detect the tiniest smile in the man’s wrinkled face. I thought I saw him wink his eye, too, but I couldn’t be entirely sure. Then he rapped the gavel and began speaking. “Greetings, good men of Ostergotland. We have gathered today to settle the case of the Sigfrid slave Orvar. Orvar was convicted of murdering his master Sigfrid the Wise of Rodeby, but he managed to escape only days before his punishment was to be executed. From what I understand, no one except for Leif Blackhair has seen him since. Leif has requested this meeting to offer the Sigfrid family an indemnity in order to redeem their loss and also to buy Orvar and his family from them. Is that correct, Leif?”
I got to my feet and said, “Yes, sir Law Speaker, that is correct.”
“200 silver coins, Sir.”
I could see how the eyes of the brothers widened and how they fought not to let their surprise shine through. But it was too late. I knew already that they would accept my first offer. It wasn’t necessary to let them know that I had been willing to give them double that amount in order to repay Orvar’s debt. Or more if it had proven inevitable. Nobody but my closest family needed to know that there was no limit to what I would do for Orvar. Nobody but they needed to know that Orvar had saved my life.
The Law Speaker looked over at the Sigfrid brothers and waited for them to respond. The first one, a jovial-looking man with bad skin and long, light brown hair gathered in a ponytail, stood up. He threw a couple tentative glances in my direction before speaking.
“We, my brothers and I are very angry and very sad about the death of our brother. It was a cruel crime committed by a lowly slave. Our brother didn’t deserve to die in this vicious manner. He was a good man, a good father, and a good master. He never mistreated any of his slaves, and they all loved and respected him tremendously.” The man threw another nervous glance at me before continuing. “I think I speak for all of my family when I say that the price Leif Blackhair has offered to atone for his death is not quite sufficient. Sigfrid deserves more than 200 silver coins. However, if Leif gives us 300 silver coins, we will consider the guilt paid and Leif can be the owner of not only Orvar, but of his family, too.”