The Rule

‘Enough of this,’ an angrier voice growled from the right, and Gunnarr shuddered as one of the shapes moved briskly towards him. ‘I say we take the boy as well.’

‘No!’ shouted another, and rushed forward to intercept, restraining the aggressor with an arm across the chest. ‘That is not what is called for.’

Through a mist of uncertainty, Gunnarr realised that he recognised the voice. ‘Egil?’ he asked hesitantly.

‘Yes,’ Egil answered, with heavy reluctance. ‘Greetings, Gunnarr.’

‘Egil,’ Gunnarr began, ‘I’m sure if you wait until tomorrow we’ll be calling on you. I can play with Hákon and the boys—’ He stopped abruptly as he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, and turned to find his father standing calmly behind him.

Egil hurried forward and spoke with hushed urgency. ‘This time I cannot help you, old friend. It’s my own cousin’s name at stake.’

‘I know that,’ Gunnarr’s father replied, with a voice of indifference. ‘But you can protect my wife, and my son.’

‘Father, what is happening?’

‘Yes Folkvarr, I can,’ Egil responded, ignoring Gunnarr, ‘but there is a sword at your side. For every number of them you take, they will take one back from you.’

Again Folkvarr sighed heavily, and then he placed a hand on Egil’s shoulder. ‘Please, a moment with my boy?’

Egil’s face became regretful. ‘Of course.’ He retreated back into the gloom, deliberately avoiding Gunnarr’s searching gaze.

Folkvarr turned and dropped to a knee, so that he and his son’s eyes were level. Gunnarr was whimpering, his expression distraught.

‘Fight them, Father, don’t let them hurt you!’

‘Gunnarr—’

‘Or run, into the forest, please!’

‘Gunnarr, enough!’ his father said sternly, and he shook the little boy’s shoulders until he was silent. ‘I want you to take my sword inside, and go and hug your mother until she tells you to stop. Remember, she brought you into this world and protected you when you were weak. Now you are strong, it is your turn to protect her.’

Gunnarr’s mouth shot open, but then he felt the weight of his father’s instructing eyes and dropped it closed again. With practised, unquestioning obedience, he scrunched up his face and nodded silently.

There was a moment of still as the two of them looked at each other for a final time. Folkvarr’s eyes were wide, almost apologetic. Gunnarr bit his jaw closed and determinedly returned the gaze long enough for one stray tear to roll down to his chin. Then he turned dutifully and carried the heavy sword in both hands towards the house, feeling the snatched brush of his father’s fingertips across the back of his head before he stepped out of their longing reach.

Once inside, he located his mother’s whimpers in the darkness and, rather than crawling onto her lap and sinking into her breast, he sat upright beside her on the floor, placing an arm across her shoulders and letting her fall gratefully against his tiny frame. Together they flinched as they heard a brief flurry of sound, like stones being hurled against sand, and then a ruffled silence returned almost as soon as it had faltered.

After some moments, Gunnarr gently dislodged himself from his mother’s now feeble grip and crawled hesitantly over to the doorway. Egil was there still, standing patiently over a motionless shape on the floor.

‘Come here and help me carry him, Gunnarr. One day you will understand.’

II

She would always follow too closely, so eager was she not to be left behind. Perhaps in later years Gunnarr would recall that about her with a faint smile, but as a boy of twelve he was conscious of it only as the snatch of her fingers on his feet and the tickle of her breath against his calves as they crawled through the dew-laden grass.

It was a clouded spring morning, with still a touch of winter in the air. Together they worked their way along a tufted ridge that bordered a red-brown stream, following the rushing water up a gentle gradient inland. Gunnarr led, as he always did, eyes forward and alert, barely feeling the thistles that scratched across his knees as he went. Kelda followed gamely. She was weaker than the boys, and he could hear the determined little grunts that she let out as she struggled to keep pace. There were times when she would rise up onto her knees and peer back at the town walls as they receded further into the distance, but she would never voice the uncertainty that Gunnarr saw growing on her face.

After a short time of slithering down and scrabbling up the rises and falls of the riverbank, they reached the shelter of a thicket tangled with brambles, and lost sight of the stream. Gunnarr drew to an abrupt halt and cocked his ear skywards, feeling Kelda’s chin thump softly off the sole of his foot as he did so. She exclaimed aloud, but must have sensed his scowl even with his head turned, for she quickly fell silent again. Gunnarr listened to the wind once more and heard the voices clearly above the rush of the stream, one gruff and sounding in short, sharp bursts, the other quieter and less frequent.

He broke off and turned back to Kelda. She was watching him with her mouth ajar, brown eyes gleaming with excitement. Her teeth looked very small, and Gunnarr was reminded that she was much younger than he was. A ‘little girl’ the boys called her, and would name Gunnarr the same whenever they caught the two of them together. But the boys had wanted to stay in town and watch the dog fight, and Gunnarr was not the type to waste a day standing in one place. Whatever the others might say about her, Kelda would never let him down when there was adventure to be had.

‘Stay quiet,’ he warned her under his breath. ‘It will mean death if they find us.’

She smothered her smile instantly and locked her lips closed.

Gunnarr studied her with a stern expression. Her plait had come half undone and her hair was wisping around her head. It had been raining only a short time before dawn, and her woollen clothes were plastered with mud. ‘Your mum is going to be angry again.’

Kelda rolled her shoulders and smiled once more. ‘I don’t care.’

Gunnarr did not return her grin. ‘You remember the signal?’

She nodded quickly and rolled into a sitting position. Casting about briefly, she plucked up a blade of grass, stuffed it between two grubby thumbs, held it to her lips and blew. It made a blunt, hissing sound.

‘You can’t do it,’ Gunnarr complained.

‘I can,’ she insisted, and continued to blow into her hands, until Gunnarr reached out and snatched the grass away.

‘Just follow me and stay quiet.’

Through tunnels in the long grass he led her, weaving through the roots of the bushes on trails made by foxes and river rats. A few days past, Eiric had come home boasting of seeing a mother wolf and six cubs lying at the water’s edge. Gunnarr had left town that morning looking for burrows in the river bank, his aim being to take the pups and skin them so that his mother could make them all hats. He’d brought Kelda with him because he needed someone to snatch up the babes while he threw stones at the mother. But that plan had vanished when they’d heard people talking by the river, somewhere just upstream.

The low voice sounded once more, louder this time, and Gunnarr realised that they must be close. He turned and wriggled back to Kelda.

‘Who is it?’ she whispered. He could hear the breath rushing in and out of her chest.

‘A thieving band from the uplands, most like,’ he replied grimly. ‘Could be as many as twenty of them, waiting until nightfall to snatch any beast we don’t bring inside the walls.’

Kelda drew a sharp intake of breath. ‘What should we do?’

Gunnarr gave her a reckless look and patted the short skinning knife that hung at his waist. ‘If I have to fight them, their numbers will tell eventually. They’ll be starving, just like everyone else, so if I’m caught they’ll likely roast me over their fire. You they’ll carry off to bear their children.’

Kelda caught his hand. ‘Let’s go back.’

Gunnarr shook his head.

‘What then?’

‘Egil would want us to ambush them and drive them off.’ He reached across into the nearest bush and handed Kelda a stick about the length of her arm. ‘When I give the signal, you come out waving your sword and screaming as loud as you can. They’ll think us an army, and flee.’

Taking the stick, Kelda looked down at it in her hand and nodded hesitantly. Her eyes flashed a sparkle of enjoyment. Gunnarr smiled at her and fell forward onto his front to crawl off again.

Within a few yards he heard the low voice talking once more, and this time he could make out words.

‘Stupid, stupid …’ the voice was saying, over and over again. The words were punctuated by the sound of splashing footsteps as the man stamped about in the water somewhere below Gunnarr’s line of sight.

Gunnarr slowed his pace, his heart beating solidly against the ground beneath him. The undergrowth was thinning, but the sound of his limbs as he dragged them through the foliage seemed to be louder than ever. He realised that he could not hear Kelda. For once she had stayed back, watching as he pressed forward.

Within two more yards he breached the cover of the last bush. Once he did the long grass died away into tough, cropped shoots. His head and shoulders had emerged on an elevated ridge that overlooked the water, although from how high up he could not say. The men were still hidden from view somewhere beneath him, but the low voice continued to talk, almost incessantly.