The Rule

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.

Midday came, and Hákon did not return. The women were busying themselves on the work benches that ran along the east wall of the room, rolling wicks for the lamps from cottongrass gathered earlier in the year. Fafrir, Eiric and Bjọrn sat murmuring in low voices around the table. Egil tried to join them, but their conversation felt trivial and forced. He went outside again and spent a while watching Fafrir’s son leading Eiric’s son and Bjọrn’s daughter, both still young enough to be tottering on their feet, from rock pool to rock pool. He hoped they were as oblivious as they looked.

For the second half of the afternoon, he returned to the wall above the gates and stood staring up into the hills. Come evening, he was still there. The wind had forced a chill into his bones. The wild sky was orange in the west and darkening to soot in the east, like iron lifted out from the coals, and still Hákon didn’t come home. Egil’s men seemed to sense his emotion, and left him to himself. Before long, he was standing alone in the dark.

He returned to the longhall, and found his sons standing anxiously by the doorway inside. Gunnarr had joined them. The women were sitting very still and quiet, and when the children spoke too loudly they shushed them.

‘Will you come with me?’ Egil asked.

‘Yes,’ Gunnarr answered for his brothers. ‘But Egil, fighting in this dark …’

‘I do not go to fight today,’ Egil said quietly. ‘I fear that the horse may have wandered off the path.’

They took no light, in case it was seen. Egil led them, almost running in his haste and intent on maintaining that pace all the way up the slope. But as soon as they pushed through the gates, Eiric gave a shout. Egil looked up, and saw a flame floating down the mountain in the blackness.

‘Hákon,’ he gasped.

Gunnarr clutched his arm. ‘We cannot know that,’ he warned, but Egil shook himself free and hastened up the road.

The going was difficult. He had to rely on his feet to distinguish between the hard stone of the path and the soft grass when he strayed. Unseen rocks rolled beneath his feet, and his old legs stumbled many times. He could hear his sons following behind, labouring to keep up.

When he was twenty yards away, he looked up and found that the flame had halted. It glowed from a ridge above his eye line, spitting sparks into the air. A horse gave a whicker, and shifted its feet nervously in the gravel. Egil squatted down and placed a hand over his mouth, his ragged breath racing through his fingers.

‘Who’s there?’ a halting voice called.

‘Hákon!’ Egil cried.

‘Father!’