The Long Hunt (The Strongbow Saga) (36 page)

As had happened that night on Oeland, at my mention of Birka her face took on a look of fear, and she began trembling.

"What is it?" I asked her. "What about Birka causes you fear? What happened there?"

"Do not leave me in Birka," she pleaded. "There is no one there who will help me. It is an evil place, full of evil men."

"I will not leave you in danger," I told her. "I promise you that. But you must tell me what it is you fear."

She said nothing, but sat wringing her hands and rocking back and forth.

"Rauna," I said, in a softer voice, "How did you and your father come to be a part of Sigvald's company? Was it in Birka? What happened there? I wish to help you, but I cannot if I do not know these things."

She was silent so long I did not think she was going to answer. But finally, she took a deep breath, raised her head and looked into my face, and told me the tale.

"For many years, a man—one of your people—would come to our lands to trade with my people," she began.

This surprised me. I had understood that the Finns lived deep in the hinterlands of Svealand and Gotarland. "Do you mean he was a Dane?" I asked, interrupting her.

She frowned. "What is a Dane?"

"I am a Dane. My people are Danes. We live in lands far to the west of here." It was clear she did not understand. "These are the peoples of the northlands," I told her. "Here, where we are now, is Svealand—the kingdom of the Sveas. These lands are theirs."

"No one can own the land," she protested.

Ignoring her, I continued. "West of here are the lands of the Gotars, and to the west of their kingdoms are the lands of the Danes. Beyond the Danes, across the Jutland Sea to the north, are the Norse."

She shook her head. "Do you not all speak the same tongue?"

I nodded. "Yes, the common tongue of the north. What you and I are speaking now."

"And you all dress in iron, and carry many weapons, and fight, and kill. All of these peoples you speak of, they are all the same. They are all the others.
I
," she said, tapping her chest for emphasis, "am one of the people—I am
Samit
. You are one of the others."

This was going nowhere. She knew too little of the world to understand. "Continue your tale," I told her.

"The man who came each year to trade—his name was Barne—wanted furs. For them, he gave us knives, and axes, and brightly-colored cloth and beads, and other things we did not have. He was a good man. He was not evil. He taught my father, and others among our people who wished to learn it, to speak your tongue. He tried to persuade us to follow his god—he believed there was only one, which is a very foolish thing.

"Several times, he took my father with him back to Birka, where he had come from, with many furs to trade there."

"Ah," I said, "then this Barne was a Svear merchant."

Ignoring me, she continued. "When my father would return, he always had many, many goods for our people. He said Barne had taught him much about the ways of the others, and their beliefs.

"Last winter, Barne did not come. Instead, a great band of the others came to our lands. They did not come to trade. They had many weapons, and they came to rob and to kill. All who could fled deep into the forests to escape them, but many were slain, and others were taken away and never seen again. Our villages were burned, and our goods were stolen."

She was as slow at telling a tale as Einar. I wondered how late in the night it would be before we got to Sigvald.

"In the spring, after the raiders had gone and our people had gathered together once again, our
noaidi
searched the other side for Barne, and found him there. He had died—he, too, had been killed by the raiders, and his spirit had left this side of the world."

Now
I
did not understand. "What is a
noaidi
?" I asked, struggling to pronounce the strange word. It was clearly of her people's language, not of the common tongue.

"A
noaidi
is a spirit traveler. His spirit can leave his body and travel to the other side, and return. It gives him great power and knowledge, to be able to see the world from both sides. Are there no
noaidis
among your people?"

I shook my head. She seemed surprised.

"What happened when your people learned Barne was dead?" I asked.

"There was much talk about what we should do. No one believed that the raiders would never come back again. Some said that we should leave, and seek new lands to live upon. But others said our people had hunted and fished these lands since time began, and our spirits, and those of our fathers and their fathers before them were bound to these lands. If we left them, when we died our spirits would be lost.

"My father said we should go to Birka, and ask the help of the others who lived there. He said when Barne had taken him to Birka, he had told him the people there had rules they lived by. If a person broke the rules and harmed another, the one who was harmed could go to a meeting of all their peoples, and ask that the wrong be made right. He said Barne had taken him to meet with the leader of the others in Birka who presided over such meetings when they were held. My father said he was a good man, like Barne was. My father told our people he would make the journey to Birka himself, and ask the leader there to help us against the evil men who had attacked us. We would take a fine gift—a bundle of the richest winter pelts of foxes and martens—to give to the leader of Birka. All of our people gave of their best furs for the gift."

This was a strange tale, to be sure.
How would it lead to Sigvald?
I wondered.

"Because the journey was so long, my mother, brother, and I traveled with my father, so he would not be alone. After many days, we reached the shores of a great lake. Birka, my father explained, was on an island out in the center of the lake. We would camp there, on the shore, and wait for a boat to pass by. My father said that was what he and Barne had done, and when a boat came, we would pay for passage to the island.

"After three days, a boat did come. There were five men in it. They were fishing. My father told them his story—why we had come to Birka—and asked them to carry us there. The men said their boat had room for only one more. So my father took the bundle of furs and went with them, and told us to wait until he returned.

"The men in the boat were evil, like the raiders had been. They had not gone far from shore when my mother saw one of them hit my father over the head, and they threw him overboard into the waters of the lake. Then they turned their boat and rowed back toward our camp.

"I had been in the woods, gathering firewood. I did not see it happen. I heard my mother scream and ran to her. I reached our camp just as the evil men's boat reached the shore. My mother told me they had killed my father. She told me to run. She picked up my brother—he was but two years of age—and ran, too. I was so frightened. I fled into the forest, as fast as I could run. My mother could not keep up. I heard her scream again, but I was too afraid to go back and help her."

Rauna hung her head and began weeping.

"It was right for you to run," I told her. "It was what your mother wanted you to do. You could not have helped her."

"You cannot know that," she said bitterly. "You were not there."

"Do you remember the man Jarl Hastein, my captain, spoke of? The evil man Toke? You asked me about him?"

She nodded.

"He and other men attacked a farm back in my homeland. They killed all of the women and children there. In the end, my brother and I were surrounded by them. My brother told me to run. He did not want me to die there with him. I did run, and I escaped, but he was killed. I know the pain that is in your heart. But you did what your mother wanted you to do. You could not have helped her."

She raised her head and stared at my face, studying it. She had stopped weeping now, but her cheeks were streaked from her tears, and her breath came in sniffling gasps.

"Is this true? Or do you lie to me?"

"It is the truth. I ran because my brother asked me to. It was what he wanted for me. I could not have helped him. I could only have died as well. But now I have sworn to kill all who played a part in his death. It is why I survived."

"The men who killed my mother are already dead," she murmured.

"Tell me what happened."

"Later that day, as darkness was beginning to fall, I crept back toward our camp. I found their bodies. Because she was carrying my brother, my mother could not run fast enough to escape. They had crushed my brother's skull against the trunk of a tree and left him lying there. They had torn my mother's clothes from her, and they had, they had…." She shook her head. Her eyes were staring as if she could see her mother in her mind—what she had found that day—and there was a look of horror on her face.

"They had raped her?" I asked.

She shook her head again as if to clear it, and looked at me. "What is…raped?"

"When a man lies with a woman against her will. When he forces himself on her."

"Your people would have a word for such a thing," she said bitterly. "My people have no such word. It is not a thing that happens among us. Yes, they had raped my mother, and then killed her."

"But what of your father? Clearly he lived."

She nodded. "When the evil men threw him into the lake, the cold water woke him. But he was like you, after you were hit—he was weak and confused. He managed to swim to shore, but then fell into blackness again. I found him the next morning, lying in a bed of reeds a short distance down from our camp.

"I buried my mother and brother. I was glad my father did not see her in death. But I knew how much he had loved her. I cut off a piece of her braid, for him to remember her by. It is what was in the bag he wore around his neck—the bag he asked you to give to me. I moved our camp into the forest, where it could not be seen from the shore. And I nursed my father until his strength returned.

"My father said we must go to Birka. He said the men who had robbed him, and had killed my mother and brother, were surely from there. He said what they had done had broken the rules of the people of Birka. He told me the leader there—the man Barne had taken him to meet—was a good man, who would see that the evil men were punished.

"My father told me that there were always many very large boats—ships—at Birka, for people came there to trade from many distant lands. Barne had told him the ships came up from the south, through a narrow channel that led to the sea. My father said we would walk around the shore of the lake until we reached the channel, and there we would ask one of the ships coming from the sea to carry us to Birka.

"I begged my father not to. I was afraid. I told him that even if a boat stopped, they would just do to us what the other evil men had done. But he would not listen. He told me not all of the others were evil. He said there were many good men among them, like Barne, and like the leader of Birka, and that the good men would help us.

"It took us four days to reach the mouth of the channel. We waited there another day before a ship came up from the south. The first ship that passed did not stop when we signaled to them. After that happened, my father went into the forest and found and killed a deer. He hung its body so it could be seen from the channel, so any ship that passed would know we had meat to trade. The next ship to pass did stop. I wish it had not. My father might still be alive today if we had not gone aboard it. The captain of the ship was Sigvald."

"Sigvald?" I exclaimed. "The chieftain of the pirates? He was at Birka?"

Rauna nodded. "He had many goods aboard his ship. He had brought them to Birka to sell. He and his men had many weapons. To me they seemed much like the men who had attacked our people during the winter. They frightened me. But they did not harm us.

"My father told Sigvald why we had traveled from our own lands to Birka. He told him of the raiders, and how we had come to seek help against them. He also told Sigvald how the evil men had tricked him and robbed him and had killed my mother and brother. My father told Sigvald he needed to go to Birka to tell the leader there what had happened, so he would punish the men for breaking the rules of their people. He told Sigvald he and his men could have the deer, if they would carry us there."

She fell silent. "What did Sigvald do?" I asked her. "What did he say?"

She shook her head. "It made no sense to me. At first, he just laughed. All of his men, who had gathered around to hear my father's words, laughed. Then he asked my father how well he could shoot his bow.

"I could tell my father was angry, but he was trying to hide it. He turned to me and said, ‘Come, we must go.' But Sigvald said that if my father could hit a target that he named, then he and his men would take us to Birka. When my father made the shot he set for him, Sigvald nodded and smiled, and the men with him did, too.

"I am certain Sigvald knew what would happen in Birka. My father found the leader. At first he would not even speak to us, but my father reminded him that they had met before, with Barne. Barne's name made him at least listen to what my father had to say. But he gave us no help. He said what had happened in the winter, in the lands of our people, was no concern of his. He said my father had no way of knowing that the men who had robbed him, and had killed my mother and brother, were from Birka, and that even if they were, the rules my father spoke of—the rules of the people of Birka—were not for our people. He said he was sorry—I remember hearing him say that, and thinking that he lied—but there was nothing he could do to help us.

"Sigvald had gone with us to see the leader of Birka. Afterward, he told my father that the men who had killed my mother and brother could only be made to pay one way. He said my father must find them and kill them himself. Sigvald said he would help my father do this, but there would be a price. He said he needed men who were skilled with a bow. He said if my father would agree to serve him for one year, he would help him find the men who had killed my mother. After the year had ended, my father and I would be free to return to our home if we wished, and we would have riches to take with us."