discounted that as nonsense. He’d heard the stories after Audun killed Egill Jotun, but anything from the battlefield was to be taken with a pinch of salt, too. No women’s bodies had been thrown on the pyre.
Well, except for Lilia’s.
Now, however, it looked like things were finally moving his way. He’d felt the truth in the sailor’s words. The man had been terrified. As skeptical as Valgard was of the old ways, the stories from the far north had always appeared to support the idea of magic, or some kind of connection with the gods. Now it fell to him to determine whether this was true or not. This was what he needed. He needed to go north—but how?
“You must come.” Finn’s voice shook Valgard out of his thoughts. The big soldier could move quietly when he wanted to. “To the longhouse.”
“Hakon Jarl has replied, apparently,” Finn said. His face did not give anything away.
Valgard raised his eyebrows. “Has he? Well then. Let’s go.”
Finn did not ask about the body on the floor.
When they entered the longhouse, Jorn was already there, sitting to the right of King Olav. It was very faint, but Valgard still heard Finn’s snort of displeasure. The longhouse wasn’t anything like as great as it had been in Sigurd’s time. War trophies had been ripped off the wall, along with weapons and shields. In their place was a big, broad cross that the king had ordered built out of broken weapons, to signify how faith overcame war, apparently. It caught and broke the rays of the sun. Valgard couldn’t help but think that a handful of Harald’s men would have turned the components of that cross back into tools of pain and death in an instant.
The king spotted them and gestured to the dais. They walked past an old farmer, sixty if he was a day, clad in muddy rags and clutching a sack that looked heavy. He was flanked by two watchmen as he shivered in the cold air. King Olav paid him no mind; the rough and discolored woolen sack had all his attention.
“Sit, Finn,” the king commanded, gesturing to his left. Valgard took a seat by the wall. King Olav nodded very briefly to acknowledge his presence. Then he turned to the old man. “You bring a message from Hakon,” he said.
“Y-yes,” the farmer stuttered.
“In parts?”
“That’s what the riders said,” the old farmer mumbled. His voice trembled, and he did not dare look the king in the eye. Judging by the sound of King Olav’s voice, Valgard thought that was probably a good idea.
“So riders came from the north and brought you this,” Jorn said. Sitting on the king’s right, the self-proclaimed Prince of the Dales looked altogether too pleased with himself. A lucky strike against the Viking Thrainn in what was supposed to be the Stenvik raiders’ last stand had given him some notoriety among the men; turning on Sigurd had not worked against him as much as Valgard had thought it would. Always well dressed and groomed, Jorn looked at home as the king’s right-hand man. He pressed the old farmer. “Why didn’t you tell them to bring the whole message themselves?”
“They . . . they threatened me, my Lord,” the old man muttered. “They told me to take it to . . . the king . . . or I’d be on a spike.”
“Very well,” King Olav interrupted. “What’s in the sack?”
The old farmer shuddered, swallowed twice, and drew a deep breath. Then he grabbed the bottom corners of the sack and tipped its contents out onto the floor.
Two rag piles landed with a thud.
“Oh, the—,” Finn muttered before he bit his lip.
Jorn stared dumbly at the rags. “Is that . . . his—?” The messenger’s left hand had been cut off, as had his right foot. The farmer shook the sack. Another two bundles tumbled out and clattered onto the floor.
“The men said . . . they said Hakon Jarl says you can come up to Trondheim and collect the rest any time you want.”
Like Jorn and Finn, Valgard held his breath. The tense silence was broken when King Olav smashed a mailed fist on the armrest of the high chair. “Why won’t he listen?” he growled. “I bring peace. I bring prosperity. I bring a better life for him and his stinking herd of miserable sheep!”
“The northern lords haven never been famous for caring much about their flock, my King,” Jorn