第10章 The Burial on the Hillside

The rites lasted three days. Vondra performed them in the old way, the way that had been done since the first men settled the fjord. Sigurd's body was washed with salt water from the shore, dressed in his finest cloak, his hands folded around the haft of his axe — the same axe that had been his companion for twenty winters, its blade worn thin by use, its edge still keen. The body was laid on a bed of juniper branches in the longhouse, and the men of Sortholm filed past in silence. Each man touched the jarl's axe-haft, once, with his bare hand, and spoke a word or two — a memory, an oath, a farewell. Some said nothing at all. They touched the wood and moved on, their faces carved with the particular grief of men who had lost the center of their world. Bren was the last to approach. He stood before the body for a long time, his red hair hanging over his face, his hands at his sides. Then he knelt, touched the axe-haft, and whispered something that no one heard. He rose and walked out of the longhouse without looking back. On the third day, the burial party climbed the hillside above the fjord. The path was steep and narrow, winding between rocks and sparse grass, worn smooth by generations of feet making the same climb for the same purpose. Aldric walked at the front, carrying the arm-ring in a leather pouch against his chest. Behind him, six men carried the body on a wooden frame. Behind them, the settlement followed — women, children, the old, the young, all of them climbing the hill in the grey morning light. The graves on the hillside were marked with stones — rough granite slabs driven into the earth, some carved with names, some bare. Sigurd's grave had been dug beside Yrsa's, as was fitting. The jarl and the jarl's mother's wife, side by side in the dark. Vondra stood at the grave's edge and spoke the words of the old tongue. His voice was low and steady, rising and falling with the cadence of the ritual, and the words were ancient — older than Sortholm, older than the language the men spoke now. They were words of passage, of release, of the binding between the living and the dead. Aldric did not understand all of them. But he understood the shape of the ritual, the way the words opened a door between this world and the next, the way they gave the dead man permission to cross. When the body was lowered into the earth, Aldric stepped forward. He held the silver arm-ring in his palm. The metal was cold, stained with Sigurd's blood, polished by years of wear. He looked at it for a long moment, then placed it on the grave-stone. "This ring belonged to Jarl Sigurd," he said. "He wore it when he sailed. He wore it when he fought. He wore it when he sat in the seat of command and made the decisions that kept this settlement alive. He gave it to me. I wear it now, in his name, for his people." He picked the ring up again and slid it onto his wrist. The gesture was ceremonial — taking the ring, placing it, taking it again — and the men of Sortholm understood it. The ring was the jarl's power. It passed from hand to hand, from generation to generation, and now it rested on the wrist of a boy who had been born on the water and raised in the shadow of the oar-bench. The earth was shoveled in. The grave-stone was set. The people stood in silence on the hillside, looking down at the fjord, at the Grey Fang in the shallows, at the settlement that had been Sigurd's and was now Aldric's. Torben stood apart from the crowd. He had not spoken during the ceremony. His face was still, his eyes fixed on the grave. When the last shovel of earth was in place, he stepped forward, knelt, and pressed his hand flat against the stone. "Brother," Torben said. It was the first time Aldric had heard his father call Sigurd that. Not "lord" or "jarl" but "brother" — the word used between men who had sailed and bled together, who shared the deep bond of the oar-bench. Torben rose and walked back down the hill. He did not look at Aldric. He did not need to. The word said everything. That evening, Aldric called a meeting in the longhouse. The jarl's bench was his now, but the seat felt wrong — too large, too high, the back pressing against his spine at an angle that Sigurd's broader frame had filled naturally. Aldric shifted, settled, and spoke. "Sigurd is gone. The shrine is held. The king's men have withdrawn." He paused, measuring the faces before him. "But the king's anger has not withdrawn. Prince Magnus warned me. King Harald will send more men, or he will send a decree, or he will send both. We must prepare." "Prepare for what?" asked Eirik, an old fisherman who had sat in the back row of the oar-bench for fifteen seasons. His voice was rough, honest. "We are forty families. We have one ship. The king has a hundred ships and a thousand men." "We have the shrine," Vondra said from his place by the pillar. "The shrine's law protected us once. It will protect us again." "Law does not stop spears," Eirik said. "No," Aldric agreed. "It does not. That is why we prepare spears of our own." He stood. "Tomorrow, we begin. The men will train. The women will shore the stores. We will strengthen the settlement — walls, ditches, positions on the cliffs. We will make Sortholm a place that costs more to take than it is worth." The men murmured. Some nodded. Some did not. The doubt was visible, a fog that lay over the longhouse thicker than the mist on the fjord. They had followed Sigurd for twenty years. Sigurd was a man of experience, of scars, of proven judgment. Aldric was a boy who had sat in the prow and watched the horizon. But Sigurd had named him. And the arm-ring was on his wrist. And the god had accepted the oath. "We obey the jarl," Vondra said, and the words settled the matter, not with conviction but with the resignation of men who had no better option. The meeting ended. The men filed out into the dark. Aldric sat on the jarl's bench and listened to their footsteps fade. Torben was the last to leave. He stopped at the door and looked back at his son. "You spoke well," Torben said. "I spoke as Sigurd would have." "No." Torben shook his head. "You spoke as yourself. That is better." He paused. "Your mother would be proud." He walked out into the night, and Aldric sat alone in the longhouse with the fire burning low and the shadows pressing close. The arm-ring was cold on his wrist. The bench was hard beneath him. The accumulated gravity of every decision made in this place — every oath sworn, every life saved or spent — pressed on him like stone. He would not fail. He could not fail. Forty families depended on it. The fire burned down to embers. The night deepened. And Aldric, jarl of Sortholm, sat in the dark and planned for war. ---