About to offer them a soothing word, the doors burst open and yet another guard rushed inside. "My lady," the guard stopped in confusion at the scene before him, but started anew. "My lady, Konal's men have returned. They're at the gates and Konal's body is on a litter. What should we do? They claim you know their true allegiance."
The guard framed his statement more as a question. The fire returned to her belly. If Konal was on a litter and Hakon not with them …
"By all the gods, open the gates and let them in. Take them here. Go!"
Snorri paled and looked at Runa. They both in turn looked at Astra, but she hung between her captors as if she were a corpse.
"Don't let him be dead," she said to herself. "Not him nor my son."
Chapter 40
Separated from the others, stripped of their mail coats and weapons, Gunnar and Toki sat in a small room within Clovis's castle. Toki had scoffed at it, calling it a pile of rocks surrounded by a rotten wood fence and fetid water. "The stone looks so solid, but it will topple faster than you think," he had told him as they waited in the empty room. "We once took down a real castle in half a day, and it burned too."
Gunnar could not imagine stone burning, but the floor was of dark, grooved wood and the rafters above were likewise wood beams supporting a wood roof stained black with age. With little else to do in captivity, he studied the stone walls and the flaky mortar holding them together. How men piled rocks so high amazed him. The room was on the second floor and towers stood higher still. The sole feature of their room besides the locked door was a small window cut into the wall too high offer any view other than sky. Light streamed from the morning sun and bounced off the walls to fill the space with a straw-colored light. It would have been cozy had they even been provided a blanket, but they had only their cloaks for warmth. Rock walls, Gunnar had found, were cold. He had shivered all night, and even as desperately exhausted as he was, sleep had eluded him.
"Do you think my father has discovered we are here?" His uncle, sitting enfolded within his stained cloak against the interior wall, shrugged.
"We've been kept aside for a reason," he said. "I can only imagine it's for ransom. But this Clovis, the way he howled when he saw you …"
Gunnar stopped picking at the loose mortar. Clovis had prodded him like a fattened calf ready for slaughter, and his delight at Gunnar's capture had been shameless. Clovis was the nightmare stalking Gunnar's dreams, the madman bent on taking his hand in revenge for his own son's maiming. Both his parents had drummed this threat into Gunnar's head. He had nearly passed out when he learned their Frankish captors were reinforcements dispatched from Paris to reinforce Clovis's losses. They delivered him into the jaws of the wolf.
"Don't worry for it," Toki said, realizing the fears he had conjured. "Clovis will have to kill me before I allow him to touch you."
Gunnar smiled and crossed the room to sit by his uncle. Clovis could do what he wanted, and Gunnar knew no one could prevent him in his own castle. The only mystery was why he hadn't already taken his revenge. Maybe be waited to bargain, promising to leave Gunnar's hand attached if Ulfrik surrendered to his demands. He could only hope his father would listen, and not sacrifice his hand. It hurt him to wonder if his father might balk at the price Clovis would set.
The interior wall was warmer than the other two that faced the outside. They sat against it in long silence, until Toki chose to speak again.
"No matter what happens, it is Fate at work. The Norns weave a man's life, and he can do nothing to change it. We are here because we must be, and we will leave when the Norns pull that strand. I have few regrets, Gunnar. My life has been good-like croplands, giving me all I need, sometimes failing, other times overflowing. If I had to mark one regret, it has been that I stayed in the North too long. I belong with my family, you and your brothers, my sister, your father. I belong where the battles are fought. Even imprisoned in this room, I am with you and the fight is not yet done. I feel good."
He reached a hand from beneath his cloak and squeezed Gunnar's arm. Unsure how to answer, Gunnar placed his other hand atop his uncle's and returned the gesture.
Then sounds of a door opening in the adjacent room and thumps on the floorboards. Both Gunnar and Toki turned to the door, and Gunnar peered through the spaces between the heavy slats. He could see only shadows, but the Frankish voices of Clovis and his guests were clear. Rattling metal and creaking leather obscured their voices, but Toki urged Gunnar to translate. He raised a hand for silence, then pressed his ear to the door, holding his breath to listen for every detail.
The first voice was of the leader who had captured them. His royal baritone filled the room, and even through the door commanded respect. "You're badgering is both unsuited to you and tiring to me, Clovis. Please stop. King Odo has answered your call with me. Understood? When I speak, it is with the king's authority."
The shadowy forms stilled in the wake of the rebuke, but Clovis did not hesitate for long. "I am not defying the king's authority. Are you questioning my loyalty?"
"Never," was the long-suffering reply. "But I am questioning your judgment. I know you want the boy. So do I, and I have captured him on the field of battle. He is my hostage, to use however I wish. I may just have his head mounted on my standard and end your peevishness today."
Gunnar pulled back from the door, and Toki hissed at him for a translation. He provided a smattering of the talk, but quickly pressed his ear back to the door. The voices had drawn closer in that moment.
"I will pay you whatever you think Ulfrik will, more if I must. And there'll be no trickery from me, unlike that Northman snake."
"Oh you will? You cannot pay what I ask, because you do not possess the lands I want. Lands you have ceded to the Northmen and have failed to reclaim. Lands that should be awarded to one capable of holding them."
The door shook as hands grabbed the locking bars and both Gunnar and Toki fell away. Spear points would enter first, and neither wanted to lose an eye to carelessness. Yet the door remained closed, and Clovis's voice was bright with anger.
"Those lands have been held by my family for generations, and I am the rightful ruler. King's authority or not, you've not the power nor right to take the land from me."
"Well, I'd be taking it from Ulfrik, wouldn't I?"
The door opened and the expected rush of spear blades pushed Gunnar and Toki into the room. The man who had captured them was dressed in fine clothes, a contrast to the mail and leather he had worn in the field. He flashed a hawkish smile as his two spearmen continued to drive into the room. Clovis followed close at his heels, his face red and shining with sweat, his jumpy posture like a man who had just stood after falling from a horse.
"My God, Clovis, not even a piss pot? Do you want your floorboards to stink of Northman for the next decade?" Their captor frowned and snapped at the two guards to stop prodding. Gunnar tried to bat away a spear, but the blade flashed close to his hand and he recoiled. Toki, however, snagged a spear in his grip and tugged it, just to warn the Frank before releasing the weapon. The two stared at each other, and Toki's lips curled in a smile.
"Tell your protector to calm himself," said their captor. "He'll get through this alive if he behaves."
"He wants you to stop fighting," Gunnar translated. "He says you'll stay alive longer if you do."
Toki sneered at the Franks. "Says the wolf to the hare. But I'll go along. He's here to decide our ransoms, no doubt."
"I am Theodoric, and now, little man, you know what name to use for your song. I am here by the direct order of King Odo of West Frankia, and I bring three score of cavalry troops and three dozen footmen in my personal guard. You've seen what they can do. Counting the men under Clovis's banner, we are strong enough to wipe the stain of the Northmen from this land. More accurately, to trample it into the dirt. I will plant my banner in your father's heart, and I will have your mother shared with all my men. My spears will sag with the heads of your friends and kinsmen. Your homes will be smoke and ash, and nothing will remain to prove your filthy people ever polluted my domain with your repulsive countenance. And you will not be singing, little Gunnar Ulfrikson, not one note, for your body will be ground up and fed to pigs. Translate that for your friend."