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Kattegat
The Great Hall was crowded and loud, but Ivar was used to that; he could sit there quietly and observe other people without being so easily noticed. Sansa wasn’t feeling well and had stayed home, so now basically no one was interested in talking to Ivar, which was fine because he wasn’t interested in talking to them, and made that clear whenever anyone tried.
Routinely Ivar lanced the room with his gaze, taking in all the people he considered principal characters, whose business he might want to know about (without actually speaking to them). His brothers and their wives, of course, Lagertha and her playmate of the week, the most important and powerful visitors. And members of his own household—like Edith, the Saxon girl Sansa had brought back from England as her slave. Edith had been allowed to go to the festivities tonight, though as a rule she was a quiet and circumspect girl, which Ivar felt was befitting her position.
So where was Edith now?
She had been pulled into dancing with some visiting trader and looked like she was enjoying herself, or at least not sending off distress signals. Now Ivar spotted her, finally, in a corner with the same man. He was trying to kiss her. Edith was shying away, and not in a playful way. Ivar narrowed his eyes. He was not as adept at discerning distress signals as Sansa was, never having applied himself to it until recently, but in this case, it didn’t matter: he didn’t want that stranger kissing his slave.
“Edith!” Ivar’s voice cracked like a thunderclap through the room, resonating exactly where it needed to. She looked up suddenly and he signaled to her, frowning deeply. This was all the excuse she needed to sidle away from the trader and hurry to Ivar’s side.
“Yes, Ivar?” Edith asked demurely when she reached him. At least, he assumed she did; she spoke so softly he couldn’t hear her half the time anyway.
“Sit down here next to Torvi,” he ordered the girl. The trader, who clearly didn’t understand who he was dealing with, glared at Ivar. Ivar glared right back and indicated the man was now being watched by him.
On Ivar’s other side, Edith was murmured at by Torvi, who had her arm around the girl. “Did he hurt you?” Ivar asked her abruptly, and she shook her head. “Tell someone if he bothers you again,” he grunted, considering the situation resolved. He always thought of her as “little Edith,” but she really wasn’t that much younger than he and Sansa, and it was only natural that men would start noticing her. Natural, but definitely unwanted, by Ivar anyway, and that was what counted, because she was very useful to Sansa.
It was late when Ivar finally decided to leave the Great Hall. The most interesting things always happened late, when many people were tired or drunk, and they became careless with their words and actions; but Ivar felt he’d seen everything there was to see tonight.
“Wake up.” He nudged Edith, who had fallen asleep at the main table, where she had stayed for safety and perhaps to enjoy the company of other women for a change. “Time to go home.” He let himself down to the floor and started to crawl away, rudely shoving sleeping/passed-out people aside.
Edith hurried after him, adjusting her cloak against the chill breeze. “Where are Hrolf and Iselin?” she asked, nervously looking around the dark, quiet streets.
“I sent them home already,” Ivar told her dismissively. “I do not need bodyguards in Kattegat, I’m perfectly safe. And it’s not too far to crawl. Hurry along by yourself if I’m too slow.” He was not sure what precisely her objection was.
Edith did not hurry along by herself, but rather stayed closely at Ivar’s side. “Attend to Sansa when you get home,” Ivar instructed the girl. “See if she needs anything. Then you can go to bed.” He thought he heard an affirmative peep from her.
As they passed the docks, Ivar began to get an uneasy feeling, some sound or movement that shouldn’t be there, and he froze mid-crawl, listening attentively. “Did you hear—”
The man sprang from an alley, knocking Edith down and kicking Ivar in the ribs. He rolled over automatically, curling protectively around himself, only to be kicked again. “Ivar the Boneless, some mighty warrior!” his attacked scoffed. It was the trader who had been interested in Edith. “Thought it was just an exaggeration that you had to crawl everywhere. Don’t see how you managed such a fearsome reputation!”
The man’s insults gave Ivar time to get his breath back, and then he quickly showed him how, exactly, he’d gotten his fearsome reputation. Well, in fairness, Edith whacked the man with an oar first, and once he was down on the ground, on Ivar’s level, Ivar wasted little time dispatching him bloodily.
He looked up at Edith after the final stab, seeing her trusty oar still at the ready. “Okay, maybe some bodyguards would have been useful,” he conceded, dabbing at a cut on his cheek.
“What do we do?” Edith asked him. She had kept her head (and her oar) in the crisis, which was to her advantage, in his estimation.
The death had clearly been self-defense. Ivar could probably find his brothers and explain the whole thing very easily.
But that wasn’t much fun.
“See what he’s got on him,” Ivar ordered, patting down his trousers. Edith set the oar aside and patted down his tunic.
Together they came up with a sword, a dagger, a gold arm ring, an amber bead pendant, and a (very small) bag of silver. “This is for Sansa,” Ivar decided of the pendant. “This is for me,” of the gold arm band. “This is for you,” he added, giving Edith the silver. “And these I dedicate to the gods, for giving us victory,” he announced, of the weapons. He pitched the knife over the side of the dock, reverently, and made plans to donate the sword to the priests. He was sure they would appreciate it. “Now,” he went on, looking around, “hand me that rope.”
**
There was some fuss down at the docks the next morning, and Ivar shouldered aside the crowd’s shins to get to the front to see. A man was hanging by a rope from a post, though from the blood on his chest it didn’t seem like he’d died by hanging.
Bjorn and Ubbe were surveying the scene critically. “Pick me up,” Ivar demanded, so they lifted him atop a half-open barrel between them. It was full of apples, and Ivar reached in to help himself. “What is this?” he asked, crunching loudly on the fruit.
Bjorn shrugged slightly. “He was found this way,” he remarked flatly. “He was a trader from Olska.”
“He’s the man who was harassing poor little Edith at the feast last night,” Ivar remarked, because that would easy enough for them to discover elsewhere. Edith lurked on the other side of the crowd, on her way to the market for Sansa. “It looks to me like he has angered the gods somehow. Perhaps they killed him in vengeance.”
From someone else that statement might be odd, but that was just how Ivar’s mind worked. “Did the gods rob him, too?” Ubbe asked dryly. “His friends say his valuables are missing.”
“I bet he didn’t stop at the temple to pay homage to the gods when he arrived,” Ivar predicted. The traditional practice was becoming sadly overlooked by visitors eager to start making money. “Perhaps they have taken what was due to them.”
Bjorn rolled his eyes and was about to make a cutting remark to his youngest brother, when he finally stopped to look at him. “What happened to you?” he asked instead. Ivar’s face sported a number of fresh cuts and bruises.
Ivar looked suddenly embarrassed, which was not an expression Bjorn had seen on him much and almost didn’t recognize. “I had a little too much to drink at the feast last night,” he admitted, “and I tripped and fell on the way home. Poor little Edith practically had to drag my a-s home.” He took a self-conscious bite of the apple. “My wife is not very happy with me right now.”
Ubbe smirked a bit at Ivar’s rare admission of failure. “Is Sansa feeling better?” he asked solicitously.
“She will feel better when the baby is born,” Ivar assessed. “And when she gets her herbal tea!” He caught Edith’s eye and shooed her on with her errands.
“We must find out who is responsible for this,” Bjorn redirected, nodding at the hanging man.
This was not very interesting to Ivar. “To be put on display like that, he has deeply offended the gods,” he repeated, talking a little louder to be overheard by more people. “Blasphemer!” He chucked his apple core at the body, which started other people murmuring about if it was true. “Look, ravens! A sign from Odin!”
“Where?” asked Ubbe, looking around.
“Over there,” Ivar replied, pointing vaguely but talking loudly. “The ravens confirm the gods’ judgment.”
“I don’t see any—” Bjorn insisted, but other people were now pointing too, and someone else threw a piece of moldy bread at the body. A couple of the priests had shown up, a complete and total coincidence, and were giving the corpse their best judgmental looks. The traders’ friends, angry at this treatment, were beginning to argue with the crowd, and Ivar laughed heartlessly.
“We had better cut him down,” Ubbe suggested, and Bjorn nodded.
“Hey,” Ivar interrupted indignantly. “Put me down first.” His brothers lifted him off the barrel and back to the ground, though they knew better than to expect thanks for it. Ivar left them to their civic duties and crawled off on his own business.