Playing . . . Well, now he’d seen Erlend Nikulauss?n playing at that game. Over and over again he saw himself and the other men tumbling around the hearth, the way farmers chop wood or toss hay. And Erlend’s slender, lightning-swift figure among them, his gaze alert and his wrist steady as he danced with them, quick-witted and an expert swordsman.
More than twenty years ago he himself had been considered one of the foremost swordsmen among the youth of the royal retainers, when they practiced out on the green. But since then he hadn’t had much opportunity to use his knightly skills.
And here he was now, riding along and feeling sick at heart because he had killed a man. He kept seeing Holmgeir’s body as it fell from his sword and sank into the fire; he heard the man’s abrupt, strangled death cry in his ears and saw, again and again, images of the brief, furious battle that followed. He felt dejected, pained, and confused; they had turned on him suddenly, all those men with whom he had sat and felt a sense of belonging. And then Erlend had come to his aid.
He had never thought himself a coward. He had hunted down six bears during the years he had lived at Formo, and twice he had put his life at risk in the most reckless manner. With only the thin trunk of a pine tree between him and a raging, wounded female, with no other weapon than his spearpoint on a shaft a scant hand’s breadth long . . . The tenseness of the game had not disturbed his steadiness of thought, action, or instinct. But now, in that outbuilding . . . he didn’t know if he had been afraid, but he certainly had been confused, unable to think clearly.
When he was back home after the bear hunt, with his clothes thrown on haphazardly, with his arm in a sling, feverish, his shoulder stiff and torn, he had merely felt an overwhelming joy. Things might have gone worse; how much worse, he didn’t dwell on. But now he kept thinking about it, ceaselessly: how everything might have ended if Erlend hadn’t come to his aid just in time. He hadn’t been afraid, but he had such a peculiar feeling. It was the expressions on the faces of the other men . . . and Holmgeir’s dying body.
He had never killed a man before.
Except for the Swedish horseman he had felled . . . It was during the year when King Haakon led an incursion into Sweden to avenge the murder of the dukes.4 Simon had been sent out on a scouting mission; he had taken along three men, and he was to be their chieftain. How bold and cocky he was. Simon remembered that his sword had gotten stuck in the steel helmet of the horseman so that he had to pry and wriggle it loose. There was a nick in the blade when he looked at it the next morning. He had always thought about that incident with pride, and there had been eight Swedes. He had gotten a taste of war at any rate, and that wasn’t the lot of everyone who joined the king’s men that year. When daylight came, he saw that blood and brains had splattered over his coat of mail; he tried to look modest and not boastful as he washed it off.
But it did no good to think about that poor devil of a horseman now. No, that was not the same thing. He couldn’t get rid of a terrible feeling of remorse about Holmgeir Moisess?n.
There was also the fact that he owed Erlend his life. He didn’t yet know what import this would have, but he felt as if everything would be different, now that he and Erlend were even.
In that way they were even at least.
The brothers-in-law had been riding in near silence. Once Erlend said, “It was foolish of you, Simon, not to think of getting out right from the start.”
“Why is that?” asked Simon rather brusquely. “Because you were outside?”
“No . . .” There was the hint of a smile in Erlend’s voice. “Well, because of that too. I hadn’t thought about that. But through that narrow door they couldn’t follow you more than one at a time. And it’s always astounding how quickly people regain their senses when they come out under the open sky. It seems to me a miracle that there weren’t more deaths.”
A few times Erlend inquired about his brother-in-law’s wounds. Simon said he hardly noticed them, even though they were throbbing terribly.
They reached Formo late that evening, and Erlend went inside with his brother-in-law. He had advised Simon to send the sheriff a report of the incident the very next day in order to arrange for a letter of reprieve5 as soon as possible. Erlend would gladly compose the letter for Simon that night since the wounds on his chest would no doubt hamper his writing hand. “And tomorrow you must keep to your bed; you may have a little wound fever.”
Ramborg and Arngjerd were waiting up for them. Because of the cold, they had settled on the bench on the warm side of the hearth, tucking their legs underneath them. A board game lay between them; they looked like a couple of children.