The Long Hunt (The Strongbow Saga) Read Online Free PDF Page B

overcome the exhaustion I felt, and I slept.
    I was awakened by a hand tapping me lightly on the shoulder. With difficulty I opened my eyes. It was still dark within the sleeping chamber, but through its open door I could see, out in the main hall, sunlight streaming down through the smoke-hole in the roof. I had slept late into the morning.
    "Master Halfdan? The jarl is asking for you."
    Fasti was kneeling beside my makeshift bed, watching me anxiously.
    "I am not your master, Fasti," I told him, as I sat up.
    "But Master Hrorik is dead, and Master Harald, too," he replied. "With Toke gone, are you not now the master?" A look of alarm crossed his face. "Do you not intend to stay? Are you leaving again?"
    Fasti asked questions to which I did not know the answers. My imagined homecoming had not included this day. I had thought we would catch and kill Toke here. That was as far into the future as my dreams had ventured. I did not know what to do now, for Toke was gone, he had escaped. And worse, he had taken Sigrid. How would I—how could I—find him now?
    "Master Halfdan?"
    I shook my head, trying to clear the fog from it. This, too, I had not foreseen. With Sigrid gone, was this estate now mine, and mine alone? If so, then its thralls were now my slaves, my property, and I their master.
    "Do not call me that," I said gruffly.
    At the tone of my voice, Fasti recoiled as if he feared I might strike him. You are much changed, Fasti, I thought.
    "What has happened here, Fasti?" I asked. "Since Harald and I sailed for the Limfjord. After we did not return." You are a thrall, I thought. I know what it means to be a slave, for I, too, was one. But you were not so broken then.
    He hung his head, but said nothing.
    "Fasti?"
    "There were beatings. Many of them."
    Of course there had been. Neither Hrorik nor Harald had been harsh masters. Though they considered the estate's thralls to be their property, they did not treat them cruelly. A thrall who angered Hrorik or Harald might expect a tongue lashing, but rarely worse. In some ways, the female thralls who worked in the household had it harder, for Gunhild had a hot temper, and would often slap a thrall who angered her, or sometimes even whip her with a switch. My mother had often been the recipient of Gunhild's anger.
    But Toke had always been free with his fists, even when he'd still lived on the estate, before Hrorik had disinherited and banished him. I could well imagine how he would have treated the thralls without Hrorik or Harald to intervene. For certain Gunhild would not have stopped him.
    "By Toke?" I asked.
    Fasti shrugged, then nodded. "He angers easily. And some of his men, too. It took little for them to find fault, or take offense. The big one, with one eye, was almost as cruel as Toke. And after a while…" Fasti paused, as if hesitant to continue.
    "After a while?" I asked.
    "Even a few of the carls here. Some of them would laugh at the beatings. Some of them joined in."
    "Things are changed now, Fasti," I told him. "The one-eyed man is dead. I killed him. And Toke will not be coming back here. I will see to it."
    Fasti was silent for a long time. Finally he raised his eyes to mine, and spoke again.
    "Do you remember Huginn?"
    In truth, at first I did not—I did not even understand what Fasti was asking. Huginn was the name of one of the two ravens who serve All-Father Odin. What should I remember about him? But it was plain that Fasti believed the name should have some meaning to me. I searched my memory from the time before I was free, when I was still a thrall, like Fasti.
    "Do you mean the chicken? The black one?" I asked.
    Fasti nodded, and he smiled.
    The chickens roosted in a corner of the byre. Fasti was in charge of caring for all the beasts, and seeing to their needs. Each morning, before he cleaned out the stalls, he would collect the eggs from the hens, and bring them scraps and leavings from the kitchen. When I did not have other duties, I would join him