Summary
A semi-short historical/fantasy about a half-human, half goddess (A Halfenwraith) goes looking for a human hero to marry. Takes place in a mythical Viking-like world.
ACT THREE: ‘In the Hall of the One-Eyed King’
Lord Erlot One-Eye wasn’t really a ‘king’, though he called himself one. In truth he was just another brutish warlord who, using fear, treachery, cunning and cruelty, had outlived others of his ilk. He also new the secret of keeping his warriors loyal —give them plenty of free food, drink and women and pay them in silver every full moon.
In his younger days he was known as Erlot Broadaxe and had followed the Whales Road westward with Eric the Red when Greenland was first settled. Always a quarrelsome man, Erlot had eventually fallen out with Eric and been one of several ‘lords’ to join Leif’s group who continued on westward. New, fertile land was eventually found, and named ‘Vineland’ for the wild grapes that grew there in abundance. After a number of bloody battles with the ‘Skraelings’, Vinland’s native inhabitants, an uneasy truce of sorts was worked out and Norse settlements were founded in a number of places along the rocky coast. Apparently Leif had left his ‘trusted lieutenants’ to govern these settlements while he pushed ever westward.
Over the years Lord Erlot grew rich and powerful by collecting rents, raiding and trading. Living more like a king than a ‘governor’, Erlot gathered more and more warriors to him. When Leif returned and asked him why he needed his own personal army, Erlot had said it was to ‘hold back the wild and savage ‘Skraelings’ and for ‘protection against his enemies.’
As a ‘scald’, I had spent a good deal of my life entertaining wealthy and powerful men and the majority of them were mostly good men. Hard perhaps, stern and often quick to anger, but basically men who knew right from wrong and tried their best to do the former.
Erlot Broadaxe was not one of those. He was not a ‘good man’, nor did he even try to be — something that was painfully evident to me when I first heard him open his mouth.
Halfdain and his men had escorted us to Erlot’s fortress; a large, rambling structure of wood, stone , steep paths, rocky outcrops, log walls, thatched hovels and a two storied wooden ‘great hall’ on the crown of a hill.
It was to this wooden hall that we were taken. Halfdain treated us with courtesy, though our weapons were confiscated and only myself, Swanhild and the mercenary captain Dalguard were allowed inside the great hall. Dalguard’s men were given two wineskins to pass around and told to wait outside in the sun.
As I marched up those steep wooden steps I suddenly felt the ‘wrongness’ of the place — for the signs were clearly there for those who knew what to look for: the joyless faces of the servants, pinched with hunger and worry; the loud, boisterous laughter from the rough, heavily armed warriors who seemed to be everywhere; and a general, overall feeling of tension and fear that rose from the place like a palatable stink— though the three sun-dried bodies dangling in the wind over the main gate might also have had something to do with it!
