Heroes of the Valley Read Free Page A

called me a fat-thighed marsh imp; I overheard him as he spoke with Ingirid! Why are you laughing, Gudny?'
    'It's just that Brusi's description is so delightfully apt, little Halli. It amuses me.'
    'Halli,' his mother said patiently, 'Brusi is twice your age and size. Admittedly his wit is wearisome, but still, you must ignore it. Why? Because if you fight, he'd hammer you into the ground like a short, squat tent peg, which would not be appropriate for a son of Svein.'
    'But how else am I to protect my honour, Mother? Or of those close to me? What about when Brusi calls Gudny a thin-lipped, preening little sow? Must I sit back and ignore this matter too?'
    Gudny emitted an incoherent noise and put down her stitching. 'Brusi said that ?'
    'Not yet. But it is surely only a matter of time.'
    'Mother!'
    'Halli, do not be insolent. You have no need to protect your honour with violent acts. Look to the wall!' She pointed up into the shadows above the Law Seats, where Svein's weapons hung muffled in the dust of years. 'The days are long past when men made fools of themselves for honour. You must set an example as Arnkel's son! What if something should happen to Leif ? You would become Arbiter yourself, as – as what number in direct line from our Founder, Gudny?'
    'Eighteenth,' Gudny said instantly. She looked smug. Halli made a face at her.
    'Good girl. As eighteenth in line, after Arnkel and Thorir and Flosi and the others going back in time, all of whom were great men. In your father's case he is so still. Don't you aspire to be like your father, Halli?'
    Halli shrugged. 'I'm sure he digs excellent beet fields, and turns manure with a deft technique. In truth his example does not over-thrill me. I prefer—' He stopped.
    Gudny glanced up slyly from her work. 'A man like Uncle Brodir. Isn't that so, Halli?'
    Blood came to the face of Halli's mother then. She banged her fist upon the table. 'That's enough! Gudny, not a word more! Halli, be gone! If you are troublesome again I shall have your father beat you.'
    Halli and Gudny had learned early that mentioning their uncle Brodir was a reliable method of upsetting their mother deeply. She, who as Lawgiver dealt imperturbably in the hall with the rankest murderers and thieves, found the very name distasteful and hard to stomach. At some level her brother-in-law offended her, though she never spoke the reason.
    For Halli, this curious power only added to Brodir's allure, a fascination that had begun in early childhood with his uncle's beard. Alone of all the men of Svein's House, Brodir did not shape the hair upon his face. Halli's father, for instance, in a ritual of great solemnity, regularly stood above a hot tub, staring through the steam at a polished reflective disc, methodically shaving his cheekbones and his lower neck, before trimming the rest with a small bone-handled knife. His moustache was carefully curled, his beard kept to the length of the first knuckle on his forefinger. His example as Arbiter was followed by the other men of the House, save Kugi the sty-boy, who though a man was hairless on his chin – and Brodir. Brodir never touched his beard at all. It bloomed out like a gorse thicket, a nest for crows, an ivy entanglement strangling a tree. Halli was entranced by it.
    'Shaping a beard is a down-valley tradition,' Brodir advised him. 'In these parts it has long been thought unmanly.'
    'But everyone apart from you does it.'
    'Oh well, they follow your father, and he is influenced by dear Astrid, who comes from Erlend's House, down among the Loops, where people's hair is so light-rooted it often blows off in the sea winds. It makes little difference if they clip and preen.'
    Beard aside, Brodir was unlike Halli's father in so many ways it was hard to imagine they had blood kinship at all. Where Arnkel was big-boned, Brodir was slight (though inclined to an ale-paunch around the belly), with a somewhat pudgy, ill-formed face ('Onund's stock again' was Katla's