The Rule. Jack Colman

squalling child.’ He looked down at Gunnarr, smiling. ‘How long for Kelda now? I saw her yesterday; she looked as if she’s carrying an army of her own in that belly.’

      Gunnarr’s bleak expression made way for a brief smile with the thought of Kelda waddling around beneath the weight of the first child she was carrying. ‘Before the close of the moon, they say. Poor lad couldn’t be born into a worse situation. He’ll probably try and climb back inside once he gets out.’

      The three men produced a muted bout of laughter, and Gunnarr began to pull on his boots. At dawn it had looked like the day might stay clear, but already the clouds were rolling in, the same colour as the wet stones on the beach.

      ‘Another day for inside work,’ Ári said, glancing up at the sky.

      Gunnarr sprang to his feet and brushed off his legs. ‘I have two tups turned out on the hillside. I may go and bring them in, before they find themselves roasting over an army’s camp fire. But that depends on Eiric and Bjọrn.’

      He went over to stand beside Hilario, who was gazing out to sea.

      ‘They’re out there somewhere,’ Hilario said. ‘But I don’t see any sign of them coming back today.’

      The others agreed. For a few moments they stood and stared out beyond the waves. Of raids they knew nothing, for Egil had put an end to what had been a dying occurrence. Enough lives had been lost on home soil without going looking for fighting overseas as well, and in some cases it had been asking for bloodshed even to put certain men in the same boat together. There had still been deep-water fishing trips though, sometimes even whale hunts, and as sharp-eyed young lads Gunnarr and the others had been stationed around the prow and told to bellow when they saw something. Gunnarr remembered crowding along the rail with the other sighters, waiting for a glistening back to crest the surface with a hiss from its blow-hole and present them with a target they could drive in to shallow waters and strand on the beaches for killing. But that he had seen once, maybe twice. As with everything else, the people of Helvik had soon learnt to give it up.

      ‘Gunnarr?’ From behind them, the sound of a female voice interrupted their viewing.

      ‘Fun’s over,’ Hilario sighed, without turning around. ‘Is that wife or mother?’

      Gunnarr swivelled and located the source of the sound. A dainty figure waited politely for him at the edge of the beach.

      ‘Looks to be neither,’ he replied, with an air of intrigue.

      ‘Aren’t you the lucky the one?’ Hilario grinned, suddenly keen to take a look for himself. Gunnarr ignored the comment and left them, walking steadily across the shore to meet the woman.

      ‘Forgive my interruption,’ she called in a quick, nervous voice as he approached, and Gunnarr smiled away the apology as he made a short study of her appearance. She wore grubby woollen skirts, tattered and muddied around the bottom and flecked with stains across the front. Her limbs were slim, too slim, and though she attempted to hold herself presentably, her posture was slumped with a look of perennial exhaustion. She smiled self-consciously, and Gunnarr realised that she could be very pretty to some, but for the gauntness of her face, the skin around her eyes being dark and sunken from lack of food and sleep, and the element of worry in her expression.

      ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked, his voice soft with immediate concern.

      ‘My name is Tyra,’ she began, with an effort. ‘Do you know me?’

      Gunnarr saw her on her knees in a mess of trampled snow, her face wailing with anguish, blood and tears running down her cheeks. ‘Yes,’ he answered, stirring with recognition. ‘You sometimes speak with my wife. I knew your husband,’ he added warily, and her eyes flicked immediately to the ground.

      ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit?’ Gunnarr suggested, attempting to smother a moment of awkwardness, but she smiled and shook her head.

      ‘I will not keep you long. I wouldn’t have come to you if I were not desperate.’

      Her hands were shaking, Gunnarr noticed. The nails on her fingers looked torn and brittle, many of them gone completely. He said nothing, waiting for her to gather the momentum to speak, and she did, with sudden emotion.

      ‘It’s my neighbour, Brökk; a brute of a man, just like them all.’ She faltered. ‘Forgive me,’ and Gunnarr shook his head and motioned for her to continue. ‘He’s been taking the vegetables from my land. I dug some drainage for them last year, and they’ve come on better than most. It would not be so bad, but I have no animals of my own, and no husband to hunt. They are all I have to feed my boy on.’ She hesitated, as if suddenly worried that she was wasting her time. ‘I was told—well, I know—that you are the man to help me with such things.’

      Gunnarr’s features had been set since the first of her words. The familiar flush of anger tightened his jaw.

      ‘I know the kind of man that Brökk is,’ he said plainly. ‘Leave it with me.’

      Tyra relaxed visibly, and a proper smile flashed across her features for the first time. ‘Thank you so much, Gunnarr,’ she exhaled. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’

      Gunnarr waved away her thanks, feeling his anger doused slightly by the relief that he saw on her face.

      ‘Please, my son would like to meet you,’ she continued, and held out her arm, prompting a grubby little boy to dash out from where he had been stationed among the trees at the edge of the shoreline and career boisterously into her hip, almost knocking her sideways.

      Gunnarr smiled through the twinge of guilt he felt upon seeing the child, and bent down to bow his head in greeting. The boy briefly reciprocated the gesture, as he had been taught, before being overcome with a sudden bout of shyness and retreating behind his mother’s skirts. It was clear where most of his mother’s share of food went, but even the child was scrawny and awkward.

      ‘He’s not usually this timid,’ Tyra said with embarrassment, trying to pull him gently out from behind her, but the boy gave a squeal and fought back gamely.

      ‘Please,’ Gunnarr said, ‘you must come and eat with us this morning. Kelda has been preparing a lovely stew.’

      As he’d expected, Tyra refused with proud determination. ‘That is very kind of you, Gunnarr, but we have already eaten this morning. We won’t bother you any longer.’ She took her son’s hand, and started to draw away.

      ‘Me and Kelda will visit you tomorrow,’ Gunnarr told her, and Tyra thanked him again. The little boy shouted a brief goodbye, and scurried away into the trees.

      ‘Where are my two favourite women then?’ Gunnarr asked loudly as he stepped through the doorway of his house. It was the same home built by his grandfather many winters ago, with various patches of repair and slight modifications. It sat inland to the north-east, nestled on the fringes of the settlement beneath the sheltered canopy of a small group of rowan trees.

      He found them kneeling together on the floor in the middle of the room. ‘There’s one,’ he said, grabbing his mother with one hand and pulling her playfully into his shoulder. ‘And there’s another!’ he exclaimed, reaching down to use his other hand to tug his wife gently upwards and kissing her lovingly on the lips.

      Both women laughed happily as he held them in the double embrace. They appeared to have been carding odd scraps of wool and arranging the fibres on top of each other for felting. The square shape laid out on the floor looked to be the perfect size for wrapping an infant in.

      ‘Well that’s not going to fit me,’ Gunnarr commented, and his mother Frejya thumped him in the stomach. She was shorter now in her old age, and these days to hug her was more like hugging a younger sister than a parent. Strands of grey were beginning to highlight her dull blonde hair and faint webs of blue capillaries had crept across her weathered red cheeks. Yet her eyes were as quick and mischievous as ever, with deep laughter lines extending from the corner of each.

      Kelda, to Gunnarr, looked just