Free The Dark Horse by Marcus Sedgwick Page A

above the bay, known as Bird Rock. Everyone went, as is the law. Even Gudrun managed to walk up the hill—her first journey outside the village since her accident.
    Mouse walked next to me. I remember she was silent, so silent. Perhaps I should have realized then that something serious had changed in her. Something had happened to her when Ragnald had . . . what? I’m still not sure what he did to her, but he had changed her somehow.
    She had never been loud, but now she was quieter than ever. If it had been possible, I would have said she was even quieter than when she first came to us. But I did not realize this fully, my mind empty; I felt little. It was all a dream to me, just as it seems to me now, looking back after all these years.
    I suppose something of me died with my father. That seems likely, doesn’t it? Maybe that was why I felt nothing as we walked up the cold hillside.
    But Sif cried. I remember that well. I remember being a little surprised by it. I should not have been.
    We put Horn’s body on the stone table in the center of the circle, and Gudrun said some words. I do not remember them.
    Then Longshank spoke.
    “This place is now sacrosanct. It is forbidden to return to Bird Rock until the new Lawspeaker, whoever he may be, returns to light the bone fire.”
    Not that anyone ever went up there anyway, except Gudrun, and, I think, Mouse.
    Then we left Horn on Bird Rock for the crows to come and clean his bones.
    I was not sorry to leave, for my mother and I had our own duties to perform before the day was done.
    Once we were back in the village, my mother, keeping her dignity as well as she could, asked two or three of the men to help us. I didn’t really notice who.
    We carried Olaf out to the low hill where we buried people. We dug a shallow trench; it was only a foot or two to the bedrock, and then we put Father into the hole. On top we laid the biggest slab of rock we could move, so that people would know there was someone buried underneath.
    Then the men left, silently, and Mouse, Mother, and I stood around for a while, thinking our own things.
    Mouse, silent since Ragnald had attacked her, finally made a sound. But not exactly a human one.
    She whimpered, like an injured dog.
    Freya put a hand on her shoulder.
    “Shush,” she said gently, and Mouse grew silent again.
    Then we returned to the village.
    That was how we sent my father on his way to the next world.
    “What will happen now?” I asked as we walked back.
    Mother shook her head.
    “I don’t know,” she said.

2

    Longshank peered through the murk of smoke inside the great broch. The faces of the whole village stared back at him.
    Everyone awaited the result of his deliberation over the law.
    “Upon the death of the Lawspeaker,” he said, “the position shall be filled by the Lawspeaker’s son.”
    There was a murmur.
    Mouse saw Sif stare angrily through the fire.
    “But Horn has no son,” Longshank continued, “in which case the position shall fall to his nearest male relative.”
    There was another murmur.
    “But Horn has no living male relative,” said Longshank.
    “We know!” cried a voice from the back of the broch.
    Longshank jerked his head round to stare at the place the voice had come from.
    “Get on with it!” called out another voice.
    “Very well,” Longshank said. “In this case the position returns to the last person to contest the fight with the dead Lawspeaker, unless anyone wishes to challenge
that
person to a trial.”
    This had been the case with Olaf and Horn, but there was a further problem: Olaf had perished at Ragnald’s hand.
    “But,” said Longshank, “since the challenger is no longer alive, either, the position falls to his son.”
    There was a huge uproar in the broch.
    “So,” said Longshank, though no one listened to him because they already knew what it meant, “the boy Sigurd shall be pronounced Lawspeaker, provided he passes his coming-of-age trial.”
    The tumult