The Battle for Skandia- Character Reaction

3

"Here, Svengal." The book was passed to the skirl.

ERAK STARFOLLOWER, WOLFSHIP CAPTAIN AND ONE OF THE senior war jarls of the Skandians—Erak smiled indulgently—made his way through the low-ceilinged, wood-paneled lodge to the Great Hall. His face was marked with a frown as he went. He had plenty to do, with the spring raiding season coming on. His ship needed repairs and refitting. Most of all, it needed the fine-tuning that only a few days at sea could bring.

"Or it just needs a stabilizer of some sort," Halt suggested. The Skandians all laughed.

"Or you just need a new stomach, Halt," Erak countered.

Now this summons from Ragnak boded ill for his plans. Particularly since the summons had come through the medium of Borsa, the Oberjarl's hilfmann, or administrator. Will made a face. If Borsa were involved, it usually meant that Ragnak had some little task for Erak to look after. Or some not-so-little task, the wolfship skipper thought wryly.

Breakfast was long since finished, so there were only a few servants cleaning up the Hall when he arrived. At the far end, seated at a rough pine table off to one side of Ragnak's High Seat—a massive pinewood chair that served in place of a throne for the Skandian ruler—sat Ragnak and Borsa, their heads bowed over a pile of parchment scrolls. Erak recognized those scrolls. They were the tax returns for the various towns and shires throughout Skandia. Ragnak was obsessed with them. As for Borsa, his life was totally dominated by them. He breathed, slept and dreamed the tax returns, and woe betide any local jarl who might try to shortchange Ragnak or claim any deduction that wouldn't pass Borsa's fine-tooth comb inspection.

Duncan raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Meanwhile, Erak scowled at the book, as if Borsa could somehow see the look.

Erak put two and two together and sighed quietly. The most likely conclusion that he could draw from the two facts of his summoning and the pile of tax returns on the table was that he was about to be sent off on another tax-collecting mission.

Tax collecting was not something that Erak enjoyed. He was a raider and a sea wolf, a pirate and a fighter. As such, his inclination was to be more on the side of the tax evaders than the Oberjarl and his eager-fingered hilfmann. Unfortunately, on those previous occasions when Erak had been sent out to collect overdue or unpaid taxes, he had been too successful for his own good. Now, whenever there was the slightest doubt about the amount of tax owing from a village or a shire, Borsa automatically thought of Erak as the solution to the problem.

"He probably enjoys it," Gilan said thoughtfully. "If the two of you didn't like each other, at least." Erak snorted.

"Wouldn't surprise me."

To make matters worse, Erak's attitude and approach to the job only added to his desirability in Borsa's and Ragnak's eyes. Bored with the task and considering it embarrassing and belittling, he made sure he spent as little time on the job as possible. The tortuous arguments and recalculation of amounts owing after all deductions had been approved and agreed were not for him. Erak opted for a more direct course, which consisted of seizing the person under investigation, ramming a double-headed broadax up under his chin and threatening mayhem if all taxes, every single one of them, were not paid immediately.

Everyone laughed at that, while Erak shrugged. "It worked."

"And God only knows how you became Oberjarl after that," Will said, grinning.

Erak's reputation as a fighter was well known throughout Skandia. To his annoyance, he was never asked to make good on his threat. Everyone raised an eyebrow. Those recalcitrants whom he visited invariably coughed up the due amount, and often a little extra that had never been in contention, without the slightest argument or hesitation.