Erling, Steinulf and I walked about the building site after the body had been taken away. The spear still stood in the wood.
"Who could drive a spear deep enough at that height to bear a man's weight?" asked Steinulf. "I couldn't do it. You couldn't do it. Soti or Lemming couldn't do it. Sigurd the Volsung could have done it maybe, or Svipdag, but such men are rare nowadays."
"It happened. There must be a way," said Erling.
"Oh, there's a way. It's on everybody's lips. One of the gods, or one of the underground folk, or a walker-again."
Erling turned and looked at him. "You speak of the newly dead."
I said, "No, my lord, not your father or brother. Their souls have gone to a place far from Sola. If their bodies or anyone's walk againI'm not saying they do, I'm only supposingthen the spirits that use them are not theirs. Your father and brother were human sinners, no worse. This is demon's work."
Erling said, "Couldn't someone have hammered the spear inclimbed a ladder somehow and?"
"Can't have done," said Steinulf. "The higher you climbed the ladder, the further you'd get from the butt of the spear. That's a six-foot shaft. No man has that kind of reach. And someone would have heard."
"I'd thought your blessing would frighten the spirits off, Father Aillil," said Erling.
"My lord, the holy apostles themselves found some spirits unmasterable except by prayer and fasting. I'm a weak reed to lean on when you face demons of this power."
"Can you fight them with prayer and fasting then?"
"I can try, my lord, but I'm no apostle. I fear the Lord hearkens not much to my prayers."
"You must do what you can. I ask no more of any of my warriors. You eat at my table, you must stand in my shield wall."
I bowed my head. "As you command, my lord. I've had no breakfast. I will live on water until this business is ended."
"I will have my hall," said Erling. "It will not be hallowed to Odin. Not while I am above ground. Father, I think it would be good for me to join you in this battle. I will fast also. Now let's see Turlough's family."
They shared a low turf house with three other families. There were no box-beds, but there were low stone partitions dividing households. The place stank of sweat and fish and unwashed wool. Turlough's wife, a shapeless, brown woman named Copar, sat leaning against a partition and scrambled to her feet when we entered. Her three dirty, snuffling children clung to her skirts. She bowed, unsteadily. Someone had given her beer.
"I am sorry for your loss, woman," said Erling.
"It's very kind of you I'm sure," said Copar. "It's hard to understand the ways of the Lord."
"Your man fought for me the night of the fires. By his death he has earned your freedomyours and your children's."
The woman gasped and fell at Erling's feet. "No, my lord! Don't send us out by ourselvesnot now when we've none to protect us! It's a cold land in a cold world, and things walk at night that should not walk"
Erling put his hand on her head. "No one will send you out. We'll find you a living first. Only I want you to know that your man didn't die for nothing. He would have wanted you free, I think."
"Aye, my lord," she hiccupped. "He was a hard man, and he beat me when he was drunk, but it was because he was shamed to be a thrall, you see, and mad at the world. We're in your hands, my lord. Do what you will."
Erling spoke to each of the children, and asked their names, and gave Copar some bread from the hall. Then we went out and breathed fresh air again.
"It's best to believe in fate, Father Aillil," he said. "I must think those people different from me. If they're not, 'tis almost beyond bearing."
"What now, my lord?"
"I'll see about getting the thralls out to build today. You will go to the church and say masses. Then get some sleep. Tonight you and I will watch together at the hall."
I sleep badly when I'm hungry, and worse when I'm frightened. When the voice began to speak, I wondered who had come in without my hearing; then I knew it for the voice from Big Melhaug.
"It all comes from the sin you call superbia, overweening pride."
"I am many kinds of sinner," I muttered, "but I don't think I'm especially proud of myself."
"No? You talk of your god as if he were your father; as if he felt and pitied."
"God help us if He does not."
"Why should he? On what grounds do you assume his love? On the word of a Jew a thousand years dead? Who could believe such things?" Did I see eyesunblinking, yellow snakeish eyes? "Does the hawk pity the rabbit? Does the wolf pity the sheep? Where in all the world is there mercy for weakness except in the ravings of your religion? When has this mercy ever been shown? And what use is mercy unshown?"
"Then what is there but despair and death?"
"There is courage! Face the darkness! Be strong enough to make the sacrifices. Harden your heart. Life can be a wonderful thing, but you must seize it by force!"
"My Lord Erling believes. I can at least believe in his faith a while yet."
"Don't think that you will thereby prevent the sacrifices. The sacrifices will be made. . . ."
"There's a saga of a hero named Bjovulf," said Erling as we sat under the stars and purple heavens that night amid the ribs of the hall. He was in full armor and had two casting spears at hand. I was armed with the crucifix from the church. "He came to Hroar, King of Denmark, to rid him of a troll who broke into his hall each night and killed men."
"What happened to him?"
"Oh, he killed the troll. Ripped his arm out of the socket and let him run away to bleed to death. There were great men in those days. Are you my Bjovulf, Father Aillil?"
"You need no heroes, my lord. This Bjovulf can have been little ahead of the man I saw fight Aki."
"Even Bjovulf couldn't fight all the heathens in Jaeder and all the gods of Asgard together."
"How did you become a Christian, my lord? What keeps you firm? I've heard of your king Haakon the Good. He tried to live as a Christian, but the lords made him sacrifice and he was buried as a heathen, they say."
"We went a-viking in Ireland," said Erling, "my father and I. I saw a mana priestdie for Christ. We were holding him and others for ransom, and some of the lads were having a lark and thought it would be sport to make him eat horsemeat. He refused, and the lads took offense at his manner. They tied him to a tree and shot him full of arrows. He died singing a hymn. I thought he was as brave as Hogni, who laughed while Atli cut his heart out. My father said not to talk rot, that a man who dies over what food he'll eat dies for less than nothing."
"I've never seen a true martyrdom," I said. "I'll wager it wasn't like the pictures."
"No," said Erling. "It looked nothing like the pictures in the churches. Martyrs die like other men, bloody and sweaty and pale, and loosening their bowels at the end."
"So I'd feared."
"What of it? The pictures are no cheat. Just because I saw no angels, why should I think there were no angels there? Because I didn't see Christ opening Heaven to receive the priest, how can I say Christ was not there? If someone painted a picture of that priest's death, and left out the angels and Christ and Heaven opening, he'd not have painted truly. The priest sang as he died. Only he knows what he saw in that hour, but what he saw made him strong.
"I saw a human sacrifice once too, in Sweden. When it was done, and my father had explained how the gods need to see our pain, so they'll know we aren't getting above ourselves, I decided I was on the Irish priest's side."
"And you're sure our God doesn't need to see our pain?"
"Not in the same way. I serve a God who will not have human sacrifice. You've never believed in human sacrifice, but I did once, so I can tell you it makes no little difference."
I said nothing for awhile. A cloud bank was moving in from the northwest. I hoped we wouldn't get rained on.
"They tell me you've taken a leman," said Erling.
I jerked my head up. I'd almost fallen asleep. I said, "It's often done."
"Father Ethelbald said the Irish church was strong in forbidding such for priests."
"We are, we are. But the nights are long, and the flesh is weak, and many think it's better to cleave to one woman than to lust after the whole race of them."
"It's one of Soti's thralls, isn't it?"
I didn't want to talk about this. "Yes, as it happens," I said.
"Is there some trouble, Father Aillil? Does Soti hold anything over you? I'll help if you ask."
"It's . . . it's between Soti and me, and nothing you need trouble over."
"Be that as may be, remember I'm ready to help. As you yourself said, Soti is as great a devil as you'll find in this land. He does nothing in sport."
"I'll remember, my lord," I said.
Why didn't I tell him? Did I think he couldn't protect the girl? Was I ashamed of my weakness?
The true reason, I think, was that if Erling helped I'd have no further excuse for bedding her. I didn't want to stop, and a small surrender to Soti seemed worth it. A mere sin of the flesh, after all, and all in the open, would put me under no great obligation to the smith.
Someone screamed in the night.
It was a loud scream, and a long scream. A man with a belly wound, or a woman in fouled childbirth, screams like that sometimes.
"Down by the byres," said Erling, and set off running.
I followed, all the hairs on my back lifting.
People came tumbling out of houses to gape at us, the men carrying axes. We reached the byres and ran around them, then poked in the grass and among the stones, finding nothing.
Half-dressed men came to join us, and no one found anything.
"Oh God," said Erling at last. "My hall."
He raced back as fast as he had come, with me at his heels.
It was a different pillar this time, but the same kind of burden. Erling seized the man's legs and lifted him, but he was already dead.
Title: | The Year of the Warrior |
Author: | Lars Walker |
ISBN: | 0-671-57861-8 |
Copyright: | © 2000 by Lars Walker |
Publisher: | Baen Books |