The land way north was not an easy one, as Norwegians prefer to go by water if they're traveling any distance, and we had water on both sides. The paths varied, being now wide and easy, now narrow and stony, now low and muddy; sometimes they forked without any hint as to where they'd lead, sometimes they'd disappear altogether in a bog or a grassy waste, and you'd have to go carefully around, or push your way through with the sun as your guide. Sometimes we'd stop at farmsteads for directions, and the farmers and their wives looked at us as if at walkers-again, often slamming their doors shut in our faces. Moling didn't seem to mind anything. He swung his staff and paced along at a remarkable speed, leaving me puffing to keep up. He sang most of the time, songs I hadn't heard for long and long. His hound traveled twice the distance we did, racing ahead, doubling back to see why we came so slowly, then racing ahead again.
It took to raining in the afternoon and I began to look about for friendly shelter, but Moling paid it no mind. We slogged along, waterlogged, cold, and mired with mud to our knees, and it occurred to me that Moling, not understanding the light nights, would go on like this until autumn. I finally said, "We have to find shelter for the night! It doesn't get dark until close on midnight this time of year."
Moling looked at me as if I'd found the answer to the problem of Free Will.
"Is that so?" he asked. "Where shall we look?"
"Well there's a farmhouse up there. We can only ask."
The farmer was heathen, and paled at the sight of our robes, but he respected the name of Erling Skjalgsson, which I dropped with a thump, and grudgingly let us have a place in his byre, empty this time of year. We found straw to spread our cloaks on and opened our scrips, he for his hound and I for the beast within.
"Remarkable, these long summer nights in Norway," Moling said as he fed the dog and scratched its belly. "Are the winter nights short in proportion?"
"Aye. The winters here are like a foretaste of Hell."
"I've spent a lot of nights in the open, watching the moon and the stars. I've come to a conclusion about them."
"And what's that?"
"I think it can't be true that the sun travels around the earth. It must be the other way around."
I nearly choked on my cheese. I'd had no idea how far gone the man was. "That's the maddest thing I ever heard," I said, and I said it to his face. I mean, there are limits. I'd had enough of this kind of nonsense from Caedwy.
"No, think about it. How could the earth be the center of the universe? This is a fallen place, a cursed place. The sun, on the other hand, is glorious and gives us life. The sun is a symbol of the Beloved. The earth must be the sun's dog, running about it as Conn does with me."
"Look," said I. "The earth is down, and it's flat. The sun is up, and it's round. The sun flies. The earth just sits there."
"I've heard that the Greeks believed the earth to be round like a ball."
"It makes no difference. If the earth moved, we'd all fall off it."
"I suppose that's true. It's a pity. It would be much better theology for the earth to go around the sun."
"I hate to spit in your beer, brother, but real things seldom make good theology."
"Ah well, it's no matter. In any case the sun will rise in the morning whatever we think. Now tell me, Father Aillil, what is it you wanted to talk with me about?"
"How did you know I wanted to talk with you?"
"Am I wrong about this too?"
I closed my scrip. "No, you're not wrong. I need to confess to you."
"I'm not a priest."
"If I wait for a priest I may wait forever," said I. "First thing, I'm not a priest myself . . ." and I went on and confided to this madman all my secrets and my whole history at Sola, all I'd wanted to tell my Steinbjorg. For all I knew he'd babble it to the world. When I was done I sat silent.
"I cannot shrive you," he said.
"WHY?" I shouted, and the farmer and his family must have been wakened.
"Because there's no place in your heart for my forgiveness to rest. See here, the Beloved is like a loving father who comes to his child each day and says, `I have a gift for you,' and offers him some treasure, but the child is holding on to the gift he was given yesterday, and so cannot take the new gift. You must let go yesterday's gift, my brother Aillil."
I shuddered. "I cannot," I said. "My hands are iron. They will not open."
"Then they must be heated in the forge, and hammered open. The Beloved will do it, for He loves you."
"I'm sick of His love. I'm crushed and crippled under the lead weight of God's love."
There was no answer. I looked and saw that Moling was sleeping, easily as a child, with his dog curled up against his belly.
We went on the next day in much the same way. Again I had trouble keeping up and got no chance to talk. But now I doubted whether there was much use in talk. Moling was like the adults I'd watched as a child, secure in their growth, knowing everything and sufficient for all, whose world I could neither understand nor enter.
There was rain and then fog, and as the fog burned off we heard a sound of shouting and clanging some distance off, but in the direction we were headed.
"There's a battle!" said Moling, and the ring in his voice made me wonder if he hadn't been a warrior once.
"What about it?" I asked.
"Let's go see!" He hitched his skirts up in his belt and set off like a greyhound, catching his dog up, and the two of them raced ahead of me, growing smaller and disappearing over the crest of a low ridge.
When I finally drew up to them we were halfway down the other side, and in the dale below two gangs of men were having it out with swords and axes. There were about twenty in one group, and only six in the other.
"Bad odds," said Moling.
"What can we do?" I sighed.
"We have our staffs. We could fall on the larger group from behind, and the Lord might give us victory!"
"Or they might brain us with their axes."
"Yes," said Moling, and from his eyes I realized that being brained with an axe didn't seem to him an awful thing at all.
And suddenly I thought, What the Heaven? Let's die here today, saving lives, and go home to the Beloved.
So I shouted, "Columcille!" and Moling shouted something or other, and we fell on the fighting men like a thunderbolt.
And I swear to God, the moment those men started getting thumped from behind, and turned to see two roaring Irishmen with bare legs and flying staffs, they screamed and fled, nor looked back while we could see them.
Three from the other side still stood. They let their weapons sink, and one of them sat down, and another said, "Are you Valkyries?"
I wish Moling had understood the question. It would have given him a laugh.
I said, "No, we're not Valkyries, we are men and servants of the White Christ. I am Father Aillil, priest to Erling Skjalgsson, and this is Brother Moling, a holy man of Ireland."
"If you're Erling's priest you're well met," said the man. "We have one of his men here, a Christian, and he's dying."
And I looked down and there lay Halvard Thorfinsson, with blood soaking the belly of his shirt.
"Oh Lord," I said. "Have pity on little Sigrid."
I stepped toward him but Moling was ahead of me. He took Halvard's head in his lap, and gave him water to drink from the skin he carried, stroking the pale hair of the young warrior.
Halvard said, "I want to confess, Father."
I heard his confession and shrove him, silently praying God, as I always did, to accept the faith of the dying in place of my ordination.
"There's much pain," said Halvard when we were done.
"You're a brave lad," I said. "You'll do as well as any."
"It's strange to die this way, and me a Christian. If I were heathen yet, I'd know that Odin would welcome me to Valhalla. What welcome has Christ for a warrior, Father?"
I had no quick answer, and Moling must have seen my trouble, because he asked what the boy had said. I told him.
"Tell him I've had a dream about Heaven," said Moling. "The teachers tell us that the Beloved lives outside Time itself. He goes back and forth in it when He wills. And when we go to be with Him, we too will be outside Time.
"It seemed to me in my dream that at the last day the Beloved called together all the great warriors who had been brave and merciful, and who had trusted in His mercy, and He mustered them into a mighty army, and He said to them, `Go forth for Me now, My bonny fighters, and range through Time, and wherever there is cruelty and wickedness that makes the weak to suffer, and the faithful to doubt My goodness, wherever the children are slain or violated, wherever the women are raped or beaten, wherever the old are threatened and robbed, then take your shining swords and fight that cruelty and wickedness, and protect My poor and weak ones, and do not lay down your weapons or take your rest until all such evil is crushed and defeated, and the right stands victorious in every place and every time. We will not empty Hell even with this, for men love Hell, but I made a sweet song at the beginning, My sons, and though men have sung it foul we will make it sweet again forever.' "
I said these words to Halvard in Norse, and he died smiling.
I hired a boatman to take Moling across the Boknafjord to Aarvik the next day, and we said our goodbyes, and I got a ride back to Sola in a fisherman's boat.
And then I had to tell Sigrid about Halvard.
I stood in my patch among my children, working with a hoe to keep the weeds from them. A bird shadow swam the earth at my feet, but I looked up without fear, for I knew it was my white-and-red hawk, and although the ravens might fly by in the distance they knew better than to venture closer.
"Doing well now, are you?" asked a voice, and I knew it for the abbot, for who else spoke to me in these dreams? "Getting along fine, no problems?"
I worked on in silence.
"Are you ready to forgive me?" he asked.
"Still on that?" I asked. "You harp on it as if my forgiveness were worth the wealth of Dagda."
"What do you know of worth?" he cried. "If you knew the value of one word of forgiveness, you'd be all day coining indulgences like the king of Ulster at his mint! To have such wealth at your fingertips and never to touch it . . . if you could see things from my side of the river, you'd think yourself a pauper living on a mountain of gold, and all unknowing."
"I'm just being holy, as my Heavenly Father is holy. He doles His forgiveness out in jealous dribs and drabs. Why should I be prodigal with mine?"
"All saints and blessed angels! Did I teach you so badly? Think you really God is a hammer-tongued old fir darrig such as I was? Think you all the praises and thanksgivings of scripture are but flattery to a tyrant?"
"I know how God has used me. I know nothing more."
"You know nothing at all! You've never seen, and you will not look, and you haven't the sense to" Then he fell silent, as if a hand had stopped his mouth. I plied my hoe until he spoke again.
"Would you hear a jest from Heaven?" he said. "A thing to make you laugh? I've learned I was never meant to be an abbot, nor even a monk. I was born to be a married man and a father. There was a girl I grew up with, whom I used to dream about, and I always thought those dreams a torment from the Devil. As it turns out, 'twas she God had intended for my wife. And my cramped nature came from being a man out of place in the world, trying to make shoes with a cooper's tools, so to speak.
"You, on the other handyou'll laugh when you hear thisyou were born to be a priest. Isn't that rich?"
I didn't laugh, not at all.
"You've overlooked one thing, you know," he said at last. I didn't want to listen. I wanted to toil here among my children, looking at their bright faces, hearing them laugh, watching them grow. I would never sell them. I would keep them forever, and if I never earned my freedom, so be it.
"What you fail to consider is that your whole prosperity depends on the white-and-red hawk. But no hawk is forever."
I whirled to face him. "What are you getting at?"
"Behold," he said, and with a long finger indicated the sky.
I turned unwilling eyes upward, and I saw that another bird was approaching from the west, a great white eagle, larger than the hawk.
"Does he come as an enemy?" I whispered.
"Watch."
The two great birds circled each other for a minute, then the white-and-red hawk stooped before the eagle, and flew his circle lower than before, while the white eagle circled above.
"They watch together!" I cried. "Instead of one guardian, I now have two! You're a poor prophet, Father."
"Yet watch."
Then came a great flock of ravens, all the ravens in the world, so many they blocked the sun out like a thunderhead, and they attacked the eagle and the hawk. And great was the battle then: the noble birds fought like hurricanes and thunderbolts; one after another the ravens fell in blood like rain, and yet there were so many of them that still they came on, and the hawk and eagle were wearied. And as they fought, the battle moved off, drifting eastward before a westerly wind, until all the birds were gone from sight.
"So fine, so brave; can they both be lost?" I cried.
My answer was to see the white-and-red hawk return alone. He took up his watching post above my patch, and the white eagle was seen no more.
"Thank God this one was spared me at least," I said.
"Yet watch."
Now came a red eagle, greater even than the white one. This time the hawk did not greet the larger bird with obeisancehe flew in his face with rage and flashing claws, and great was their battle, so that the blood fell down in my eyes. But at last the red eagle struck the hawk down, and he fell like a hailstone to land among my children and lie unmoving, his eyes gone lightless.
I knelt and wept for the white-and-red hawk, for whom I had suffered much, and who had repaid me well.
"Now see who wards your patch," said the abbot. I looked up and saw that the red eagle had grown to even greater size, and was circling as the other noble birds had done. But all the birds of the earth, eagles and hawks, ravens and crows, even bluebirds and gulls, gathered together against the red eagle. He fought valiantly, but I thought they were too many for him.
I lowered my eyes. I no longer cared.
"Erling is the white-and-red hawk, isn't he?" I asked.
"You worked that out all by yourself? Perhaps there's hope for you yet."
"Why should he fall before that bloody red eagle? What do I need with the red eagle? I was well suited with things as they were."
"Perhaps God has purposes beyond what suits you. Perhaps there are more patches in Norway than yours alone, and just as dear to Him."
I looked at the sky. All the birds were gone. "They must have slain the red eagle," said I. "Who will guard my patch against the ravens now?"
"There are no more ravens. They will never come again, or not for a very long time. But there are other dangers."
And suddenly he was the Black Axe-man again, towering over me with his weapon swinging. I turned and ran from him, and as I ran I crushed my children underfoot.
Title: | The Year of the Warrior |
Author: | Lars Walker |
ISBN: | 0-671-57861-8 |
Copyright: | © 2000 by Lars Walker |
Publisher: | Baen Books |