It was a great fleet that assembled in Hafrsfjord for the Wendland adventure in the spring. Ships gathered from all the west, for Olaf yet had friends. Among them was Einar Eindridisson, just a boy thenblond and pink-skinned and rather overpretty; showing no sign of the great belly that would give him a nickname one day. He was but seventeen then, and I wouldn't mention him except for the role he came to play later in our lives. He flirted with Thorliv a bit, but naught came of it.
The fact was, he wasn't up to Erling's standards for a brother-in-law. Hardly anyone in our company was. Most of our force were next thing to exilesyounger sons with nothing to lose and Vikings with a taste for risks and high profits.
But that didn't stop Erling from making alliances. He'd thought over Sigrid's offer to wed Sigurd the hostage, and quickly decided in-laws in the north would be useful. So before embarking we celebrated their wedding at Sola. 'Twas a fine business, with feasting in both halls and brawling and rich gifts for small and great. But the honeymoon was short, for Sigurd would come along to Wendland.
It was in fact a double wedding. We played host as well to the union of Olaf and Astrid's sister Ingebjorg to Jarl Ragnvald of Gotland in Sweden. Afterwards they sailed back to Ragnvald's lands on a Christianizing mission. I thought Ragnvald and his ships might have stayed to join our expedition, but kept the thought to myself. Olaf had always treated Ingebjorg more as a pampered daughter than a sister, and I think he may have been eager to get her out of harm's way in case he should pass from the landscape. Thyri had borne him a son that winter, but the child died after a few days.
This Wendland voyage wasn't a king's venture. It was a desperate, double-or-nothing gamble by a prince whose high seat was rotting beneath him. Who would defend Olaf's interests with so many of his followers out of the land, you ask? Nobody. If Olaf failed in the Baltic, he would never return.
We trooped down to the jetty all together on the last morning, the crews of Fishhawk and Olaf's Long Serpent. I slipped on the gangplank while boarding (not for the first or last time) and fell between the ship and the jetty in the very moment when she was bobbing out from her mooring. The next moment she'd jerked the end of her tether and was coming back to crush me. I've seen men come out of such vises limp and boneless as jellyfish.
Suddenly the ship checked, and I looked up to see Olaf Trygvesson stretched between jetty and gunwale, holding the great hulk of the thing off with his own tremendous strength. Others joined him quickly, and strong hands pulled me safely up and set me aboard. I cried my thanks to the king, thinking again what a great man he was at his best.
'Twas a grand site to see all those shipsgreat longships and smaller longships, even lesser craft manned by musters from small farming districts still loyal to Olaf, working their way by braced sail- and oar-power out of Hafrsfjord, then shifting their sails to catch the north-northeast wind that would take us south along the North Way. We in Fishhawk were up in the van, sailing just aft of Olaf's Long Serpent. They called her the biggest longship ever built, and I could well believe it. I myself thought her a work of overweening pride, and frankly we had to reef our sail to keep from outrunning her. But she was a remarkable piece of work, and I've never seen better carving and paintwork on a vessel (I understand the artisan who did that work had an Irish grandfather).
Our fair beginning did not last. We waited two full weeks at Lindesness for a decent wind for the Baltic. The weather turned dirty; we spent days and nights huddled under our woolen awning tents; and you don't know me yet if you haven't guessed I was sicker than a pregnant bride.
But we got a less-than-hateful wind at last and turned our noses eastward. The skies persisted overcast, but we sailed near enough shore to navigate by landmarks, so we made our slow way, tacking as often as not.
We took the Oresund entrance to the Baltic, the same way Erling had come out on my first voyage with him. The Oresund is not a nice way to gothe currents fight you (and jostle the ship underneath more than I care for), and the road is infested with Vikings, though we'd no fear of them as long as we stayed together. I believe a few of the smaller craft that straggled were lost to pirates, but you expect that sort of thing.
We could have taken the Big or Little Belts, but we'd have had to pay tolls to Svein of Denmark if he'd let us through at all, which wouldn't have been likely.
The placid Baltic is something of a relief after the North Sea, and I was grateful for it, though the winds continued fitful and often contrary. I couldn't help expecting to see my sister Maeve somewhere, for it was on Gotland Island I'd seen her last; but of course she could be anywhere in God's world by now.
I stood at the rail one day when the wind was good and we were making some progress, and Erling came up beside me.
"Have you noticed aught uncanny about this voyage?" he asked me.
"No. Nothing at all. The weather stinks, but no more than custom."
"It seems to me that's in itself uncanny."
I thought about it. "You mean we've seen no sign of Eyvind Kellda or his witchery."
"Just so."
I rubbed my chin. "A roaring sort of silence, that."
"So it seems to me."
"What are we doing here?"
Erling lowered his voice so I could barely hear him above the sound of water and the creak of rigging. "I know why I'm here. I'm here because Olaf is my brother-in-law and my king, and it's now he needs a kinsman as never before. But why are you here? Not for your love of sailing, I'll warrant."
"I'm here because I don't wish to be here. I follow the Beloved, and he takes the hard, narrow, dangerous road always."
I did not tell him the further reasonI could not under the seal of the confessional. Astrid had asked me to go and keep an eye on him.
"I'm glad of your company, Father. I expect I'll thank God for your presence in the end, as I have before."
Erling went away then, and I prayed for him, and the king, and the lot of us.
At last we reached our goalthe coast of Wendland. The Norsemen gathered at the rail and discussed the landscape in loud, excited tones. It was the kind of country that always delights Norsemenflat as old beer, whether in forests or fields.
A Norseman's idea of heaven is flat country as far as he can see. Give him a few acres of even, stone-free earth, and he thinks himself Holy Roman Emperor.
Look at what happened in England. Alfred granted the Danes the Danelaw. They settled down to plow and plant and make little squareheads, and before you knew it they were the dullest folk in England (which is saying a great deal).
Olaf's emissaries had arranged a meeting with Burisleif at Jomne, on Wollin Island. This was the home of the renowned Jomsvikings, whose head was a famous Dane called Jarl Sigvald, and a place where Viking and Slav rubbed shoulders as a matter of course.
Jomne is set on a ridge of high ground between a mireland and a riverbank. Local pilots took us through reedy shallows to the piers. Jarl Sigvald met us therea tall, paunchy yellow-headed man with pink cheeks and bright eyes and a remarkably ugly noselong and crooked and swollen red. To my credit I took an instant dislike to him. He seemed to me one of those smiling, open-faced scoundrels who'd knife you in the back for your shoelaces. Perhaps I just misliked his face and his clothing. He was dressed as the perfect East Viking, in fur hat and yellow silk shirt and wide, bloused breeches above soft leather boots, jangling with jewelry everywhere. He also sported many tattoos. He reminded me of slave traders I'd seen in Visby when I'd been merchandise. I'd been inclined against East Vikings ever since.
He led us through the streets of the town, all laid out in perfectly square blocks with a precision I found oppressive. In contrast to the orderly design, the buildings themselves wanted paint and showed rot at the foundations. Jomne looked badly fallen from a high discipline.
The reason was not far to seek. All around were armed men, the famous Jomsvikings who'd made themselves legends in the world and come near conquering Norway at Hjorungavaag in Jarl Haakon's time. Their courage in facing the headsman's axe, and the pardon that spared them following Vagn Buesson's act of heroism, was still sung in every hall from Greenland to Constantinople.
Could these men we saw be the same Jomsvikings? Fat for the most part, filthy, weighed down with baubles, stumbling with drinkand old. The brotherhood that had once drawn bold youths from all the north was now, it seemed, a place for old men to hole up and drink to their past deeds until they drank themselves to death.
Old Bergthor, who walked near me, said, "All these Slavs are thralls!"
Steinulf said, "No, the custom is different here than in Norway. Slav men wear their hair short, or they shave it altogether."
Bergthor humphed. "Well, I call it unmanly."
They brought us to a lofty old hall with a shingle roof in need of work, where we were met by a smiling young man dressed in Slav style (his head was shaved, all but a braid hanging down on one side). He directed a woman to bring Olaf a welcoming ale-horn.
"I thank you, sir," said Olaf after the speech that followed, "but where is King Burisleif? I knew him in my Russian days, and you are not he."
"Very true," said the young man. "I am Mistislav, duke and cousin to King Boleslav." (That was how he said the name.) "My royal cousin begs your pardon that he cannot be here to greet you in person, but he is much occupied with urgent matters for the moment. He has a meeting with the Emperor Henry this year to prepare for. But he promises to make haste to join you before many days. Until that time, accept his hospitality. If you lack anything, he will hold me answerable, so do not hesitate to make your needs known."
Then began a time. We went into the hall, freshly painted within, the floor strewn with fir boughs, the walls hung with ancient rusting shields and bannerstrophies of the Jomsvikings in their glory days. Burisleif (or Boleslav) had not stinted on his duties as a host. There was plenty of foodmuch of it strange, but tasty and plentiful. And the ale and mead never stopped, and the serving wenches were not shy. All in all, it put one in mind of the old Norsemen's Valhalla.
And once that thought entered my head, it would not go away. My thirst dried up and my hunger withered, and when I lay on my back with the whole sodden company in the night, listening to the couples panting in the shadows, I turned it over and over in my mind.
At last I went to the bishop, who'd found himself a hermitage of sorts, a half-ruined fisherman's shed near the quay. I came one morning, without eating breakfast, and found him on his knees facing the sun through the unhinged door.
He looked at me with those dying-man's eyes of his. He was thin as a shadow, and his hair clean white. His tonsure needed renewing and his cheeks shaving, things I'd never known him to neglect before.
"Father, this thing is not of God," said I.
"Go back to the hall, Aillil my son. Go back and enjoy the good things of this world. Lie with a woman. Perhaps it will make you less a prig."
"Begging your pardon, Father, but that's rare counsel from a priest who starves himself and lies alone."
"I've a penance to make."
"And who's set this penance on you? Who is your confessor, Father? Or have you laid it on yourself, set adrift without a polestar on the sea of your own pride?"
"I have failed my king! Had I been harder, less easy-handed with the heathen, his throne might have been established forever."
"The men who turned on Olaf were mostly Christians already," said I. " 'Tis not about the Faithnor the forswearings in the north, nor this errand of ours. 'Tis about how Christians will live together in the land. We can build on rock or on sand, my lord, and I fear our house is falling."
"Aillil of Ireland. Always so sure of God's ways. 'Tis simple, when you're priest of one church, to see the world all black and white. You do not see the greater matters, the good of all the land."
"Is this not what faith isto obey when obedience makes no sense to you? If a man tries to save his life in all his choices, he loses his soulso says the Word. Why should it be different for kingdoms? Is this what it means to be a king, and a bishopto be a coward and choose the broad way that leads to destruction?"
There was a movement in the shadows, and Deacon Ketil of York stepped into the light. "You ask who is the bishop's confessor," said he. "I have that honor. It is for me to tell him his sins, and to decide his penances."
"Who are you?" I asked. "Are you man or are you devil?"
He looked at me fair with those gray eyes, and for one moment I thought I knew him from some other place, some other time. But I could not name him. I shivered.
"You bring great men to destruction," said I.
"Kings are made for glory, not for long life," said he.
"That's a noble saying," I answered, "but as pagan as horsemeat pie. I've one from the Scripture`He who would be greatest of all, let him be least of all and servant of all.' "
"Do you speak thus to your bishop?"
"No. I speak thus to you. What learning have you, Brother Ketil? What skill in God's arts brought you to this power you wield? Recite for me the Athanasian Creed if you can."
"Enough, Aillil," said the bishop. "Go back to the feast. Sit by your lord. Leave great matters to your betters."
The bishop's word is the bishop's word. I went from there, sick at heart, and for once drank with a mind set on the waking slumber, the gray and purple land of forgetting. I woke next morning with a hundred razor-sharp needles driven red-hot into my skull, so that whichever way I leaned my brain pressed on their points. I drank to ease the pain, and so it went for many days.
"How many days has it been?" came the cry one morning. I think 'twas morning, but 'twas nearing noon, and we all lay, as had become our custom, in our piss and vomit in the straw on the benches, trying to raise the courage to sit up and face the drudgery of another day of pleasure.
"How many days has it been?" Olaf shouted again, sending red-hot coals down our ears to sizzle behind our eyes. "We came to do God's work, and all we do is feast! The summer passesthe Lord returns any day, and we've not made war for Him!" He reached a long arm from his high seat and grabbed a thrall by the shirt, lifting him bodily onto the bench. "Bring MistMistybring that fellow from Burisleif, the one who greeted us here. I want to speak to him."
Olaf refreshed himself with his morning draught (no drink seemed to affect him until well along in the night), and shortly the young Wend came in the door, looking fresh and bird-hued as always. He asked how he could be of service.
"Where's Burisleif?" Olaf asked, unsmiling. "I've lost count of the days, and still he tarries."
Mistislav smiled and stretched his hands out. "What can I tell my lord?" he said. "King Boleslav has many matters to attend to, as so great a man as you can easily understand. His heart is sick that he is forced, against his will, to neglect his brother Olaf, but he assures me that he is doing his utmost to come to you as soon as humanly possible."
"Perhaps I've not made myself clear," Olaf returned. "We are here on a mission from God. We have been sent to prepare the way for the return of our Lord; to cut a swathe from the Baltic to Jerusalem, converting Slav and Arab and Syrian and Jew, and so meet Him with worthy prizes when He sets His foot down on the Mount of Olives!"
"And a glorious plan it is; well worthy of so noble a king, as I have heard my lord say many times. But men must build up their strength before such ambitious tasks, and it is my lord's wish that you accept his bounty and make yourselves strong before he joins you in your march."
Olaf stood crookedly, leaning with one hand on the high seat's arm. "Do you know what I believe?" he asked. "I believe your lord Burisleif has no mind to join my march. I think he thinks my army a danger to his lands and his plans, and he's keeping us here under his eye, hoping we'll lose heart with waiting and go home."
"Your Majesty, I assure"
"I knew men like you in Novgorod, and I knew them in England. The king keeps you at his hand to tell lies in his name, and if the lie be caught he can say he knew naught of it. I may be nothing more than a sea king today, and a drunken one at that, but I'm not a total fool."
"King Olaf is great and wise, famed throughout"
"Get this man out of here before I hang him up on the wall with the armor. Sigurd! Erling! Bjorn! Ulf! Come to me. We must plan our campaign on our own, if we're to get no help from Burisleif. And you, Sigvald!"
Jarl Sigvald the Jomsviking stood and said, "Aye, my lord!" His nose was even redder than usual.
"Are you with us or not?" Olaf asked him. "Are you here to help me in my mission, or to be a spy and toady for Burisleif?"
"When I hear the king speak of this great adventure, my heart skips in my chest, and I feel myself a young man again. I've three ships which I am honored to place in your service, and young Jomsvikings to man them. Not true Norsemen, I'll grant, these recruitsmostly Slavs or half-bloods, but brave and handy, and eager to make their names as fighting men."
"Then join us here by the high seat, and we shall make our plans. Men! Drink no more ale than you need to kill your hangovers, and get some food in your bellies. Today we drill with weapons. We've been idle too long."
The men rose, groaning quietly, and I don't think many marked the quiet call of Queen Thyri from the women's bench"But what about my Wendish lands?"
To say Olaf and his captains planned a campaign is perhaps to hang a long name on a short pup. As a former officer of Valdemar the Russian, Olaf must have had some sense of the distances and obstacles involved, but he spoke of turning westward and subduing the Liutzians across the river (his first step) as if it were a summer stream crossing. The balance of his strategy was to move ever southward, stealing horses, living off plunder, and baptizing all and sundry as he went. The newly baptized would, of course, joyfully join his army, and so we would grow as we went, like a snowball rolling downhill, and sweep all before us.
We pressed pilots into service, boarded our ships and crossed the Odra river, going some ways south, on a Monday in July. It was but a short crossing, hardly time enough for me to get sick, and as we disembarked I went with Erling to the quay, where Olaf listened as Jarl Sigvald argued loudly with the Norse captains.
" 'Tis madness!" said Red Ulf, Olaf's burly forecastleman. "To burn our fleet would be like dumping silver into the sea, and there's no need for it!"
"But think what a gesture it would make!" cried Sigvald. "Men would watch the smoke rise, and they'd ask, `What does this mean?' and the answer would be, `This is Olaf Trygvesson of Norway, burning his ships in the Odra to show that he has vowed to fight his way to Jerusalem, and means to finish the march or die, like Lot never turning back.' "
"It sounds well," said Olaf, scratching his beard,"and since the Lord is returning I suppose we'll not need the ships again. . . . "
"My lord," said Erling. "I think this march is gesture enough. 'Twould be a sin to burn the Long Serpent without cause."
Olaf turned and gazed at his gilded longship. "Perhaps 'tis weakness in me," he said, "but I love a good ship better than a fine statement. Let the sea-horses live for now."
I could see Erling relax then. He'd have done much to defend Fishhawk, and he was glad it hadn't come to that. But it made an ill beginning to an ill adventure.
I don't know what I expected. I suppose I'd some idea that warfare in God's name would be different from the common kind. Perhaps I expected our swords to turn into flower garlands whose fragrance would turn wicked hearts to virtue.
The Liutzians are a warlike folk, and oddly enough that worked to Olaf's advantage. He sent out scouts the next morning across the grassy, rolling country to find a likely target, and the men returned that evening to say that there was a fortress not far off being attacked by an army.
We made our own attack at sunrise the next day, just as the Slavs broke through the fortress gates. I watched our assault from a high place, with the bishop and Deacon Ketil and Thangbrand and that sainted crew. Loud were our prayers and we were wet with holy water and fragrant with incense as the bishop said a mass for victory, but my thoughts were undevotional. The fortress was a round wooden stockade with a dry moat about it. All the Liutzians, foes a moment before, fled inside. They made a good defense from the walls, doing real murder with their arrows, but they had no proper gate. Our men dashed forward and picked up the attackers' battering ram. They lifted it, warded by other men upholding a roof of shields, and plowed through the defenders at the breach like a spear through a deer's belly.
I heard the screams of women and children. I heard the cries of brave men in gut-agony. I saw the fortress and all the houses set afire, and livestock and bound captives led out into the open. We went down to them and they were made to kneel as the bishop preached a sermon, translated by Jarl Sigvald.
If we expected the people to quickly embrace the Faith following our blazing show of Christian zeal, we were disappointed. The people knelt, weeping or groaning or just sullen, and none showed any sign of repentance and faith (I wondered how well Sigvald translated the bishop's words, but I'd no way of knowing).
After a moment of awkward quiet, Deacon Ketil stepped forward and whispered in the bishop's ear.
The bishop raised his voice again. "Make it clear!" he shouted. "Make it clear that if they are not baptized now, they will be put to the swordmen, women and children!"
Jarl Sigvald shouted something.
The people only looked at one another.
"This is the last offer!" cried the bishop. "Choose now! Choose you this day! Baptism or the sword! This is the will of God, and of King Olaf of Norway!"
More blank looks. I thought then and think now, if Sigvald had translated cleanly they'd have at least shown some fear. Instead they only looked fuddled.
Then someoneI think it was Sigvald, or perhaps Ketil, roared, "In the name of Heaven!"
This was the signal set earlierthe signal to carry out holy justice.
I could not help myself. I left the company of priests and ran to the two nearest children I could see, and I covered them with my body.
I waited for the butchery to begin, for the screams and the sounds of steel cleaving flesh and bone. I prayed God to set Himself between Olaf and these people, by some miracle.
And the miracle came. Instead of hacking and screams I heard voices raised in anger, and all in the Norse tongue. I looked cautiously up.
I saw Erling Skjalgsson and his men ranged to face the king's army, blocking its advance. Olaf was roaring at Erling. "Why do you bar our way?" he demanded.
"I did not come to Wendland for such work. If I wanted to butcher something, I'd stay home and kill sheep."
"It is God's will!" Olaf called.
"No, it is not!" I screamed, rushing forward through the people and thrusting myself between the armies, shouting so I sprayed the king's face with my spittle. "This is the bloody will of Hell! This is such work as Odin would dono! Odin's followers would kill their foemen and sell the living for silver, but they'd never butcher a whole town in the names of their demon-gods!"
"This is a day of victory for the Lord," shouted Olaf, "and triumph for a Christian king, and you blaspheme it! I've borne with you long enough, Irish hedge-priest! Sigurd, take this person away and put him to the sword!"
"You're no Christian king!" I shouted back. "You're a Viking from crown to footsoles! Baptizing a devil only makes him twice the devil he was before!"
Two Sigurds stepped forward, unsure, I suppose, which of them the king wanted. One was Sigurd Eriksson of Opprostad, looking unhappy about the whole business. The other was Bishop Sigurd, who was not properly a man for the king to order about, but he'd taken up thralls' ways.
The bishop approached me with his arms spread wide, his crosier in one hand. "Aillil. Erling," he said. "Surely you can see that these are matters too great for lone men's consciences. The Lord Jehovah, the Lord Sabaoth of the great armies"
"Is the Lord Jesus Christ," said I. "I cannot answer for what was done in olden times. But I know what the Lord Christ requires."
The bishop gulped once or twice, as if struggling for air, and Deacon Ketil came to his side.
"Arrogant puppy!" the deacon shouted. His mouth gaped wide and his eyes were red. "You think God has spoken only to youthat your way alone is right!
"Do you not see that this is a spiritual battle? All these people, this town, this world are only a shadow, covering the true reality of the spirit world! If you care so much for these heathens, you may baptize them before we slay them, and so their soulsthe only real part of themwill be saved and enjoy eternal bliss! Is it not you who says so often that Christ is found in the place of pain? Their pain will be short and fleeting, their happiness eternal! Repent, and learn the true charity of Heaven!"
"Heresy!" I shouted back. "Damned, Manichaen heresy! Bishop SigurdI appeal to you! Is it not heresy to say that the world of matter is an illusion? If that were so, then our Lord's birth, death and resurrection in the flesh were all illusions! I may be no theologian, but even I know this!"
The bishop gulped some more and looked back and forth between us a moment. He deemed Ketil a prophet and feared to defy him, but the Faith is the Faith, and he was not a man to deny it.
"Aillil has a point, my son," he said to Ketil. "Surely you don't mean"
"You quench the Spirit with this quibbling!" cried Ketil. "The written word kills! The Spirit gives life! We must not be bound by outgrown laws! This is a new millennium, and God is moving in a new way! All who cling to their footling rules will be left behind while the Elect march on to meet the Bridegroom at His return!
"The day of thought is past! Now is the time for feeling and action! I speak in the name of the Lordlisten to your hearts! Your hearts will always tell you what is right! Listen now, men of the north! Listen to what your hearts say!"
And suddenly a silence fella weird, expectant silence, like a house swept and garnished, awaiting some tenant who could be named only in whispers.
And a whisper camea humming in my head that sounded like the voice of Freydis Sotisdatter, hardly noticed at first but rising and pounding so loudly at last in my temples that I thought my skull would split. I did not guess that every other man heard the same, until their chanting grew loud enough to overcow the inner voiceand they chanted just the thing I was hearing.
"Words are a poison, deadly and flawed;
Feelings a strong ale, brewed up by God.
Old things are broken; scrap for the fire;
New things a promise; sating desire.
Bodies are night-dreams, gone with the morn;
Spirits are godheads, ever-reborn."
I shivered to hear ita song unlearned, sung in perfect unison by two thousand men. I shivered even more when I realized I too sang.
We sang it louder a second time, and louder still a third. The men drew their swords and axes and began to beat on their shields in cadence. I had no weapon, but found myself clapping my hands with them. Images rose in my mindimages of old hurts unhealed, old slights and insults unavenged; somehow it seemed very clear that all these things were the fruit of heathendom, and heathendom must be plucked from the earth like a thistle.
Yet all the while some part of me watched this rising with alarm. 'Twas not right. 'Twas not what I thought or believed. Yet did I have the strength of mind to breast such a storm-surf of passion?
Out of habit I reached for Enda's crucifix. As I touched the one that was there, I remembered that Enda's was gone, and this was only crackbrain-Ulf's.
Yet my mind came clear that very moment. I remembered who I was, and I remembered what I was about.
I must speak to the bishop, I thought, and I began to move to him where he stood, a little back and to one side of Ketil. Ketil stood with arms raised and face turned to Heaven, his entire body thrilling.
I suppose I was the only one who saw Bishop Sigurd raise his crosier and brain Ketil with it.
As Ketil fell, the head-song ceased. The army went silent. Once again the birds sang, once again the insects chirped; once again the fearful wails of our prisoners could be heard.
Bishop Sigurd looked at me as if to say, I beg your pardon. " 'Twas heresy, just as you said," he told me. "A pity. A great pity. And now I am become a manslayer."
"I'm not certain of that," said I, looking at Ketil's whitening face, yet turned skyward as he lay in an ever-broadening pool of blood, one eye opened and the other shut. "You thought the Wanderer at Agvaldsness was Odin. He was not. But KetilI think Ketil might have been. Odin was ever a raiser of madness."
"Perhaps. If not Odin, some other demon, I suppose. A great loss. He was a most excellent clerk."
"Roast you, Erling Skjalgsson!" The voice roared and turned us. It was King Olaf.
"I did not deceive you," said Erling. "Spare your anger for those who led you on miry paths."
"I wagered my all on a single roll of the dice!" cried Olaf. "I'd rather have died on my quest than be shown up a dupe and shamed before what remains of my kingdom! Better to follow a lie to a brave man's death than be left with nothing!"
"Come back with me to Sola," said Erling. "We'll rebuild the kingdom from there. Together we can do it, and make it stronger than before."
"Get out of my sight! Tell my bitch sister she's gotten her wishI've been shamed and made to kneel in the dust! That will please her! I'll make my own plans for the days to come, and they'll not include you, betrayer!"
He turned and spoke to his commanders, and before long his army was trooping back in the direction of their ships, to row for Jomne. Sigurd Eriksson risked one last, troubled look behind him as he went. I saw Lemming, a head above the other men, looking back at us, while Freydis tugged at his hand to bring him after the king. He stopped and looked back and away, then scooped Freydis up and brought her back to us. It was the firmest I'd ever seen him be with her.
Bishop Sigurd stood a long while watching the army go, then turned to follow them, using his crosier like a staff.
"Stay, Father!" I cried to him. "Olaf will blame you as well! Come back to Sola with us!"
The bishop smiled crookedly, like a man elf-shot. "I am his bishop and confessor," he said. "He needs me now as never before. In time he'll come to his senses, and then he'll need me yet moreif I am alive on that day."
And so he followed his flock.
We set about unbinding the captives and setting them free, then retired to our own vessels with a willing Liutzian pilot to take us away.
Title: | The Year of the Warrior |
Author: | Lars Walker |
ISBN: | 0-671-57861-8 |
Copyright: | © 2000 by Lars Walker |
Publisher: | Baen Books |