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CHAPTER XVIII

They call Christmas Jul in Norway, and it used to be celebrated in mid-January, but Haakon the Good, who failed in so much, at least got most of the Norse to change it to December 25 and the eleven days following.

The thralls ran about, cleaning and washing and airing beds, cooking, fetching and carrying, but they did it with a good will, because Jul was a good time for them as well as the free folk. Ragna rousted me from my bed Christmas Eve and set some of them sweeping my house out. "We'll have to get you a house thrall," she said. "That slut of yours is never here in the daytime, and you keep house like a bear. How long is it since you've had your clothes washed?"

"I don't want a thrall," I said.

"Well, you'll get one anyway. Set him free if you like and pay him wages, but you can't go on living like this."

"I haven't been well."

"You're fine now, and you need a thrall." She gusted out the door, then poked her head back in. "We will have mass tonight, won't we?"

"Yes, of course."

I wasn't keen for Christmas. I was still angry about Enda, whose crucifix now hung about my neck, and the thought of spending the festival among barbarians and far from home did not set my heart singing. It occurred to me, for no particular reason, that I didn't know when Easter would fall the next year. I wondered how I'd find out, and if I really cared.

I poked my head outside and saw Erling walking through the steading with his red-haired cousin Aslak Askelsson, who had come to guest with him for the feast. Aslak had brought news that Jarl Haakon was dead, and everyone was waiting to hear the story.

We got to hear it the next day, after I'd said the high mass and the toasts had been made and we'd all honored the Lord with drunkenness and gluttony. Erling said, "Aslak, tell us this tale of the fall of Jarl Haakon. I liked him when he was sober—did he make a good death?"

Aslak, seated in the guest seat and looking a little shy of the honor and attention paid him, coughed, and Halla brought him a horn of mead, which made him blush. He said, "Sad to say, he was unlucky in his dying. It happened this way—

"Haakon was feasting at Medalhus in Gaulardal, but he'd left his son Erlend with his ships at Viggja. The drink must have addled him, because he sent his thralls to Orm of Leira and demanded Orm send his wife Gudrun to him."

"Orm wouldn't take that well," said Erling.

"Indeed. He sent the war arrow out and soon the whole district was in arms. Especially the smaller bonders, because Haakon had often done the same to them, and they'd no protection. But Orm of Leira is another sort of man altogether. He blocked the roads so Haakon couldn't get back to his ships. Haakon sent his men away to fend as best they could, and to try to get word to Erlend to sail home to Hladir, and he fled across the Gaular River to his leman, Thora of Rimul. He drove his horse into a hole in the ice and left his cloak close by so men would think he'd drowned. Then he went to Thora, and the thrall Kark was with him.

"Meanwhile, as Erlend sailed out of the fjord, he was met by a man named Olaf Trygvesson—"

"Olaf Trygvesson!" cried someone. "Is he in Norway?"

"Aye. He sailed from England this autumn, and met with his kinsmen at Opprostad, and then sailed north with five ships to kill Haakon. He must have uncanny timing-luck. He killed Erlend and took his ships without trouble, then came ashore to find that every man in the district was eager to join him.

"Well, naturally they looked for Haakon at Rimul. The dead horse in the river didn't fool them a bit—Haakon had left too many tracks. They marched up the valley and held a Thing at Rimul, and Olaf stood on a big rock and shouted that any man who killed Jarl Haakon would be richly rewarded. But nobody betrayed him, so they finally went to Hladir, which Olaf seized for his own.

"The next morning up came Kark, and in his hand he carried Jarl Haakon's head."

"I can't believe it," I said. "I knew Kark. He hadn't the kidney for that kind of work."

"It happened this way—" said Aslak, "—at least this is how Kark told it. Thora had had him, I mean Kark, dig a large hole in the pigsty at Rimul. Then they laid boards over it, and Haakon and Kark went underneath with a lamp, and Thora covered the boards with dirt and ran the pigs over them, and no one could tell their hiding place.

"But when Olaf had come to Rimul, the rock he had stood on to speak was hard by that pigsty. And Haakon and Kark had heard every word. And Haakon had whispered to Kark, `You're not thinking of betraying me, are you?' and Kark had denied it, and Haakon said, `We were born on the same day, and I think it likely we will die on the same day. Remember that.'

"And when Olaf left and evening fell, they slept, and towards morning Jarl Haakon cried out in his sleep. Kark tried to wake him but could not, and he was afraid because he didn't know whether some of Olaf's men might still be about, so he took his knife and cut the jarl's throat."

"A bad death for a great man," said old Bergthor.

"And what reward did Olaf give Kark?" I asked.

"The reward he deserved. He had his head cut off and set the two heads side by side on the gallows out at Nidarholm. Every man who goes by throws stones at them."

I got up to go outside, afraid of what I might say.

"Stay, Father," said Erling. "This needs talking of."

"I don't feel well," I said.

"Still. I want your counsel. This matter of Olaf Trygvesson is a tangled one."

"Jarl Haakon is dead. Olaf rules in the Trondelag now. What concern is it of yours?"

"Haakon was lord of most of Norway. Olaf wants no less, I'm sure. That's why he went to Hladir, not to his own inheritance in the Vik. If he's to be another Harald Finehair, every landed man in Norway will have to decide how he stands towards him. Aslak, what do Olmod and the cousins think of all this?"

Aslak said, "Olaf is kin to the Erikssons of Opprostad. There's little likelihood he'll come to us in peace."

"Yet Olaf was friendly enough when we met," said Erling.

"When you met?" asked Steinulf.

"Don't you remember the tall Viking from Russia with the two ships at Tunge? Who do you think that was?"

A murmur coursed through the hall. Everyone wondered to think they had come so close to the great Olaf Trygvesson, and not a blow struck.

"Then he must have sailed south to Opprostad to get support from his kinsmen, then shot north to Haakon," said Steinulf.

"That's what I think," said Erling.

"Yet you made no move to stop him?"

"I didn't know it was he at the time. I thought it possible. Perhaps I failed in my troth to Haakon, but Olaf made no attack, and I don't care to molest fellow Christians and priests on mere doubt."

"And Haakon had about come to the end of his thread," I muttered. Erling stared at me.

"He looked a king from head to foot," said someone. "He wore an embroidered shirt of scarlet, and a rich fur cloak, and his arms were loaded with rings."

"He has the blood of Harald Finehair—I should have known it," said old Bergthor. "So many of them have that height, and those bright eyes."

"Are you saying that because you parted from Olaf in peace we might make terms with him?" asked Aslak.

"I think there might be hope," said Erling. "Or are you fitting out a fleet to go against him?"

"No point in it. He's sticking to the land this winter—taking the road to the Vik to rally his kin there. We'll be boxed between the Tronds in the north and the Vikers in the east, not to mention the Erikssons, before we get our chance at him."

Then they began the game of "What If?" which means so much in war and state, and my mind wandered. I thought of Kark, and I thought of Erling, and it seemed to me there was little to choose between them.

Then Steinbjorg came in and whispered in my ear, "Gunnlaug is come to her time. She's calling for you. She says she knows something's wrong, and the child must be christened."

* * *

We went to the house where the woman Gunnlaug lay, with other women about her. No man was there but me; even her husband, one of the bullyboys, feasted in the hall. We heard her cries before we got there, above the patter of the rain, and I could smell her sweat when I got inside.

Someone told her the priest was come, and she cried for my prayers between her screams. Yet today I can see her face, drawn to the skull with pain, the hair pasted to it like seaweed on a rock, her mouth stretched to bare the gums as she cried again and again, and it never seemed to end. I prayed my prayers and prayed them over, and the women made her walk about the room to loosen the child's grip, and still it went on. I looked at Steinbjorg, kneeling at her head or holding her arm, and thought that she would suffer so as well, a few months hence. I wondered how it was for the blessed Virgin, nearly a thousand Christmases before. Could it have been easy to bring the Son of God into the world? Must not her body and all of nature have protested the invasion, shrinking in wonder and fear from the fullness of time?

But this child was nothing like Mary's, when at last she came forth. She was red and shriveled and slimy of course, like all babies, but this one cried strange, bubbly cries, and her mouth was wrong. The women tried to hide her from Gunnlaug, but she croaked, "I know it's ill-formed. Let me see it. I want to hold it." So they wrapped her in a cloth and gave her to her, and she held her and cooed to her, weeping. Then she said, "Father, you must christen my child now."

I said, "I think she'll live. She can be christened in the church."

Gunnlaug looked at me, and her eyes were miles deep, with all the misery of Eve's curse in them. "She will not live, Father. You must christen her now."

There was water there, so I christened her Maria, as her mother wished. I had barely finished when the door burst open and Gunnlaug's husband came in, followed by Soti, a halting and fearful shadow.

"Let me see the child," said the father.

Wordlessly the mother gave her up to one of the women, who passed her to him.

He looked at the face and cursed. Then he turned and carried the child out.

"Where's he going?" I asked.

Soti answered. He stood before the door. "He goes to expose it on a hillside. That is our way with the deformed ones. It keeps the race strong."

"This is an abomination!" I shouted. "Lord Erling will hear of it!"

"It's the law," said Soti, smiling. "A strong law for a strong land, and strong gods."

"It's murder!"

"By no means. That thing is no human. It cannot walk. It cannot talk. It cannot even feed itself. It's a beast like other beasts, and if it's not worth its feed we put it down. It's the decision of the father, or of the owner if the mother's a thrall."

"Get out of my way, Soti."

Soti stepped aside, still smiling.

I'd not known how much of the night had passed in Gunnlaug's labor. When I got to the hall everyone was dozy with drink, and Erling nodded in his high seat.

"Gunnlaug's child is born," I said, shaking him. "She has a harelip. The father took her out to expose her. You've got to send men to stop him."

Erling stared at me with fuddled, sad eyes. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I can do nothing. It's the law here. Soon, perhaps, we can change it, but—"

"Sod you," I whispered. "Sod you and your law and your land."

I rushed out into the rain and wandered paths through the night, listening for a cry, tripping over stones and stone fences, getting mired in icy bogs. I never found the baby.

At last I followed the smell of smoke back to the steading in the dark, a long stumble that left my feet slashed and my shins bloody. In my house Steinbjorg waited. She rushed to strip me of my wet things and said, "Where have you been? Have you gone mad? You could have sunk in a mire, or been taken by wolves, like that poor baby. What's gotten into you?"

I shuddered like a horse's flank. Steinbjorg bustled me into bed and wrapped herself around me, and blankets around both of us. Through chattering teeth I said, "Don't you see? Don't you see what Soti meant?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You're his thrall. When our child is born, he'll find some flaw in it. He'll expose it, unless I do his will."

 

I stood in bright sunshine in a patch of meadow somewhere in the Sola neighborhood, although I don't know how I knew that, since nothing I saw looked familiar. The ground wasn't very promising: boggy and full of rocks.

I heard a noise behind me and turned, and for a terrifying moment I thought it was the black giant with the axe, but then I saw that it was only the abbot. He held in his hand an iron-shod wooden spade, such as the thralls use to break up the fields in spring. As usual he looked at me as at something a maggot had vomited up.

"This is your patch," he said.

"My patch?"

"Your patch, lumpkin. 'Tis here you must work and raise a crop, to earn your freedom."

"I'm free already!"

"You? As far as I can see, your useless head remains on your shoulders. Or don't you remember, you would not pay the price to enter the land?"

"There's little point in paying such a price," I said. "What good is freedom, or entering the land, or catching the white hind, if I lose my head?"

"A head like yours would be little enough loss, but be that as it may you've made your choice, so nothing remains but to work your patch. Sow the seed, cultivate it, harvest it, and we'll give you credit for the value of the crop." He extended the spade to me.

I said, "Do you mean I may enter the land after all, and pursue the white hind, if I do this?"

"If you buy your freedom. But be warned that freedom is not cheap or easy, and, as you yourself have observed, yours is a pretty poor patch."

"You just watch how fast I can buy myself!" I cried, seizing the spade, and I turned from him and set to work with a will. I manhandled the rocks out, and dug ditches to drain the boggy places, and spaded and planted. Faster than I could ever have imagined the shoots began to sprout.

I watched the shoots with love and fascination. They were not like any plants I'd ever seen. They were pink instead of green, and as they matured I saw that they were not plants at all, but small, perfect children.

Looking on them, I loved them. I felt tender care for each precious, precarious little soul. "How will I harvest them? How will I sell them?" I wondered. "How can I endure to part with the least of them?"

And then I heard a flapping sound behind my head, and spinning round I saw, against the sun, great black wings. Ravens were raining from the sky, coming to snap up my precious babies. They were large as a man, these ravens, with red eyes and golden beaks sharper than shears, and there were hundreds of them. I flailed my arms and swung my spade, trying to drive them away. They came on as if I didn't exist, and began to grasp my little ones in their beaks, and they pulled them out of the earth, threw their heads back and gulped them down. It was done faster than it takes to tell. All my sweet innocents were slaughtered, and the ravens, with one contemptuous look back at me, took to the sky again, blocking the sun out with their shadows, leaving me alone on the desolate ground.

"GOD!" I screamed.

 

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Framed


Title: The Year of the Warrior
Author: Lars Walker
ISBN: 0-671-57861-8
Copyright: © 2000 by Lars Walker
Publisher: Baen Books