Back | Next

CHAPTER III

Summer browned to autumn, and winter passed with snows and rains. Erling chafed, because the winter market he'd started, at Risa Bay up the coast, failed to attract much custom. He instructed the men who collected tolls in Kormt Sound for him to invite (or strongly urge) passing merchants to stop, but those who did didn't stay long and seemed to resent the delay in their voyages.

Preparations for Easter were exhausting, though only part of them were meant for the feasting at Sola. Erling and his family, the bullyboys and I would be with the king at Agvaldsness on Kormt Island. One does not come to a king's feast empty-handed, especially if one is lord in the west, and there were preparations to make.

You never sail any distance in April if you can help it, but Easter with the king is not a thing you can help. So the thralls loaded our supplies in two ships, and we embarked on St. Philip's Day with a foul wind, the men plying their oars and singing. Old Bergthor came to stand beside me as I clutched the rail, clenching my eyes shut to ease the nausea. We'd just rowed out of Hafrsfjord, bearing west of north.

"If I were a fisherman, I'd say our luck would be bad this trip," he said.

"How so?" I asked, glad for any distraction.

"The seagulls fly to meet us. That means poor weather and bad fishing."

"One expects bad weather this time of year. And I doubt any of us will do much fishing."

"You're a fisher of men, aren't you, priest? Isn't that what you said in church?"

"That kind of fishing can be done in any weather."

"Not if a gale blows us onto a reef and we sink to Aegir's hall."

"Perhaps you ought to go cheer the women, my son," said I. He hated it when I called him "son," so he lumbered off, muttering, no more or less surefooted on the pitching deck than in the yard at home.

The sky went gray and a gravelly snow began to pelt us, but despite Bergthor's augurings we reached the relative shelter of the Kings' Way, the sound between Kormt and the mainland, without mishap. Long and long the men who had controlled that sound had exacted ship-tolls and generally called the dance for a large swath of the west, so naturally one of Harald Finehair's first acts after Hafrsfjord had been to take possession of the king's farm at Agvaldsness. He'd died there, as a matter of fact (in bed, if you can believe it).

We rowed into Bo Harbor, north of the farm, fighting the currents all the way, and tied up at the jetty. We were met by men of the king's guard, and the king's mother, who greeted her daughter with a kiss and offered Erling a horn of ale in welcome.

All together we marched up the hill to the farmstead. Kormt Island is as treeless as Jaeder, but somewhat more rugged. Just outside the walled-in meadow we passed the church, which gave me a heartbeat's pause. It was a steep-roofed wooden house with carved dragons at the gables, much like pagan temples I'd seen. Apparently the king had chosen to simply cleanse and reconsecrate it, rather than razing the abomination and building a proper church. Two tall gray, needlelike standing stones stood just north of it, a little distance from one another, tilting slightly and clearly very old. Pagan monuments without question, but the Norse respect old things. Now that I think of it, so do the Irish.

We entered the yard, and there with his bullyboys was the king, Olaf Trygvesson, tall and fair and strong. He crushed his brother-in-law in a bone-squeaking hug.

"Greetings and joy of the season, Erling!" he shouted. His face was red with drink. "Welcome to my house, you and all who come with you! If any man lacks any thing in keeping with the fast, and tells me of it, and I cannot fill the need, I'll pay him a mark of silver and give him a new sword to boot!"

Everyone raised a cheer for the king's hospitality, and we turned to go inside. But Olaf checked himself, and stopped to stare at something a little way off. We all stopped too and looked where he looked.

There, crouching in the shadow of the wall of a storehouse, was a rag-clad man.

Olaf strode over to the wretch, who tried to run but made bad time, dragging one leg. When the king caught him up he seemed to sag, boneless.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"Forgive me, my lord, I mean not to intrude," the man piped. Up close he was thin and old-looking, though I think less old than he appeared. "I'm a poor fisherman, who cannot work since I was elf-struck and lost the use of my right side. I thought—I thought there might be scraps from the kitchen—"

Olaf put his fists on his hips. "Do you realize the offense you have done your king?" he shouted.

"I meant no offense!" cried the man, eyes wide.

"Then why do you crouch out here, starving, when I dine inside! I am a Christian king! Do you think me less generous than one of your pagan princelings? This is the season of the death and resurrection of the Lord Christ! No man shall leave this place starving, even in the fast!"

The man stared, trying to choke words out.

"As penance for your offense," Olaf went on, "you must humble yourself to receive even more than you ask for!" He drew a twined gold ring off his upper arm and down over his hand. "Take this ring, and get food and clothing, and call your family and friends together to feast Easter morning. Drink the health of your king, and do not neglect to come to church Sunday."

The man took the ring in trembling hands, which sank under its weight. And Olaf grasped him by the arms and lifted him to his feet. The man stood straight.

"I think—" he said, "I think I can walk! I think I can walk again!" And he set out taking a step, then two, then running about in a circle, whooping.

We all shouted then, and the men clashed their weapons on their shields shouting, "Olaf! Olaf!"

It might have been staged, of course. Olaf could have bought a man to play the part of a cripple, to impress Erling and the other guests.

But I think not. Olaf had his sins, stacks of them, but he was never serpent-minded. It might have paid him better had he been. He was a rusher-in, doing what he thought best and saying what he thought right, and the devil with what men thought.

He was also a king. Kings have the healing touch, as all men know. And years later, when some were calling to make a saint of him, they told the story of this healing to vouch for his holiness. It never came to aught, of course.

We entered the hall, larger and grander than Erling's but not much, and took our seats to catch up with the drinking. Erling's people joined other guests at the table on the bench across from the king's men, on the south side (Erling having the seat of honor across from King Olaf), but churchmen were expected to sit together on the king's right, and I found myself there, very nearly across the table from the bishop. Up close his aspect shocked me. Never fleshy, his long-jawed face had wasted to a skull, and his sick man's eyes had grown fearsome—coals in pits. What ravagement have you done yourself, Father? I asked silently. This was a good man, as good as any I'd known, but he'd set himself to work that wore him, like a silver spoon spading.

"I don't see Father Thangbrand about," I said to him. I'd been looking for Thangbrand with some unease.

"He's sent to Iceland on a mission," the bishop replied. "He was badly suited at Moster."

I breathed a thankful sigh.

"I understand you have somewhat that belonged to him, my son," he said, too casually.

"I don't know what that could be." In fact I did know.

"A family of heathens, fled from the king's law. It's said you've given them sanctuary. The tale has come from more than one quarter, so I know not how I can doubt it."

" 'Tis the truth. They are free folk, and no outlaws as far as I know, and may move about as they please."

"Not when they've defied the king's command to be baptized. Have you baptized them yourself, that you act so freely?"

"I've good hopes of baptizing them in time. I'm an old-fashioned man—I try to spread the gospel through word and kindness."

"Behind the times you are then, Father," said a voice. I turned to face a young man in robe and tonsure who spoke with an English-Norse accent and looked at me out of clear gray eyes. "God's servant must always adapt the gospel to the times he lives in. Turning the other cheek means nothing to these Norse. They respect only strength. So we show ourselves stronger even than they, and earn their respect, and win them."

"Permit me to introduce Deacon Ketil, from York," said the bishop. "He's newly arrived in Norway, and the king sets store by his counsel."

"A long head on young shoulders," said I. "You're a fortunate young man."

"I have a gift. It is from God. I take no credit for it."

"The deacon is a seer," said the bishop.

"A seer? And a deacon?"

"This is a time for seers," said Ketil, "as the Millennium approaches. Great powers are at work in our world, and those with the Sight are needed to winnow good from evil, truth from falsehood."

I faced the bishop. "Have you turned to soothsaying in the king's hall now?"

"What's this?" he answered, with a sad smile. "An Irishman with no faith in signs and second sight?"

"Oh, I believe in them. But I've never seen good come of them."

"Too many scruples, Father," said Ketil, still looking at me with that disquieting calm gaze. "You'll have no scourging and you'll have no scrying. What are you doing in Norway?"

"You've a good heart, Aillil," said the bishop, "and it does you credit. But you've not read the signs of the times. The space is short and there's so much to do."

He coughed into an embroidered napkin for a minute. "Just a year until the Millennium, and so many heathens yet who've never been baptized. There's no time, you see, for persuasion. The work must be done by force or not at all. Catch them, baptize them, and trust God to work faith in their hearts. If I don't do all I can any way I can to convert them, how will I face my Lord a year hence, when He demands an account of my stewardship?"

You'll have marked that I'm a man who likes to talk, and who often as not sets his mouth to work before taking counsel with his brain. But on that occasion I said nothing, could think of no reply, God help me. What might have followed had I found the right words to answer him? I know not. Probably nothing would have changed—he'd welded his mind to his plan. But I didn't even try, and I can't help feeling some fault for the disasters that followed. All I could think was that I was looking at a man who would be face-to-face with the Lord within a year whether the Kingdom came or not.

Our conversation was mercifully shortened by a general call for silence as an Icelander named Hallfred, one of the king's skalds, stood before us all and let loose with a new poem in praise of the king. Never had I appreciated the exquisite beauty of Norse poetry before that day. On and on he rambled, about the burden of the tree of the battle and the hater of the burden of the tree of the battle and the lightning of the hater of the burden of the tree of the battle and I hadn't the vaguest idea what he was singing about, but I blessed the thickets of his imagery and the length of his wind.

And when he sat down at last, with a new ring from the king on his arm, the bishop was in deep conversation with Olaf.

So the fast-time feast went on, and I managed to shift my seat back to Erling's table, and we enjoyed countless more unintelligible poems.

I had a chance to talk to Erling's cousin, Aslak Askelsson, husband to my sweet Halla. Askel had grown much in the year and months since I'd seen him last (his red beard had come in thicker, and he'd put on muscle), but I found it hard to draw him out, and he gave no reason why Halla had not come along to the feast.

Erling introduced me to a woman named Thorbjorg Lambisdatter, a young widow who, he said, owned three ships and plied trade to Dublin, Frankia and the Baltic.

"I always leaned to the business more than my husband, God rest him," said Thorbjorg with a smile. "When he died, I chose to keep my part of the property and build the trade. It's harder for a woman of course, but I've a crew of men I've learned I can trust, and they look after me. There's one or two'd marry me if they could, I think, but none of them could do the job better than I, so why trouble?"

She was a tall woman, this Thorbjorg, with curling auburn hair, a straight nose, and a jaw any man might be proud of. She could almost have been described as manly, except that her hands were long and slender, her voice musical, and she moved with the grace of a maid. Erling spent a lot of time talking to her during the drinking bouts, and I noticed that Astrid marked it. But of course she had no cause for concern. Erling was trying to raise business for his winter market.

We celebrated Easter and bid good welcome to hams and cheeses and eggs, and one night, as we slept on the benches, I woke with the need to go out to the jakes.

After I'd done my business and felt better, I was stumbling back down the well-worn path to the hall when I bumped into something solid and fell sprawling. I heard a curse above me, and looked up to tell him to watch where he went. But there was no one there. It was nighttime, but there was enough light from the moon and stars to show me anyone who might have been around to see.

Again I heard muffled voices. My chest constricted. No man wants to meet unbodied spirits at night in a land still mostly heathen.

In my fear I grasped my talisman, Enda's blessed crucifix. And once again it did its unearthly work to show things truly. My sight cleared, and I saw men in arms, wrapped in cloaks and watching me with bright eyes.

That vision could have been my bane had I not kept some part of my wits. These were men invisible, and they were invisible for a purpose, and if they knew I'd seen them they'd have killed me in a second. So I looked past them, scrambled up muttering, pretending to be drunker than I was, and walked straight down the path, lurching close to one of them so he had to pull back to avoid me. They let me pass and I made for the hall, not too fast, but feeling their cat-eyes boring holes in my back as I went.

Inside I hurried down the hearth-way to the box-bed where the bishop lay. I tapped on the door, afraid to knock too loudly. Clutching the crucifix, I looked around in the shadows, fearful that one of the unseen men might have followed me in, but we were safe so far.

The bishop was a light sleeper it seemed, or perhaps he never slept at all those days. He opened his box-bed door to me straightaway.

"What is it, my son?" he asked.

"Forgive my waking you, Father," I whispered, "and forgive my coming with a mad tale, but what I say is true, by St. Bridget. I've a crucifix here—'tis a kind of a holy relic, and has shown its power to winnow truth from seeming before now. As I was out in the night I touched the cross, and I saw armed men all about the hall whom I could not see before. I fear we're in mortal danger, whether to our bodies or spirits I cannot say. But we must gather the priests and pray now."

He looked at me a moment. "Prayer is always in order, whatever the danger," he said. He pulled his robe on and came out in bare feet, and we waked the priests. "Pray!" he said. "Pray that evil will be restrained, and shown in its true light, and pray that we may be protected by the angels of the Lord."

There was quiet grumbling, but the bishop was not a man to deny, and they were soon with me on their knees. We prayed in Latin, the bishop leading us, and he set a censer burning.

And in a moment a horn was heard without, and there was a shouting and clash of arms, and a man came rushing in to beat on the door of the king's bed.

"My lord!" he said, when Olaf opened to him. "We've caught and taken twenty armed men. We stopped them in the yard."

"In the yard!" said the king. "Were the wardens sleeping, that an armed party came so near?"

"The wardens saw them not," said the bishop, stepping forward. "Father Aillil came but a moment ago to say there were men in the yard who could not be seen. He called us to prayer, and I doubt not it was that that broke their spell and rendered them visible again."

"If this be true we owe you a debt, Father Aillil," said Olaf. "Bring these men in, that we may see their faces and know how to judge them." He closed his door and reappeared a few moments later in shirt and trousers, and set his feet on the step for his boy to lace his shoes on. Then he wrapped his cloak around him and strode to his high seat. A thrall girl, wide-eyed, poked her head out of the king's bed, then pulled it back and closed the door except for a crack through which, no doubt, she watched.

They brought in the attackers. I thought at first they were drunken as they stumbled and wagged their heads—then I realized they were blind.

"God has turned their darkness back on them," said the bishop.

One, though, was not blind. Last of all the wardens brought in Eyvind, tall and white, and he held his head high and looked me in the eye with contempt, before turning the same look on the king.

"Eyvind!" the king cried. "I should have known it was you. I'd heard rumors you were yet above ground."

"No thanks to you, Olaf Trygvesson. You called me and my fellows to a feast, made us drunk and burned the hall down around us, liar and breaker of hospitality that you are.

"But such a man as I cannot be killed by fire. I live, and shall go on living, to see you cast down and trodden under the feet of your enemies."

"Why should I fear you, Eyvind?" asked the king. "You've seen the power of my God. Against Him your tricks are as a child's skill and a crone's strength."

"Your God has naught to do with it," said Eyvind. "You have a man among you who knows a little of truth." His eyes met mine for a moment. "I should have killed him when I had the chance. Of that sin of omission I do repent."

The bishop stepped forward. "You men have two choices, by God's mercy and the king's. You may be baptized and turned from the evil of your ways, and be granted a quick death. Or, if you will not cast off the shackles of sin, you will be put out of the world with torment and shame."

Eyvind shouted quickly, "None of mine will bow to Christ, now or ever!" His men looked fuddled and fearful, but they said they would follow Eyvind.

"I've seen I cannot kill you with fire," said Olaf then, "so I suppose it must be water. Who knows the tides hereabouts?"

"I do," said a man.

"When is high tide next?"

"A little before dawn."

"Good enough. Is there a skerry somewhere near where we can bind these men, that they may drown slowly?"

"I know of such a place, on the windward side of the island."

"Then let it be done." And the king went back to bed. They took chains and ropes and torches, and marched the wretched prisoners off, and I followed.

Why did I follow? I could have put them out of my mind and rolled back into my bed like the king.

I'd not have slept, though.

I had no reason to love Eyvind and his men. They'd have cut all our throats if they could, or burned us in the hall. But this holy cruelty stuck in my throat like a fishbone.

"Troubled in conscience again, Aillil?" asked a voice, and I found Bishop Sigurd walking beside me on the path.

"You know what I think, Father."

The bishop sighed. "Perhaps you're right, my son. Perhaps we've spoiled all with too much zeal. But what am I to do, with the Lord set to return so soon?"

"Forgive me, Father, but are you so very sure? Is it not written in Scripture that no man can know the day or the hour? What will you say to the Lord if He asks you why you set aside His plain command for the sake of a man's idea, however charming?"

"The Church declared long since that forced conversion can be valid, for salvation is not by man's choice but God's grace."

"Then the Church is wrong in that, for it flies against Christ's plain words as to how we should handle our enemies."

"You speak boldly for a man of questionable ordination."

"I've had the chance to read Helge of Klepp's gospel book," said I.

"We've got to get that book tied down. 'Tis a dangerous thing in untrained hands."

"Why do we fear so to just obey? Do we really think the Lord knew not His own business?"

"Times change. We must change with the times. What use to obey Him in this or that point if we fail to win the world for Him?"

"And what shall it profit if we gain the world and lose our own souls?"

The bishop's voice grew quieter. "I am prepared to sacrifice my soul, if only I can win Norway."

"Father! If I'm certain of aught, it's that the Lord asks no such sacrifice of you!"

"How sweet it would be to be a common priest again, and so sure of God's ways!"

We walked in silence for a time, stumbling on the stony path.

"So what do you intend tonight?" Bishop Sigurd asked finally.

"To watch over these men's deaths, and pray for them."

"No more?"

"No more."

The roar of the waves and the salt in our faces told us we were nearing the west side of the island (Kormt is far longer than broad). The guide led the warriors wading out to a skerry—that's a small, rock island—in an inlet there. Odd that the Norse word "skerry" is so like the Irish "skellig." Since both have to do with rocks in water, I can only reckon that the word goes all the way back to Babel, and that the Norse remember it wrong.

Eyvind and his wretches were bound in chains, tied with ropes and secured to the rocks. The warriors made a fire on the shore nearby and sat down to wait, and the bishop and I joined them.

There was little talk among us, for it was a nasty business we were about, but there was noise from the skerry—shouting and cursing, and weeping and the singing of spells.

And as time passed and the surf swelled, the voices began to scream, and their screams were loud and long and terrible.

The screams rose as the waters rose, and the shrieks of the drowning men became one with the roar of the sea, and it seems to me still, whenever I hear waves crash, that I hear the voices of those lost souls sinking into Hell.

But the screams grew less at last, as one and another heads were covered, and at last there was but one voice, and it was Eyvind Kellda's, and his shouts were curses, on the king and the bishop and Norway and me.

Then only the waves.

After many minutes, one of the warriors said, "There's nothing more to do here. Let's leave the corpses to the crabs."

So they went back to the hall, and the bishop went with them, and I was left alone with the sea and the dead.

I don't know why I went down to the water. No, that's not true. I have an idea, I just don't like to believe it.

I was wearing a robe for the festival, so it was no trouble to kilt it up in my belt, pull off my shoes, and wade into the surf (bone-chilling cold it was, too—shocking as a cane across the shins). The men lay under the water, floating boneless like dead fish on a stringer. I waded over to Eyvind Kellda's pale form and said, "What manner of man were you?"

And his eyes opened.

I could not help myself. I'd seen enough of this kind of thing. I pulled my eating knife from my belt and sawed at the ropes that bound his hands.

When they were free, the hands came up and fastened about my neck.

* * *

When I came to my senses I was rocking in the wet bottom of a boat, bound hand and foot. I thought for a confused moment that I was back in the slave ship with Maeve. I lay close beside something wrapped in a piece of woolen sailcloth that felt very like a stiffening body.

I looked up to see Eyvind Kellda at the oars. When he noticed I was awake he gave me a kick in the head that sent me under again.

* * *

I woke with a headache right out of Lemming's forge, in darkness slashed by a single, large light that turned, on scrutiny, into a fairly large campfire. My wrists and ankles ached and my hands and feet were numb, bound behind me.

There was a whimpering nearby, and I twisted to see a young woman—a thrall judging by her whitish garment and short-cropped hair—lying bound close by.

Footsteps approached, and Eyvind Kellda towered over me.

He squatted next to me and regarded me as one might a hog marked for slaughter.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"An island. One of hundreds. Nobody's about, so yell all you like."

"What are you going to do to us?"

"Do you see that boat over yonder?" he asked. I twisted my head and made out a boat shape in the shadows, sitting atop a pile of something or other.

"In that boat lies the body of my friend Bjorn. He was the best friend I've had in a long, long life, and your king drowned him on the skerry. I shall give him a Norse funeral of the old kind—I'll burn him in the boat. You will be sacrificed in his honor."

"And the girl?"

" 'Twould be a shame to send him to Valhalla without a woman."

"Has she no say?"

"Of course not, no more than form. She's a woman, and less than that, a thrall. You know, one of the things that makes your religion move so slowly among men in this land is the way you dignify women. Your god's mother, and the one-wife rule, and a single heaven for men and women alike—these are slaps in the face to men with blood in them.

"I've seen a land where wives are burned alive on their husbands' funeral pyres. I thought of doing that for Bjorn, but I felt he'd prefer the old ways of this land. So I'll strangle the girl first. Am I not merciful?"

Tears came up in my eyes. "If I had salvation to offer you, Eyvind Kellda, I'd let you drop into Hell. I cut your bonds. I freed you from the rocks. And you repay me with murder. This girl, who never did you any harm, you'd murder too."

Eyvind laughed then, deep and hearty. "You are so blind, Christian man. You know nothing of the way of god."

"Returning evil for good is not the way of God."

"Those words! Evil and good! What do they mean? Is it good to take care of your parents? What if you steal to do it? Is it evil to break a promise? What if you promised to kill someone? The more you think about good and evil, the less you know. It's like a song that has meaning in a dream but is known for babble when you wake."

"What kind of god do you believe in who cares nothing for good or evil?"

"The more you speak the more you show your blindness. There is no god. Not in the way you think."

"No god? You say this world doesn't exist, that there's only spirit. Now you tell me there's no god. How can there be a spirit world if there's no god?"

"How do you explain light to the blind? How do you explain coupling to children? It would take a very long time, and—I'm sorry—you don't have much time."

"Then I'll tell you. Good and evil exist. They exist because they match the character of God. At the last day He will judge each man according to His law, which He has placed in each of our hearts. And on that day He will send murderous coxcombs like you to the hottest fires of Hell."

Eyvind laughed merrily and struck me backhand. "Talking to you is like talking to a child who believes the world ends at the home-field fence. Killing you will be like killing a child. It ought to be fun."

"At Erling's hall you said each soul is reborn in a higher or lower form. How do they judge what you've deserved if there's no good or evil? And who judges, if there's no god?"

" 'Tis not a question of good and evil. 'Tis a question of enlightenment," said Eyvind, as a man speaks to an idiot.

"Why is a man higher than an ape or a horse?" he went on. "Not because he's kinder. A man is crueler than any beast. He is higher because he's cannier. He knows more. He has wisdom those beasts cannot match.

"I am higher than you because I see clearly. A man like you looks within himself and is appalled at what he sees. Because he cannot accept what he is, he looks for some soap to make him clean, like the blood of your Christ. But if you had true wisdom, which may happen in the life to which I now send you, you would accept what you are. This acceptance brings power. This acceptance brings godhood."

"You look to become a god?"

"I am a god. All that is, and all I do, is. It is not good, it is not evil, it simply is. Good and evil are but the fancies of minds uncontent."

"If I had you bound, and were ready to kill you, I wager you'd sing differently."

He cuffed me again. "It is very offensive to me that you keep judging me by these rules of yours.

"There is no injustice in the world. If you suffer pain, it is because in some earlier life you acted in unenlightened ways. It is not my fault if I am the cosmos' tool for working out the balance of your rebirth ring.

"Until you understand this, you will never be released from the ring. That's why all these things you do at Sola—freeing thralls, helping the poor—these are the closest things I know to what you call evil. They prevent the blind ones from working out their earlier lives' darkness."

"If I do it, am I not fated to do it, by your rules?"

He cuffed me again. "Don't talk back on matters you don't understand." I could feel my right eye swelling up. "If you had the misfortune to be born in an unenlightened land, you at least ought to have the decency to listen while your betters explain the facts of life."

"I don't believe in this enlightened land you talk of," I said, tasting blood in my mouth. "I don't believe there's anyplace in the world where they don't know about right and wrong. There is such a thing as natural law. Without it we'd sink to mere beasts."

Eyvind sighed. "Your ignorance wearies me. Of course the land I visited had morality. It had morality because most of its people were young souls, as they are in every land. But I found, as I have found everywhere, that those who have earned higher rebirth—the rich and the powerful—care less for rules than the lowborn. And that is simply one more proof that right and wrong are illusions belonging to the ignorant."

He got up and walked to a small keg near the fire. He broached it with a hand axe, dipped out a beaker of ale, and walked to the thrall girl.

He hunkered down near her head and said, "My dearest friend lies dead in that boat over there. What do you say to that?"

"I-I'm very sorry, I'm sure," the girl stammered.

"I don't think you're sorry. I don't think you care at all."

"No, my lord! I care very much. I'm sorry for your loss."

"Are you? How do I know you care? What will you do to prove it?"

"I don't know—anything you say, sir."

"Anything?"

"Of course. Anything!"

"Good. I have it from your own mouth that you will do anything to honor my friend Bjorn. Let it be known that you have willingly agreed to journey with him into Valhalla."

"No—" she cried, "I didn't—" But Eyvind pressed the beaker to her mouth and forced its contents down her throat, then walked away, leaving her coughing and weeping.

Eyvind crouched beside his friend's pyre and began singing a tuneless song whose words I could not make out.

I took that chance to do a priest's work. "What is your name, child?" I asked the girl.

"Gunn, my lord," she sobbed.

"My name is Aillil. I'm a Christian priest."

"Yes, I heard."

"I'm very sorry, but it looks as if we'll both be in the next world ere long. I have the duty—and the honor—of telling you that the Lord Jesus Christ will welcome you to His Heaven if you wish."

"Yes sir, that's very kind of you, sir."

So I told her the story, how God had come to earth as a man and died to save her from her sins.

"No, sir," the girl said. "Now you say too much. I'm sure He did what you say, but it wasn't for me. 'Twas for great folk—kings and jarls and hersirs and free men. If He's good enough to let the rest of us in with them, I'm most grateful. But don't tell me 'twas for me."

I said, "He told a story once about a shepherd. The shepherd had a hundred sheep. Nine-and-ninety of them stayed safe at home, but one wandered off. And the shepherd left the nine-and-ninety and went to look for the lone renegade. Do you know what this means?"

"No, sir."

"It means that even if you had been the only lost one in this world, He would have gone to the cross for you. There are no small ones in His sight."

"You swear this is true?"

"I'm not the best priest, but I've had a glimpse of His face. I know it's true.

"I've a crucifix—a carving of the Lord Christ on the cross. 'Twas made by a friend—a young man, a thrall like you. He stole a knife to carve it, and they hanged him for it, but he died in faith. The crucifix helped me rescue a girl from the folk inside the mountain, and perhaps my own soul as well—"

"You've been inside the mountain?"

"Aye. And I got out with the girl I went to rescue, and neither of us the worse for it. You see, the crucifix helped me remember that the Lord dwells in the place where death and danger are. When we're afraid—when we're facing death—if we remember to look for Him, He's with us. Especially in those places."

She wept then. "I'd decided to believe in your God already, because that man there by the fire despises Him, and anything he despises must be good. But this—I wish I'd known this before. I would have lived much otherwise than I did."

I took her confession then and prayed with her. There was no way to baptize her, so I troubled her no more with that requirement than the Lord did the repentant thief on the next cross.

Then Eyvind was standing over me, and I was not sure how long he'd stood there, or how much he'd heard.

"I've often wondered how you Christians condemn idolatry, yet treasure your holy bones and statues and bits of wood, and bow down to them, and pray to them. Was there ever such a mass of hypocrisy in one place as in the Christian church?"

He leaned down and probed cold fingers under my collar, pulling out Enda's crucifix on its leather thong. He snapped the thong with a jerk and straightened, examining my relic in the firelight. "Not very good work," he said, "and it's not even finished." With a flip of his hand he tossed it into the fire, not so much as looking to see whether it landed where he'd sent it. It did.

I screamed then, but that scream was as nothing to my cries as he dragged poor Gunn up near the boat and raped her, shouting, "Tell your master when you come to him in Valhalla that I did this in his honor!" And then he took a leather thong he'd secured to a peg in the earth, and choked the life out of her while he stabbed her to the heart with a knife.

'Twas like the rape of Maeve, when the Vikings took us, except that Maeve at least kept her life and what little hope goes with it. Gunn was soon a slack sack of bones which Eyvind swung into the boat at his friend's feet.

Then he turned back to face me.

"I'm waiting," he said.

I didn't dignify him with an answer.

"I'm waiting for you to preach at me, and tell me what an evil thing I've done, and what an evil man I am, and how I'll burn in Hell."

I croaked out of my swollen throat, "No, I don't think I'll do that. If I did, there'd be just the slightest chance that you'd repent and be saved. I don't think I want that to happen."

Eyvind laughed then, and as he laughed he walked toward me, his cord and peg swinging from one hand and his knife in the other.

Then I heard a horn, and I thought it was the angel of death coming for me, and there was shouting, and suddenly men were all around, running and yelling and waving their weapons, but after a few minutes all grew quiet, for there was nobody to fight, only a trussed-up priest and two bodies in a boat.

And there was Olaf Trygvesson, in a gilded helmet with eyeguards and a fine knee-length brynje, shouting, "Where the Hell is Eyvind?"

And there was Erling Skjalgsson, kneeling with a knife to cut my bonds.

And I croaked, as I rubbed my wrists and stabs of pain skewered my hands and feet, "Eyvind was here a minute ago. How did you find me?"

As if in answer, Deacon Ketil of York came to look down at me. "You despised my Sight, Father, but it saved your life this night."

"I could wish you'd come a few minutes earlier," said I.

"Why?"

"Because of the girl Eyvind slew."

"Girl?" He looked around a moment as if he didn't know the word. "Oh," he said then, "you mean the thrall."

He spoke as if thralls were beneath a deacon's notice. I was suddenly whelmed with a desire to throttle this man who'd saved my life. I made to get up, but lances of pain in hands and feet brought me down and curled me up on my side.

I heard Olaf's voice shouting, "He's slipped the net! Dump those bodies in the sea and let's be gone."

I screamed at the top of my voice, "THE GIRL DIED IN FAITH! SHE GOES INTO HOLY GROUND!"

 

Back | Next
Framed


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