We took it in turns to watch through the nights with Erling the first week, his mother and Halla and I. Sometimes he wrestled hell-things in his sleep, and then he'd wake, staring and sweating, and we'd have to hush him like a child ridden by the nightmare.
Once when this had happened, and he knew at last that the voice with comforting words was mine, he said, "Father Aillilyour father was killed."
"Aye, my lord."
"If someone had asked you to dig up your father's corpse, and look on his face, would you have done that?"
"Never."
"No. No man would, willingly. A rotting corpse is not your father. If an enemy had cut him up after he died, it would anger you, but you'd not feel his honor had been touched. Decay is the same, a foul desecration of a corpse, but no harm to him.
"I saw my father walk again though, Father. The eyes that watched when my first arrow hit its mark, the mouth that smiled when I wrestled my cousin Thorgeir to the ground and made him yield, the tongue that called me a fool and a woman when I was baptizedthey were all there, in that hellish blue light. They mocked me. They shamed my father. They told me that everything I believeand everything he believedis a lie. They said that life itself is a lie, because it promises goodness and hope and love, and all that awaits is death and rot. They said that the real rulers of the world do not think and do not feel and care nothing for good or evilthey merely are. And someday even they will not be. They said that those who build high and those who dig deep are the same, because all will end in a level ruin."
"This was the wickedest of devils, my lord."
"Aye. But I did not let it defeat me."
"No, my lord."
"That's all you can do with a walker-again, you know. Not let it defeat you. You can't kill it. You can drive it from its corpse, but it will find another. Then someone must fight it again. The fight goes on all our lives. We shall not see the end of the battle before Judgment Day."
"We need not be fighting all the time," I said. "God gives His beloved sleep."
"You mistake me. I'm not wearynot in my soul. In my father's walker-again I saw that thing you priests call evila twisting, a decay of what was noble. I hate evil now. I hate it with a pure hate. I will be strong for the Lord, and I will plant His church here, and woe to any man who stands in my way!"
The Norse call the time between mid-August and mid-September "Corn-cutting Month." It brought the finest weather I'd seen in Jaeder (it only rained half the time). The haying was done; all the grass on the farm had been cut and ricked for the winter, along with heather from the hills. Now the free men and thralls worked together to cut the oats, rye and barley with their sickles. The air was dusty and sweet, the skies occasionally blue, and nobody expected me to join in the work. People said I had mastered the gods, and they bowed when I passed. My little church was full every Sunday. Even Ragna asked for baptism. Perhaps God was pleased with me after all.
Erling had dragged himself out of bed, over our protests, the second week. He had walked three steps and fallen, but each day he went a little further, and before two more weeks were done he was swinging a sword in the yard and wrestling short bouts with Eystein. He laughed and drank in the now-completed hall with his men as before, except that he was short with Soti, who took to eating in his own house.
Erling's new hall stood bright and handsome, carved and painted in red and gold, a landmark from anywhere in the neighborhood. He had replaced the old box-bed-in-the-corner sleeping arrangement for the master with a loft room above the entry room, reached by an outside stairway. When Halla was not standing in the steading, spindle at work, eyes on Erling, you could generally find her in the weaving house, working on a tapestry of David and Goliath for the wall.
There was a stranger who lived in my clothes, who heard confessions and said masses and preached little homilies and comforted the sick. He seemed a decent fellow, sincere and faithful and compassionate, though oddly unlifted by his success. But at night, when he closed up the church and went to his house to lie in the arms of his leman, he vanished quite, and a carnal Irishman named Aillil took his place. Only, when he lay in the darkness with her warm in his arms, he imagined she was Halla.
I'd best give my leman her name, since by now she was becoming a human to me, and not just "that woman." Her name was Steinbjorg. She came from a long line of thralls, she loved honey and being tickled, and she was terrified of thunder.
I'd done one thing for the sake of my conscience, lest I be an utter hypocrite. I changed the tonsure the Vikings had given me on the thrall-ship. I let the crown-hair grow out, and shaved my skull forward of a line across my head from ear to ear. This was the ancient Irish tonsurethe tonsure of Patrick and Columcille. It had been out of use for generations, and wearing it made me feel somehow less an imposter before God.
I was paring the tallow out of the candlesticks in the church one morning when Soti walked in. He stood by the doorway, arms folded.
"I've seen your holy place," he said. "It's only right you should see mine. Or would that frighten you?"
"Those that are with me are more than those that are with you," I said, setting the sticks aside and getting up. I followed him out.
"True enough, true enough," he said, as he led me down the lane. We walked in a light drizzle. We could not see the sea, although we could hear it. "It seems everyone wants to be a Christian now."
"I was speaking of the unseen world. One of our holy men said those words to his servant, then opened his eyes so he could see the armies of God camped around them."
"If your god has these great armies, then why did he let men kill him?"
"For the same reason a father would die for his childrento save them."
Soti shook his head. "No. It goes against decency. We must not think of the gods as our parents. It sets us too high. Your god humbled himself, let himself be shamed, and you glory in his shame. Do you not see that it eats all law? If the great are to be low, and the base are to be high, then someday thralls will bear swords, and lords will carry dung. This cannot be."
"Christ came to satisfy the law, and fulfill it."
"No. This thing of yours is the end of law. My gods uphold the law. When they are gone wolves will swallow the sun and moon, and winter will last a hundred years."
"Law is good," I said. "It keeps us from tearing each other to bits. But there is a better thing than law."
"Yes there is, but it's not a thing for men. Look therethere you see my holy place!"
It was outside the walls, at the west end of the hill, overlooking the sand above Sola Bay, a stone house with a turf roof.
Soti opened the door and led me inside. It was much like any other house in Jaeder, except that there was a sort of dais built at the far end, topped by a number of carved and painted wooden poststhree large ones at the center and a number of smaller ones grouped around them. The light from the hearth fire was poor, but that only made the images more threatening, full of imminence.
"Sticks of wood," I said. "When the swallows soil them they cannot clean themselves, and when the rats chew them they cannot shoo them off. Your gods are rotting, Soti."
"And does your god float in the air if you drop him during your magic meal?"
"The Eucharist is a mystery. You wouldn't understand."
"These images are mysteries also. Do you think I believe these posts are all there is to my gods? My gods are far greater than these posts! But in the images I meet them, and they speak to me. They speak truly."
"They speak half truly, perhaps. Enough to get men killed, and damned."
"If the gods wish a man dead, is that not their right? Does your god ask leave when he takes a life? You call your god trusty, but in your heart you know him ruthless and forsworn as my gods. Lookhere is Odin" he pointed to the tall post furthest to our left, a figure with a hole for one eye, and a long beard and a spear in one hand. "Odin is the wisest of the gods. He knows all that happens in all the worlds, and he knows all that happened in the past, and all that will happen to the end. He works magic by unspeakable rites. He gives victory to his favorites, but he betrays them all in the end. I say it openly, for it is true. Are any people so wise as the Norse, who trust not even their gods?"
"You are to be pitied," said I. "Your chief god is a liar."
"Odin is not chief god. Oh, some will say so. Kings and jarls and hersirs and poets. They think they see one of their own in Odin. But the bonders know better. They know that when you choose a god, it's plain power you want. Have you ever seen plain power, god-man?"
I thought of my scrap with Lemming.
"Whatever you're thinking of, it's not even close. I have felt power. I was struck by Thor's hammer. He left his mark on me to carry to my grave. If they dig up my bones a thousand years hence they'll trace its black stain on my skull.
"Look on Thor!" He pointed to the image at the center, built wider than the other two, with a spiky red beard and great round eyes and a hammer in one hand.
"It was when he struck me down that I saw how little I was, and how great is the sky. I saw myself less than a gnat, less than a grain of dust that the breeze carries off. It was in kindness that Thor showed me this. I, who have felt his power, can never fear a man againeven you, god-manand I know that when Thor takes time to notice you and your insults to him, he will crush you as a man crushes a louse between his fingernails, and with less concern.
"But even if you should somehow evade the hammer, you are not safe. Look on the last of the great threehis name is Frey."
Frey was the worst. In Odin's and Thor's images there had at least been some hint of majestythe kind of glory you found in the ancient gods whom worthies like Virgil and Alexander had worshipped. But the round little eyes of Frey were the eyes of a swine, and he grinned an idiot grin on top of the long beard he stroked, and with the other hand he grasped an enormous phallus, fully the size of one of his legs. Most idiots I've known have been decent fellows, but if you can imagine an evil idiot, he would look like Frey.
"Any man who could worship that would be happy in Hell," I said, looking away.
"Yet I think if you are likely to bow to one of these three, it will be Frey," said Soti.
"You lie."
"And how is Steinbjorg these nights? I always found her most warming when the weather grew cold. There was a thing she used to do with her toes"
I wanted to flee that place of abomination. Instead I said, "All right, how much?"
"How much for what?"
"For Steinbjorg. She serves you days but sleeps in my bed. It's unhandy for both of us. Name a price and I'll buy her."
Soti smiled. "No, I think not," he said. "You just go on enjoying her, god-manor turn her out, it's all the same to me. I'll name my price when the time is right."
"You're trying to put a hook in my mouth."
"I have a hook in your mouth. You've taken it and run with it. I'll pull you in in my own time. Enjoy the bait, but remember who holds the line."
"Lines can be broken."
"By big, strong fish. Are you a strong fish, god-man?" Soti stepped nearer. "I know your secret wound, man of Ireland. I can't say who it wassomeone close to youa woman or a girl, I think. You wonder why there was a miracle for Lord Erling, and none for her. And you fear the answer your heart knows, that she was lost because she was nothing to your god. Like mine, he cares for the great ones, not for the little ones. They fall and he marks it not, for his eyes are on great dooms and high deeds. But he has said it is not so, and that makes him a liar, and you cannot bear that."
I said, "If I understood all I would be God, and I am not. He who would believe must endure to have a few questions unanswered." And I turned and left the shrine before he could reply, as if my answer had been a strong one.
Coming out into the pale light, I saw Soti's daughter Freydis racing towards me along the path. Whatever the smith's and his wife's sins, they must have been good parents, for their daughter was as smiling and sweet as she was fair. She wore a green frock this morning, and she beamed at me.
"Father Aillil!" she cried. "See the pretty stone I found!"
She held it out for inspection, and I pronounced it a pretty stone indeed.
"Is my papa in the shrine? I want to show him my stone."
I said, "Do you go to the shrine often?"
"Oh yes. Is papa there?"
"Do you like the shrine?"
She laughed at me. "It's just the shrine. It's where the gods live. You don't believe in the gods, do you? They'll kill you some day."
I sighed. "Yes, your papa is in the shrine," I said, and walked back to the steading. I spent an hour in prayer.
Title: | The Year of the Warrior |
Author: | Lars Walker |
ISBN: | 0-671-57861-8 |
Copyright: | © 2000 by Lars Walker |
Publisher: | Baen Books |