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CHAPTER XXI

Come morning we rowed out of the harbor and northward to Tungeness, where we caught a northwest wind to take us southeastward, between the mainland and Bokn Island. We were heading straight for Stavanger as a matter of fact, but that wasn't our goal. Ours wasn't a very good wind—'twas light and prone to fades and shifts, but we made slow progress, rowing when needed. Erling paced the stern like a hound in a pen.

"Peace, young man," said Helge, leaning over the side as if enjoying the view. "Eyvind does not yet guess we follow him. When he does know, 'twill be too late for him."

"He's slipped death more than once ere now," Erling answered. "Why should this time be different?"

"He's never before dealt with one who saw him as he is." And Helge turned back to his sightless seeing.

At Helge's bidding we turned due east to enter the Aamoyfjord (which isn't a proper fjord at all but a passage between two islands), then passed between Hidle and Heng Islands, and my mouth watered at the sight of our landing place at Tau. There were boathouses there, and a pier to which we made fast.

As we disembarked, Helge said, "The shudder of our feet on fast land gives Eyvind the alarm. He knows we are here."

Erling said, "Then surely we must leave you behind, Helge, and make speed."

Helge answered, "He does not yet know I see him. He thinks you come by chance. Therefore he trusts his cloak of darkness and makes no haste. But let us go speedily by all means."

It was about midday when we started up a well-trodden, steep cattle path into the mountains. We could not see their upper slopes for the mist.

"We'll not climb far unless this fog burns off," said Erling.

"Just come with me, my lord," said Helge. "Think of me as a local pilot on an unknown coast. 'Tis my job to know where to take you, and your job to let me do mine."

Erling had no answer to that. So we trudged uphill. I wasn't as fit as the warriors, and would have fallen behind except that we all had to match our pace to Helge's. Someone had cut him a staff; he leaned on it as he climbed steadily, neither quickly nor slowly, showing no special weariness.

We passed out of the sun into the moon-white, limbo-like country of the clouds. The air grew chill on our sweaty backs, and all sounds muffled.

"You have the helm, pilot," said Erling. "If any man loses sight of the rest, sing out! We don't want anyone pitching off the mountain."

We climbed in column, and the further we climbed the colder and quieter it grew. Soon I wished I'd brought my cloak, and I noticed that some tree branches bore traces of rime—for which it was too early in the year and too low on the mountain.

"I've hunted in these parts many a time," said Steinulf. "But if I lost myself now I'd have no inkling where to go, other than downhill."

"Hush!" said Erling.

"Why?"

Erling paused before he answered. "I don't know."

But no one spoke again for a time in any case. I felt—and I think all felt the same—that something or other was best not disturbed.

We labored uphill. We shivered. We could see our breath, and the back of the man in front of us, and a few trees near the path edge, and little else. For the rest we might have been in Hy Braseal, for all we could tell.

And then it seemed to me that the mist faded, for the light grew brighter and I could make out more.

All I saw was trees, mountainside trees that grow slantwise to the earth out of piety for the sun, but they were remarkable trees. They were mostly oaks, crooked and black and wind-wrenched, bending their knobbly limbs like old men with lumbago. In fact, the more I looked, the more they resembled crooked old men. I could swear one of them had a face, and eyes—in fact more than one of them had something like a face—an angry face. I could see an angry face on every one if I let my mind dwell on it. . . .

It was when one of them moved that I began to scream.

I did not scream alone.

Most of our party, hardened bullyboys all, took to their heels and vanished downhill to dissolve from our hearing in shouts and clatterings and crashings.

But the bodyguard, the sworn men, God bless them, knew their calling. They formed a circle around Erling, overlapping their shields to protect him. The shield-fort, I was pleased to note, also took in Helge and me. I think these men were no less frightened than the others, but they had sworn their oaths. Irishmen could have done no better.

"Be easy!" cried a voice, and I realized that Helge had been shouting, unheard, for some time. I felt his hand on my shoulder. He was going about the circle, touching each man and speaking in his ear to calm him.

"Be easy!" he repeated. "These are but shadows. 'Tis Eyvind's work—look! They seem to come ahead, but they never close with us. They can do you no harm if you keep your wits!"

Our shouting quieted as we saw that he spoke truth. The trees appeared to move in, dragging their trains of root, reaching out wizened arms to grasp us, but it was only a show. They walked and walked, and got no nearer. The moment I knew this, the seeming ended and the mist crowded in again.

"Eyvind falls prey to his own gullings," said Eyvind. "He thinks all creatures have spirits, and thinks he can rouse them. We know better, and so we are untouched."

"Except for losing most of our company," panted Steinulf.

" `Not by might, nor but power, but by My Spirit,' " said Helge. "What I mean to do tonight I could do alone, but I bring you all as witnesses."

"A shock like that is itself a wound," said I. "I'm not sure I can suffer many of its like and live."

"You of all men should have no fear for that. You carry a talisman to help you see aright."

"What?"

"That crucifix that hangs about your neck."

"But this isn't Enda's cross. 'Tis Ulf the Viking's. There's no power in it!"

"Nor was there power in the other, except to remind you what is true. For that purpose this one will work as well as the other."

I bristled at that—it seemed a slight to poor Enda, but I hadn't the face to argue the matter.

Helge set out again, his staff tapping on the stones, and we followed, our heartbeats slowing by stages. He led us unerringly, finding the fords or bridges where we crossed running water, and the causeways where our path leveled and passed through mires.

It seemed the evening must be coming at last, for the mist thickened. I began to wonder if we'd be marching into the night, when human forms appeared—of a sudden—before us.

They emerged, one after another, out of the mist. There, again, was the Englishwoman I'd raped. There were my father and mother and my brother Diarmaid, who had died under the Vikings' axes, and Maeve of course. There was Steinbjorg my woman, holding our baby, whom I'd not protected, and Halla, who had died in the bed of a man she did not love.

All of them stared at me and stretched their arms out and cried, "Aillil! If only you'd been a better man—a better son or brother or husband or father—or Christian at least—we'd have been spared our fates."

Ah Lord! How cruel to give us power to choose, and to let our choices bear fruit so heavy and venom-ripe! We are not wise enough to live in your world! We're like parents plucking our children from a burning house—if we take one, another will be lost, and to choose one over another at all is to sin against love. 'Tis a game without rules, played blindfolded on a log bridging a chasm, and all the moves are losing moves. The game itself is punishment enough—what need of Hell?

Then I felt once again that hand—the palsied hand of an old man—on my shoulder, and I came to myself and saw Helge staring me in the face. I could hear weeping and cursing all about me, and knew that every man was seeing a like vision.

"Father!" Helge cried. "You must give these men absolution!"

"Absolution!" I wept. "How can I give what I myself cannot receive?"

"Have you no faith at all? Don't you see this is but another trick of Eyvind's?"

"Even the devil can speak truth now and again," said I. "I've done what I should not, and left undone what I should—"

"The crucifix, man!" Helge grasped my hand and dragged it up towards my breast. "Have you forgotten what the crucifix means?"

The moment I touched the thing, my head began to clear like clouds at noonday. I knew that I forgave Ulf, who'd carved it, and how could I do such a thing except in the strength of a greater mercy? The Lord Christ had endured much evil from men, and yet suffered to the utmost for their good; if sin was a mountain as big as the world, yet His death-cry had rooted it up and cast it into the sea.

"These men haven't confessed to me—" I said, shaking my head to clear it.

"Yet general shrift is often given before battle. Believe me, Father—this is a battle to put Hafrsfjord in the shade."

So I went about to each man, pushed him down on his knees if he wasn't kneeling already, and spoke the words of absolution loudly in his ear. 'Twas like blindfolding skittish horses. One by one they went quiet, and at last all were still. Only then did I look about and see that my ghosts were gone. Now it was deepest dark on the mountainside, and we felt rather than saw the mist.

"I'd fear this night, if I'd not just seen what I fear yet more," said Erling (I wondered what visions he'd seen). "Lead on, Helge, we follow."

Each man hooked his hand in the belt of the man ahead, and I grasped Helge's belt, and we toiled snakewise up the path. We stumbled and stubbed our feet on rocks. All things were upended, for now all of us were blind and only Helge saw, and we could do naught but trust him.

Ask me not how long we trudged, stumbling and cursing, until we came suddenly on a rock wall, lighted faintly by a glowing that spread from twin caves, set side by side before us.

A different scene appeared in each of the caves. In the cave to the right there seemed to be a wide, white desert, sand on sand in wavy drifts under a brazen sky, such as traveled men say you find in Eastland. My tongue parched just looking at it.

Through the entrance to the cave on the left we saw a lush, green valley, watered by a rushing stream, shaded by trees that bore bright-colored, outland fruits. Graceful beasts bounded through thick-carpeted meadows, and birds hued like butterflies flew overhead.

" 'Tis a riddle," said Erling, looking back and forth between them. "No doubt one way leads to our goal; the other over some cliff or the like. Which way do you judge we should go, Helge?"

For a reply, Helge vanished before our eyes.

We stood thunderstruck all together a moment.

"Helge!" cried Erling. "Helge! Where are you?"

"Can he have been a seeming all this time?" asked Steinulf. "Has Eyvind been leading us through him?"

"I think not," said I. "I touched him; I'd swear he was real. My guess is that he must have pushed ahead of us, and Eyvind put a seeming in his place. Or perhaps he's here yet, and Eyvind has stopped our eyes and ears to him."

I clutched my crucifix and looked about, but it threw no light on the puzzle.

"Naught to do then but riddle it out ourselves," said Erling. "Were I Eyvind, I suppose I'd go the unpleasant way, hoping that we'd choose the easy one."

"Perhaps . . . " said I.

"But then that seems overeasy. Eyvind is cleverer than that. So perhaps he chose the pleasant way, to confound us."

"I think we must remember what Eyvind believes," said I. "Each of the earlier seemings grew out of his faith. He believes in spirits everywhere, so we saw walking trees. He believes all sin is punished, in this life or another, so he tormented us with guilt. Now here I see him looking at the world. To him all the pleasures of the flesh—food and drink, for instance—are illusions. So he would reject them and choose the way of the desert where he is nearer the nothingness he worships."

"Then 'tis your counsel to go the desert way?" asked Erling.

"Well—" I said, not wanting the burden of this choice.

"My counsel would be to go the pleasant way nonetheless," said Erling at last.

"I don't follow," said I.

"To hunt a beast you must think like the beast, but you must remain a man the while. If you became wholly like the beast you might be a great hunter, but you'd be a werebeast, not a man hunting.

"While we hunt Eyvind we must know how he thinks, but we must not think as he does. We know that the world, and its delights, are not an illusion, because our Lord became a man in this world, and if His deeds in the body were but seemings, then our salvation is a seeming. Therefore we must declare what we believe before God and Eyvind and all Watchers and Holy Ones, by choosing the door of the flesh, in which we rejoice and suffer, and walk in the steps of the Beloved."

"A noble thought," said Steinulf. "But will it bear our weight if we step out into thin air?"

"If I must fall," Erling answered, "let me fall from the height of a noble thought. This time I go first."

And before we could protest he strode forward, spear in hand, and entered the leftward cave. He vanished from our sight in a moment.

"Well, that's done it. Hey for the warrior's road," said Steinulf, and he followed. One by one the bodyguard passed into the illusion, until I stood alone.

I took a deep breath, muttered a prayer, and passed through the gate of Paradise.

 

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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