Erling spent the night praying in the church, knees on cold stone. I tried to keep vigil with him, but fell asleep.
"This has gone far enough!"
The voice of Ragna woke me. She swept in followed by a serving woman.
"What kind of troll's cavern is this place? Give us light!" The serving woman had come prepared with a soapstone lamp, and she went, very irreverently, up to the altar and lit my tallow candles.
"Mother, this is a church," said Erling, rising stiffly.
"That means nothing to me. I have words for you, and they will be said. And you will listen!"
"Of course, Mother." Erling sat on the bench.
"Do you know what they say out there?"
"I suppose they're saying that the gods are against me and my luck is gone."
"They say that. They also say that the ancient kings of Rogaland have heirs in Ireland, and perhaps it's time to call them back."
Erling stretched his neck. "I thought it was something like that."
"And what do you intend to do about it?"
"I will catch whatever's doing this, and kill it."
"Even if it's your father?"
"Not my father. His walker-again. Just a devil in his body."
"Slowly, one bit at a time, you cast aside everything that ever you believed, everything your father and I believed."
"I must do what is right."
"People are dying, Erling! Your people are dying. First it was a thrall. Last night it was a free man. Tomorrow night it will be a warrior, or perhaps one of us. When you are dead, who will look to my welfare?"
"We have many kin, Mother, if it comes to that, but it won't come to that. I will stop this thing."
"Bait not the gods, my son! You are strong and brave, but you are not stronger and braver than fate! You are proudlike your father and his father, and Horda-Kari and all the rest of that blood. And my blood tooI come of proud stock also. But there is such a thing as too much pride. Ask your priestis there not a sin of pride?"
Erling said, "Please go now, Mother. I want to speak to my priest."
"I'll go and sew your shroud. If you are set on making me weep, I must be prepared."
She gusted out, and Erling remained sitting and ran his hands over his face. "I've prayed most of the night, Father. I thought there'd be a sign from God."
"And?"
"Nothing. Not a word. Am I too proud? Was my father right? Is it folly to hazard your life over a footling matter like food, or a goat buried under a doorway?"
The man fed me to be his priest, so I answered him as a priest.
"My lord, when the early Christians were martyred in Romaborg, all that was asked of them was to sprinkle a little incense on an altar. They didn't have to pray to or believe in the false god, just go through a ceremony that even their enemies didn't believe in. But they would not. They let themselves be burned alive, and torn by wild beasts; they let their flesh be ripped by pincers. They accepted it not only for themselves, but for their wives and children, and they shouted encouragement to them as they watched them die. It was a stubborn thing they did, and wrongheaded from any sensible point of view. But it was not pride. And in the end they won, although they never lived to see it."
"Yes," said Erling. "That's what I learned from the sagas when I was a boy. That it matters not when you die, or by what means, but only how you face it. A young man in a tight place, facing deadly odds. Such was Christ himself, at the battle of Calvary."
What would he have done had I counseled him to be sensible? Why didn't I counsel him to be sensible? I truly do not know.
Erling said, "I must find a place to sleep or I won't last the night."
I said mass for the two of us, and he went out. I snuffed the candles and went to my own house to sleep. My stomach whimpered like a dog at the door, and sleep, along with a draught of well water, was the only relief I could offer it.
Halla called to me as I was going inside, and I stayed to greet her.
"You've got to stop him," she said.
"I cannot. I wouldn't if I could."
"He'll be killed!"
"If you wanted a man unlikely to be killed, you should have chosen a herdsman or a farmer." Or a priest, I might have added, except that in this land priesthood was risky.
"If it were only men, I wouldn't be afraid! Erling can defeat any man!"
"Well you should be afraid of men. There are such things as arrows."
"Fighting the gods is different!"
"We fight the gods every day, my daughter. Odin with his deceit, Thor with his anger, Frey with his lustthey all live within us, and they threaten terrible things if we deny them their sacrifices. A Christian must learn not to believe their lies, even when they seem truth of all truth. Even when it means death . . ."
"I'll be glad when you're dead!" she shouted. "If you have to be a martyr, good for you. But my Erling!" She ran off, weeping.
Cold eyes, yellow-green and round. "Why do you say such things? Why are you so cruel? You are no martyr. If you had lived in those early days, you'd have sprinkled all the incense they asked for, and thanked them. Whom do you look to impress by this self-slaughter?"
"No!" I said through clenched teeth, and covered my ears to keep out the voice of the dragon.
"It's time."
Erling, standing in my doorway, woke me. I shook myself and got up to join him.
"Are you hungry?" he asked.
"I could eat that old cheese you Norwegians like."
"Then let's be done with this, and we'll eat till we burst."
"It'll be Friday in the morning."
"Then we'll eat all the fish in the sea."
We set out together for the hall site. No work had been done there that day. There was a sliver of moon. The sun balanced on the horizon, ready to tip off for the short night.
We sat facing each other, our backs against two of the pillars.
"What are those birds you have painted on your shield?" I asked him.
"Eagles."
"Why did you choose that emblem?"
"I watched two eagles battle once. I thought it the grandest thing I'd ever seen. Soaring and spinning, talons and beaks, far above the earth. If men could fight that way, would they have the courage?"
"I think you would, my lord. That's not flattery. I've seen you fight."
Erling laughed. "Everyone talks about my duel with Aki Eriksson, the easiest of my life. He fought like a sheep. My mother could have killed him. But folk tell the story as if I did something great. I think some day I may regret killing that half-wit."
"Why so?"
"Sigurd Eriksson, his brother, is a good man, and a Christian. They tell a tale about him. They say that when he was serving King Valdemar in Russia he visited a marketplace in Estonia. There he saw a handsome thrall lad. He thought the lad looked wonderfully like his own sister Astrid, widow of King Trygvi Olafsson of the Vik. Astrid had disappeared years before, fleeing Norway by ship. When he spoke to the boy, he learned he was indeed Astrid's son Olaf, and that they'd been caught by Vikings and sold into thralldom.
"He bought the lad and set him free, and they say he's a man grown now, a great warrior and a Christian. I'd like to meet this Olaf Trygvesson. I think Jarl Haakon may have come to the end of his thread
"What's that sound?"
I listened. "Footsteps. A lot of them. Coming towards us."
"Do you think all the gods are coming?"
I began the Pater Noster as we stood and faced the noise, trampings up the walled path. Erling held his shield before him, spear ready, and I held the crucifix high.
It was dark now, and they were shapes in the dimness as they approached, twenty, fifty of them. Starlight glinted on helmets, spear points and shield bosses.
"Lord Erling!"
"Steinulf!" shouted Erling. "I told you men to stay at Somme!"
Steinulf stepped forward. "We talked about it, my lord. We decided that you had no right to demand it. If you die alone, we are shamed for life. You have the right to command us to die. You have no right to command us to live."
"Not all of you are Christians. Did you all come?"
"Every man."
"Then it seems there's nothing I can do. Watch with us. We mean to end it tonight."
The wind blew colder, and clouds rode in on it, shrouding the stars. The men sat back to back, sharing warmth. It was black as Judas' grave.
"Three knots bind the heart;
Three links chain the mind;
Three words make a man a craven.
These are the knots that bind the heart:
Never to touch the fair girls again.
Never to drink the brown ale again.
Never to do the deeds that men remember."
I thought I'd heard the voice before. It sang on the wind, and it sang against the wind, and it sang under the wind.
"Three knots bind the heart;
Three links chain the mind;
Three words make a man a craven.
These are the links that chain the mind:
Never to hold your son in your arms.
Never to see your son raise a beard.
Never to sit by his side in the hall with
the warriors."
The wind came up stronger, and raindrops fell, cold as a river under ice, and I began shivering to rattle the flesh off my bones.
"Three knots bind the heart;
Three links chain the mind;
Three words make a man a craven.
These are the words that cravens make:
`Sometimes the arrow leaves you blind.
Sometimes the spear will leave you lame.
Sometimes the sword will geld you
and not kill you.' "
"A hymn, Father Aillil! Sing us a psalm!" It was Erling's voice, but it seemed very far away. I tried to sing, but my teeth were chattering. I bit my tongue.
The world was very black.
There was one light in all the world.
It came towards us, over the meadow, from the direction of Thorolf Skjalg's grave.
We all saw him. The men groaned. They wept. They yammered like dogs. Some shouted, "Thorolf! 'Tis my Lord Thorolf come out to walk again!"
He was a tall man, dressed in full armor, with shield and spear and sword at his belt. He glowed all over with blue fire. He was coming to us.
The men began to beat at the earth, and at the pillars, and at each other. "He walks again!" they cried. "He comes to make the sacrifice!"
"Run!" someone shouted. "We've got to run!" But no one ran. No one stood on his feet. A few tried to crawl, but most stayed in their places, kneeling or sitting, watching the walker-again come nearer and nearer.
"It's the battle-fetter!" someone cried. "Odin has set the battle-fetter on us!"
All the men groaned and rolled on the ground, and I rolled with them.
Thorolf came ever nearer. I could see his eyes now. They were green-yellow, round and cold.
"Death!" cried a man. "It is our death, each and all of us!"
The wailing rose like steam from a bog in winter.
Then a hand fell on my shoulder. I could not see the face of the man, but I knew his voice. Erling said, "A psalm, Father! I don't ask you to fight, but sing me a psalm that I may fightthat one about the mountains falling into the sea, and shaking!"
I set my forehead to the stones and tried to gather my wits. I found I still had the crucifix in my hands, gripped so tightly it was wet with my blood. I tried to moisten my lips. I licked the blood from my hands.
"Deus noster refugium . . ." I croaked.
"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her and that right early."
I could not see the fight that Erling fought. Only now and then the witchlight of the walker-again flickered, and I knew that flicker for Erling's shadow. I saw the demon cast his spear, and saw his mouth open in something like laughter. I saw him fend what must have been Erling's spears in return. I heard the whacking of blades on shields, and saw the dead man leap and whirl; and his leaps were head-high, and his whirls faster than birds' wings. I spoke my psalm again and again, gripping the crucifix as a drowning man clings to driftwood, and I wept for my lord, and all the men wept for him, and they cried, "My Lord Erling! My Lord Erling! I'd come to you if I could, but I am only a man, and not a hero, and I weep to see you die alone, as heroes always must."
And I found I was saying the same.
Faces blossomed before my inner eye.
My father saying, "Sparrow-heart! Stop wiggling or I'll leave the splinter in your flesh, and you'll carry it to your grave. Crying too? Such a baby! Are you my son or a heifer-calf?"
The abbot saying, "Hold still. You weren't afraid to transgress, now take your licks like a man!"
And a boy named Aoife who put his red face close to mine so I could smell his breath and said, "Now admit you're a liar or I'll break your finger. I'll do it tooyou know I did it to Dathi and I'll do it to you. I like the sound when the bone snaps. So say it. Say, `I'm a filthy liar.' Say it now. . . ."
I do not know how long it took. We watchedwe could not do otherwiseand it went on and on. Parry and thrust and leap and slash. Strike with the sword and strike with the shield boss. Circle and watch, then in with a flurry of blows.
But at last we knew that the morning was coming. And as the sun edged the eastern mountains, the battle-fetter was loosed. And we looked at one another, crouched and kneeling and wet and filthy, useless weapons flung about in the stones and dirt, and we were filled with shame, and groaned aloud. And we scrambled to our feet and rushed into the meadow.
Two bodies lay on their backs in the stubble.
One had once been Thorolf Skjalg. It was ugly and putrid but no longer a danger. Steinulf struck its head off with his sword so that it might not walk again.
The other was Erling, bloody and pale. We knelt about him, weeping. "Bjovulf can have died no better," I said.
"Sigurd died not so well," said another.
Someone else said, "He breathes!"
Title: | The Year of the Warrior |
Author: | Lars Walker |
ISBN: | 0-671-57861-8 |
Copyright: | © 2000 by Lars Walker |
Publisher: | Baen Books |