"What am I to do with you boys?" Erling asked the two hostages. "You went into the storehouse, which is forbidden, and opened the chests, which is twice forbidden, and scattered the seed grain, which is murder, and left the door open behind you so the rats and birds could go in, which is treason." We were all in Erling's hall, seated on the benches on both sides, and Thorir and Sigurd stood pale-faced before the long-fire facing the seat of judgment. Their freckles showed clearly against their bloodless faces, though they held their heads up.
Thorir, the younger and bolder of the two, stepped a little forward and said, "We are men of Halogaland. We do not stoop to planting seeds and grains and digging in the dirt. We live by hunting and fishing, whale-taking and the Lapp trade, occupations worthy of free men."
Erling sat still a moment before answering. "I suppose you do eat bread up in Halogaland, don't you? I mean, you don't just smear butter on dried codfish like the Iceland thralls?"
"Of course we eat bread. We eat the best barley and wheaten bread. Our foster father's is a landed man's table."
"And where do you think the bread comes from?"
Thorir looked puzzled, as if this were a new thought.
"I'll tell you where the bread comes from," said Erling. "It comes from me. It comes from grain and meal that I sell your foster father every year when he sends his knarr south to trade. If it weren't for my dirt digging, you'd be feasting on buttered codfish, free men or not."
This seemed to subdue Thorir, and he hung his head. But he yet looked sullen and gave no sign of bending.
"Because of what you've done, when your foster father sends his ships this autumn there'll be less for him to buy, and what there is will cost him more. So you've robbed him, just as if you'd broken into his treasure chests.
"Now all that remains is your punishment."
The boys shuddered visibly.
"Eystein!" called Erling. "Carry out the punishment."
Big dark Eystein came down the hearth-way with a hazel-wand in his hand. He gave each of the boys two sharp whacks across the buttocks. They gasped but did not cry out.
"Now watch your steps in future," said Erling, "and we'll say no more about it."
"That'sthat's all?" asked Sigurd, rubbing his backside, his eyes wide.
"Of course. What more did you expect?"
"Wewe thought you'd kill us."
"Kill you? What gave you that idea?"
"It's well known that Christians kill and torture men for the least wrongdoing."
Erling shifted in his seat. "I don't think even King Olaf would kill boys for a prank. But let me speak clearly so there'll be no misunderstanding.
"You came to Sola as hostages, surety for your foster father's submission to Olaf and the Christian faith. But I told you when you came, and I tell you now, that I rank you foster sons, not hostages. You will be treated and trained as I would sons of my own, and held to the same rule. You may not think so now, but I expect we'll be good friends before you go home."
The boys looked confused, but they knew their manners. "You do us honor, Lord Erling," said Sigurd.
"Not for the last time, I hope. Now go and play."
They do not plow in Jaeder, due to the particular rockiness of the soil. This seems no hardship to Norsemen, who turn the earth with iron-shod wooden spades (or send their thralls to do it) and will tell you smugly that "stones feed the ground."
The boys' transgression notwithstanding, there was plenty of seed for home and export purposes, God granting a decent summer.
So the thralls went out, spades on shoulders, and the air grew sweet with the breath of the mould, and the seagulls flew in to feast on bugs and worms they turned up. And in the evenings, you could watch Lemming and Ciaran and the company of freedmen drilling and practicing weapons' play with sticks and basket-woven shields. The company had a full three men for a start, but as the nights went on it grew to more than twenty-five. The bullyboys laughed at them, but not before Eystein.
The road-builders went out again too, Patrick the thrall and his friends, to make high the low places and make low the high places and make straight the way for Erling Skjalgsson and Sigurd Eriksson. They set out on a drizzly, gray morning. Patrick the thrall kissed his Dierdre good-bye, and started the others in a song as they tramped south along the highway.
'Twas the next day they came back, all of them save one, walking fast but weary, and casting many a glance over their shoulders.
"It was the berserkers," said one of them to Erling, who had rushed up from the fields to meet them. "Baug's men from Harvaland farm. They came to mock us at our workwell, you expect that, especially from berserkers. But they wouldn't quit. Njal the overseer tried to tell them to bugger off, but they started pushing, and then there were words and things got out of hand."
"Was anyone badly hurt?" Erling asked.
"Patrick is dead."
My heart sank.
"No more? They just came to their senses?"
"Berserkers? Not likely. No, it was the bear that saved us."
"Bear? You mean a man named Bjorn?"
"Noa real bear. A beast. A great white bear with blue eyes. It appeared suddenly and came between us and Baug's men. If we'd not been ready to run from them, we'd have run from the bear in any case. We ran as long as we could, but neither they nor it followed us. I hope the bear ate them all."
"I'll take some men and see to Baug Kollasson," said Erling. "And this bear must be looked to also."
More and more people, mostly thralls, were running toward us, and I looked around to see Deirdre coming. I rushed to meet her, but some busybody beat me with the news.
Her screams started the seagulls from the fields.
"This bear they tell of, was it a thing of this world?" Deirdre asked later that day.
We sat on a bench in one of the thrall's houses, where she and Patrick had lived. No one else was there except Asa, who had come along unasked, as if her place were at my side, my work hers to share. It felt strange, but it felt good also. Deirdre had wrapped herself in a blanket and her head glowed faintly against the gloom in the light from the smoke holes in the gables. She shivered from time to time and rocked her baby.
"There are white bears in Greenland, so I'm told. But never in Norway. No, that was no earthly beast."
"Was it of the devil then? One of the old gods in disguise?"
"I think not. I saw such a bear once before, in another world, and I believe it to be from God Jehovah."
"It was a bear from God," she said, so softly I could hardly hear.
"I believe so."
"And it saved those men."
"Yes."
"All but my Patrick."
I sighed. "Yes."
"A miracle. A miracle for all of them. All but Patrick and me."
"I've no explanation"
"Oh, I know the explanation. God hates me. He's always hated me."
"No. You mustn't think that. I know it seems hard and cruel, but you have to believe"
"I have to believe what I've seen. I have to believe what God has done in my life. He let me be taken from my home and made a slave in a strange land. He let a man of the bodyguard, all hairy and boozey, take my maidenhead when I was fourteen, and he let the same man set my baby out for the wolves because he didn't want to feed it. He gave me one moment of joy in my lifemy time with Patrickthen He took that away, along with all our future and our hopes. Tell me how God loves me, Father. Tell me how He loves my child. Tell me about His tender care."
"He does care, daughter"
"What did the Lord say? `By their fruits you shall know them.' You told us that in church. What shall I know by God's fruits? How has He shown His love for me?"
"You're in pain, daughter. I don't think God blames you for suffering. There's nothing I can tell you to change your mind, but I'll pray that He comforts you."
Asa said, "Go away, Aillil. Stop talking of things you don't understand. I'll see to this." She crawled over to Deirdre and took her in her arms, rocking her as she rocked the baby and cooed.
I left them there.
We led the ninety bullyboys southward along the road the next morning. Erling and I, Steinulf and Eystein rode horses; the rest marched. We were armed and we were angry. A light spume blew in from seaward.
"Do you think we can handle the berserkers?" I asked Erling as we rode.
"As far as I know there's not above twenty. I think twice double their number ought to serve."
About midmorning we met two horsemen coming northward. They thickened out of the mist like wraiths. It was Baug Kollasson, along with his brother Hoskuld.
"Erling Skjalgsson!" Baug called. "Well met!"
"I come on no neighborly errand," Erling called back.
"This I foresaw," said Baug. "My men broke the peace and did you offense. I come to make amends."
"What amends do you offer?"
"This," said Baug. He waved a hand at Hoskuld, who hopped down from his horse and came trotting up to us with a woolen sack in hand. I took the thing and he let go as though there were serpents inside.
"The heads of two of my berserkers," said Baug.
I dropped the sack (I meant no disrespect to the dead, but it was a shock).
"Two free men for one thrall," said Baug. "I call that handsome mansbot."
"I cannot gainsay that," said Erling with a frown.
"Then we are at peace?"
"For the moment."
Baug grinned and reined his horse around. He galloped away, Hoskuld following. Their figures faded as their hoofbeats muffled.
"Two of his own men," I whispered, as one of the warriors moved up to retrieve the sack. "He's a cold one."
"That's the trouble with this bargain," said Erling. "Two warriors mean less to Baug than one thrall to me. But I could hardly say so."
The wind out of the west strengthened as we returned, and brought rain to soak our woolens. When we got back to Sola, one of the thrall women trudged through the mud to me as I dismounted and told me, "You'd better see to Deirdre. She tried to hang herself in the old storehouse."
Erling and I went to the house where she lay under a blanket on a bench. She'd an ugly welt on her throat but had taken no lasting harm. The mischief of Sigurd and Thorir had profited for once. They'd found her in their exploring and cut her down.
She was thrashing about, held down by some of her friends. She cried, "No! No! I want to die! Let me die!" No need to shrive her, so I gave her a blessing, and Erling and I went out in the rain.
"Her man died in my service," said Erling. "I'll do what I can to make it good. It will fetch her freedom."
"Thank you," said I. "You'd better see the boys and give them some reward. This will be a chance to make friends."
"My very plan. Do you think the woman will be well?"
" 'Tis hard to say. It's not easy to keep someone in life if they truly wish to go west. But if we keep her under watch for a while, we might hope to have her come right."
"I'll see to it. She's no profit to me dead, and she seems a good enough woman."
The next day was fair and Erling rewarded Thorir and Sigurd by letting them practice weaponry with the bodyguard. This was a particular honor as they were playing the Baldur-game, too dangerous for children.
The Baldur-game went this way: The men were told off in two companies, each of which took turns casting blunt wooden spears and shooting blunt wooden arrows at the other, giving each side shield practice. Blunt weapons or not, such capers can put an eye out, and I watched with concern.
But the boys were quick and deft, and used their shields to good effect. No harm came to them, or indeed to any man else that day. It rattled on for some time, till both sides were well winded.
Then Erling stepped forward in his bright helmet and brynje, sword and shield in hand, and announced that he would play the true Baldur-game. A hush fell on the company, and the men eyed one another aslant.
I'd heard of the "true" game, but hadn't seen it since I'd been at Sola. I wasn't keen to see it now.
The legend of Baldur tells how the gods threw deadly weapons at him to honor him, for all things on earth had sworn an oath to spare him. But through the cunning of the demon Loki, a mistletoe plant had been overlooked in the oath-taking, and being cast at Baldur gave him his death-wound.
Erling was the only man in Norway (or anywhere) I ever heard of playing the "true" Baldur-game. When he played, the spears and arrows were steel-headed, and deadly sharp.
As I watched him set himself in his place in the meadow, the reluctant bodyguard massed a bowshot away, I found my fists clenching so that I must relax them lest the nails draw blood. Erling's face showed no emotion, except that his blue eyes blazed.
"Now!" he cried, and the archers let fly.
They did not spare him, for they knew his command and his temper. The arrow-storm they unleashed was just what they'd have loosed at Svein of Denmark, had he been there. And when the archers were done the spearmen ran closer and let go.
Erling was a marvel. I'd never seen anything like it, and I'd seen him fight before. Surely no man of flesh could move so quickly, pivot his shield so deftly, cut missiles from the very air with his sword so lightly. He seemed a blur in the light, as if he'd lost bodily presence and become a spirit without flesh to wound. The thing did not last long, but when it was done he called for a second volley, and a third.
When it was over, and it seemed hours to me, his men opened their throats and shouted, and banged their swords on their shields. "Erling!" "Erling!" He was the greatest warrior in the world (tell it not in Nidaros!), and he was their lord. I shouted too, and looked at my hands to see them smeared with blood.
Thorir and Sigurd were with the men, and they shouted as loud as any. So I understood why Erling had done this madness. He'd gotten himself two lifelong worshipers.
I took one of my seaside walks that evening, stopping a few minutes to watch the freedmen drilling in the meadow. I didn't know how they'd do as warriors, but it always warmed me to watch them. A few leagues southward along the shore I found Freydis Sotisdatter, wandering loose on her own like the wild creature she was. She stared southeastward over the wide crescent plain that faced the bay.
I walked up and asked, "What do you see?"
She started and turned to me. "Father! I was justthinking."
"What do you see, child?"
"How do you know I see something?"
"I know the look. Tell me what you see."
"I've seen it before. Just there. Only there. Never anywhere else. At the north end of the crescent. A bird."
"What kind of bird?"
"Not a true bird. An image of a bird. 'Tis plainly made of metalsilver, perhaps. It comes circling down to the ground there, and soars in to land. It doesn't flap its wings or suchit's just a flying image. And a doorI know it sounds mada door opens in its side, and a stairway comes down, andand people come out."
"Out the door?"
"Aye."
"Are they frightened?"
"No. Not at all. They laugh. They talk with one another idly, as if they were all doing something natural."
"That's a queer vision."
"What does it mean, Father?"
"I've no idea."
"Is it from God?"
"Who can say?"
She sputtered at me. "You're supposed to know these things! What use is it to have a god-man if he can't tell you about the mysteries?"
I don't know how I'd have answered if the sound of hoofbeats hadn't startled us. The sound came from the south and approached along the beach, and as it came we heard that death-screaming we both knew, and blue light began to cast shadows at our feet. I seized Freydis, clutched her to me and rolled into the weeds.
The great, gray headless horse galloped in view and crowded the sea out of sight, and we pasted our hands over our ears lest they burst with its screams. And when it was gone, and the screaming ended, we took our hands away and heard Arnor in the distance, crying, " 'Tis the horse! The horse!"
The next day I watched as Astrid went out hawking with two of her ladies and two of Erling's men to watch them. She was a fierce huntswoman and a headlong rider. She rode a taller horse than any of the others, and they were going hard to keep up, but falling back nonetheless as they headed south on the paths between the fields.
I heard the two boys' voices then, Thorir's and Sigurd's, raised in excitement. I hoped they weren't getting into new trouble that would spoil their peace with Erling, so I went to see. I found them on the back side of the brewing house, on their knees and playing at dice.
"You're young to be learning the vice of gaming," I said to them.
Sigurd looked up at me, dice in hand. "Vice?" he cried. "Gaming a vice? Aren't you the one who tells us every week in church that God wants us to take risks?"
"Risks, yes," I said. "Laying down your life. Doing right when it costs you. Making the choices that set your soul bare to the world's cruelty for the Beloved's sake. But thisthis is none of God's risks. This is just a way to fool yourself into thinking you can live without working; make your hoard and never take a risk again. I'd have you learn better lessons while you're here."
"Be easy, Father, we're not playing for silver," said Thorir. "We're playing for the girls."
"The girls?"
"Thorliv and Sigrid. We've decided to ally ourselves to Erling by marriage, but we both like Sigrid better. So we're playing for her."
"She's not a horse. And what's wrong with Thorliv? She's a sweet girl, and there's not a hair to choose between them for beauty."
"Nothing against Thorliv," said Sigurd. "But Sigrid has more fire. She'll make a true Viking's wife. Anyway, Thorliv is mad for that horse boy."
"And what about me?" came a voice, and we looked up to see Freydis, who'd been lurking behind the house corner. "Am I not fit to be a Viking's wife?"
"You're a passable enough girl, but you're lowborn," said Thorir. "And anyway, anyone can have you."
I had to grab her as she ran by, lest she tear their eyes out with her fingernails. She screamed and Lemming soon appeared, all teeth and fists, and the two boys started like quail.
It was quite a show while it lasted. The boys were quick and agile enough not to be caught, but they couldn't avoid a few boxed ears and boots where it would do the most good. They covered all of the yard and most of the meadow before Lemming finally cooled and was content to spit at them and walk away. The boys laughed watching him go, but their freckled faces were white.
"Boys and girls, girls and boys. The dance goes on forever," said Ragna, who'd walked up beside me.
"Sad times these are," said I, smiling. "Young people have no sense of what's proper. I'm sure it was far different in your day."
Ragna turned and looked at me from crystal-blue eyes. "Are you making game of me?" she asked.
I dropped my smile. "No indeed," I said. "Or only in a friendly way."
"But you've heard about Thorolf and Lodin?"
"Lodin? Who's Lodin?"
She smiled a thin smile. "You've never heard the story of Thorolf and Lodin. People here are more close-mouthed than I'd thought. Or is it possible everyone's forgotten?"
"Steinulf told me about your father, and how Thorolf courted you."
"This came later. Steinulf may be the cause of the silencehe used to flatten the nose of anybody who brought the story up. We'd best walk, and I'll tell you it. Better from me than another, and you're bound to hear it in time. Haven't you even heard this from the thralls? About Ragnvald and the uprising?"
"Someone mentioned an uprising, I think. But it seemed a sore subject and I didn't push it on."
We took the path to the sea. The day was cloudy, but dry so far. The sea roiled gray in the distance, like molten lead.
"I loved Thorolf, and I miss him like youth itself," she said as we went. "But he was not the blameless husband. He had an eye for the women, and took many lemans."
"A common enough thing."
"But he broke the Commandment. We didn't know it was a commandment in those days, but we knew it was wrong even so. He coveted his neighbor's wife."
I mumbled something.
"To make all worse," she continued, "the neighbor I speak of was his oldest frienda man named Lodin, a freedman's son who'd grown up with him here at Sola. They'd been like brothers all their lives.
"Lodin took a wife. Thorolf had given him a gold ring as a gifthe was always generous, was Thorolfand with it Lodin bought himself a thrall wife. She was a prize. She was Jaeder-born, but her mother had been captured in Greekland. She had black eyes, and hair like a raven's wing, and skin the color of mead. She was tall and lovely as an underground-woman. Truth to tell, Lodin was a fool to think he could hold onto such as she.
"From the moment Thorolf saw her, he lost his senses. He paid less and less attention to his lands, to his duties as hersir . . . to me. He sat in the hall, or walked in circles in the snow, and I knew he was wrestling himself. The baser man won."
"That must have hurt you much."
"Yes, and as much to see what was becoming of him as for the insult. I tried to touch him, but he was like a man snatched into the mountain.
"At last he hosted a Jul feast here at Sola, and invited Lodin with many others. And in the course of things he challenged Lodin to a wrestling match. It was no contest. Lodin was never a fighting man. As they wrestled, Thorolf snapped Lodin's back."
"Dear saints."
"After a seemly time he took the girl for his own. As Lodin had been a freed man of the family's, all his property fell to Thorolf. Everyone knew what he'd done. Gydathat was the girl's nameknew what he'd done. And she hated him with all the fire of her southland blood.
"Thorolf made it worse. Gyda had a child, Lodin's son. Thorolf made him a thrall. But the boy was much with his mother, and he learned from her for what purpose he'd been born.
"It happened at another Jul feast, exactly fifteen years after Lodin's death. The boyhe was called Ragnvaldhad gathered his thrall kinsmen, and other thralls from Sola and many farms hereabout. They fired the hall."
"A nightmare."
"It was. Some died in the hall, smothered with smoke, but Thorolf made a breach in the wall and brought many of us out. He and his bodyguard came forth armed and angry. The thralls were no warriors. Thorolf and his men slaughtered them like rabbits, except for young Ragnvald, whom they captured alive. You can fancy what happened to him."
"I fear I can. And what of Gyda?"
"When she saw Thorolf alive and her son taken, she walked into the burning hall of her own will, and came out no more."
"I've heard them say, `As wrathful as Gyda.' I see now what that meant."
" 'Twas because of all this that we kept thralls out of arms in Jaeder so long. When it was done, and the rebellion crushed, Thorolf regained his senses. He never took another leman. But he bore a burn scar on his face to his grave. And sometimes, when he slept, I heard him say her name."
"Erling saw all this?"
"Yes. He was but a little older than young Ragnvald."
"And he still bethought himself to be a good master to his thralls."
"I think he felt for Ragnvald more than ever he let on. They had never been friends, but I doubt not Erling pitied him."
There are sides to life at Sola I've spoken little about. One of them is how people slept. You know that the bullyboys for the most part lay on straw on the hall benches, each in his bedroll, ready to spring to Erling's defense in a moment (though that's less fine a gesture when you remember they mostly lay down dead drunk). It was the same sort of arrangement you find in Ireland or England or anywhere else. And, as in better places, you couldn't really expect them to lie alone.
This was one reason I'd slept in my own house, cold as that could be, from my first night in Norway. You can't wink at fornication, yet I'd never found a formula for telling strong men not vowed to chastity that they must wait for marriage. Especially since bodyguard men marry late or not at all. Either they die young, or they wait until they've begun to dull, like axes too often sharpened. And sometimes they never wed at allthey choose the warrior's pension, which is death in battle, when strength and speed have gone.
One of the necessaries provided the bullyboys, just like food and drink and clothing and new weapons, was thrall women for the night. They expected it, as did the women. A woman who pleased a man might get gifts, which served as well as any other wealth to help buy freedom.
There were rules though, understood by all. I'd have insisted on them myself except that I'd found them in place when I came. No woman ought to be forced against her will, and married women were off limits (at least before men's eyes).
And of course it all went on before men's eyesanother reason for me to stay well away. They all shared a bedroom (though thank God for darkness), and Norsemen are not shy about making noise at their sport.
A priest is a meddler by nature, though. There were certain thrall women I kept a watch over, for this coupling without promises is a dangerous game and thralls make away with themselves too readily.
Dierdre, Patrick's widow, was one I watched. She shouldered away all offers for some time, and of course her child helped. Most men judge a squalling suckling a poor addition to night games.
But one day I came into the hall for breakfast and saw her rolling up Eystein's bedroll for him, the babe lying to one side.
I thought I'd just have a word with Eystein about that.
Title: | The Year of the Warrior |
Author: | Lars Walker |
ISBN: | 0-671-57861-8 |
Copyright: | © 2000 by Lars Walker |
Publisher: | Baen Books |