Feeling somewhat stronger, we made our way down to the harbor at Tananger. As we'd expected, a scout ship from Olaf came in shortly and took us aboard. We sailed to White Island, halfway back to Kormt, where our ships had come. We boarded Fishhawk and waited with Erling another full day for more ships to gather, herded in by the ranging boats sent out in all directions by the king.
At last we had above twenty ships, and a force we judged sufficient to handle any number of berserkers. One by one the long vessels hoisted sail to catch the west wind, and we coasted southeast to Hafrsfjord. There was no hiding our landing, using oar power to bring each ship to one of the three jetties and debark its force. Evening fell before we were all ashore. Olaf's and Erling's bodyguards put up at Somme; the others at other farms. We saw no berserkers about but knew they were watching. We set a guard for the night and planned for battle on the morrow.
I wouldn't be fighting (surely not in the presence of the bishop), but I lay long awake. When I slept at last I dreamed I sat in Erling's hall, on the bench, playing hnefatafl with the Wanderer. No one was about but we two.
I had the king and the defenders' pieces; he had the attackers all round. I moved one of my men.
The Wanderer reached across and shifted my man back where it had been.
"Bad move," he said.
It galled me, but I trusted him, so I made another move.
Again he pushed my piece back. "No. You can do better."
I ground my teeth and made a third move.
He inclined his head, sighed and said, "All right. That will have to do."
The game went on that way. My anger swelled like a carbuncle. At last I made a move I thought specially good, and when he undid it I could not stopper my mouth.
"Will you let me play my own game?" I cried. "Perhaps I won't winno doubt you're cleverer than Ibut at least 'twill be my loss!"
The Wanderer leaned back and smiled. "Well said, Aillil. A game's no good without the risk of losing."
"Is there supposed to be a lesson here somewhere?"
"You wonder why the innocent sufferwhy life is so cruel. 'Tis because the game is real, and no one forces good moves on you. Our choices bear fruitfor ourselves and others. The fruit is real, not a seeming. Otherwise our lives would have no worth. Life is the true Baldur-game."
I arched my back and rubbed it. "There's sense in that," I said. "But it's awfully hard on the small and the weak. 'Tis one thing for Erling to play at the Baldur-game in full armor. 'Tis another to set a child or an old woman out, all unprotected and by no choice of their own."
"That's why Erling was put here, and Olaf and you and every other strong one. To protect the weak."
"Very nice, of course. Except that the strong as often as not are the danger, not the protection."
The Wanderer gazed in my eyes. "There is a way that seemeth right to a man, but the end thereof is death. Men will not believe that their chosen ways are lemmings' paths. The only way to show them otherwise is to let their works flower and bear their fruit. Thus the Baldur-game. All will be made right in the endthough not in any way you'd guessbut before that, men must be permitted to move as they will on the board, and see what it gets them. No one will be able to say they were denied their trial."
I dressed myself in the dark and waited until the men began to stir. When Erling woke I went to him and said, "I must speak to the king."
Erling pulled on his shirt and said, "Why not? Things can scarcely get worse."
When Olaf emerged from his box-bed, Erling and I went to him and Erling said, "Father Aillil wishes a word."
Olaf was pulling on a padded jacket, to go under his brynje. "What will you, priest?" he asked.
"Perhaps you've considered this already," I said, "but a word in your ear can do no harm."
"Say on."
"You're fighting no natural enemy here. This is Eyvind Kellda. With Eyvind, all is seemings and tricks. With him, the great thing is not to believe what you see. The numbers of his force will be other than what they seemmore or less, but certainly other. You may see warlocks, or werewolves, or giants and dragons for all I know. Believe nothing."
Olaf stood and thought a moment. "Makes tactics difficult," he said.
"I can't advise you there. But I can pray for you, with the bishop and other priests."
"I've never despised prayer as a shield, Father," said the king.
The bishop came in and said mass right there in the hall, and we ate breakfast after. Then there was a great jingling sound, like a thousand thousand exceedingly small bells, as those men rich enough to own brynjes pulled them over their heads.
We priests took the lead as we processed out into the yard, into a pale-skyed, cold morning with a crust of snow underfoot. Olaf chose a nearby hill as a gathering place, and we marched there. A horn sounded to assemble everyone, and in about a half an hour the whole host was mustered.
I stood with the churchmen a little apart. "Well, did you warn off all your precious heathen?" Thangbrand asked me.
"I got no chance."
"Then the Lord hath delivered our enemies into our hands."
"Perhaps," said the bishop. "But look up there."
We turned to follow his pointing finger, toward the higher ground of Sola, and along the horizon from one side to another we saw berserkers, armed and straining like leashed dogs, howling and biting the rims of their shields in eagerness. There were hundreds of them, a living wall of iron and teeth.
"There can't be that many berserkers in all the world," said the bishop.
The king's voice recalled us. Olaf had found a large rock to stand on, and his booming voice carried well in the crisp air.
"We will stand in this place and let them come to us," he cried.
Aslak Askelsson, Erling's cousin, objected. "Why would they come to us when they hold the high ground?" he asked.
Olaf bristled at the question, but answered, "Because they are berserkers. Even Eyvind can't hold them forever."
"But the number of them! Berserkers are always most deadly in the first attack, and even Harald Finehair at Hafrsfjord had not so many berserkers as this!"
"I've reason to believe there are not so many as we think. Eyvind Kellda does all by tricks."
"And you're willing to bet your army on this?"
"It seems to me as sensible as attacking that force uphill. Possess your minds in patience, men, and trust your king."
So we waited.
We waited through the morning, and watched the sun move from the mountains on our left and overhead. Women from the nearby farms brought ale to refresh us. New ships with men sailed in and joined us, but I could feel the impatience growing, and many of the newly arrived lords gathered around Aslak, grumbling.
"Men from More," said Thangbrand to the bishop. "There could be trouble."
"What's this about More?" I asked.
"They've close ties to the Trondelag," said Thangbrand.
"So?"
"Why do you think Olaf celebrated Christmas at Agvaldsness this year? When he's always feasted at Nidaros before?"
"I thought he fancied a change."
Thangbrand laughed. "Things are boiling in the Trondelag. They welcomed Olaf like a good herring-year at first, but the heathens are strong there, and they've no stomach for his ways. Olaf wanted to cement his alliance to Erling in case things come to sword-points."
"Then why did he bully Erling so?"
Thangbrand shrugged. " 'Tis the only way Olaf knows. He rules by strength. 'Tis as good as any other."
The day waned; the sun sank into the gray sea; the wind stiffened and we all went back to our sleeping places. Spirits drooped; there was grumbling and the skalds found a poor audience. The king drank more than usual (even for him) and went to bed early. The talk trailed off, low but surly, and we rolled up on the benches in our sleeping bags. I found it hard to sleep but managed at last, whelmed with bone-weariness and care.
I felt older than Ossian when the morning stirrings woke me. We heard mass again, but before breakfast Aslak and several of the other lords presented themselves before Olaf's high seat.
"We are leaving," said Aslak.
Olaf called for ale and swallowed a beakerful before replying.
"You were ever a skulking pup, Aslak," he said. "I always looked for treachery from you."
"I am a Norseman!" Aslak spit back, slapping his thigh. "I'm not one of your Slav thralls! I have rights! You spent your life in foreign lands, and you've no inkling what it means to be a king in Norway! Perhaps you could have been a Norse king had you been willing to learn, but you only bark orders like an overseer. You never listen! A king in Norway must listen!"
"You Norse know nothing of kingship. But I will teach you."
"You'll not live that long, Olaf Trygvesson."
"Is that a threat?"
"A prophecy. You pay heed to soothsayers. Perhaps you'd have listened to your lords if we'd torn up crows and brought you the bones to look at." Aslak turned and stalked out, and several other great men went with him. They put to sea while we ate our breakfast.
We were a smaller force who assembled on the same hill that second morning. Again Olaf stood on his rock and harangued the troops. He was a good shouter, but I thought his heart wasn't wholly in it. The cheers from the men were tamer than the day before.
Meanwhile, the army of Eyvind Kellda, ranged on the heights, looked even larger.
And so we stood through another day. The berserkers shouted insults and obscene songs. They dropped their trousers and showed their bare arses. Our men grumbled, but Olaf held them back. A rain came that turned to snow, and we went back inside.
We ate little and drank much that night. Nobody was in a mood for songs.
And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
The third day dawned with snow falling, but it thinned as the light rose, and we went out to our place again. Olaf gave no speech. We just stood and watched the berserkers caper. I could have sworn there were yet more of them.
Then at last, as the sun began its short drop into night, they began to advance.
"See!" cried Olaf! "They come! Now we'll have the high ground!"
But high ground seemed little comfort as we watched the gray mass of them approach through the snow. They could surround us easily and attack from all sides. I told myself over and over it must be a seemingthere were never so many berserkers alive at once. But what did I know about such things?
They sang as they came. Not one united song, of courseyou'd never get berserkers to sing togetherbut the hundred songs they sang all at once shared a rhythm; and the discord of their noise was maddening in my ears, like the yammering of a thousand savage beasts that knew not pity.
The bishop called us churchmen away to a hillside some distance off, to watch and pray. I went reluctantly, looking often over my shoulder at Erling and his men. The king's army seemed to me like a band of children, out playing army, suddenly set upon by Assyrians. The loneliest place in the world, I thought.
The bishop started us a hymn, and I sang and prayed, my hands clamped together as around an axe haft.
The berserkers did not surround our force, as we'd expected. They came straight on in a mass, screaming, counting on the bone-splintering crash of their onrush. The king, seeing this, ordered his men to unlock the circular shield wall they'd made, and spread the wings out. The flankmen had barely found their new places when Eyvind's mob was on them.
I cannot tell you to this day how they stood the shock. Perhaps our prayers had something to do with it. It was a near thing for a while, but the madmen fell back at last a short distance.
They'd taken their toll though. Half the shields in Olaf's wall were smashed; men from the rear ranks were moving up everywhere to replace comrades being dragged back for tending or burying later. Steam rose all along the line as hot blood melted through the snow-carpet.
The berserk army turned and reformed itself. They were bloodied but not much winded. I could not see how the king's men could withstand them again.
Then something like a mist rose from the earth, and when it thinnedin the silver of the moonrisewe could see that, in fact, there were but a few over a hundred berserkers, less than the king's army, even without the defectors.
"Look there!" cried Olaf. "They are few! It's as I saidonly a seeming!"
Then we heard the howling.
The wolves came from our rear, in full voice and at a dead run. The men on the flanks were hard put to turn themselves quickly enough to meet them, and not as well set as they'd have liked when the blow struck.
At the same moment the berserkers hit the front. There was no question of standing or fleeingthe king's army was being smashed between two hammers.
I swear I saw blood spurting two men high, and severed heads and arms flying skyward in the moonlight.
I'd never heard such screaming. Mad berserker screams; wolf howls from Hell; the angry, raging cries of men making their last stands and meaning to sell their lives dearly. 'Twas terrible. 'Twas wonderful. 'Twas very, very lonely.
Then came a new cry. A fresh, human cry. A cry that sounded, to my ears, somehow Irish; and I was not wrong, for it was the men of Lemming's new company of freedmen. Each man had an axe and a shield, and wore a leather war-shirt and a leather helmet (they could afford no better). But they came on with the rage of men fighting for their manhood; they had a thing to prove that night.
They were wonderful.
They saved Olaf and his men.
And they died each last one of them; all but Lemming.
Title: | The Year of the Warrior |
Author: | Lars Walker |
ISBN: | 0-671-57861-8 |
Copyright: | © 2000 by Lars Walker |
Publisher: | Baen Books |