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CHAPTER VI

Lemming stood by the forge, shirtless in spite of the late autumn weather, his corded body glowing in the smithy's gloom from the forge light, his eyes gleaming in reflection under the shaggy brows and the sweat-rag he'd tied around his head. With wide-mouthed tongs he held a short bundle of rods—some iron, some steel—heated yellow in the forge.

He set one end of the rods into the vise, two jaws in a V-shape, banded upright to the side of a wide wooden block set in the ground. His helper leaned down and jammed in a wedge at the bottom with practiced hammer blows, to tighten it.

He began to twist the bundle into a single, striped rod, spiraled like a narwhal's horn. It seemed to twine as easily as wax, but the writhing muscles of his arms and the sweat that runneled down his skin bespoke the force he was spending. When the bundle was all of a piece he grunted and the boy knocked the wedge out. Lemming spun around and laid the thing on an anvil, then went at it with a hammer. He struck with practiced rhythm, alternating rings on the anvil with blows to the rod—ring-clash, ring-clash. As if by wizardry, the spearhead began to take shape under his harnessed violence. Sparks flew in a fountain and sprayed his leather apron. The air smelled like a dragon's belch.

Most folk think a smith some kind of unnatural being, and it's easy to believe it when you watch a good one at work. Lemming did nothing to dispel the mystery, not because he cared to be an object of superstition, but because it was his nature to hoard words as a landlord hoards silver.

He was using the centuries-old twist-forging method. They once made swords in this manner (swords such as Smith's-Bane, which he himself carried), and I suppose they still do in some places, but imported Frankish swords, better in quality, have crowded them out. There's still a market for fine, forged spearheads though, and Lemming hoped to sell a number of them at the Risa market come winter. A good two dozen completed heads rested in a box in the corner. They were fine ones, not only well-forged but engraved and silver-inlaid.

I went out of the forge, blinking in the daylight. A man called my name as he trotted up to me. I recognized him as a tenant farmer of Erling's. He carried a coil of fishing lines.

"Will you bless my tackle, Father?" he panted.

"Of course," said I. "What's your hurry?"

"The herring are running, Father! 'Tis the biggest run in years! There'll be plenty of fish to smoke for the winter—no one need go hungry! I'd ask you to bless my boat, but I keep it up at Tananger, and it's a bit of a walk."

I hurried to say some words over the stuff, and the fellow went on his way happy. Everywhere I could hear voices raised, as men set out for their berths. Nobody keeps boats in Sola Bay, because of the surf, but many have ancient rights to keep boathouses up at Risa or Tananger or in the Hafrsfjord. Those who had no boats could hire on as crew, for a share of the catch.

I saw Arnor heading north with the crowd, carrying his own lines. I hailed him. "A fisherman as well as a horseman?" I asked. "You're a lad of many parts."

"I own a boat after all," he said cheerfully. "It's berthed at Somme, so I'll have a bit of a pull northward in the fjord until the afternoon breeze comes up. But I hope for a fair wind for my sail, and there's fish for the taking, they say."

"That boat of yours is large for one man. Are you going by yourself?"

"A man with a boat can always get help when the herring run," said Arnor.

I let him go then, and went back to the church to say a mass for the safety of the fishermen, and for a good catch.

But when I came out into the sunlight again a bank of storm clouds loomed in the west, above a leaden sea. The wind was rising, from the southwest as Arnor had hoped, but I feared this wind would be no friend to him.

I went back inside to pray some more.

The storm struck that evening, just before the early sunset, while the fishermen were trying to pull home, against the wind. Some had been prudent and given it up early, but there are always reckless or desperate men who'll try for a little more time. It would be their bodies washed up along the shores from Agder to the Sognefjord over the next few days. Fisherman in Rogaland tattoo their hands, a different mark for each farm, so that if kindly folk find their bodies and give them burial, word can be sent of it. Because of this we were able to account for many of the dead, but some vanished as if snatched by Aegir's daughters.

We sat all together in Erling's hall that night, listening as the wind leaned on the walls, making the rafters groan and setting the hams and fish that smoked in them to swinging above us. Asa sat miserably among the women at the east end. Arnor was one of those missing on the sea.

Among us men Lemming could not be found. I did not fear for him (or not much) for I knew what he was about. He was tramping along the strand in silent agony, wet to the bone, daring Thor to strike him, for Freydis was missing also.

No one seemed to know what had become of her. All we could think was that she must have joined the fishing, odd as that was for a young girl. Not that she wasn't strong, but she didn't know the work and there were certainly enough men eager to help. There would have been no need to bring Freydis.

I could think of one fisherman who'd have taken her along though.

When we were done feasting, the trestle tables were taken down and set against the walls and we all sat in miserable fellowship on the benches, men and women alike. We knew there'd be no sleep.

Asa came and sat by me. "Have you seen Thorliv's face?" she whispered. "I know she thinks Freydis must be with Arnor, and she's broiling."

"It's a reasonable enough guess," said I.

"He likes the girls, and they like him. Is that so great a crime? That's how it is with proper men, the kind who make mothers—and aunts—proud."

"It's harder on the girls," I murmured.

"Girls should know better. I liked boys too at her age, but I never ran off alone with them. I waited for my parents' choice of a husband, and I did my duty. Nor did I ever regret it."

" 'Tis the times. Young people today have no sense of decency."

We were silent a moment. Asa said, "You've never answered my offer to convert and be your wife. Since the news of that woman's death—Erling's leman that was—you've stood off from me."

How could I tell it without sounding unmanly? How could I explain how deeply I'd cared for Halla, and how I'd always felt the wreck of her dreams was somehow my doing? Now she was dead—how could the name Halla and the word dead abide in the same sentence?—and was that somehow also my fault? I'd bungled everything in my dealings with her. It all boiled down to one conviction, there in my heart like a stake—a priest should not seek to marry.

"You remember how you and Arnor went barefoot, and never looked at the smith, and all the rest, when you first came? Because it might displease the gods and bring disaster?"

"Yes, of course."

"My unmarriage is like that. It's something I offer my God. When I've broken the rule in the past, only tragedy has come to the women I cared for. I'd not have the same happen to you."

"Then you do care for me?"

I made no reply to that. "I'll gladly baptize you whenever you like, though," I said.

 

The storm blew itself out around dawn. We went out into the cold, pale-skyed, blasted landscape, and walked the shores among the trash of seaweed, dead fish, birds and driftwood to seek out the smashed boats and the stiffening men with skin like cods' bellies. Boys were sent running to tell the names of the dead and where they could be found, and the cries of women went up in their wake.

Among them all there was no sign of Arnor, nor of Freydis. I saw Lemming from time to time, a shadow against the sky on some high place, scanning the sea.

As that second day drew toward evening, I sat at last on a clump of heather, weary and boneless as an oyster, when I heard Asa's voice raised. At first I thought she was weeping, but then I knew it for laughter. I scrambled to my feet and ran toward the sound.

And there was Arnor, coming down the path from Somme, ice in his hair, bearing Freydis in his arms.

"I rode it out," he said. " 'Twas hard work, but I made it. I . . . I found Freydis on my way back."

But there were blisters on her hands, as if from hard rowing.

* * *

And then it was Jul again, with all the bother and delight that helps Christian folk forget the dark and the cold of the murderous months.

It was the custom at Sola, as it was and is everywhere in Norway, for all, high and low, to sleep on straw in the great hall on Christmas Eve. Even Erling and Astrid forsook their loft (which they might have kept to without offense) and joined the rest of the household on the benches.

But there were some for whom this yearly fellowship was not so much a matter of delight as of refuge. The remaining heathen, Asa among them, believed that Jul eve was the time when angry spirits rode across the sky, on the lookout for hapless wanderers caught out-of-doors, whom they might snatch off and carry away to unspeakable fates. For them it was also the night when the dead of the past year came back to their old hearths, for a tender or bitter farewell as the case might be.

Only two human souls at Sola slept alone that night. One was Lemming, who did not care much for people close about him and who, if he believed in spirits, thought himself a match for any of them. The other was myself. I had to work hard at my celibacy, and there was too much groaning and panting in dark corners on such a night for me to endure, even after heavy drinking. Perhaps especially after heavy drinking.

"But you cannot go out to your house alone!" said Asa to me as I left. I think perhaps she'd hoped to lie beside me and trust to nature. "The spirits will take you! Or if not that, the dead are about!"

"And may God save all the dead, and the spirits too, if possible. I've no cause to fear them."

I pried her hand gently from my arm, and went outside into a night filled with mist. No Bethlehem star to guide my way tonight, I thought. But I knew the path well enough, steering by landmarks like a sailor under overcast.

It was near the women's house that I saw her. Queen of the year's harvest, she had come back to the place she had most loved.

"Hello, Halla," said I.

She looked as I remembered her, her honey-colored hair uncovered, her eyes bright enough to make good the lack of stars. But she bore in her arms a babe. A stranger might have thought her the Blessed Virgin herself.

She spoke no word, but smiled at me.

Death had not withered Halla. For me rather, she withered death.

"A blessed Christmas, fair one," I whispered.

 

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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