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CHAPTER XX

We oared up the river and out into the Baltic, catching ere long a usable wind and westing. It was coming onto autumn. The geese made slow arrowheads over us, honking at the injustice of it all.

I'd never seen Erling so fretted. His gaze turned again and again back to the Wendish shore. I spent much time at his side, saying naught.

That first day he hammered the rail with his fist and said, "I must go back. I owe it to my king to try and turn him."

" 'Twill do no good," said I.

"Yet I must. 'Tis Olaf. What will we do without Olaf? We nearly had it built, Father—a new Norway with Christian laws and Norsemen's rights as well. I fear there'll never be such a chance again."

He paused a moment, then said, softly so no one else could hear, "He called me betrayer. Could it be thus I'll be remembered when I die? As a man who turned his back on his lord in his hour of need?"

"Never," said I. "Not you."

Just then the lookout up on the sail-yard shouted, "A ship!"

We turned to see it approach. 'Twas a black ship with a wolf's-head at the stem and a blood-red sail. The moment I saw it, a chill trickled down my backbone.

"She comes on at full sail, from downwind!" said Erling. "It's not possible!"

The wolf-ship made an elegant arc, circling us widdershins, sail bellied out all the way; never once tacking. It cut us out of our fleet as a wolf cuts a fawn from a herd of deer, and our other ships did not—or could not—defend us.

"No one can have the wind at all points," said Erling.

"One can," said I.

I'd caught sight of a pale face, staring at us over the ship's rail. It smiled a wide, death's-head smile.

Eyvind Kellda. Eyvind Kellda alone in an uncrewed ship, driven by a wind of his own making.

"We must follow him," said Erling.

"No!" said I.

He turned to me with a question in his eyes.

"He wants us to follow him!" I answered. "Isn't that plain? He dangles himself as bait in our faces. What else can he mean but to lure us into some trap?"

"Or away from Olaf!" Erling cried, slapping his thigh. "Of course! Olaf must be in danger, and Eyvind would prevent me returning to aid him! Steersman!" he roared. "Come about! Turn her now!"

"That'll take us straight into the wind!" the steersman answered.

"Then we'll row for the Odra! Down sail! Smartly now! We've no time to lose!"

The crewmen loosed the backstay and dropped the sail, furling it with practiced hands, swinging the yard around and stowing it in its crutches. Our other ships saw the action and did the same. To no avail.

The more the steersmen brought our ships around, the harder blew the wind out of the east, shouldering us in Eyvind's wake in spite of ourselves, heeling us over on the broadside before we finally came about. I'm a little sketchy on the details, as I was trying to throw up over the side without being pitched overboard.

"Out oars!" Erling shouted. "Row us back to Wendland, lads!"

The first shift sprang to the trees and seized their oars, ran them out through the holes and began their song, pulling with all their might, muscles straining, faces red.

It did no good. We drifted yet westward, along with our sister ships, less swift than we.

Our second shift of rowers joined the others on the sea chests, adding their strength to the pulling force.

Oars snapped. Rowers got scourged by the lashing pine slivers. But even then we made no headway. We blew ever westward, in train with that black-and-red hell-ship.

"Ship your oars, men," Erling called at last. "There's no good in it."

So we sailed day and night after Eyvind, like hounds after a bitch in heat—out through the Oresund, past the Kattegat, into the open sea.

Only then did our following wind slacken and turn northerly, and we lost our headway. Eyvind's black ship pulled away from us, heading north along the coast, fanned by its own pet breeze.

"We can go back to Olaf now," said Erling.

"We can. 'Twill do no good," said I.

"How do you know?"

"Whatever was doing is done, else Eyvind would not have left us. He's finished his business; now he's making his escape—once more. Do evildoers in Norway never die like honest men? Soti had to be killed twice, and now Eyvind needs killing a third time."

"That's our task, isn't it?" said Erling.

"Kill Eyvind a third time?"

"As many times as it takes. It needs must be done. No one's safe with him about. With Olaf . . . gone, I must do what I can to defend the land." He took one last, hungry look eastward, then told the helmsman, "Make north. Follow the red sail."

* * *

In the days that followed Eyvind danced just out of reach. It galled Erling, who'd never before seen the ship he couldn't run down. We hoped to catch Eyvind at Lindesness, where the currents and shifting winds can stall sailors for days or weeks, but Eyvind shot past the point like a home-bound pigeon, and we followed as easily, though without closing the distance between us. Up past Agder we sailed, and along Jaeder, passing by Opprostad and nearing Hafrsfjord.

And it was there that Eyvind's ship vanished. 'Twas there one moment and gone the next, like mist in the morning. Erling climbed the mast to scan the sea himself, cursing like a heathen, then slid down with his teeth showing.

"I do not like being made game of," he said. "I do not like it at all. Soon or late, God will put that man in my hands, and I'll not let him slip then."

`Twas drawing to evening, and we saw no course but to go home. We downed sail and rowed for the mouth of the Hafrsfjord.

As we neared and the sun sank, we saw a light burning on the northmost point of the southern jaw of the harbor mouth.

As we sailed past a voice called, "Erling Skjalgsson! I must speak with you!"

We all knew the voice, for we'd heard it many times speaking the law at the Things. 'Twas Helge of Klepp, a blind man far from home, alone and carrying a torch for which he had no use in the world.

* * *

"The torch was for you to see me by, not the other way round," said Helge as we sat with him on the rocks an hour or so later. We'd entered the fjord and anchored, and Erling and I, Steinulf, Lemming and some others had rowed ashore in a small boat while the rest of the fleet moved in and anchored about us. Lemming gathered some dry wood and moss and made a fire to warm us.

"I had my brother Gunnar bring me here and leave me alone. He didn't like it, but I was in no danger. I'll be in danger later, but why should our kindred lose him along with me?"

"What's this danger?" asked Erling. "You put a shock to us, Helge, showing up like a balefire this way."

"You cannot face Eyvind Kellda without danger," Helge answered.

"Too late. We've lost him. He cloaked himself in darkness and stole away to his friends, the trolls. He's gone and we cannot follow."

"You cannot. 'Tis another matter with me."

"You?"

"I've lost the use of my body's eyes. But the eyes of my soul are clear, and God has granted me to see a few of the hidden things. It happened just a few days since, as I knelt in prayer, that I began to see Eyvind Kellda. I know where he is, and I see where he goes."

I asked, "Are you sure this is not some seeming Eyvind has stewed up himself? 'Twould be like him."

"The things I've seen of Eyvind in my soul are not things he'd show of his own will. For instance, what vessel does he seem to you to sail in?"

"A great black wolf-ship, with a red sail," said Erling.

" 'Tis no such thing. 'Tis a four-oared fishing boat, with a ragged gray sail. He makes it move at breathless speed, but all the rest is show."

"And he has no guess that you see this?" asked Steinulf.

"This is the everlasting weakness of Evil," said Helge. "We know what he knows; he cannot know what we know. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not yet comprehended it.

"I doubt not he'll know soon enough he's being followed. But there's no harm in that. He cannot escape the blind man's eyes."

"So we can put back out to sea with the fleet straightaway," said Erling, smacking a palm with a fist. "I expect day or night means naught to you."

"Leave the fleet. Send the levies home. There's nothing we could do with them that we cannot do with Fishhawk's crew alone."

Erling scratched his chin. "I can't just cut them loose. I need to feast them and make gifts. Else men will say that there's no profit in sailing with Erling."

"Send them to Sola then, and have Astrid feast them till you return. You won't be long, however our errand goes. And let's wait for morning ere we sail."

"Is it clearer for you in the light?" Erling asked.

"No, but I'm old and weary. I'd like to sleep before the hunt."

Erling sent men to pass the word from ship to ship, and the twilight swallowed their forms as they sailed south, leaving only the cries of the bosuns and the creaking of the rigging, fading as they went. Lemming went with them, taking his Freydis home.

We set up a tent where we were, and the crew spread an awning and slept in their sleeping bags on Fishhawk.

"The end of the world," said Erling in the darkness, when the others were snoring and only he and I awake. Perhaps he thought me asleep too. "This is indeed the year when the world ends for me. The Age of the Viking is gone, as all men know. The world we would have made together in its place, Olaf and I, shall never come."

 

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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