Forged by Iron

by Eric Schumacher

  There was a small furrow on the side of the trail, and I dove for it. If I could reach it, the archer would need to be on top of me to hit me. My body slid into the earth's crease just as another man's scream tore through the air. Feilan had found her prey. And with that, the enemy nearest me crashed into the forest and disappeared.

  I rose and scanned the scene. Lodin and my father were searching the men they had killed. Two more men lay dead near me. For a moment, I believed that we had somehow escaped without harm, but then I saw Turid. She was cradling Sigrunn's head in her arms, an arrow protruding from her mother's stomach. My heart sank.

  I turned my eyes to Olaf, who stood over the man he had killed, staring down at the corpse. For a moment I thought he might hack at the dead man again, but at the last instant, he began kicking the body. Over and over, he kicked. “You pig!” he yelled as his shoe thudded into the man's ribs. “You dog! You potlicker!” His face was red and his eyes tearing. “This is what you get for hunting women and children, you coward! This is what you get!” He spat on the man.

  “Enough!” Astrid screamed.

  Olaf snapped from his fury and stepped back, panting. He then wiped at the spittle on his lips. I stared at him, still recovering from the shock of the attack and the rage I had seen in Olaf. The boy had a dark pit of anger in him. I knew its source, for I felt it in my own soul. Only Olaf was too young to be encumbered by morals or norms. He was too young to understand that kicking a corpse was irregular. I suppose there was a part of me that wished I had done it too to expunge the impotent rage I felt at the chaos that was our lives. But I was older than Olaf and had learned to swallow my rage, for better or worse. And so I just stared.

  “Torgil! Check that man.” My father pointed to the burly man whom Astrid had killed. “Take his weapons, his armor, and any wealth you can find. Hurry.”

  I rushed to the body, which had fallen flat on its back beside the cart. As I did, my father's voice called again. “Astrid. See to Sigrunn!”

  My hands tore through the man's pockets and cut the small purse from his belt. My eyes shifted to the man's face and his shocked, yet vacant eyes. As I pried his byrnie from his body, I tried not to look at the wound in his throat or the dark blood that flowed from it to pool around his head. When I was done, I dragged the booty to my father.

  “How is she?” called my father to Astrid.

  Astrid looked at him. “The arrow went deep and the wound is grave. She needs help.” Astrid clearly wanted to say more but could not. Beside her, Turid wept as she brushed her mother's hair with her hand.

  Olaf moved to the back of the cart and stared at her. “Will she live?” he asked with the bluntness of a boy who had seen only eight winters. As if to punctuate his lack of decorum, he dropped a sword and seax and sack of coins into the bed of the cart with a loud rattle of metal.

  “Olaf!” Astrid scolded him. “Mind yourself.”

  My father climbed into the cart and studied Sigrunn. “We have no tools to remove the arrow, Astrid. And we cannot stop. We know not who might be following us or how close they are. If we find a steading ahead, we will see if they can offer help.” His gaze shifted to Lodin, who stood near the ox, and in that glance, I saw the truth in his eyes. There would be no stopping. My father turned back to Turid. “Keep your mother warm, and do your best to stem the bleeding. That is all we can do for her now.”

  We dragged the dead into the woods on either side of the track, then Lodin whistled for his hound. Feilan came bounding back, her face a mask of blood, her tongue hanging from exertion. Lodin patted the hound's head, then called for us to move. “Olaf,” he called. “Sit in the back of the cart and keep an eye on the trail behind us. If you see anything strange, call out. Do you understand?”

  “Aye,” said Olaf, then he dangled his feet over the end of the bed and rested his newly blooded sword on his lap.

  And so we walked away from the carnage, and as we did, I marveled that the ox had survived the skirmish unscathed and did not seem spooked by the wicked affair. But then, that was life. Full of surprises and inexplicable mysteries.

  My father was wrong about the stopping. We halted during the night at the sound of Turid's doleful wail. Sigrunn had bled too much from her wound and her life had drained from her despite Astrid and Turid's best efforts to stop the bleeding.

  Truth be told, I was almost relieved, for her moaning had gotten worse as the night progressed and I feared it would give us away to our pursuers. I was not the only one who feared it. On more than one occasion, my father and Lodin cautioned Astrid and Turid to keep her quiet, but their efforts could not stop Sigrunn's complaints. I must say, it is a strange feeling to resent someone and mourn their dying in equal measure.

  Her death, when it came, affected me more than I expected. I had not been close to Sigrunn, but she had taken good care of Astrid and Turid in life and had been kind to me, and for that, at least, I was grateful to her. A tearful Astrid said much the same at her graveside, which we dug in a pretty meadow near a stream. I fought to keep my tears inside as I watched a weeping Turid place wildflowers about her body, then lay honey and skyr and coins at her feet to aid her on her journey to the underworld. I did not just cry for Sigrunn, mind you. I also cried for Turid, who had suffered a loss no less than mine or Olaf's or Astrid's or my father's.

  We laid stones over Sigrunn's shallow grave to fend off the forest creatures, then returned wordlessly to the cart. There was nothing really to say, though I suppose some comforting words for Turid would have been nice. Olaf and I were too young to think of those things and my father and Lodin too hard to show such care. Even Astrid seemed devoid of speech, choosing instead to wrap her arm over Turid's shoulders.

  Without a word, Lodin pulled the ox forward. I glanced one last time at the meadow where Sigrunn lay, then followed Lodin down the path. As I did, I wondered silently whether more of us would die before we reached our destination.

  Chapter 10

  Just after leaving Sigrunn's grave, we passed into the kingdom of the Swedes and from there, the trail turned mostly east, as Lodin had said. The land was flat, though filled with all manner of terrain — rushing rivers and trickling brooks, round hills and lonely meadows, marshy ponds and windswept lakes. And all of it unfolding through curtains of spruce and pine, beech and oak. It was beautiful but deserted country, known more for its animals and outlaws than its inhabitants. In fact, if there were people thereabouts, we saw no cabins or signs of settlement.

  Several days after Sigrunn's death, we eased our pace to regain our strength. Lodin used the longer breaks to teach us children about the forest and how to identify the sounds within it, such as the grunt of a mouse or the difference between the call of duck, eider, and grouse. We learned to stop and hide when birds took flight and how to watch Feilan for signs of trouble. He taught us how to identify different paw prints, which to be wary of and which presented possible food. It became a game and I enjoyed it — it took my mind off of our troubles.

  “See there, Turid,” he pointed at a nearby lake as we passed. “The red waterlilies?”

  “Aye,” she said.

  “Do you know the story of those flowers?”

  She did not and told him so.

  “Then I shall tell you. Long ago, there was a poor fisherman who had a beautiful daughter. The small lake gave little fish, and the fisherman had difficulties providing for his family. One day, as the fisherman was fishing in his boat, he met a male water spirit, who offered him great catches of fish on the condition that the fisherman gave him his beautiful daughter the day she reached her eighteenth summer. The desperate fisherman agreed and promised the spirit his daughter. On the allotted day, the girl went down to the shore to meet the spirit. He asked her to walk down to his watery home, but the girl took forth a knife and said that he would never have her alive. She then stuck the knife into her heart and fell down into the lake, dead. Her blood stained the waterlilies red, and from that day until this, the waterlilie
s of the lakes here are red.”

  “That is a sad story,” Turid remarked.

  Lodin merely shrugged. “I do not make the stories.”

  Before leaving our camp each night, we boys trained with the men while Astrid and Turid prepared food, or washed clothes, or saw to their own grooming. Occasionally they would join us, learning the basics of weapon craft, though I admit, Astrid was already well-trained, having been raised by my father. It had been a long time since Turid had wielded her father's weapons, but she took to the training with a zeal that matched our own.

  I enjoyed these moments of sparring immensely. Unlike Olaf, who, much to my chagrin and envy, often joked with Turid as they rode in the cart, I was shy and awkward in speech. Try as I might to join in their conversation, my words either felt inadequate or lame or both. Like an ill-shot arrow, they never seemed to hit the mark or make an impression. The sparring sessions gave me a way to interact with Turid, and I reveled in the closeness and the conversations they yielded.

  But there was something else those sparring sessions provided. Turid had been miserable after her mother's death and spoke little to anyone. Training returned a brightness to her face, if only briefly. More, they gave her a way to expunge the pain and anger within her, which was plain to see in the ferocity with which she fought. After one such session with my father, he pointed his practice blade at her. “You fight with heart, Turid. That is good, but fighting with heart alone can get you killed.” He tapped his temple. “Learn to fight with your head also and you will be formidable.”

  “That is high praise,” said Astrid to Turid.

  Turid grinned. “Thank you, Lord Torolv.”

  “It is the truth.”

  It rained the following two days. When it began, I welcomed it. We all did. It made our tracks harder to follow, and we needed that. But as the rain fell harder, drenching our clothes and turning the track into a quagmire through which our cart could no longer pass, my mood shifted from gratefulness to agitation, and then to teeth-grinding frustration. Whereas I had thanked Thor not much earlier, I now cursed our luck and the mud and water and cold he poured down on us.

  Seeing the futility of our efforts, Lodin called a halt to our journey. We could not sleep on the muddy ground, so my father and Lodin constructed a flimsy tent over the bed of the cart and shared out some of the food we still had, most of which was now wet. Lodin took the first watch with a soggy Feilan by his side. The rest of us sat shoulder to shoulder among the cargo, listening to the rain patter on the tent as we silently and miserably ate our food.

  I was about to bite into my venison jerky when Feilan launched into a cacophony of growls and barks. In the midst of the clamor, I heard Lodin yell. My father hastened from the tent, stepping on Turid's ankle and knocking the food from my hand as he did so. He flew out into the grayness with Olaf and me not far behind. But as we emerged, Lodin whistled and Feilan's barking subsided.

  “What is it?” I asked as I stopped beside my father, sword in my hand, and scanned the rain-veiled landscape.

  “I know not,” growled my father.

  Lodin appeared then through the trees with Feilan by his side. His hood was over his head, revealing just the white of his nose tip. “All is fine,” he called. “It was a moose, I think. Something big, anyway. Feilan chased it away. I doubt it will return. Even so,” Lodin added, looking at my father, “be vigilant when you take watch. If it is a hungry bear, it may have the scent of our food in its snout and return.”

  “I would feel better if I had Feilan with me,” my father responded. I thought he was jesting, but there was no humor in his tone.

  In the dimness of Lodin's hood, a smile stretched. “I am sure Feilan would not mind.” Lodin scratched the top of the dog's head. The hound responded by shaking her body from muzzle to tail. “You should get some sleep, lord. Your watch will begin soon enough.”

  My father nodded and wiped his blade on his wet trouser leg before returning it to its scabbard. “I am grateful we have you as a guide, Lodin. Truly.”

  Lodin glanced at my father in a manner that suggested he was not altogether comfortable with the praise.

  We encountered no more problems that night or the next, and when the rain finally ceased, we woke to find ourselves not an arrow's flight from a vast sea filled with crying gulls and terns. It twinkled in the morning light and brought a smile to my face.

  “Behold, the Vanern,” Lodin announced with a theatrical flourish.

  “The what?” Olaf wondered aloud.

  He laughed. “The Vanern. It is a mighty lake.”

  “This? A lake?” Turid added. “It looks like an ocean.”

  “Aye,” Lodin said. “It does. More importantly, it means we are close. A few more days now and we will be on the threshold of Haakon the Old's farm, gods willing. Let us wash ourselves here and be on our way.”

  We moved on with our clothes and bodies cleaner and our spirits lifted, but all of that quickly changed. The trail rising from Lake Vanern was still thick with mud and hard to navigate. Here and there, the wheels of the cart got stuck, requiring us to push uphill to free them. Whatever cleanliness and rest we had enjoyed was soon a memory — by the end of that day, we were mud-streaked and tangle-haired yet again.

  We pressed on, traversing the undulating landscape for two more days. It grew hot and we sweated in our dirty clothes. We stopped more frequently for water and breaks, though never long enough for my limbs or my body to fully recover. I refused to complain, though. Tired as I was, I was determined to emulate my father, who marched on resolutely, even as Astrid and Turid and Olaf rode in the cart and dozed.

  We descended again on the third day and came to a flat, wooded place that reeked of smoke and something more pungent.

  “Be alert,” Lodin called.

  “What is this place?” my father asked.

  Lodin shrugged. “I do not know what they call it, but they make tar here. That is what you smell.”

  “A lot of tar, from the smell of it,” said Astrid.

  “Aye,” confirmed Lodin. “Which is why we must be careful.”

  “I do not understand,” Astrid admitted.

  “Tar is valuable,” he said. “Without it, kings cannot sail their ships. This place is prized by the lords for the tar it produces, so they watch it closely. As you can imagine, they are suspicious of outsiders.”

  We rounded a bend in the trail and stopped. There, before us, four men loaded barrels onto a large cart pulled by four oxen. Tar blackened the limbs of the men, who were collared like thralls and who were being ordered about by an armed warrior. All five saw us coming and stopped.

  The warrior, whose belly was as large as one of the tar barrels, hooked his thumbs in his belt and approached. “Lodin? Is that you?” he asked.

  “Is there another on this road who looks like me?” asked Lodin.

  The man, whose red hair was covered in gray ash, smiled, revealing two rows of crooked teeth. “There is not. You are well met.”

  “As are you, Stig.”

  The man appraised our party with bloodshot brown eyes. “What have you brought for me this time? The blondy there? The younger one? Both?” He rubbed his hands together eagerly.

  Lodin laughed. “Neither. I am afraid these thralls are spoken for.”

  The man frowned. “Truly? You know I pay well, Lodin.”

  Lodin grinned, and for the briefest of moments, I thought he might acquiesce. “I am merely passing through, Stig. Though —-” he raised his finger excitedly “—- I do have a gift for you. Ale! Some of the finest I have tasted, too.”

  The tar man frowned. “We have ale.”

  Lodin shook his head and took the tar man by the arm. “Not this ale. It is special. Strong and sweet. Given to me by the master brewer of a great lord. You will like it, I am certain.” He walked the man to the bed of the cart and grabbed a small barrel. This he gave to the man. “Take it.”

  The man's frowned deepened. “This ale will not even
last a night here. A woman, on the other hand…” His dark eyes moved again to Astrid.

  Lodin wagged his finger before the man. “Careful, Stig. Or I will have Feilan teach you not to press your good fortune.”

  Stig eyed the wolf-dog warily, then raised his hands in mock surrender. “I meant no harm.”

  Lodin slapped the man's shoulder. “No harm done, my friend. Until next time.” He grabbed the ox's lead rope and walked on. Stig stepped aside and we followed Lodin down the road, passing the other wagon and the miserable thralls loading it.

  When we were beyond earshot, my father grumbled, “You should kill that smelly turd, Lodin, and end your troubles. He robs you.”

  “And then I will just have to face the next smelly turd that takes Stig's place. No. He may be a thorn in my side, but Stig is known to me and I to him. Besides, he is fearful of hounds,” he chuckled.

  “Will you truly bring him women next time you pass here?” Astrid wondered aloud, not attempting to hide her displeasure.

  Lodin shrugged. “If a thrall woman will make Stig happy and give me passage, why would I not?”

  I glanced sheepishly at Astrid and Turid. Though anger hardened their faces, they held their tongues. Behind them, Olaf was looking at the trees and whistling at the birds. I wondered if he had even marked the exchange.

  The trail exited the trees then and entered a large meadow. In the distance stood the wooden walls of a borg. Lodin pointed to it. “That is Ormsbro.”

  “Who rules there?” my father asked.

  “A lord named Ulf Ormsson holds his seat there. It is he who controls the tar pits we passed and sells the tar to lords in the north and east.”

  “Orm's bridge?” I translated the borg's name.

  “That's right,” confirmed Lodin as he moved to the cart and began organizing the wares in the bed. “The borg sits aside the trail and guards the one bridge over the black river. Ulf's father built it. It is our way east.”