The Islands of the Blessed sot-3

by Nancy Farmer

  “I had sworn an oath to destroy Bjorn,” Adder-Tooth continued, “but he shut himself into this hall and I couldn’t reach him. What was I to do? My honor was at stake. And so I found a wise woman who was willing to help me.”

  “You mean you threatened her,” the Bard said.

  “So what if I did? She was a poisonous old hag and not fit to live anyhow. She demanded silver and free passage to another island. I had to find her a cloak dyed blue with woad.

  She needed a hood and gloves made of catskin. She had to sit on a cushion filled with feathers so her spirit could fly. Paugh! Sei�er makes me sick!” Adder-Tooth said, naming the magic women used.

  “Not sick enough to stay away from it,” remarked the Bard. The king glared at him and drank another horn of ale. It was his sixth or seventh, Jack thought.

  “The ceremony was done under the full moon. The hag sat on an old grave and chewed one of those red mushrooms that grow under birch trees.”

  “Atterswam,” murmured the Bard.

  “Yes, that. She went into a trance. I had expected her to contact spirits and tell me how to break into Bjorn’s stronghold, but something unexpected happened. She began to scream. Her body writhed and she flopped around like a hooked salmon. I didn’t touch her. I don’t meddle with sei�er even when I’m paying for it. Her form began to change, and suddenly she wasn’t there at all. In her place was the hogboon. It had eaten her all up.”

  A hush fell over the hall. Wind burrowed through the straw and made the lamps in the alcoves flutter. The followers of the king had stopped eating. Beyond the howl of the wind and the sea crashing below the cliff, Jack heard voices. They were like men caught in a deadly trap—a sinking ship or a fire. They shouted for help, but no aid was coming and they knew it. They raged against their fate.

  “Shouldn’t we try to help them?” Jack said, fearful and yet unwilling to ignore them.

  “They are not living men,” said the Bard. Nothing he said could have been more dreadful.

  Little Half moaned and buried his face in his hands. “I knew we shouldn’t have touched that tower.”

  “Shut up! It was either that or the hogboon!” shouted the king. “We need music. Wake up my skald! The swine is probably drunk, but he’ll sing the better for it. More ale! More mead!”

  Servants hurried to obey, and soon a bedraggled young man stumbled into the hall carrying a harp. He ran his fingers through his hair. “What kind of song—?” he began.

  “I don’t care so long as it’s loud!” roared Adder-Tooth.

  It was evidently a request the skald had heard before. Shouting rather than singing, he recited the tale of King Siggeir, who captured a rival’s ten sons and left them, bound and helpless, in a deep, dark forest. Each night a giant she-wolf appeared and devoured one of them. On the tenth night the youngest son, who was named Sigmund, clamped on to the wolf’s tongue with his teeth and ripped it out. After which, Sigmund was rescued by his sister and went on to have many other nasty adventures.

  Jack tried not to listen. It was the usual Northman entertainment. The warriors cheered every time Sigmund did something appalling. Much ale was drunk. Someone got sick in the straw. Eventually, most of the men crawled into sleeping cupboards along the walls and passed out. But a few stayed awake to guard the gate. Adder-Tooth was carried by servants to his private bedroom.

  The Bard, Skakki, Jack, and Thorgil remained seated. “We must leave tomorrow,” said Thorgil, who had been silent for a long time. She had dropped all pretense of being a delicate princess. Her gray eyes raked over the squalid hall and found nothing to her liking. “Gods! I’d forgotten what a drunken revel was like.”

  “This was no revel,” said the Bard. “They were drinking to hide fear.”

  Big Half and Little Half appeared, with the young skald fluttering behind them. “You should eat,” Little Half said. “I have cheese and bread in the pantry that hasn’t been mauled.”

  “Is this how these men spend every night?” said the Bard, disgusted.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I can’t tell you how honored I am to meet the great Dragon Tongue,” gushed the skald.

  “So you should be,” the old man said absentmindedly. “Thank you for your offer, Little Half. We would welcome food that hasn’t been slobbered on.” Soon everyone was enjoying a peaceful meal. If it hadn’t been for the drunken snores and the guards lurking by the gate, it would have been almost cheerful. The terrible cries in the wind had vanished.

  “Much as I hate to bring up an unpleasant subject, I need to know what happened with that hogboon,” said the Bard when they had finished.

  “What’s a hogboon, sir?” Jack asked.

  “Do you remember my telling you about Jenny Greenteeth?”

  “The ghost who haunts the Hall of Wraiths?”

  “Yes. She’s a perfect example of what happens when you don’t fix wrongs,” said the Bard. “Long ago something terrible happened to Jenny and her spirit was unable to rest. The problem is, she can’t remember what it was. She comes after anyone who strays into her territory, moaning whooo… whooo… whooo like a demented owl. My guess is that she’s asking ‘Who killed me?’ Now, of course, no one can tell her. Jenny’s fairly harmless, apart from causing the odd heart attack. A hogboon is far worse.”

  “This one came from an ancient barrow,” said Big Half.

  “I saw it when it came for Bjorn.” Little Half shivered. “It was a tall presence wreathed in cobwebs. Its body was like the mold you find on bread. Soft-looking. It left gray footprints.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” the Bard said. “Adder-Tooth forced the wise woman to go into a vision trance. Unfortunately, she chose a barrow containing a hogboon, and it awakened. It saw an opportunity to take over a living body, except that hogboons are not alive. The best they can manage is to use up the life force within a host, and when that was gone, the woman dissolved into dust. Am I correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Little Half. “That’s what Adder-Tooth told me. He himself didn’t realize what had happened until the creature spoke. ‘That was a dainty meal you prepared for me,’ it said. ‘Ask of me any boon and it shall be granted.’ Well, of course Adder-Tooth only wanted one thing: the destruction of Bjorn. He immediately demanded that without asking whether payment would be involved.”

  “There’s always a price for such favors,” said the Bard.

  “When Bjorn was alive…” The dwarf swallowed and wiped his eyes. “When Bjorn was alive, this hall rang with laughter. Women and children still lived here, and on that night we were posing riddles.”

  “I remember,” said Big Half.

  “Bjorn had given us this puzzle,” said Little Half.

  Its shaping power passes knowing.

  It seeks the living one by one.

  Eternal, yet without life, it moves

  Everywhere in the wide world.

  “The answer, of course, was Death. The riddle had no sooner been set when a gray presence drifted through the wall. The lamps grew dim and the smaller children began to cry.

  “‘I seek Bjorn Skull-Splitter,’ it said in a ghastly voice. We were all terrified, but Bjorn bravely drew his sword. ‘I am the one you seek. Why are you here?’

  “‘I am the answer to your riddle,’ replied the hogboon.

  “Our leader grew pale. ‘Take the women and children from the hall,’ he ordered. ‘Now begone, foul creature, or I will be forced to kill you.’

  “‘None may slay me,’ the hogboon whispered, and leaped at him. Bjorn sliced it in two with his sword, but the parts came together like smoke, and it laid its hand on Bjorn’s chest. Our poor leader groaned and dropped his weapon. In an instant his face had aged ten years.

  “‘Take up your sword, Bjorn Skull-Splitter. This battle is not over,’ said the hogboon. Bjorn, may Odin remember him, fought on. Each time the hogboon touched him, he aged. It was like watching a cat play with a mouse. At the last Bjorn could only lie helplessly o
n the floor. He tried to lift his weapon, but by then his hand was so gnarled, he couldn’t open his fingers. He crumbled away into dust before our eyes. The next day Einar Adder-Tooth’s army invaded.”

  “By all the gods of Asgard,” swore Thorgil, “this crime cries out for vengeance.”

  “So it does, princess,” said the dwarf, “but much happens for which there is no remedy. The living must go on.” Jack had a moment of satisfaction when Thorgil looked startled. She had completely forgotten she was supposed to be a princess.

  By now exhaustion was falling over all of them, particularly the Bard. They had walked a long way and the night’s revels had been wearing. “We can continue this conversation in the morning,” said Little Half, noting the old man’s tiredness. “I’ll bring fresh straw and you can sleep out here. I don’t recommend the sleeping cupboards. They’ve been thrown up in too often.”

  “I could sing for you, to help you sleep,” offered the skald.

  “I’d rather listen to Pictish beasts howling at the moon,” said the Bard. “There’s one more question, Little Half. Why does Adder-Tooth want a princess?”

  “Ah!” The dwarf looked embarrassed. It was he, after all, who had carried that information to the king. “Why does any ruler want a princess? He needs a wife.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  ESCAPE PLANS

  Jack thought Thorgil would never calm down. She stormed about, kicking straw and swearing bloodthirsty oaths until the drunken warriors began to stir. Skakki kept telling her, “I won’t allow it, little sister. You have my word.”

  “You have my word too,” said the Bard. She screamed at both of them.

  “How can she be forced into marriage?” said Jack. “I thought Northmen brides had to consent.”

  “That’s the ideal situation,” the old man said. “But Adder-Tooth needs a princess to insure his kingship. He has no right to the title.”

  “I’ll kill myself before I let that slime bucket near me!”

  Thorgil snatched up a knife someone had left on a table, but it slid from her hand. She bent to retrieve it and her knees buckled. She collapsed on the floor. “Curse that rune of protection! Curse it! It won’t let me die!” She thrashed about in the straw.

  “Perhaps I could bring her a calming drink,” said Little Half, who had dodged her fists several times.

  “Something hot. No wine or mead,” said the Bard. He laid his hand on her forehead and murmured words in the Blessed Speech. She shuddered and lay still.

  “We should leave now,” Skakki said in a low voice. He nodded at the iron door, where a few bleary-eyed guards squatted.

  “I don’t relish a long, dark walk to the village with a hogboon wandering about,” said the Bard. “It may prefer to feed on full-moon nights, but it’s clearly restless. Only the spirits in the wall are keeping it out. I wouldn’t like to encounter them, either.”

  “Would they attack us?” Jack thought about the hogboon slowly devouring the life of the wise woman and Bjorn Skull-Splitter.

  “Probably not,” the old man said. “The spirits in the wall are innocent sacrificial victims. They strive to defeat the one who slew them, but if aroused, they might lash out at anyone who came near.”

  Great, thought Jack, hugging himself against the growing chill in the hall. The more he learned about spirits, the less he liked them—Jenny Greenteeth, the draugr, hogboons. But there was also the gentle ghost who had stood outside the old Roman house with his two children. Restless spirits weren’t all bad. Perhaps most people noticed only the ones that were.

  The dwarf returned with herbal tea for them all. Then he and his brother made comfortable beds of straw in the cleanest part of the hall and fetched sheepskins for the coldest hours before dawn.

  Jack fell asleep quickly and slept like the dead until after the sun rose. The workers from the village had already passed through and the servants had opened up the windows. A chill breeze ruffled his hair.

  Jack sat up and blearily looked around. The hall had seemed halfway decent in the dim light of the night before. Now it showed itself an utter ruin. Ale-horns were strewn everywhere with gnawed bones and half-eaten trenchers of bread. Servants were turning over the straw with pitchforks and tossing the riper bits into the fire. The warriors were crawling out of their cupboards. To go by the groans, they all had filthy hangovers, and they staggered outside to urinate over the edge of the cliff.

  “I’m sorry, my lady,” apologized Little Half, flinching at Thorgil’s murderous glare. “You really must get up so we can put this place to rights. It’s much nicer on the cliff.”

  “Oh, leave me alone,” she muttered.

  Jack helped her outside. They sat upwind from the warriors on stones overlooking the water. The sun was just breaking over the hills to the east, and the bay below them was still in deep shade. The water was dark blue with a frosting of seagulls.

  “My head feels like trolls have been playing knucklebones with it all night,” Thorgil moaned. “Ohhh, everything is moving.”

  Jack turned his head sharply and found that his vision was swimming too. “That tea Little Half gave us…” he said.

  “What?” the shield maiden said faintly.

  “That drink we had just before going to bed. I think it was drugged.”

  “You can’t trust anyone in this snake pit,” she said.

  “Apparently not.” Jack was annoyed at himself. He should have been more suspicious of Little Half. He liked him because he’d been a friend of Bjorn, but the dwarf was in the service of Einar Adder-Tooth now.

  Little Half brought out hot cider and oatcakes. “Traitor,” snarled Thorgil.

  “Now, princess, it isn’t as bad you think it is.” The dwarf knelt by her and placed her fingers around the warm cider cup. “Everyone suffers changes of fortune, and sometimes they turn out better than you think. My brother and I felt terrible when Bjorn died, but Adder-Tooth is no worse than most masters.”

  Thorgil looked up, surprised. “You’ve had many masters?”

  “We’re wandering entertainers. We go from hall to hall, and when one group gets tired of us, we move on. We used to visit Bjorn regularly, but we’ve also worked for Grimble the Sullen, Leif Lousy-Beard, and Ragnar the Ravenous. There aren’t many jobs for a man like me. I’m too small to be a warrior, and my singing voice would curdle the milk inside a cow. But I know how to lighten a dull evening with lively tales and games. I’m also an excellent servant. I give good advice without appearing to do so, and I perform chores a king can’t trust to others.”

  “Such as drugging people,” said Jack. His head ached dully and he had trouble concentrating. The dwarf shrugged.

  “What does Big Half do?” asked Thorgil.

  “He juggles knives, but he usually winds up cutting himself. He does acrobatic tricks. Most of the time he falls flat on his face, and the warriors seem to find that amusing. I’m afraid my brother isn’t the swiftest deer in the herd. Without my care, he would have starved long ago. He also plays Bonk Ball.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My own invention,” Little Half said proudly. “You need a wooden ball wrapped in leather and a stick of wood called a ‘bat’. A player throws the ball at Big Half as hard as he can, and he knocks it away with the bat. If he misses, it goes bonk on his head.”

  Jack smiled grimly. Big Half definitely wasn’t the swiftest deer in the herd if he let his little brother talk him into such a game. “Tell me more about that wall outside.”

  Little Half hunkered down and helped himself to one of the oatcakes. “When you ask for anything from a hogboon, it expects to be paid back. The night after Adder-Tooth took over, the hogboon took shape in the hall. I can tell you, everyone dived for cover. Warriors were fighting one another to get into the sleeping cupboards. They knew swords were no use against it.

  “‘I have granted your wish, Einar Adder-Tooth,’ the creature said. ‘Now I have come for payment. Each full-moon night I expect a living huma
n left for me on my barrow. If you do not provide this, I will take you in its stead.’ Then it turned into a mist and disappeared through the wall.

  “The full moon was just past,” the dwarf continued. “Adder-Tooth asked the Picts about the body that lay in that barrow, and they said it was an ancient king who had also built a haunted tower at the other end of the island. He had buried thirty men alive beneath its stones. Some years later, on his wedding day, relatives of those men slew him and carried off his bride.

  “Adder-Tooth reasoned that you had to fight ghosts with ghosts and that thirty vengeful spirits should be enough to fight off one hogboon. He ordered the tower dismantled and brought here. He didn’t need to fortify the seaward side because hogboons can’t travel through water.

  “The minute we started dismantling the tower, the voices started. You couldn’t understand the words, but the rage was unmistakable. The horses bolted. Men had to drag the carts themselves. They didn’t complain, though, because fear drove them, and they got the wall up before the next full moon.”

  “If hogboons can’t travel through water,” Jack said with a yawn, trying to gather his thoughts, “why didn’t Adder-Tooth simply go to another island?”

  “He had always been landless,” Little Half said simply.

  “Bjorn’s island, fine hall, horses, and sheep were more wealth than Adder-Tooth had ever dreamed possible. And he could call himself a king. You have no idea how much that means to a third-rate pirate. The first thing he did was hire a third-rate skald to sing his praises.”

  Jack saw the third-rate skald stagger out of the hall and collapse with his face in a trough of water.

  Little Half stretched his arms and legs as the sun flooded the cliff over the sea. “Once the wall was up, the hogboon battered against it, and the spirits of the dead men battered back. If you thought last night was noisy, wait till you see what happens during the full moon.”

  “I have no intention of waiting for the full moon. I’m not staying here,” Thorgil said.

  The dwarf laughed. “You’ll get used to the idea.” He gathered up the cups and left.