A Mighty Dawn

by Theodore Brun

  ‘Not mine alone.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Sigurd, impatiently. ‘But it was you who saved my sister.’ He kicked at the snow. ‘I suppose I should be grateful.’ His sullen look hardly betrayed much gratitude.

  ‘As should we be to you.’

  Sigurd looked up sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your part in our victory. It’s there, swinging from the sacred oak for all to see. ’Twas bravely done.’ Erlan could see the anger pouring into Sigurd’s face, but he didn’t care.

  ‘You dare make mock of me? You? A cripple!’

  The word bit again. Erlan felt his pride pawing at the ground. But he held it in check, saying nothing.

  ‘My father – fool that he is – reckons you a gift from the gods. But every cripple is a throwback of the gods. Refuse. Marked with shame.’

  ‘That may be true,’ Erlan nodded. ‘Yet, though I’m a cripple, your father judged me more of a man than you.’

  Sigurd’s face curdled in disgust. ‘You may have beguiled that old fool, but you never will me.’

  ‘No,’ smiled Erlan. ‘I shall leave that to others.’

  ‘Don’t think yourself superior to me, cripple.’

  Erlan leaned in and hissed, ‘That’s right. I am a cripple. But tell me, my lord – what was it crippled you?’

  Confusion spread over Sigurd’s face and before he could think of an answer, Erlan left him standing there and went to seek more welcome company.

  He was soon back amid the roiling revelry, scaling the steps to the high table. He walked along in the shadows behind the high-born guests, passing without their notice, when suddenly – smoothly – a silhouette rose and stepped into his path.

  The queen eyed him languidly as she twirled a chalice in her fingers.

  ‘My Lady Saldas.’ He tipped his head.

  ‘Our beloved stranger. Tell me, how was your little friend? Is he enjoying our feast and all of its. . . delights?’ She raised an eyebrow.

  Her eyes were still and mysterious as forest pools. If Bara’s coquetry called to a man’s body, the queen’s beauty called to a man’s soul.

  ‘The boy’s like a cat,’ he replied. ‘Throw him in anywhere, he’ll land on his feet.’

  ‘His master doesn’t fare so badly.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘You turned up here a beggar. Now look at you. You’re seated at the right hand of the king.’

  ‘For tonight.’

  ‘You’re being modest.’ She sighed. ‘Don’t – it doesn’t suit you. Your deeds won the favour of the king.’

  ‘He does me honour.’

  ‘It is your due. Take it for what it is. From what I hear, you proved yourself most able in bringing back our daughter.’

  ‘I’m only glad Princess Lilla is safe.’

  ‘I’m sure you are,’ she said, a glimmer of irritation crossing her brow. ‘Of course, there are other ways a man must prove himself.’ She took a slow sip from her wine-cup, never shifting her eyes from his. ‘You went into the wilderness. The unknown. . . and you overcame what lay in the darkness. Tamed what was strange to you.’ She dropped her voice. ‘A man like you – with your body still so. . .’ Her eyes swept over his chest. ‘So young. You need a match worthy of you. A different kind of wildness to be tamed.’

  Somehow the queen seemed closer now. With each word, he caught a breath of her dusky fragrance – alluring.

  Dangerous.

  ‘A different kind?’

  ‘One that has a taste. Once a man tastes this kind, he’ll never want another.’

  Her lips curved in a beguiling smile, her eyes a cauldron of desire. Heat flooded his loins, as though she’d reached out and caressed him with an invisible hand.

  Nearby, a chalice clattered to the floor. He looked round, distracted.

  ‘Think on what I said, stranger,’ she murmured when he turned back. ‘There are ways to win a king’s favour. And there are ways to win the favour of a queen.’ She touched his hand. Only for an instant but her fingertips scorched like fire. ‘Now I must attend to my husband.’

  Erlan watched her go, waiting for the pounding in his chest to subside.

  This is a foolish game to play. He shook his head clear and went to resume his seat. Lilla was there, her earlier radiance having returned. But as he sat, she gave him a strange look. Almost reproachful.

  He would’ve asked what she meant by it, but before either spoke, a banging thundered out over the din.

  There was a tumult of shouting, a clatter of tableware and the company fell silent, wanting to see what the noise was all about.

  Erlan looked with the rest and saw, to his horror, his friend Kai standing alone atop a table, pounding his foot like an angry stallion. Folk around him were trying to pull him down, but he kicked them away, and went on with his stamping.

  ‘What the Hel’s he up to now?’ murmured Erlan. Lilla couldn’t help giggling.

  Evidently feeling secure enough, Kai raised his cup. ‘My king! My noble king! I appeal to you, my lord!’

  At this, everyone let him be and turned to see what the king would do.

  And when the whole gathering had been hung in suspense some moments, at last Sviggar spoke. ‘Come, young scoundrel. What’s this about? You interrupt our feasting – you’d better have good reason.’

  ‘None better, my lord,’ crowed Kai. ‘I wouldn’t dream of troubling you, noble king, were it not to lavish great honour on you.’ He gave a slavish bow.

  ‘Lavish, is it?’ cried Sviggar, a smile creeping onto his lips. ‘Tell me, lad. How does a servant boy mean to lavish honour on a king?’

  ‘Why, with a song, my lord!’

  ‘A song? Nay – you have the wrong king, lad. In all the Nine Worlds, there’s nothing so tedious as a skald-singer!’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more, good king. A pox on all skaldmen and their women, I say. Nevertheless, I have a grand song for you. . . For all this noble company! I swear it’s worth the hearing.’

  The king shook his head, amused. ‘What says my queen to such a thing? Shall we hear him?’

  ‘I confess I am curious,’ replied Saldas. ‘Let him sing if he wants.’

  ‘Very well,’ declared Sviggar, ‘for the queen’s pleasure then – our ears are yours!’

  An exultant smile flashed over Kai’s face. And then, suddenly, he fell serious and still, and raising his cup, in a high clear voice, began to sing:

  Hark this hall-song Treasure-Giver,

  Still the horn-stream brew,

  Stories sung of dead men’s doings,

  None like mine so true.

  Wolf’s wine soaking Sveär snowdrifts,

  Shadows stealing, not a trace,

  Black soul spirits, Hel’s own children

  Murder men of Sviggar’s race.

  Red-flood rose to Uppland barrow

  Sword-wolves sought these wraiths of death,

  Swallowed up by silent forest,

  Four fine helm-halls bit from breath.

  Kai sang on, verse after verse, retelling the whole grisly tale. Erlan let his eyes wander over the benches. A half-smile here, an open mouth there, another with her eyes closed. Listening. Hardly a muscle moved nor a cup lifted. He wondered what places they imagined, what creatures they conjured in their minds, and how different their vision must be from what he, who’d seen it all, remembered.

  Kai was nearing the end of his song now. His words recalled the terrible screaming in the darkness, the fear, the stench of battle. . . it was too much. Erlan retreated back to the present. Back to this place of warm bodies and hot food. Of laughter and song. Of friendship, even. And for the first time, he let an idea linger in his mind that never could have before.

  This was now his home.

  A smile formed on his lips as Kai finished his song:

  Earls and oathmen bravely burrowed,

  Red edge roused against the foe,

  Found them there in steel and slaughter,

  Harvest c
ut by battle-hoe.

  Fey they fell upon the killing,

  Brothers bled by Vandrung sword,

  Sent them gladly to the Spear-God,

  Came back home with shining hoard.

  Now with oak-hall rafters ringing,

  All shout ‘Honoured Sviggar King!’

  Stranger sworn a friend and brother,

  Worthy earls wear golden ring.

  Odin smiles upon his sword-sons,

  Men were matched, his favour’s won,

  Fairest Freya now cries ‘Daughters!

  Love your lads, ere night is done!’

  Kai lifted his cup, drained it to its dregs and smashed it on the floor. The tables erupted in a storm of applause. Kai stood there, overwhelmed, grinning like a crescent moon.

  And for a moment Erlan forgot all that had brought him to this faraway hall and beat the table in admiration with all the rest.

  The king meanwhile rose and waved the crowd to silence. ‘So, young Gotar! A king will seldom thank you for proving him wrong, but tonight I’m happy to admit it. We shall not forget the lesson.’ He slipped a ring over a worn knuckle. ‘Here, lad – treasure from your Treasure-Giver.’ He flung it down the hall.

  A nimble house-karl plucked it out of the air and flicked it straight up to Kai. The young skald caught it and peered wide-eyed into his hand.

  ‘First time he’s been lost for words,’ murmured Erlan.

  ‘I doubt for long,’ replied Lilla.

  Kai dropped to his seat under a shower of backslaps, still gawping at his gold.

  ‘It seems our young skald has inspired me,’ cried Sviggar, wiping his beard. ‘See this hero of the lad’s lay – this Erlan, who came as a stranger. Your servant sang it true. You must now consider us kith and kin.’ He looked down on Erlan with a munificent expression. ‘Come – stand! Let everyone see you.’

  Reluctantly, Erlan stood.

  ‘Two things I have for you. The first is this.’ He tugged off the golden torque adorning his neck. ‘Take what your courage has won for me. I have enough gold besides.’ So saying, he tossed the magnificent torque into Erlan’s hands.

  ‘Well? Put it on!’

  Erlan did as bid.

  ‘There. It becomes you well.’

  ‘My thanks, my lord.’ Erlan bowed his head, adjusting to the new weight around his neck.

  ‘Now for the other,’ said the king. ‘Perhaps the mead of Odin’s tongue is flowing sweet tonight, but it strikes me you can no longer have only this name of “Erlan” – a stranger with your past foresworn. To us you’re no longer a stranger. You came as a wanderer – you and your Gotar rascal there. So I give you a new name: “Aurvandil”. Shining Wanderer. Yes – Erlan Aurvandil is how you shall be known!’

  He turned to the benches. ‘Come! We drink to this hero of our lay – Erlan Aurvandil!’ he cried, and sank back his wine till it ran down his beard like blood.

  Erlan looked out over the sea of faces, watching his new name ripple like wind over their lips. He looked to his left and saw the old king’s beaming face; to his right, the slender form of Lilla, wearing a smile so faint he thought she might be laughing at him. Perhaps he wanted her to.

  He felt the warmth in their looks. His lord and. . . whatever Lilla must be to him. But this wasn’t all. He glanced along the table into the fathomless eyes of his queen and felt their heat upon him. And beyond her, Sigurd’s seething envy.

  His gaze travelled further, beyond the table into the shadows. And there, for the first time, he saw the glimmer of two eyes staring out of the darkness. Eyes that he now knew he’d felt on him all night.

  Vargalf. The man who moved in shadow. Erlan felt the cold hatred from those eyes and shivered.

  All of a sudden a voice cried out his new name over all the others – again and again. ‘Aurvandil! Aur–van–dil!’ And the voice was so filled with wretched despair that it hushed the hall at once. All eyes turned to a man below the platform, kicking and cursing his way free of his seat, clambering over the table and leaping down to the hearth.

  It was Finn, drunk as a Dane, his blond hair a dishevelled shag. ‘All hail the Aurvandil!’ he cried, waving his brimming horn. ‘Stranger, see – it is you who have the luck you need, not I! The favour of this great house is on you now.’ His voice was a rancorous slur, his tongue slowed by drink. ‘This house, which rewards faithful service with murder! Be on your guard, stranger.’ He lurched towards the platform, jabbing an accusing finger at the king. ‘I swore an oath to you. As did you to me. Honour. . . protection. . . my blood for yours. . . And what is your word worth, my lord?’ he snarled. ‘Not half a heap of shit!’

  The queen leaped to her feet. ‘You forget yourself, thrall. You owe your king everything.’

  ‘Aha!’ bawled Finn, cackling drunkenly. ‘Yes – yes! Our beauteous queen – unrivalled in all the land! All the more so now – would you not agree?’ He spun around to stir the approbation of the crowd – but was met only with silence. He turned back to the high table with a scowl. ‘A curse on you, damned witch!’

  ‘How dare you,’ said Saldas, words sharp as frost. ‘I’ll see you join your wife in Hel for that.’

  ‘Yes, yes, my lady,’ Finn slurred, smiling. ‘Plenty of time for that. But first, to the Aurvandil, all hail!’ he bellowed, laughing like a madman. ‘Hail to his honour! Hail to his fortune! Hail to his fate! All hail to the Aurvandil!’ And reeling round, he put the horn to his lips and drained it to its last drop.

  The company waited in stunned silence. Waited for someone to say something. The king was getting to his feet, but before he said a word, the horn in Finn’s hand went spinning away and the archer fell to his knees, choking. Someone screamed. The women nearest him recoiled in disgust. Suddenly he reared up from the floor clutching his neck. Erlan watched, gripped with horror at the dreadful gurgling in his throat. Finn staggered back, smashing into a bench, sending a man careering into the table; pitchers smashed, a hall-maid shrieked, shoving him away from her. He crashed to the floor, tearing at his neck, nails clawing his skin bloody in desperation, his face purpling, his heels scraping frenziedly at the floor. And then. . . the awful gurgling stopped. His limbs stilled. His face turned ashen grey.

  He was dead.

  A man jumped from his bench, knelt beside Finn and bent over him, sniffing at his gaping mouth. He jerked his head away at once and looked up at the king.

  ‘Poisoned, my lord.’

  Sviggar’s face was a mask of dismay. Whatever words he had were swallowed up in the babble of voices that erupted. Everyone was shouting.

  But Erlan said not a word. He was staring at the ghastly features of the bodyguard, the tumult broiling all around him. And suddenly the torque around his neck felt cold and sinister as a shackle. This prize. This mark of honour.

  This gold.

  And its touch burned like ice.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  A MIGHTY DAWN is not about recreating history. The Scandinavian peoples of the early eighth century were, in the technical sense of the word, pre-historic. They were not recording historical events, as they were elsewhere in Europe and the wider world, where writing and the preservation of written texts had already been going on for centuries.

  Thus the only real means available to delve into the shadows of those dark days of northern Europe are the physical traces left behind in the archaeological record, and the echoes of events (which may or may not have happened) in the sagas and poetry passed down the generations by word of mouth, only a small portion of which would ever be captured for posterity in writing, and often centuries after they were first conceived.

  Just occasionally those echoes are verifiable.

  The Ragnarök was a central concept to the Old Norse mind. Fate was unfolding inexorably towards this cataclysmic event, when the whole cosmos would be rent by chaos and conflict, and fall into eventual destruction – the so-called ‘doom of the gods’ or ‘twilight of the gods’, depending on which translation one favours.r />
  Our knowledge of the Old Norse beliefs about how these events would one day occur comes from two sources. The ‘Völuspá’ (The Vala’s Prophecy) is the oldest known poem in Scandinavian literature, part of which scholars date as far back as the sixth century. The other is the later story of ‘Gylfaginning’, part of Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, his compilation of Old Norse stories written in the thirteenth century.

  Described in these is the Fimbulvetr – the ‘Great Winter’ – that foretells the beginning of the Ragnarök. In ‘Gylfaginning’, one of the gods describes what he knows of the signs of the coming chaos: ‘There will then be great frosts and keen winds. The sun will do no good. There will be three of these winters together and no summer between.’

  The ‘Völuspá’ is more poetical. It says that the children of the wolf Fenrir will carry off the moon, that they will attack the sun and paint the home of the gods red with their blood. The sun’s rays will darken and the stars will no longer be visible in the summers that follow, during which mighty storms will rage.

  In other words, they provide quite clear descriptions of specific weather conditions. Norse scholars have suggested that these details might echo an actual event in history – the so-called Dust Veil of AD 536. This was a natural catastrophe, possibly on a global scale, identifiable in the historical sources from other parts of the world. For example, one Roman official in Italy wrote of “something coming at us from the stars” producing a “blue-coloured sun” resulting in “a summer without heat… perpetual frost… unnatural drought.” Crops withered in the fields and all the while “the rays of the stars have been darkened.”

  Other sources from around the Mediterranean and the Near East give similar descriptions of prolonged celestial darkness, unseasonal chill and failed harvests, and all relate how the sun was so obscured in that region that it hardly cast a shadow from the beginning of AD 536 to the end of summer AD 537.

  Other scientific data backs up these historical sources, supporting the idea that something drastic occurred in the middle of the sixth century to affect the global environment, which had a particularly severe effect on the region of Scandinavia.

  The cause of the Dust Veil is not known for certain. Perhaps a series of massive volcanic eruptions, perhaps an extraterrestrial impact (a comet or meteor of some kind), or else a combination of these. Whatever the cause, the existence of extreme weather phenomena in and after AD 536 is unquestionable and may have had knock-on environmental effects for up to two decades afterwards.