Poul Anderson

by The Golden Horn; The Road of the Sea Horse; The Sign of the Raven (epub)

  Now he got up, the floor cold under his bare feet, and went over to lay a hand on Thora's neck. "You must understand," he said earnestly. "This is an old dream. I've heard it said the world is round, a learned Saracen told me that long ago."

  "So you've told me, and I say it's heathenish nonsense."

  "Perhaps. Yet if the world is a ball, I could sail over the top and be in Vinland or Cathay. But let it go. The Greeks thought there was a Hyperborea, a land of ageless springtime, beyond the north wind. It may be that Ydhun's apples grow there, or the well whose waters make men young again. It may be that unicorns run through green meadow where the flowers are stars. It may be ... I know not, and that's a hunger in me."

  "Are you so hungry for death?" she asked, and the edge was dulled in her voice.

  "No. No, I'm in no haste to die. There's so much undone." Harald looked bitterly at the wall. "God has spared me weakness thus far, and yet the years are heaped on my back, and all I once longed for has shrunk to a sameness of days. What has become of this empire of the North I meant to shape? A half-score years of petty raids, Svein still alive to jeer me, while elsewhere all the world is shaking with a new birth. I grasp at Denmark, and it slips like water through my fingers. I think of England, and while I sit thinking Norman William readies to leap on her. I look to Sweden, and see a wall of armed men I cannot hope to spring over. And here in Norway, what is it? A fight of words, a fight with shadows, a step here and a step there while the land lies sullen and does not understand."

  He straightened. "Live or die, this much I will do. It will be enough to sail beyond the North."

  Thora drew a long breath. "I cannot swerve you," she whispered. "I know that by now. But my dearest—did you mean what you said about taking me along?"

  "No," he answered quickly.

  "I thought not. So I must stay behind again, and wonder how you fare—each day a year, each night a century, while I think of your gashed corpse brought home. You sail and fight, and I stay behind to pray!"

  The last word was a shriek.

  Harald's hand slipped downward, over her breasts, and he bent close to her. That near, her face blurred; he could no longer see well at less than arm's length, though otherwise his might was scarcely diminished. His lips sought her cheek.

  "Enough," he murmured. "You shall be with me next year, you and Magnus both."

  "I'll hold you to that vow," she shakily, "if next year comes."

  His arms tightened around her.

  3

  Three longships lay where men had never sailed before.

  It was a dead calm, with murky fog, and a still, relentless cold gnawed past furs and leather, down through flesh and the marrow of bones. The crews shivered, slapping numbed hands together, stamping booted feet on the ice-slippery decks. From afar came a distant, booming voice of thunder and judgment.

  Harald looked down the dragon's hull. Mist swirled to blur the huddled crew and the small cheerless fire on the cooking hearth. There was ice crusted on the bulwarks, icicles hanging from the rigging, the sail was a stiffened sheet. Over the side, he could discern blackened waters. A man who fell into them might be dead of cold ere they hauled him back.

  The remote crashing came louder on a brief bloodless wind, rumbling and banging, roaring and growling. A break in the fog showed the sun low and heatless, a wan disc of ice. Its light flashed off a drifting berg, transforming it to a dwarf's hoard of red and green and sapphire blue, mocking him with its jeweled glitter.

  "How far have we come?" Eystein's voice seemed muffled. His breath blended with the streaming fog.

  "God knows," said Thjodholf. "Farther than is right, I think."

  "That noise!" Gunnar's jaws clapped. "Can it be the sea falling over the world's edge?"

  The wind dropped again, and fog rolled in more thickly. Soon Harald could not see the other craft, or the sternpost of his own.

  "It may be," said Thjodholf. He crossed himself. "Or it may be the quern Grotti, the giantesses Fenja and Menja swinging it and grinding salt into the sea."

  Harald snorted. "Those are ice floes striking together," he told them.

  "And if so, pack ice is the last thing to try sailing through," declared Vigleik Erlendsson.=

  "Be still!" shouted the king.

  "There was ice in my beard this morning," said Thjodholf, "and the days grow shorter more swiftly than they ought."

  Somewhere to starboard, they heard a sucking and smacking sound, something huge and black broached the sea and waters ran monstrously off its flanks.

  "The Snake!" yelled someone out of the fog. "The Midhgardh Snake!"

  "A whale," bawled Harald. "A whale, God damn you for a sniveling coward!"

  "We're none of us craven," said Thjodholf quietly. "And yet are we mad? Half our provisions are eaten up, and we had strong favoring winds when we left. If we must row back, there'll be hunger and thirst aboard ere we win to land."

  Harald slumped on a bench. The fog thickened. Men cried out across the noise of moving mountains, oars splashed, and the ships drew close for comfort.

  Gunnar tugged at Eystein's sleeve. "I've seen many fogs," he whispered, "but never one like to this. What are those shapes in it?"

  "Thicker banks. Not ghosts, but only thicker patches." Eystein's tone sounded unsure. He could not take his eyes from one gray shadow; it was like a troll crouched to spring on him.

  Louder rolled the thunders, as if marching down on them.

  Harald's lips opened. If there was to be no wind, then down mast and out oars. But he closed his mouth again.

  The fog gathered, smoking in the hull and dripping from the cordage. He heard the iceberg groan, was it calving? The whale threshed the sea, somewhere out in sightlessness.

  Blind, he thought, blind and alone, three little chips of wood huddled under the cliffs of Giant Land.

  Gunnar squatted down by Eystein. "I thought I saw a boat yonder," he muttered.

  "There are none save ours," the sheriff told him thinly.

  "No man's craft, nay . . . but him the drow sails far. In half a boat, with his bones shining and seaweed hanging from them, and those what see him is dead men ere morning."

  "Be still," snapped Eystein. "Were all the men who ever drowned to come against us, I'd stand by the king."

  A whisper went down the benches, and Eystein wished he had not spoken. He himself thought he could almost see the unhallowed corpse clambering over the side. Water rushed between the barnacled ribs, weed grew on the naked skull, the flesh was puffed and gray and eaten ragged by fish. An eel wriggled where his heart had been, and the eyes were a dreadful hollowness.

  A breath of deeper cold flowed from the larboard. Harald could just make out the shimmering flanks of the iceberg, it was drifting toward them. Loud and hoarse, the floes coughed in the north, shifting and grinding.

  Even Thor had gone home beaten when he fared hither.

  Harald's eyes sought his chest. There lay rusting sword and ax and mail, wrapped in the raven flag. He had thought to plant Landwaster on the shores of Hyperborea. But there was only the sea, and the fog, and the ice, and the cold.

  Perhaps that was all which lay north of him. The chill struck to his heart. Perhaps it was only eternal winter, roaring bergs and whistling winds across an emptiness of snow. He could leave his bones here, and Norway would crumble behind him.

  And yet. . .

  Jotunheim the gloomy, or land of youth and springtime and all bright hopes, or the great curve of the world across to the fabled lands of the East, who knew? What did any man know? It had been his hope to come back with a tale that would lift men's souls, but he lay freezing and becalmed while the ice bellowed its laughter.

  Had it not been for his war with Svein, had he taken Denmark as was his right and been king of the North, he could have sailed with a hundred ships and a year's provisions. Always it was Svein, Svein the supple, Svein the crafty, Svein with the spider's patience, who lay between him and his longing. Satan snatch Svein
Estridhsson down to hell!

  The thunders crashed and banged; it was as if he heard a voice in them, the grim chanting of Fenja and Menja as they turned the quern of the sea. Here was the home of winter, death and despair, sunlessness and howling winds, glaciers spilling south to grind down mountains and all the hopes of men. Here lay the wreck of the world. It was too great for him, he had dared too much.

  He lifted his head. Rime frost crusted his beard, and his cheeks were numb. The huge hollow booming of the ice, or the quern, or the waters pouring down to foam among the nether stars, rolled in his skull.

  "God's teeth," he whispered, "you've beaten me, but it will not be forever. Someday men of my blood will come back."

  There was a sudden rage in his breast. He wanted to kill, he wanted his banner to fly over burning homes and wasted fields, he wanted to cut Svein Estridhsson down like a dog and leave him for ravens to eat. This journey had ended in nothing, it would scarce make a tale. No skalds would weave it in verse, no saga would carry its remembrance; the most he could hope for was a few parched lines in some monkish chronicle. The taste of failure was acrid in his mouth, and he wanted to wipe it out with blood.

  He rose. Men's eyes turned frightened to his tall form, they crowded toward him. He wondered if an order to go further would bring their swords out against him.

  "We've tried," he said without tone. "You've done bravely, lads, and I shall not forget those who came with me on this. But now it seems best we return home."

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  map of Stamford Bridge

  Epigraph

  I: How a Ship Was Launched

  II: How They Fought at the River Niss

  III: How a War Was Lost

  IV: Of Haakon Ivarsson

  V: How Peace Was Made

  VI: How They Fought in Sweden

  VII: How Ellisif Was Angry

  VIII: Of Harold Godwinsson and Tosti

  IX: How St. Michael Drew His Sword

  X: How Ulf Uspaksson Fared Alone

  XI: How the Host Was Gathered

  XII: How They Fared to Orkney

  XIII: Of Kings in England

  XIV: How They Fought at Stamford Bridge

  Epilogue: Of Olaf the Quiet

  Stamford Bridge

  FOREWORD

  The Golden Horn told of the early life of Harald Sigurdharson. Born in Norway in 1015 A.D., he was an Yngling, a scion of the house of Harald Fairhair, who had fought his way to kingship over the whole country a century and a half before. The father of this later Harald, Sigurdh Sow, bore the name of king himself, but was in fact only a chieftain in the South. Since 1000, when its strong King Olaf Tryggvason fell in battle, most of Norway had lain under lords of lower rank.

  In the year of Harald's birth, a new Olaf arrived from the West. This was the son of another Norse under-king, also called Harald. After the death of the latter, his wife Aasta married Sigurdh Sow. Thus Olaf Haraldsson, nicknamed the Stout, and Harald Sigurdharson were half brothers. Olaf had been a Viking abroad until he became a zealous Christian. Now he returned to claim the throne. Any man born to the royal house could do that, if he could get enough support; this situation had led to civil war in the past and would again in the future. Many of the regional Things (folk-moots) hailed Olaf king; those leaders who stood against him, he overthrew, until he reigned alone.

  He proved an overbearing master, especially in the ways he set about converting the heathen left in Norway. At last a goodly number of chieftains and yeomen, Christian as well as pagan, rebelled. In this they had the help of the mighty King Knut of Denmark and England (known to English history as Canute), who planned thus to make Norway a fief of his own.

  Olaf must needs flee. He found refuge in Novgorod with Grand Prince Jaroslav the Wise. The rulers of the Kievan state were of Scandinavian origin and had kept in touch with the ancestral lands. Jaroslav himself had married a Swedish princess, Ingigerdh, who was fond of Olaf and pleaded his cause.

  A year later, in 1030, Olaf came back with what forces he could gather to try to regain his kingdom. Other Norsemen rallied to him. Among them was young Harald Sigurdharson.

  The royal host met the rebels at Stiklastadh. After a hard battle, Olaf fell and his army broke. Harald, wounded, was brought to a hiding place by a friend.

  When he had recovered, he went first to Sweden and thence to Novgorod. Jaroslav received him, too, kindly, as he had already received Olaf's bastard son, a small boy named Magnus. In the next few years, Harald got his full growth, to seven feet of height. He fought well in Jaroslav's wars and rose to a high position. He also learned something about civilization, which in Russia was far more developed than among his own folk.

  Meanwhile a Danish viceroy ruled Norway so oppressively that Olaf came to be thought of by the people as a saint.

  Restless, ambitious, aware he would do best to gain wealth before attempting anything else, Harald presently left Novgorod for Constantinople. The capital of the Byzantine Empire was still the largest, richest, most cultivated and brilliant city in Christendom. Harald enlisted in the emperor's Varangian Guard, crack troops recruited from men of the northern lands. Waging war, taking enormous booty that he shipped to Jaroslav for safekeeping, he soon won a name for himself, and then the captaincy of the guard. Likewise he won the lifelong friendship of an Icelandic warrior called Ulf Uspaksson—and, at last, the love of a young noblewoman, Maria Skleraina.

  He lost her forever, when conflicts and intrigues at court forced him to escape from the empire with some followers. He reached Jaroslav, now resident in Kiev, in 1045, and was royally received; but he never got over his bitterness, and vowed he would never again be powerless. During the next months, he used his wealth and fame to draw men to him. He also made a strong alliance when he married Elizabeth, a daughter of Jaroslav and Ingigerdh. His Norsemen softened her name to Ellisif.

  After Knut's death, the chieftains of Norway had plotted to overthrow Danish rule in their country. Foremost among them were Einar Thambaskelfir (the Archer), his son Eindridhi, and the brothers Finn and Kalf Arnason. Of the latter, Finn had fought with Olaf at Stiklastadh, Kalf against him; but they had never lost family feeling. An expedition crossed the Baltic Sea and fetched back young Magnus Olafsson to be the king of a free Norway.

  Joyful, the folk flocked about him. The Danes, under Knut's weak son Hardhaknut, gave way rather easily. Magnus and Hardhaknut made peace by a treaty which provided that, if either should die without an heir, the other would succeed him.

  At first Magnus proceeded as harshly at home as his father had done. Among others, Kalf Arnason had to flee overseas. Rebelliousness seethed. Then Magnus' godfather, the skald (poet) Sighvat, brought him to his senses. Thereafter the king reigned so well that he became known as Magnus the Good.

  When Hardhaknut did, indeed, die sonless, the Norse were ready to help Magnus make his claim on Denmark. They subdued that country, or so they thought. Magnus appointed Svein Estridhsson his jarl over it. ("Jarl" was a title of nobility which could be inherited or bestowed; it implied great power, and some jarls had been stronger in fact than kings.) This man's mother Estridh had been of higher rank than his father, hence his nickname. However, he was descended from the Skjoldungs, the royal house of Denmark. When Magnus went home, Svein proclaimed himself the Danish king. His folk upheld him.

  Magnus fared back to put down his unruly jarl. Thus matters stood when Harald came north. Since Magnus would not agree that his uncle had an equal right to rule over Norway, Harald joined Svein. That became an uneasy alliance, with bad faith on both sides, and finally broke apart. Harald, who had been secretly negotiating with Magnus, now sought his nephew out. With him were Elizabeth and the daughter she had borne to him that winter, whom he had had christened Maria.

  Harald and Magnus met in friendlier wise than before (1046). They decided that they would share both the kingship of Norway and the riches brought from the South. It seemed that together they could soon ove
rcome Svein . . . and then perhaps go on to England, since Magnus had a claim on the throne of that country as well, through his old treaty with Hardhaknut.

  Sea Horse Road took up the story from there. Harald and Magnus ravaged widely in Denmark but could not catch Svein. They vowed they would return next year with a greater host and make an end of him. Meanwhile they sailed home.

  Traveling about the kingdom he had won, dealing with its folk, Harald added men to his following, among them the Icelandic skald Thjodholf. However, he made enemies, for he was impatient with the loose government and backward ways of the people, and often rode roughshod over them. This, as well as the clash of their two overweening prides, brought him more and more into conflict with Magnus.

  Nonetheless, the kinsmen sailed together against Denmark the following year. They were victorious in a pitched battle, but Magnus was mortally injured. Repentant of the harm he had done, he said as he lay dying that Svein should rule in Denmark. Harald swore Magnus had had no right to give that claim away; it was his too. But many of the Norse had never cared for this war, and had only waged it for love of Magnus. Under the leadership of Einar Thambaskelfir, they went home. Thereafter, Harald could do nothing else. He must return fast and get the shire-Things to hail him king before anyone could rise to challenge him.

  Riding about the country, he met the sheriff Thorberg Arnason, a brother of Kalf and Finn. ("Sheriff stands for an Old Norse word meaning a man whom the king appointed to keep order and otherwise represent him in a district, but who might well become a leader of opposition to him.) Thorberg was friendly and kept Harald as his guest for some time. Harald and Thorberg's daughter Thora fell in love. She was willing to become his mistress, but neither she nor her father wished to see her a mere bedfellow. Harald promised that, when she came to him in the spring, she would get the name of queen, equal to Elizabeth's title. This enraged the daughter of Jaroslav; however, she soon yielded, if only because she loved her husband. The two women seldom quarrelled openly in later years, but they were always hostile to each other.