Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  If this was magic, it got him nothing. He neither prayed nor cursed as he carved; only the act itself absorbed him. When he was done, he would throw the thing into the fire, choose another stick, and begin again.

  Gunnar and I stood waiting to be noticed until, finally, I spoke his name. Only then did he raise his eyes—dark, deep-set eyes under sweeping black brows like the wings of a raven.

  “You’ve an unlucky look about you, boy.” Ignoring Gunnar, he looked straight at me.

  I said, “Grani is dead and we’re at feud with Strife-Hrut Ivarsson.” I added the circumstances short and plain. While he listened, the corners of his mouth drew downward and the furrow between his eyes deepened. A vein, like a twisting worm, pulsed at his temple.

  I waited, tense with expectation, hoping to hear the words that would send us into battle. His knife-blade bit deep into the stick; a sliver of wood flew at me.

  “You!” he snarled. “You would plague me about the horse. O, you brave Stallion-Fighter, don’t you know men like Hrut Ivarsson grow fat from feuding with their neighbors? You gave him his opening—I blame you for whatever happens now.”

  Gunnar started to defend me.

  “Shut up!” Thorvald shouted him down. “You think I haven’t seen it? Three nights ago in my sleep—twelve riders approached a desolate house and entered it. Inside were women standing before a loom—the Norns. Men’s heads were their loom-weights, guts were their weft and warp, a sword their beater, their shuttle an arrow. While they worked they sang a bloody song.”

  He sank back in his seat and passed his hand over his eyes. He had visions often—though never one I could recall as gruesome as this.

  “Husband, dreams are sent by the Devil to delude us.” My mother had come up behind us while he spoke.

  “D’you think so? Did the foreign priests teach you that? Well …” he began in a truculent tone but seemed to shrink under her steady gaze and an uncertain look crept into his eyes. “… well, anyway, here it ends. We’ll not feud with Strife-Hrut. No, not for all the stallions in Iceland. Now leave me in peace.”

  My chest ached so I could scarcely breathe. “At least we weren’t cowards!”

  The word burst from me—I had never dared say it aloud before. There was a long moment’s silence. Then the hand that held the rune-stick lashed out and struck me across the forehead where my wound was. My knees gave way and only Gunnar’s grip on my arm kept me from falling.

  “Coward? To me? Say that again, boy, and I’ll have the lungs out of you! If it shames you to live in my hall, then go to sea and earn your bread with your spear as I once did. You’ll soon have your belly full of fighting. But while you eat my bread, you’ll take my orders. There will be no feud. Just as I have done these thirty years, I’ll have naught to do with Strife-Hrut or any of the rest of ’em.” And almost to himself he added, “You know why.”

  All the world knew why.

  Twenty-nine years before, when Iceland became a Christian country, Black Thorvald, alone of the forty-eight godis, had refused to accept the new faith.

  It happened this way. Missionaries came from Norway; in particular a man named Thangbrand of Saxony. At first, the people laughed at him, but Thangbrand frightened them with stories that the world was soon to end in fire and the dead rise from their tombs, for it was nearing the thousandth year, he said, since the birth of the White Christ. This Thangbrand was a fighter, too. He attacked some who disputed him and killed three or four—one, a famous berserker, whom he beat to death with a crucifix.

  Then there began to be conversions and the country was deeply rent. At the Althing that summer, open fighting nearly broke out between the new believers and the old until, at the last moment, a compromise—or so they called it—was proposed. In order that the country not be split into warring camps, both sides would let one man decide for all of them and take their oath to uphold his decision.

  The story goes that he lay for a night and a day in his tent, his face covered with a cloak, while outside the people waited. When, at last, he came out, he gave his verdict. Let there be one law and one belief for all, he pronounced—and let it be the religion of the White Christ!

  My father and a few like-minded friends were stunned, furious. But they had sworn. More than that, they were outnumbered. The godis knew that if they did not lead the way to conversion, others would, and they would soon see their old-time influence usurped. Thus they rushed to lick the Christmen’s boots. That, at any rate, was what my father shouted in the face of their leader, the rich and powerful Snorri of Helgafel.

  The following day, when people left the Althing, they dipped themselves in hot springs and let the foreign priests say words over them. All, that is, but Thorvald the Black. He stood apart and railed at them, scorning their new religion and calling it a feeble thing, unbecoming to war-like men. But, though many in their hearts agreed with him, none stood with him, and he left Thingvellir Plain alone.

  Within a few years, the exposure of infants was banned as well as the public eating of horseflesh. Soon after that, even private sacrifice to the old gods was forbidden on pain of outlawry. Then old folk, especially old women, who clung to their fathers’ faith, were called witches and some were drowned in the deep pool at Law-Rock.

  In the end, my father made two concessions. First, he gave up sacrificing to Thor, whose temple had stood on our land for five generations. Not because the law forbade it, but because he was enraged at Old Redbeard for letting this new god make a fool of him. And secondly, he allowed our mother, whom he had lately married, to have herself baptized together with the others of her family. This may seem strange, but he loved her very much. He even allowed her to go to church twice a year and to wear a cross provided she did not expose it near the fresh milk or the beer when it was brewing.

  His stubbornness cost him dear. In the year one thousand, Black Thorvald was a vigorous man of two-and-thirty, full of fire and ambition. His voice was heard with respect at the Althing, and men had begun to seek his support in their lawsuits and to promise their allegiance in return. He had made a name for himself as a viking too, spending a part of each year at sea and enjoying the guest-friendship of the great Orkney jarls.

  All this he let slip from his hands. He had never made a secret of the fact that he knew rune-lore and that he had the second sight. Now folk began to whisper against him, and the more they whispered, the more he despised them. As the years passed, his thingmen, whose fathers and grandfathers had been dependents of our family, deserted him for happier halls and fewer and fewer sought his help. He, being too proud to seek theirs, turned from them and ceased to attend any of their gatherings. Finally, he let his chieftaincy be purchased for a song, as though it were a thing of no worth.

  While godis like Snorri and his friends grew great by feuding and suing, trading and marrying, and lavishing their money on the new churches that began to dot the land, Thorvald the Black, ignored and nearly forgotten, only grew angrier.

  And little by little his mind gave way to melancholy, indecision, and sudden frights, until there was no spirit left in him. That was the worst of it. He was only a rag of the man he had been. Oh, he could rant and threaten us, but he walked on his knees.

  My father’s voice broke in upon my thoughts. “What are you gaping at, moon-calf? I said leave me. I’ll not change my mind. I’ve chosen my way and that’s an end of it.”

  “Oh, yes!” I shot back, for I truly hated him at that moment. “Yes, and your way has led us to this, that we crawl before bullies like Hrut!”

  “Odd!” My mother saw his face darken and the worm writhe on his temple. “Drop this quarrel at once. Beg your father’s pardon and vex him no more.”

  She looked from me to him, her eyes full, near to brimming over. She could still summon her tears for him.

  My anger died even as she spoke. I too had tears though I kept them inside. I made my apology to his stony face and let her draw me away.

  She sat Gunnar and me down on
the wall bench and served us bowls of skyr and boiled mutton, and, for Gunnar, a big marrowbone she had saved especially for him. Our sister Gudrun Night Sun sat beside me and touched my forehead with her fingertip. She, too, was close to tears. She was a pretty girl of thirteen, all leg and no bosom, and hair so long she could tuck it in her belt. “Tangle-Hair, I’m sorry about Grani. He was beautiful, and I loved him as much as you. We’ll fight those men, won’t we?”

  I shrugged. “You heard Father.”

  At that Gunnar laughed harshly and said in a low voice, “What did you expect?”

  For him it was simple. He despised our father in a quite uncomplicated way. For our mother’s sake, he did not fight with him. He shouldered the work of the farm and managed it well, for underneath all his dash he was a serious farmer; but in his heart he was only living for the day when he would be master of this hall.

  He cracked his marrowbone and scooped it clean with a finger. “Why don’t you clear off and go to sea for a bit, Odd?” he said. “The farm could spare you and any trading ship would take you on. I know all the captains.” Gunnar managed our yearly bartering expeditions to the coast. “You moon about strange places all the time.”

  That was true. But something held me back. I was Black Thorvald’s child, a part of him in some way that Gunnar—blond and bold and good-natured—would never understand. My father and I had unfinished business, though when or how it would ever be finished I did not know. But it was pointless to say this aloud.

  “What, and leave you here to wolf down all the best bits?” I grabbed his marrowbone. He pushed me back and we wrestled, laughing, ending up in a pile on the floor.

  3

  A Walk in the Night

  Late that night I lay awake in my place on the wall-bench, listening to the breathing of the others. My head ached and my brain teemed with restless thoughts.

  A creaking noise—the door to my parents’ bed-closet swung open. Ulf, my father’s old hound, heard it too, heaved himself up from his warm place by the hearth, and trotted over to the shadowy figure that filled the doorway. The two shadows glided to the outer door, the bar was slid back, and they went out into the gray half-light of a northern spring night.

  Going to piss, I thought idly. But another thought stirred in me. Visions come clearer out of doors, he always said. Our mother had scoffed at his dream vision, but he believed. I believed. Was he going out to seek a waking one? I lay still for a while, waiting to see if he would return. When he didn’t, I pulled my cloak around my shoulders and followed.

  A milk-white mist covered the ground. I stood shivering by the door, searching for a sight of him. Out on the heath, a nightjar cried. Behind me the river whispered between its stony banks. Black against gray, the slumbering bulk of Hekla floated in the distance. I had lived all my life under the shadow of the volcano. From that direction I caught a movement. Ulf raced back and barked around my legs.

  I could just make him out. “Father, wait!”

  “Go back!”

  He started away and I followed, walking quickly because I knew what great strides he took. I remembered too well how my little-boy legs had to work to keep up with him when he would take me on those midnight marches that filled my childhood with such terror and wonder. I didn’t need to catch up. I knew where he was going.

  Ulf raced back and forth between us, but soon tired and fell back, leaving us alone—two shadows in the void. I thought, as I did when I was a boy, that Chaos must have looked like this on the day before creation.

  For it was of such things that my father would rant, as we tramped the countryside on those restless nights long ago. Dragging me behind him with his hard hand gripping my small one, the words would pour out of him, for whole hours at a time, in a howling mad torrent. He taught me how Odin All-Father hung for nine days and nine nights on the windswept tree, on Yggdrasil the Sacred Ash, pierced by a spear, himself a sacrifice to himself. How he peered into the depths, grasped the runes and, screaming in his frenzy, flung them up. And he told me what natures the other gods had—guileful Loki and handsome Balder, and Frey, who makes the grain grow, and Red-Bearded Thor, bluff and jolly, except when he stands on the thunderclouds and hurls his hammer. But always and always he came back to Odin—Sorcerer, Rune-Master, Lord of the battle-mad berserkers. The more that darkness closed in around his mind, the more my father turned his hopes on One-Eyed Odin.

  But where was there room for hope? He had had a vision, he said, of the end of things.

  First would come a long, killing winter, and after that an Age of Axes, an Age of Swords, and an Age of Wolves. Kin would slaughter kin. The sky would split, the sun turn dark, and in Hel’s Hall a cock would crow, and the fettered monsters would wake and break their bonds—Garm the Hel-Hound and the Wolf Fenris, whose gaping jaws stretch from earth to sky.

  Then would gather all the enemies of gods and men—the giant, Hyrm, driving from the east in a boat made of dead men’s nails, and the Midgaard Serpent, hissing and dropping poison, and all the dead, marching back along the road from Hel. They would ring Asgard round, they would storm across the Rainbow Bridge, and the armies of gods and giants would clash on a dark plain in the Last Battle. The wolf would swallow Odin and in the end, all would be dead—gods, giants, ogres—all. He called it Ragnarok, the doom of the gods.

  A hundred paces ahead of me I could see his back bent over double as he toiled upward.

  After such a night’s excursion I would creep under my covers and shake. My mother would hold me then and, in comforting me, try to make me tell what I had heard. I told her nothing.

  In the mornings I would reason with myself, for I am a reasoner by nature. If the gods were dead, or doomed, then why not let them go? Why not accept the Christian god as nearly everyone did and let life be simple? My mother believed in the White Christ and she was a good woman.

  No. Almost … but, no. My father’s hold on me was too great for that.

  He raved because he knew things so deep that they drove him mad. He shook and bullied me because these were things so hard to tell that the words stuck in his throat. And he taught me—this above all—because I was his spirit-child. I was everything to him.

  For his sake, then, I thought, let these doomed gods have my prayers, for what little good it may do them. The White Christ has all the rest.

  That was what I said to myself in the morning. But oh, how he frightened me at night.

  After some years the night marches stopped. His bouts of melancholy, which earlier had come only at intervals, mostly in the dark of winter, grew longer and more frequent. He would sink into brooding silences that lasted for days. It was then that I began to think he was bewitched.

  I did everything to keep him from slipping away from me. Because I was gifted with word-wit beyond my years, I could recall every word he had ever spoken to me. Tales by the dozen, not all of them gloomy, and fierce poems on the deaths of heroes, composed in that knotty, riddling skaldic style of verse of which he, like many an old warrior, was a master. He used to declaim them to the mountains sometimes in a ringing drumbeat voice. Now, in an effort to please him, I shaped poems of my own, devising the most complex meters, the most elaborate kennings. Always only to please him.

  As he had taught me the shapes and names of the runes, I begged him to reveal to me their secret uses, too. And he did teach me a little, but soon lost interest. He would grunt and put me off when I pestered him to teach me more, until at last, I ceased to ask. Perhaps he’d begun to doubt the magic himself and was afraid to put it to the test. But I feared it was some secret flaw in me that unfitted me to learn it.

  Finally, I could find no way to break through the wall he had built around himself. As I grew older, I turned more and more to Gunnar, whom I adored. I saw how my father hated that, and so I did it all the more. Let him choke on it!

  †

  We had tramped for miles now and the ground began to rise and leave the mist behind. A hundred paces ahead, I saw his back be
nt low as he toiled upward. I scrambled after him, my feet slipping on the loose pumice stones and the fractured lava rocks with edges like knives. I called his name, but he went on as though he didn’t hear.

  I remembered the boy I was, no more than ten, who came flying down this mountainside one night, half running and half falling, cut to ribbons by the stones and blinded by tears. In all the years since then I had not dared to go back.

  But now—since the stallion fight, I told myself—I was no longer afraid. I had mastered fear itself. And so I climbed.

  Hours passed. Now I had come as far as the snow-filled crevices that reached like skeleton fingers down the blue-black mountainside. The going was very steep as I neared the top. My palms and knees were bloody. An icy wind tore at my clothes and wailed in my ears like the shrieking of ghosts.

  Here began the bottomless fissure that split the mountain lengthwise. A sulphurous steam rose from it. I climbed for another hour, working my way along the edge. I knew where my father would stop.

  “Get away from me! Why d’you follow me?” He stood tottering on the rim of the crater. I sank down in the snow at his feet.

  “To see what you see. Our fate.”

  “I’ve seen that already. I told you.”

  “Then, to see the Old Ones in the mountain.” I scarcely knew what I was saying, I only wanted to be near him.

  “You had that chance, boy. It wasn’t to your liking.”

  “I was only a child….”

  He had dragged me here one night, snorting like a bull in his fury, and pushed me to the edge to show me my tomb. For into Hekla, he said, die all the men of our family. In terror, thinking that he meant to kill me, I broke away from him and flung myself headlong down the slope. By the time I reached the bottom I was half dead and lay in a brain fever for three days. When I recovered, I tried to excuse myself to him, but he only turned from me with a scowl and never mentioned that night again. Though later my mother told me he had not eaten or slept during those three days that I hung between life and death.