Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  Maybe he’d even meant his promise when he gave it. Maybe Snorri had not gotten to him yet.

  Then, all the godis on Hrut’s side stepped forward one by one to take their oath on the truth of Hrut’s story, and to urge these honest jurors to pass the sentence of outlawry upon us.

  Hoskuld’s face was the color of tallow. He sagged against his sister’s strong shoulder.

  “Uncle,” I said, “I will speak for us. I have the words.”

  He nodded. He could make no sound.

  “You think words can save us now?” asked Gunnar bitterly.

  “Sigmund’s testimony is all we have. At least the truth will be told before we go down fighting.”

  The words came out somehow—“lawful feud … a life for a life”—they aren’t important. But I remember what a sudden hush there was as I faced Hrut and told him there was a witness to his crime. “Hrut Ivarsson,” I cried, “do you recognize your own man?”

  That was Gunnar’s cue to seize Sigmund, push him into the circle, and tear off his hood.

  Hrut took a menacing step towards us, looked hard at the cloaked figure, and began to laugh. Then Snorri, too, and the thingmen, and the jurors, and the crowd—all held their sides and laughed.

  For it wasn’t Sigmund Tit-Bit at all. It was a bald, toothless old man, frightened out of his wits, who piped, “That fella give me this copper penny just for to wear his cloak and stand back there…”

  “How long ago?” I screamed, shaking the old man till his few teeth rattled.

  “Not long, sir, on my life! About when the young godi marched by. You won’t kill me, sir?”

  “Gunnar, find him!”

  “Where, for God’s sake?”

  “Don’t bother,” came a voice from behind us. “Here’s your lost dog.”

  “Father!” Dragging Sigmund by the scruff of his neck, Thorvald marched into the clearing. “He came sneaking up to Hoskuld’s booth to help himself to the last wineskin and a fast horse. He found me instead. And so….” my father looked around him, blinking, as though seeming to notice for the first time where he was. “And so, I’ve brought him. Heard the end of your speech, boy—fine speech. Now you make him talk, and I’ll … and I’ll wait at camp.”

  He had fought down thirty years of dread to get this far. Our desperate need had given him the strength to come face to face with his enemies—but only just. His nerve was failing him again, he couldn’t stick it. Releasing Sigmund, he took a faltering step backward.

  “Father, look out!” I yelled.

  Hrut, with his sword in his fist, covered the space between us in a few bounding steps and flung himself with a curse upon Sigmund. The blade took off the top of the man’s skull in a shower of blood and brain. Whirling, he came at my father, who stood flat-footed and helpless, with a dazed look in his eyes. Hrut aimed a blow, and then things happened fast. Black Thorvald bent low and drove his shoulder into Hrut’s stomach as he rushed in, and Hrut made a circle in the air and landed hard on his back.

  Bystanders scattered in all directions. Two of Hrut’s men were right behind him, and they went for my father, who—I saw with horror—had not bothered to strap on his sword. Gunnar was quicker than I. With a warning shout, he threw his spear butt first at father. Thorvald plucked it from the air, and in two swift movements drove it into one and then the other of his attackers.

  But this was a hopeless fight. In a moment they were all over us. Gunnar, father, and I crouched inside a steel hedge of sword blades, awaiting our death.

  But death didn’t come. Instead, the hedge parted and Snorri stood before us. His thingmen, too, rushed in between Hrut’s fighters and us, shouldering them out of the way. At a word from Snorri, some held up their shields to protect us, while others wrenched away our weapons and twisted our arms behind us.

  What were they saving us for?

  “Black Thorvald,” Snorri smiled. Malice glittered in his eyes. “What a long time you’ve made me wait. I won’t lose you now. If I let our friend kill you, why, these good jurors might call the honors even and dismiss his suit. And that would be a pity. Gunnar, tell your father what I require of him.”

  My brother bit his lips and said nothing.

  “Perhaps the young troll will oblige me,” said Snorri indicating me.

  I turned my head away.

  “The wife, then?” Snorri barked, letting his exasperation show.

  The shield wall parted to let in Jorunn, with Hoskuld behind her. Tears streaked her cheeks. “Husband, he wants you to ask his pardon, and if you do, he’ll make Hrut give up the suit. I’ve been a true wife, Thorvald. These thirty years I have shared your misery. I ask you this one thing now—save my sons for me.”

  I hated her at that moment.

  “Brother-in-Law,” Hoskuld urged, “do one sane thing to redeem your wretched life. There’s no shame in begging pardon of a Christman. It allows him to forgive you, and so God loves you both.”

  Thorvald turned his face to them, his bull’s chest heaved.

  “Father, don’t!” I cried.

  Cowardice had become a habit with him, and Snorri’s scorn was nothing compared to the scorn he felt for himself. What spirit had he left to fight them with? But he had fought! Just for a few moments, thirty years had dropped away and he had wielded his spear like a young viking on the deck of his ship—the viking he had been.

  “Husband, I beg you,” Jorunn pleaded.

  “Odin!” He screamed his god’s name. With a twitch of his big shoulders he shrugged off the two men who held his arms. Snorri threw up his hands to defend himself, but Thorvald had him down, tumbling over with him on the ground, searching for the man’s jugular with his teeth.

  It took the bullmastiff and five men to get him off, while others forced Gunnar and me to the ground. All the while, Snorri, in a hoarse voice, was shouting, “Don’t kill them! Don’t kill them!”

  It would have been too easy a death, you see. He wanted to give us time to see it coming, to taste the fear.

  †

  The trial was soon over.

  Poor foolish Hoskuld, gabbling his legal gibberish, was shoved aside. The jurors looked grim. They knew what was expected of them. Gunnar and I were dragged forward to hear sentence passed against us: “For the unprovoked slaying of Brand Hrutsson and the hireling Bork, exile for life, to be accomplished within two weeks from this day, the penalty for refusal, forfeiture of your land and your lives to any man who cares to take them.”

  While these words were being spoken, Hrut crowed and capered about, showing us his backside and screaming filth. Snorri watched him for a moment with an expression very like disgust, then turned and strode away, his spearmen falling in behind him.

  †

  The next hours I pass over quickly—they aren’t very clear in my mind. Perhaps I said with bitterness to Hoskuld, We never had a chance, did we, lawyer? Perhaps I only meant to say it. Kalf touched my arm, but I spun away from him—I cannot bear the sight of friends when I most need them. In that way, as in so many, I am like my father. Thorvald, Jorunn, Gunnar, and Vigdis—I suppose we said words to each other. Somehow the tents came down and the horses were loaded up.

  Then we were crossing Thingvellir Plain and parting where the way divides—one track to Hawkdale, the other to Hekla. I don’t think anyone called, “Farewell.”

  That ride home still finds its way into my dreams. A storm had been brewing all day and it erupted with booming thunder and sheets of rain that beat the meadow grass flat: such a wild, unseasonable storm as Black Thorvald might have conjured up out of his own black heart had he really been the sorcerer he was said to be.

  “Please, husband,” cried my mother, her voice almost lost in the roar of the wind, “Vigdis and the baby, pity them at least.” All she could do was beg. For better or for worse my father had made himself master of our house again. He ignored her pleas and rode like a man with a demon at his back. And we followed over forty miles of rain-lashed heath and five swollen ri
vers, stopping only once to cram handfuls of sodden bread down our throats.

  As I shrank in my saddle from the driving rain, long-buried memories of those wild childhood rambles with my father crowded in upon me—his fearsome description of the Doom of the Gods, which would be heralded by great whirlwinds and the falling of the sky. In the state of mind I was in, I half feared and half hoped that I was seeing it now in real truth.

  It might have been midnight or noon when we reached the farm. I had lost all sensation of time in the indistinguishable grayness. My horse was stumbling from exhaustion, and all I knew was the clawing wind, the ache that throbbed from my buttocks to my shoulders, and the numbness of my fingers frozen to the dripping reins.

  Then Ulf, our yellow-toothed hound, came howling up the ridge to meet us. His barking roused the thralls, who gathered round us, watching silently. They weren’t fools, they wouldn’t stay to be slaughtered. Soon they’d begin to slip away, hoping to join some bandit gang. Even Morag. I saw it on her face.

  Inside, we hung our dripping clothes by the fire and wrung out our hair, then threw ourselves down to sleep. Tomorrow would be soon enough to take stock.

  But Thorvald did not sleep. He fumbled in the kindling pile for a stick, took it, and sat down heavily in his high seat. He drew his knife and began to carve: “Fe … Ur … Thurs … Oss….” The slivers flew.

  I lay on the wall bench opposite, wet and shivering under my fleece. “Father,” I whispered, “it was good to fight again, wasn’t it?”

  He didn’t answer, and before my lips could shape another word I was asleep.

  That night I dreamt of Grani, my brave stallion. In my dream I stood beside him in the ring, saw the goad descend in aching slowness through its arc, and heard myself scream … Too late! The iron hook clawed out the red gobbet of his eye. But instead of the shriek of pain and hoofs beating the air, he turned his blood-streaked face to me in silence. And as I took his head between my hands, it seemed to dissolve, becoming instead the head of a bull—a black bull, from whose eyes streamed not blood but tears, rivers of tears. When I thought on it later, it seemed obvious that the bull was my father’s fylgia, his spirit animal. Then I felt a crushing weight: a nightmare sat on my chest, pressing down, suffocating me. I thrashed and struggled to wake up and finally, with a wrenching effort, broke free. I lay still for a few moments.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw that the rain had stopped and bright sunlight sifted down through the smoke hole. No one else was awake. It was very still.

  The next thing I noticed was my father’s knife lying on the floor by the side of his chair. Raising myself on an elbow, I was surprised to find him still sitting just as he had been when I fell asleep, only that his right hand hung down, and his head, turned a little to one side, rested against the carved chair back.

  And his furious dead eyes looked into mine.

  10

  Jorunn Ship-Breast Remembers

  For the length of a heartbeat I simply stared. Then I dropped to the floor and rolled out of the path of his gaze. With my heart knocking against my ribs, I circled the wall until I was beside him. Then snatching his cloak from its peg, I threw it over his face. Feeling a little easier once his eyes were covered, I woke the others.

  That morning while Thorvald sat—indifferent as always and only a little less animated—in his high-seat, we tried to make our brains, numbed already by so many shocks, take in this one too.

  Jorunn, pale and lifeless as a corpse herself, sat on the bench close by her husband’s side, unable to speak a word. It fell to the cool-headed Vigdis to set us moving.

  “Find a big plank, husband,” she said to Gunnar. “Odd, fetch water and cloths.”

  We began the ritual of preparation: laying him on the plank as best we could, for he was already stiffening; sealing his eyes and nostrils, and wrapping up his head. With an effort, Gunnar and I got him stripped, washed, and clothed again in clean breeches and a fine embroidered shirt that we discovered lying in the bottom of his chest. I didn’t remember ever seeing him in that particular shirt, but my mother’s cheeks colored for a moment when I brought it out.

  Then Vigdis said to us in a low voice, “You know you must put him out through the wall, for he was a difficult man when he lived and I don’t imagine death will improve him.”

  When Gudrun Night-Sun died, we had carried her out by the door, but of course, no one feared her little ghost if it should find its way home again. Thorvald was a different case. A draug is a terrifying thing—especially so when the living man died in anger, still more so if, like our father, he was uncanny.

  Gunnar replied sarcastically that he would enjoy nothing better that morning than to tunnel through five feet of sod wall, but that we mustn’t hope to get rid of father as easily as that. “He’ll be back to stamp on our roof and kill our cattle however we carry him out, that grim man.”

  “Hush, Gunnar,” said Vigdis, with a nervous glance at Jorunn. But our mother, sitting with her hands limp in her lap, gave no sign of hearing anything we said.

  So Gunnar and I, with Skidi Dung-Beetle to help, set to work to break a hole in the rear wall, the farthest from the door, just large enough to admit the plank and body. While they dug from the outside, I applied the bow-drill and sawed through a section of the wooden planking that lined the inside of the room.

  The day was a hot one. By the time we had dragged out the last basketful of dirt, the sun beat down straight above our heads, so that we got no shade even in the angle where the stable adjoins the house wall. Luckily, the river ran close by this end of the hall. We drank the icy water and rested a little.

  “Now then, Tangle-Hair,” said Gunnar, “you at his head and I at his feet.”

  We shoved our burden through and trudged with it over the stony path that followed the river.

  “Brother, “said Gunnar over his shoulder, “doesn’t he seem a little heavier than you would have guessed?”

  A draug’s weight, it’s well known, grows in proportion to its mischievousness. I thought this a poor joke and didn’t answer.

  ‘The Barrows’ was not a place we visited often. Here the heath was humped up all around in grassy mounds which gave the appearance of a range of foothills as it might look to a strolling giant. Within each barrow, like a worm in a cocoon, an ancestor kept his vigil and thought his patient dead man’s thoughts—or so, at least, they did when not feasting inside the fiery mountain. One little mound was new, the grass not yet thick upon it. There Gudrun Night-Sun lived.

  Altogether, six generations of our kin rested under our feet.

  Thorolf Braggart had been a priest in the temple of Thor back in Norway. It was a large temple that boasted a man-sized statue of the god, covered from top to toe in gold leaf, and seated in a chariot drawn by wooden goats.

  In those days, because of the tyrannical rule of King Harald Fair-Hair, thousands of Norwegians loaded their families, their cattle, their tools and weapons into any leaky tub that would stay afloat and braved six hundred miles of open sea to make their home on this island, only recently discovered. They found a country by no means rich, the interior nothing but ice and lava, the seacoast and river-valleys able to bear only hay and a little barley in the south. In place of the magnificent pine and oak forests that they’d left behind them, they found nothing here but stunted birches. Despite these drawbacks, immigrants continued to arrive until, within sixty years of its discovery, all the useable land was taken.

  Thorolf, too, decided to join this migration—in his case, impelled by neighbors who had chanced to find their missing cattle in his barn. Arriving at the mouth of the river Ranga, he soon discovered that all the decent land along that coast had already been claimed by others, and he was compelled to follow the river and seek land up country. He could find no place that suited him, though, until he came in sight of Hekla. Here, at any rate, his horse lay down and refused to go another step, and he took this as an omen.

  So there, beside the riverbank, Tho
rolf Braggart set down his high-seat pillars and built his hall around them. The pillars in our hall are those very pillars, and the hall has changed little in two hundred years.

  Not far from his new hall, Thorolf built a temple, just large enough for himself and his neighbors to sit comfortably in when they drank ale and ate the consecrated horseflesh on feast days. And in it he placed images of Thor, Odin, and Frey, all carved with his own hands, as well as a table to hold the bowl and twig by which the sacrificial blood is sprinkled on the worshippers, and the silver arm ring, which a man touches whenever he swears an oath.

  Now, Thorolf was gifted with the second sight, as many of our family have been, and was able to see how the land-spirits from round about came up out of the ground to see this new temple of his and appeared to be favorably impressed with it. When he died, his barrow was built within sight of it, and all his descendants thereafter were buried in this same place.

  From that time on, every father in his turn served as Thor’s priest, beginning with Thorolf’s son, Amundi Twist-Foot, who was the father of Olvir the Childish, who was the father of An Bow-Bender (the first of our line to be a godi), who was the father of Stein the Fast-Sailing, who was the father of Odd Snout, who was the father of my father.

  But Black Thorvald, as I have already described, being angry with the god for letting the White Christ make a fool of him, neglected the temple and it soon fell to ruin. The idols within it, punished by the weather and gnawed by mice, shrank away until they were nothing but misshapen stumps.

  Ironically, there seemed to be no other space large enough to contain our father’s mound than this very spot. With the help of the thralls, who trooped along with us, carrying their spades and mattocks, we broke up Thor’s earth.

  Jorunn came up behind us as we worked, so quietly that no one noticed her until she spoke. By that time the grave was nearly dug and a mountain of dirt and stones lay heaped up beside it.

  “Odd, will you do a thing for me even though it doesn’t please you?” She knelt at the edge of the hole and held down to me a wooden crucifix. “He wouldn’t have one in the house, but I have kept this all these years hidden in my chest.”