Odin’s Child

by Bruce Macbain

  “Grandfather, I’m going too,” said Kalf. “You know I must.”

  “How’s that, you young dog, what d’you say?”

  “I said I am leaving—not for good, but for a while, to seek my fortune with Odd. May I have your blessing?”

  “Blessing? That you may not!”

  “Then I go without it, I’m sorry, Grandfather.”

  “Must I lose son and grandson both?” He put his hands to his ears and reeled back into the room. His loud lamentation brought Katla flying from her perch by the loom to throw herself between us.

  “Wicked Kalf!” she screamed. “What are you thinking of to leave us like this and go off with these outlaws—and with this one especially,” directing her pointy chin at me. “I don’t say anything about myself without a brother to protect me from … from assailants and such, but the poor old thing here, lone and lorn, and….”

  She would have gone on longer, no doubt, for she was just warming to her subject, but Hoskuld, recovering himself, silenced her with a look. I had often suspected that he disliked Katla, for all her fawning on him, and couldn’t bear to hear himself defended by her as if he were a pitiful, doddering invalid. Her outburst against us did more to change his mind than anything Kalf or I could have said. Still, it was no easy change of heart that he underwent. If you could have looked through the filmy windows of his eyes, what a battle you would have seen raging inside him.

  “Be still, girl,” he snapped. “Your brother is right after all. I have seen it coming this long time. The son of Flosi the viking has better things to do than lead an old man about.”

  Flosi—that name that was never to be spoken.

  Kalf went to embrace him, but Hoskuld held him at arm’s length and bent his brows sternly. “Now Kalf, you must promise me. Stay with Odd. Never leave his side. And mind this, too, damn it all. I am not a lecturing sort of man, but there are wise words in shriveled skins, and young dogs ought to heed ’em. You listen, too, Odd. Keep silent in a strange hall. Answer lying with lies. And don’t think that everyone who laughs when you do is your friend. When the ale goes round, drink your share, but don’t hold on to the cup. Above all, never trust what a woman tells you or believe ’em constant, for their heads are turned on a potter’s wheel and their counsels are cold. It takes sharp wits to wander in the world, you young dogs, and a fool is soon found out.”

  “Yes, Grandfather, yes,” Slender-Leg answered impatiently to all this preachy stuff.

  “And Kalf, even though you swear like a heathen to vex me, try to remember that you are a Christian boy, and say your prayers sometimes. And you, Odd Tangle-Hair, God help you. Not even guarded by the armor of baptism. What can I say?”

  “Hurry up in there,” came Stig’s rough voice from the yard. “We’re mounted and ready.”

  “Hoskuld Long-Jaws,” I laughed, taking his dry hand in mine, “live easy. And charming Katla, too. We’ll be back to drink your mead again one day soon.”

  But it wouldn’t be soon.

  They were all long in their graves before I saw these shores again.

  Kalf scooped his bow and quiver from their peg on the wall, flashed a last smile at the weepy old man, and dashed out the door with me.

  “Young dogs,” murmured Hoskuld to our retreating backs.

  13

  Grim Visitors

  The rising sun threw our shadows ahead of us as we trudged along the sandy spit that divides the mouth of the Whitewater from the sea. We had left the horses out of sight and walked the remaining distance with our packs and shields slung on our backs. Just within the bar, Hrut’s ship rode at anchor, and nearby three of his men hunched over a small fire, warming themselves against the morning chill. They jumped to their feet as we came in sight, though we were careful to walk slowly, keeping our hands well away from our swords.

  “Halloo,” I called when we were within hailing distance. “We are men from over Skalholt way, looking for a berth. Can you use a few good seamen?”

  Coming closer.

  “You’ve wasted your time,” one answered, surly-voiced. “Strife-Hrut Ivarsson’s her master—you passed his hall four mile upstream. And he sails today with a full crew.”

  “We’ll ask him just the same, friend, if you don’t mind—always room for good hands at sea. Meantime, won’t you let us have a look at her? We won’t sail in just any old tub.”

  Almost close enough.

  We were too many for his liking. He hesitated, with his hand on his signal horn. His two companions stood close at his side, fingering their weapons.

  “No farther,” he warned, “not without the master’s say-so. Wait there, if you want to talk to him.”

  “I’d like to, friend, but not just now.” I ran the last few steps, drew, and thrust all in one motion, bearing him to the ground with my sword in his side. Stig and the rest leapt in after me and in a moment the other two bled out their lives in the black sand.

  “Captain,” said Stig, “best we get aboard and cast off. The tide’s already running and Hrut’ll be on his way.”

  But I scarcely heard him. Blood frenzy blew through me like a gale.

  “Here, now what are you doing, Captain? We haven’t got time for that.”

  What was I doing? On my knees beside the sentry’s body, cursing Hoskuld’s dull old blade, I struck and sawed at the bleeding neck, picturing to myself that it was Hrut’s neck—Snorri’s neck. Not enough for me to steal a ship and sneak away like a common thief. No, let them find this, and ponder it!

  “Will no one lend me an axe?” I cried between sobs of breath.

  They looked at me sidelong, unsure what to do.

  “Be here all day at this rate,” muttered Stig, taking an axe from Brodd and tossing it on the sand by me.

  With a crunch of bone the head came away and I swung it up by its hair, the blood running down my arm to the elbow, and shouted, “This for Gunnar!”

  Stuf and Otkel grinned, Bald Brodd likewise, and Starkad, and even Hogni Hard-Mouth, as much as his grinding jaws would allow. But Kalf looked wide-eyed at me. Poor Kalf. Never seen a severed head before?

  I flung myself on the second body, raining blows on its head, its back.

  “Captain, that’s enough of that,” Stig said sharply. “Look over there!” He pointed up the riverbank where a pair of oxen appeared about a quarter mile away, pulling a lumbering cart. Two figures walked alongside it. Their shouts reached us faintly. Then others came into view behind them, and all began to run.

  For one wild moment the thought flashed through my mind: “Never run away. Fight them here and either live or die—what does it matter which?” With my sword in one hand and Brodd’s bloody axe in the other, I took a step forward. But Kalf held me back. “Odd! If any of them recognize you and live to tell it?”

  “Let me go!”

  “You gave Grandfather your word.”

  The wind of frenzy blew out. I shook my head to clear it. Where had I been?

  “Yes—yes, you’re right. Aboard her then, boys, be quick!”

  We swarmed up the side, hacked through the mooring line, and ran out the oars—as many as we could man.

  The shouting of Hrut’s men grew louder. A short-handled throwing axe whirled through the air and arced downward, burying its blade with a smack, a hand’s breadth into the deck.

  “Heads down now, lads,” I shouted, “and break your backs!”

  While Stig crouched by the tiller, we pulled till our muscles cracked and the veins stood out on our necks. For an awful moment we didn’t move at all, and Hrut was not a hundred feet away. He would see my face, and then there would be no reason to run. I tightened my grip on Hrutsbane.

  “Pull!” roared Stig. “You girls! You babies!”

  The ship creaked, rocked, and shook herself. The sandy bank moved—oh so slowly, but it moved. With scarcely enough speed to make steerageway, Stig swung the tiller hard over and pointed her nose into the middle of the channel, just as a shower of spears struck us a
nd hung quivering in the bulwark. Then the current caught us, sweeping us through the channel, past the bar, and into the open sea.

  On shore little clownish figures danced with fury and soon were lost to sight against the gray horizon.

  We looked round at each other and laughed—we had done it!

  At Stig’s signal we shipped oars and stepped the mast. The breeze found us at once, bellying our red and black striped sail, and the ship leaned over and shot ahead, leaving me breathless with the speed of it.

  Hrut’s ship was no sleek viking cruiser, but only a fat-bellied knorr—high-stemmed, broad-beamed, and hard to steer. Still, in a good wind she was a fast sailer and as the water hissed and the spray flew up around me, I thought she must be the swiftest, sweetest ship in all the world.

  “Well, you’re a pirate now, Odd Tangle-Hair,” called Stig from the poop. “How does it feel?”

  Kalf and I looked at each other and, together, we let out a whoop that startled the gulls overhead.

  “Let’s have a look at her,” I cried. “Kalf—Stuf—Otkel, lend a hand with the tarpaulin. I want to see my prize.” But the two cousins made no move until Stig said, very quiet, “You heard the Captain, lads.”

  I was too excited then to pay it any heed.

  Leaning over the hatchway, we looked down on a mountain of riches—bundles of fleeces, bales of raw wool, rolls of homespun, great round cheeses piled next to sacks of eiderdown and casks of sulfur, and a teetering pyramid of wicker cages from which glared the yellow eyes of falcons. Stig gave a low whistle. Strife-Hrut of Whitewater had just become a poor man.

  Of provisions for the crew, we found in the stern two barrels of fresh water and one of beer, a tub of salt fish, some turnips, a cauldron with cooking things, and a pile of skin sleeping bags, each made to hold two men.

  The sun climbed up the brilliant blue sky and the breeze freshened. Stig, with his arm draped over the tiller, worked us through the choppy in-shore currents while Stuf, who knew this bit of coast, called our course from the prow.

  What a fine day! What an excellent day! Over our heads gulls swooped and hung in the dazzling morning air. As we bore along past the rocky needles of the Westmann Isles, fishermen putting out in their boats waved us a good morning. And on the white cliffs that rose above the bright, blue water, boys and girls hung from ropes—looking, at that distance, like flies on a wall—to gather puffin eggs with their long-handled nets.

  Kalf winked at me. “Remember Thorgrima?”

  The sun was at his zenith by the time we rounded the south coast and stood out to sea. Our last sight of home, from many miles away, was the glittering dome of Vatna Glacier, whose glassy fingers seemed to run down the mountainside right into the sea itself.

  Alone on the white-haired ocean, as the deck rolled under me and the spanking, salt-sharp breeze stung my cheeks, I felt as free and powerful as a god must feel. Oh, my limbs ached with tiredness from too many nights without sleep, yet never had I felt more awake or alive than at that moment, with the past behind me and the future all ahead—glittering, like the glacier, with a thousand lights of possibility. I was Odd Thorvaldsson—warrior, sea rover, poet. Verses hummed in my head faster than I could con them. I loved Kalf, I loved Stig, and I loved those others whose names I barely knew.

  I almost forgot that my hands still shook.

  “Captain,” said Stig, “are you ready to become a sailor?”

  “Steersman, I know as little of boats as a cat does of fiddling, but you’ll see how quickly I can learn.”

  So began my instruction. All that day and the next I learned to work the rigging and the corner poles so as to angle the sail just so to catch the wind, and how to handle the little tiller-stick that by some simple miracle moves the great stern steering oar. A captain ought to know how to pilot his own ship, said Stig, even if he leaves most of the steering to his steersman. I learned to drop a wood chip from the bow and count my heartbeats until it passed the stern in order to gauge our speed. I even learned to mix my porridge with a bit of sea water to improve the taste of it.

  And I learned a little, too, of that greatest mystery of all. On our second day out, when the breeze had dropped to a gentle push and the sea was running in long even swells, Stig gave the tiller to Starkad and pointed me toward the sun. The others also came round to listen, for by no means is every seaman a navigator.

  “We set our course by him,” Stig began, “and you must know where to look for him at dawn and dusk in every month of the year, for he’s a wanderer and doesn’t stay put. Knowing that, you can set a course, provided you’ve got one of these.”

  He rummaged in his kit bag and produced a wooden object consisting of a handle to which was attached a wooden disk, its edge marked with notches. In the center of the disk stood a bronze needle, the shadow pin, with a similar needle, perpendicular to it, projecting over the face of the disk so that the notches could be rotated under its point. This contraption he called a bearing plate.

  “By sighting the sun at his rising and setting,” he explained, “we can read our heading from where the shadow falls. Right now we’re making south-east to the latitude of the Faroes.”

  “And how long, then, ’til we reach the Norwegian coast?”

  “Maybe a week, maybe two, depending on the winds.”

  “Or maybe never if we lose the sun for long,” struck in Bald Brodd. He was a blustering, argumentative man, as I was beginning to learn.

  “Ah,” said Stig, “but now I’ll show you a real wonder.” Once more into the kit bag, and this time he drew out a flat wafer of some kind of stone, set in a frame of wood, the whole thing no bigger than my palm.

  “Hold it to your eye, now, Captain, and move it across the sky, turning it this way and that, until you find the sun.”

  I did as he instructed and cried out in astonishment when its milky light suddenly went black. I let Kalf look through it and then the others, for they were all eager to see this marvel.

  “And it’ll do that through a fair bit of cloud,” said Stig, “when the sun don’t appear to be anyplace at all to the naked eye.”

  “It’s magic?”

  He shrugged. “Not the black sort, anyway.”

  “But not even your sun-stone can pierce the fog,” Brodd kept up in his wrangling way, “not real fog. There’s nothing can pierce that.”

  “No, and that’s the truth.” Stig scratched his spiky head. “Best not to talk about that.”

  Perhaps it was the wind turning colder just then that made me shiver.

  “Captain?”

  “It’s nothing, Steersman, go on.”

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  I clapped my arm round his shoulder. “Never better, only a little tired.”

  “Lay up a bit, then. You look to me like a man that’s been ridden all night by a hag.”

  “Blast you! What d’you mean saying that?”

  “Eh? No call for hard words.”

  “I told you I’m all right. Starkad, give me the tiller again.”

  Puzzled, they moved away—except for Kalf, who faced me with a worried look.

  “Odd, you woke me up last night, fighting in your sleep and groaning.”

  “Share someone else’s sleeping bag, then.”

  “What is it, Odd?”

  “I’m sorry. I have … dreams. But it’s nothing. I’ll be well enough soon. Why, by the Raven, I’m much better already—best thing in the world for a man, the sea!”

  I said it with all the conviction that was in me, praying it was true. Praying that my unwelcome night visitors would come no more.

  †

  Day after perfect day we ran before the wind, making our course southeast toward the Faroes. Stripped to the waist under the sun’s unblinking eye, we lay out on the warm planks, letting the breezes play over us, or else hung over the gunnel to watch the humpback whales breech and the yellow-nosed porpoises dance alongside us. We fished, we mended tackle, we sharpened our weapons till
they shone, we gambled, and we yarned.

  “Old Bjorn Butterbox, so they say, went and died while on a visit to a kinsman of his who lived away in the Westfjords—it’s where I come from,” said rat-faced Starkad, a quiet man who, after a few horns of beer, became genial and funny. “And so, the story goes, they lay the poor fellow out on the bed and sent for his son to come and fetch him. Now, when the son arrives, what does he see but Bjorn’s corpse sitting up in the bed with his arms around the farmer’s daughter and trying to steal a kiss. ‘Old man, what are you thinking of?’ cries the son. ‘You’re to be buried today.’ Well, the old man grumbled and said it was hard treatment he was getting, but he lay down again and shut his eyes. When they asked the lassie about it though, she had no complaints. ‘God knows,’ says she, ‘we get little enough company in the Westfjords!’”

  †

  Long, perfect days, but for me, never far from the dread of night. I took to sleeping by myself, after seeing how Kalf watched me. What business did he have to spy on me? And what was he telling the others? Oh, I saw him sometimes talking to Stig, keeping his voice low so I shouldn’t hear. Stig liked him; they all did. From now on I would have to watch him closely.

  Drink helped. One evening, when the lights on the northern horizon spread a weird, pale sheen on the water, we sat on deck by the ale cask and talked about the days to come. Stig, who had been there before, told us about Nidaros Town, Trondelag’s bustling port and King Olaf’s capital, where we would sell our cargo and live fat all winter on the profits, each of us with a plump girl in our beds to warm us.

  “And come the next spring,” cried I, lifting my ale horn, “we’ll sail out and see the world and make our fortunes one and all. What say you to that, boys? For, by the Raven, I’ve grown fond of you all!”

  There was a hesitant ‘Aye’ from Kalf. How slyly he looked at me then. The others were quiet and glanced toward Stig.

  “Well, then, lads,”—I forced a smile—“run along home if you like, and with my thanks. There’s nothing to stop you, your condition is not like mine.”