There was a moment of stunned silence. Then, with a howl, both sides flung themselves on the king, desperate to possess his bleeding carcass. Thorir tried to drag it off by one foot, while the king’s men hauled the other way. Harald, the ‘unnatural weed’, as Olaf had called him that morning, yelling mightily and swinging his long sword in humming circles around his head, drove Thorir back on his heels and stood astride his brother’s body—but not for long. The enemy drove at him from every side.
The young giant fought like a boar cornered by a pack of dogs. One man he opened from breastbone to groin. He hewed the arm from another and shook a third man off his back with a twitch of his broad shoulders. But even so, he was soon overwhelmed. With the others who chose to die beside their king, he went down in a tangle of bloody arms and legs, battered shields, and broken spears.
Now the battle became a rout. With their king dead, there was no army left at all, but only a mob of beaten men desperate to save their lives.
“Into the trees!” yelled someone beside me. I needed no urging. I raced with the others back the way we had come—to the palisade, to the muddy stream, to the wooded ridge. Hundreds died with spears between their shoulder blades. The worst killing in a battle always happens that way.
The young giant fought like a boar cornered by a pack of dogs.
As I neared the tree line, I caught sight of a warrior racing before me—and here’s a thing you won’t find recounted in The Lay of Bjarki, or any heroic poem: He was going so fast that as he ran between a pair of trees his long kite-shield, which was slung cross-wise on his back, caught between the trunks and stuck fast, and there he hung, flailing his arms and crying for someone to save him. No one stopped. It is such little incidents as these that we skalds neglect to mention. As I passed the man, I saw it was Bodolf the Noisy. I don’t know what became of him, nor do I care.
The farmers at our heels were shouting fit to split their lungs, but then, over the uproar, rose a scream that came from no human throat.
“Christ!” panted a man running beside me, “they’re setting wolves on us!”
I looked wildly round to see what pursued us. It was a thing hardly human, a figure, naked but for a wolf pelt wrapped around its blood-smeared body, that howled and bared its teeth as it ran along.
And standing in its path, too petrified to move, was Kalf Slender-Leg! How we found ourselves together among all those fleeing men I cannot say. You Christmen will doubtless give the credit to God. I say only that the Norns love to play such tricks.
Kalf had an arrow fitted to his bowstring. At the last possible second he loosed it, but it flew high—the first time I’d ever seen him miss. An instant later, the monster swung its broadax in a flat arc, catching him in the hip with a crunch of bone, as when a butcher hacks off the leg of a steer. Kalf spun and fell on his face, his left leg splayed outward at a crazy angle to his body.
The berserker—for it must be that—staring straight ahead out of white eyes and swinging his axe from side to side, bounded forward, passing within a pace of where I cowered on the ground.
Numb with shock, I crawled to Kalf’s side while fleeing men stumbled over me, got his limp body across my shoulders, and staggered up the ridge. Ahead of us, the berserker’s scream rang out again. I stumbled deep into the underbrush before I finally sank down exhausted under Kalf’s weight.
He lay without moving on a mat of pine needles, whey-faced, his heart fluttering in his breast like a bird’s. The mail shirt he wore was buried three fingers deep in his hipbone. That was all that had kept the leg from being severed completely. I pulled the steel links away, slit open his tunic and the leg of his breeches, and laid bare a gaping bloody mouth of a wound with slivers of white bone showing through where the hip socket had been.
I wadded up his tunic and pressed it against the wound. He came to, gasping and clawing up the earth with his fingers, and crying aloud to Sancta Maria to save him. I struggled against his frantic strength while holding my hand over his mouth for fear the enemy would hear him. They were around us everywhere.
He fell into unconsciousness again after a time. I tore my cloak into strips to bind him up—over the hip, between the legs, around the waist, and over again—and twisted the knot tight with a stick.
Having done what I could, I fell back, nearly fainting myself. Only now was I conscious, again, of the pain in my right shoulder where the cudgel had struck me. I could scarcely lift my arm.
My only hope of saving us was to reach the dinghy. But it was impossible to skirt the battlefield all the way round under cover of the trees to where we had hidden it. I could never carry Kalf that far, even with two good shoulders. No. We must wait for dusk and go straight across the field in the open.
The sun inched across the lattice of pine boughs overhead for four, maybe five hours until it stopped just above the horizon. It would sink no lower. All around me the woods echoed with the shouts of farmers hunting us down and with the cries of the wounded. Gradually, these sounds grew less as the survivors crawled away or died, and the farmers gave up the chase. Finally, a deep silence covered all.
Blood still oozed from Kalf’s wound, and bubbles of saliva gathered at the corners of his mouth. His skin was as cold as stone.
Why burden yourself with him? said a small voice inside me. You tried already to save his life, and for thanks, he threw Gunnar’s death in your face and called you a coward. And if he dies now—as he surely will—he has only himself to blame. Save yourself while you can.
I shook my head wearily. I hadn’t the strength to calculate all these rights and wrongs. I looked at him with bitterness in my heart and knew, at the same time, that I would not leave him there to die alone.
Of such contradictions are we made.
†
Kalf groaned once as I picked him up and started with him, half walking, half sliding down the ridge onto the bloody killing ground of Stiklestad. No amount of carnage that I have witnessed since dims the memory of that sight. Everywhere were bodies—some still living, though covered by heaps of dead—and blood-reek hung heavy in the air. In place of the jarls’ great host, a different army now held the field: dark figures scuttling through the violet dusk, bent low among the corpses, fingering them.
Some ancient crone came at me out of the shadows, loose-haired like a troll hag, with a knife in one bony hand and a bloodstained sack in the other in which to put finger-rings, arm-rings, ear-rings—and the flesh, too, if the rings couldn’t be gotten off otherwise.
The merchants of Nidaros would have new wares to show in a few days’ time! I spat at her, and she darted away.
At the stream, I flung Kalf down and plunged my head into the filthy water and drank. Cupping my hands, I tried to pour a little between his parted lips but it all ran out at the corners of his mouth. He was dead! No, not yet. Pressing my ear to his lips, I could still feel the faint stirring of his breath.
Here at the stream the slaughter had been fiercest. Bodies clogged the narrow channel and lay heaped two and three deep on its banks. Slippery pools of blood made the ground a quagmire where feet had churned it. More than human scavengers were busy here. The crows, with raucous conversation, had already settled to their dinner, and far off, I heard the cough of wild dogs and the distant interest of wolves.
With Kalf in my arms, I waded down into the blood-warm water, the mud sucking at my shoes, and pushed him up onto the farther bank. And there I noticed a certain body on its back, mouth gaping and dead eyes staring. His big axe lay beside him on the ground, and his soft hands clutched the broken shaft of a spear that protruded from his round potbelly—his belly, not his back. Ogmund was a fighter, after all.
The crow that perched on his chin looked up at me and spread its sable wings. Then deciding that I was nothing to be feared, it sank its beak again into his eye. How often in verses have I sung of crows and vultures feasting off some dead hero’s corpse. Believe me, there is nothing heroic about it. I lay with my cheek on the sti
cky grass until I could swallow again.
We reached the trees, at last.
I felt my way among them, step by step on trembling legs, following the sound of the water lapping the shore.
When I thought that I must be near the spot, I leaned Kalf against a tree and began the search for our dinghy. We had pushed it down in a muddy little hollow and covered it with pine boughs. What a clever fellow I was to have thought of that! I could be standing a hand’s breadth away from the cursed thing now and not know it.
In fact, I found it after some anxious minutes by stumbling over it and nearly breaking my shin.
I lay Kalf beside it, put my good shoulder against the bow and pushed. Then braced myself and shoved again with both arms, holding my breath against the pain. Panting and dizzy, I sank to my knees and lay my head against the gunnel. I’ll just rest a little, I thought. I’m strong enough … I can do it. But I couldn’t do it. I hadn’t moved the boat an inch.
No wonder then, that in my desperate state I heard nothing until I felt the prick of a blade on my neck and heard a hoarse voice behind me say, “In the king’s name, we’ll have this boat of yours.”
There was an instant of pure panic before my mind began to work. “The king is dead, God help his soul,” I said, crossing my breast.
“That’s as may be. Stand up and turn around.”
There were four of them. Three stood back where I could barely make them out against the dark trunks of the trees, but the one who had spoken lowered his point and leaned close, staring into my face. I stared back.
I got the impression of a large, rough-hewn fellow with heavy brows and a pushed-in nose, who was dressed all in sheepskins, like a farmer.
“Where were you going?” the hoarse voice asked.
“Nidaros, comrade, and—”
“Nidaros? You haven’t got the Tronder speech.
“I’m an Icelander, but….”
“But you fought for our king?”
“My friend and I have nearly died for him.”
“What friend is that?” His eyes darted nervously. I pointed to Kalf on the ground.
“Well, your friend may yet have to die. Our cargo is more precious than yours, and there isn’t room for both. If the boat we’re waiting for ever comes, tell them Thorgils said to take you where you want to go.”
“And if it never comes?”
“Too bad—”
Before he could raise his blade, I had him by the arm and stepped in close with my knife, pressing just above his belt buckle.
“You must kill me first, and before you do I’ll make enough noise to bring down every heathen within a mile of here.”
His companions leapt forward with their swords drawn. I saw the glint of their helmets and mail coats, well-equipped warriors, all three. But then, who was this shaggy farmer to speak so bold?
With my sword arm useless for a fight, I hadn’t a chance against them. I drew a breath to carry out my threat, even if it cost us all our lives. But they stopped short.
Th-Th-Thorgils,” said one. “Leave him be. We c-c-can’t risk it.”
“Listen to your thick-tongued friend, Thorgils.”
The farmer’s arm muscle bunched under my fingers. He was no weakling.
I must win them over now. “Show me this precious cargo of yours,” I said, standing back from him and speaking in an easy voice. “Short of leaving my comrade to die, I’m at your service.”
“So,” he grunted after a moment’s rumination. “But you’ll do our business first, damn you, before you do your own. Understood? Bring him.” This, to the three companions.
They disappeared among the trees and returned in a moment, laboring under the weight of a body wrapped head and foot with blankets, obviously dead.
“This is the precious cargo—a useless corpse?”
“Shut up,” Thorgils snarled. “You’ll never launch this boat without our help, brave boy, and you know it. We’ll put in her what we please, and you’ll ask no questions.”
Pushing altogether then, we got the dinghy up out of the hollow and into the water, and laid the two bodies in the bottom. With this bulky, shrouded carcass wedged in next to Kalf, it was plain that there was not room enough for all the rest of us.
Tense looks went round until the man with the stammer said, “Y-Y-You must go, Thorgils. You know the place. We’ll f-find our way back.”
The farmer turned on me angrily. “All right, get in and rig your sail, brave boy. Then sit forward, keep quiet, and pray.”
When all was ready, the three warriors, standing thigh-deep in the water, steadied the boat as he climbed in after me and settled himself by the tiller stick. A night breeze rocked us and carried us slowly out on the dark waters of the fjord.
“G-Go with God, Thorgils,” came the stammerer’s voice from far away.
†
We drifted through the grey night in the shadow of the trees with only a faint moon above us. Though I struggled to stay awake, the monotonous slap of water against the bow, the exhaustion of battle, and the giddiness of hunger soon put me in a kind of trance. But farmer Thorgils, though he must have been as tired as I, seemed immune to sleepiness. Throughout the whole long night, I never saw him yawn or shake himself—or move at all except to push the tiller stick and swing the boom around to catch the wind.
Once he spoke, when Kalf stirred and moaned—jarring me from restless sleep.
“Your friend makes too much noise. Sounds travel on the water.”
“Your friend’s quiet enough,” I said.
“Quiet? One day, by God, you’ll hear him shout.”
“What sort of riddle is that, Thorgils?”
But he would say no more.
Just before dawn he brought us in to shore, dropping the sail and sculling the dinghy to a shallow place where a lightning-cleft tree leaned out over the water. Reaching up, he threw a line around one of its branches.
“Get out.”
“Where are we?”
“Five miles or so above the town.” Pushed by a breeze that blew steadily from the northeast, we had covered in a few hours nearly the same distance that had cost us more than two days going up. “I need you for half an hour, then go your way.”
“My friend won’t live another half hour.”
“That matters not to me.”
I made a lunge for him, but pain made me clumsy. His sword flashed out and pointed at Kalf’s throat.
“Cause me trouble and I promise you, this one’ll stay here till the wolves find him. That’s better. Now lift my man out, while I steady us, and lay him on the bank … gently.”
Shivering in the icy water, I pulled and tugged at the lifeless thing. “He’s too heavy for me. Lend a hand, can’t you?”
“Oh no, brave boy, I’ve seen your tricks with a knife, you’ll do it.”
I strained again and got him halfway over the side when the blanket that covered his head and shoulders slipped, and I saw his face. I glanced away as quickly as I could and fumbled the cover back over him, but I was certain Thorgils had seen it.
With a final heave, I slung him up onto the bank.
“Well done, brave boy. Now, just you take his shoulders and I will hold him round the knees. Go where I tell you.”
We trudged with our burden up a wooded slope. As we emerged from the trees, I heard the sound of water, and Thorgils said, “Lay him down.”
We were on the sandy bank of the Nid, where it flows down from the hills and bends toward Nidaros.
“Why couldn’t you have buried him at Stiklestad?”
“Because this bit of land is on my property. Here I can watch over him. Start digging.”
“What with, dammit?”
“With your helmet, your fingernails—the sand is soft, the grave needn’t be deep.”
“I’ll dig with my sword.”
But again he was too quick for me. “Keep it in its scabbard, brave boy.” He allowed himself a half-smile and thrust his own blade into the gr
ound. “I’ll dig with mine.”
So we set to work—Thorgils loosening the soil and I, on hands and knees, scooping it into the river.
The man was a puzzle to me, and I can’t resist a puzzle.
“I suppose you’re not a popular man with your neighbors, Farmer Thorgils.”
“My woman and I keep to ourselves. I’ve a strong arm so the others give us no trouble.”
“And what makes you wiser than they?”
He looked at me in surprise. “That’s a funny thing for a Christman to say. We’re not wiser than the others, only more blessed.”
“Of course, I only meant—”
“It was seven years ago it happened. At the midsummer sacrifice.” I had set off some train of memory in him; I think he got few chances to tell his story. “We were standing in the grove where the sacrificed men hang from the trees,”—he crossed himself and spat to avert the bad luck of naming those evils—“when, all of a sudden, my woman fell down and rolled in the dirt, scratching her cheeks and puking. Later, when the fit passed off, she couldn’t tell us why. After that, she never knew a peaceful day. I took her to the priest of Thor. I took her to a witch—nothing gave her ease.
“At last, I carried her in my wagon to Nidaros, she struggling all the while and biting her lips till they bled. I was at my wit’s end. I marched right into his hall—he was hearing petitions that day and a great crowd had gathered—and laid her at his feet. ‘King,’ I said, ‘some say you have the touch. Prove it on my poor woman’s body.’
“He didn’t want to, at first, but after he’d prayed a while, he put out his hand and touched her forehead. My woman began to scream that she was on fire—it was the demon in her that screamed, of course, burnt by his touch. She thrashed and threw herself about, but he kept his hands on her until she fainted. When she woke up she was herself again, and wondered how she came to be in a strange lord’s hall. There and then I swore to repay him if ever I could. Now I keep my promise.”
Odin’s Child Page 21
